When I got out of the cylinder the wind was blowing so hard that I could not see behind my hair, although the wind was blowing the sand as well so I guess it was good that my hair was blocking the way. I stepped aside and waited for Leo to come up beside me. I heard a swoosh sound and knew that he would be close behind.

Pulling the weapon bag over his shoulder Leo said, “Do you have everything? I don’t want to come back here if you forgot something.”

Playing along I patted my shoulders then my stomach then my hips and said, “Yep, I’ve got everything.”

“Good because we have a long walk ahead of us.” He looked up at the bright sky and said, “We have to go this way” as he pointed behind us.

“What makes you say that?”

“The wind always blows the opposite way of the beast.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was looking at my wife’s tracking books last night and she thought that she was onto something with the beast. I am going to assume that this is the same beast that took her and your friend, but if its not than we’ll be one step closer to finding them both.”

Leo didn’t respond. He just began walking and I was forced to follow him, as I didn’t want to lose him in the sand storm. At first he didn’t say anything, and when I walked next to him I could see determination in his eyes, but trenching through sand is only so exciting for so long so I decided to ask him questions to pass the time.

“So how did you and your wife meet?”

“Huh?”

“Your wife… How did the two of you meet?”

“We’re hunting a beast and you want to pass the time by talking about my wife?”

“Umm yeah.”

“Okay.” Leo paused and then stopped for a moment and looked around us.

With a curious look I asked, “What is it.”

Leo held up his pointer finger to his mouth and said, “Shhh.”

I leaned close to his face and whispered, “What do you hear?”

“Shhh.”

I paused and listened to whatever is was that Leo could hear, but all I could hear was the wind blowing. I turned my head different way, in case I was missing something, but no matter how hard I tried to couldn’t hear anything. So I took a step forward to start walking again. I made it about three steps away from Leo when he came running at me and knocked me over chest first. Trying to make a joke out of the situation I said, “If you wanted on top of my all you had to do was ask.”

With a confused look Leo said, “What… No… There’s something following us.”

I lifted my head as high as I could and said, “I don’t see anything.”

Leo rolled on his back and sat up. “I could have sworn I heard something behind us.”

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I sat up and said, “Uh huh.” Just as I was about to stand up, I got flown back into a big sand hill and slid down it on my back. I decided to lay there for a while and let Leo handle whatever it was. ‘I wonder what Leo looks like without a shirt on, if his arm muscles are any indication than he has to be pretty hot. No. Dammit Adisson focus, Leo is in trouble and all you can think about is how hot Leo is. I mean attractive. I mean… Urg I should help him’ I thought. I quickly got on my feet and looked in the direction that I was flung. I placed my head sideways on my forehead to block the sun from my eyes, but even with that and squinting I couldn’t see him at all. The only thing that I could do at this point is walk towards him and hope that I would find him. The sun felt hotter than it was before, and I could feel my back burning under my shirt. Sweat ran down my face and into my eyes every so often. I would have to wipe it away, with my hair, just to see where I was going. The sand was so uneven that I would walk on one surface, then I would sink up to my knees and I wouldn’t be able to move. I would have to wiggle myself out of a mini hole just to keep going.

So when I finally made it to where we had previously been, it felt like weeks had passed and I was exhausted. Thinking that something bad had happened to him, I dropped to my knees and started digging and looking for anything of his. My arms started to slow down and the weight of them began to make it harder and more agonizing to dig. Just then I touched something solid and my body filled with adrenaline as I began to dig faster. After brushing it off the object I realized that it was Leo’s bag of weapons. I don’t know if it was the sand that got into my eyes, or thinking the worst had happened to Leo, but I sank on my feet further and began to cry. My hands began to shake with fear and my chest began to ache with pain of losing someone close to me.

The strong wind began to pick up again, and I knew that if I had any chance of saving Sam I would have to pace myself. With no idea where I was going, I stood up, swung Leo’s bag over my shoulder and began to walk in a slight left direction. I could feel the wind pushing me along, and I didn’t care that I was going in the wrong direction; I just let the wind walk for me so that I used as little effort as possible in my legs.

When the weight of the bag go too much I would switch shoulders and hold onto it as tight as possible when the wind came, because to me the bag was Leo and I could not have gotten this far without him. Sometimes the wind would pull the bag and I one way or backwards, but no matter how hard it tried I basically stayed on the same unknown path that I had started on.

The sun began to lower and the wind began to die down. I didn’t know if it was real or not, but in the near distance I could see a big white rectangular tent. Not thinking, I dropped the bag of weapons on the ground and began to run at the tent at full speed. I was so excited to have some fresh water and some shelter. The closer I got the more the tent began to disappear, until I was standing where I had seen the tent and there was nothing there.

I sighed in disappointment and went to pick up the weapons bag that I had dropped on the ground; only to realize it wasn’t there. In a type of panic, I turned around and tracked my steps to where I had come from, but I could not find the bag anywhere. I stopped for a moment and looked up at the sky, there was something odd about the way the sky was but I couldn’t put my finger on it. A light breeze came and brushed some sand against my legs. I lowered my head and noticed that the wind had revealed something underneath a light layer of sand. I bent down and brush off the sand. When I reached forward, I picked up the object and noticed that it was one of Leo’s shoes.