Fluff

Chapter Fifteen - Fun for Teddy

Teddy was having more fun than she'd had in... at least two days! She knew that the Endgame would be a ton of fun. It was supposed to be fun, after all, otherwise why would it be called an Endgame? But they hadn't even arrived in the area of it yet and she was already having a blast.

"Girls!" Emily called out. Her voice sounded like it was coming from some ways away, so Teddy grinned and started to make her way back, but not before she tussled a bit with Trinity. They grabbed at each other, and Teddy managed to shove the smaller Trinity into a bush, only one of Trinity's other bodies to trip her up so that she fell and rolled across the forest ground.

She came up laughing, a few dry leaves stuck to her shirt and knees covered in a bit of mud.

"C'mon!" Trinity said before she helped herself out of the bush, then started running off towards where Emily and the others were.

Teddy ran as fast as she could. She wasn't going to let some racoon-tailed idiot outrace her!

She was really enjoying today. The morning had been a little hectic, but after that it was nothing but fun! There was singing in the car, hugs from Grandpa Boss, they ate fast food until her tummy felt queasy, and now all that extra energy was getting used up running around the woods.

She saw a bunch of birds, squeezed a toad, and tried eating an acorn Trinity found. The acorn hadn't been edible after all, but the rest was a lot of fun!

Teddy felt herself grinning even wider as she found the Boss standing with one hand on her hip and the other holding out her folded up map. "I'm back, Boss!" Teddy said.

Emily looked up for a moment, counted heads, then nodded. They were still in the woods, just a few metres away from the edge of a narrow old road, the same one they'd gotten onto when they found that one old bridge by the stream. "Good," the Boss said. "Stick close, we'll be moving a bit faster soon."

"Oh?" Teddy asked. She moved up onto her tippy-toes but couldn't make out what the map meant from just a glance.

Emily nodded, then folded the map and stuffed it into a jacket pocket. "Alright. If I read things correctly, the woods should be opening up to a small, uh, rural town area? It's a collection of homes and chalets off to the side of Saint Arie."

"How far from the Endgame is it?" Athena asked.

"I don't know," Emily admitted. "But I think this entire area was evacuated a while ago, soon after the Endgame started since it's technically part of the Saint Arie municipality."

Aurora shifted her shoulders around to the left and right, her back cracking with the motion. "Okay. So we're going to sneak into the town from here?"

"That's the plan," the Boss said. "I'm also thinking about setting up some sort of, ah, forward camp around here? Maybe right on the edge of the Endgame? Somewhere where we can come back and sleep. It's..." She glanced at a watch stuck to her wrist. "About two thirty. Another hour of walking to get to Saint Arie proper, at least. I don't know if we want to camp out within the Endgame."

"That's probably a bad idea," Teddy said with a nod.

If they did that, the Endgame might decide to play tricks on them, and just like any proper, well-governed society, they were stronger when they worked together. The Endgame might try to split them up, and then they'd all be stuck working on their own without the Boss to lead them.

"Alright," Emily said. "Stick close, then."

They crossed the narrow road in a crouch, each girl hurrying across one at a time while Emily kept an eye on the surroundings. The place was quiet. Not just regular quiet, but that kind of eerie stillness that only showed up when everything living had packed up and left. Though... maybe not everything living. There were lots of mosquitoes and bugs around, and she saw a stray cat staring at them from way down the road.

As they continued and pushed through a thin band of forest, they arrived in a place where there were lots of houses, well spaced apart. Most of them were older, boxy-looking buildings with slanted tin roofs and cracked driveways, a few that she could make out through the trees were more like log cabins, though they almost all had those big antenna towers sticking off their sides, and some had cars in the driveway that weren't too old.

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The grass before all of the houses looked a bit long. It wasn't something that Teddy spent too much time thinking about, mostly because she knew that somehow, lawn care was a capitalist invention, but... yeah, it was weird seeing so many homes that hadn't been lived in, even if it was just for a week.

"Kinda creepy," Athena said.

"Mhm... just like you," Teddy agreed.

They started to tussle until Emily cleared her throat. "Girls," she snapped. "Focus. We're close to a dangerous place. It's not the time to be playing games."

They cut across someone's lawn, going up a small hill where a house made from an old camper was parked. From the bushes and grass and stuff around it, Teddy suspected that it might have been abandoned for more than just a week or so. She wandered over to it and was planning on trying to see inside when she heard Athena gasp then shout-hiss. "Down!"

Teddy didn't make a habit of listening to her sisters--except the Boss, of course--and especially not her rival Athena, but the tone that Athena used was serious, so she dove down into the tall grass, landing on her knees.

There was nothing.

Then, just when she was thinking of getting up and giving Athena a smack, she heard something. Tires on gravel.

She peeked under the camper home and spotted a gray HRF truck creeping by on the road ahead. It wasn't going fast, just slow and lazy, with the engine humming and one of the guys inside leaning out the window like he was waiting for something exciting to happen.

They didn't stop. They didn't look around. They just kept going.

Teddy stayed still until the truck was gone. Then she slowly sat up and let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

"Was that a patrol?" Emily asked as she sat up. It looked like Aurora had basically tackled her to the ground and now she had a few dry leaves sticking to her too.

"Looks like it," Athena said. "I didn't make eye contact with the guy in there, but I think they were bored?"

"Bored... probably means that they weren't after us," Emily said. "I guess it makes sense that they'd patrol the area. Good call, Athena. I'm glad you noticed them before we were caught."

Athena smiled smugly, and Teddy narrowed her eyes. She'd be the next one to save the group then!

"I think we should only go a bit further in. Maybe we can pick out a place to squat at for a bit, to see how long there is between patrols," the Boss said.

"If they're even regular," Aurora said.

"If they're regular, you're right."

The house they picked was small and squat, painted yellow in a way that made it look like it was trying too hard to be cheerful. The front step was crooked, and there was a wooden sign in the window that said Bless This Mess.

Teddy liked it immediately.

The Boss liked it too. It was farther from the road than some of the other houses, and the fence around the property was full of gaps they could squeeze through.

They crossed the yard in a low crouch, even though there was no one around to see them, and stopped at the front door. It was locked, of course. The window next to it wasn't, and after helping Trinity in, they soon had the door unlocked and were able to sneak in.

Inside, it smelled like couch cushions, old leftovers from the back of the fridge, and that sprayable stink-remover stuff that came in a spritz bottle. There were shoes by the door and a coat still on the hook. A shriveled little plant sat on the windowsill.

Teddy marched in, flopped onto the couch, and stretched across it like she was claiming territory.

"I hereby declare this zone part of Bearland," she said.

"Get your boots off the furniture," Aurora said.

"But I'm tired," Teddy lied.

"You tackled Trinity into a bush and tried to eat a stick," Athena said. "You're not exhausted. You're just dumb."

Emily shook her head at Teddy, stopping her from lunging at Athena. "Alright. This is our new base for the moment. I think it's recognizable enough. If you get really, really lost, try to make your way back here. In the meantime... we rest here. We snack. And then we figure out what comes next."

***