The Evil Church in the Forest

*Ainslee*

The transport vehicle jars all of us as it goes over the rough terrain. It’s still cold, but it’s warmed up a bit since the sun came up. So far, the reactions are almost as different as the twenty of us. A few of the younger kids are crying. The older ones, the almost adults, the ones that should be able to shift if they weren’t so fucking tired, are angry.

And a lot of them keep glaring at me.

I’m waiting for someone to say this is my fault, to just go ahead and put words behind the evil looks, but no one has done it yet. I keep my eyes focused out the slats between the timbers holding this rickety piece of shit together the best I can and try not to lose it.

“We should talk strategy,” one of the older guys, Nelson Pebbles, says. He’s a short, stocky guy, about five years older than me. If this culling would’ve happened in three years like it was supposed to, he would’ve been too old. That’s true for four or five of these angry people.

“Shit, I meant to go talk to Mark Beav