The Defective Soldier || Newt

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟒𝟐

𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕓𝕠𝕦𝕥 𝕎𝕒𝕪 ℍ𝕠𝕞𝕖

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The evening was an unbelievable experience for Group S. They were outside of the Safe Haven for the first time in months. Spring had rushed into the confines of the place that they were still reluctant to call home. They had felt themselves being thrown directly into a wall, astounded and gasping for air. The desire to get out grew by the day, their restless nights and waking nightmares became worse than ever. No reminder of peace could distract them. They were alone in their own hopelessness, a mutual understanding where all they knew was that nothing made sense.

In the Main Land, as they called the remains of where the Last City had been located, it made sense. They had a duty to fulfil, a mission to carry out. It could seem unimportant, but such details had changed them for the better. They had found something in the rumble of days, on the deceased, the Past-The-Gone, those who held hope to survive the cure, and the few Immunes that had escaped with their lives from the chaos of life—they had found humanity.

It was by no means a peaceful time, with no silent mornings accompanied by the beauty of a prolonged day and the end of an entrancing sunset. The Camp, where they stayed for most nights, was messy, loud, and chaotic. Cranks appeared often, and fighting them with hopeless everyday people to protect was no easy feat. Rather, it was an exhausting and apparently useless effort. But, despite it all, the loud noises were more often than not from laughter, the messiness proof that people fought to live through and through to their last breaths, and their chaotic lives a reminder, which they wouldn't have anywhere else; They were still in possession of a brief life in which no delays were permitted, no risks taken in vain, and no paths available to turn back around. As far as they knew, each passing day was all they got. No more, no less.

"Do you think they're worried? Back at the Safe Haven, I mean," Henry asked in the rumble of distant laughter.

The 'new recruits', the official names for those whom they had cured or found with the days, sat around the bonfire, chatting the night away. One of them was playing a bloodied and patched-up flute, but that didn't mean the music was any less entrancing. It worked to calm the many cured, too. Like the old woman whose veil flew in the wind, covering her tired smile as her eyes got lost somewhere in the flames of the bonfire that George and a young boy they had found earlier that day had put together.

"I'm sure they are," replied Mae with her lately overflowing calmness. "Some almost passed out when they heard about the rescue mission."

"Impressively, Thomas more than anyone, even Rachel, and she's your sister." Rowan nudged Mae lightly. "I'll have a good word with that brother of mine—"

Dennis, who had so far been minding his own business, attending to the new recruits in whatever they pleased, stopped to look at his sister. "What did I do now?"

"Not you, the other one," said Rowan with a laugh. "Tommy."

"Oh," that piqued Dennis' interest, as he sat down on the only spot available. "He only really acts like a brother towards Chuck. I'm almost jealous."

"No, he doesn't," Mae voiced to Thomas's defence. Quite the recurrent thing to happen.

"Just date him already," Henry groaned, "I beg you, it's getting tiring."

"It really is," George sided with Henry, awaiting William to declare his position on the absurd argument.

He shrugged. "You should at least tell him how you feel, though. Trust me, pushing it back doesn't work."