A/N: First of all, I'm so so so so sorry for this massive gap between updates! But never fear, I have a bunch of chapters prewritten now, so the updates will become more regular!
Anyway, enjoy the randomness and hilarity that ensues below. My sister's favorite paragraph is in this chapter and so is mine, so... Hopefully there are parts that make you laugh :D
Rules of the Road Chap 4
We continue on our driving shifts with Hawthorne taking the wheel next. Since he's still convinced that Three's at least a little dangerous, he pulls Twelve to the front with him, leaving me in the back with the mentally screwed up kid.
Luckily though, Three passes out against the window after only moving about twenty feet. Then, I feel safe enough to shut my own eyes.
When I next wake up, Three is murmuring some song under his breath, and the I remember those road songs that Dudley and his friends used to sing on their way to the zoo after they dropped me off at Mrs. Figg's house.
Maybe a song will make this whole predicament a lot less awkward and silent.
"100 bottles of butterbeer on the wall, 100 bottles of butterbeer," I sing at the top of my lungs. "Take one down, pass it around, 99 bottles of butterbeer on the wall!"
Three's face breaks into a massive smile, and he immediately does his best to join in. I look up to the front seat, but Hawthorne has dropped his head down on the wheel, and Twelve is rubbing her temples.
But Three and I don't let that stop us. We both continue belting out about butterbeer bottles even when our voices get hoarse. We count down to 77 butterbeer bottles on the wall when Hawthorne final has enough.
"THAT'S IT! I'M LEAVING YOU TWO AT THE NEXT GAS STATION!" he yells over our scream-singing.
I immediately stop singing. I have enough self-preservation to believe him, but Three goes on singing in a really weird falsetto until four more butterbeer bottles have been taken down and passed around. Then he realizes everyone else is quiet, and he shuts up.
After a couple more hours, Hawthorne pulls over, and it's my turn to take the wheel. It's nearly dark out here in the middle of nowhere which concerns me and my lack of driving skills, but I shall show no weakness.
As I'm driving, I can't help but notice that all we've seen for forever has been fields. That's all we've passed. Hawthorne and Twelve haven't seemed overly worried over this, which means they must know where we are and what direction we're driving. I make a mental note to ask for a geography lesson about this strange country when Twelve is next driving.
I putter us along at a nice even 40 mph for a few hours before anything relatively exciting happens. I'm just slowly driving us along when something appears in the light of my headlights.
Zombies. Eating a person.
Immediately I slam on the brakes and park the car so that the lights go off. Zombies are attracted to lights, so maybe if we sit here in the dark in complete silence, they won't notice us. I punch Hawthorne's shoulder and hiss, "Zombies."
He jerks into a sitting position and squints at the two zombies eating the poor human. The head is a few feet away, so at least the zombies were pretty humane about killing him. He wouldn't have a felt a thing after his head got torn off.
"Your kill," I tell Hawthorne.
In the back seat, Twelve and Three wake up and look questioningly at me as to why the car's stopped. I gesture with my head out the front window, and Twelve nods. Three however jumps to his feet, hits his head on the light control panel on the roof, turns on all the lights in the car, and shouts, "THAT'S MY SISTER'S BOYFRIEND! HI, TODD!"
At this point, I'm entirely too furious with him for turning on the lights to ask whether Todd is the dead body or the zombie.
Both of the zombies immediately turn towards us and start grunting at each other. They abandon the body and start stumbling/running in our general direction.
Hawthorne curses and puts down his window. Without much careful aim, he puts two bullets through the head of both zombies before they're even close to the Hummer.
He leans back into the car and shuts the window, while sliding the gun back under the seat. "Let's get out before more show up. And, for the love of god, turn off the lights."
Twelve turns off all the lights, and I start driving again.
Things are all awkward and quiet, so I decide at least something needs to be said. "You're a good shot," I comment to Hawthorne.
He shrugs. "Next kill goes to Twelve. Then you'll see who's a good shot."
Chu-chunk. Chu-chunk.
"You just ran over Todd," Three comments in an unemotional voice.
"Sorry, Todd."
After about another hour of me driving, everyone else is still awake, so I figure I'll stop the car soon and take a nap.
Before I can stop the car, Three opens his door and leans out.
I slam on the brakes with all my force. Twelve immediately grabs onto the back of shirt and yanks him back into the car. "What are you doing?" she hisses.
"Jeffrey's back," Three says in a distant, blissful voice. "I was letting him in. You can sit in the backity-back, Jeffrey. Thanks for coming back."
My heart is pounding hard in my ears, and I have to put my head down on the wheel. "Who's driving next?"
Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start.
"Three, you're a terrible driver."
Three relinquishes the wheel and crawls over Hawthorne and Twelve to the backity-back. "Jeffrey wants to drive next."
Hawthorne pounds his head against the window next to him. "Jeffrey's not—"
But the car starts up and drives forward at a nice, safe pace. Hawthorne and Twelve look really shocked, and I barely stifle my smile. Twelve looks up at me, and I barely lift my wand from my lap.
Her shocked face melts into a grin.
"I told you Jeffrey could drive," Three says. I can't see him though because he's lying across the back seats.
Twelve shakes her head and slides across the seat to sit next to Hawthorne. Without thought, he puts his arm around her, tugging her closer. She puts her head down on his shoulder, pulls her knees up to her chest, and falls asleep against him in an instant.
I look back at the two of them, and I think about some things. Hawthorne said they were best friends, but there was something about the way he said it. Something more. And that's just reiterated by how he's acting now. Hawthorne keeps looking down at her with this look in his eyes that I've never seen from him. It takes a moment of pondering on his part, but he moves his lips to her hair and kisses the top of her head.
The only trouble is… I don't know if Twelve feels the same way about him.
"Eyes on the road, London," Hawthorne says roughly.
Jeffrey swerves us back onto the road.
A few hours later, I'm too tired to hold my wand up, so I decide it would be a good time to trade drivers before I crash us into a lake like I did with Granny's car.
I unbuckle my seatbelt and turn around. Three is still passed out in the far back of the car, and Twelve and Hawthorne are still asleep curled up together. I sigh and reach over my seat to nudge Twelve. She hasn't driven in a while.
I poke her knee because that's all I can reach. She goes rigid, and her eyes fly open.
"Take the wheel," I say sleepily.
"Okay," she breathes.
Twelve looks up at Hawthorne, who appears to be still sleeping very soundly. She gently extracts herself from his arm and crawls into the front seat. Yes, I do believe she doesn't feel the same way about Hawthorne as he does about her. Either that or she's better about hiding it.
I curl up into a ball in the passenger seat considering everyone else is still asleep, so there's no point in moving. Twelve starts driving off in her normal, reckless way.
"Hey, Twelve, could you describe to me where we are?" I ask. "I don't know anything about this place and only seeing cornfields is starting to worry me."
So Twelve tells me about this country we're in- Panem. She explains that Panem is divided into thirteen districts, even though one of them is abandoned, and each district is specialized in doing something for the Capitol (their leading capital). She takes a long extent of time describing to me how evil the Capitol is, but eventually she gets back to the question I asked. Hawthorne and Twelve are from District 12, the coal mining district, but that should have been obvious by her nickname. She tells me we're in District 11 (the agriculture district) which is the largest district.
After that, I drift off to sleep for the first time in what seems like forever.
The car stops, and I open my eyes quickly. The other two in the back also wake up and start looking around for zombies.
"We're in District 10," Twelve says.
I look around the car. There aren't crop fields any more. Instead there are massive grass fields. I think Twelve said this was the livestock district. Currently we're pulled in front of a beaten up general store.
"I thought we could stock up," Twelve comments.
"Good thinking," Hawthorne says.
He reaches under my seat and pulls out a bow and arrow (which he hands to Twelve) and a crossbow and a gun for himself. Three snatches up my Glock, so I'm left with only my wand. That's ok, though. My wand and I— we can get through anything together.
Twelve and Hawthorne lead the way to the door of the general store. It's obvious this place has seen some struggle because the door is dangling by only one hinge and half the windows are shattered. The inside's pretty messed up as well. It looks kind of like the Gryffindor Common room when I ran through it while trying to get away from the zombies.
Twelve grabs an arrow and has it at the ready. She nods at Hawthorne, and it appears they've begun to work as a system, excluding me and Three.
Hawthorne pulls his gun out of his holster, aims it at the only window with glass, and fires. There's an incredibly loud crack, and glass sprays everywhere.
"What was that for?" I ask loudly.
"I'd rather not be surprised," he comments, and that doesn't make much sense to me.
But then a zombie sprints out from behind some shelves and charges straight towards us. Without even a trace of panic, Twelve sends an arrow straight through his head. The zombie crumples to his knees, and she hits him again. Just to make sure.
Another zombie whips out of another aisle, and Hawthorne takes that one down with an arrow and then a bullet to the head.
No more zombies come, so Twelve and Hawthorne head to their kills and retrieve their arrows. They are separated, and neither of them seems to notice the zombie running on top of one of the shelves.
Three starts laughing next to me, but I'm too scared to say anything. Before I can compose myself, the zombie leaps from the edge of the shelf… heading straight towards Hawthorne.
Levicorpus
The zombie flips upside down and dangles in midair, just far enough away from Hawthorne.
"SHOOT IT!" I yell at the top of my lungs.
Twelve has the fastest reaction time and sends an arrow through the zombie's heart. I drop my wand arm back to my side, and the zombie smashes head-first into the tile floor with a sickening crunch.
There are a few seconds of tense silence. And then: "Thanks," Hawthorne says.
"Any time," I reply, though my heart is pounding like a rabbit on raw caffeine.
A few more seconds of silence.
"Just grab whatever seems useful," Twelve says, grabbing a giant plastic bag.
Three makes a noise of complete glee and sprints over to some shelves with his arms flailing above his head. He jumps straight at it as if to give it a hug… and smashes his head into a heavy looking can. He falls to the ground, and I pretend I didn't see it happen.
Thirty minutes later, the car is gassed and the backity-back and trunk are filled with bags of food and other useful (and useless) items. Fortunately, Hawthorne doesn't actually follow through with his earlier threat (THAT'S IT! I'M LEAVING YOU TWO AT THE NEXT GAS STATION!). For me, at least.
We're about to pull out when I go: "THREE!"
Hawthorne sighs. "Can't we just pretend we accidentally forgot him and leave?"
"No!" I say loudly. I pitch myself out of the car and run back into the store. Much to my dismay, Three is still unconscious on top of the massive can he smashed his skull on. I'm about to freak out that I watched him die and did nothing about it because he doesn't move, but then his chest rises with a tiny breath.
I pull my wand from my pocket and Wingardium Leviosa him out to the vehicle. It appears that I've finally won Hawthorne's trust because he didn't ditch us like I thought he would. I open the side door of the car and levitate Three into the car.
"I got him. He knocked himself out on a can," I say.
"Marvelous," Hawthorne says.
After ten minutes of driving through grassy fields, Three pops up and shouts, "WHAT IS IT, JEFFREY?" He smacks his head really hard on the back of Twelve's chair and knocks himself out again.