Ditchfields

Chapter 8

The boys had spent the last half an hour walking along the road they had discovered earlier.

‘If we were going towards Beaufort, we would have seen it by now’ Blake stated.

‘Yeah’ Zach agreed. ‘Maybe we should head the other way’.

‘We haven’t been walking very fast, so we’ve probably only walked a couple of kilometres, and Beaufort is a fair way away’ Keith suggested.

‘Am I the only one who’s noticed we’ve been walking on flat surface for the last half an hour?’ Kenneth spoke up.

Everyone stopped walking and turned to him. ‘Yeah, so?’ Blake asked

‘Considering we drove up the mountain to get to Ditchfields, shouldn’t we be walking downwards to get to Beaufort?’

As the reality dawned on everyone, Zach began walking in the opposite direction.

The rest were about to follow, when a bright light and the sound of a car in the distance stopped them in their tracks.

They waited around 30 seconds before the car was near them. It was a car decorated much like a police car, but the blue had been replaced with a dark green, and instead of police in big, bold letters it said ‘RANGERS’.

The hope that spread through Zach was contagious, as everyone began looking at each other with joy in their eyes.

The Ranger quickly hopped out of his car and before any of the boys could speak, he said ‘Are you the kids from MacKillop College? The one’s who’ve been speaking on the radio?’

They looked at each other, confused.

‘We’re from MacKillop’ Keith said. ‘But we don’t have a radio’.

‘Oh, well it sounds like one of your classmates is at the Ranger Outpost. Would you like me to take you there now?’

Without a question, the four of them piled in to the backseat of the Rangers car and were on their way to the Outpost.

*

I reached the front door of the Ranger Outpost and put my hand on the door that had ‘PULL’ written in bold letters. I walked into the Outpost and the first thing I noticed was the silence. It was like no one was there.

From the distance, I had noticed that there were no lights on, and I figured that since it was so late they were all resting or something like that.

But when I entered the Outpost, it felt different. It was cold, the heater had been turned off. I looked around for a sign that would point me in the direction of the Offices, since there was no one at the Admin.

I found a sign that told me the Offices and Living Spaces were on the second floor, and so I walked around, looking for a flight of stairs.

I found them, and quickly made my way up, two steps at a time.

I came out into a semi-circle shaped room.

The door was in the middle of the straight line of the semi-circle, and the circle part was made up of three offices.

On the left, the Offices belonging to Mr. E. Shumpert, Mr. H. Maclean and Ms. Fleming.

On the right were the offices belonging to Mr. And Mrs. B.Harding and also a Mr. Stanley.

In the middle was a room marked ‘Conference Room’.

I walked to my left, Office #1, and opened the door.