by Bella Street
Trent stood over him, feeling disconnected from the whole surreal tableau. “Who did she see?”
Gareth glared up at him, his face smeared with blood from his hands. “You don't know anything!” Suddenly he jumped up and strode to where Cynthia, Eva and Jared stood huddled together looking at him with sullen eyes. “What did you say to her?”
“We didn't say anything!” Eva said sarcastically. “We weren't even talking to her.”
He turned to Jared. “What did they say?”
He shrugged. “We were just talking about owls being dirty birds. Nothing about her.”
“This is so weird. I'm totally having a flashback,” Eva said. “Cynthia, do you remember that girl in middle school who was always having seizures? What was her name?”
“Oh! I remember! She was the one who spread those rumors about the mayor. It was Sarah something.”
“That's right! The little pervert who was trying to slime the mayor, my mom's cousin.”
Trent felt the blood drain from his face. Oh, no. He realized Seffy's almost flip explanation of her past held more secrets than it revealed.
Cynthia laughed. “Remember, we called her a dirty bird. And she was. Filthy little tramp. Like a bitch in heat.”
Suddenly she went flying backward, landing on her rear in the rubble. She looked up and screamed at Gareth. “You pig! What did you do that for?”
Jared shoved him, but Gareth batted him away and went after Eva. She let out a squeak and ran behind Cynthia.
“Hey, freak,” Jared yelled at Gareth. “What's your problem? Lay off the girls!”
Gareth walked over to them, his fists clenched, breathing hard. “Stay away from Seffy. Never speak to her again or I'll kill you, do you understand?”
“What's this got to do with Seffy?” Eva cried. “You're out of your mind!”
“Because Seffy's real name is Sarah.”
Trent looked over and saw Addison who was bracing herself against the porch column. Her gray face and hollow eyes matching Gareth's.
“Are you saying she's the girl from middle school?” Cynthia said, her eyes huge. “How bizarre.”
Trent knew in his bones it was no coincidence. Seffy was the hub. Somehow, some way this all revolved around her. He looked over at her, still sprawled in Lani's lap unconscious, and was glad she wasn't hearing this.
“Why did she change her name?” Eva asked stupidly. “Was she ashamed? She should've been ashamed. After all she almost got the mayor in trouble with those sex abuse lies”
“You changed your names,” Addison said, her voice flat. “I'm gonna guess you were Cindy and Emily. Am I right?”
Both girls stared at each other in shock. “How do you know that?” Eva seethed.
“Because we did the same thing. Sarah, Gary, Lisa, Amy...do those names ring a bell?”
Eva narrowed her eyes. “Not really, which isn't surprising, because we didn't spend our time around losers. We just remember the seizure bitch because she almost destroyed my family with her allegations! She tried to bite the hand that fed her, stupid, spiteful tramp!”
“Trust me, it was the other way around.” Gareth coldly pointed to the house. “Don't you remember this place?”
Eva snorted, but averted her eyes. “It's just a house.”
“It was his house.” Gareth closed his eyes. “Imagine it painted and with furniture. God.”
Trent approached him, struggling for calm in the face of horror. “We need to get Seffy inside. The temperature is dropping fast.”
Gareth glanced up. “We can't go back into that house.”
Malone walked out of the darkness from down the street. “I checked the other houses. The one next door also has a basement where we can stay.”
Trent clenched his fists as he was forced to stand by and watch Gareth pick Seffy up and follow Malone to the next house. When their forms were swallowed up by darkness, he turned to the girls. “Make yourself useful and get the supplies out of the basement and take them next door.”
Cynthia got to her feet, her face contorted with rage. “We don't have to do anything you say.”
“Well, between me and my gun and the fact that I won't stop Gareth from making good on his threat, I suggest you get moving.”
Jared gave her a little push. “Just do what he says.”
He and the girls traipsed back into the house, sneering at Addison on the porch as they passed. When they were inside, she stared at Trent with unseeing eyes.
“I always wondered what it was—her 'big secret',” she said, her voice lifeless. “Now I know, and all I can think is that's it? That's the big deal? So Seffy went through some abuse. Who hasn't?”
Trent watched as her face crumpled. She slid down to the floor of the porch, tears streaming down her cheeks. He ran up the steps and got his arm around her before she was all the way down. When he tried to help her up, she pushed him away.
“I'm fine.” Addison struggled to her feet and took an unsteady step away from him toward the side of the house. “I'm not like her. God, what a lightweight.” Pushing past him, she stumbled down the steps and headed after the others.
Trent blew out a ragged breath, unsure of what to do next. His mind whirled with desires for retribution, his muscles—flooded with adrenaline—wanted action. And yet, he could only stand to the side while Seffy's friends called the shots.
He went down the steps and looked up at the house. No house number. He went out into the road and saw there was no street sign yet. So he still didn't know where he was and didn't know where he was going.
And he couldn't hold his girl.
***
Trent sat hunched against the cold concrete in the basement of the other house watching Seffy sleep next to the others. At least he hoped she was asleep and not still unconscious. He was surprised that Gareth or Lani didn't try to rouse her. Gareth had said that way she wouldn't feel the cold. On some level, it made sense, but he wanted to warm her up instead of hope she didn't notice. Pretending it wasn't cold didn't actually make someone warm.
Trent shivered. Seffy sat slumped against Lani's lap, with Gareth on the other side, his hand resting on her leg. All he could do was sit across the room and do nothing. Jared and the girls had decided to take their chances and sleep upstairs, which was fine with everyone else. Malone sat next to Lani, and Addison was huddled in a ball next to Gareth but not touching him. Exhaustion lined each and every sleeping face.
He felt bad for the girls, felt sick about what they'd endured, yet couldn't fix it, couldn't make anyone pay, not when they were in the middle of a huge state with no direction. He checked his watch. Four a.m. At five he'd wake everyone and get on the road. Any road. It didn't matter. They had enough gas to get at least another five hundred miles. That had to be enough to get them to a population center, if not a gas station. He had to believe that whatever emptied the last two towns hadn't made it this far.
Seffy stirred. Trent held his breath as her eyes flickered open. After a moment of confusion, she looked across the room and saw him. His heart thudded hard as she slowly sat up. He watched her, unsure how to act. He didn't know what her next action would be and was surprised when she carefully shifted Gareth's hand away from her leg. When she got to her feet, Trent did the same, his heart in his throat.
He swallowed as she walked across the small space and into his arms. Trent clutched at her, pressing his face into her hair, fighting—and failing—the burn of tears. He held her tight, aware of her bones, her flesh, her warmth, and being unable to hold her close enough. She laid her head on his shoulder, her heartbeat steady.
The scars on his body were all surface. How could he help someone whose scars went soul deep? How could he hope to heal when the salve itself had been poisoned? How could anything he had to offer make a dent in the hurt? Never had he felt so unprepared, so unskilled. So useless.
Someone coughed in their sleep, causing some others to stir slightly. Trent released Seffy only long enough to take h
er hand and go upstairs. Her solemn expression took in the different surroundings and her grip on his fingers lessened. They went outside into the greenish light and he hugged her again.
After several minutes, she pulled back slightly and looked at him. Lines of fatigue circled her eyes as she regarded him. “Something bad happened.”
“Yes,” he said softly, unsure of how much to reveal.
“I dreamed...is that his house over there?”
Trent nodded, unable to say the word out loud.
Pressing her face against him, she peered over his shoulder. She seemed transfixed. With reluctance, Trent turned slightly and followed her gaze. Then he noticed the jeeps in the front yard...saw the gas cans in the back. His respiration kicked up a notch. It would be largely symbolic, it would hinder their plans, but when you didn't know what to do, you threw everything you had at the problem. “Sef, we're going to do something that needs to be done, okay?”
She looked up at him with trusting eyes.
He led her toward the house. Twenty-five yards seemed like a long way, then suddenly, was too close. Checking her expression, which was pale but composed, he dropped her hand and jumped in the first jeep. Releasing the emergency break, he shifted into neutral and rolled it out into the street and away from the house. He did the same to the second one. When both were safe distances from the house, he pulled a gas can from the back of one and began walking toward Seffy.
She met him halfway and took the gas can from his hands, grim determination in her eyes. Trent watched as she went around the house with unhurried steps, dousing the parts with wooden siding. Next she went up onto the wooden porch and drenched the surface with gasoline. He saw her take one step through the front door and slide the can onto its side on the floor. He heard the liquid pulsing from the opening.
When she returned to him, he lit a piece of wood debris on fire with a lighter from the supplies, waiting for it to develop into a strong flame. Seffy took it from his hands and walked back to the porch. She tossed it onto the top step, backing up as the sound of a whoosh disrupted the pre-dawn silence. Trent pulled her back across the road and they watched the flames take hold of the wood once the gasoline was consumed.
As the crackling reached their ears, Seffy's shuddering sigh came from some deep, dark place within her, her face rigid with pain.
Within minutes the house was engulfed and the crackling turned to a roar. But no sound of a siren pierced the morning. Maybe something had happened to the townspeople and no firefighters would ever come again. Maybe the man who bought the house would never know it was burned. But Seffy knew it had burned, and that was something.
Trent didn't bother asking if she was okay. He touched her back, urging her toward the other house. As they walked down the dirt road, Lani suddenly appeared on the porch.
“Oh, my gosh! We were so worried!”
Trent released her hand, sending her an apologetic glance. There was no way Gareth could handle another shock today.
She nodded in resignation. He allowed her to walk several feet ahead before following. Gareth appeared next to Lani. When he saw Seffy, he ran down the steps to her and pulled her into his arms. Trent couldn't hear their exchanged words, but whatever she said calmed Gareth as he stared in shock at the fire.
Deciding to stay right where he was, Trent watched the column of black smoke climb into the purpling sky. During the long hours of the night, one thing he wondered about was the color of the sky. Had they gone far enough to find the blue? Apparently not. Maybe there wasn't any more blue sky, maybe there wasn't any safe place left to go.
As he watched the fire burn and heard the sounds of exclamation from the others behind him, he slowly became aware of another sound. It was a chopping, rhythmic beat, loud and out of place. Instinctively he looked overhead, but only saw massive plumes of black smoke roiling higher and higher into the atmosphere.
Suddenly something broke through the smoke. Trent's eyes widened when he realized it was a helicopter. Had emergency services arrived after all? He stood transfixed as the helicopter, followed by another, landed well away from the flames, but close enough that the blades made the fire burn hotter. A man jumped out of the cockpit of the first one to land and strode toward him.
Fenn.
Trent blinked, sure he was seeing things. He checked over his shoulder and saw everyone else staring at Fenn, too. So not a hallucination. The compound leader stopped directly in front of him, his attention fixed over his shoulder. Trent somehow knew he was staring at Seffy.
“You have to come back.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Notice, he didn't say come 'home',” Lani observed as she collapsed onto her compound bed.
Seffy stood in front of her feeling about a thousand years old. Fatigue dulled her thinking. “What?”
“Fenn. When he walked up to us. He said we had to come back. Not come home. I think that's telling.”
Addison snorted. “He was using his familiar scare tactics in that dead-calm voice of his. Diseased animals on the loose, deadly virus spreading, blah blah blah. He's a closet megalomaniac.”
“His girlfriend is the megalomaniac, if you ask me, except that she looked furious that we were back.” Lani smoothed her hair over her shoulder, looking unaffected by the drama.
“The air better be clean is all that really matters. Some of these cuts on my arms will probably end up as scars. That's all I need.”
“I heard Trent telling Malone they caught a couple of guys who'd been doctoring the cafeteria food. It wasn't in the air at all.”
Seffy glanced at Lani, paying attention for the first time. But the knowledge that she and Trent had gone largely unaffected by subsisting on canned goods and candy bars was meaningless. She no longer cared how she'd fallen in love with him, only that she needed to be with him.
She'd had her shower, she'd had something to eat, all she wanted now was Trent. Instead she forced herself to listen to her friends talk about conspiracy theories, their first helicopter ride, and wasn't the Montana desert absolutely stunning even in the freakish light? Maybe more so.
Lani had also wanted to talk about...the Other Thing, but Seffy had stopped her.
It was done. Over. No going back.
A sliver of angst had been relieved by the burning. Even more would be relieved the moment she could crawl into Trent's arms and forget about the past for good.
Talking with Gareth had been especially delicate. She'd had some respite in unconsciousness, but he was still reliving the moment over and over until veins stood out under his eyes, the muscle in his jaw flexing. Seffy had hugged him in his room and had been as reassuring as possible, but that was all she could do.
She chafed at the clock on Lani's night stand. Seven p.m. It would be hours before she could go to Trent. Exhaustion weighed her down, making her tempted to give into tears from frustrated plans.
“Okay, girls, I hate to do it, but I'm beat.”
Seffy looked at Lani.
“And no offense, sweetie,” the brunette said, “but you are, too. I can tell just by looking at you. I think we've had a little too much adventure.”
Addison nodded. “I'm heading to bed, too. See you guys in the morning.”
Seffy intercepted her as she headed for the door and hugged Addison hard. Her friend yielded for a moment—hugging her back—but quickly stiffened. Seffy watched her go, then turned toward Lani, who was already waiting for her hug. Lani held her tight, sniffling, but said nothing, even though her wide eyes indicated she wanted to talk.
Seffy went back to her room tired, yet strung up. She pulled open her closet door and headed to Trent's room.
He wasn't there.
She blinked away exhausted tears. It was silly to get weepy, he'd be here eventually. She would see him. Seffy took a cleansing breath and sat down on the edge of his bed.
Suddenly his door opened and he strode in. He stopped when he saw her, shutting the door with a distracted air. “I was just
at yours.”
Seffy choked back a sob and quickly crossed the room. His arms were greedy as they enveloped her, his embrace crushing and oh, so satisfying. He held her until she felt his heart beating against her own. She eased away slightly only to gain access to his lips, which she plundered with needy kisses. Trent kept up, tangling his hands into her hair and whispering words of love.
Seffy leaned against him as their kisses became less desperate and more languorous. She gripped the front of his shirt and tugged him toward his bed.
He paused. “Sef, are you sure...?”
Tightening her grip on his shirt, she sent him a steady look. “I need you, Trent.”
Conflicting emotions shifted across his features as they made their way to the bed. Sitting down on the edge, Seffy slid her arms around his waist and pressed her face against the hard planes of his torso. She breathed in his scent, his warmth as he slowly shrugged the shirt from his shoulders.
Tipping up her face, she waited until he kissed her, hoping her responding touch would wipe away his reservations. It wasn't long before they tumbled onto the mattress, where the only thing that mattered wasn't the past or the future, but the haven she'd found in his arms.
***
Gareth couldn't sleep. The events of the last two days played over and over in his mind in a loop. How—how—was it that they'd ended up at that man's house? It was beyond belief. Beyond comprehension. Beyond cruel.
Poor Seffy.
Her quiet assertions that she was fine didn't ring true. Hell, he was traumatized by what happened. How could she be so calm? She must be in denial...again. Maybe they both were. But what good would talking do? Talking brought it back fresh and surely she wanted to forget what happened as much as he did.
Gareth got off his bed and paced the small confines of his room. It felt like he'd never left. He'd been stoned out of his mind the night they'd all been hustled into the jeeps. Trent had meant well, he supposed, but he'd also failed. Lighting that house on fire—while probably cathartic for Seffy—had been a beacon for Fenn to find them.