Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyer, the awesome person who created The Host owns everything except my characters Amy, Sandra, Alex and Dan.
Chapter 3
I stared at the empty dessert passing by slowly. I was on the back of Alex's motorcycle. Sandra and Dan were a few miles ahead of us seeing the same thing we did; sand, rocks and cactus. We were on our way to Tucson, where more rumors of humans were.
Apparently a few months ago a seeker's car had been found abandoned in the desert outside the city and it looked as if the seeker had been killed by hyenas. The body was never found. She, no it, had been looking for another alien who had disappeared the same way while going to Tucson. Dan had found the story in a newspaper a while ago. The aliens had accepted the coincidence and moved on and put up warnings of wild dogs. We however thought something else might be up. Humans.
The desert sun beat down on us. It was hot here, to hot. Even moving on a desolate never ending road at sixty miles an hour I was hot. The hot air roared in my ears as it blew past me and brought no relief to the heat. You could see the heat rising in columns from the sand and the pavement, and it wasn't even summer yet. I peered around Alex's shoulder, I wondered if I would be able to see Dan and Sandra from here. I was so bored. On long trips like these I would try to see pictures in the clouds, but here it didn't work. The empty blue skies were no comfort. They made me feel venerable and so did the glaring sun if I stared at the sky to long. As it turns out we missed the rainy season, I couldn't imagine it raining here.
I wanted to hurry up and get out of this wasteland. Of course the aliens didn't speed, they were too good for that, or so they thought. Usually I liked riding the motorcycle. I liked the feel of the wind in my face, whipping at my clothes and the hair that fell out of my helmet and the road giving way beneath our tires and the continuous loud hum of the engine. But under a never ending blue sky it made me uncomfortable.
"Alex, when are we going to get there? My butt is killing me and I haven't eaten since this mourning," I shouted over the wind and the motorcycle.
"We're not stopping till we get to Tucson. And for your butt hurting and you starving suck it up," laughed Alex and I joined in. The wind took away our laughter make it become faint. It felt good just to laugh again.
In truth I wasn't really suffering at all. I just had to think about what I would've complained about if the aliens hadn't taken over. We had had to "suck it up" to worse before.
"We should be there in about an hour", said Alex more serious now.
"Okay," I said. Only one more hour of this desolate desert and then we could find a place outside the city to hide.
"Agh", I grunted. So this was their idea of outside the city. Well if it kept us away from seekers, good.
It was night time now. After Alex had decided that staying in the city or the surrounding area he decided to camp out here in the desert. We drove back out for a while, I forget how long and now we were pushing the bikes through the sand. Ugh. I hated to think that we would just have to push them pack to the road if we wanted to go on a raid.
It seemed as if we had been pushing our motorcycles forever when Alex finally saw it fit for us to stop. There was a pile of rocks as we approached we found that was a small cave.
"It doesn't get much better than this", remarked Alex. We all mumbled in agreement. My arms and back ached from pushing the motorcycles. I could think of some better things, but under the circumstances, I had to agree. We hadn't been caught; we had a shaded place to rest during the day. Yes this would do. I collapsed on the sand. Something caught my eye.
"Alex, Dan come look at this", I called my voice rising with each note. I heard them heave themselves of the ground and come over. All I could do was point. I heard them gasp behind me. Tire tracks. I looked around for more but they cut off as they left the cave. I turned to face my brothers. Their faces were just as shocked as mine.
"Well?" I asked starting to panic. "What do they mean?" I was verging toward hysterical, my voice rising with each word. I stared at Alex and Dan looking for some kind of logical explanation.
Sandra, who had been close to falling asleep, was woken by the commotion of our discovery was now stumbling over. She was now gapping at the same thing we were. Tire tracks. How had they gotten here? They cut off as they lift the cave. How?
The initial shock wore off. Alex begun pacing and mumbling incoherently to himself. Then he spoke to us.
"These tracks were either made by humans or seekers", he stated. "They stop at the cave entrance so however made them doesn't want to be found." He stopped again and took a deep breath. "It could be some seekers trying to hide their presence from humans or…
"Humans. Either way it means we're on the right track." We stared at Alex with dumbstruck expressions. Humans, near, in the desert? These tracks weren't more than a day old. The thought filled me with hope, hope and fear.
What if seekers had made these tracks? Would they come back? I shuddered at the thought at meeting a seeker in the near future.
I remembered the tracks we had made in the desert and how we had painstakingly tried to cover them up the best we could.
"Let's do something with our bikes," suggested Dan.
"Like what," asked Alex.
"Well, we could try to hide them better."
"Yeah" he agreed.
Our choices for hiding our motorcycles were pretty scanty. The cave wasn't all that big. We hid one behind a corner and shove the other one into a small crevice. The hiding spots weren't the best and left a good portion of the bike uncovered. We covered some of the bikes with our nondescript spare clothes.
What if this cave belonged to a seeker? What could they do? What was there to do? We could fight, but seekers had guns. It wasn't like they could just roam around in the desert. Sandra was for leaving but Alex and Dan agreed with me when I said we should stay here. We couldn't just walk away when we were this close to finding others like us. We decided to figure out if they were aliens or not before making our move. What was our move? I had no clue.
The Sun would rise in an hour or so. I had been up the whole night pushing motorcycles through sand. I hadn't slept in twenty four hours and I was hungry. I wasn't in the mood to eat. All I could do was sleep. I collapsed next to Sandra who was already asleep.
Suddenly Dan jumped to his feet fallowed by Alex. They were both listening intently to something. That's when I heard it too.
The silence of the desert was interrupted by the sound of an approaching engine. Someone or something was toward us.
A/N: So here it is. Chapter three. It took my longer than expected to post it. But it's here so be happy. You should be glad to know that the next chapter is about halfway done. There is no school Monday! Yes it's a holiday. I should have some more time to write. Halloween is coming soon. YeY!! I'm happy. WoW, I got a bit off topic. Review please. This story has gotten many hits…and not so many reviews. Thank you,
Leah