Conflate | Bellamy Blake ¹ ✓

✯ | chapter two

❝prayers are promises, too. and these are the days of broken promises.❞

-ringer, the 5th wave

♛

AS SOON AS WE come close to the camp, an alarm starts going off in my mind. Something's not right. Bodies of the fallen, both Grounders and Sky People alike, are strewn carelessly everywhere- over logs, slumped on the ground, and against trees. The stench is rancid and makes my stomach churn as the awful scent invades my senses. A few flies are beginning to buzz around the corpses.

I immediately copy Finn's actions in getting low, crouching down as I climb the slope that leads to camp. Stray strands of hair hang in my face but I don't want to use dirt-coated hands to brush them away. Bellamy's hand brushes my shoulder as he leans over me, mouth close to my ear.

"It's too quiet," he comments in a whisper. I nod in agreement. Usually constant chatter could be heard from half a mile away. But now, it's so silent that I'm sure we're the only ones making noise.

Just as Bellamy starts forward, Kane suddenly grabs his arm and forces him back. "We'll take it from here." He turns around to the group of guards that came with us. "Banks, Scanlan. You stay with them. We'll signal once we're sure it's safe."

I pucker my lips in distaste as the adults rush past us into camp. Finn, Bellamy, and I all share annoyed looks with each other. We're the ones who know this place like the back of our hands. Why didn't they trust us enough to let us in?

Bellamy paces back and forth restlessly while I spend time playing tic-tac-toe in the dirt with Finn. It seems like a morally wrong thing to do with the bodies of our friends displayed around us, but it's something to pass the time.

"What is that?" Finn asks, pointing his stick at the letter I had just drawn with my own.

"That's an 'O'," I reply in a confused tone, wondering what he could have mistaken it for.

"It looks like a 'C'."

I roll my eyes and dig my stick firmly into the ground, repeatedly drawing a circle until the shape is firmly set into the soil. One eyebrow raises at Finn. "Better?"

He places an 'X' in the top left corner without looking at me. "Yes."

"We need a stretcher!" one of the guards calls from inside the camp. My head snaps up at the urgency in his voice- he'd found someone in there. I immediately drop my stick and dart towards the camp, only to be stopped by Banks and Scanlan.

"Woah, woah, woah, woah." Banks' muscled arm shoots out into my bath just as I run by, making me bounce back into Bellamy, who steadies me on my feet with a dirty look at the guard. The three of us exchange glances that may appear like defeat, but Bellamy's discreet nod starts it all.

I'm the fastest out of us three, so I make the first move. I spin around Bellamy and sprint as fast as I can toward the tunnel that leads to the inside of the camp. Ducking through the leaves and dirt, I squint to see in the darkness and am grateful when I finally break out into the light again.

Except what I see is not much light. Our entire camp is coated with grey ash that soaks up all the color, draining the once lively site into a wasteland. Charred remains of bodies lay sunken into the colorless grass, and we seem to be the only ones here.

"Where is everyone?" Bellamy wonders aloud, voice hollow with both shock and fear. I shake my head and take a few steps forward to try and shake off the sickness brewing in my stomach. The slight wind that tampers the ashes moves across my face like the brush of a ghost. The atmosphere seems heavier, weighed down by the loss of life.