Two Schools Out - Forever

106

We had to keep on the move. It was going to be dark soon, and we needed shelter. Most kids my age would be bummed about their next math test or that their parents cut their phone calls short. I was more concerned with shelter, food, water. The little luxuries of life.

We were over northern Florida now. All along the coast we saw a million twinkling lights of homes and stores and cars moving in threads like blood cells in a vein. If blood cells had, you know, weensy little headlights.

But there was a huge unlit area below us. In general, dark = no people. I looked over at Fang, and he nodded. We started to descend.

A few minutes' reconnaissance informed us that this was the Ocala National Forest. It looked like a good place, and we dropped down out of the twilight and aimed ourselves carefully through small gaps in the umbrella of treetops. And landed in water.

"Yuck!" I was calf-deep in muddy water, surrounded by cypress knees and towering pines. Looking around, I saw land a couple yards away and slogged over to it. "To the left!" I called, as Nudge and Iggy swooped in.

"This is good," I said, looking around in what was rapidly becoming the pitch-darkness. "Easy to get out of, straight up through the trees, but almost impossible for anyone to track us overland."

"Home, sweet swamp," said the Gasman, and I smiled.

An hour later we had a small fire going and were roasting things on sticks. I was so used to eating this way that even if I were, like, a grown-up making breakfast for my 2.4 children, I would probably be impaling Pop-Tarts on the ends of sticks and holding them over a fire.

Now Fang pulled a smoking, meaty chunk off a stick and dropped it onto an empty Baggie, which was Nudge's plate.

"Want some more raccoon?" he asked.

Nudge paused in midbite. "It is not! You went to the store. Didn't you? There's no way this is raccoon." She examined the meat critically.

Fang shrugged. I rolled my eyes at him.

"Oh, maybe you're right," he said seriously. "Maybe this is the raccoon, and I gave you the possum."

Nudge choked and started coughing.

"Stop it," I told Fang, reaching over to pat Nudge's back. He looked at me innocently.

"He's just kidding, Nudge," said the Gasman. "Last time I checked, Oscar Mayer wasn't making squirrel dogs." He held up an empty package, and Nudge wheezed a bit and swallowed.

I was trying not to laugh, and then I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I glanced around-we were all here. But I felt like someone was watching us. I see incredibly well in the dark, but the fire was too bright to see much beyond it. Maybe I was imagining it.

Next to me, Angel straightened up. "Someone's here," she whispered.

Or maybe not.