Apokalypsis Book Three

by Kate Morris

  She was able to avoid Elijah during lunch, too, and sat in a corner away from the rest of the kids. She had no desire to see him, not ever again. As she was finishing her salad, the girl who’d run into her this morning approached her table.

  “Hey, bitch,” the girl called loudly, trying to draw attention, which instantly did.

  “This ought to be intelligent,” Wren said to herself and heard a few chuckles from tables nearby. Maybe this Skylar chick wasn’t as popular as she thought. Wren noticed she was flanked by girls she knew to be cheerleaders. She was probably one, too.

  “What do you mean by calling me an asshole this morning, bitch?” she asked as she marched around the table in her pink tracksuit to confront Wren.

  “What do you want?” she asked calmly.

  “You called me an asshole, bitch.”

  The girls in her posse issued ‘ooh’s.” Wren had been in many situations like this before being the new kid all the time. It usually happened on the first day. She was under strict orders to turn the other cheek. For the past four years, she had.

  “Gee, so sorry to have offended,” she said stiffly and with no real feeling.

  “You will be, you fucking weirdo,” the nasty girl promised and dumped the rest of Wren’s salad on her lap.

  Wren just pursed her lips, trying to hold back a grin, and nodded her head knowingly. Then she made the terrible mistake of looking up and catching movement off to her right across the cafeteria. Elijah was marching her way with a pissed off expression on his face. Was he mad that she was about to get into it with one his likely conquests? Skylar picked the wrong day and time to mess with her. Seeing Elijah only made her even angrier than she already was.

  Wren shot out of her seat.

  “Yeah, you wanna’ fight, bitch?” the girl encouraged.

  Skylar took two aggressive steps at her with both hands out as if she were going to pull her hair or choke her. Wren slapped her hands down, hooked onto one of them and flipped the girl over her back. She landed on the concrete floor. She hit hard, too. She let out a loud ‘oof!’ when she came to a stop. Wren didn’t care.

  Unfortunately, Skylar grabbed at her leg and tried to trip her as she stepped away. The girl was embarrassed. She was going to be a lot more soon enough.

  Wren hauled back and kicked the girl solidly in the ribs. She rolled away in pain but sprang to her feet. She charged Wren, who dodged her and gave her a push into the table, sending lunches flying. The girl spun and swung on her, which Wren expertly ducked. One of her friends screamed. Wren didn’t care. It felt good to take out a little of her anger at the world for a change. Skylar wasn’t about to stop, though. She was embarrassed in front of her friends and still thought she could win.

  The girl swung wildly at her, which she dodged again but grabbed the back of Skylar’s head and pulled it downward as she brought her right knee up connecting with her face.

  Training with Jamie for four years straight had made her this way. When she was fighting with him, she had been taught to do it as if her life depended on it. Moves were automatic, defensive or offensive. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have to think about what to do next. She didn’t feel panicky, either. Her hands were still and calm, not shaking at all. Sparring with Jamie made her tough.

  Skylar straightened and held her bloody nose. She charged forward again, so Wren dodged and ended it by sending the girl flying across a table through other kids’ lunches and covering her in food debris. It wasn’t like when she fought Jamie. He was like kicking at solid steel. Skylar doubled over and fell to her hands and knees. Wren shoved her over onto her side with the bottom of her boot. She was crying and holding her bloody nose.

  Wren had no sympathy for her. She had it coming. She’d seen the girl bullying other kids since she came to this shit school. She’d also heard all of the nasty comments the girl had made about her, too.

  “You crazy bitch!” one of Skylar’s friends screamed.

  Someone was stepping into the ring. Or, at least that’s what her words implied. Wren lunged toward her but was grabbed from behind in a bear hug. She knew somehow that it was Elijah by the sheer size and strength of his arms.

  “Enough, Wren,” he shouted above the melee as a lunch monitor came over. Kids were yelling and encouraging the fighting. It was like being in a Roman colosseum.

  “Take her to the principal’s office, Mr. Brannon,” the man said with an angry, judgmental scowl on his face.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered like the robot he was. “Come on.”

  She yanked free, grabbed her bag, and stormed out.

  “What the hell, Wren?” he asked her once they were out in the hall by themselves.

  She shot him a nasty glare and threw her arm toward the cafeteria door. “I don’t need an escort, Chosen One. Just go back to your throne. I know where I’m going.”

  Wren marched ahead, but he caught up.

  “Hey, stop, dammit,” he said and grabbed her upper arm, which she shirked free. She did stop, though.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  He reared back with surprise, “What was that all about? You beat the hell out of that girl.”

  “That girl? You mean, one of your many jersey chasers? Is your ego going to suffer with one out of commission for a few days?”

  He gave her a surprised and perplexed look. “What?”

  “Oh, please,” she derided. “You’ve probably banged half the chicks in this school.”

  “How the…” he started but stopped abruptly. “We’re not talking about me here. Why’d you do that?”

  “She pissed me off,” she admitted with a shrug and continued walking. “Keep that in mind the next time you lay hands on me.”

  “Half the time, I don’t know if I want to kiss you or never talk to you again. And I think you’re feeling the same way about me,” he said, then looked surprised that he had.

  She scoffed and shook her head, “You’ve got a very wild imagination, Golden Boy. I never, ever have wanted you to kiss me. I’d rather die, so stay away from me or you’re gonna get what your little girlfriend back there got.”

  “Just because you beat up a jersey chaser sure as hell doesn’t mean you could do the same to me.”

  She hit him with a raised eyebrow carrying with it a taunting message. He backed down but folded his arms across his broad chest.

  “Okay, maybe you could get close. But why do that?”

  “She’s an asshole. Like I already told her,” she said as if that made it okay.

  “What’s your problem?”

  She laughed at the irony of his statement. “Oh, that’s so…” She couldn’t even finish. Where to start? “Gee, didn’t you get my message? Or can you not read? I thought I made myself very clear. Just stay away from me, Golden Boy.”

  She rushed away for her disciplinary meeting with the creepy principal, who Elijah told her he called Principal Pothead. Principal Prick would make more sense.

  “He’s not in, young lady,” his secretary told her. “But I’ve already heard about your little fiasco in the lunchroom. You are making quite the reputation for yourself.”

  “Thanks. I aim to please,” she stated with sarcasm. “So, when’s he gonna be in, Phyllis?”

  “Just go to class, Miss Foster,” she said, giving Wren a hateful look. “You’ll have to meet with Principal Russo after school. He’s in meetings till then.”

  This piqued her interest, “About what?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What are the meetings about?”

  The lady with too much rouge and red lipstick and tall, teased, matching poofy red hair exclaimed, “Well, you’ve got some nerve. Go to class, young lady!”

  Wren rolled her eyes and left. Instead of going to class, she went outside to catch a breath of fresh air. Her phone rang a few minutes later. It was Jamie. She had to sell her scuffle with the Skylar chick as self-defense. He told her they were leaving at the end of next week, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Two weeks. They’d be out of here by November first. Good. She was glad.

  “Tacoma?”

  “Yes, or some small city in North Carolina. We’re not sure. Then you’ll return and start fall classes at Ohio State.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your request was approved. They said with a college and city the size of Columbus, you’ll have no trouble blending in. That is if you can stay out of fights till then.”

  “Sorry, it won’t happen again.”

  “Ice your knuckles, Wren,” he said. Then he joked, which was rare, “And probably your knees, knowing you.”

  He disconnected to her morose chuckle. Then her phone buzzed before she even got it put in her pocket.

  I skipped fifth. Meet me in the workout center.

  Apparently the English language is too difficult for you. Let me clarify what you clearly didn’t understand yesterday. Go to hell.

  I’m not asking. Get over here now.

  “Ass!” she swore. Wren decided to ignore his brutish demands. Elijah Brannon was not going to tell her what to do. Instead, she marched to the cafeteria kitchen and stole a baggie of ice. Then she went to class. She didn’t want to, but she also wasn’t going to let him think she skipped because of him.

  He wasn’t in Chemistry class, either, and neither was their teacher, so the sub- the wrestling coach, who knew absolutely nothing about Chemistry- let them go early. She walked to the principal’s office again to meet with him. Wren startled as Elijah appeared at her side talking.

  “Why didn’t you come to the gym?

  “Hm, let me think…” she asked rhetorically and flipped him off in slow motion. “Clear it up for you?”

  “Stop being so damn immature,” he ordered, angering her. “I need to talk to you.”

  “No, you really, really don’t. Now, I have somewhere to be.”

  “I’ll wait for you,” he said.

  Wren rolled her eyes and snorted. She sifted quickly into the crowded hallway around them and lost Elijah.

  She went into the principal’s office and was told to sit and wait for him, which she did, for thirty-four minutes. What a total dick.

  “Is he ever getting here? I mean, the school’s all gone but me.”

  “Oh, don’t be so high-falutin’, little missy.”

  She frowned. What the hell did that mean? Sometimes American slang made no sense.

  “Is he coming?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Phyllis answered. “Now, I have to go and pick up my granddaughter from daycare. You keep your little butt right there. He just messaged and said he’d be here in two minutes.”

  “Fine,” Wren relented.

  It took him ten not two more minutes, and by the time he came in, Wren was devoid of patience.

  “Let’s go, Wren Foster,” he ordered and ushered her into the hallway.

  “What? Where?”

  “The detention room,” he said and walked past her in a huff.

  “Why?” she asked and followed a bit more slowly.

  “Let’s go!” he barked. “Keep up. I’m not in the mood for your bullshit today.”

  She trudged after him but wondered why he wanted her to go to the detention room with him. Was she supposed to sit in there by herself with an empty school? Detention was probably over by now or nearly so. She wouldn’t stay. She’d just climb out a window and leave and call Jamie. She wasn’t ever supposed to be bothered with stuff like detentions.

  “I want you to get a good, long look at where you’re going to be spending a lot of your time.”

  “Fine, just tell me where to report tomorrow after school and I will,” she said. No, she wouldn’t. Jamie would get her out of it.

  He turned left down a darker hall with no windows. They passed her economics classroom and the chem lab. Then he turned right. She was trying to memorize the route. It was a big school, and she didn’t have it entirely committed to memory, which didn’t matter now because she was leaving it very soon. He made two more turns.

  “Seriously,” she said to his back. He was a tall man, probably around six-three and lean. He was balding and wore brown polyester slacks, always with the brown slacks. “Just give me the room number, and I’ll show up tomorrow for detention.”

  “Hold your tongue, Miss Foster!” he barked rudely.

  He opened a door to their right and stood aside until she entered. Once they were inside, he turned and swiped his key card through a slot. The light turned red. Had he just locked it? Wren immediately felt on edge.

  “Sit!” he ordered.

  Wren looked around. There were no desks. There was a single chair in the middle of the tiny room. It wasn’t the detention room at all. It couldn’t be. It looked more like an oversized janitorial closet or something. Or some sort of interrogation room. It was about the size of her kitchen in the trailer. There were cupboards to her right and shelves on the left. The walls were cement block, unfinished. The back of the room did not provide an exit, either. She turned back to him.

  “What are we doing in…”

  She received a sharp slap against her cheek. It instantly stunned her. Then she saw red from anger.

  “What the f…?”

  He slapped her again. This time she actually grabbed her stinging cheek and reared back as he leaned in. What was he thinking?

  “I knew you were going to be a pain in my dick,” he swore at her angrily, spittle hitting her face. He was sweaty. Had he really just left meetings? He looked like just came from a sauna. “You think you can come into my school and act like a fucking heathen just because of those papers?”

  Wren flinched, thinking he was going to hit her again. It was hard to see. He’d hit her hard enough to make her right eye water. Jamie would kill him for this. “I think I should go. You can call my uncle.”

  “Oh, your uncle. Right. Fuck your uncle,” he swore.

  “Principal Russo, I don’t want you to get into trouble,” she said, and he smiled. “This could severely affect your job, sir.”

  She was going to try and make him see reason. Wren ran through the threat assessment checklist in her head. He was being really weird. He’d struck her. They were in a small, dimly lit room at the back of the school somewhere and everyone other than kids playing sports was gone for the day. This situation was not an accident.

  “I don’t want you to get fired,” she said and rose her chin an inch to show him that she held all the cards.

  His hands moved from his hips to the buckle of his leather belt. He sniffed and swiped a hand over his sweaty brow.

  “Sir, this isn’t going to end well. You could lose your retirement.”

  “This isn’t going to end well for you, either,” he promised with a glint in his dark eyes and whipped off his belt. Was he going to beat her with it?

  Wren slid her hand to the butt of her pistol inside her hoodie. She’d had to call Jamie to have him take care of the principal when he’d thrown a fit over her carrying on school grounds. He knew she had the gun, and that was why in the next instant, he pounced with animal-like quickness on her. She drew it but wasn’t able to pull it all the way up before he was on her.

  “You little bitch,” he said and grappled with her until he had her wrists and the gun fell, skidding away.

  Wren tried to knee him in the crotch, but he was no amateur. He deflected. She pushed up through his arms and sliced down on his elbows. She tried to run past him. He grabbed her around the waist and slammed her into the door and flattened himself against her. It was hard to breathe. He meant it to be.

  She managed to flip and take a knee to his crotch. He deflected it again, wrapped her in a bear hug, to which she got a half-strength head butt against his forehead. Then he took them both to the deck. It knocked the wind out of her because he spun at the last second, letting his weight fall on her. Breathing became difficult, which made fighting him off even harder. He reared back onto his haunches and backhanded her. She reached up and clawed his face, even tried to gou
ge his eyes. That earned her a punch to the ribs. Now, she really couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t holding back. Nothing about this was normal.

  Wren didn’t have the strength to punch him again. She could barely draw a full breath. No matter. She used her legs as Jamie taught her how to get out of this very scenario.

  She kicked at his back, kneed him there, too, and hooked her calf around his. He shook her shoulders hard, slamming her head into the concrete, which effectively stunned her. He kept wrestling with her hands, trying to capture them.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she screamed in between gasps for breath as he tied her wrists with his leather belt. She brought her fists down on his head, and he backhanded her. “Are you crazy?”

  Wren struggled and fought in earnest to get her hands free and was disappointed that he’d managed to tie them so quickly. He was a lot stronger than he looked. It was like wrestling Uncle Jamie, only this man wanted to kill her and Uncle Jamie loved her.

  “My uncle is gonna kill you!” she yelled in his face and thrashed about under him. She spat blood at him.

  What he did next made her almost throw up. He squeezed both breasts painfully.

  “Are you fuckin’ crazy? Get off me!”

  Wren went wild with panic and began kicking and squirming. This wasn’t about school-sanctioned discipline anymore. It never was.

  He ignored the kicks, which were full strength, and pulled her arms above her head while straddling her and squeezing her breath out of her ribs his legs were so tight. Then she heard metal against metal and looked up. He’d latched his belt onto something, a chain or hook wound around a steel pipe coming out of the wall, a water or gas line by the upside-down looks of it. This spurred her to try harder.

  He had planned this. Why else would he have known that pipe was there and to fasten his belt to it with some sort of clamp or clasp or whatever it was? He took the time to set this up, plan it, orchestrate it. Wren had to get free.

  “If you hurt me, my uncle will kill you,” she warned again.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said as if that made sense.