Two days.
Forty-eight hours measured not in minutes, but in cycles of gnawing hunger, piercing cold, and the relentless, grinding pain that had become Leo's entire world. His broken arm was a furnace of agony sealed inside his skin. The crude sling did nothing for the deep, sickening throb that pulsed with every heartbeat, a constant reminder of the damage. He hadn't slept, not really. He'd drift into a shallow, feverish doze only to be jolted awake by a spasm or the distant, haunting crackle of gunfire that never seemed to stop.
Beside him, Kayla was a ghost. The glass still protruded from her eye socket, a monstrous fact they had all learned to ignore and could never forget. The area around it was swollen, an angry, infected purple. She whimpered in her sleep, when sleep came, and spent her waking hours perfectly still, conserving energy, her good eye staring at nothing. Their food was almost gone, the last juice boxes drained. The "rationing" had devolved into a shared, silent despair. The fire, which they kept burning night and day, was their altar and their prison.
Hope had curdled into a thin, sour paste. No helicopters had thrummed in the grey sky. No shouts of rescuers had echoed down the ravine. The only sounds were the woods and the war in the distance. The group's morale had fractured into silent cliques of misery. Miss Perkins's optimistic commands had dwindled to whispered pleas to "just hang on."
On the third morning, a new sound cut through the fog of Leo's pain.
A shuffling. A slow, dragging scrape through the fallen leaves on the slope above their camp.
Everyone froze. All eyes turned upward. A figure was moving through the trees, silhouetted against the weak dawn light. It was a man, his clothes rumpled, one sleeve torn. He moved with a strange, unsteady gait.
Miss Perkins's face, pale and exhausted, lit with a desperate, beautiful hope. "Oh, thank God," she breathed, the words a prayer. "Hello! Hello, we need help! We're down here!"
"Wait, Miss P—" Jake started, but she was already scrambling up the muddy bank towards the tree line, driven by two days of helplessness.
"We're children! We've been in a crash!" she called out, her voice cracking with relief.
The figure turned at the sound. It didn't speak. It didn't wave. It just altered its shuffling course and came directly toward her, picking up a little speed.
Leo felt a cold dread, separate from his physical pain, clutch his stomach. Something was wrong with the way it moved. Something was empty in the way it focused on her.
Miss Perkins stopped a few feet from the tree line, her hopeful smile beginning to waver. "Sir? Are you okay? Can you call for—"
The man lunged. It wasn't a run; it was a sudden, graceless surge of weight. He fell upon her. There was no struggle, no fight. He was just a force of nature. He drove her to the ground with a heavy thud.
And then he buried his face in her neck.
The sound was not a scream. It was a wet, choking gurgle, abruptly cut off into a horrible, bubbling silence. A jet of crimson arced, spattering the bright green ferns.
For a heartbeat, there was absolute silence in the camp. The world seemed to hold its breath.
Then, chaos.
A unified, primal scream tore from twenty-two young throats. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated terror that shattered the last vestige of their old world. There was no thought, only instinct: RUN.
They scattered like birds blasted by a shotgun. Some ran back towards the terrible sanctuary of the bus. Others plunged blindly into the woods downstream. There was no direction, only away.
Leo's body moved before his mind could process. He was on his feet, a fresh, white-hot lance of pain shooting from his arm as he jostled it. Danny was beside him, his face a mask of panic. "This way!" Danny yelled, grabbing Leo's good arm and pulling him towards the thickest part of the forest, away from the… the thing that was now rising from their teacher's still-twitching body, its mouth and chin dark and glistening.
They ran. Leo's breath came in ragged, sobbing gasps. Every footfall sent a jolt up through his shoulders into the broken bone. He clutched the arm tight against his chest, but it was like carrying a live wire. Through the trees, he saw other shapes now. Not just the one. More of them, moving with that same slow, relentless shuffle, drawn by the noise.
Then, a voice, high and desperate, cut through the panic behind them.
"Don't leave me! Please!"
Leo dared a glance over his shoulder. Kayla was on the ground fifteen yards back, having tripped over a root. She was scrambling, her hands clawing at the mud, her movements uncoordinated by pain and terror. And lurching towards her, not ten feet away, was another one—a woman in a stained housecoat, her arm outstretched.
"Danny!" Leo screamed, skidding to a halt.
Danny followed his gaze, his expression torn between terror and loyalty. "Shit!"
It was Leo who made the decision. He turned and started back. "Kayla! Get up!" he yelled, his voice breaking.
Danny, with a strangled curse, took the lead, darting back with more speed. Leo stumbled after him. Danny reached Kayla first, hauling her to her feet just as the housecoat woman closed in. Danny didn't fight; he shoved Kayla hard towards Leo and then threw a rock he'd scooped up. It bounced off the woman's shoulder with a dull thud, doing no damage but buying a second.
"Run! Just run!" Danny shouted.
Kayla, sobbing hysterically, latched onto the back of Leo's shirt, her fingers twisting in the fabric. It was the wrong choice—Danny was stronger, un injured—but in her blind panic, she clung to the first stable thing she found, which was Leo in front of her. The pull on his shirt jostled his arm, and he saw stars, a cry of pain ripped from his lips.
They ran again, a desperate, three-legged race through the nightmare woods. Leo led, with Kayla clutching his back like a barnacle, and Danny behind them, yelling directions and looking for threats. Fuck, fuck, fuck, my arm, was the only coherent thought in Leo's mind, a profane mantra matching the rhythm of his pounding heart. He never swore, but the pain deserved it. It was a living thing, a beast chewing on his bones.
The trees blurred. They had no destination. The only goal was to put distance between them and the gurgling sounds and the shuffling footsteps.
Then, his foot caught.
A thick, knotted root hidden under a blanket of moss. He went down hard, his good arm flying out to break his fall. The impact was a cataclysm. The vibration shot through the ground and up into his broken arm with such intensity that his vision tunneled to a pinprick of grey. A raw, animal scream was torn from him, a sound he didn't know he could make. For a moment, there was nothing in the universe but white, searing fire in his left side.
"Leo! Get up!" Danny's voice was in his ear, frantic. Hands were under his shoulders, hauling him. Leo couldn't help. He was a dead weight, whimpering, tears of pure, unadulterated agony streaming down his face. Kayla stood nearby, hyperventilating, her hands pressed to her ears as if to block out his pain along with everything else.
Somehow, Danny got him upright. They stumbled on, slower now, Leo leaning heavily on his friend. They ran until the burn in their lungs was worse than the fear, until they could hear nothing but their own ragged breaths and the wind in the pines. Finally, they slowed to a gasping, limping walk.
They were alone. The sounds of the other fleeing children were gone. The only reminders of the camp were the phantom taste of peanut butter, the image of Miss Perkins's hopeful smile, and the sticky, coppery smell that Leo feared was now permanently in his nose.
Danny bent over, hands on his knees, vomiting from adrenaline and exhaustion. When he straightened, his face was set. "We gotta find the others. We gotta stick together. Maybe Ben, or Jake…"
Kayla, still trembling violently, shook her head. Her voice was a thin, haunted scrape. "We don't even know where we are. We don't know which way they went. We just… ran." She hugged herself, her good eye wide and lost. "It was stupid. We should've followed someone. We should've followed Ben."
Her words hung in the cold morning air, the terrible truth of them undeniable. In their blind panic, they had chosen the wrong direction. They were three now: a leader with a shattered arm, a follower in shock, and a girl with glass in her eye. They were lost, utterly and completely, in a forest that had just begun to fill with monsters. And the only adult they had was lying dead in a clearing, her throat torn out.