The Game of Survival

TWO | TRUST US

CHAPTER TWO
GREY

For someone who has such little trust in me, Evan refused to keep an eye on me, claiming he 'would rather try to find a car that still had gas.' Although it did hurt, I didn't dwell on it for too long as I walked alongside Kai and Xavier with my hands bound together in front of me. Xavier was less anxious than he led on when he'd first stumbled into the bathroom doorway.

Halfway down the road, I looked back at my tiny home with a frown.

Did they paint the windows?

Xavier periodically looked at his ticking watch while Evan's hand his rested against the gun safely stored in his hands. Kai cautiously watched where he stepped, clearly on edge and waiting for something to happen.

"Are these necessary? I mean, you," I pointed to Kai, "attacked me." I pointed back to myself.

"You still fought back though, and while it was pretty sloppy you have a mean swing," Kai replies never looking at me.

I huffed. "This doesn't help me trust you, you know that right?"

Kai looked at me, amused. "Then why are you still walking with us?"

I shrug. "Easy. Evan has a gun. Xavier is fast, and you can tackle me pretty easily. So not only am I, but I also don't have the odds in my favor."

Xavier chimed. "How can you tell I'm fast?"

"With the way you ran into the bathroom, you were light on your feet. I also saw, though, with the way you stumbled, you don't know how to stop properly."

Xavier raised his eyebrows and looked to Kai, impressed with my observations. "How do you know he wasn't just too anxious to stop properly."

"I don't."

Silence fell between everyone again. My hands were still bound together.

The quiet lingered for a moment before Evan stopped in his track, hand raised. "You hear that?"

I scrunched my eyebrows and focused my hearing on our surrounding sounds. All I could hear were the lively crickets and other chirping bugs I couldn't name. Xavier's grip on his pack tightened as he and Kai slowly crept closer to me.

"Boo!"

Kai and Xavier jumped as my heart leaped to my throat. Evan blinked, "Cute."

"What? I didn't scare you enough?" A woman with bright blonde hair smirked standing in front of Evan.

"Lilac." Kai sighed. "You find anything?"

She frowned tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Not really. I managed to snatch some blankets, pillows and a few cans of food." She lifted her duffle bag. Lilac narrowed her small eyes and jerked her head to me. "I can see you were successful."

"Her names Rhea. Kai insisted we take her with us before night." Xavier informed politely.

"Rhea?" She looked at me. "Like the goddess?"

I nodded with a blank face.

"Looks like you got a real chatterbox on your hands."

Kai pursed his lips. "Well, might be my fault. It was dark and I mistook her for an infected."

Infected.

"So you attacked her," Lilac stated matter-of-factly.

The brown-haired male scrunched his face with guilt. "Yeah."

Lilac chuckled softly before walking over to me, knife in hand. She held this knife steadily, her intentions were unclear to me. I tried reading her body language but all I got back was calm and ease. She stopped in front of me with the blade, glinting in the moonlight, just touching the tips of my dark eyelashes. She readjusted her grip, grabbed my arms, and cut off the zip ties around my now bruised wrists.

"What, it wasn't enough you tied her up? Why were the zip ties so tight?" Lilac complained, clearly in my favor.

Xavier shrugged. "Evan was the one who put them on."

Lilac rolled her grey eyes before mumbling, "of course it was Evan."

She looked back to me with an apologetic smile. But then her smile dropped and she got close enough to my face that if either of us walked closer, our lips would end up touching.

"I may have undone your binds, but trust me when I say this, you try anything? Anything at all, and I swear to you, I will hunt you down and skin you alive." She lightly tapped my nose with the tip of her knife. "We clear?"

A moment passed before I answered. "Crystal."

She backed away, looking me up and down. "Perfect. Good thing I grabbed a couple of bandanas from the houses I raided." Lilac pulled a blue bandana, a pink one, a grey one, and a yellow bandana. "It's also a good thing I made you guys bring your bandanas."

Lilac looked at me again. "Assuming you're coming with us, you're gonna need one of these. When the second plague hit Dubuque, a small section of the city, our section, kind of became like Fornia with the dust storms. So we need to wear these to prevent breathing in the sand and suffocating. This time of year the storms get pretty heavy, so take your pick."

Lilac held out the bandanas. I cautiously glanced and everyone, everyone eyed me carefully, trying to guess what I would do next. Either pick a cloth or try something. In their defense, strangers were unpredictable in these times. It's hard to read whenever someone wants to kill you, use you, befriend you, or even eat you.

I chose the grey one.

Visually,  everyone's tension went away as I gently took the grey fabric from  Lilac's hands. Lilac eyed the cloth in my hands.

"Interesting choice."

They say colors depict your most inner feelings. Grey. Detached, neutral, emotionless, loneliness. Within the last two months, I've had to survive on my own. Without the family that abandonded me. And every night, as a nightly routine, I sob as I stare at the note I've read and memorized word for word. And for two months parts of me have chipped away.

For two months all my life has been, is grey.