Apocalypsis 04 - Haven

highway.”
    “Bring me to the buggy, Paci, please.” I wanted to see for myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the people on watch; I just wanted to figure out what kind of threat these strangers might pose. Maybe they wouldn’t be dangerous at all.
    The horse surged forward under Paci’s commands, and we trotted to the buggy. My teeth chattered in my head the entire way, and I was glad when it was over. I much preferred a walking horse to one in a hurry.
    Rob leaned way out of the driver’s seat. “Yo, what’s up?”
    “Can I borrow the glasses?” I asked.
    He handed me the binoculars after taking them from his buggy passenger. I couldn’t see inside to know who it was. “Here you go. Check out that bunch of trees right there,” he said, pointing to a section of the landscape that was particularly dense.
    I put the lenses up to my eyes, and Paci turned the horse sideways. Once the beast calmed down and stood still I was able to focus on what I was looking at.
    At first I saw nothing. Then I noticed a girl standing on the edge of the woods. She was wearing a bright red shirt and hard to miss now that I had better eyesight. I scanned the area around her, and about fifty yards to the left, I noticed something weird in the trees.
    “What the hell?” I said under my breath.
    “What?” asked Rob. “What is it?”
    “Did you see that … treehouse or whatever that is?”
    “Treehouse? No. Let me see.” Rob held out his hand for the binoculars. Before he could put them up to his eyes they were yanked away.
    Rob looked at me and rolled his eyes. Then Trip’s voice came from inside the passenger area.
    “It’s a treehouse. She’s right.”
    “So what’s that mean?” asked Paci.
    “It means this is someone’s home, so we just need go tell them that we’re passing through and we don’t mean them any harm, that’s all. No big deal.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince them or myself of that fact, but either way, my brain wasn’t paying any attention to my calming words. My heart was beating like crazy and my headache got a lot worse all of a sudden.
    “Who’s going?” asked Bodo.
    It got silent.
    “I’ll go,” I said.
    “No, I’ll go,” came Trip’s voice. “Anyone got a white shirt?”
    I looked around, not sure why he suddenly wanted to be dressed. He seemed to be very attached to walking around half naked.
    Everyone had on patterned shirts, and mine hadn’t been white in almost a year. No one responded.
    “I just need to wave a peace sign around, I’m not going to wear it. Come on, someone has to have something white.” The passenger door to the buggy opened and slammed closed. Trip came around the front of the vehicle and stood next to the head of Paci’s horse.
    “Here, take my sling,” I said, pulling it up over my head. I unwound it from the bottom of my elbow, trying not to jerk my arm around too much.
    He reached up and took it from me. “Thanks.” He met my eyes for a second, and I reached out and tapped him on the shoulder with my toe in a gentle kick. “Please be careful. Peter would never forgive me if something happened to you, and he can be a serious pain in the butt when he’s not happy.”
    Trip gave me a very charming half smile before going all serious again and turning around. “Okay, I’m going. If they do anything aggressive go into defensive mode. No one come in after me. We have no idea how many people they have hidden in there.” He mumbled under his breath. “Could be a whole damn army.”
    “We aren’t going to just leave you,” said Rob, sounding pissed. “We’ll come back at night and get you out if they take you. Count on that, man. Count on it.”
    “Do what you think is best. I won’t blame you if you choose not to.” Trip walked away, holding the sling up high above him and waving it around.
    We all watched as he got farther and farther away, his form shrinking in the distance. We traded the binoculars around, each of us on horseback taking turns watching the reaction of the treehouse kids. Only the girl with the red shirt showed herself, and she did nothing but stand there. The other three Trip had seen were staying undercover.
    The animals in our convoy stomped their feet every once in a while making their harnesses jingle, and the sheep let out a few bleats now and again, but those were the only sounds we heard. I kept waiting for a gunshot to take our friend down, my heart nearly exploding with the stress of it.