by Tyler Lahey
There was some yelling. Liam was hit on the shoulder. Jaxton was there, thumping on his chest. The numbness evaporated and his sense returned with renewed lucidity. “FALL BACK!” They rolled back through the fields as the lightning snapped a mile skyward, little figures with boiling blood.
…
By the time the group had made it back to the vehicles, they were whooping and jeering, breathless with victory. Liam looked around in disgust. It had been a turkey shoot. A quick head count from Jaxton revealed everyone was alive, and uninjured. They crowded around him in congratulations, thrilled at their own performance. He had won more than a few followers today. Jaxton moved among them, nodding and offering encouragement.
Why had they ever doubted at all? Look where he had led them! Last night the camp inside the high school had been stricken, their words and movements laced with fear. Today they had met their fears head on, and prevailed. Harley threw her arms around Jaxton, her pretty face flushed with triumph. Wilder clasped his arm in silent thanks, his eyes filled with pride. It was the same everywhere Liam looked.
“What did I tell you? We had them on the run from the start,” Jaxton rapped Liam on the chest, to the latter’s annoyance.
“We never found out who they were.”
Jaxton threw up his hands. “They were a threat, Liam.”
“Who fired the first shot?”
Jaxton shrugged. “They must have attacked. And one of our boys acted.”
Liam shook his head. “I was watching. We shot first. One of the advance party shot first.”
“It was me.” Bennett was smiling with a strange, easy confidence that Liam had never seen before. “One of those bitches made a move just inside the tree-line. I put her down.”
Wilder threw his arm over Bennett’s shoulder, whooping his approval.
Liam frowned, locking eyes with that icy gaze. “I didn’t see any movement.”
“Of course not! You were hiding in the grass!” Bennett laughed easily, and the rest joined in.
“And where the fuck is Terrence?”
No one knew the answer. Was he among them? He was not. Jaxton began looking frantically, calling out and demanding others do the same. The brute was no-where to be found; he was gone. It only took them thirty seconds to realize one of the ATV’s was missing, the fastest among them. Adira was alone at the high school. And that was when Jaxton began to panic.
Chapter Nine
The water churned and pitched in the muddy banks, hurtling down towards the pond. It didn’t take long. The rock and sandbag dam broke down slowly at first, with little sluices of brown water, and then all at once. Whatever fish they had meticulously brought from other ponds in town were washed away in the torrent.
Adira looked at the field from atop the roof. The little ditches were filled with water, drowning what little cold-weather vegetables they had been able to grow. Her slumped form stood alone, outlined against the grey sky. And it was getting colder. When would the hunters start bringing back deer?
She stuffed her numbing fingers into the pockets of a fleece she had taken from the pile. The rain that still fell was almost painful. She turned to lift the metal access hatch in the roof, when she heard one of the ATVs gunning up the slick driveway that rose steadily from the road. That was quick, she thought.
Descending the stairs, she blew out several candles that were still burning in the old cafeteria; their supply was running low. She cringed at the piles of muddy, wet clothing that sat in musty piles. Empty cans of food and liquor bottles littered her path.
Her boots clacked loudly on the tile floors, passing row after row of blue lockers. Someone coughed. Adira peered into an old classroom. There were several disheveled cots with soiled linens. One was occupied.
“Lily, are you sick?”
A pasty, exhausted girl sat upright on her lumpy futon. She hacked another round of violent coughs and looked up at Adira with her wide eyes, their pupils dilated.
“It’s my chest.” She tried a deep breath, but failed in another chorus of coughs. Adira heard the wheezing. Her breaths came short and ragged.
“Did you talk to those girls? The two from nursing school?”
Lily nodded drearily as the rain pattered away on the second-story windows. “They say we’re out of antibiotics.”
Adira kneeled down beside her, and felt her skin. It was hot to the touch. “How long have you been like this?”
“Two weeks, or so.”
Adira muttered her disapproval and scanned the room. There were trophies everywhere, expensive jewelry and various antiques cast aside with ambivalence, no longer seated in places of honor in the homes of their former masters.
“Does someone make sure you have enough food to eat?”
Lily shrugged. “Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. Most people try to stay as far away as possible. They don’t want to get sick.”
“We’re going to get this sorted out for you, ok?”
Lily smiled, her hazy eyes struggling to lock with the sultry set opposite her. “Did Jaxton lead them? To attack the Hill-people?”
Adira’s mouth became a white line. “He did.”
Lily nodded, approving. “I always see him, making sure things are ok. I’m glad he’s here. The others won’t care. Tell him I’m sick, will you? He will help. Will you tell him I’m sick?” She pleaded.
Adira exhaled, only now noticing the stench of sickness and sweat that pervaded the room. “Of course I will. As soon as he gets back.”
Adira rose. “I’ll check on you later, I saw someone driving up, they must already be back with good news.”
Adira heard more murmuring, but she couldn’t bear that sickly sweet stench any longer. She closed the door behind her.
Who was back so soon? Had Jaxton sent a messenger? She felt an unnatural anxiety building in her breast as she jogged down the two flights of echoing stairs.
Rounding the corner in the lobby, she ran into a towering figure, wet to the touch. “Jesus, I didn’t see you-“ She stopped short.
There was a greedy grin plastered on the face of that 6 foot 3 inch towering mass of flesh. Adria screamed, and Terrence gripped her slender arms with both hands. There were vicious red marks on his wrists, and he stank like a wet cur. She wanted to vomit, and she knew her fists were slamming into Terrence’s thick chest, to no avail. He cuffed her roughly across the face and she screamed in pain. In a flash of panic she drove her left knee up into his crotch, with a sickening crunch.
She found herself tearing down the halls as the howling echoed all around her. Her mind was a blur, a mess of terror that blocked coherent thoughts from entering her throbbing cortex. One word finally burst through that hazy nebula: gun.
Lily stumbled out of the door in front of her. Adira hissed at her, spittle flying everywhere, and pushed her back into the room. “Hide.”
Loud footsteps smacked on the tiles as her limbs pumped. Her rifle was upstairs, in the classroom she and Jaxton shared as a bedroom. She should have had it on her. Fuck.
“STOP!” Terrence roared. She shot a glance over her shoulder. He was a stone’s throw away. Adira slammed into the double doors blocking the cafeteria and remembered the shiny revolver Jaxton kept in his map room.
The door was open, and the room… totally dark. She was inside, and it was too late to flee. The daylight that filtered into the cafeteria through tiny vertical windows barely illuminated this tiny annex. She fumbled around in the dark, bumping into the table and beginning to shake with the undeniable realization of the dead-end she had entered. She ran her hands over the crinkly paper stretched across it, and shuddered.
A shadow blocked the doorway. “You’re trapped. Don’t fight it.”
“What the fuck do you want?” She hissed, ducking back into the darkness behind her. She prayed he couldn’t see her.
He sidestepped, and instantly became invisible. Adira trembled, already considering the answer to her question.
“Your little
lover had me humiliated in front of everyone.”
She couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from, and forced her shaking legs to move.
“He had my hands tied, and beat me like a dog in front of all you. Now I’m going to take you here, and then I’m going to kill him. And you’ll carry the shame forever. Come here, you bitch.” His voice carried raspily, a husky tone fraught with terrifying excitement. Adira felt her shirt pulled from behind till it ripped, and she wailed. Her flailing limbs struck the bottom of the table as a hot, sweaty form pushed down on top of her body. With a single stroke he snapped the button on her jeans. She felt like crying. She was crying. Her little arms deflected off his flushed face, as if she were a child. It was pitch black under that oaken table and her only sensation was of touch. Touch from massive, greedy hands and a stench from an unwashed structure of flesh. In her desperation, as he dragged her pants off her quaking legs, she punched him right in the nose. He howled in pain, and his over-sized fist crashed into her face. Her eyes were watering, she knew. She could barely breath from the blood that now ran down her face. It tasted like metal. She felt detached as the pain washed over her, infected her mind and made her want to die. This wasn’t reality. Where was Jaxton? He had to save her. No. He did not. He couldn’t see her like this. She had to save herself. She felt his hands on her thighs for the first time, and then something else. Cold metal. Her hands, reaching up, on cold metal. With a scream of righteous fury that pierced her own ear-drums, she yanked the heavy .357 magnum from its tape under the table. It came crashing down into Terrence’s eye socket. He screeched like a delirious harpy and reeled in terror. There. There, pushing through the wave of pain that had already overwhelmed her, was a joy, a joy so complete and captivating it shook her hands as she held the pistol out in front of her. She was delirious with it, and she screamed again, in primal ecstasy.
“Die, you fucking pig.”
The hammer snapped back and then forward on the heavy revolver, and the beast’s pasty face exploded in an orgy of fluid.
She collapsed on top of the corpse, too drained to move.
…
Terrence had broken their pact. That much was certain. What he planned to do now, Bennett was terrified of. The truck wouldn’t go any faster.
“What? What are you looking at? I fucking know.” Bennett spat, annoyed that Leeroy was still staring at him with those beady little eyes.
Bennett turned off the windshield wipers. The rusted truck strained up the gentle incline of wet asphalt, loaded down with four people in the bed.
Bennett felt his pulse racing. Had anyone seen him cut the bonds that bound the beast? They couldn’t have. The grass was too high; he had made sure of it.
The convoy peeled past the little white church with its black steeple that dominated the skyline from the high school. The grey storm clouds were lifting back, drawing up as a curtain and revealing a pale white sky above.
“This was not a good plan.” Leeroy mumbled, wiping away little drops of moisture from the glass.
Bennett fumed privately. “We made the mistake of trusting him, that’s all. It was a sound plan.”
“Where do you think he’s off to?”
Bennett met Leeroy’s beady eyes evenly. “We both know where he’s going. He’s not a person that takes humiliation lightly. We just have to get there before it’s too late.”
“We’re five minutes and 35 seconds behind him.” Leeroy bleated.
“Why the fuck do you know that?”
Leeroy stared out the window in response.
An eternity later, their truck screeched to a halt in a muddy puddle outside the Citadel. The others poured out of the flatbeds and off the off-road vehicles. Jaxton was already inside. Their footsteps sounded in a rhythmic clacking. People peeled off into classrooms, bolted up the stairs, crying out her name. Bennett was horrified for what he might have done to her, but also disgusted. Where was the outpouring of concern when the other girl died? The survivors idolized Adira, the brooding muse and partner of their leader. And Bennett hated it.
All the same, he didn’t know what he would do if she had been hurt. Every fiber of his being was drawn to her, and this failure would finish him. He was attempting to fathom the guilt he might feel when he saw them, standing in a hushed crowd around the door to the cafeteria annex.
“He tried to rape her. She shot him, thank god.” He heard.
He shouldered his way past, and peered inside, his heart thumping. It was dark inside. Wilder and Duke were still catching their breath, so furiously had they torn through the hallways with rifles at the ready. Liam held a torch aloft, so little fingers of whirling light gently touched the faces within. His hand lay on Harley’s shoulder, who kneeled in a slump. At the center of this frozen image was Jaxton, who held Adira’s broken body with a striking tenderness. Her face was swollen and bruised, with specks of sticky blood that plastered tendrils of her dark her to it. She was breathing, though. Bennett exhaled, not sure if he should be relieved.
A gunshot snapped. Then three more. Wilder held a smoking silver-colored pistol. The blood from Terrence’s corpse was pooling at his feet.
“Enough.” Jaxton commanded. He sounded exhausted. With infinite weariness he lifted the broken form in his arms and passed through the silent crowd. All present shook at the sight, so overwhelmed were they. Even Terrence’s brawny cronies held their heads low, in deep shame.
As Adira passed him her hand flopped out from the embrace, extended un-consciously. It brushed his arm. At this light touch Bennett turned on his heel and ran, as fast as he had ever run. He mounted a still-running ATV and tore down the main road of the abandoned town, where he could scream and no would hear him.
Chapter Ten
“We have to go look for him.”
Liam sighed, his stomach rumbling in complaint. He felt like sleeping, but he knew he couldn’t do it. She would never waste the day. He regarded her coolly, marveling at the changes time had wrought on her. Harley had shaved both sides of her head, so that her flowing auburn hair resembled some a rough mohawk. There was always a pistol strapped to her thigh, and he almost never saw her out of survivalist gear, except when they had sex, which they still did frequently. Liam found that it was never as enjoyable as before. Watching her sliding a knife into her belt, he realized he was intimated by her. But it drew him in, despite his attempts to fight it. She had him.
Liam stood, “Ok. Let’s go.” He snatched his shotgun from the cot in the dimly light classroom and waited.
“You don’t wanna check with Jax?”
He bristled. “Why would I?”
Harley nodded, and smiled. Her hand reached up to touch his face. Her eyes softened and she opened her mouth, as if to say something to him. His heart swelled and oddly, he felt himself urging her privately to say something he desperately wanted to hear. And when she hesitated, and instead turned to leave, he was crestfallen. He willed himself to ignore the hunger, the cold, and the anything that would try to harm them outside. He could give her more. He would be better for her.
Though he couldn’t be sure, Liam thought it had to be November. The trees were almost barren, and that delicious chill he had been drawn to so many nights prior was now a numbing frost. He saw the sun edging down towards the horizon. Was it truly so late in the year already?
Their ATV rattled along, struggling to run on a mixture of gasoline. No one was rationing it anymore. Jaxton barely came out of her room. Adira was healing, he knew, but it would take weeks before she would look the same. He sensed she would never, however, act the same. He had imagined if Harley had been in Adira’s place, and he had become intimately familiar with the anxiety that crowded his mind while doing so. Terrence was dead, but there was no triumph. No one did anything all day; they sat around in silence, or slept. The crops had died. The dam was broken, and the guards didn’t patrol the roof anymore. It was cold, and they were hungry. The infected wandered aimlessly in the parking lot of the school.
<
br /> Bennett had left the day prior, with a few men, to hunt. They had not been heard from since. The police had not shown up as promised, and a frigid week had passed. Liam suspected his departure was just as much to avoid the questions that followed.
For the past five days, Harley and Liam had searched for Elvis. They had taken extensive pains to avoid the trailer parks in the deeper woods, and instead prowled across little rivers and beds of dead leaves in the barren forest. Each search brought them closer to the field with the dead grass. There was no sign of him. Liam was concerned. Elvis had been his friend for a few years. But he did not share Harley’s zest for the search. Privately, he recognized that he was alarmed Harley cared so much.
They drove a little further west this time, edging up against the great western wall of the valley. The ridge rose suddenly hundreds of feet, a dark mass speckled with tiny abandoned houses.
“Maybe he took refuge in one of those houses.”
“Harley, I don’t thi-“ But she was already climbing, her boots sending tiny landslides of turf cascading down the hill behind her.
Liam clamped his mouth shut and moved his legs.
As they trekked, the sun began to slowly set, basking the valley behind him in a golden hue of late autumn.
“Where are the houses on this hill?”