Welcome, welcome, to the twenty-first chapter of TSL! This chapter is made possible by... Isabella EstherRuth, who GAVE ME MY COPY OF HUNGER BACK! :D *cheers loudly*
In other news, I don't have that much to say. Thank you, to all of my loyal friends and reviewers, which are basically the same thing... And this chapter has random E.Z. in it! Wow, I'm having a spiel. Moving on, I have two questions that I'd like to ask.
1) What color is Lana's hair?! I have no idea. I heard somewhere that it was red, but that doesn't seem right, to me. If any of y'all's know, I'd really appreciate it. And...
2) Did any of you know that Orsay's like Sam's age? I had absolutely no idea. I was innocently reading "HUNGER", and it was like "...she saw a group of people who looked to be about her age..." And it was talking about Sam, Astrid, Quinn, and Edilio! I was like; "Orsay's a teenager? WHUUT?" For some odd reason, I thought she was like ten or eleven.
MOVING ON! Yeah, you don't have to answer those questions if you don't wanna. I really wanted to make this a short author's note, but I guess that's not gonna happen.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own "GONE" (oh, and this is starting like right at the beginning of "HUNGER"!), or "Holiday" by Green Day...
DEDICATION: I dedicate this 21st chapter to Rouge (a.k.a. Miss Rouge Apple) for all her love and support! (We did it. We defeated the cool-whip with help from our lovely OC's. And Orc and Drake, kind of but not really. And the pumpkin pie, the real hero of the saga! :D)
REMINDER: I put up a one-shot, the thirteenth-and-a-half chapter of TSL, where we see how Alex beat the poof. If you haven't read it yet, go read it now!
Chapter Twenty-One: Holiday
Alex awoke to loud banging from downstairs. Yawning, she pulled on her spare pair of jeans and a semi-clean T-shirt and stomped down the stairs. What she saw confused her- Drake was standing, glaring, at the closed front door.
"What's your problem?"
He nodded at the door. "Sam."
Alex almost laughed. "So you shut the door in his face?" The scowl didn't budge, so she pushed past him and yanked the door open herself. Sam was standing, arms crossed, on the porch of the small house that Alex and Drake were sharing.
"Get in the car," Sam snarled. Alex looked behind him, and saw a Jeep; the Mexican kid (Edilio, she remembered) at the wheel. Drake was now paying attention.
"Why?" he asked, his tone equally vicious. Sam's eyes flashed.
"If you're going to live in this town, you're going to contribute," Sam retorted. "Now get in the car. We're going to pick cabbage." From the look on Drake's face, Alex deduced that he would rather do anything then get into the car with Sam, but all the same he followed the other boy to the Jeep. Alex grabbed her sneakers and followed.
XxXxX
After she and Drake squished into the Jeep's not-so-spacious backseat (the seating order was Edilio in the driver's seat, Sam riding shotgun, a kid introduced to Alex as Albert Hillsborough to the far left in the backseat, a fuming Drake next to him, Alex next to Drake, and shoved beside her was a sixth-grader who seemed all right, who had told Alex that his name was E.Z.), they were off. There wasn't much conversation, Edilio's eyes were firmly fixed on the road (as were Sam's), Albert's hands were nervously twitching as he stared out of the window, and Drake looked angry enough to explode.
Alex then patted the pockets of her jeans, and realized…
"Dang, I left my iPod in my other pants."
She then noticed how funny that sounded, and began laughing out loud. The only one who didn't give her a weird look was E.Z., who held out one of his own earbuds.
"You can share mine, if ya want," he said in a laid-back tone. Alex, surprised at the generosity of this random boy, took the earbud.
"Thanks," she replied, and stuck it in her ear, not knowing what to expect. E.Z. nodded and pressed 'play'.
Familiar music filled her ears, and the often listened to words, "say, hey!" made her smile. She looked at E.Z. "You read my mind." He grinned back.
As if they had made a silent pact, they both started singing loudly, not caring in the slightest about the four other people in the Jeep. "Hear the sound of the falling rain, comin' down like an Armageddon flame, hey! The shame, the ones who died without a name... Hear the dogs howling out of key, to a hymn called 'Faith and Misery', hey! And bleed, the company lost the war today..."
Drake, who was (by now) used to her random singing outbursts, simply rolled his eyes and continued his angry thoughts. The other three boys didn't know what to make of it.
"I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies," Alex and E.Z. sang into fists clenched like microphones. "This is the dawning of the rest of our lives, ON HOLIDAY!" They both yelled the last part, and Alex had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at Sam's expression. E.Z. held out his hand expectantly, waiting for a high-five, and Alex happily gave him one.
"Hear the drum pounding out of time, another protester has crossed the line, hey! To find, the money's on the other side..."
"Can I get another amen?" Alex sang loudly.
"Amen!" E.Z. replied just as loudly, and they both sang--
"Here's a flag wrapped around a score of men, hey! A gag, a plastic bag on a monument..." Ignoring Sam, who was now giving both of them death glares, as if they shouldn't be allowed to sing in the FAYZ, they continued on to the chorus. "I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies, this is the dawning of the rest of our lives, ON HOLIDAY!"
At the same time, they both broke into a mad air-guitar solo, strumming wildly and headbanging.
"Hey!"
"Three, four!"
Alex made a staticky microphone sound using her right hand, and said in the manliest voice she could muster, "the representative from California has the floor." E.Z. opened his mouth, about to launch into the spiel that is in the middle of the song "Holiday", but the Jeep then jerked to a stop.
"Sorry to interrupt," Edilio said in a tone that suggested that he didn't really care as he turned off the car, "but we've arrived." E.Z. shrugged, and they all piled out onto the edge of a cabbage field.
"Why are we even here?" Drake grumbled. "We just brought you guys food only yesterday."
"There's more then three hundred kids back in Perdido Beach," Albert replied irritably. "The food may have erased your debt, but it sure didn't erase our hunger. So, cabbages." Drake rolled his eyes, but didn't reply.
"Is this the only food we found?" Alex questioned. Albert sighed, sounding exasperated.
"There's avocados, cantaloupes, broccoli, and a whole bunch of artichokes. Oranges, maybe." Alex raised an eyebrow.
"To tell you the truth, I'm starving," E.Z. said, nudging Alex with an elbow. "Ya wanna help me pick a cabbage?" Alex glanced at the field full of the leafy vegetables, wary.
"I don't usually enjoy cabbage, but sure."
E.Z. started out into the field, earbuds in and whistling "Holiday". Albert was muttering something about how many pounds of cabbage they had, and Sam was drinking out of a bottle of water. Alex shrugged. Everything seemed normal. She couldn't quite place it, but there was something weird about this field.
It was quieter, maybe.
Alex shrugged again, and made to walk into the field.
"Hey, Alex, could I talk to you for a second?" She spun around, meeting Drake almost nose-to-nose.
"Sure. What is it?"
"You and E.Z. Back in the car. You two were..."
Alex rolled her eyes, a half-smile on her lips. "Honestly, Drake? This is what you wanted to talk about?" He raised both of his eyebrows, as if daring her to continue. "You are such a boy. I just met this kid, for one. For two, he's in sixth grade. And three, we were just sharing earbuds!"
Drake frowned. "But--"
"But nothing," Alex said firmly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pick a cabbage with my new friend." As she turned to walk away, she saw Drake's frown get deeper, but he wasn't frowning at her, his gaze was directed at the field, at E.Z.
Alex shook her head and walked nearer to the field. I'll never get how a boy's mind wor-- A solid shape collided with her body, and she fell, fell away from the field. A grunt escaped her throat as she hit the hard ground, Drake on top of her.
"MERWIN!" she bellowed in frustration. "Get... Off... Of me!" He complied, and she sat up. "What the--"
And then E.Z. screamed.
"E.Z.! What's the matter?" Alex yelled back, getting to her feet.
"Something bit me! It hurts... It hurts... Oh, man, it--" He screamed again, a sound that embodied pure pain and agony, going higher and higher into a keening sound of hysteria.
Alex caught a glimpse of a black mark on the leg of E.Z.'s jeans.
"Snake," Sam muttered.
E.Z.'s arm went into a seizure. It flailed around; it was as if he had no control over it anymore. "They're in my feet, they're in my feet!" he began screaming and jumping up and down like a madman.
Alex lunged towards the field, not caring of the danger, only knowing that she needed to get to him, needed to get to her friend.
Drake's whip-arm wrapped twice around her waist, pulling her back and not letting her go any further. She pummeled at it with her fists, to no avail.
"Drake! Let me GO!"
"No, Alex, I won't," he said loudly. "Look." Alex forced herself to look at the ground nearest to where she was being held, and she took a deep breath, horrified.
The dirt seemed to be alive, but in reality, it was seething with worms. Worms as long as from Alex's elbow to the tips of her fingers, and their target was a still-screaming E.Z.
Out of the corner of her eye, Alex saw Sam move closer to the field, a look of pure helplessness on his face, saw E.Z. move closer to Sam, his body convulsing wildly.
She saw the worm burst from E.Z.'s throat. And another, right under his ear.
She saw him sink to the ground, no longer screaming. "Help me," E.Z. whispered, blood pumping from his wounds, eyes fixed on Sam, pleading. "Sam..."
Alex let out a sob she hadn't known she was holding in as she turned away, but not quickly enough to miss the worm sliding out of E.Z.'s mouth, and she couldn't mask the sound of the killer worms devouring the body of her friend.
And then Drake's arms were around her, hugging a bit too tightly, but she welcomed the pain it caused. Alex watched silently, solemnly, as Sam and Edilio dragged what was left of E.Z. from the field. She only approached his remains long enough to pick up his iPod, one of the only things left of E.Z.
The song "Holiday" was just ending. Alex turned off the machine, sticking it into her pocket as Sam burned E.Z.'s body with bright light from his palms. A tear fell from her eye, hitting the parched ground.
"It's the FAYZ, man," she heard Edilio say quietly, in a vain attempt to comfort Sam. "It's just a FAYZ."
That's pretty depressing. Let's give E.Z. a moment of silence.
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Review, please!
:Hyperactive Lioness: