No Time To Bleed

It took me a good half an hour to reach the RV again. The sky had turned to brute like late morning color which was weird considering I felt like I’d been in that building for days.

Alongside the RV I found the van nearby with no one inside. I ended up banging on the RV’s rickety thin door to get inside. The door flew open.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Alex’s voice blared, yanking me viscously by the collar into the vehicle.

I hit the couch.

“What the hell?! Did you just throw me on the couch?! There’s a slice of pizza stuck to my ass!”

His eyes narrowed at me. “You’re a whore.”

My jaw dropped. “Excuse me?!” My legs jolted to a stand.

“You’re a whore. You’re wearing no bra.” The devilish smirk hit his face.

I threw my hands up. “It’s not my fault! I had to give it up or I’d get shot, you moron!”

A pillow heaved from my hand at his head.

“You would’ve gotten shot at? Are you nuts? Where’s Clarissa?” he ranted. “One second I’m in the car sleeping and Eli wakes me up cause he felt the car shake and heard a boom!”

The toilet seemed to flush on cue and Eli came out, blowing his nose.

He did a cute little giggle. “Hi Jasmine. Alex worried about you. He said you were special.”

“I mean special as in stupid. Eli, go watch TV back there!” Eli ran off as Alex itched for the back of his neck.

I chuckled, my hands pressing into my hips. “God, you’re lucky I’m so glad I’m alive right now or I’d mutilate you.”

His eyebrows jerked and he bit down to the bottom of his lip. “Now that you mention it, you do reek a lot. What’d you do? Roll around in dog crap?”

My mouth opened to answer, but the door knocked again. In came Clarissa, Cece, and Shatoya.

“Cece, get the laptop. We wanna look at this stuff right away.” Clarissa ordered.

To be honest, they all looked a wreck. Shatoya’s sleeve was torn and the muscles in her arm seemed to be going into spasms. Clarissa had a long gash that drained down the side of her arm and let droplets to the carpet. And even Cece had a weak limp along with a trembling knee.

The laptop was brought out and Clarissa glared at me. I didn’t know why.

“Flash drive.”

I handed it over to Cece who injected it to the computer that calibrated up the location of the tracker devices.

It took about five minutes of total silence before Cece came up with the results. “You guys are not going to believe this…”

“What?”

“What?”

Clarissa and I stepped forward.

"Clarissa...." Eli's voice whined from his place near the window and she shushed him.

“You know how they moved all the evacuated people to the outer edges of the town for safety?”

We all nodded, completely anxious. She then pointed to a blinking red dot on the screen.

"Clarissa, look at this!" Eli whined again.

"Eli, will you give us some adult time?!" she snapped at him and turned back to us.

“They’re right there, safe….”

“Why do you sound like you’re holding something back?” Alex asked.

Cece swallowed, cramming her hands into her pockets. “Lexicon took charge of those evacuations.”

Absolute dread etched its way onto Clarissa’s face, but I was nothing, but confused.

“What does that mean?”

Alex sighed and looked to me. “It means Lexicon has Ryant and Max.”

The news didn't even have time to sink in til Eli's bloodcurdling screams hit the air and the entire back room of the RV exploded into a ball of flames.