On those cool days of autumn we traveled so far. The aching in my legs did stop, eventually, and then there was only the gnawing, bubbling hunger to worry about. It felt like my stomach was eating itself and would soon swallow me if I didn't get some food fast. No one had dared mention to Jason that they were hungry, because he already knew and he hadn't bothered to do anything about it.

"He hasn't eaten in over two weeks," Jackie whispered to me, and I nodded in amazement and acknowledgment of this fact. Jason never ate anything, or he didn't when the rest of the pack was watching.

He was, at the moment, chewing idly on a deer bone as he hiked over cracked pavement and weeds. The rest of the pack followed his every step, careful not to misplace a foot, exhausted as they were. He avoided the clumps of ash tree forests and kept out in the open sun of the heat, which greatly displeased many of the pack members.

Jason finally stopped for the night in an abandoned liquor store. The shelves were still stocked with the occasional bottle, and these were passed around as everyone avoided the broken glass which littered the rotting wooden floor.

"I hear Stone's gonna close in on us this week." Melany was a higher-ranking member of the pack, and thus pretended to be on top of current problems when really she had no idea what was going on and didn't really care.

"Where did you hear that?" Jason asked in that smooth, mellow voice of his, his gray eyes stony as he gazed towards Melany. It wasn't really a question, it was a warning to Melany that she shouldn't spread rumors around the pack without first consulting him because that was considered challenging his authority.

Instead of listening to the continuous power struggle, I gazed out the jagged opening in the glass window. The sunset was slightly obscured by smog, but the sky was a pale pink color, creating a serene outside landscape.

"What are we going to do about food, Jason?" Only Benny would ask that question. Being second in command, he was allowed to challenge Jason and jockey for leadership positions from time to time.

Jason thought it best to ignore this question, and there was silence while no one wanted to dare say something that Jason wouldn't agree with. All eyes looked to the glass on the floor and no one met Jason's eyes. Then someone dared speak out.

"What's our next move?" This bold question, posed by Lilac, was just broad enough to start a conversation.

"That supermarket a few miles away, still standing? It still has food remnants. That's where we'll eat." Jason looked around the circle, daring someone to object to his plan. No one questioned him because they all seemed to be happy just to finally be getting some food. Benny, however, glared around the circle at the complacent pack. He stood up, crossing his arms and looking towards Jason.

"Why can't we go now?"

Jason's eyes flashed with anger as he glanced up at a defiant Benny. "It's dark now, too dangerous. We can't risk it, especially after the fight with Stone."

"Stone's gone, Jason. We're all alone out in the middle of nowhere and you can't pay attention to the needs of your people. They are hungry, Jason. They need new shoes, new jackets, new clothes even. They need lovers, and there aren't enough males in this group. How can you be a leader when you ignore the needs of your people?"

Jason was standing up too, now. The only other male of the group, Stell, backed away for fear Jason might include him in the fighting. Benny and Jason stood facing each other while the females around the circle held their breath.

Finally, Jason experimentally attempted to force Benny to bow to him by pushing his head down. There was no resistance, and soon Benny was looking up at Jason from a low position and asking for forgiveness. Jason walked in circles around the now obedient Benny and then pushed him away with a quick blow to the back of his head. Benny stumbled away and sat in the corner, waiting for Jason to sit too. Jason walked back to his place in the circle and did so, slowly, and order was, at the moment, restored to the pack.

The others relaxed again and Stell came crawling back to the circle where a small female, Paz, greeted him warmly with a kiss. Lilac scooted closer to Jason with a glare from a tall female sitting near Melany. Benny came back to the circle and began stroking Melany’s hair, making the tall female even angrier.

This tall female’s name was Charly, though her full name was Charlotte. She had stringy blond hair and faded blue eyes, and she was the tallest female in the group, not to mention the skinniest. Her look was rare those days, when there were mostly dark-haired, dark-eyed people, not to mention generally darker skin that didn’t burn in the harsh rays of the sun.

Benny had to be the darkest of the pack, while Stell was the lightest. Jason’s skin was a middle-ranged color, as was most people’s. He had black hair and gray-green eyes that almost glowed in the orange night.

As the sun went farther behind the earth and the world grew darker, the sky seemed to glow even more fiercely orange. Benny looked restless, and Paz was glaring in Jason’s direction, muttering to Stell. Mutiny seemed nearer than anyone had expected.

Many people tried to sleep, but squatting over glass shards in the orange glow of the night was not an easy way to do so. In the end, most of us were so tired from the hike that we fell into a restless slumber of the mind while out bodies stayed alert and positioned to run at any second.

In the middle of the night, Jason and Lilac were still awake. The two slipped out of the liquor store and found a soft spot outside in the overgrown tall grass. I was the only other one awake, and I heard them outside, their struggled breathing and quick movements in the grass. I closed my eyes, trying not to hear and to sleep and to forget the loneliness inside of me but I couldn’t. I had only ever had one partner and he had gone and gotten killed in the last battle with Dark. I had only been injured, my right ribs a little bruised and a few cracked, but otherwise I had been fine. Jason hadn’t had a scratch on him, the bastard.

All the others were still in some sort of a sleep state, so I continued to try and do the same. The glass on the floor was distracting me because I kept worrying that the soles of my shoes would give way to the sharp shards. Then my feet would be busted up and Jason would have to carry me.

This was the sole reason that I have never considered mutiny. Jason may be strange in his ways, but in the end he truly cared for Heart. He tried to attend to our needs, he really did, and he would give up his own life in an instant for any member of Heart, right down to the lowest of the low ranks. Of course, though Benny knew this, he still thought that they should be more demanding of a leader who was in charge of their well-being. Of all the members, I dubbed him the most likely to consider or even attempt mutiny. For the most part, the other members just hoped a mutiny wouldn’t start some sort of a civil war.

Finally, the morning came. Gray rays of dim light filtered through the missing glass in the windows, waking the majority of the pack. Jason and Lilac were back inside, resting at the front of the room together. Jason’s coat was pulled tight around Lilac’s thin body, because the cold didn’t bother him, or so he said. All the other members wore their own coats, most of which were thin windbreakers that draped all the way down to their knees.

Slowly, every member stood from their resting place as they woke, including me. Benny still kept his head bowed to Jason, showing his continuing loyalty, and Jason acknowledged this with a sly smile in his direction.

“Everyone ready?” The pack checked their pockets for their belongings and pulled their coats tighter around their bodies. Jason leading the way, they all followed with new vigor towards the food source. Keeping close to the tiny forests made the pack more secure and seemed to be a more direct route to the large building that loomed ahead.

The sun was hotter than usual that day, but all of us kept our coats on to protect the ultra violet rays from burning our skin. Like most days, the sky was a light gray, keeping the moisture, hear, and ultra violet rays on the inside, but the light outside, meaning that the day was similar to the night, very dimly lit. It felt like your eyes were constantly straining to make out faces and distant land marks, which reminded the older people of the days when people had glasses.

Those days were gone since the revolution. No glasses, no doctors, no penicillin, only the herbal remedies certain people had discovered, and of course those didn’t always work.

Sark, our healer, was at the back of the pack, trailing along the thin dirt path we were following. She was struggling, not having eaten in a long time, and I began to worry about her. I let a few people pass me in the line, and finally dropped back to see Sark.

“You okay back here?” My voice sounded a little hoarse, a little quieter than usual, and it surprised me.

Sark smiled at me but didn’t say anything. I smiled back and continued trekking onward, grasping the branches of the low trees briefly as I steadied myself on the trail.

Suddenly, the line of pack members stopped. “Sark!” came a cry from the front of the line. Everyone turned to look back at Sark, who ran up to the front. She rested her eyes on Benny, who was leaning on Melany, with blood trickling down his leg.

“I tripped and fell on a rock. It barely hurt, I don’t know why it’s bleedin.”

Sark took a closer look and saw that the wound was small but very deep. She turned her gaze to the low tree branches and quickly found what she was looking for.

“Sorry spider, I need this,” she whispered, taking clumps of the massive web spun between two branches and balling it up in her hands. Benny cringed as she applied it to his cut, but the wound stopped bleeding.

“Benny,” she whispered to him. He looked up from gazing at the spider webs to looking into her eyes.

“It’s fixed. Don’t touch.” Then she fled to the back of the line once more as everyone’s eyes followed her.

Jason grinned in her direction and looked the happiest we’d seen him in a long time. “Sark, I owe you again. Extra food?”

She shook her head no, as she always did when proposed with food, and smiled gently in Jason’s direction. They had an understanding.

“Let’s go!” Jason shouted, pointing at the store looming ahead of them in the distance. The shrill cry of an eagle made him pause as he looked up at the startled bird. Clearly, something had invaded its territory. Jason closed his eyes in the muggy heat, felt the sun on his face, and listened. The entire pack stood perfectly still, no one daring to breathe. The sun beat down on their faces and yet they saw no light, felt only the warmth of the rays burning their skin.

Jason’s eyes snapped open at a sound no one else heard and he quickly scanned the horizon. A dark blur was steadily moving towards them, coming out of what looked like the desert.

“They’re coming! Get ready, we’re gonna run.” The blur was getting closer at a surprising rate.

“When I give the signal, get ready.” Jason tilted his head to the sky and howled like a wild animal. Then the entire pack took off their jackets and followed Jason in a sprint towards the store. The only sound was the thumping of their dirty tennis shoes as they ran for their lives towards the store.

Sark lagged further and further behind. Jason signaled Benny to lead the pack while he went back to help Sark.

“Sark, come on, just a little longer, I promise. Look up, see the building? The door is just ahead. We will get there, and we will be safe, and we can stop running soon, but right now we have to run. We have to hurry, we have to keep running, Sark. You’re my Sark, don’t quit on me now. You can do this, I know you can, it’s easy, much easier than the things you’ve already had to do. You can make it along with the rest of the pack.”

For all his pep talk, Jason knew in his heart that the pack wouldn’t make it. The dark blur on the horizon was gaining on them, and Jason could now distinguish it as a pack, though which pack he couldn’t say. His best guess was that it was Dark come to finish them off. Jason knew that Heart could never win an all-out battle with Dark, but if they could just get to the gorge up ahead, they might stand a chance. Jason felt the weight of his pack’s lives carried in his chest, and he hoped that they could walk away safely from this second encounter with Dark.

When it looked as though everyone up ahead was starting to get tired, Jason put his plan into action. A quick cooing noise that sounded like an angry dove erupted from his throat, startling Sark and halting the remainder of the pack.

“I have a new plan that I think will work better than hiding. We’ll move to the left, descending slightly into the woods, and come out at the edge of a gorge. I need a few fast runners to accompany me to the gorge.”

“I’ll go.”

“No, you stay with the others, your job is important.”

Benny’s eyebrows dipped below his wrinkled forehead as he heard Jason’s words. Jason hurried to explain.

“I need you to mount an aerial attack on this intruder pack.”

A few pack members sniggered at the rhyme.

“It’s not funny.” Jason looked sternly over his people. “We can laugh when we win. Now, about those runners…” He scanned the group.

I wasn’t a fast runner, and so knew ahead of time that I wouldn’t be chosen.

“Stell, you’re fast. One more person, maybe… Charly, you can come.”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the pack as they all doubted his decision. Benny let out an indiscrete “ha!” and Charly’s entire face turned bright red as blood rushed to her head. Lilac looked at Jason in disgust and Melany’s eyes widened in shock. They were all thinking one thing: how dare he make such a debatable decision at such a precarious time?

“Let’s get moving, pack. They’ll be here soon. Benny, take your group through the forest and wait at the gorge’s edge at the place where we made camp last time. We’ll stroll down and go through the gorge.” Jason and Lilac briefly embraced before Jason turned and sprinted off towards the gorge entrance, Stell and Charly close behind him. Benny shook his head but dares not comment as he led his half of the pack into the dense forest of weedy ash trees.