Kano and Bronte had been willing to accompany Aaron and Miles to the city.

The four of them had just left the property where the treehouse resided. Miles had their backpack slung over his unwounded shoulder, and Aaron was swinging his bat idly. Sans said equipment, the group felt relatively unprepared.

Miles told himself that a shopping trip really shouldn require nothing more than what they had. They sure as hell wouldn't need money, and Miles couldn't think of what else they should have brought. He reminded himself that in the backpack he carried, there were also knives that they'd taken from Northside high, and if they encountered a desperate situation, they could always bring the weapons into play.

Mainly, Miles was forcing himself into a mindset that nothing would go wrong, and though the city would be swarming with adults who had lost their minds, four Unaltered teens would be perfectly safe. They'd be stealthy and fast.

The majority of the day would be consumed by traveling to and from the city, which had to be a couple of hours on foot. If the group managed to spark at least some trivial conversation, perhaps the time would pass faster.

So far, that did not seem to be happening.

Aaron must have been thinking similarly. "So, you guys!" he started, addressing Kano and Claire. Feeling immediately excluded, Miles' brows furrowed and he turned away his gaze, uninterested. "We haven't really... spoken... much? Where do you, um, come from?"

Conversation slowly picked up, but Miles wasn't listening. His hands had found their way to his pockets, and his yellow-green eyes were silent as they surveyed his surroundings. The backpack bounced on his back with each step.

While still looking around a little nervously, a familiar sight caught his attention. A fallen wooden fence, a rickety porch, a door with peeling paint. He felt suddenly ill again just looking at it, forced to reminisce the sickening discovery that had been waiting for him inside the day earlier.

"Miles, are you okay?" came Kano's question, tearing Miles from his thoughts.

"What?" He'd realised that conversation between the others had already stopped. His gaze flitted from person to person as he walked, feeling relatively disoriented. In a way he was disoriented; torn from a memory located in a different place. He was glad. "Yes, sorry. I'm fine."

Kano blinked. "... it's fine."

The journey dragged on for what felt like days upon days. In reality, hardly two hours had passed by the time they reached the city. Already, they'd been darting to take shelter behind buildings and walls and whatever was nearby, for Altered were everywhere.

They were currently crouching behind an empty house, and Kano had his neck craned around the edge to see what was going on and relaying it back to the group. "They're everywhere..." Kano said, referring to the Altered. "Some of them are just sitting down. Some of them are fighting with each other. I guess they don't work in groups. Some - oh!"

Kano staggered back, eyes wide. "What is it?" Miles demanded, jumping to take Kano's place and peer around the wall. He noticed immediately what had frightened Kano. "Is he...?"

"Skinning somebody?" Kano finished, hugging himself. "Yeah."

Miles closed his eyes and took a step away, biting his lip hard. "Fucking hell."

"Cursing will not help," Aaron put in, hovering nervously with the group, unwilling to see for himself what had happened.

Miles opened his eyes. "Nothing's going to help that kid anymore, I assure you." Seeing it from a distance had made it a little easier on Miles' eyes, but no easier to stomach. "That woman was skinning a kid. With a knife. It's like they're getting more and more brutal by the day."

"Like you said," Bronte muttered, "they'll regain control over their bodies but not their mind and soon enough, they'll just do whatever their head is telling them. And if that's to hurt people... well..." she didn't finish.

"We need to go." Miles shook himself to clear his head. "We need to find a way around them." He tugged the backpack off his back, tugging open the zip.

"If they're everywhere, they'll be in the supermarkets too."

"We'll just have to be extra careful." Miles peered into the bag's depths and started rooting through it, relieved when he felt a recognisable form shift beneath his fingers. "Lia left the knives in here! We should have one each, I think we brought four."

He seated himself and pulled out - luckily - four knives, then tugged off all of their silicone covers. "Here," he said as he passed the knives to the three stunned faces peering down at him. When he reached to give Aaron one, though, the boy waved his bat around by way of declining the offer. Miles shrugged and put the cover back on that knife, returning it to his bag.

After zipping up the bag again and tossing it over his shoulder, he picked up one of the knives and looked at the group members. "Don't split up," he said, even though it sounded illogical. "We're all headed to the same place and if we separate, we're immediately in more danger."

"Safety in numbers," agreed Kano nervously.

"Where are we actually going?" Aaron asked.

Miles, admittedly, wasn't especially familiar with this part of the city. "There are convenience stores normally on every corner. The first one we find, we'll go in. We have to be quick and quiet getting in. Even faster getting our items and getting out again."

"What if the door is locked?" Bri mused.

"It will be," Miles said. "Or it'll be smashed, if someone's gone in already. But Aaron has a bat - if we need to break something, we can."

"You just said we'd need to be quiet."

Miles looked exasperated. "We'll do what we have to, okay? We have people and a dog to feed."

"Right, sorry."

Miles tightened his grip on the knife in his hand, glancing around the corner again to scan for somewhere they could move towards quickly to stay hidden. "See that?" he pointed to a tall apartment building on the other side of the street. "We have to run to that. It's out best option."

"We'll be running in broad daylight through a street full of people who want to kill us," Aaron remarked.

"Got a better idea?"

Aaron was silent.

Miles got ready to run. "Everyone ready?"

Nobody answered. But when Miles ran, they all ran.

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+1089 Words.