It's light when I finally stop the car. And it's not even to had the wheel over to someone else… It's because I see a car ditched on the side of the road with "HELP ME" written on the windows in white paint. It could be a trap to steal our things or it could be overridden with zombies…

Either way, I don't want to chance driving by.

"Guys," I say loudly. My voice sounds magnified in the silence. I reach over and shake Hawthorne's shoulder (he finally fell asleep around three in the morning. You can't resist sleep forever). "Wake up."

He and Twelve both shoot up into sitting positions with their weapons and start aiming around at the nonexistent zombies that are attacking the car.

"Calm down, we're not getting attacked," I say.

"Oh, god, you scared me," Twelve hisses. "Why did you have to wake us like that?"

"That," I say, pointing down the road a ways at the car in the ditch. "What do you reckon?"

"It looks safe enough," Hawthorne shrugs. "Besides, the people inside are probably already dead. Let's just keep going."

Twelve leans forward from the backseat and gives Hawthorne a hard look. "We have to at least try to help them, Gale," she says. "What if they are alive in there? We can't just leave them!"

He immediately gives into her prodding. "Fine, whatever, but if that car is full of dead bodies, don't say I didn't warn you."

In sync, we all turn back to the Cadillac in the ditch. Twelve gives it an appraising look and fingers the Glock, but ultimately it's Hawthorne that says, "We'll send London."

Twelve instantly starts to put up a fight. "We can't just send him alone! What if—"

"He's got his magic wand-thingy, Katniss," Hawthorne says, annoyed. "You watched him take down that entire mass of zombies. I think he'll be okay."

She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at Hawthorne, but I don't let her fight back.

"It's okay, really," I say. "I'll go. I'll wave you guys down when I know it's empty."

Before she can protest some more, I open the door and slide out of the car. If this is what it's going to take to get Hawthorne on my side, then so be it. I will face imminent danger if I have to. I'm not roughing it out here alone.

I approach the Caddy with my wand out in front of me. I mean, it looks really abandoned, but you never know. The windows are tinted, so I can't see into the car, which means I'm going to have to whip open one of the doors. So I summon all my Gryffindor courage and yank the trunk door open.

Nothing.

I sneak around the side of the car and check out the front.

Still nothing.

The front of the Caddy is pretty smashed up like this person got in a few wrecks, but there doesn't appear to be much else of interest in the car. The zombies must have carried away the victims.

I walk back around the car and wave the Hummer down. I start to walk back onto the road when something smashes into my back.

When I wake up next, Hawthorne's head is floating above me, looking almost concerned and worried for my well-being. If the sunlight weren't already burning my eyes enough to make them water, I might shed a tear in thanks.

Distantly, like he's shouting down a tunnel, I hear him asking, "London? London, can you hear me? Are you alright?"

My voice comes out garbled. "Huh?"

I try to sit up, but Hawthorne keeps me pinned to the gravel that collects on the side of the road. "Hey, are you okay?" he asks.

Without thinking much about it, I reply, "No," because, really, I'm having a hard time remembering what just happened.

"Uh, god, that was not what you were supposed to say," Hawthorne mutters.

"Where's Twelve?" I ask, squinting my eyes up at his face.

"Keeping that crazy freaking kid under gun point," Hawthorne replies. "She's tough. She's got him under control."

But I'm left with my jaw hanging slack because I don't know what the heck he's talking about. "What kid?" I ask, trying to look around to find Twelve and this supposed kid.

"God almighty help us," Hawthorne mutters to himself. He looks back down at me through eyes narrowed in concern and says, "Are you messing around with me or are you serious?"

"I'm serious," I reply indignantly. "I have no idea what's going on!'

He runs a hand through his hair and shouts, "Katniss, he can't remember what's going on! Something happened to him!"

"S***," she replies. "Are you serious?"

Since Hawthorne's back is turned, I take the opportunity to sit up and find this kid that I don't know.

Some of the past few minutes floods into my head when I see him.

Twelve is standing a few feet from the Caddy with my Glock pointed at a kid, who's crouched in front of the vehicle's front door. He doesn't look even vaguely concerned at the fact that there's a gun pointed at his head. In fact, if anything, he seems distracted.

From what I can remember and what I'm seeing now, I can patch together that things went down a little like this:

A few minutes earlier…

The Hummer idled up in front of me and I started walking back up the slope to the road. "It looks abandoned," I say, and that's when something hit my back.

Suddenly, there was something pounding on my head, and it knocked me to the ground. From what I could tell, I was screaming my head off and swinging my arms around in an attempt to knock my assailant off. In the process of flailing about, my wand flew out of my hand and rolled down the slope.

At that point, I thought the thing beating the crap out of me was a zombie, but I was incredibly wrong. When, I rolled over, there was a kid (maybe twelve or thirteen) screaming and hitting me with his eyes shut.

So then we were both screaming and smacking each other and rolling around in the muddy grass, and I looked up the slope to the road and Twelve and Hawthorne were sprinting down towards us.

The last thing I remember seeing was Hawthorne slamming the butt of his gun onto the side of the kids head. And then the kid's foot collided with my temple, and everything went black.

I take in a slow breath and knit my eyebrows together. That's not really a situation most people get to be in.

"Why are we holding him at gun point?" I ask loudly.

Hawthorne turns around sharply. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's because he tried to kill you?"

"He wasn't trying to kill me," I say.

"Okay, so maybe he was just trying to jump you," he retorts harshly.

I look back around Hawthorne at the kid sitting next to the Caddy. He's looking at me somewhat guiltily, but he still seems really distracted. I can tell that this kid would never seek to kill me or even steal all of my belongings. He was just protecting himself.

"He only did that because he thought I was a zombie," I insist. "Twelve, lower your gun. There's no need to make him think we're enemies."

Twelve shoots the crazy-looking kid a hesitant expression and then looks right back at Hawthorne for permission.

"Wait, wait, wait," he says. "Two seconds ago, you didn't even know who this kid was. How come you suddenly remember everything?"

I cross my arms over my chest. "Sometimes it just takes my brain a while to process things."

From his position on the ground, Hawthorne puts his head in his hands and mutters something about wanting to go back and kill me instead of picking me up. I look back up at Twelve, and she still looks reluctant.

"He's still dangerous, London," she replies. "He could still want to attack us. We really wouldn't know."

I get into a standing position and start walking up to the road to stand next to Twelve. She sends me a somewhat leery look and keeps a firm grip on her gun.

"I'm not going to make you put the gun down," I assure as soon as I'm at her side. "I just think we should talk to the kid himself."

Hawthorne climbs up the slope to stand next to Twelve as well. He's got his crossbow with him, which honestly makes me a tad bit scared to be near him when he's angry.

"Go ahead, try to talk to him, London," Hawthorne says.

I shoot him a look and take a few steps closer to the kid. The kid doesn't look at all scared, worried, or angry as I approach him. If anything, he looks a little bit pleased. "Hey, kid, what's your name?" I ask.

"No," Hawthorne says loudly as the kid opens his mouth. "Don't tell us your name. Tell us where you're from."

The kid doesn't seem frightened by Hawthorne's bluntness. He just stares into Hawthorne's stormy gray eyes with his big ones and says, "District Three."

"Makes sense," Twelve whispers to Hawthorne. "He looks like them."

"You're a long way from home, Three," Hawthorne comments.

Hawthorne's questioning techniques don't make much sense to me, but Three doesn't seem at all bothered. He raises an eyebrow and cocks his head to the side. "Well, so are you, Katniss Everdeen and her supposed cousin, Gale Hawthorne."

I almost start laughing because I'm so shocked, but Twelve and Hawthorne look completely untrusting now. "Holy s***," Twelve whispers under her breath. She fingers her trigger.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, Twelve," I say quickly. "There is no need to shoot him yet. We don't know anything about him."

I turn back to Three, and now he's cocking his head at me. "I don't recognize you," he says in his weirdly high voice. "What's with that funny scar on your head?"

I reach up to the touch the lightning bolt scar on my forehead and remember back to my old life for a few brief seconds. "That's a long story for another time," I reply. "It's you we need to talk about."

He blinks at me. There's definitely something weird about this kid. It's like sometimes he's off in his own bubble. Like he's not really here. Maybe he has ADHD or something… That's always a thought.

"You weren't meaning to kill me, were you?" I ask.

"Nope," he replies and flops over onto his side on the ground.

"You just thought I was a zombie, right? You were just trying to protect yourself?"

"That rock over there kind of looks like whale when it's upside down," the kid comments. Obviously there's something wrong with him.

"Three, answer my question. This is important," I say.

"Yes, I thought you were a zombie," he says impatiently.

I turn around to face my two companions. "See, there's no need to shoot him. If a human came up to our car, we'd beat him to a pulp too, wouldn't we?"

Hawthorne still seems pretty unconvinced. "What about the stuff written in the window. That seems like trap, kid. What's that for?"

It seems unfair to me to be treating a kid of no more than thirteen who has obvious mental issues like this. Three, however, seems completely unmoved. He flips himself over so that he's doing a headstand against his Caddy and says, "My sister wrote that in the window after the zombie ripped my brother's intestines out in the middle of the road. She hoped that someone would drive by and help us, but they didn't, so she and her boyfriend left a long time ago. I've been alone ever since, except for Jeffrey."

"Who's Jeffrey?" I ask.

"My imaginary friend," Three replies without hesitation. "But even he's left now. He was mad because we hadn't eaten anything besides dirt in, like, two weeks. I told him we'd be okay, but he ran off anyway."

Suddenly, I feel really, really, really bad for this kid, and the only thing I can think to do is take him with us. I turn back to Twelve and Hawthorne, and they both seem to be thinking the same thing. Twelve has finally lowered the gun. Even hard-hearted Hawthorne is looking at the kid with pity.

Three flops over so that he's lying face down on the ground. "My mom told me it was okay to have Jeffrey as my only friend because no one else was nice to me, but she died a long time ago, too."

Oh my god. I mouth to Hawthorne and Twelve.

Twelve visibly winces and steps forward tentatively. "What will you do now?" she asks.

He picks his head up and drops it on its side so that he's looking at us. "I'll probably just eat some more dirt. I'm getting pretty hungry." He licks the ground by his face.

Twelve immediately steps forward again. "What would you say if we invited you to come with us?"

He sits up in an instant, his eyes even bigger than before. "You want me to come with you? You actually want me to come with you?"

"Of course."

And before we know it, the four of us are piling back into the black Hummer.

A/N: Thanks for reading! What do you think of their new companion? ;) Let me know what you think.