I Thought It Was Over

Chapter 18 - Scary

18 – Scary

Beep beep beep.

Ugh, my alarm. Rolling out of bed, I pulled on red skinny jeans and an oversized blue striped shirt, with my new furry jacket.

The next morning we were on the move again. Piling in to the car, I thought about how I hadn’t had contact with HQ for a few days. I made a mental note to text later, and stopped Mia from getting into the driver’s seat.

“Clio, want to jump behind the wheel?” I asked.

“NO! She’ll kill us all,” Mia shrieked, sinking to the ground in mock despair.

“Mia, shut up. Clio, get in the van. Lillian, shut up. Becky, get in the van,” Emily said. I shrugged and nodded; Clio laughed and obeyed; Lillian punched her friend and obeyed; Mia scowled and ran away.

“Mia, come back,” I called. Hearing laughter from a nearby bush, I shot my flame thrower just over it. Mia started crawling out, as I shot another lick of flame just over her head.

This was about the time everything went wrong.                        

Somebody stood up behind the bush, their face flaming and their mouth curved in a haunting scream. I screamed as well, and Mia went pale as a bowl of plain vanilla icecream, out of the freezer for 5.5 minutes, perfect temperature, with a bit of cream and nothing else. She scooted backward and concealed herself in the bush to watch what happened next.

From everywhere around us rose a small army of enemy people, wearing the same clothes as the fire head person. A uniform?
They all had guns, pointed at our heads.

“Stay down, Mim!” I shrieked. Clio screamed and we jumped close together, a tight, terrified team of teenagers and preteens.

“Freeze,” one of the enemies commanded. I reached down and slowly zipped up my boot, pressing an emergency button on – sugar. I forgot to put it on today. Usually I have a band thing that goes around my leg, and it has a few buttons on it. Today I obviously had forgotten it.

Good one, Becky.

“How did you find us?” I asked.

“Tracking device on her,” the same guy replied, pointing.

“On Clio?”

He nodded.

“Well, Mr, um,” I said.

“Cleveland.”

“Mr Cleveland, that is very clever.”
“I know.”

Wow, rude.

 

“What do you think about letting us go?”

“No,” he replied. “Them, fine. Maybe you.” He gestured at Lil and Em; they hadn’t seen Mia yet.

“But what do you want?”

He pointed at Clio.

“Oh no, you can’t have that,” I said. He nodded.

“I need.”

“You can’t have,” I replied. He nodded persistently.

A strangled scream caused us to look towards the person who I had inadvertently set on fire; they seemed to have no face.

“Yeah, um, sorry about that, by the way,” I said. Two people hurried over and sprayed them in the face with a hose.

“You hand her over, and we let your little people go.”  Little people? Oh, Lillian and Eleanora.

“No.”

“Or we kill little people.”

“No!”

“We give you two minutes.” I huddled with the others.

“We leave no one behind,” I said. They all agreed, and I quickly sent Mia a message on Instagram.

Turn your phone on silent

She replied done and I texted her.

We’re going to make a break for it, be ready.

She texted back ok and a smiley face.

I straightened up and yelled to Cleveland.

“We don’t need your two minutes, we’ve decided.”

He looked please. “Which?”

He obviously wasn’t very good at the English language, but a kick from Clio told me that it wasn’t the right time.

“Neither. We keep everyone, and you leave.”

“No, no.”

At some signal from Cleveland, a few of his people came and grabbed us roughly. They tied up my hands and wrists, and snapped on handcuffs; the others got the same coarse treatment.

“Don’t struggle,” I told my friends.

“In the van,” Cleveland called. “Master Leo will be pleased, we have one of the captives.”

“Leo?” I asked. Cleveland nodded.

“Leonardo Glow,” he replied. Turning my head away, I felt the blood drain from my face.

If Leo got hold of us… of me… I was doomed. We were all doomed.