The Rain: The End by Marietta Standlee (good summer reads TXT) 📕

"Rest." He pants between breaths; his face is so red; he looks like he's about to collapse.

Colin checks on the guns we managed to snag. "There isn't a lot of ammo, but we'll be able to defend ourselves."

His whole body is tense; he's a warrior through and through, us running away like this does not sit well with him.

"There was nothing we could have done." I try.

"Yeah." He says between clenched teeth, rubbing his forehead, before kicking Karsten in the ribs, not hard, just enough to get his attention. "Hey, why didn't you guys post any guards if you thought the Turks were around."

Karsten sits up slowly; his breathing has calmed down some. He uses his shirt to fan himself. "We thought we lost them." With a stricken expression, he asks, "Did they kill everybody?"

Colin nods, "As far as I could tell, yes."

Karsten crosses himself and mumbles something in German. I throw a glance at Colin. "Why did they attack? Gangs?"

"The Turks hate the Germans. They hate us Americans even more that's one of the reasons why we had to get out of there." Colin explains, confusing me more than answering my question.

Puzzled I retort, "I'm not good at Geography, but we aren't even close to Turkey."

"No, we're not, but a lot of Turks lived in Germany before the invasion. For generations, the Germans invited them in as workers; it's been an avalanche for them since. It doesn't help that they don't like each other. The cultures are too different. When I was stationed here, my COs always warned us away from certain areas. A lot of bad blood runs between Germans, Americans, and Turks."

Karsten nods vigorously. Saddened I stare into the shadows. So much death already, and we have nothing better to do than add to it instead of coming together to fight a common enemy.

"They followed us. We thought we lost them when we got out of the city." Karsten says with tears in his eyes.

Colin looks disgusted. "If you knew, why didn't you post guards."

"We didn't have enough people." Karsten defends his dead leader.

"You had enough people to ambush us." I throw in.

My heart goes out towards the poor people I watched die, most of them kids. They counted on their leaders to keep them safe. To protect them.

"That's why we were so happy to see you," Karsten explains, his face has finally returned to its normal color. "We don't have any experience with fighting. Jochen was a store manager. We stole most guns from a police station. We didn't have any soldiers. We just lived day by day."

Colin seems to calm down somewhat, but he's still angry; posting guards is common sense, no matter what job you had. But either way, it's too late now.

"We need to get some rest. We'll march in the morning. I'll take first watch." Colin decides.

Immediately Karsten curls up into a ball by a tree. "Please don't leave me." He whispers.

I exchange a glance with Colin; no matter what, we're stuck for now with this guy. Knowing what I know now, we got lucky when Jochen and his people shot at our car; they could have just as easily killed us as unskilled as they were.

"Wake me," I tell Colin before kissing him goodnight.

He pulls me close to him, hugs me tight. The moonshine illuminates his face and exposes a nasty cut on his cheek from the ricochet. "We'll need to find some stuff in the morning to clean that with. I don't want it to get infected."

I carefully touch his cheek. He takes my hand and kisses my fingers. "It takes more than a little scratch to kill me, princess."

I smile and shake my head, before I make my way towards a tree to curl up. From there, I watch Colin fiddle with the guns, and warmth spreads throughout my body before I close my eyes.

Sleep evades me for a little while, though. Even the thick layer of leaves I lie on can't soften the hard, cold ground underneath. No matter what position I chose, something pokes me somewhere. A rock, a root, something. I finally decide a small pebble by my hip isn't as bad as everything else and close my eyes.

It's not the first time I'm forced to sleep out in the open, but I don't think I'll ever get used to how uncomfortable it is, especially without sleeping bags or anything else.

It's still dark; when Colin wakes me, we're both reluctant to include Karsten in the watch rotation, from what we've seen so far, he's more likely to fall asleep. Besides, we don't know him enough yet to trust him with our lives. Leaving Colin and me to split this duty. I yawn and stretch before taking the seat Colin occupied earlier. The guns are all laid out before me; I smile, pretty sure Colin took them apart and put them back together by the light of the moon.

Karsten snores deeply; somewhere off in the distance, something screams. The sound is high-pitched and makes my skin crawl, but whatever it is, it's far away. But it gets my adrenaline going and wakes me up for good. All my senses are on high alert. Despite the quiet settling around me now.

Every so often, a cloud covers the moon, turning everything pitch black for a moment or two. I lean back to stare at the stars between the clouds and it seems like there are millions of them, dotted all over the black canvas. And somewhere up there are several alien space stations.

That thought leaves a sour taste in my mouth and I let my mind wander towards what Jochen told us about the alien collecting the maniacs. I'm sure the aliens control the maniacs via the nanobots. They probably called them in like a herd of dogs, and like dogs, they followed the call. It makes me sick.

I feel my anger rise, a familiar feeling that always burns inside of me now, like a tumor, it sits there, in