Roll the Dice

Chapter Eighteen-No Longer Five. Only Four.

*Livvie Henry*
(Still Day Seven)

Dakota had finally calmed down and was sniffling beside me. Isabella came back up with her food and set it down.

"Where's Lilly?" I asked when she didn't come in behind Isabella. She got a confused look.

"She isn't back?" My stomach sank. I shook my head. Isabella threw open the door and yelled Lilly's name. No reply. Dakota instantly wiped her eyes and we all stood up, grabbing our weapons. I ignored the pain in my arm and walked down the steps with an arrow ready.

"Lilly!" I called, not carrying right now if an enemy heard me. Lilly was like my sister and if she was in trouble I had to get to her. I promised I'd protect her. You dumbass! You shouldn't have let her leave! This is all your fault! What if she's dead?! Your. Complete. FAULT! The voice in my head pushed me harder.

"LILLY!" I staggered down an aisle and saw to my horror a spilled bottle of chloroform and a rag laying on the floor. Her bag of food was nowhere in sight. Her attackers probably took it. I wasn't sure whether to be scared or relieved; she was in danger but it was chloroform so it knocked her out, didn't kill her.

I shouted for the others and heard their feet pounding against the floor as the ran to me from different areas in the empty store. By the time they reached me, I had tears completely covering my vision and my bottom lip was between my teeth to keep it from trembling. Emily was the first of them to peice it together and she hugged me tight.

"She's okay. She's okay. We'll get her back. She's okay." She kept repeating those words to me, but...okay, you know how mothers are able to sense when their children are hurt? (A/N: I didn't make that up. Mothers can really sense if their children are hurt. Even if their kid isn't around them. Freaky.) Well Lilly and I are so close that we have this sort of connection. We can get this feeling if the other is in some sort of pain or danger. (A/N: that, too, is possible. It's happened to me before. No joke.) That feeling was filling me up right now, and I knew I needed to find her before it was too late.

Something shot past my face and I whirled around, arrow raised, to see a girl standing a few feet away. She had blue hair and looked as scared as ever. I shot my arrow through her chest when she raised another knife and she collapsed on the ground. I heard someone scream and turned to see Emily laying on the ground with Isabella crouched protectively over her. As if she'd pushed her out of the way of something. Dakota threw a knife at a target I couldn't see and I heard a thud as something hit the ground.

There were more footsteps and Emily said, "We need to go! Now!"

"I have to find Lilly!" I exclaimed, turning to run. Hands clamped around my waist, keeping me in place.

"NO, Liv! We need to go, NOW! If we die, Lilly won't get any help!" Seeing the sense behind her words, I growled but followed the other girls out of the store, shooting random attackers.

"Where are they all coming from?!" Isabella asked and I shot the last few chasing us through the parking lot.

"They probably heard Livvie yelling," Dakota replied. "Not that we blame you!" she added to me.

"What do they have against us?!" I exclaimed.

"Nothing," Emily told us. "The games are ending soon because the only around seventy girls are left. They are out to kill whoever they can." We ran and ran and ran. My legs were on fire by the time we stopped. We had run out to the field where we'd been dropped into the games because nobody was here, which meant safety. I collapsed on the ground and tried to get my breath back.

After a few minutes, Isabella asked, "What are we supposed to do? Stay here for the night?"

We all sorta sat in a silence looking at Emily until she said, "We'll sleep out here in the field. We'll be safer than most places in the city. Those girls could be anywhere."

"But what about bugs and rodents?" Dakota asked with a scared and creeped out expression.

I laughed a half-hearted one. "Those are the least of our problems." I stood up and began to walk towards the fence along the farthest edge of the field. It would take us as far away from the city as possible. The fence was the boundary line of where the girls' games were. When I reached it, I sat down against the fence and sighed heavily. I heard Isabella's stomach grumble.

"I need foooood," she mumbled, patting her stomach.

"Well we lost everything at the store," Dakota replied. "You'll have to wait till we can get more." Isabella pouted but said no more about food. We all huddled into a small ball to rest. Something hit the ground and I jumped, almost peeing my pants. There was a box about three feet away from it. I hit Emily before scrambling over to it, the others quickly joining me. I ripped it open and the smell of food instantly hit my nose.

"Thank you, guys," I whispered to the sky. There were five ham sandwiches, five bottles of water, and five cans of peaches. And a note. We all shared two of the sandwiches, a bottle of water, and two cans of peaches before finally settling in to sleep. After a while, I heard all of them snoring and that was when the worst kind of torture began. That was when my conscience set in.

How could you let this happen to her? you PROMISED you'd keep her safe! What happened to that, huh? She's probably hurt and dying, while your sitting here DOING NOTHING! You're a terrible friend! You deserve to die! Not her! I began to bawl my eyes out and I had to slip away from our huddle so that I wouldn't wake them up. It was finally setting in that I was probably going to lose Holly, my sister. We weren't normal without each other. It was all my damned fault. She was going to die at seventeen years old because I couldn't keep a promise. Because I said we needed more supplies. Because. Of. Me.

So, because of this, I realized something else, too.

We might might not be five anymore.

Only four.