River, Sun, Freedom

Chapter 24: Running

“I believe hiding is not an acceptable form of escape.”

Aaron rolled his eyes and didn’t answer. He drew back his leg and then slammed his foot into the wall inside the cupboard. There was the sound of wood splitting and then a hollow slap, as though a board had fallen flat on the ground.

“what the...?” Jodi exclaimed. 

 “you coming?” called Aaron as he crawled into the cupboard and disappeared. 

Jodi squatted on the ground and peered into the space. The wall on the back of the cupboard was now a tiny doorway. Beyond it she could see the darkened interior of a separate room. Bewildered, she bent forward and crawled through, until she found herself in a dark, long storeroom with doors on either end. 

“I made this escape way back and the beginning of the thirteen years I’ve been here. Just in case.” Aaron said as he helped her to her feet. He nodded over to the door closest to them, which had light shining through the crack below it. “that door is unlocked. We’re in the interior of the building so it would take a while to get back on the road, but right now, that’s not where I wanna be.”

“me neither.” Jodi said, her anxiety building as she thought of her friends, injured and trapped somewhere in the building. 

At least, she hoped they were in the building.

“where do we go?”

“now hang on a minute.” Aaron placed a hand on her shoulder. “your friends should be with Laurie, right? I’ll free them. You get out of here as fast as you can.”

Jodi shrugged of his hand. “this place could be crawling with vampyres. We’ll be better off if we stick together.”

“even if we did come across the mutants, you have nothing to ward them off. You’re their prisoner. They’ll see you’ve escaped and rip you apart!”

“oh I’m sorry. Were you locked in that room because you wanted to be?” She bit out sarcastically. “face it, mate, you’re as much a prisoner as I am.”

They glared at each other for full minute before Aaron sighed. “fine.”

“fine” Jodi agreed. “but you did have a point. What are we going to do if we come across the vampyres. They’ve changed so much, I can’t use their old weaknesses against them if they don’t have them anymore.

“what do you usually do?”

“blow their heads off with my gun.”

“Ah ... classy.” Aaron chuckled, though there wasn’t really anything comedic about the situation. “but we have no weapons like that. Which means, we’ll need to make plan.”

Jodi felt impatience cause a bristling feeling all over her body. sit down and make a plan? While Jake was out their being tortured by vampyres. And Nate and Damien? “we don’t have time for that!”

Aaron shook his head. “going without a plan would put us in danger. And that means there’ll be no one to save Laurie.”

“monsters are out their eating my baby brother, while we stand here wasting time!” Jodi hissed, panic beginning to cloud her judgment. An image of Marge as she was consumed before her flashed in Jodi's mind.  What if that was Jake right now?

“that’s not going to happen. Calm down Jodi.”

“don’t tell me to be calm!” Jodi's voice became unintentionally loud and suddenly there was a noise outside the door behind Aaron. Jodi covered her mouth to suppress a gasp and riled against her own stupidity. Silently, they waited for something to identify the noise.