Barely Alive (#JustWriteIt #SuperCharged)

Chapter 9 - More Than What Meets the Eye

"Sky above me.

Earth below me.

Fire within me."

Hunter looked around the corner of a building. He looked all around, then sprinted out of his spot. He ran down a gravel road for a little while until he was a few yards away from a little farmland. He stopped running and continued jogging to the house on the land. He jogged past a walker that he had tied to a lamp post. He jogged to the deck on the house and jumped onto the railings. Then he jumped off the rail and went to the door. He opened the door and had everyone in the room look at him. He took the backpack he had on, off and threw it to Leo. It hit the male in the back of the head as he was the only one who didn't look back at Hunter.

"What was that for?!" Leo asked, holding the back of his head.

"That is what was left," Hunter said.

Leo opened the backpack and looked a at what was in there. There was a few cans of food, a few containers of medicines, a child's winter jacket and boots, and a hunting knife with its sheath.

"What do you mean by all that is left?" Travis asked.

"That is what was left of our search area. The rest of this town might have something left, but what you told us the search radius is, it is completely empty."

"What? How could that happen?" Travis asked.

Hunter went over to the table in the kitchen. There was a map of the town they were in, but unfortunately, the name of the town had been ripped off and the edges were tearing. He took a red marker that they had found in the house, and crossed off the last building in their search radius.

"We'll have to expand the search radius if we want to find anything of actual use," Hunter said as he walked back to the others.

Travis thought about that. He knew the hospital was on the other side of town, and they were running short on medical supplies.

"Okay. We'll expand our search radius. Hunter will decide how far we expand it. Hunter, not the whole town," Travis stated.

Hunter went back to the table, and drew a bigger circle around the first one. It was five blocks larger than the first circle. He then went to a storage area and grabbed a bigger duffel bag. Then he went back to the main room.

"I'm going to go and see what is in that little clinic that is on the edge of the radius," Hunter went to the door and opened it. "Don't know how long I'll be gone."

Anthony watched as Hunter left. Once the blonde was out of the view of the cabin, he looked back towards the group.

"So am I allowed to ask how you guys all got together?" Anthony asked.

Darcie narrowed her eyes at Anthony. Tori gave Darcie a look and both girls returned to their unreadable faces.

"Well it started in smaller groups that kind of collected together. Five years ago, Darcie and I met Tori," Travis started.

"Ten years ago, I met Dawson," Leo added.

"Eight years ago, I met Kaylie but that's an entirely different story," Levi continued.

"And that's a story we aren't discussing right now," Darcie interrupted, having heard the story before and never wanting to hear it again.

"So, anyways, a year after we met Tori, our trio entered a building to hear movement happening in a different part of the building. We all pulled out our guns so we could shoot, however the people in the building were Leo and Dawson. We started talking and we quickly connected. The two of them joined our group and we became a group of five. Just last year, we were exploring when we saw a horde of walkers surrounding a building. At first, we thought it was a girl on top of the building-"