In front of me was a brilliant blue colored hot spring. It wasn't overly large but I'd imagine that about twenty people could fit in with ease. Steam rose off the water and the air felt heavy while still feeling pleasant. The entire thing was surrounded by thick shrubbery and trees. It was like we had stepped through the magic door and were transported to some safe haven.

Beck walked past me, breaking me out of my trance as he set the bags he carried down onto a large boulder with a semi flattened surface. Chester had already taken his shirt off and tossed it on to a different rock, and was now wading into the water. I looked over at Cody as Mabel giddily jumped into the water, wearing her shorts and shirt still.

Cody raised an eyebrow at me, daring me to go in.

So I did. I took off my socks and shoes before putting my hair into a messy bun and walking ankle deep into the water. It felt wonderful, like, it was different from a bath, because I could moved around, but it was also different from how I imagine a hot tub would be, because the water didn't feel like it was burning my skin.

I watched how Mabel did it, because I had never actually been in a pool, let alone a hot tub. Mabel had gone to a few swimming lessons with her class in the fourth grade, but when I had gone into fourth grade, my mother refused to pay the forty dollar fee, and I had to sit on the sideline with a boy who liked to pick his nose and wipe it on any available surface.

I was knee deep when I say Mabel suddenly go from waist deep, to disappearing and reappearing with only her head visible. I stopped walking forward, wondering if she had somehow tripped and just didn't want to stand up, but Cody walked passed me and about the same spot, he did the same.

Sam saw me looking at them with confusion and smiled, "There's a little bit of a drop off, I think the thing is about 14 feet deep, so you can't touch the ground, but," he shrugged and smiled.

I nodded and decided to just wade around knee deep, I spotted a rock that was semi out of the water and sat down on its surface, leaning back on my elbows to let the sun warm me as I left my legs in the water. There were sounds of splashing, and I heard the guys' laughter float around the space. It was serene, relaxing.

When they had first opened the gate I had figured that they were just going to let me run around, like I had been bugging everyone about since my knee hurt. It wasn't enough that I had escaped from one prison like setting.. I wanted to be able to come and go from the compound as I wanted. I wanted to be able to be free, really free.

As I day dreamed about doing whatever I wanted whenever, I let the voices of the other's playing in the water blur. Strong arms picked me up and I was tossed over a shoulder in one fluid move. I was so startled that when Chester started moving towards the drop off, and the voices came back, that I didn't immediately respond.

It wasn't until the guys were hooting with cheers, except Cody, he was just smiling amusedly, that I realized what Chester was going to do. I pushed my hands against his back, trying to push myself up a little to see around, "Chester,"

"No, Cupcake, we came to have fun! Come swim with us!" he said, his voice filled with joy.

I looked around, wondering which one would hear me out, when I saw Mabel. She would know I didn't know how to swim! But when I registered her gleeful expression I realized that maybe she didn't want to save me. She was excited to see this happen, and the thought had my blood boiling.

"Chester, wait I can't-"

"Here we go!!!" Chester said, ignoring me.

Cody moved forward, hand out as he started to say something, but it was a little late as Chester moved over the edge of the drop off. The feeling was surreal, at first I was just closing my eyes and floating. Chester was still right there, and to be completely covered in water made me feel limitless, weightless.. infinite. But then I needed to breathe, and then I panicked.

I squirmed until I was latching onto Chester like a little spider monkey- if that was even a real thing. I'm sure I resembled more of a little kid unwilling to let go of her parent though. Chester broke the surface, his arms tight around me, he was laughing when he surfaced, and I hid my face in his shoulder as I proceeded to ungracefully cough up a lung.

Chester stopped laughing after a second and pulled back enough to glance at my face, "Are you alright?" he asked.

The noise of earlier had died down a little and I felt my cheeks heat at my theatrics. Way to ruin a perfectly good day out, Kodi. I nodded softly.

"You little shit, she can't swim, why'd you do that??" Cody demanded, making me flinch.

Chester swam until we were on the ledge again before turning to Cody, "Fuck you, you were encouraging it!"

That brought on a full out shouting match. I had successfully climbed off Chester, and when I caught my breath enough to pay attention, I found them all up in each other's faces, with the other boys throwing in shouts of blame as well. Mabel was sitting back, looking bored, and I wanted to strangle her.

Okay strangle is a little bit of an over dramatic, but I wanted to yell at her.

"Guys..."

My voice was lost in the argument and if I had been out of the water, I probably would have stomped my foot. Evan had joined in on the arguing and I wondered why they were even yelling. Yeah, sure I couldn't swim, but I wasn't dead, and I wasn't drowning at the moment.. no harm no foul right?

"Guys!"

Ignored again. I hated that- I hated the feeling of being ignored, I had lived most of my life in the shadows, either trying to hide, or being ignored, and the only times that I had managed to be seen were the times that I was being punished from one thing or another, and I was just sick of it!

I huffed softly and marched out of the water, angrily putting on my shoes as I didn't want to walk all over the ground barefoot. I climbed up onto the rock and took a deep breathe, "HEY!"

Still, nothing. Unbelievable. I actually stomped my foot this time. When no one looked over at me, I kinda lost it. I walked over to my bag, knelt down and pulled out a water bottle, taking a drink of it. It was hard to hear anything over the guys shouting. No one had thrown any punches which I guess was a good thing, Mabel was swimming on the other side of the hot spring, and I was getting more and more frustrated by the second.

With all of the noise of the boys, it was no wonder none of us heard it. I should have been alert, with all of the noise, and the fact that we were so close to the compound, of course there would be zombies out and about.

I smelled it before I heard it, and then a rotten hand was on my shoulder. With the knelt down position that I was in, I was a little bit trapped for turning, and I was aware that my bow would do me no good being so close to the zombie. Training took over my brain, and I rolled forward in a summersault type move. I landed, using the momentum to propel me to my feet.

On the way to standing I grabbed a decent sized rock and turned to face the zombie. It was sick. It had no right shoulder, and torn up, dirty, blood soaked clothes. It stumbled close to me and I let it get close enough to touch me before I swung, the rock connecting with its head, and my arm feeling the ricocheting effect.

The zombie went down, and with my blood coursing through my veins, I looked away from the zombie as I planted my boot on its temple and stomped down. There was resistance at first, but this zombie hadn't fed in a while, and had been rotting for a long time.

I felt sick to my stomach and I placed a hand to my belly as I looked around, realizing a few things. The boys had all stopped fighting and were all looking at me with expressions that varied from horror to proud. I let out a deep breath and stepped away from the dead corpse, leveling my gaze with the boys, addressing them all at once, even though the message were mainly for my four goofballs, but I'm sure Evan should learn the lesson too.

"You guys need to stop fighting. I tried to get your attention a few times and everyone ignored me," Beck opened his mouth but I cut him off and continued, "No. This is important. So what if Chester dunked me under water? I'm not dead. It was a misunderstanding that any one of you boys could have made. Bickering isn't going to solve it. And you guys broke all of your rules, so I think you all should have some sort of punishment.."

I added the last part because my brain didn't want me to give them all the speech. Part of it was the fact that Mabel was there, and the other part was me realizing that I didn't just want to go throwing my past around like no big deal. Telling Evan, a guy I wasn't sure I could trust, really didn't seem to appealing.

"We're sorry, Kodi. You're right, we broke the rules and had you not been training so much with Cody, you could have died," Sam said, his playful eyes full of seriousness, "I think we should head back. There's no telling how many zombies heard the noise, and I don't want to lose anyone because of ignorance to the danger around us."

There was a series of agreement, and then the boys were coming out of the water and putting discarded clothing on. I couldn't help but get distracted by the display of perfection that was the boys shirtless, so I turned away, forcing myself not to even have the chance to sneak a look.

Before we left the hot spring, Mabel pulled me back behind everyone and hissed about me ruining the trip.. but for the first time, I didn't care. She was mad about something that was a misunderstanding, okay, but she didn't need to say what she said, and I knew she was part to blame, for not speaking up when we both knew she very well could have, had she wanted to.