A/N: This novel is a collaboration between myself and Messenger but this chapter is my own work so I'm leaving him out of the by-line. Feel free to contact him as well as me about any suggestions you may have. And stay tuned for his first chapter, coming 'soon'. ;) jk, I trust you...
The last light of Sam's candle was wavering. It had been two hours since his parents had gone to bed and the silent salute of midnight was fast approaching. His room was dim by the light of the meager flame and his bed and desk were visible only by faint outlines. The floorboards were too creaky for him to stand without alerting his family so he edged forward towards the door in a sitting position. He had left his bag at the foot of the bed and all he had left to add to it was the food. He'd be on the road for days if the plan went ahead and running cross country every day was going to require plenty of sustenance.
He hooked a finger around the edge of the door and swung it gently open. The hall was lined with soft carpet that would absorb his footsteps so he raised himself warily to his feet and paced forward. He rounded a corner of the hallway that took him to the kitchen and, fervently hoping that his candle didn't die now, he crept into the kitchen and slung his bag onto the counter.
The kitchen was mostly bare of food - having a four-child family tended to do that to the food supply. There were plenty of basic utensils scattered around the room but Sam didn't see what use a whisk was going to be where he was going. He swung open the door of a high up cabinet above the fridge and emptied the cabinet out until the back of it was fully visible. He had installed a false back weeks ago when he had first been chosen to go on the journey.
He eased the false back out and was met with a wall of tinned soup and instant pasta that the rest of the group had donated to him. Commercial foods had been rare in Lone ever since the split but somehow they had collectively amassed twenty pot noodles, sixteen pasta pots and twelve Cup a' Soups. Nobody would tell him how they had gotten hold of so much so that he couldn't be forced to give up the information.
Sam reinstalled the false back, having nowhere else to put it. If nobody had noticed it by now, they weren't going to. He carefully replaced all the pasta and vegetables as close to how he found them as he could. He opened his bag and hauled out a large sack, into which he tossed all his food supplies. Finally, he produced a pre-written note for his parents explaining that he wasn't telling them where he was going because firstly it was a secret and secondly they wouldn't like it. With a final deep breath and a glance around the only home he'd ever known, he was ready to go. He took one step forward and clattered into a chair near the doorway that he hadn't spotted in the dark. The chair scraped and screeched across the tiled floor. Sam gasped and thrust his hands forward to catch it. Fortunately, it wasn't falling.
Still, his parents were likely to rise from bed at any moment to investigate. With his hopes of nostalgic final moments in his house dashed, Sam strode swiftly out of the front door. He emerged from the house to a scene so peaceful he almost abandoned his mission entirely for the sake of preserving it. The sun would rise eventually though, shattering the stillness that had settled over the town of Porten. There was nothing to preserve here. Well, nothing that was worth it.
He strolled as calmly through the streets as he could, in the hopes that he would be taken for an insomniac out for a walk at midnight. The rest of the group were due to meet him at the Arklanshire border, about half a mile from the wall. He took Kemp Road, a long and winding street which followed roughly the track of the railway. The railway itself terminated about a mile before the wall, for what New North American would want a filthy Loner catching the 11:13 to New York?
Sam chuckled to himself. This was not going to be a simple task. What was he letting himself in for?
He reached their rendezvous point - marked by a bright green flag with a Union Jack in the corner - within ten minutes of turning onto Kemp Road. He picked up the flag, waved it back and forth twice and waited for one of the group's members to reveal themself.
"Sam!" hissed a husky male voice, "Sam, it's William. Over here."
Sam whirled to face in the general direction of the voice and spotted a pair of bright eyes peeking at him through a patch of scrub. The landscape was bare out here, all pretense of civilisation dropped for the few miles between the town and the border that nobody ever bothered to visit. Sometimes Sam wondered if the Wastelands stretched further East than the official border.
He doubled back on himself until he found an opening in the bushes, where another group member, Harry, was there to greet him.
"Ready for this?" Harry asked softly. Harry was far more feminine than William, whose appearance could easily have suggested he was a medieval warrior. Harry had a much thinner face with softer skin. He must have originated East of the border somewhere, Sam thought. The split had been hard on Lone. Nobody was even close to 'pretty' anymore.
Sam nodded mutely, not sure at all that he was. He couldn't let his friends down though so he would say nothing. He would go. For them and for Lone, he would go.
He followed the bushes - which were the boundaries of what used to be a forest but was now a collection of crippled trees and clusters of bushes such as this. They led him naturally to a gap in the twisted branches and papery leaves. The gap was where the rest of the group had chosen to set up.
They didn't have a name, really. Nobody had ever come up with one. There had been plenty of suggestions from some of the group's less dedicated members, such as Charlie and Phil but they were all either silly or dirty and had sounded like they were from the brain of a thirteen-year-old - so they had been ignored. The only reason Charlie and Phil hadn't been kicked out was because they brought the membership up to eight. Six members didn't even feel worthy of a name.
"There you are, Sam," greeted Rob, the leader of the group. Rob had dark skin and a buzz-cut of black hair. His father had made a living selling something on the boundary of exotic and illegal - Rob never mentioned what - to Rwanda, the family's homeland. While he'd lost most of his father's accent, Rob had inherited a large portion of his father's business accumen - and his love of flirting with the law.
"Yeah," Sam murmured, then added, "I have the provisions."
"Good," Rob replied, "I have some more for you."
Rob nodded towards Jock, a beefy kid whom Rob may or may not have been paying in imported sodas. Most of the group were there voluntarily, for the sake of Lone. Jock, however, rarely offered opinions on the subject of reunification. And in this group, everyone had complex opinions, which were normally discussed fervently in hushed tones.
Jock brought forward a second sack of instant meals and silently placed it beside Sam's own sack, which Sam had placed a few feet to his right when Rob had greeted him. The gap in the bushes was about as wide as a large bathroom and eight people fit easily into it with room left to walk around and set out equipment.
A second - and slightly scrawnier - kid, named Andrea, the group's only female member, stepped forward and handed him a kettle. There was a slightly reverent twinkle in her eyes. For a moment, Sam thought she was showing him respect for taking the weight of the mission on his shoulders but on further inspection of the kettle, he understood. This was no metal pot that sat over a fire and screeched when the water boiled. This was a plastic kettle with a built-in water purifier. What Andrea was staring at had been the extra-life battery installed below its handle.
"Where the hell did you find a kettle?" Sam spluttered, "And a battery!"
"Keep quiet," Rob urged, "You never know what kind of guards might be patrolling around here. This isn't border area, you know. Any guards here would be patrolling for the fun of catching one of us."
Sam nodded. Rob would never reveal where he'd gotten it from anyway. For all Sam knew, he'd re-established his Rwandan connection and imported it from there.
"One more time before we start," Rob whispered, "You sure about this?"
"Yes," Sam replied, with enough passion for the cause in his heart to be speaking the truth. Butterflies in his tummy were nothing compared to the raging fire in his veins. Lone would not be shunned any longer, if he had anything to do about it.
He heard feet crunching behind him and twisted around to see Charlie and Phil emerged from the darkness with four shovels each balanced in their arms.
"Then let's start digging." Rob grinned, his teeth gleaming in the darkness.
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