Our First Argument

'Wait…' I whispered. 'Did you hear that?' an eerie noise had caught my attention.

It could've been the wind, or perhaps a bird desperately trying to find some worms… but it somehow sounded… heavier than that. Even though heavy wasn't exactly the right word to describe it.

When I held in my breath all I could hear was my own heart beat and Nick's heavy breathing, but it hadn't been Nick who had alarmed me. There it was again. That annoying nerve wrecking rustling. It couldn't be a bird, but it was too stealthy to be a lurker. We were being followed.

The breathing behind the bushes… It somehow seemed familiar.

Nick was in too much pain to realize. He'd gotten even paler, and less talkative the last half hour. I started getting worried, but didn't have time to think about it when I heard the weird noises again. Snapping branches, bushes being pushed aside as if something, was slowly making its way toward us.

Nick slowly closed his eyes, kept them shut for a second, and then opened them again. Right at the moment he did, more rustling made me turn around.

Nick's eyes now widened. 'Not again…' he whispered.

He softly shook his head and limped towards the general direction of the sound. When he reached for a low hanging branch the sounds seemed to trail of. Nick pushed the branch aside, and we saw…

Nothing. There was literally nothing interesting in the clearing Nick had just revealed, but Nick seemed to have a different opinion on that. He stumbled towards the other end of the clearing and kneeled down.

I anxiously looked around before walking after him as I folded my arms in front of my chest because of a chilly breeze.

'What-?'

'Shh!' Nick hissed as he softly touched the ground.

'What's the problem?' I whispered back as I thought about kneeling down next to him, but changed my mind as I thought of how anything could sneak up to us like that.

'Look, look at that.'

I looked over to what he was pointing at. There were footsteps in the mud.

'They look rather recent to me…' I mumbled, considering myself an expert after having followed Nick's trail for so long.

'That's what I was thinking.' He answered.

Out of nowhere he groaned and pressed a hand against the wound in his stomach.

'Nick!' I yelped a little too loud. My voice was hoarse, probably because of dehydration, but the high-pitched sound echoed through the trees.

'It's fine, I'm okay, I'm okay…' he mumbled.

'No, no your not! And if we don't find a way to clean that soon, you'll end up just like me back when I had that wound!' without me realizing it, my hand clasped around my wounded shoulder. It still felt bruised, and the scar was definitely going to mar my skin forever, but it had healed.

He looked up at me and tried to calm me down, but it was to no use, I was worried about him, he couldn't die!

'Cammie, hey, c'mon listen to me…'

I burrowed my face in my hands as I leaned against a tree. 'It's hopeless, were in the middle of the woods…' I couldn't look at him, but his beaten self was a burnt image in my mind. Drenched in blood, his pale face full of purple bruises…

'Cammie…'

'What are we going to do, what can we do?' I said softly, my voice cracked and my breathing was uneven. Because of the lack of sleep I kept panicking about everything… it annoyed me those constant mood shifts. 'What do we do…?!' I repeated once more, louder this time.

'Cammie listen to me!' he shouted out above my panic attack.

I stopped talking and looked at him as he got closer and took my hand.

'We'll figure something out, I'm not gonna die yet alright?'

I looked at his determined face and nodded. He was so much different from that depressed guy I found in that shed weeks ago. He gave me hope.

'What do you suggest?' I asked.

He frowned and opened his mouth to answer.

Another branch snapped behind us and caused both our heads to turn. I placed my hand on my dagger in its hilt.

We both stopped breathing and tried desperately to catch any other noise, but nothing followed.

Carefully I tried approaching whatever lurked in the shadows behind the trees.

'Cammie, no!' Nick whispered, his voice just as hoarse as mine, as he tried to grab my wrist to pull me back.

I pulled myself free, and took a deep breath. This stupid thing had to be over. I was sick of getting startled all the time.

'We have a gun…' I told the emptiness in front of me.

An odd realization occurred me, had we lost all politeness in the world? I wouldn't start a conversation with a stranger with a simple "hi". Since when did I have to start by telling the other I could easily kill them? Politeness got you nothing anymore. Nothing but death that is.

'Who's there?' I asked trying to make sure my voice wouldn't shake as I did while I took another step forward. 'We don't want to hurt you, just show yourse-'

A low dark sound followed, it sounded deep, raspy and terrifying. Almost like growling. I stepped back, Nick rushed forward to shield me from whatever was about to jump out of the bushes, but as soon as he did, rustling noises indicated whatever it had been, had fled again.

For a second it was quiet.

'Well… that happened.' I mumbled.

'Something similar to this has happened to me before…' Nick suddenly spoke. 'I thought I'd imagined it because I was so tired, but I guess not.'

I looked at Nick's face, his black eye, the dried blood, partially lurker's, partially his own… I almost couldn't see the person behind the injuries anymore.

'I've also been stalked by something.' I responded thinking back to the big yellow eyes I'd seen right before almost getting eaten by that lurker.

Nick's tired eyes widened.

'I guess something haunts these woods…' I whispered, my voice barely louder than the wind. 'And I don't think its human.'

Nick had a look on his face I couldn't quite determine. He slowly bent over and pressed his muddy hand against the open wound. After a second he realized what he'd done. He wiped the hand clean against his army print jeans, tore some fabric from his already torn up shirt and pressed it against the bleeding cut.

'Nick-' I stopped myself just in time before asking "are you okay?" again, because of course he wasn't. Even though he'd told me it was going to be okay, we were still in the middle of the woods. Whatever could've helped us in the city, we sure as hell weren't going to find it in the middle f nowhere.

'We're going to follow those footsteps.' I decided out loud.

The eyes Nick had just closed out of fatigue shot open when my voice reached him. 'Wha- are you crazy, you know how dangerous that is?'

'I know, but it's all we got.'

He wanted to protest, but I held up my hand. 'Think about it, these are the only signs of human beings. Apart from that all we've got is the hardware complex, and excuse me for not wanting to go back there.'

'Cammie, we can't just-'

'They might be friendly, who knows, it could even be Luke…'

'And what if they're not?' Nick had an angry look on his face, and he probably felt like scolding me because of my stupidity. 'What are you expecting to find Cammie, because I'm pretty sure all we might come across is another survivor in the woods. What makes you think they're not starving as well? Supplies are getting hard to come by.' He concluded.

I opened my mouth to say something, but closed it again, and started following the footsteps. Something felt familiar here… as if I hadn't followed enough footsteps lately…

'Cammie, what are you- I thought we were together in this- do you know how stupid and unreasonable you're acting right now?'

His pleas got quieter as I walked on. I didn't hold in my pace, because I knew if I would, he'd know he won.

'Cammie get back here right fucking now!'

'I'm not your dog.' I reminded him as I kept walking.

Finally I heard him getting a move on, and he caught up with me.

'This is bullshit.' He said angrily.

I smiled. 'Look at us, our first ever argument.'

'This is not funny Cammie, I'm serious, we're basically throwing ourselves in the arms of death right now.'

'How cute, you're getting all poetic.'

Nick rolled his eyes. I slowed down slightly so that he could keep up with me and we followed the footsteps together.

'This still isn't a good idea, we should just head to the meeting point, everyone will be there and we'll-'

'And what if they're not, or what if you won't last that long?'

I glanced sideways at Nick. He gulped.

'These footsteps are the only promise we have to supplies.' I said as I tried to find a slight change in his hardened expression.

'You can't really call this a promise.'

Nick still had a grumpy look on his face, but kept walking.

'There's no telling if the group will have a better idea.' I said after a while. Nick only nodded and kept his mouth shut as he focused n keeping up with our steady pace. I decided not to bother him anymore. I had clearly won the argument. Either that, or he was too tired to argue with me any longer.

My thoughts trailed off to a happy place. A place with lots of ice cream.

To prevent myself from going crazy under pressured moments I'd taught myself that. It had become a habit, and I kept thinking of stuff like that when my mind stopped working under all the stress.

I didn't even look down as we walked, the trees and bushes seemed to have been pushed aside roughly by whoever had walked here, so it wasn't too hard to know where to go. He or she had either walked here often, or hadn't been to graceful, because he had created a clear path through the woods.

I looked up at the trees, at the grey sky. The weather had gotten colder and colder. It hadn't rained in a while and I had a feeling the rain would be snow soon. I'd stopped counting the days long ago, but I could feel the seasons and it seemed to be winter, perhaps almost mid. The more we'd move north, the earlier we would encounter snow. I definitely wasn't looking forward to that. I looked at Nick who was so pale it almost seemed green. He had dark purple bags underneath his eyes.

'When we've found a way to clean that wound you're really gonna need some sleep.' I said as I bent over slightly to be able to take a look at the face he now turned to the ground. Probably so that I wouldn't be able to see how dead he looked. But I knew.

'Wait.' Nick said and he kneeled down.

I didn't turn around, but stopped walking. He sounded more awake, and I was afraid he had second thoughts about my plan after all. 'Not this again Nick, I told you, this is the only thing we can-'

'No no, not that… look at the footprints.'

I looked down, and at first couldn't detect anything extraordinary, but then I noticed the even pattern of footprints had become messy. It almost seemed as if the person had suddenly gone blind as they were walking.

'Lurkers.' He said as he frowned.

'You think so? But back there they look normal. They couldn't have just turned like that… There are no other signs of life, or death around here. Besides, we can't go back now, even if we did want to go back to the complex, we wouldn't be able to make it anymore. We can only move forward.'

Nick started coughing. 'I'm just saying we gotta be careful.' He said in a cracky voice when the coughing had ended. We were seriously running out of time.

Nick had trouble walking straight. He stopped and closed his eyes.

'Please Nick, were almost there…' I hope… 'Hang on.'

I wanted to support him, but he shook his head.

'I'll manage, I'd feel more motivated if we knew what's lying ahead of us.'

I raised an eyebrow. 'You mean you want me to go on ahead?'

'Not too far, stay in sight.'

I nodded.

I didn't really feel comfortable doing so, but I ran ahead without looking back.

It occurred to me later, that I hadn't given him any weapon, anything to protect himself with. I wanted to go back, but I knew how little time we had, and as long as I wouldn't wander of too far I'd be able to hear if he was in trouble… right?

I ran ahead, not going to far, but far enough to check our surroundings.

The steady sound of my feet running through the fall leaves was the only thing I hear for a while, until I was forced to stop, because the footsteps made a turn because of the path leading to a dead end. I'd gotten to what seemed to be the edge of the forest. The trees were a lot less thick on my left where the footsteps were going. I pushed a branch aside and had a strong dejavu feeling. With an open mouth my eyes greedily looked at a huge lake spreading out before me. I ran halfway towards the shallow, clear water before stopping myself thinking of Nick, and I turned around.

I wanted to shout out to him, tell him things were a lot less hopeless now that we'd found the water, but remembered there was someone else around, so I kept quiet.

My mood had changed drastically, and I ran the opposite direction of the footsteps.

As I ran back I saw a figure sitting against a tree. It was Nick, luckily. I stopped and bent over to catch my breath.

'Nick…. You gotta… come see this…!' I managed to say in between my gasping for air. I wasn't as fit as I normally was for some reason. 'There's… a lake… and I thought… we could…'

Nick had his eyes closed. I stopped talking. He wouldn't move. Was he even breathing?

'Nick?' I grabbed his shoulders and shook them. His head fell on his chest. 'Nick!' I pressed two cold fingers against his throat, and waited t feel his heartbeat. 'Nick…?'

Heya guys,

don't worry, I'm back from the dead... ;) I'm so sorry I havn't updated in such a long time!

This chapter has actually been on my computer for a while, but for some reason I found it hard to publish, mostly because it seemed kind of below my level of writing. I changed some things several times, and ended up with this...

I hope the people still sticking with the story will like it... my life is pretty busy lately, but I try writing whenever I can. The story may seem a bit boring, or a lot the same right now, but trust me, things are going to get crazy.

If you still bother to read my story, thank you so much it means the world to me!