Page 3 of G.O.D.S Omnibus

Sobs pour from the girl; she is terrified. I intertwine my fingers with hers, offering a small amount of comfort. I wish I could offer her a simple “It will be okay”but that isn’t who I am. If I’m being realistic, we’re both going to die before someone finds us. Even if these psychopaths leave us out here, dehydration or this damn humidity would more than likely kill us. Summer is over and yet it is still hotter than hell.

I pull us further into deep bushland, no longer on the rough path someone made by driving a car through at some point. If we have any chance of survival, I need to be able to hear if we are being followed.

My lungs burn, but I must push through it. The girl falls to her knees, almost taking me down with her, her sobs so loud I cover her mouth with my hand and shush her. I really don’t want to frighten her any more than she is, but her sniffling will get us killed.

“Do you want to die?” I ask, kneeling in front of her. She shakes her head no. “Then pull yourself together. We have to keep moving.”

I vaguely remember learning that the moonlight reflects the sunlight, so the bright side of the moon faces the sun and then something about the horns and drawing a line to the horizon to find which way is north. Hopefully, this random knowledge will get us to safety.

We start walking, the bush now silent. The darkness surrounds us, giving me a false sense of security. Besides the crunch of our footsteps, it’s eerily quiet. Maybe they gave up and stopped chasing us, or maybe they sit watching and waiting to pounce. Either way, I keep the girl moving.

“Did you hear that?” she whispers.

The engine of a car rumbles in the background, and we instinctively move towards it. Our only hope out of here is to find a road and follow it to the nearest town. We run, the sound of the vehicle giving us a burst of energy to push forward.

The girl, whose name I should have asked for at some point, falls to the ground when we reach the road. A car approaches, and I make a split-second decision. I race into the centre of the road and wave my hands in the air. The car slows to a stop, a shadow steps out, and my heart thuds against my ribs. This is the moment of truth: do we die, or will this person help?

“Jolie?” a familiar male voice calls out.

I shield my eyes from the headlights, letting them adjust.

“Brennan?” I ask, taking a step back as he gets closer. Right now, I trust no one, not even my social worker. What is he doingin the middle of the bush and in just the right place to find me? I don’t believe in coincidences. “Stay back,” I warn, trying to process what is happening. Should I trust him? “Fuck,” I hiss under my breath. What other choice do I have right now?

He stops walking. “What are you doing out here?”

“I could ask you the same question. Why are you in the middle of nowhere, Brennan?”

He takes a few steps closer, cautiously moving towards us. “I visit my gran every Friday night.”

Of course he does. Perfect bloody cardigan-wearing Brennan is the only twenty something who visits his gran on a Friday night.

“What happened to you? Are you okay?”

I look down at my hands—they’re covered in blood. Some dried, but most of the scratches and cuts on my hands are bleeding.

“I’m fine, but we need to get her to a hospital,” I say, pointing to the girl still lying on the edge of the road, now curled in a ball.

Brennan rushes to her side, picking her up and putting her in the back seat of his sedan. I jump in the passenger seat.

We drive for a few minutes before he speaks. “You need to tell me something, Jolie. I was supposed to pick you up tomorrow morning. I have a new placement for you, and I don’t know if I can explain to my boss how I found you cut up and bloody in the middle of nowhere.”

“If I tell you, will you not freak out?”

Brennan is nice, too nice. Being the only person in my shitty life to genuinely care about me, I decide to tell him the whole truth.

“It’s a bit late to ask me not to freak out, don’t you think?” He looks over at me with a slight smile on his face.

“I suppose you’re right. I was planning on running away.” His head snaps to glare at me, and the disappointment on hisface fills me with shame. “But I found a card that said to go to Alison’s café.”

“And of course, you just had to go.” His words are laced with sarcasm.

“I thought it was Trace,” I whisper.

His whole body goes stiff, and the reaction to me mentioning my best friend is weird, but I compartmentalise that for another time.

Starting with being drugged at the café, I explain what happened, right through to stopping him on the side of the road. I watch as he processes everything and wait for the lecture about how irresponsible I was.

“Shit,” he grits out. “I should take you to the police, but they will think you were running away and then I won’t be able to send you to the placement I have found. It’s a good deal, this place. Jesus, Jolie, how does shit keep happening to you?”

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