Going Viral (A Virals Story)

Chapter 8- SHELTON

Oh man, oh man, this was so bad. I tugged incessantly on my earlobe, pacing the bunker, waiting. A few minutes, then there was a thud as my portly companion dropped into the main room.

"Dude, what crawled up you ass and died?" Hi asked, flopping into his chair. I paused and frowned at him.

"This isn't time for bullshit, Hiram. Where's Ben?"

"He's on his way, seriously though what's up?" I shook my head, resuming my pacing, and refused to talk about anything. Several more minutes passed, then Ben ducked into the bunker. He looked a lot better than the last time i'd seen him, the dark circles under his eyes were fading and he looked like he'd finally brushed his hair. But his eyes still looked dead, and he'd rolled his sleeves up due to the hot weather, revealing the bandages still adorning his whole forearms. I smiled at him, and he nodded weakly before jumping up onto the window sill. "Now can you tell us what's got you so jittery?" Hi said, a tick forming above his left eye. I took a deep breath, sitting down in the other chair and sighing. A hand drifted back up to my earlobe.

"Kit was round at our house last night, and i heard him talking to me parents while i was washing up... Apparently he just found out that he's got another daughter with some woman he was with when they were younger," two sets of eyes snapped up to meet mine, and i shrunk away from my friends intense gazes. "And, the mum got killed in a car accident, so now she has to come live here..." I finished with a squeak as Hi slammed his hand on the table, i didn't dare even look at Ben. "It messed him up pretty bad," i added quickly, trying to lead blame away from Kit. "He started crying, it was horrible to see to be honest."

"You're kidding me..." Hi groaned, head butting the decaying wood repeatedly. "How old is she?" His question stumped me and i stared, confused as to why the information was relevant. Then i thought back to the conversation i heard the night before.

"13, i think..."

"So she's around our age, too." Another groan. "We'll have to make friends with her then, i mean if she was like five then we'd be able to stay away from her. But it'll be suspicious if we're avoiding her like the plague when we're similar ages."

"That's if she wants to be friends with us, we aren't exactly normal." I offered helplessly, Hi shrugged.

"Exactly, what do we do then?"

"I say we be welcoming, not like she has much of an alternative for buddies all the way out here. If she doesn't want to hang around with us, that's her call."

"No one mention Cole." Ben piped up, my gaze flickered over to him to see him hunched over, black hair shielding his eyes from view. I opened my mouth to argue, but Hi cut me off.

"I agree, what she doesn't know won't hurt her, and i'm pretty sure we can all agree that that's an extremely sore topic at the moment, having to explain everything to the newbie would involve reliving everything, and i know damn well that i'm not willing to do that. So we don't talk about or bring Cole up, if Kit tells her about her then fine, but we mention nothing." I nodded in agreement, unused to Hiram being so... Business like. It was weird, but i figured that he was assuming Cole's position as leader of our ragtag group. Under usual circumstances, the role would have naturally fallen to Ben, but he was officially mentally unstable, and so unable to make decisions. Poor bastard.

"So it's settled then?" I asked, Hi nodded, then paused.

"When does she get here?"

"Tomorrow," another nod, Stolowitski then shoved from his seat and joined Ben on the window sill, muttered in his ear. Ben shrugged.

"Then we should go out somewhere tonight, the three of us, what's on at the cinema?" I shrugged, grabbing my phone and checking the cineworld website.

"The new muppets movie has just come out, we could go see that?" I offered, Ben snorted.

"Why not? Maybe we'll spot Hi," he muttered, Hi huffed indignantly.

"Dude i'm cooler than you'll ever be, like a block of ice in an alaskan freezer." I raised an eyebrow, snorting laughter at the horrendous comparison. Inside i was jumping with glee at the fact that Ben made a joke, a sign that he was finally returning to normal.

Maybe things were finally looking up.