Chapter Seven

Drake

I glanced outside. The rain had stopped ever so slightly, but the going would be just as difficult. "Someone's got to stay behind to guard the bus," I said. The bus had been concealed in the wreck of an old house, but there were no guarantees it would be safe there.

"The trouble with looking for a mad person is that there's no logical place they'd go, so Kohaku could be anywhere in her state," muttered Stan

I looked outside again and realised that perhaps we could find her if we left immediately. "Well, I'll go out to look first," I said. "I'll be taking Marle with me. Anyone who wants to follow, make sure you go in pairs."

The others began deciding when each team would go out and look while I put on my coat and grabbed a map, some beef jerky and a compass before stepping outside. Marle stepped out a second later. "Where should we start looking?" she asked.

"Those people that attacked you, were they wearing any shoes?" I asked in reply.

"No, they looked like savages."

I nodded. "So Kohaku's tracks will be the only ones that look like shoes." I stared at the ground. Once too hard to leave an imprint on, it was now so muddy any tracks would soon wash away. "Be careful where you leave your own tracks," I warned. "Those other . . . people might still be on the prowl. Ready to go?"

"Ready when you are."

I nodded and we started looking and listening for any sign of Kohaku.


Marle

A couple of hours passed with no sign of Kohaku. I was almost ready to give up, but Drake seemed never to tire. We searched everywhere, but the rain was quickly erasing whatever tracks there might have been. Then, I spotted something. "Drake! Come here, quickly!"

He hurried over. "What?"

"Does that look like the heel-print of a tennis shoe, or is it just my imagination and overwhelming desire to find some trace of Kohaku?" I asked.

Both of us spent several minutes staring silently at the mud.

"You may have something there, Marle," said Drake. "But how in the world did she get this far without us finding any sign of . . . Wait a minute!" He pointed to an overhang just above our heads. "That's the only reason this print hasn't been completely washed away," he went on. "What luck!"

After debating whether or not we should return and notify the others, we decided it would waste too much time and started off on Kohaku's trail.


Drake

"Yes! Now that we're on the trail . . . Blaze, go!"

There was a burst of light as Blaze materialised before me. "Blaze, do you smell Kohaku?" I asked. Blaze looked at me in confusion and I realised he had never been introduced to Kohaku, so he had no idea what I was talking about. "You know? The girl who can talk to Pokemon?"

Blaze nodded and took a sniff, sneezing seconds afterwards. He was reacting poorly to the wet weather, which meant I'd have to recall him once he'd pointed us in the right direction.

"Arrc!" Blaze blew an Ember to the north, indicating where he thought Kohaku was.

"That way? Good work, Blaze!"

I recalled Blaze before heading north with Marle.


Melissa

I sent my Pidgeotto to search from the air, reasoning that she might have a better chance of spotting Kohaku than we did down on the ground.

After a while, she came winging back and squawked at me, pointing with her wing. "What is it?" I asked. "Did you find something?"

She nodded and flew off in the direction she had come. Wishing I shared Kohaku's ability to talk Pokemon languages, I followed her. The trail took me out of town and onto an abandoned stretch of road where abandoned cars stood in limbo, their journeys destined never to be completed.

Kohaku herself was lying on her side in a ditch. I went up to her and gently shook her awake. "Kohaku," I said. "It's Melissa. Can you hear me?"

She mumbled something, evidently feeling too groggy to speak coherently, but it was enough for me and I helped her to her feet. "Come on, let's get you out of here," I said.

Kohaku leaned on me heavily as we made our way back south. When we got back to the bus, there was no sign of the others; they were clearly still out searching. But Kohaku was found now. I had brought her back and was determined to help her in any way I could. I helped her to lie down and knelt beside her to ask her what was wrong.

"I don't know what came over me," she said. "I guess I just snapped when I walked out on you guys. Then, I sort of passed out by the roadside."

"It was probably the injury you suffered in that fight," I told her. "I think you'd better stay still for a while in case you're concussed. I'll send Pidgeotto to fetch the others and let them know you're here."

Rummaging in the glove compartment, I found a Biro and a piece of notepaper. I checked the Biro was working before scribbling:

Kohaku found.

on the bit of paper. Then, I called Pidgeotto over and asked her to take the note and go find the others. She picked the note up in her beak and flew away as I watched her go.


Drake

A squawk from above caught my attention. Circling around, twenty feet up, was a Pidgeotto carrying a piece of paper. "Hey, isn't that Melissa's Pidgeotto?" asked Marle.

"Probably," I replied. "I wonder what it's carrying . . ."

The Pidgeotto landed next to Marle's foot. Marle patted her on the head and read what was on the piece of paper. "Kohaku found. Well, that saves us some trouble," she said.

I nodded in the direction of the town. "We should head back, then."

We had begun to retrace our steps when I was alerted by the distinctive smell of rotting flesh. "What is that smell?" Marle asked in disgust.

I scanned the undergrowth and spotted a flash of white; upon closer inspection, it turned out to be the lower half of a human skeleton. I swore and leaned closer to get a better look at it. "This wasn't here before," I observed.

Marle simply stared at it in horror. "Did it die of the Plague?" she asked.

"Not likely. The Plague badly decalcifies bones in its first stages and these are still in good . . . hang on!" Upon closer inspection, I saw that some of the bones had sustained damage and the pelvis had something that looked almost like a bite mark.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Marle when I pointed it out. "Are there carnivorous Pokemon out here?"

"Maybe, but this is a human bite mark!"

Shocked, we both stared at the skeleton for a while. I glanced at Marle's face to see if she foresaw some nasty fate about to befall us, but she showed no sign of it.

"I think we'd better head out," I muttered.


Ben

"Kohaku!" I shouted for the umpteenth time. As usual, I got no response.

Beside me, Stan tried to scan both sides of the street at once. Progress was painfully slow due to the myriad of side streets and back alleys in this shell of a city. "It could take us weeks to find Kohaku if she isn't able to reply," Stan told me icily.

"That's funny," I replied. "Because I just thought to myself . . ."

Stan stopped and grabbed me by the collar, glaring at me angrily. "What's funny, Ben?" he demanded. "Death? Losing one of the only friends you've got? Is all this amusing to you?" He let go of me and gestured towards the deserted wasteland of the city all around us. "Because I sure as hell am not laughing," he told me.

He shoved me backwards and I tripped on the kerb, landing hard on my left side. I felt sure he was going to beat me to death right there and then - until we heard laughter. It was a human laugh all right, but it sounded somehow different to your regular laugh, sort of insane.

Stan and I turned to look in the direction it had come from and both our jaws dropped at the same time. Standing in the doorway of yet another faceless building, a man leered at the sight of our fighting. His white shirt stained with dirt and what looked like blood, he smiled the smile of a madman at us from that darkened portal and beckoned us towards him. When he saw the fear on our faces, his smile widened and he took a step towards us, then another . . .

He was crossing the street over to us and, if we didn't move, he would reach us in a matter of seconds. It was lucky that Stan dragged me back up off the pavement at that exact moment. "Holy crap, Ben!" he hissed. "Get the hell out of here now!"

Without a second thought, we stumbled off down the street, pursued by the grinning businessman.


Stan

Ben and I ran for the hills as the crazy man chased us through the streets. By sheer luck, we turned a corner and smashed into Marle and the others. The businessman ran past us down another street.


Ben

"Hey! Wait for me, you guys!" I called as I recognised the fleeting forms of the others charging hell for leather down the street with Stan.

The unexpected collision with them had thrown me into the road and, when I tried to push myself up, I realised just how much my left arm was hurting. I switched to my other arm and succeeded in getting back on my feet again, albeit with a pounding head and the increasingly likely prospect of a broken leg.

I hobbled round the corner and after the others, who were by now already up the other end of the street and practically home free. It felt like something out of a movie as I forced myself up the road as quickly as possible. Any second now, I expected to be cut down by some unseen menace stalking me across the final stretch back to the bus as I dragged my hurt leg ineffectually behind me, not caring if I caused it permanent damage . . .

The moment I passed an alley, they leapt out at me, all flailing limbs and slightly crazed smiles. I guess nobody heard the commotion as they knocked me down and dragged my battered body off into their dark new world.


Drake

The streets ahead were all seemingly deserted, the silence and decay that had fallen on the town belying the menace that lurked within. I had a hard time deciding whether it would be safer in the nearby forest or in the town where we had to deal with the voracious humans that prowled the alleyways. Given my knowledge of bushcraft, I'd take the forest any day.

"Where to now?" asked Monica.

I looked at the map and compared it with what I saw around me. It was bit harder than it should have been given the age of the map since, where there should have been buildings, there were either heaps of crumbled concrete or decaying shells. "Well, another left turn will bring us to the main road out of town and, after two days, it takes us to the sea," I said.

"It'd take us far away from the town and our old camp quickly and easily," Stan noted, tracing his finger along the black line on the map.

"Which is exactly why we're not taking it," I replied.

"Why not?" asked Kohaku. "If it's so fast, it'll get us further away from . . . Oh."

"Exactly. The old Alpha Crew will be looking for us there and they'll be moving way faster than us," replied Stan. "They won't be stopping for food, either. And that means we'll be going into the forest."

I looked at the map again. There was a mountain range surrounding the town and, though by no mean visible from here, it would still pose a problem if we just gallivanted into the forest willy nilly. "Actually, Stan," I said, "I think we should follow the road for about fourteen miles and then head due north. There's a gap in the mountain range that leads to a river, which should take us to shore about fifty miles further north of the road." I moved the map round for the others to see. "There's also around fifteen other possible exits, so the odds of guessing where we are will be hard," I went on. "This route will be tough going, but it gives us water and we can build a boat too. The river's big enough and there are no waterfalls."

There was general assent to the plan, but it all rested on the hope that they wouldn't catch us on the road and that they weren't great trackers.

"OK, ready to go?" asked Stan. Then, something occurred to him. "Hey! Where's Ben?"


Ben

"You are our servant now!" one of them said to me.

"You will obey us and the great Plague Lord Tyler Banks!" said another.

"Cease your preaching, you worthless curs!" Tyler Banks said as he loomed out of the darkness. "Well, at least you're awake, dog!" he said to me.

I felt the world around me begin to tip softly and I was amazed that I didn't slide over and smack into the far wall. Tyler and his cronies simply stood and laughed, lit by some unholy light. I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to protest at this strange ritual and, without thinking, I opened my mouth and started to call out.

Tyler was there immediately. His right hand snapped back and the end of the cat-o'-nine-tails came down hard across my face. "Shut up, you lily-liver piece of . . .!"

I sat bolt upright and smacked my head against a solid metal panel. The pain shot through me like wildfire and I immediately raised my hands to stem the flow of blood. After a while, the the pain dulled to a gentle throb and I risked taking a hand away from my aching cranium. I then bashed my skull again as recoiled at what I'd just felt. Luckily, my pain didn't go unrewarded this time; there was the gentle scraping of metal against metal as the ceiling of my prison slid off the walls, followed by the loud crash of it hitting the floor outside. I squinted up at the motionless fan mounted high on the wall and sat up, sinking my hands back into the awful substance around me.

The feeling of fresh air was a welcome relief from what I suddenly realised was the rather organic odour I'd been stuck in the box with. I clambered out of the metal prison and rolled over the side onto what I guessed was concrete.

I landed facing the strange box, which was white on the outside and, as they came into focus, I managed to read the words printed on the side in large black letters:

COLD STORAGE

I had spent the last few hours in a powerless freezer.


Melissa

Eventually, Ben managed to get back to us and told us about how he'd got himself shut in a defunct fridge.

The journey down river passed without incident. When we had reached land, I stood gazing at the decaying remnants of our civilisation and thought about how I had been forced to put my trust in seven other teenagers who had been complete strangers to me until we all got picked to take part in Project Alpha. Now, I could hardly imagine life without Marle, Stan, Monica and the rest. We were a team and we were going to get through this together. No matter what happened, I was determined that some good would come out of all this - if we could find anything even remotely good in this wreck of a world. I also knew we had to steer clear of Tyler Banks and his thugs in case they did something unspeakable to us for running out on the Project.

Political traitors: that was what we would be in Tyler's eyes. As far as he was concerned, we were little better than defectors who had gone over to enemy territory and we could expect no mercy if he ever caught up with us. Our only hope was to pray that fear of the Plague kept him at the Location.

"Melissa?"

It was Marle who had approached me from behind and tapped my shoulder. I looked at her, at the girl I had known for little more than a year but who had become my closest friend during that time. "Sorry, I was just wondering how all this is gonna end," I told her. "Will we ever find somewhere we don't have to worry about our safety all the time?"

I doubt it," Marle told me. "And I don't have to be a Timeseer to know that. We've got to build a new world together."

I smiled. "I guess we'll have to give it our best shot," I said.

Marle stroked her Umbreon, who had been rubbing against her legs, and nodded. "Yes," she said. "We'll do our best, all of us."