Lost

16th August: 5:33pm

I dragged my hands roughly through another dank cupboard, brushing away a cluster of stray cobwebs and a thick coat of dust. I simply shoved aside ninety nine percent of what was in the cupboard, just a few grotty looking blankets and worn out weapons. I sighed angrily. Even when I did get my hands on something useful – five or six plastic bottles of water – I noticed that they had turned fairly stagnant with a thin coat of green scum around the bottoms of the bottles. I exhaled sharply. In this heat, any water was better than no water. But there was no way this was going to be enough to sustain seven of us.

With a grunt I pulled myself to my feet and slammed the cupboard door shut violently, the sudden noise making me jump.

I scuffled through from the ‘kitchen’ of our dry and musky hide out, through to the bedroom. It was more of a camp site than a bedroom. Blankets and pillows just spread out across the sand. Anything close to a proper bed had been given up months ago. We were living in squalor.

On the opposite side of the room, Fun Ghoul, my comrade and lover, sat cross legged on his tattered sheets, elbows rested on his knees, head buried in his hands. I sighed sadly, and stepped towards him, each footstep of my heavy boots crunching quietly on the hot sand. He must have heard me approaching, but he didn’t look up. I tucked my finger under his chin and tilting his head up. His eyes fixed on mine, but they were empty, like he wasn’t registering me at all.

“Hey.” I muttered quietly, trying to catch his attention. But still, blank. I spoke louder. “Hey. Fun Ghoul, it’s me, Poison.”

The sound of either his name or mine seemed to snap him out of it. “Sorry. What’s up?”

“Any luck?” I asked. While I’d been searching the kitchen for anything useful, he decided he’d search everywhere else he could lay eyes on. He kicked the rucksack at his feet. I bent down and peered inside. A couple of laser guns and a first aid kit. As useful as they would be, it wasn’t what we needed. I sighed.

“What are we going to do, Poison?” Fun Ghoul asked solemnly. “We could starve.”

I grabbed his shoulders and pressed my lips against his forehead. “It won’t come to that. We’ll just have to split up, all of us. We just have to go and search for supplies like we always do.” I took a seat beside him. “Don’t give up. We need you here; you’re the strongest of the team.”

There was a short silence. You could have cut the atmosphere in the room with a box knife. Fun Ghoul roughly rubbed his face with his tattooed hands, groaning in frustration. “I hate this town,” he growled. “It’s so washed up.”

There was a long moment of silence, in which I stared emptily at Fun Ghoul while he stared equally as emptily at the dried out sand beneath his feet. Straightening up, I gently nudged his foot with my boot, causing his head to snap up in subconscious reaction. I threaded my fingers through my hair lazily, pushing a thick strand of red away from my face.

“Do you think you can handle telling the others the situation?” I asked him, only realizing how patronizing I sounded after the words left my mouth. Upon realizing he hadn’t really noticed the tone of my voice, I continued. “While I figure out a route?”

“I guess so,” he muttered, placing his hands on his grazed knees and hauling himself up. I watched him leave the room. Hearing the panic in his tone made my stomach turn uneasily and I threw my hand to my mouth to stop myself gagging. I turned a little to my left and leaned against the makeshift wooden desk, scrambling through a messy pile of papers, maps, blueprints, lists and letters. There were scruffy red markings all over one of the maps where Art Breaker had struck off our previous routes the night before. Taking the black pen, I marked out the safest possible direction for a supply hunt.

I picked up the blueprint in both of my scraped up hands and carried them to the next room, dumping them on the dirty ground where everyone was sitting. Crouching in the only available space, I looked each of them dead in the eye.

“We need to split up.” I announced. Venom Noise’s head shot up and she glared at me like I was crazy. I shook my head. “It’s the only way. The eastern route is our safest but we’ll get nowhere near enough supplies that way.”

Art Breaker was staring intently at the blueprint, tracing her long index finger down the thick black line I had drawn. She was deep in thought so I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to disturb her. After a while she scrunched her face up. “I don’t think the southern route is the best idea.” She mumbled.

“Why not?” I challenged. The south side of the desert had always been the safest, ever since the first day we arrived in California.

“Our last base was there, and we left a lot of things behind. They'll expect us to go back.” She reminded us. “I’m thinking that Venom, Ghoul and I head out Eastward like you said, while you, Lucid, Jet and Kobra head down the highway towards Zone 13. They’d never expect you and Ghoul to travel apart so they might leave us alone.”

The more I thought about it, the more her plan made sense. They only ever attacked me or Ghoul when we were together, because they knew it hurt the other to see it. I also doubted they’d expect us to head towards one of the most dangerous Zones in the world. I nodded in approval.

“Perfect.”