Burning Daylight

Chapter Seven

"Avery's your what!?" The words come out harsher than I had intended them to, stricken by the words that he hastily spit out at me moments before.

The flakes grow thicker, completely reducing our vision to almost nothing as the three of us stand there, almost knee deep in snow and shivering from the cold.

This doesn't make any sense! If Avery is his sister than Carver must have been-

It starts to make some sense now, all of those things Carver said to him back then, something about joining the family again since they ran away from him in the first place only to be hunted down by him in the end. But why would Luke hide something like this from me? Did everyone else know? Surely they must have; they were with him when they escaped Carver the first time.

His head hangs a little, indicating that he feels guilt for not telling me sooner, Nick on the other hand; smirks wickedly.

"I've known it all along too, Avery was a little brat back before-" Luke's eyes cut him off completely with just one menacing glare, shutting up Nick instantly.

The shouts and hollers from the other group grow closer, shadowy figures can be seen from very far away down the dirt road towards us, blinded by the blurring flakes of snow that make it impossible to see. I guess I don't have much time to even think about what I was just told, that seems to be the case in most situations now ever since the outbreak started catching wind.

"Quick, break off into the woods; we can lose them in there." Luke's hushed tone snags both of our attention spans as he veers off completely into the spiraling whirl of white, along with the brittle sticks that snap against our bodies as we make a mad dash inside the heavily wooded, frosty area.

My heart feels numb; I can't tell if it's because of what Luke just said or if it's because it's actually frozen solid.

I swear I can feel almost bits of my flesh freezing up inside my skin.

My breath begins to quickly deplete from the lack of oxygen in these winter temperatures, puffs of white air emit from my lungs as I exhale trying to keep up with the two morons where one decided to run blindly through a forest; as we leave footprints in the festering snow behind us.

Sticks come flying at me from all directions, wildly I wave my arms around trying to brush most of them off while maintaining my speed, dashing through while losing sight of the group that were chasing us.

It feels like we've been running for hours... Even though I know we weren't.

My lungs feel like they're caving in from all of the effort, I've never had a problem outrunning anything; so it must be this sudden freezing temperature drop. Eventually I collapse into a shivering fit on top of the fluffy snow. Everything is so cold, to the point where I can't feel anything anymore.

I can't keep this up, it's getting way too cold, I don't even think we'll make it at this point anymore.

"Shit." Luke mutters, taking his backpack off and frantically un-zippering it, pulling out a large quilt as Nick touches my frigid hands with his and helps me up to my feet; wrapping me up tightly in the warm fuzzy quilt Luke had packed.

"Man, we need to get outta this damn cold, we're not going to last an hour out here at this rate." Nick mutters, not showing any signs of hypothermia what so ever; but then again he was always good at hiding things.

"I know that, do you see any other places we can just run off to right now?" Luke snaps slightly, turning his back to face me while Nick glares darkly at him.

"And here we go." I mutter quietly under my breath, going completely unnoticed by either of them.

"It's your fucking fault for making us run off that god damn road!" Nick spits viciously, glancing over at me with his worried blue eyes, clearly lingering on something.