Never Die Alone

Chapter 10: Shelter

The rustling got louder and Michael drew his bow, walking towards the sound. Megan held back, watching him. He looked into the bushes where the sound was and lowered his bow.

"Look at this!' He exclaimed.

Megan hurried over and glanced into the bushes where she saw a rabbit caught in a trap. "A trapper left his trap here!" She exclaimed.

"He probably has lots of traps." Michael said.

"You should likely check them with Jacob." Megan said, "I don't know anything about hunting or killing animals."

"Okay," Michael said, "I'll grab this rabbit later, after we get the camp supplies."

They found sturdy, small trees and chopped them down with the axe and then Megan cut off the branches with the saw. They drug the small trees and the branches back to camp.

"How are we going to get this together?" Michael asked.

"We can make a little lean-to kind of shelter by attaching these at an angle to two upright trees." Megan said.

"What are we going to use to attach them to the trees?" Michael asked, looking at the logs they had drug in.

Jacob straightened from the backpack he'd been shifting through. "Taija found some copper wire. We'll use that." He took one of the logs from Michael and tied it to the tree using the wire.

Megan did the same and then attached the other two logs on the other side of the tree so that the logs sloped up and met at the upright tree in the center so they looked like an arrow pointing into the sky. After that, they strung wire between the logs and laid the branches onto the top until they were thick and provided insolation.

"Hopefully that'll hold in the heat."

Lucy watched them, her green eyes wide. "That's a good tent." She praised them. It had been the first time she had talked in a while.

"Thank you." Megan smiled. "It'll be nice to sleep in tonight."

"Jacob," Michael announced, "I saw some rabbit traps back there in the woods. We should go check them out. I figured that you probably know more about hunting than I do."

"Okay let's go." Jacob said.

The boys left into the woods and Megan ducked into the shelter they had constructed. She started hauling out any sticks or rocks that made the ground too uneven. She could hear Lucy and Emma talking outside and she was amazed at how good Lucy's manners were.

"Megan!" She heard Emma yell. "Cam!"

Megan ran back out of the shelter. Cam was running up from where she'd been near the river side.

There were two zombies crawling towards her. Megan pulled the knife out of her belt where she'd left it and ran towards the closest zombie. Lucy had backed up away from the zombies and Emma was backing away as quickly as she could on her infected leg.

"Take that!" Megan yelled as she jumped and stabbed one of the zombies in the skull. She drew the knife back out and stabbed it in at a new angle just for good measure. She turned, knife raised, towards the other zombie but it was already lying on the ground. Cam was standing over it, pulling the screwdriver she had grabbed out of its skull.

"Put the knife down!" Cam said to Megan, eyes wide. "I'm not a zombie."

Megan became less tense, "Sorry."

Lucy was trembling, "Are they monsters? They look like people."

Emma's brow furrowed, "Yes, they are monsters. They just look a little bit like people. We have to kill them to protect ourselves."