Warning: This chapter is dark.

CHAPTER 39

There was a sense of lightness in the air as they retraced their steps. Instead of the heavy silence from before that threatened to suffocate them, there were jokes, shouts of motivation and even the occasional song. Plus, they were descending the mountain this time, which was much easier and put everyone in a good mood.

They all groaned when Shaggy started up another round of the Crystal Cove High School song, then Scooby chimed in with the National Anthem. But it was undeniably catchy, and the others all sang along at varying degrees.

Velma was a little uneasy about all the noise they were making, but in all honesty, she didn't expect any soldiers to be anywhere near them. They were smack bang in the middle of the bush where the only way in was on foot, so they were untouched by helicopters, jeeps and trucks.

'COOEE!' Shaggy called out to no one in particular.

Velma and Daphne glanced at each other and rolled their eyes. Velma made the motion of pretending to push Shaggy in the river beside them, sending Daphne into fits of giggles.

'Cooee!' Fred responded.

'ROOOOO – EEEE!' Scooby chimed in.

'Isn't exactly what happened on Year 9 camp?' Daphne asked Velma.

'Yep. And Year 5 and Year 6… and the week we went camping before the war started.'

'Wow. All that feels like a lifetime ago.'

'Some things never change,' Velma said, smirking at yet another round of cooees encircling the group.

The path wound its way through the mountains like a confused snake. By the time night fell, they had covered twice as much ground as they had in the two days prior to their descent. As the ground flattened out, they found a small area with a rock overhanging just beside the Janna River. Fred made a fire and they gathered around it, trying to soak up as much of its warmth as possible. It was freezing; the persistent dampness was becoming almost unbearable. Everyone was wrapped up in sleeping bags, trying to dry their clothes and bags as best as possible.

Then a familiar buzz pounded through the trees. Without a second thought, Fred chucked a bucket of water over the fire and they watched as a fleet of planes soared over the empty sky.

Velma gasped. 'Kiwi planes!'

The others gaped at her in a look of disbelieving hope.

'You know what we should do? Listen to the radio again!'

'Velma…' Daphne began.

'No, no, not that radio! I don't have that one anymore,' Velma replied defensively. 'I meant the transmitter. The one where we heard the American broadcast!'

She fished it out from the depths of her bag and made a face as she realised how wet it was. She dried it off and turned it on.

The radio transmitter became the new fire; the gang now gathered around it, with hope burning at their hearts.

Static.

Velma groaned. 'The static sounds bubbly. I think it's waterlogged. It wouldn't produce static if the batteries weren't charged, so it's not that. I'll try and drain it out overnight and we can listen to it in the morning.'

With a defeated sigh, Fred tried to kickstart the fire, which was difficult when he'd just poured an entire bucket of water over it. Velma helped him start a new one deeper in the cave, where it would be better sheltered from the elements.

'This is a perfect spot to be,' Velma said. 'This cave provides good shelter and it's close to the water.'

'It is good. I'm surprised we didn't see it on our way in.'

Velma sat up. 'Yes. I thought it was just me forgetting things. We didn't pass this area, did we?'

Fred shook his head.

She looked uneasy.

'Don't worry, Velm. As long as we follow the river, we'll be fine.'

'I don't want to be lost in the middle of nowhere.'

'We're not lost. I know where we're going. Hey, you know what they say when you're camping?' Fred said. 'Never camp within two hundred metres of the water.'

'But if it's in a dry season it's okay…'

'No, I'm not just talking about rain,' Fred said, clearly enjoying giving Velma an education on this. 'Down by the river, the path is flatter and easier to follow. If you don't know where you're going, it's easy to get lost in the bush, so your best bet is to stick by the river. But if you're being hunted, you want to stay away from the river. Close enough so you still have water, but far enough away so that you can hear people coming before they see you.'

'Very smart, Fred,' Velma commended. 'If soldiers did come looking for us in the bush, they would come by the river. Do you think we're far enough away from the river?'

'No,' he said honestly.

A spark from the match finally caught and the sticks burst up into flames, enveloping the cave in a cosy, soft glow. Even though they had only seen at most four Kiwi planes, the mood around the campfire was celebratory. They made some damper and toasted it over the fire, then spread peanut butter and nutella on it for dinner. Shaggy and Scooby started an intense game of charades that lasted for almost two hours before the others assigned them both sentry duty because of their overhyped energy levels.

'Like, are you up for hangman, Scoob?' Shaggy asked.

'Res!'

'Okay, okay, you two do that. We're going to sleep,' Velma laughed.

'Rokay!'

'Come on,' Fred smiled, nudging at Daphne to get away from the fire.

'I'm cold, Fred.'

'Hi cold, I'm Fred. Now let's get to sleep. Or I'm going to freeze my butt off.'

'Hi going to freeze my butt off, I'm Daphne.'

Fred whirled around to look at her. 'Did you just dad joke my dad joke?'

Daphne smirked. 'You know it.'

'You guys are like, elite,' Shaggy chuckled. 'Go to bed.'

'Rou're hung!' Scooby grinned.

'What? Like, Scoob, there's no point playing Hangman with you. You like, can't even spell your name.'

'Reeheehee! How rabout I-spy?'

'Sure man. Like, I spy with like, my little eye, something beginning with… S.'

'Hmm. Roup?'

'Poop? Really Scoob? That doesn't even start with an S!'

'Not roop! Roup!'

'But like, I don't spy any soup.'

'Roldiers?'

'Zoinks, like I hope I don't spy any of those either. Scooby, do you get the point of I-spy? It like, has to be something you can see.'

'Roh! Rokay! Hmm… Sludge? Roil? Sky? Rtars? Raggy? Scooby?'

'Nope, but at least those are like, valid guesses.'

'Shorts? Rhirt? Socks? Rhoes? Sack? Rleeping rag?'

'You're like, very close with that last one.'

'Sleep!' Scooby exclaimed, pointing at Fred, Daphne and Velma.

'Bingo!' Shaggy cheered as he high-fived Scooby. 'Like, now it's your turn!'

'Ri-spy with my rittle eye…'

~oO*Oo~

They had been found.

They could hear the footsteps and they knew it would only be a matter of time before the soldiers thought to search the cave. Daphne was still groggy with sleep, rubbing her eyes as she slipped out of her sleeping bag. Fred was grabbing at her shoulder and yanking her to her feet, but her legs were of little use. She shook her head; she was paralysed by fear. Frozen by the thought: after all they had done, all they had achieved, did it really all come down to this? They were going to die; they were going to get shot in a random patch of bush with no name. It was so unfair.

'Like, move Daph!' Shaggy hissed in her ear before dashing past her with Scooby and Velma hot on his heels.

Daphne shook her head and used Fred's tug on her arm as momentum to pull herself along. They left the safety of the cave and sprinted in the opposite direction – up into the mountains. There was nothing for it; even if they somehow managed to escape the soldiers, they would be lost in the bush, without food or shelter, (they had to leave everything behind when they evacuated the cave), which was equivalent to a death sentence anyway. As Daphne and Fred zoomed through the bush, holding each other's elbow, Daphne couldn't help but wonder which patch of bush would be the last one she'd see. How long would it be before the soldiers caught up to her? Would it be in that area up ahead with the protruding root that threatened to snap the ankle of every unfortunate soul who ventured past? Or would it be in the sprawling native mulberry bush up ahead? In the end, it didn't matter. It all looked the same.

But still the soldiers didn't ever catch up, and they ran and ran and ran. They ran even further than the previous cave they had ironically dubbed "The Point of No Return". They were gasping for breath, but the pure adrenaline pumping through their veins was giving them more than enough reason to keep going.

If that was the good news, then the bad news was that the soldiers were even fitter than they were, and they were edging closer all the time. As the mountains closed in, it suddenly became very dark as the tree canopy enveloped around them, trapping them in that combined space.

'How many rooms does the farmhouse have?' Velma asked distantly.

Daphne shook her head, perplexed. Why would Velma care about that at a time like this?

'Doesn't matter,' Fred replied. 'We'll find a way. We've just got to wait for the others to…'

'Fred?' Daphne said.

'Ruh roh.'

'What?' Velma asked. 'Oh. Ruh roh indeed.'

Fred and Daphne almost careered into the others, who had abruptly stopped in the middle of their path. Daphne looked up and saw why. Her face contorted with fear as she gazed up at the solid rock face stretching dozens of metres skyward, blocking out any sunlight.

'Daphne, what's wrong? Are you okay? Daph?' Fred asked.

He grasped her shoulder.

Where there had previously been bush, each side was bordered by the same solid rock face that lay in front of them. All were far too steep and unclimbable… the only way out was back the way they came…

No. That wasn't an option either. The soldiers were already there – two of them, their guns cocked directly at the gang. The one at the front grinned sadistically and snarled his lip at them, which sent chills down Daphne's spine.

'Of course I'm not okay! We're going to die! Why would you ask that?'

'We should get going soon,' Fred said.

'What are you talking about!?' Daphne asked frantically.

Three other soldiers – obviously the less fit of the group – caught up to the others. Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby backed away as much as they could until they were pressed up against the rock. There were five soldiers, five guns and five of them. Fear engraved itself on every single face as they were lined up like a firing squad. The-soldier-with-the-snarly-lip's expression cracked into one of pure glee.

Shaggy and Scooby were clinging onto each other, tears streaming down their faces – thinking about the next meal they would never have and more importantly – the thought that this was it.

Just to the side of them, Daphne had pulled Velma and Fred in on either side of her, all clutching onto one another as a final sign of friendship.

Until –

Fred broke the group embrace and stepped in front of the four of them, as if shielding them from the bullets that would ensue.

'Take me. But please, leave them to live. It's me you want, not them,' he said firmly.

Daphne screamed – a sound that reverberated across the entire valley. It was a pained wail, a desperate sound, a sound that horrified her as it erupted from her body.

She grabbed his arm, and in her state of blind panic, tried to pull him to the side. 'Fred! Fred, move! Fred!'

Still he stayed, solid as a rock, facing down the soldiers with such a confidence Daphne knew was only a façade. The five soldiers all pointed their guns directly at his chest.

'Freddie, please!' Daphne screeched.

Five bullets were released at once. In a split second, Daphne's arms came around Fred from behind and her hands covered his heart as five bullets smashed into his chest. Daphne pressed her face against Fred's back, her tears already soaking into his shirt. She barely registered the searing pain in her hands as Fred's body fell limply forward. Daphne let out a strangled cry as she struggled to keep him standing, as if the action might restore life to him. But she was too wobbly, too dizzy and she fell to the ground with him lying limply in her embrace.

She didn't know what happened to the soldiers, or even where Velma, Shaggy and Scooby were. There was nothing but her and Fred. She finally withdrew her hands – or what was left of her hands to see that they were a rough smattering of flesh, blood and bone. They barely resembled what they had once been.

But that pain was nothing compared to the hole in her heart.

She screamed as she rubbed her mangled hands together, knowing they contained the last drops of Fred's blood. Fred, who had so heroically given his life…

'Daphne…'

It was Fred's voice, but it couldn't be! She shut her eyes tighter, not wanting to see Fred's shattered body or her mangled hands. Then she was spinning into blackness. She briefly wondered if she had been shot, but she didn't think she'd be flipping over and doing somersaults in an empty black space if that were the case.

Then the world stopped spinning and her eyes snapped open.

She was lying back in the cave in her sleeping bag, and sunlight was streaming in through the cracks in the rock. The morning's first mosquitoes were hovering around the damp entrance, creating dancing shadows across her face. Daphne reached up to run a hand through her hair and recoiled.

She sat up and looked at her hand.

It was whole. It wasn't severed or mashed as she thought it would be.

A wave of relief washed through her. It was a dream!

She almost cried in relief and immediately raced out of the cave to find Fred and the others.

She burst out into the sunny morning, calling, 'Fred! Velma? Shaggy, Scooby? Fred!'

No answer. She felt a strange wetness on her hand and shook it away. Clouds rushed over and blocked out the soft sunlight she had felt just moments ago. She felt that same wetness on her hand and groaned – it was raining again.

Except it wasn't. It was only raining on her hands. She wiped her hands together, but that just amplified the wetness. She glanced down at her hands at screamed in horror. She tried to back away from her hands but stumbled and tripped over a log behind her.

They were covered in blood – Fred's blood. Out of pure terror, she ran towards the river and plunged her hands into the murky depths of the water. She pulled them out of the river and stared at her pristine clean hands, before dunking them back into the river and scrubbing them intensely. She was making so much noise that she almost missed the bubbling sound coming from the other side of the river.

Daphne glanced up just in time to see something straight out of a horror movie emerging from the river. It was slimy and quite possibly the grossest creature Daphne had ever seen that she actually stepped back in repulsion. Before her very eyes, something started to assemble in front of her – an awful mixture of bones, flesh and other things found at the bottom of a river like twigs, rocks and… rubbish? The thing bent over backwards at an unnatural angle before reappearing right in front of her bearing a zombified head. It jiggled and jostled and cracked until it loosely resembled the shape of a human being.

She couldn't stop staring into the black, soulless eyes as they bored into her own. The creature's lip curled up and Daphne realised with cold fear that it was the same soldier that killed Fred.

She tried to yell for Velma, Shaggy and Scooby, but no sound came out. She slowly backed away, but her foot got lodged between a rock and she stumbled backward into a pile of mud where she began sinking into slimy nothingness…

But then she wasn't sinking – she was saved as a slimy skeletal hand grabbed at her shoulders and pulled her up to the surface. Its bones protruded into her flesh and the last thing she remembered seeing was the snarl of a lip as it brought her closer…

'DAPHNE!'

~oO*Oo~

Her eyes flew open and Velma was standing over her, Fred was holding her hand and staring down at her with an expression of deep concern.

'Daphne! Wake the hell up!' Velma was shaking her as Shaggy splashed an entire bucket of water over her, drenching pretty much everything that remained in the cave.

Daphne stared up at them with bleary eyes. What if this was fake too? Had she woken up in another dream?

But something about this seemed real. There was a sense of structure to this world that had been absent from all those dream worlds. This time, she knew she'd woken up for real. She sat up, coughing and spluttering at the water that had gone in her mouth and threw herself at Fred. She bawled into his shoulder and he nursed her with a bewildered expression on his face.

'God, Daph. Are you okay?'

'You died,' she sobbed.

'No I didn't. I'm alive and well, just like you, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby.'

'And the zombie thing…'

She pulled back from him and glanced around, gaining a newfound appreciation for the waking world.

'That dream… it was just so vivid.'

Velma patted her shoulder affectionately. 'Daphne, I can confirm that you are awake now.'

'Like, maybe we're all still asleep and we'll all wake up soon and this war was like, just one crazy mass hallucination nightmarish thing!'

'Really, Shaggy?' Velma said sceptically. 'Mass hallucination?'

'It can happen! Remember the terror wood!'

'Rhat if we're all rtill in Rulington Ribrary?' Scooby said suddenly.

'Enough!' Velma shouted. 'We're not in Burlington Library. We're in Headquarters and we've been in a warzone for the last four months. This, unfortunately, is reality.'

'And you're really not helping Daphne here,' Fred said sadly.

'Rorry.'

'Yeah, and like, sorry for drenching you.'

'I don't care. I'm just so fucking happy I'm awake now,' Daphne sighed.

'Do you want to talk about it?' Fred asked gently.

'Yeah, like what's with that zombie thing?' Shaggy said.

'No. The dream… it was so horrible. I don't even want you to think about it.'

'I'm always here to listen to you,' Fred said. 'I'm glad you're awake now. I'll be right back, I'm just going to the dunny…'

'No!' Daphne barked. Then she added more timidly, 'Please don't leave me.'

'I'm not leaving you, Daphne. I just… want to… go to the… toilet?' he replied, bewildered.

'Are you like, okay, Daph?' Shaggy asked.

Daphne was shaking; some unknown fear was rattling every bone in her body.

'Well, it's okay, I guess I can hold on for a bit,' Fred shrugged. 'We'll get some breakfast while Daphne wakes up a bit and then we'll get going for the day.'

Fred turned around and made a move towards the rucksack containing the food. Suddenly possessed by the thought that a snarly-lipped soldier would explode out of the bag as soon as Fred touched it, Daphne leapt out of her sleeping bag and made a grab for Fred's arm. Fred jumped about a foot in the air at Daphne's sudden movement.

'I'll… I'll come with you,' she said, trying her best to sound calm and collected, which was difficult when her palms were so sweaty that she was loosing her grip on Fred's arm.

'Okay,' Fred said, trying his best to sound unfazed. 'How about we go down to the river and um, you know, wash our faces?'

He threw an arm around his girlfriend as they walked down to the river together. As he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, he couldn't help but notice that she looked extremely… out of it. She was bleary-eyed and she looked like she was living in another world. Fred hoped the cold water would do her some good. Throughout the war so far, Fred began to notice it was always Daphne that got hit the hardest in the mental sense whenever they did something risky. He hoped she would be able to get over it soon, because Fred had a funny feeling this was only the end of the beginning.