aliens are stupid • ben parish

12

Nobody was annoyed at the the fact Nugget and I had given the squad this punishment, we were all too high on adrenaline to even think about that. But by the time we finished our run tempers were getting a little frayed.

'Ugh! Flint do you have to pant like an old dog?' Teacup moans.

'Well yes I do because I just ran 10 laps of this whole bloody compound.' Flintstone snaps back at Teacup. She folds her arms.

'Hey guys? It's time for dinner.' Dumbo enters cautiously into the conversation.

'Shut up!' Teacup and Flintstone yell in unison, the two are now walking along the corridor to dinner having a sort of evil eye staring contest.

They go back to bickering and I sigh.

'And what's your problem?' Flintstone turns to me, taking me by surprise. 'You're the one that got us in trouble in the first place!'

'I got you in trouble so we could win the game. Like you were doing anything to help anyway, your ankle probably didn't even hurt.' I say back to him.

'Guys will you just shut the hell up!' Ringer shouts as we push open the big double doors and enter the dining hall.

No one says anything after that.

We all go and collect our food in silence. Then we sit and eat and the only sound to be heard is the mumbled conversations from other groups and the sound of cutlery hitting together as we eat.

Everyone's annoyed, everyone's hungry and most of all everyone's tired. That exercise took a lot of of us. God knows what a real mission would do to us.

My eyes start to wander around the room and they eventually stop on Zombie.

Jesus Parish who gave you permission to look this attractive?

His brown hair is flopped effortlessly across his forehead, just like before. Sometimes, when he's stressed, or thinking, he runs his fingers through it casually and it lands up looking perfectly tousled.

How is that even fair?

Obviously I can't sit there and stare him for too long otherwise it would be creepy. So I force myself to look in another direction. Any place but Zombie's perfect face.

My eyes fall on the leaderboard that is on a large screen at the top of the dining hall.

Rank 1: Squad 53

I elbow Oompa who's sitting next to me.

He looks at me his dark eyebrows furrowed.

I nod towards the board.

'What?' He says excruciatingly loudly when he sees the ranking. His mouth is hanging open.

Everyone looks at him, confused.

Both of us point to the leaderboard.

'Woo hooooo!' Flintstone calls when he sees it. I laugh.

There was now a chorus of 'yeses' and 'woohoos' coming from our table and the surrounding squads were staring at us in a combination of confusion and jealousy.