Escape Route (Decode Sequel)

Chapter Twelve - Zennon.

Lennon

Axel and Anita were out there, waiting for us. I swear Harry was out there too but who knows what I was seeing with the heat messing with my head. Maybe it was Vince? Zayn tried for at least an hour to try and convince me what I had seen definitely wasn't Harry. But I didn't see an older man, I saw the mess of curls, the sharp jaw line and the six foot figure standing out from the scenery. Although the only thing Zayn had managed to convince me of was that I was losing it and the sickness was only getting worse. 

I questioned why we couldn't walk along a road instead of a steep trail up a mountain side and Zayn could only assume why. The Italian mafia like to keep their business under locks from the curious public. If someone dies on this derelict mountain side, who's to know? The map Carlo had given us had been marked with a thick red line all the way up the trail, at least half a mile away from the road. You could sometimes hear cars drive along in the distance. Every engine that quietly bumbled past had me praying it was a way out... But it never was, yet. 

We'd crawled for at least an hour after Zayn had spotted Axel. We had to steer away from the trail for a while to stop them having a direct path to us. We didn't want to be killed before we led the horse to water. We needed Axel to see us, figure out where we were headed but not actually meet us. It was like a game of cat and mouse. And we were the prey.

The leather trousers held up pretty well, for the first fifteen minutes that is. After that my knees sliced across jagged rocks, spikey plants and who knows what else. The sun had begun setting, enveloping us in the dreaded darkness I feared so visibly. I wasn't normally scared of the dark, in fact I'd always wanted to sleep beneath the stars but not like this, definitely not like this. 

We took shelter under a semi-small tree. There was a bigger one further into the horizon but it was almost pitch black by the time we stopped crawling and tip toeing. I was too tired and dazed to go and further and Zayn was pretty exhausted himself. 

We both sat against the trunk as best as we could. My head lolled around, it felt too heavy to hold up. My throat was red raw from being sick. My nose burned too with the fowl stench. And my stomached ached badly from the sickening food and the hunger.  

"Do you have any water left?" Zayn whispered, his voice was strained and croaky from fatigue, as was mine.

"A little, why?" I managed to huff.

"You should save it for morning." 

I nodded in response, I had no energy left to speak. I felt like I'd run several marathons without stopping but in reality we'd probably only walked half off one if that.

"Axel spotted us which is good."

"Yeah we just need to make sure he doesn't actually kill us."

"I think he's more interested in finding Vince first and then killing us," I went to speak but he wavered his finger in the air. "Which won't happen, Carlo agreed to protect us from him." 

"I don't know... Axel looked pretty pissed when we hopped into the mafia mobile."

"I commend your effort at humour but like I said, we're not what he wants first and foremost."

"I think if given the chance he'd shoot us point blank without a second thought."

"Don't worry, he won't have the opportunity to do that."

"Do you think Carlo will stick to his word," I paused thoughtfully. "I mean how do we know we can actually trust him? Just because he wants Axel dead doesn't exactly make him friendly fire."