a/n: this is a big chapter. 

For what it was worth, Wren had stopped counted the days since the third sunrise. It was hard to tell when one ended and the next began—how could they count the nights? Everything was tested at night. It was easy to survive the sun. Time twisted by its own rules that she could not comprehend, and so she did not pretend she could. The wolf did not count its days, all it knew was that it wanted to see the next. It did not know how many it had seen before nor how many more it would. One night at a time, one night that she had ended.

The wolf was near a lifetime ago now.

Order could not have been the natural plan, following one leader's direction until the leader marched them towards their death. Everytime she left the camp she rarely found animals living together. Perhaps two squirrels would share a tree, but even then they only ever lived side by side. They were not together. Perhaps a bird would feed its young, but even then it was only ever waiting until it could be alone again.

"You need to keep your footsteps quiet," said Ronan. She snapped her head to the side; she'd almost forgotten that he and Xavier walked beside her. Ronan was better than Terra by a longshot, but more than anything she found him slow. She knew how to stalk the forest. At this point, she figured she knew the forest better than anyone else. Almost daily now she would slip away through the walls, whoever was placed as guard hardly ever did their job. She would walk right on out with the gatherers and they would all be none the wiser.

As far as Wren was concerned, she was the only one who knew they weren't alone in the forest. She knew little about the nomads—as she referred to them in her thoughts—but if the others knew it would cause a panic. Not because there were people still alive on the ground, but because their blessed schedule had been foiled, their impeccable management undermined by their own oblivion.

She'd seen groups twice now, two different small crowds. The first were two men, both much older than the sixty-something in the camp with gray beards and chiseled faces worn out by nature's trials. Broad-shouldered and stoic, Wren knew they were apart of the forest itself, of the natural order. They killed for survival; they did not count the suns. She'd been so curious that she could not bring her feet to run, so she crouched below the bushes, breathing slowly, stalking like the beasts themselves.

The second group was larger, five people if she had to guess. Two men just as burly, an older woman and one who was younger—the latter was the most threatening of them all with eyes as sharp as knives—and then a boy who looked even younger than Wren herself. A family in the overgrowth, sleeping beneath the canopy of leaves.

"Quiet," Xavier hissed. The trio held their breaths as he raised his finger, pointing towards the leeward side of the hill before them. Something was rustling, something like footsteps. Humans struggled with keeping their feet silent; she could tell by the sound it was not an animal beyond the hill. Nomads—her stomach churned with excitement. There were people alive and they were cutthroat and fascinating and now the rest would know.

She followed Ronan's lead up the hill, the trio lying down on their stomachs behind the low shrubbery so as to remain hidden. She watched Ronan's face more than she did the clearing, more excited to see his shocked reaction than the nomads themselves.

She expected Ronan's eyes to widen, for his lips to part speechless, but she did not expect Xavier's face to go staunch, for them both to freeze like they'd seen death themselves. "What the fuck is that?" she heard Xavier whisper, and she knew right then and there that "that" was no nomad, that "that" was not human at all.

Her head turned slowly towards the sight, her stomach dropping while her heart raced. It was a hulking creature, not quite human but not quite animal either. It had skin like a man, pale and almost translucent in the light. It stood upon two feet, but towered above any person she'd ever seen. Its body was large and heavy, its face twisted and deformed. By its feet was a small fawn, its neck snapped to the side and blood pouring out. Wren's eyes were drawn to the blood on the monster's meaty hands; he had killed it himself.

"Let's get the hell out of here," said Ronan, his voice hardly greater than a breath.

"No," Wren shook her head. "We have no idea what that is, we need to watch it—"

"We need to get the fuck away from that thing."

"We could shoot it," she whispered, "Get closer. Right now we have the upperhand."

"It could rip our fucking heads off," snapped Xavier. "Let's go."

Though every last instinct in Wren's body urged her to turn around and follow the boys as they began to descend the hill—crawling on their hands and stomachs so as not to make a single sound—her curiosity begged her to stay. A monster in real-time, a beast far more peculiar than any wolf or deer or nomad they'd come across.

"Wren—" Ronan hissed. She rolled her eyes and followed them down, their feet breaking into a sprint the moment they reached solid ground. She was sure they'd piqued the beast's attention, but a creature who lumbered so large could never be as fast as three teens who saw the end of their world right before their eyes.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The rumor spread through the camp like a wildfire. One word to Kennedy at the gates and the crack of a whip, and almost instantly every last person had heard of the monster.

"How many were there?" Only one.

"What about the other hunters?" They went the other way.

"Will it attack?" We don't know.

"Will it come?" We don't know.

"Will it kill us all, will it break our bones, will it crush our bodies into the dirt?" We don't know we don't know we don't know.

"I've got good news," said Eliza, still holding her breath and gulping down fear at the prospect of the new threat that lay beyond. "Fixed the freezer finally. We can store food, less hunters needed."

"Thank God," Ronan exhaled. "We have no idea what we're facing out there." He knew he should have continued the conversation—after all these days Eliza had still remained just as frosty towards his advances, and it didn't take a genius to know he needed one on his team—but he caught sight of Bianca's black curls walking away from the growing crowd and a memory plagued his mind. He turned to Xavier and gestured that he follow. Bianca was headed underground.

They expected her to have moved farther into the bunker, hiding in the wreckage of the people that had lived there once before. Beyond the walls of the room where they'd woken up, they had access to one closet that had held the guns—that was where Eliza had built the freezer, she'd scavenged the rest of the debris for insulation—and little more. The walls inside the bunker had crumbled, as though some bomb had obliterated whatever life once existed. Climbing through the rubble, one could find some places still intact, but all signs of life seemed to have disappeared entirely. They'd expected Bianca to hide.

Instead, she went digging through her own locked cabinet, as though the answer to some unspoken question may be what was hiding. She whipped around when she heard their feet hit the metal floor. "Why'd you follow me?"

"Keep the monsters at bay, huh?" asked Ronan, her words from that first fateful morning ringing in his ears.

"Glad we're all up to speed," she muttered.

"You said it was a figure of speech," he said. His voice was deathly serious, so much so that it froze Bianca in place. She looked up from the drawer, swallowing hard as Ronan's glare narrowed. "What else do you know?"

"I don't know anything," she insisted, but her face grew paler by the moment.

"We all know you're a fucking con artist, Bianca. You really expect me to believe you knew nothing?"

"Think, Ronan," she snapped, a new wave of anger bubbling to the surface. She was sly, yes, but she had not conned anyone on the ground. "We can speak, we can walk, we can shoot. We remember things we've been taught. I don't know anything about the monster you saw but maybe I did once. Maybe we all did."

"You said it without hesitation and then you were right." He didn't want to fight with her; from the very first morning Ronan thought she was the only person he might be able to trust. He couldn't trust Xavier, he was too slippery a player, but so long as he offered power he knew he had his loyalty. But Bianca he thought he could trust, he truly did.

"I said it because it felt right. I know just as much as you," she said.

"Then get me some information." It was an ultimatum, a final challenge to determine where she stood. He couldn't have a traitor in his camp, he couldn't have a liar in his midst. There were monsters outside the walls and somehow Bianca knew. "And if you don't know anything, then maybe ask your smartass friend." He didn't mean to say that last part aloud. Bianca was closer with Eliza than anyone else in the camp, and she was by far the most intelligent.

He was glad that she seemed nervous when she'd heard about the beast. He had almost begun to worry that she knew more. Now he only had to worry about Bianca.

"They're gonna have questions," Bianca said. "And we don't want Terra making new security protocols. You should get back up there."

He nodded. She was right. They shared a greater problem at hand than what she may or may not have known. And she would find him information—she needed to stay by his side and she needed to stay alive and how else could they know what the hell they were up against? As Ronan ascended back into the light above, Xavier stayed right down on the bunker floor, the duo left in silence.

"You believe him, don't you?" she asked.

"Should I?"

She shrugged. "If I'm gonna lie I'm gonna do it well."

"Someone in this camp is hiding something," he said. "I don't know who it is, and honestly I don't really care, but it's like I'm breathing it in, you know? It feels heavy."

"I'm not hiding anything," she said, "But I know what you're talking about. Something's been left unsaid."

"How do you plan on finding information?"

"I clearly knew something once so maybe there's something in this damn drawer, I don't fucking know," she snapped, but her voice was more tired than anything else. She reached into her cabinet and handed Xavier a small cloth pouch tied closed with a frayed brown string. "It's the nightshade. If Ronan finds it now he'll kill me."

"You think he'll break into your drawer?" A slight laugh escaped his lips, but his smile dropped when he saw the serious furrow in Bianca's eyebrows, the way she bit her lip in a stress he hadn't recognized.

"Do you actually trust him not to?"

"He'll get worried if I'm down here much longer," said Xavier, to which Bianca nodded, a welcome invitation to leave. He was good at reading people, few of his initial assumptions about his camp had proven to be false. Ronan was a righteous man and Bianca was as cunning as himself. She wouldn't be afraid if she was innocent. He liked Bianca, he truly did, but it took a liar to know another.

Ronan looked towards him as he returned to the cold sunlight, the question in his eyes clear as day. Xavier shook his head: no, he learned nothing. It took a liar to know another.

He shook his shoulders, exhaling quickly and returning his mind to the present frenzy. Security protocols. How to protect themselves. New rules, new counts, new schedules and laws and storing food and monsters and beasts that made the wolves pale in comparison.

And in the midst of the commotion, the panic and the fever, all eyes were focused inwards, as though the answer to all their fears existed among them. So engrossed were they all that they failed to notice how the small girl, the little bird herself, slipped away back into the woods clutching nothing but a knife, back into the realm of the beast itself. 

a/n

this chapter is sPoOkY!

I haven't made memes yet and I'm working all day today so probably won't post them til tomorrow 

keep an eye out for a new cover!! I've been working on some editing stuff but idk if I like anything I've made yet (might post a few covers in the spam book for y'all to vote on!)

QUESTIONS:

-Is Bianca lying? Did she actually know about the monsters? Does Xavier believe her or Ronan more? 

-WHAT THE HECKITY HECK IS THAT MONSTER? Are there more? 

-WHO ARE THE NOMADS? Is Wren actually the only one who's seen them? How have they survived?

-What happened to destroy the bunker? 

-What the hell does Wren think she's doing?