Apokalypsis Book Three

by Kate Morris

  He approached the brick and cement retaining wall and followed after the person, catching a glimpse as they rounded the corner at the end of the wall. This time, if it was Principal Pothead, he was getting it on video. He knew it was a dead-end that way, leading to a steel door that entered into a janitor’s maintenance room. He’d gone out that way before when he wanted to avoid being coerced into going to a party after workouts this last summer.

  Just as he was about to set up his video on his phone, Elijah froze. He could hear someone talking. Maybe an afternoon tryst. There were rumors that the principal was a player and cheated on his wife. Elijah didn’t particularly like him. He’d seen the man hitting on junior and senior girls. He was sort of a perv.

  “…no, I can’t get out of it,” a girl was saying. “No, Jamie, I gotta go. I just wanted to know what you…”

  The person she was speaking with must’ve interrupted her. He couldn’t hear the rebuttal, though. Perhaps the girl was on the phone.

  “What the hell, Jamie? No, of course I can’t. That would look even more suspicious now.”

  A ‘no’ that sounded more like a drawn out no-ewe with an ‘r’ on the end. That same odd pronunciation again.

  “Fine, dammit,” she swore angrily. “Yes, I understand. Yeah, I gotta go.”

  At this, Elijah dashed from the area and hid around the corner. As he suspected, Wren rounded the building and almost walked past him before hurrying away in a huff of anger that was obvious in the way that she carried herself.

  That was a strange conversation, and he found himself thinking about it during his workout. He jogged two miles with his headphones on while listening to what Alex called ‘’80s hair bands.’ It was better than the craptastic music on the radio nowadays. It was metal rap, regular rap, or chick music that seemed to be the current trends. Pass, pass more, and definite hard pass. He also worked on deadlifts, rowing, and bicep curls with the team trainer.

  By the end of the day, he was surprised to find himself anxious to see her again. He rushed to Chemistry class, but she wasn’t there. Most everyone else was, though. She was late. Their teacher, Mr. Sorenson began the lecture and instructed them to prepare for a lab. Just as some of the students rose to retrieve their supplies, Wren walked in. Most of the kids were preoccupied getting beakers and packages of powdered chemicals, but he had both eyes focused on her.

  “Late, Miss Foster?” Mr. Sorenson remarked with judgment.

  “What?” she asked as if unaware. Her cheeks were high with color, even though she still kept her head down and the ball cap lowered. “Oh, yeah. Whatever.”

  Her attitude was maybe even worse than when she’d confronted Principal Pothead. Mr. Sorenson looked miffed.

  “I don’t tolerate tardiness,” he came back at her.

  “Then take up your complaint with your principal,” she said and kept on walking.

  “Oh, I will, young lady,” he said. “And any more wise remarks like that, and you’ll find yourself in detention.”

  She smirked. She actually smirked and even snorted as if she found him funny or perhaps beneath her. She definitely had a defiant attitude.

  “Um, we’re doing a lab,” Elijah told her as she slammed herself down onto her stool next to him.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” she remarked in an acidic tone. “So, what are you waiting for? Go get the supplies.”

  “Ohhhhkay,” he returned, feeling pissed off. It was sort of funny when she ripped into the adults. It wasn’t so fun or humorous when it was directed at him. As he walked away, he muttered, “Let me just get that for you, princess.”

  When he returned to the lab table, Wren was staring openly at him with an expression of surprise. Then she realized it and quickly looked down. They managed to get through the experiment without any trouble, and the second it was over, she tried to bolt, as usual.

  “Hey,” he said, grabbing her sleeve. “Seven o’clock, remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember, Golden Boy,” she said and yanked her arm free with a deadly glare.

  He watched her leave the room, watched her glance over her shoulder at him once as she did so. It wasn’t the glare or the rudeness of her tone and comment that got him. It was those eyes. They were an unusual color, true. Like an aqua blue similar to the ocean near the shallow shoreline. They were the same color as the shallow ocean water near the beach. But there was something truly frightened in them when he’d grabbed her sleeve to stop her from running out so quickly. He hadn’t hurt her. He wasn’t stupid. He’d never hurt a girl, not one with such skinny arms. Of course, he could and would hurt her if he’d applied too much pressure. But he hadn’t. Why would she be so scared like that then?

  Run again or stay put? He felt indecisive about it. There was no right answer in this situation. They had to make it to safety. Those…things were out there, were more active at this late hour. They always seemed to get more rambunctious at night. He wished instead of worrying so much about his grades, about the game, about school, that he’d taken survivalist classes and had learned some valuable skills to use to help him make it through this. To help him keep them safe, too. He had to get them to safety. But where was safety now? There was no right answer, only decisions.

  Chapter Four

  “I really wish you would’ve told me about this, or at least asked before you agreed to it,” Uncle Jamie was complaining.

  “I told you earlier when I called you from school,” she reminded him. “I didn’t have a choice. I gotta go. He asked. I had to agree to it. Sorry, but that’s how combined assignments work. I can’t get out of it.” Plus, he was pushy. But she didn’t tell her uncle that part.

  “Just be careful,” he said.

  Wren sighed as she wiped Hope’s spaghetti sauce drenched chin. “I will. You know that. You don’t even need to say it.”

  “I do. That’s my job, remember? Keep you safe?”

  She smiled with appreciation and touched his forearm. “I know. Sorry. It’s just that he’s not a bad person. Just some high school kid. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.”

  “I need his name, address, everything,” he said.

  “Blood type, date of birth, social security number?” she joked.

  “Even better,” he joked. “No, just the basics. I can do the rest.”

  She rolled her eyes impatiently. “I gotta get going. Can you watch her? Lila’s going to be home by nine tonight.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “Teenage babysitter, toddler babysitter, can’t be that different, right?”

  “Not different at all, actually. Of course, I don’t need help on the potty.”

  “Not anymore,” he teased, to which she slapped his shoulder lightly.

  “Shush. She’ll be ready for bed by seven-thirty or so,” she said. “So, all you have to do is keep her alive for about an hour.”

  “Manageable,” he said with a wink. “Go on. And, Wren?”

  She turned to look at him from the kitchen sink where she was placing her plate to be washed later. He always did the dishes since she did all of the cooking. They had fallen into a comfortable routine years ago.

  “Yeah?”

  “Got protection?”

  “Ugh,” she groaned with irritation. “You know I do,” she answered and patted her hoodie. “It’s not like that. He’s a goody two-shoes popular boy.”

  “Ya’ never know,” he added as she grabbed her keys and left.

  Her head was getting sore from having her hair in a ponytail all day, so she pulled the hair tie and let her long locks swing free. Then Wren rubbed her scalp. She wasn’t a big fan of ball caps, but they served a purpose.

  Her car was an older model with no GPS system. It had one at some point, but Jamie always made sure to remove them completely if they had one when she got a new car. It was a Honda Accord, four-door, not exactly sexy, but it gave her a set of wheels to use. Better than being stuck riding a school bus.

  She followed the directions she looked up on the int
ernet she used at school in the library and wound her way back through town to the guy’s house, which was a huge two-story mansion that resembled an English stone manor and even had a turret and a neatly manicured and maintained yard. The homes in this area were set on slightly larger lots than most in-town homes, and his even had a short cement driveway coming off the right side onto the street. It sat on a stately, gentle crest and had a black wrought-iron fence surrounding it. The home was nestled among many other grand old homes in an established neighborhood. She’d passed a few houses getting to this one that had ‘historical home’ placards on their fences and front doors. She knew this road, had been down it a few times since moving to this town as it was close to the library where she liked spending her free time. Every town they moved to in America she always first scoped out the local library. This one had a truly beautiful library, an old building that looked like an antebellum mansion of red brick and white pillars that sat on the corner of the main road through town.

  She parked on the street out front like so many of the other cars in the neighborhood and got out, locking it with the remote.

  Then she pushed open the gate on the fancy old fence and shut it behind her. She looked around anxiously, feeling a little trapped in. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barked. Children’s laughter came from the west. They were probably playing outdoors.

  Wren walked up to the door, but as she reached out to knock on the solid wood, it opened.

  “Hey, Wren,” he greeted with a smile.

  Damn. She couldn’t actually remember his name. A habit had formed over the years, one in which she did not bother memorizing her classmates’ names.

  “Um, hey,” she offered instead of a formal or courteous greeting.

  “Come in,” he said. “Have you eaten?”

  “Yeah,” she answered.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said. “I’m just finishing up.”

  He strode down the hallway, and Wren wasn’t sure if she should remove her shoes or not. She left them on. She followed him instead. This was the first home of a classmate she’d been in. Any other time she’d had a partner to work on a project with at school, they were more than happy, relieved even, to let her take the reins and just do it for them. This guy was different. He wanted to be involved, which sucked for her.

  The house was grand, kind of dark inside with all the stained-glass transom windows and cherry paneling. It was beautiful. Uncle Jamie would’ve loved it if he could’ve seen it for himself. He enjoyed looking at historical homes.

  He led her to an eat-in kitchen with an original antique black and white tile floor that looked like real marble. The cabinets were tall and narrow and reached all the way to the ten-foot ceiling. There was even a sliding ladder so the cook could reach those tall shelves. He took his seat at the small dining table that looked as ancient as the house.

  “Gimme’ just a minute,” he said. “We’ll start in a sec. I had to get in an extra workout after practice.”

  “Sure,” she said, irritated she would have to wait.

  “Sit. Want something to drink? There’s plenty in the fridge.”

  “No, thanks,” she said as she glanced over her shoulder at the massive stainless-steel refrigerator. It was obviously not original to the home. There was an exit door to what looked like the backyard. There was another at her back. That wasn’t good. Including the one she came through, that was three doors. She chose to stand at the L-shaped peninsula so she could see the white swinging door from that angle.

  She watched out the back windows, which were leaded with beautiful designs, and looked for movement while the boy ate his food. Scarfed his food, more like. He ate like he hadn’t eaten for a week. He was inhaling a slab of steak and a baked potato. It looked like he’d eaten more than one steak by the size of the plate and debris on it. Good grief.

  “Sorry, just give me a minute,” he commented again and drank a big gulp of some kind of orange drink.

  “What’s in the cup? Tang?”

  “Tang? What’s that?”

  She shook her head. “Powdered drink mix.” It was popular in her former home, evidently not here in the states.

  “Oh, never heard of it,” he said. “Is that some trendy drink where you came from? California, I heard?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she lied.

  “Cool,” he said, finished his baked potato by stuffing the skin into his mouth. His table manners were unrefined. “Where at?”

  “Huh?” she asked, stunned by his disgusting behavior.

  “Where at in California are you from?”

  “Are you familiar with Modesto?”

  He shook his head.

  “Hm, well, that’s where we’re from,” she lied, having never been to that city. “Good old Modesto.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  He asked a lot of questions, and that made her nervous. “My uncle and I.”

  “Cool,” he said, using that word again. As he was about to ask her another question, she cut him off.

  “What are you drinking?” she repeated.

  “Oh, it’s protein water. Coconut water, electrolytes, vitamins, that kind of stuff. Tastes pretty nasty, though. Don’t let the color fool you.”

  “Why do you drink it if you don’t like it?” she asked, curious.

  “My coach has us drink it.”

  This she found really strange. “Do they have you on some type of diet? Hormones? Roids?”

  He chuckled and rose, towering over her as he took his plate to the sink.

  “No, none of that. Although, my brother does monitor my diet so that I’m not inhaling too many carbs,” he said, then grinned sheepishly. “I have kind of a sweet tooth addiction.”

  “Oh,” she acknowledged but still wanted to know more. “What are you some sort of mega athlete or something?”

  He looked down at her with surprise, which made Wren back up and glance around nervously.

  “I’m the quarterback,” he answered.

  “Oh,” she repeated, feeling stupid. “Football. Right.”

  So, this was the boy the girls were constantly gossiping and speculating about. Who he was dating, which girl he liked, how they could get him to like them instead. He was basically the entire female conversational loop in that lame school.

  “No big deal. You’re new. Doesn’t really matter anyway,” he said as if he were disappointed. “Football isn’t the only thing that defines me.”

  She shot a speculative glance his way, looking from his feet to his blonde head and back down again in a mere three seconds flat. It sure as hell looked like he was defined by football. His body did, at least. His arms were huge, his biceps the size of her head, or so they seemed. The vintage concert tee he wore was snug against his chest. His thighs were thick and muscular, too. She could tell, even through his slightly baggy jeans. She’d never been into jock types. Of course, she’d never been into any type. She wasn’t allowed. Relationships were a hard no.

  Wren cleared her voice, which sounded loud in the kitchen space. “Well, we’d better get to it. I have other stuff to do tonight.”

  “Oh, sorry,” he apologized. “Come this way. My room’s upstairs.”

  “Your room?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Um, yeah, that’s where all my work is,” he answered as he led her out of the kitchen and through the white swinging door, which led to a lovely dining room with historical burgundy wallpaper lining half the walls while the lower half was covered in cherry wainscoting that matched the rest of the house so far. She counted the steps to the next door. Sixteen. The dining room was about sixteen feet long or slightly more since her feet were small.

  Then they entered a more open area where a side entryway foyer was located after the living room, which seemed like a formal one with antique Victorian furniture.

  “You live here with your parents?” she asked, wanting to know how many people were in the house.

  “Nah, just my brother,” he answered as he went up the wi
nding, mahogany staircase. “He’s still at work.”

  The moldings and wainscoting on the stairwell were intricate and done with superior craftsmanship. She only noticed things like that because of Jamie. Hanging out with him had rubbed off on her.

  “This place is really…something,” she remarked, glad that there weren’t a bunch of other people in the house. Golden Boy she could handle. Five or six people could’ve been a potential problem.

  “Thanks. It was my parents’ place.”

  “Are they on vacation?”

  When they reached the upstairs, it opened up into a wide hallway about eight feet across where the paneling continued and the walls were covered with family portraits. She immediately spotted his father. Golden Boy looked just like him.

  “No,” he answered and opened a door to their right, the third one on the right. She memorized the layout as best as she could.

  “Can I use your restroom? Is there one on this floor?”

  “Sure, down on the left. Fourth door,” he said. “I’ll wait here in my room.”

  “Thanks,” she answered and left him to get a better scope of the place.

  She glanced over her shoulder and made sure he’d gone into his room, third door on the right. Then Wren did a room count. She located an office at the end of the hall on the right. The bathroom was across from it. Two closed doors revealed another bedroom that looked like it belonged to a younger brother. Where was he? Was Golden Boy a liar? Were his parents really not home?

  She closed the bathroom door and did a fast search of the cabinets. She didn’t need to use the facilities but flushed the toilet anyway to cover for her lie in case he was listening. The toilet had a pull chain and a tank that was mounted to the wall above the toilet. It looked original to the house. The sink was a pedestal style and also seemed original or a good reproduction. The window was stained-glass, so she couldn’t see outside. There were men’s toiletries on the sink: can of shaving cream, razors, deodorant but no signs of a woman.

  When Wren left the bathroom, she peeked to make sure he wasn’t there at his bedroom door looking for her. He wasn’t, so she crept forward down the hall and came to a dead-end where another brother’s bedroom was and another hallway that turned to the left after the bathroom. She went that way. There was a linen closet, a big one, a guest bedroom, presumably, a library room with more of those rolling ladders to reach books on high shelves, and what seemed like a master bedroom with a giant, four-poster bed. She crept into the room a few feet and looked around.