The Reaper said, “What is stopping me from killing you now and going there ourselves?”
“Simple,” Kurt replied. “The place is rigged with traps to prevent intruders. Just last week, we snared three bugs and two men trying to break in. I put ‘em down myself.”
This was a lie.
Skylar began inching on her backside toward the line of trees behind her. She didn’t know where she was going to go, but she knew she wanted to be far from here. Far away from the Reaper and his goons. Far away from Kurt.
In truth, she liked Ray, Avery, and Florence. They were nice, they were kind, and they were just trying to survive. She was sure she would like the others in time. Kurt would like them, too. Maybe. He was turning on them, though. He was giving up the goose. All for what? So he could go on drinking and wandering around the wasteland?
She didn’t want to be a part of this, but her mind, that foolish part of her brain that had fallen in love with Kurt Walton, that had taken his last name and stayed with him when she shouldn’t have, wasn’t letting her go.
The others weren’t watching her. This was her chance. All she had to do was stand up and run down into the valley. The lingering smoke from the charred bodies would help mask her. She had no shoes on her feet, so her footsteps would be quiet. She could get away. She could. Then when she was in the clear, she would find shelter herself. She would find shoes and food and water. She would be fine. She would be—
But she couldn’t do it.
“You go there guns-a-blazin’, you’re gonna get your dicks shot off or stomped or impaled,” Kurt continued. “I can show you how to get by all that. Then you’ll have a place to stay. A place with lights and warmth and food.”
“Sounds too good to be true,” the scarred man said. “I don’t believe him. I say we cut him up a bit. Then he’ll tell the truth.”
The Reaper shook his head. “This one is not lying.”
“No, I’m not,” Kurt said.
“He has a grudge against those at this mall,” the Reaper continued. “I can feel the anger radiating off of him.” He smiled his skeletal grin. Skylar, looking at it, broke out in chills. “He wants them dead. Well, my friend, today is your lucky day. You keep your life.”
Kurt smiled widely.
If he belongs with any people, it’s this lot right here, Skylar thought. He was as bad as the Reaper. She had known this on some deep level, true, but now she saw the gleam in his eye at the possibility of getting revenge on the people at the mall, and she knew. And it hurt her to know.
She did not belong with them, or with Kurt. It was time to do something. Do something or die.
She needed to run. She needed to get out of here.
The window remained open. In fact, it grew wider.
The nearest man to her, the scarred one, was walking toward the Reaper, conferring with him in a low voice. There was a good fifteen feet of space between them and her. They had weapons, sure, but that was a chance she would have to take.
Slowly, she rose into a crouch.
Turned.
Sprang forward.
The ground felt cold and hard beneath her feet. She wheezed as she went down the hill.
“Hey!” one of the men shouted from behind her.
She kept running. No stopping. Weaving in and around trees, she heard a gun go off. A monster’s inquisitive roar immediately answered the shot.
Skylar ran.
She ran until the voices were distant and the smell of the burned bodies no longer lingered. Most importantly, she ran beyond the reaches of Kurt Walton’s shadow.
For the first time in her life, she felt free.
16
Searching
“Let her go, the dumb broad!” Kurt said. “She doesn’t mean dick to me.”
A partially true statement. If they left her alone, she might get to safety.
The man known as the Reaper shook his head. He snapped his fingers and pointed out into the forest. “Go. Find her.”
The two other men, the man with the scarf and the man with the scarred face, went after Skylar.
She ran for nearly five minutes without stopping. Her feet were bleeding. Her socks were ripped. She hadn’t run like this since she was a child, it seemed, playing out in the trailer park yard with the other kids, stickball and tag. Her heart was beating nearly through her chest. All around her, the bared trees pressed down like the darkness. Skinny, jagged branches reached out. A few times, moving too fast with her head down, she’d been lashed across the face. Warm blood trickled down her cheeks.
She had to stop now.
There was a rock just up ahead. She went to it and leaned against its cold surface. Ran her hands over it. Her lungs were on fire. Each breath she took was equal parts burning and relieving. On the rock were gashes, large chips missing, as if claws had pummeled it—which was probably exactly what had happened. That meant monsters were probably close by. But who cared? Monsters were always close by. They would grant her a quick, nearly painless death, she was sure of that. As for the men on the road she’d run away from…she couldn’t say the same thing.
But she knew she hadn’t seen the last of them.
Running had felt good, felt freeing, but they were heading back to Amsterdam Mall, and they meant to kill the people who’d given her and her idiot of a husband a second chance. Skylar wouldn’t let that happen. She would go to them. She would get there faster. And she would warn them.
Snapping branches from the way she had come.
Skylar momentarily froze. She wished she had the gun Florence had given her, wished she had anything to defend herself with, but she didn’t.
Then, in the distance, from the same way she’d come, voices.
“Think she’s over here.”
“No. She’s this way.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you.”
Skylar squatted in the shivering cold. Her feet pounded and pulsed with pain. Her lungs still burned.
Snapping branches again.
A low, guttural growling.
Shit.
She held her breath, listened to her heartbeat, felt it in her throat.
“Hear that?” one of the men called. “Over there?”
“Shit, let’s get out of here!”
Thank God. Saved by the monster.
That took one load off her mind. All she had to worry about now was the ‘that’.
Kurt felt stone-cold sober, and the realization of his wife’s disappearance, like his headache, was only just starting to hit him.
The two others came back. The man with the scarf was sweating despite the cold.
Kurt’s heart swelled with hope. They’d come back empty-handed. No Skylar.
Possibly that was a good thing. It meant they hadn’t harmed her. Meant she might get away.
Then again, did he give a shit?
Not really.
“Monster out there,” the scarred one said. “Close. We gotta go.”
The tall man who Kurt also thought, at some subconscious level, resembled the Grim Reaper nodded his head. He didn’t look worried.
Kurt couldn’t imagine how he himself looked.
Monster? That meant Skylar wasn’t going to make it after all…
But the worst thing was that he didn’t exactly feel bad about that. He felt kind of relieved.
Damn, I need a drink. Things were easier to process with a bottle of whiskey. He was no hero, he knew that. But he didn’t count himself as a villain, either. He was just himself, Kurt-fucking-Walton, trying to survive.
How many times had that dumb broad dragged him down? Too many.
Maybe it was a good thing she wasn’t going to make it. At least then she wouldn’t bother him about his drinking. At least then they both could have some peace.
The scarred man grabbed Kurt roughly around the neck, put him in a headlock, and dragged him forward, while the man in the scarf gathered their belongings.
Then they were heading ba
ck east, toward Amsterdam Mall.
Skylar prayed to God for her safety. He had never answered her prayers before, but that didn’t stop her from praying now.
On her knees, she clasped her hands together and closed her eyes. Her lips ran through every prayer she remembered from her childhood, Hail Marys and Now-I-Lay-Me-Down-to-Sleeps.
After what felt like a long, long time, the growling subsided, and she heard nothing but the wind and the smoldering fire a ways away toward the road.
For good measure, she stayed put, freezing, shivering, and crying silently.
17
On the Road
It took a while to find her bearings. She moved through the forest as silently as possible, the trees still reaching for her, snagging her hair and her clothing. She heard no sound.
Above, the sky was as dark as it could get, so dark that it almost seemed like it was not there at all, that she was looking out into the deepest depths of space. A sense of wrongness filled her, as it always did when she looked at the sky.
She moved in the direction she thought the road was. East.
Ten minutes of walking in the darkness, she found it. She came out of the forest away from the burned bodies, but she could still smell their charred flesh on the air. Grotesquely sweet.
A feeling of deep sickness filled her stomach. A ball of fire down there that didn’t belong. She broke out in a sweat as the wind blew coldly. She shivered.
You have to stop, Skylar, she thought. You’ll never make it. You’ve always been a failure. No reason to change now.
Except, there was a reason to change. For the first time in a long time, she found herself to be completely in control. No longer was Kurt Walton breathing down her neck, dictating her every move.
In front of her was the ruined husk of a car. She leaned against it. It was freezing cold. Slowly, she slid down the side of it until she was sitting on the equally cold asphalt.
Just a break. That’s all she needed. Just a moment to catch her breath.
She lightheaded and close to freezing.
No! a voice in her mind screamed. If you stop now, you will die. Mark my words, you will die.
She hugged herself. Her body was frail. Bones jutted from beneath her sweater, ribs, knobs. She was hungry. Always hungry. Even with the smell of the bodies in the air.
You’ll never eat again if you close your eyes. You’ll never feel warmth. You’ll never find happiness.
But her feet were bleeding. She was covered in scratches. Her head pounded with pain.
She couldn’t go on. Not yet.
But you have to, Sky. You have to.
This voice, of course, was right. She needed shelter. She needed to find a place with resources. Then she could rest up and cut off the Reaper, get to Amsterdam Mall before they did. Warn them. Hopefully.
Reaching, she grabbed the door, pulled herself up. Her feet were numb. She couldn’t feel them at all. It was an odd sensation. Her legs, however, were prickling with pins and needles.
Everything inside of her told her to quit, to take a seat, to curl up into a ball, to die.
But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
One foot in front of the other—that was all it took to get going.
So she did that, taking the road back the way they had come.
She heard many things in the darkness. Squelching noises. Low, grumbling growls. Chittering. Flapping wings. But she kept going.
What felt like hours later, but could’ve been just minutes, Skylar came upon a sporting goods store called Richie’s. She went in through the shattered front glass doors. The darkness inside was like a living thing. A breathing thing.
Fear tried to keep her from staying. She pushed it away, deep down inside, until the feeling was weak.
In the back room, guiding herself with her hands, she found a flashlight. She made sure to stay away from the broken windows.
Holding a hand over the flashlight beam, she scanned the place for anything of use. She found plenty.
Toward the back of the store was a collection of snow sports gear: jackets, heavy pants, boots. She settled on a dark, fuzzy North Face. The inside was lined with some kind of fur, too. She put it on over her sweater, then found a winter coat and slipped that on over the North Face. She put on gloves, a hat, and a new pair of boots. Putting on the boots proved difficult. Her feet, now that she had stopped moving, cried out in pain. First, she peeled her socks off and examined her wounds in the flashlight’s brightness. Gashes and cuts, embedded rocks, hanging, bloody toenails.
She moaned low in her throat. It was always worse once you realized how bad you were hurt.
She hobbled around, looking for a first aid kit, but found nothing. This wasn’t the store for that, she assumed.
In the coolers near the cash registers, she stumbled upon bottled water. She drank one whole, barely coming up for breath. Then with another Dasani, she poured it over her feet. The blood washed away pinkish. She blotted at the wounds with a Nike Football t-shirt.
Relief now. The cuts and gashes weren’t as bad without the blood. Still, they hurt. She put on three pairs of socks for cushion and support, then found a pair of boots a size larger than she would normally wear.
She dozed off in the back room, lying on broken down cardboard boxes. It was quite comfortable.
An hour passed, and she woke up sweating and hot. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck. Dried drool pooled at the corner of her mouth. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. She half-expected Kurt to be next to her, snoring drunkenly, with puke on his shirt.
He wasn’t. That was a relief.
She felt a lot better once the feeling of confusion passed. Even her feet weren’t burning as bad as they had been earlier. And the newfound warmth from the coats and socks gave way to a newfound energy and vigor. Cold had a way of zapping her of spirit—a thing hard enough to find with the way the world was now.
Outside, the sky was still dark. It would be for a long while. And when the sun came out through the heavy black and iron-colored clouds, it would only be for a short time. She thought of waiting for that short time. Maybe it would offer her more safety than the darkness.
Bull, she thought. This world isn’t safe. It hardly was before the Ravaging, and it certainly isn’t after…sunshine or not.
The faces of the Amsterdam Mall people floated into her mind: Avery, Ray, and Florence. How they had treated her better than Kurt ever did. How Kurt would get his revenge if she didn’t get a move on.
She’d needed the nap, though. There was no way she would’ve made it very far without it. She hadn’t slept long, anyway. When she slept too long, the nightmares plagued her mind.
She crept to the door leading outside, listened intently, and heard nothing. No birds. No crickets. Most importantly, no monsters.
It was time to move on.
18
Back in Amsterdam
“What do you think they’re doing?” May asked. “Do you think they’re okay?”
She was sitting on the edge of the big water fountain in the middle of the corridor that the sporting goods store was in. The sounds of bouncing basketballs echoed through the space.
“Logan Harper, okay?” Tyler snorted.
He reached a hand into the cold water of the fountain. The spraying features no longer worked—no use, running power to it—but the water had settled within the basin, stale and dirty looking. In the dim light coming from the emergency backups, coins shone beneath the surface.
People’s wishes, he supposed. Pennies and nickels and dimes. Even a few quarters. “Yeah, I bet Logan’s okay. I bet they’re all okay. They had a really nice thing going for them at the Falls, I think.”
“They did,” May agreed.
“We should’ve never left,” Tyler said.
May shook her head. “We left for a good reason. We left because you wanted closure.”
“Closure I didn’t get. Not really.”
May put her hand on Tyle
r’s, squeezed.
“I know, I know,” he said. “They’re gone. They’ve been gone for a while.”
She said nothing.
“Just you and me now, kid,” Tyler said.
He put on a fake smile. It didn’t feel wholly convincing on his face. No way May would buy it. But she didn’t say anything about it, so that was good.
They sat in silence for a long moment, listening to the thud-thud rhythm of the dribbling basketballs, hearing the others’ laughter. Even Florence laughed cheerily—something Tyler hadn’t really believed she was capable of.
“Tyler, you wanna play HORSE?” Ray asked. “May, you too?”
“Oh geez, I haven’t shot a basketball since, like, middle school,” May replied.
“That’s okay. You’ll still do better than Avery,” Ray said.
“Hey!” Avery called from the store. Florence’s laughter followed quickly.
Tyler looked at May. She shrugged; he shrugged.
“Sure,” Tyler said. “I’d like that.”
Smiling, May echoed, “Me, too.”
The first game, Ray beat them pretty handily. He made three backward shots in a row, and one came from all the way over in the women’s shoes section. He finished the game with H-O-R.
Everyone else was a HORSE.
“Start it up again, May,” Ray said bouncing the ball over to her.
She caught it with her good arm, still hesitant about using her other one, despite it being mostly healed.
“No backward shots!” she said.
Ray rolled his eyes and laughed.
“I’m not joking.”
“I’m with May,” Florence said. “It’s stupid how many of those you make.”
Taking the ball out of May’s hands, Ray dribbled through his legs a few times then turned around and tossed it over his head. The ball banked in from the middle of the backboard with a resounding clunk-swish.
Beneath: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 4) Page 9