Deadrise (Book 4): Blood Reckoning

by Brandt, Siara

  He was still fine tuning his best move to achieve the fear that was so vital to his new image. He had something special planned. Something big. Something that would make the people whisper the name of Meng in awe.

  Chapter 5

  “You’re going back out there?” Parisa frowned and finished tying the end of her braid. “Do you have any idea where she is?” she asked as she dropped her arms to her sides.

  “I don’t even know where to begin to look.” Lathan admitted. An expression like sorrow flickered in his eyes for a moment. “I just know she’s out there. Somewhere.”

  “You’ve told Beck you’re going?” Parisa asked. “How did he take it?”

  “He knows he can’t stop me.”

  Still frowning, Parisa said in an undertone, “He would try, though. He doesn’t want to lose you. Especially now. He’s- ” She searched for the right words. “He’s struggling.”

  “I know that,” Lathan didn’t tell Parisa all that he knew. But he knew that eventually the truth might come out in spite of his silence. And then Parisa would look at Beck differently.

  “There’s something going on with him,” Parisa went on. “Something that worries me.”

  “I feel that way, too.” Lathan’s admission was followed by a sigh.

  “But you’ve talked to him?”

  Lathan shoved his long hair back from his face. It was a gesture of frustration, and more. “I have.”

  “And?” Parisa asked.

  “And he’s talking about ghosts.”

  “Ghosts,” she echoed with a frown. “Not hunters. After- everything, do you still think he’s the right person to be leading us?”

  “No,” Lathan answered her right off. “Things haven’t been right with him for a long time.”

  “There aren’t many of us who haven’t been scared enough to make the wrong choices,” she reminded him, maybe justifying a little on Beck’s behalf. That was just like Parisa. She always wanted to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. “Most of us have regrets. Things we can’t change. Things we have to live with. He’s been dealing with a lot. The same as all of us.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed. “But I don’t want to have to live with one more regret. I don’t want to have one more thing on my conscience.” He looked at her more closely. “How do you feel about trusting Beck blindly?”

  She shrugged, evading a direct answer, but finally admitted, “I have been questioning it.”

  “Sometimes when I see Beck’s- struggle,” Lathan went on. “I wonder how far he’ll go. I wonder where this group will end up because of it.”

  “These people need to follow someone,” she began. “Or everything will fall apart.”

  “Every one of these people has managed to survive for a long time,” he said. “Some of them were on their own long before they ended up here. There have to be other survivors out there, too. And some of them have to have found better ways of surviving. Deep down you know that’s true.”

  “Maybe some who are lucky,” she conceded.

  “There’s more than luck involved.” He stared more closely at her. “You saw how Beck was acting when he came back with the search party. The ones that actually made it back, that is. Something had changed with him. He avoided talking to anyone for two days. People were scared. No one knew what was going to happen and he didn’t do anything to reassure them. If that hasn’t shaken your faith in him and his ability to make the best decisions for the group- ”

  “What choice do they have but to keep following him? What choice do I have?” she asked. “I need to keep Sisha safe. Where else can I do that? Not out there. Not on my own.”

  He looked at her. Really looked at her. Deep golden sunlight was pouring into the room through the window behind her and Parisa stood bathed in the square of light. When she had first joined the group, she had been as cold and detached as anyone he had ever met. She had seemed completely devoid of any emotions at all. He didn’t know what had happened to her, but she had obviously closed herself off from her feelings as well as from the rest of the world. He suspected that she had suffered deep losses, like all of them had, though she never talked about them with anyone.

  She had remained in her shell for weeks, probably staying with the group only because she didn’t know where else to go. But a change had come over her after they’d found the baby. The mother was dead. From flesh hunters. And the baby was almost as bad off, too, from starvation, and so weak that it couldn’t even cry. That’s probably what had saved the baby’s life. Any way you looked at it, it was a miracle that the child had survived.

  After Parisa had taken over the responsibility of caring for the baby, some protective instinct had brought her back from her own numbed existence. That emotionless prison that she had been locked in cracked wide open and gave way to a depth of maternal nurturing that had brought about an amazing transformation. And when she was ready, she’d broken down and cried for days and let the whole story come out. To him. About her abusive marriage. And about her own child. The one she’d lost.

  She had let herself be vulnerable, finally finding the courage to let herself face what she couldn’t face before. Overwhelming depths of almost unbearable pain. And then the healing began. Lathan had found that along with the vulnerability, she had a steely strength, too, at her core. He admired her for that. She’d had to be tough, or she wouldn’t have lasted this long. Not in this world. And now that she had let the two sides of herself come together, she was a whole person. Maybe for the first time in her life. He was glad to see that. He had seen a lot of shattered lives. And it didn’t always end well.

  “You don’t feel like everything has already been destroyed?” she asked him in a ghost of a voice. “You’re still hoping?”

  He shook his head. “You’re just like I was. You’re afraid to hope. You’re afraid to let go because you might sink, because you think the darkness might be too deep. In the past we were just drifting away without oars,” he said low-voiced. “We were cowards. Afraid to love because we thought we’d lose everything all over again.”

  His jaw hardened with the flow of his thoughts. “In spite of all we’ve been through, there are still good things in the world. Don’t ever let anyone tell you any different. We can decide to be the good things. That’s what Addy taught me.”

  He was right. She had been afraid to hope. Cut off from human contact for a long time, she had been living a nightmare. She’d had no one to talk to, no one to care if she lived or died. A part of her didn’t want to feel anything. She didn’t want to reach deeper and feel the pain that seemed so unbearable that it would consume her. She knew the dark place he spoke of and she didn’t want to drown in it again. Parts of her had been so numb that sometimes she wondered if she wasn’t as dead as a hunter and only going through the motions of being alive. Her sister, Addy, had kept her dreams alive, but Addy was gone now.

  “Sometimes the past follows us into the present,” she said as she wiped at a stray tear. “Sometimes we can’t get away from it.” She knew that better than anyone. “Sometimes it keeps haunting us.”

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “But the truth is that we’ve had the keys to unlock the prison of the past all along. I didn’t have the courage to use them myself.” He pressed his palm against his chest for a moment. “Truth is, I chained myself only I didn’t know it.” His hand fell away and he looked down at the ground between his boots as he shook his head. “For a while I was so confused that I was in an emotional free fall. Like any fool, I fought her - I fought Addy. But she was there to catch me and to help free me.”

  “What’s that like?” Parisa asked in a voice barely above a whisper, a voice that still held a shadow of her tears.

  “It’s like- ” He thought hard for a few moments. “Throwing the weight of the world off your back.”

  “And you’re left with what?” she asked, vulnerability in her eyes now as she searched his face for an answer.

  “Something deeper
. Something better. More true. The time finally came when I knew, when I finally got it. I didn’t want to be what people told me I had to be. I wanted to be who I really was inside.” He kicked at a small pebble with the scuffed toe of one boot. “It isn’t always easy, but I’m working hard at this. Sometimes I want to say fuck it all and give in to the darkness again. But I won’t go back to the way things were. I can’t. Not anymore. Loving Addy changed me. Just like loving Sisha has changed you.”

  “How are you feeling now?” Gage asked over his shoulder.

  “A little better,” Addy answered him as she sat with her blanket draped loosely around her shoulders.

  She wasn't cold any more even though it was still raining. It had been raining all day and the monotonous drumming on the tin roof made her sleepy. She also heard the steady drip of rain from leaks in the roof. The barn was old and parts of the roof had collapsed so that they could see the grey, overcast sky in several places above them.

  They had hidden in the barn loft after they had run into some of Meng’s men in the darkness last night. They hadn’t been seen, but it was troubling to think that Meng’s men were so close, even now. They knew that although they had escaped once, there was a good chance they wouldn’t be so lucky a second time.

  “Rain doesn't have any effect at all on the hunters,” Gage said as he watched two of them staggering around outside below the open loft door. “They still come out of nowhere. They still wander around like lost souls.”

  “Maybe that's what they are,” Addy said after a prolonged yawn. “Maybe they're the ones who aren't saved. Maybe they're caught between this world and the next.”

  “Never thought of them that way.”

  “Are we safe here?” Addy asked.

  “I think so,” Gage answered. “At least for the night. We’ll make it safe.”

  Out in the darkness, a shallow mist hung over everything. The whole world seemed shrouded in mist that was the color of ashes.

  “Out of even these ashes,” Addy quoted softly under her breath. It was a line from a book she had read a long time ago. “I will build something better . . . ”

  Gage glanced at her over his shoulder again. “You’re remembering more?”

  “Just bits and pieces now and then,” she answered him.

  Gage finally turned around and asked her, “Are you hungry?”

  Surprisingly, Addy discovered that she was, in fact, starving. She nodded and went still again as the pain started all over again. Any kind of movement, she found, did that. Her body had been pushed to the limit and then beyond. But she was almost grateful for the pain. She knew it was a miracle that she felt anything at all.

  “I'll take that as a good sign,” Gage said. After a sigh, he added, “I wish I could offer you something better, but all we have are some oatmeal bars and-

  “Wait. I have a few packets of jam that I forgot about.” He dug deep into his pocket. “Forgot about these. They’re not much, but at least they’re nourishment. What do you like? Strawberry or grape?”

  “Strawberry. I don’t like grape.”

  “Strawberry it is,” he said, filing the information away for future reference as he tore one of the small packets open for her.

  “I still have a headache,” she said. “Shouldn’t they be gone by now?”

  “The headaches will eventually go away,” he told her. “The best thing you can do for now is to get some more rest. We're not out of the dark yet.”

  When she had finished eating, she closed her eyes, giving in to the drowsiness. Caught between wakefulness and sleep, somewhere at the very edge of her consciousness, she thought she heard voices again. They had to be careful, she reminded herself as she drifted off. There was no telling who was out there. She didn’t want to be re-captured by Meng’s men.

  In her dream, Addy heard the heavy iron door slamming shut again. It cut her off abruptly from the starlight and the flickering torch light outside. When her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, she looked around. The place reeked of unwashed bodies, a faint chemical smell and something else. Fear, she realized.

  She looked around at the shadows that shared her dark prison. She could barely see them and that alone inspired a greater sense of fear. None of the occupants of the confining prison said a word to her. Perhaps it was because none of them wanted to put their thoughts into words. Maybe they were too afraid. Maybe they were hurt, too.

  No one touched her or assaulted her in any way. The night dragged on with agonizing slowness and uncertainty. The next day passed in the same way. And the following night. There was no comfortable place to lie down, so Addy had endured lying on the hard, uneven ground once again, not knowing what to expect when daylight came again.

  She was leaning her head wearily against the fence wall when she smelled smoke. An explosion rocked her dark prison. She tried looking out through the cracks where slivers of light were filtering in.

  Something was happening outside. She heard people shouting. Dark forms moved past the fence, some of them within arm’s reach. She heard snarls. Flesh hunters, she realized.

  Along with the other people, she started crying out. “Let us out,” and “Help us.”

  They drew flesh hunters. But no one living came. She pounded impotently against the unyielding walls, crying out her frustration. Was Beck out there somewhere getting ready to rescue them? Was Lathan? They would help them if they knew they were trapped inside. So she kept yelling for help. She kept hoping.

  It was pandemonium out there. Shadows kept passing through the light outside. People were yelling and guns kept going off. Single shots. Automatic weapons. Explosions. People started screaming.

  Then the voices gave way to cries and weeping as the dream shifted. It was frustrating because she couldn’t do anything about what had happened. But the darkness came again and Gage assured her it was just the sound of the rain and she didn’t have anything to worry about. Gage loomed large in her thoughts now, a big part of her life. Always helping her survive. Always giving her a reason to go on. He was like her anchor. Whenever it all became too much, or the darkness threatened, he was there, right beside her, reassuring her and reminding her of all she had to live for.

  But when she came awake again, it was someone else she was thinking about.

  “Lathan,” she whispered silently as she listened to the endlessly-falling rain. “Where are you?”

  The darkness, however, yielded up no answers.

  “You’re awake now? Whoever you’re thinking about, are they alive or are they dead?”

  It was Gage’s voice asking the questions.

  There were a few moments of silence as Addy thought about Gage’s question and about her answer. And then she said, without looking at him, “I’m going to keep hoping that he’s alive.”

  Gage nodded slowly. Everyone had lost someone close to them. Everyone was haunted by those losses. Survival was a daily gamble in this world where the dead far outnumbered the living. Being a survivor meant being a minority.

  Addy turned her face and stared at Gage’s back in the dim light. He was standing in the loft doorway again, watching for them both, but he came to sit down beside her on the straw they had spread out for a bed. The rain had made beads on the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His hair was wet, too. He shoved the wet strands back from his face and looked at her sitting across from him.

  “Don’t worry about tomorrow,” he told her.

  “I won’t,” she replied in the darkness. “It doesn’t do any good to worry. I won’t let myself be afraid,” she said as if she had the ability to make that choice and had resigned herself to whatever lay ahead. What was forced bravado and what was simply resignation he had no way of knowing. But he already knew she had guts and an inner strength that had helped her survive this far.

  They had both seen enough to know that nothing was certain and that nothing, absolutely nothing, could be taken for granted. Life was a daily struggle for survival on the most basic level. F
or food, for shelter, for the basic necessities. They didn’t have time to think much beyond that.

  “You all right?” he asked, aware of something vulnerable in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

  “I’m just . . . tired.”

  “We all are,” he said with a sigh.

  The melancholy sound of the rain stirred something deep inside Addy. It reminded her of her mother. And her father. Both surely gone now. Or they would have found her. She thought of the farm where she had grown up. It reminded her of how fragile life could be, how precious. It brought back a flood of memories. A lifetime of them.

  The struggle for survival followed so closely on the heels of death that there was never enough time to grieve. She had not properly mourned loss of her mother or her father or any of her other family members. She realized now that she had not completely come to terms with any of it. She could not think about it because doing so caused such a deep sorrow inside her.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” she said quietly.

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

  But in her mind she did. She had shown weakness. Gage had been there for her. He had shown so much strength. She at least owed him strength in return.

  “Last night I- ” she began.

  Last night she had shed some tears that she hadn’t been able to keep inside. It had been unintentional. And completely unexpected.

  “You don’t have to apologize for that.”

  He saw that her hands were clenched into fists and that the delicate line of her jaw had tensed as she fought another breakdown. “We don’t have the luxury of falling apart,” she said in a haunted voice.

  “There’s no rule that says you have to be brave all the time,” he told her.

  She stared up at the sky beyond the barn roof and remembered when she had said something like that to Lathan.

  “Right now it’s not going to change anything if you do let yourself fall apart for a while,” she heard.