A rumble sounded from the direction of the hill, a chugging blanketing the occasional metallic screech. An old car. Ava's dad had refused to buy a new car because his was 'perfectly usable' and there was 'no point fixing what wasn't broken' and so had made the same noise as they were hearing in the woods. "I thought Dursley was too technologically advanced for old cars and squeaking gears?" Ava asked, turning to face Nathan.

"They've got something big they're working on, not really bothering with cars, but we need to go now," Nathan said, speaking very quickly as he climbed to his feet, zipped up the rucksack and threw it over his shoulders. "Come on."

"Nate, what is it? You don't think they're coming for us, do you?" Whether Ava thought the same or not, and she really didn't know, she got to her feet and followed him. They'd rolled the plastic bag up and put it inside the rucksack, so Ava didn't have to worry about grabbing anything before jogging a few steps to catch up to her newest - and, she decided, her best - friend, who was already increasing his pace to a very quick walk for their short legs.

Nathan pointed to the bottom of his hat, "Listen, the noise is getting louder." turning her head so one ear was facing the way they'd come up the hill, she could only nod. It was getting louder. How had she not noticed? "Well, that means they're coming this way," Nathan explained, though she already knew what it meant. He just liked to know he knew things every once in a while. Needed to know they hadn't taken everything from him. "And who else is out here? Who else, but us, who only last night, broke into someone's house, stole food and drink, and ran away again." He made a fair point.

"And even though it was dark, so they couldn't see us, we left footprints," Ava said slowly, only then realising she'd put them in danger. "And the wind... it wasn't that windy last night. Was it?"

"No," Nathan agreed. He'd noticed the impressions of the rucksack and their feet around their little campsite had still been there when he'd woken up. "Prints will still be there. If not the ones along the bottom of the hill, then the ones up it."

Breathing more heavily, she walked a bit faster and made them change direction often. "What will they do to us?" Her worried eyes met his and a moment later they turned around and continued the way they were going, walking backwards, in the hope of confusing the drivers. The issue though, was that they were going at less than half their previous speed, which hadn't exactly been fast. "Never mind, I don't want to know."

All the while, the groaning of the engine grew louder and closer and louder and closer and-

"They've seen us."

"No!" Ava cried, "No, let's climb a tree, climb and-" The car - pick-up truck - was right on top of them.

A man with a fluffy-looking brown beard and no hair on his head, rolled the window down, shivered, and leaned his head out. "Hey, you look a little lost. Why don't you climb in here and we'll show you a nice warm place and good food?"

Ava recognised him as the human who... "Jack!" She greeted his dog, who was poking over the side of the trailer, with a bright smile and then a frown as he looked at her. His deep brown German Shepherd eyes looked into hers and she could see a deeper understanding run through them, passing a message over to her and- And she knew she shouldn't have called his name, shouldn't have reacted to him.

"You know him, do you?" His human asked. "You were the one who came in yesterday, then. He let you go, did he?" Never caring for an answer, the man turned away from her shaking head and got out the truck. Frozen in shock and fear, neither child moved as he walked to the trailer and, as Jack made a run for it, tearing across the snow, he lifted his hand from his belt, aimed the gun and fired.

"No!" Ava screamed, racing towards Jack and the growing splash of blood on the bed of snow. There was no rise and fall of his chest or movement of snowflakes under his nose. "How dare you?" Ava shouted at the man, loss and rage blinding her of any fear. "He was better than you'll ever be! He still is, and he's dead!" Choking up on the last word, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and stormed forward.

And then she was lifted into the air.

Focused on Jack and his betrayer, both Nathan and Ava had been completely unaware of the two well-built men climbing out the other side of the truck and coming round to meet them from behind, grabbing their waists and lifting them from the ground. The two mindless giants did as the other man told them: they threw them into the trailer and then jumped in themselves as the engine rumbled to attention and they started moving.

"Where are you taking us?" Ava asked, quieter this time, throat sore from screaming.

From a speaker at the top end of the trailer, the bearded man's voice crackled in return, "I'm taking you to see what Nathan let this world become. What he chose to run from and ignore when he could have saved everyone." A pause. "I'm going to show you The Site."

Ava didn't speak again, she feared the possible answers. That never normally stopped her but this man was dangerous. He'd killed his companion without blinking. And that, to Ava, was worse than any death by The Fist. This man killed knowingly, willingly.

Confused and very tired, Ava and Nathan curled up and fell to sleep with the rise and fall of the trailer as it rolled over the uneven snow.

The two henchmen sat either side of them, seemingly worried that the two friends would fight and escape, shotguns at the ready, despite their obvious lack of energy and physical strength. Lifting the collar of his shirt up to his mouth, the one nearest Ava spoke into a tiny black box, "They've fallen asleep, Sir."

"Congrats, Bob-"

"It's Finley-"

"Don't care, Bob," and the line cut off so the driver could curse the wind. "Let them sleep a little longer, I want them awake enough to understand what they're seeing later. Just, don't do anything stupid."

Finley looked over to his partner, Harrison, and they exchanged annoyed looks and then glanced all around them quickly, as if their boss could have seen them. To begin with, they'd been honoured to be called forward as the muscle and to act as lookout for any oncoming Taken, their name for the infected. However, they quickly came to the belief that they'd have been better off at home. The boss treated them horribly, not caring for them one way or another. There was no doubt that if one of the Taken was too powerful, one of them would be told to go out as a sacrifice as he drove off with the kids. And if they refused to leave the trailer by their own will, he'd shoot them.

Just like he shot Jack.

Twelve hours later, Harrison shook Nathan awake who then turned to wake up Ava. Finlay was stood up at their feet, facing out towards the woods. In his second wing mirror, the boss could see them stretching and reported through the microphone, "We're here. Rise and shine, Nathan. And introduce us to your little lady thief."

Nathan shivered and, ignoring Ava's curious stare, turned towards the front of the truck and whispered, "I'm not telling you her name."

"Fine, just look to your left now. This is what you created, Nathan. You could have helped stop this." The boss pulled the truck up beside a closely packed group of trees, with a large patch of blood at the bottom.

With horrified faces, they turned to look out the other way, seeing for the first time The Site, the area first hit by The Fist, only a few yards from the meteor's crater. It also happened to be the place where Dursley sent all their test subjects: the people now lying all over the place in a communal bath of blood.

"You can't blame this on Nathan!" Ava growled over to the truck's head. "As far as I know, he didn't create the meteor or draw out its path or put a virus in it, and unless you can prove otherwise, I suggest you shut your mouth, take us back to where you found us, and leave us alone!"

"But what you don't know, Dear, is that your friend here is immune to The Fist."

Ava span to face Nathan, "Nate, is it true? Are you? But then why would you have freaked out when I first found you?" She walked closer to him and looked him in the eye, needing some sort of truth to keep her sane. Listening for an answer, she tried to block out the thudding of her heart against her rib cage.

Holding her gaze with his own sad, truth-bearing eyes, Nathan answered, "It's true. I only panicked because if you had The Fist, you might have killed me. They locked me in a lab and did experiments on me, Ave. One of which took most my memory. I've probably played Rock, Paper, Scissors at some point." He gave a short laugh and stroked the back of his neck with one hand. "It doesn't affect me, but I still have The Fist," Nathan explained. He waved his arms wildly as Ava started to take a step back, her face pure confusion. "It's only contagious by contact. Like, skin to skin or saliva or blood or something." Physically relaxing, Ava brought her foot forward again and Nathan managed a small smile. "Sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

"It's fine, I get why you didn't tell me," and for the first time, Ava felt certain. She hadn't had to convince herself of anything, she just knew. And she also knew that if everything in the world fell apart, whatever came of this, she could trust Nathan.

If only trust saved lives.

"The experiments we did were highly advanced tests for a cure to The Fist," the boss spoke calmly, his voice rolling through the pores of the speaker. "But Nathan escaped before any significantly effective solution could be finalised."

"Well," Ava grinned at Nathan, "Lucky for Nate, I agree he should have left. If it can only be caught by skin to skin contact and everyone who has it is dead, what's the worry of contagion?" A wall of sadness rose behind the mask of confidence as her gloved hand met Nathan's in a squeeze, acknowledging his life and her love of it.

Squeezing her hand back, Nathan agreed. "Just don't touch the dead people."

"Tut, tut, tut," came over the speaker system, reminding Ava of her parents so much that she had to really squeeze down on Nathan's hand just to stay upright.

Before the wind, came a sharp, high-pitched whistle, and then the wind began to pick up and toss their hair around wildly. Nathan stepped back so their hair didn't touch, almost forgetting that Finley was behind him. Stumbling into the bigger man, he was happy for Finley's extra height so much so that he bounced right off his chest and turned to apologise as the truck jerked forwards and they all fell over, Nathan landing quite comfortably on Finley and Ava on the wooden bottom, Harrison on one side the same.

Unfortunately for him, Finley found it rather annoying becoming someone's crash mat and took Nathan by the shoulder to throw him off, brushing his neck while rolling him away.

"Drive!" Nathan called, trying to shove Finley over the side of the trailer as his eyes lost their colour and he surged forward. In way of responding, the boss rolled up the windows and locked the doors, leaving the truck parked still. He muttered a, 'this'll be fun' to himself and watched through the extended mirrors.

"Has he got it?" Ava asked in a panic, though she didn't need an answer as she watched Finley swing a left hand, fully equipped with ragged bitten claws, at Nate's face, with intent to severely injure if not kill. She threw a wooden box at the man before he could do anything more than scratch Nathan and then she beckoned for him to follow her onto the top of the vehicle's head. "Quick! You too, other man I don't know the name of," Ava called down, holding a hand down for Nate to grab hold of, two layers of glove between their skin, and he climbed up to meet her crouching figure at the top.

Harrison tried to scramble up after him, feet scraping tirelessly against the painted metal wall. "Help!" Ava and Nathan took hold of one hand each, leaning backwards to tug with great difficulty, and not before Finley got a bulky pair of hands around one leg, yanking him away from the children with strength.

As Harrison's eyes widened in fear, he felt a sharp searing heat fly through his arm and looked to see it leak fire, the blood dripping onto the trailer floor. As his eyes turned grey and blank, inhuman, he faced down Finley with a fierce roar.

With the two men caught up in their fight, Ava took the opportunity to grab Nathan's arm and jump off the metal monster, catch an unprepared Nate, and sprint through the woods in the hope they'd find the log over the river, though she knew they'd slept for part of the journey and couldn't tell how far away from their dream destination they were. They only tell that it had been longer than it had felt, was the rising of the humble moon and the glory of the setting sun, painting the surrounding cloud in blazing reds and oranges, a soothing pink crawling into the navy blue of the night sky.

Neither dared waste their vital energy on speech and so powered through the woods, in the same direction as the intense gale, deciding it was better to get somewhere far in the wrong direction than work out the right one, have it be against the wind, and go nowhere.

Ava jumped a few times, testing the strength of the chasing winds, hoping to fly part of the way. It didn't work as well as she'd hoped.

In case anyone was following, they occasionally swung round a few trees before continuing or chose to run straight at bushes, jumping over them last minute and letting the wind help to carry them. They tried to eat while they ran, to keep their energy up after their long nap - that Ava still couldn't understand because they'd only just woken up when the truck found them! In any case, they made it as difficult as possible for anyone to follow them.

That was, had their followers been on foot.

As it was, the boss had swung in a circle tight enough to dislodge the two Taken into a sprawling mess on the constant battle field and had begun to drive after the two runaways, making headway much quicker than their little feet could run.

So of course, he caught up to them. "Need a ride?" He called from the opening window. "Dursley's a good twelve hour drive from here."

Shocked by the number, Ava looked up for a moment, and proceeded to trip on a stone and go crashing to the ground. Nathan looked behind him and saw, though he'd already heard, a heap of Ava lying in the snow. He took her under the arm and lifted her to her feet. Once upright again, they kept running, though the truck ambled on by in mockery, cutting them off in front in one easy sweep.

"Get in or I shoot you."

And even though Ava knew he wouldn't kill them - he'd clearly wanted them alive for something - she didn't doubt his capability of disabling them, so they climbed into the trailer, lay low, and let the bearded killer drive them away.

After having tucked all her hair into her bobble hat, Ava curled up right beside Nathan, facing him so they could talk and read each others lips when the winds decided to steal away their voices. "Where do you think we're going?"

"Dursley, probably," Nathan admitted miserably. "They want a cure and think I'm how they're going to get it."

"But why?"

"Because I'm immune."

"No, why do they want a cure when it can't spread to any of them anyway? They're putting themselves in more danger by keeping you close if it's only contagious by human contact."

"Because they hate the idea of losing."

"Losing what? They're losing more and more lives the longer they let this go on!"

"They hate the idea that there's something they can't cure," Nathan said, playing with his thumbs. "They don't like being beaten."

"They could have beaten it by letting it kill itself off."

The conversation died again as they both felt the crushing weight of knowing that that would include killing Nathan. And Ava knew she wouldn't be able to live with that. Changing the topic, she searched for refuge in her stressful and petrified mind. "What's your favourite food?"

"I... don't remember," Nathan admitted.

'Of course he doesn't,' Ava thought. 'I can't believe they even took that from him...' And so they lay there in silence, watching each other, unaware of the owl flying overhead or the hares hopping between the trees along beside them, neither gaining or losing distance from the trailer. Even the hooting of the owls and the cawing of arriving crows didn't reach them in their private bubble of fear and anticipation.