The Hunted

Didn't Belong

They hadn't given us food. I stared up at a tree that had some walnuts growing in it. During school we had taken a survival class that taught us what we could and could not eat in the forests, but that had been two years ago. I wasn't sure if I was able to remember what was poisonous and what wasn't. Walnuts, though, I knew were safe.

As I started climbing the tree, another realization dawned on me. I had no water. The Recreation Zone was closed for the year and any commodities within the area had been removed because vandals used to break in and steal anything from toilet paper in the public toilets to candy at the shop. The owners boxed everything up in the stores and took the items to the city to sell. I would have to go to the lake in order to get water and possibly confront Derek in the process.

I pulled myself up onto a sturdy branch and shrugged off my backpack. I slipped one of the knives from the backpack and into the waistband of my pants before I reached up and started to pick the green nut off the branches, filling the backpack up with as many as I could reach before I shrugged the backpack back on and headed towards the lake.

I would need something to keep water in. There was a small chance that there would be something at the shop, but it wasn't a sure thing. I pulled a few of the walnuts out of my backpack as I headed in the direction of the shop, using the knife from my waistband to break them open.

The sun was high overhead now, but the air was still bitter. Winter was not going away so easily. It was still March. We often still had snowstorms and cold weather until the middle of April.

I didn't even want to think about what the night temperatures would bring.

The shop came into view. It was just a small cabin with a porch on it. When I was a kid, before the government became even more strict, the old men would sit out on that porch and drink their morning coffee, talking about all of the insane things the government was trying to implement. That was before it was a crime to speak out against the government.

I glanced around the picnic area in front of the shop for signs of Derek before I darted across the open space and onto the porch. I yanked on the door, but it was locked like I expected it to be. The windows had plywood secured over them, but there was a back entrance that was used by the employees. I had spent part of my mandatory work hours in this shop when I was thirteen.

The door in the back was locked as well and alarmed with a keypad. I had no idea what the code was anymore. They had changed it every few weeks whenever I had worked there.

I moved back around to the front, glancing over my shoulder every so often to make sure that no one was coming. There were Guardians in here with us and I wouldn't have been surprised if they didn't attempt to stop me from breaking into the building. They weren't allowed to kill us, but there weren't any rules saying they couldn't knock us unconscious for a while.

I took two steps back from the door, sizing it up. The force it would take to kick the door in all depended on the type of lock. It wasn't like in the movies where all it took was a hard shoulder push or a hard kick to knock the door in. It took a couple of tries to get the door open and that was only if you knew what you were doing.

"The windows your better option." I spun around. Derek stood at the bottom of the stairs, his hand resting on the railing. His bow and arrows were both secured to his back and he held a half-eaten apple.

"Thank God for harvest preservatives, aye?" I asked. The corner of his mouth twitched before he took another bite of the apple and climbed the stairs.

"What'd you eat?"

"Walnuts," I replied, tucking the knife in my hand back into my waistband. He nodded as he walked up to the door, crouching down to look at the lock. "You're not aiming an arrow at my head yet?" He took another bite of the apple as he ran his hand over the keyhole.