Don't give up on me ✓

[11] Hungover

Everyone has a plan... 'til they get punched - Mike Tyson

Chapter 11: Hungover

There were broken bodies and broken cars littered throughout the junkyard. A raging fire consumed everything around us. We had little time left before the fire engulfed us all.

Jesper was by my side. He was trying to check on me but the blood from his shoulder was dripping all over me.

"Get off her," Nate gruffly pushed him aside, and knelt beside me instead.

I flinched, expecting a rough touch, but his hands were soft on my body. He was gentle; a different man to the one he was a second ago.  He looked for any injuries and his fingers tickled my skin as he checked my arm for scratches.  

His emotions were guarded and I couldn't help but become more curious about him. His skin sparkled from sweat of the action, but he was untouched. Untouchable.

I wanted to touch him.  

Scratch that thought.

"Nate," Mrs Maythorne brushed his shoulder, "She's alive. We're all alive."

I was relieved to hear Mrs Maythorne's voice. If there was one thing she was, it was in control. I felt her warm hand on my forehead and her palm folded as she pressed two fingers against my neck, checking my pulse. She then turned to Jesper and inspected the wound on his back.

"You have remnants of metal pieces sticking into your back. We'll clean you up. Mohan, take him to the car and start dressing his wound. The rest of you, we need to collect the bodies. We can't leave them here for police to find. We leave no traces."

Nate's hand rested on the side of my face, "She's in shock."

His touch was warm.

"Nate," Mrs Maythorne said, "She'll be fine. We need you to help gather the bodies. I'll take care of her."

Nate reluctantly stood up. I watched him, surprised that he was so attentive to me. What did it matter to him?

"That includes you too, Hugo. She'll be fine. If either of you question me again, you won't be."

In all my exhaustion, I couldn't help but smile.

Mrs Maythorne caught that.

Of course she did.

"And if you find that funny, Georgia, I take it you can walk."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

I was sitting in the back seat of the car. I looked out the window to my left where Jesper was sitting shirtless, squirming each time Mohan pressed antiseptic into his back to clean the wound.

I looked to my right and saw bodies being dragged out of the junkyard and a little pile of them forming on the grass. 

And I looked in front of me and saw the junkyard sign still intact: "Where Cars Retire since 1973." But behind the metal gates, nothing remained except for a raging fire.

RIP car graveyard.

I'm not sure how much time we had before the ambulance and the fire brigade came. No one had called them and we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, but the smoke was rising higher and higher.

There were three more people that I didn't recognize.  They must have joined the fight after we arrived.  I saw a car that I didn't recognize.  Surely, those strangers must have arrived in that.  Were they non-human too?

Mrs Maythorne gave her orders. "We have three cars. That'll be three bodies in each, with four in the largest car. Biggest bodies in the trunk so this one.... This one.... And this one." She pointed at them, as if she was dividing up groceries.

Hugo and another boy I didn't recognize grabbed onto the biggest body and rocked him into the trunk of the car next to us like a piñata. Come to think of it, there were three or so new people I didn't recognize.

"Where's this guy's arm? Who has his arm?" Mrs Maythorne called out.

"Oh," Mohan answered from over by Jesper, "That was me."

"Will someone get his goddamn arm? What part of no evidence do you people not understand?"

"Yes ma'am. I'll go," one of the new people said and ran into the fire like Superman.

I looked over at Jesper. A white bandage was being wrapped around his shoulder and arm. He was staring down at the floor. I know how angry he felt at being trapped again. He had wanted to escape. Now we were stuck in this darkness even more.

They were murderers. And they weren't human. No humans run through fire and no human can fight the way we saw them fight.

And me... what did that make me?

Mohan brought Jesper to the car and he slid in next to me. He handed him a shirt to cover up. I guess they had spare clothes in the trunks of their cars too. Speaking of trunks, another body was being squeezed into ours. Then the door was opened a third time and Hugo slid a dead body into the back seat with us.

"Space for one more?" he joked.

Neither one of us laughed. Jesper flinched when the dead man's knee knocked against his. Hugo put the seatbelt on the dead man and then stood there for a minute.

"Oh I know what he's missing," he went off and came back with sunglasses. He popped the glasses on the dead man to hide the fact that he was... dead.

"Stop messing around," Nate told Hugo as he got into the car, "Let's go."

"I'm not messing around, Nate. People passing us would notice a corpse in the backseat. Now he just looks hungover."

I looked over at Jesper who was looking miserable beside his new seatmate. His new, dead, sunglass-rocking seatmate.

Mohan's head came to Nate's side of the window, "Good work, boys. Now get outta here. I'll see you back home."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"We need to take Jesper to the hospital," I said to Nate and Hugo sitting up front. The car pulled away from the raging fire in the junkyard.

I now felt a bit afraid of them. They acted like teenagers but there was no way they were.

"Can't do that Georgia," Hugo answered in a sing-song voice, "You know better than to ask."

"He's hurt."

"Mohan is a skilled healer. He's bandaged us up from much worse."

I looked at Jesper who was not even looking at me. I looked at the corpse beside him, his dead head leaning against the window. The sunglasses gave him a gothic rockstar look. Emphasis on the gothic.

"So what are you going to do? Build a mass grave?" I asked.

"Georgia," Jesper said. He wanted me to stop. "You're making it worse."

"Listen to your friend," Nate spoke for the first time. And the way he said friend made it sound nothing like one.

I looked at Nate through the reflection of the car mirror. He was driving but his eyes were fixed on me. I stared into the dark orbs that captivated me, burning like embers. Danger and warmth in them, just like fire. And I didn't know which side of him would win.

"This mood sucks right now," Hugo said, scrolling through his playlist. He chose a song and dialed the volume right on up, "Yeaah."

Drowning out the sound of my internal shrieks.

A/N: Thank you, thank youu for the encouraging messages!!  And thank you for your votes - it means a lot!  

So I'm keeping up a frequent update schedule here.  Tue, Thurs and one on weekends.  Hope you enjoy!!