“Here?” Drake asked, while he peered cautiously outside.
Keel pulled the truck to a stop in front of a feed shop. Hay was everywhere. It littered the lot, the porch and the open entrance to one of the buildings. All three of us searched the grounds for any sign of life, and found nothing of note. No footprints, no tire tracks. Just the hay blowing through the breeze, and the structures staring back at us with dead and hollow eyes.
The engine died and Keel climbed out, leaving me alone on the bench seat beside Drake. “The only thing we’ll find here is a bunch of dirt,” I said.
“And straw. Need some straw?” Drake gestured at the dried hay as it skittered across the street, propelled by the invisible hand of the restless breeze. “Zip up. It’s getting cold outside.”
I exited after him, pulling my jacket closed and rubbing my hands together for warmth. I hadn’t brought gloves or a hat, and it was obvious as we stood on the side of the abandoned highway that the temperature wasn’t done dropping. It was just starting. Clouds as dark as brushed steel hovered above our heads, and for a moment I thought they’d frozen in place, unable to move from the weight they carried. If I had a stick as long as I stood tall, I could have reached up and ripped one of the clouds open at the belly to let out the contents it struggled to hold onto so desperately.
“Rain,” I thought out loud, blinking up at the sky.
“Maybe snow,” Drake said.
Keel grunted. “More like both.” He moved up behind me, and brushed against my hip as he reached into the cab of the truck.
Without another word, he handed over my pack that he’d retrieved from the back and slammed the passenger door shut. Then he left us standing there while he went inside the feed store to investigate. Something heavy and bulky weighed down the bag, and after sticking my hand inside, I felt the butt of my pistol. I removed it, checked the clip and then shoved it into the front of my waistband for easy grabbing if needed. After adjusting the straps on my pack, I motioned at the two smaller buildings.
“Let’s start over there,” I suggested.
“No problem,” Drake grumbled, looking over his shoulder once. Probably grateful to be moving in the direction opposite to Keel.
The air rushed between the buildings with an ear-piercing whistle as it moved through the knee-high weeds. It would have been a hauntingly beautiful sound if I wasn’t so cold. With my hands shoved into my pockets, my feet shuffled through the hard-packed dirt beside Drake, and I kept my eyes moving, never letting my gaze rest on one spot for too long. Because nothing and nowhere was truly safe.
When Drake’s boots hit the sagging front porch of the first building, I jumped. The sound was so out of place with everything else around us. Wood creaked beneath our feet as we took turns peering into the dusty windows. An odor of rotted walls floated out around us, but there was no sign of the dead inside. Or living flesh either.
“Can’t see much of anything,” he said.
“Nope.”
With a huff, he used his foot to shove the door open, and though the hinges protested loudly, the wooden plank swung inward without much effort.
“Wasn’t latched,” Drake said, looking over his shoulder at me.
Empty baskets of all sizes littered the damaged wooden floor. What looked like bolts of fabric hung haphazardly from one of the walls, and a broken cash register dangled over the edge of the wide counter by the door. The faintest hint of cinnamon hung around in the air, but I couldn’t place the source. The furthest corner was stained with streaks of black from water that had leaked in from the upper floor during however many rains that had invaded the building over the years it stood abandoned. Long before the outbreak.
“Looks like some sort of store. Or what used to be one.” I pushed a basket with my toe, and the side unraveled.
“Yeah, this place closed up shop long before we were on the streets,” Drake said. He slapped his hand against one of the fabric bolts, and the entire piece pulled away from the wall, falling to the floor with a dull thump that rang out through the room. The cloud of dust that followed chased us both outside.
“Why did you do that?” I asked between coughs. I jogged away from the porch, leaving him there fanning at his face. “I’ll be next door, trying not to disturb one hundred years of dirt,” I said sarcastically over my shoulder.
The last structure to inspect was two stories, with a newer roof than the others, but even older windows, most of which were busted or missing entirely. The front door was gone, torn clean out of the frame. I never did find it.
It’d be nice to say that looting the older buildings got easier over time, but that would be a lie. Every structure we set foot in held secrets, but the ones old enough to tell the tales of my great-grandparents were the ones that truly scared the shit out of me. For starters, I always expected the ceiling to give out and collapse on top of me, or a sinkhole to open up beneath my feet, but the most unnerving and unpredictable part was always the dead. There was no telling when they would appear, or if they would at all. And some were angry, angry souls.
So, when I was picking through the junk drawers of an old library cabinet upstairs and a hand squeezed my shoulder, I held my breath and waited for the cold wash of death to surround me. When it didn’t, I turned around to find Drake standing in the room, a confused expression on his stubbly face.
“You didn’t hear me calling you?” he asked.
“No,” I shook my head. “I thought maybe you were…never mind.”
He circled around me and peered into the drawer I’d been sifting through. “This place is dead. We won’t find any working batteries or seed packets here. I’m heading back to the truck.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, distracted. Something in the corner of the room had caught my eye.
“Suit yourself. Keel’s already sitting behind the wheel. Looking pissed. You know, the usual.”
After he left, for a minute I listened to him stomp his way down the old stairs, curse a few times and then his footsteps moved beneath me toward the entrance. It wasn’t until then that I crossed the room and stepped behind a large drafting table that had fallen over to the side and pushed several empty crates out of the way so that I could stand just a foot from the wall. With surprisingly calm fingers, I traced the arc-like patterns I saw there that decorated the partially hidden corner. The coloring had faded, but I knew what the stains were from. I’d made similar designs during battle myself. As my fingertips fell away from the curling wallpaper with images of Los Angeles and the bloody warehouse pushing to be remembered, my back was hit with a cold draft. It came as little surprise; I’d been waiting for it.
“That’s mine.”
I didn’t turn around. The cold wrapped around me as if someone had draped a frozen blanket over my shoulders, and still I didn’t look. I didn’t want to see.
The small voice was close when it spoke, just inches behind my right ear. A girl. A young girl. A pre-teen, maybe. She spoke with a lisp, but each word was said with care. Like she’d practiced saying them a million times. And with each word, the room darkened, as if the day had sped up and night was arriving.
“That’s where I died,” she whispered. The chill spread up my neck and then rushed down my arms, but still I would not look at her.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
The air pressure behind me switched to my right side. She was moving. “Ah, it was dreadful. Most unfortunate, Papa said. See, I stained Mama’s new walls…oh, he was so angry at me.”
I stiffened as a white hand reached out and dainty fingertips ringed with blue-tinted nails brushed the wall where one of the blood sprays had dried in a rainbow shape. That much blood up that high on the wall meant the girl must have been struck above the chest. The neck, most likely. It was arterial spray, not a finger cut, that had decorated the dark corner. When her hand fell away, the rest of her came into view. I risked a quick glance up her side. She stood just a few inches shorter than I did, her straight
blond hair let loose around her shoulders, and she was dressed in a long white gown that brushed the tops of her pale feet. The style was an old one. Generations older.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Whatever have you to be sorry for?” she asked, still looking at the wall in front of us. She sighed heavily. “It wasn’t your hand that took an ax to my throat, was it?”
That was why I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to see the injury, the gore. The way she died. I was tired of it. So I gulped and stared at the fine hand-stitching along the hem of her nightgown instead, refusing to look at the area that sported her death wound. I kept my gaze on her profile, because it wasn’t just her mouth that moved. Her neck did as well. Something bubbled there. Something oozed at the collar of her gown. It willed me to look, but still, I refused.
“Why are you still here?” I whispered to the ground. “Why show yourself?”
She backed away from the wall, but not with her feet; she floated like ghosts do in movies, and that was more terrifying than if she’d bent over backwards and crawled to me on all fours. It meant she truly wasn’t real.
“Because no one has heard my story,” she said. “And it’s an awfully good story, I think. Would you care to hear it?”
“But…why me? I’m no one special. I’m just a woman from California.” I shouldn’t be seeing dead people, I thought. And I sure as hell shouldn’t be talking to them.
From her angled profile, I could see that she smiled, showing off two crooked front teeth and a gap on the side where she’d lost one shortly before her death. A pretty child. She didn’t deserve to be stuck haunting the building where someone had killed her.
“There’s something around you. A sort of…” she paused to tap a finger on her chin, straining her deceased mind for the right words. “I’m afraid I don’t know how to explain it. Your color. It’s a friendly one. I feel drawn to you. Your soul…it calls to mine.”
“Okay,” I breathed.
My eyes darted up and down her slender form as she turned to fully face me, and the soft mouth with the crooked teeth faded away. There was nothing but a bloody mess from her collarbone up. Her face had all been hacked away with a heavy blade. Piece by piece. The floor rose up to meet me before I knew I was falling. It wasn’t my stomach - I’d seen worse. In fact, I’d done worse. The pull came from somewhere else. Someplace else. With a thud, I hit the floor hard enough to black out, and it took me to the past. Where a young girl waited desperately to tell her story to a stranger.
* * *
“Riley! Damn-it, wake up!”
Even after pulling her outside into what was left of the sunshine, her body just got colder and colder. Like she was on ice. Her lips had turned blue, and her breath shallow.
“What’s wrong with her?” Keel stood stiffly on the street, one hand constantly wiping at his gaping mouth, the other stuffed into his pocket. He was of no help.
“I don’t know! I just found her like this - she’s freezing,” Drake said.
“She breathing?” Keel had moved closer, but seemed intent on staying on the street.
Drake repositioned Riley’s body and then hovered above her. With his ear pressed to her chest, he could barely hear the beating of her heart, and her ribs moved up and down only slightly from her shallow breaths. They were short and weak, but she was still alive.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said, mostly to himself.
Keel turned and walked away, and for a brief moment, Drake thought the man was abandoning them. But just before he started the truck engine, he called over the hood. “I’ll warm up the cab. Pick her up and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Drake shoved an arm under her legs, ignoring the scrape of his knuckles on the ground, and lifted her upper body. Once in his arms, Riley’s head fell back and her eyes - those blank, dead eyes - fluttered, then blinked. He’d turned in a half circle, but stopped with a jerk as she blinked again.
“Riley?”
He felt her take a deep breath, then nearly dropped her when she lifted her head and spoke.
“Why are you carrying me?”
* * *
When the town, if it could be called that, vanished into the distance at our backs, and Keel turned the truck onto the narrow dirt road that would return us to the main highway, the haze that surrounded me began to fade away.
Drake had carried me all the way to the truck, though I’d protested loudly; kicked a time or two, even. But he insisted on it, and once I slid into the cab, he kept a hand on me while he pulled the passenger door shut with a slam. In a way, his hand felt more like a weight than a comfort. Even on the bumpy parts of the road, his hand stayed well in place. Instead of making me feel better, it made me feel trapped.
“So,” Keel said, with an awkward bounce of his fist off my knee, “You’re alive.”
“Uh, yeah, last time I checked.” I patted at my chest, and pulled my jacket down to cover my midriff, which had been lifted from the way Drake had carried me. I was cold, even with the truck heater on full blast. It smelled like burnt wiring and dusty window screens. Such a lovely scent.
“I passed out,” I murmured, slowly remembering bits and pieces of what happened.
“It was more than that,” Drake said. He looked at me as if he’d never seen me before. “You’re already getting your color back.”
“My color?”
“Yeah, you went all Smurfette on us,” Keel teased.
“What do you mean?”
Drake shot a warning glance at Keel, but it didn’t stop him from talking. “Drake found you on the ground, pulled you outside, and your face was all blue. Like…I don’t know…you’d died.”
Died. I put my hand to my neck. It wasn’t me that had died. “Oh. I must just be tired,” I lied.
Keel saw through my bullshit excuse but said nothing more, just propped his arm on the steering wheel and chewed on what looked like a plastic straw.
The girl had shown me everything. In fact, I wasn’t altogether sure if she’d taken me back through time into her past, or simply used my energy as a vessel to dump her memories into me. Either way, I still had her death - at the hands of her drunkenly irate father - clear in my mind. To be pinned in a corner and slashed to death like she was, chopped and hacked at until the blood stopped flowing, well…it wasn’t a memory I wanted to have, but I didn’t know how to shake it free. Once Drake had woken me, I couldn’t feel the girl anymore. It was as if she just…left. To whatever or wherever was next. She’d waited decades to share her story, and I happened to be the unlucky person who walked into her former home. Yay, me.
We’d been on the road long enough for my head to clear when my eyes focused on a wind-battered billboard off the side of the highway. Pine trees rose up in the distance on both sides - it was hard to miss - standing against the greenery.
“Wait,” I said. “Stop, please!”
“What? Why?” Keel slowed the truck, but the billboard was still coming up too fast.
“Now!”
The tires screeched as he pushed on the brakes and for the second time that day, I scrambled out the back of the truck window, Drake attempting to latch on to one of my legs, and failing.
“What in the hell is she doing?” I heard Keel ask Drake.
He mumbled an expletive under his breath. “I’ve a guess.”
After grabbing up my pack, I jumped onto the highway and retreated the few meters back to the billboard, which was angled in such a way that its torn white background would be viewable for miles. It took several jumps to grab onto the lowest rung of the ladder before I got a hold strong enough to dangle from. My arms, not used to the hoisting, protested at the effort of reaching up at the second rung, but I refused to let go. A handful of minutes later I was standing on the narrow ledge that ran from one side of the commercial display board to the other. Being careful to not lean backwards, I took the pack off and dug around inside it until my hands found the can of spray paint.
“I just need one minute,” I said, while giving the can a few good shakes.
I moved slowly and carefully from one side to the other and then back again for a second trip. A few times I was up on my toes, stretching as far as my arms would go. Once done, I dropped the can back into my bag and inched my way along the wet billboard to the ladder, being careful to not drag my hands along any of the rusted metal. My tetanus shot was long overdue.
“Are you shitting me?” Keel asked, staring up at the board with an expression of shock.
Smiling, I led the way back to the truck, where Drake still sat in the passenger seat with his head resting against the window.
“Are you crazy? You are, aren’t you?” Keel demanded, before allowing me to crawl into the cab.
“Probably.”
With a slow shake of his head, he glanced down the highway at the back of the billboard. “Riley,” he said carefully, “one day you’re going to trust the wrong person and get yourself killed.”
“But not today, right?” No, not today, I thought. I ran the words through my head again, hoping that saying them to myself would somehow help him find them later.
Connor, go north. I’m there. - R
If he was still alive and still searching, he’d be looking for my words. So how could I live with myself if I ventured away from the Ark to explore and didn’t leave him a clue every so often? Drake might have been right about the Dodge boys, but I’d once been on the streets too. And so had Connor. Kris. Skip. Jacks and Winchester. And we were good people.
The image of the father killing the girl in the old shop was still fresh in my mind and somehow kept coming forward as if to quell all hope of finding more people like my group. I wanted to talk to Drake about what she showed me - about the torture she endured at that man’s hands - I had to talk to someone. But not in front of Keel. If he heard me talking of dead people, he’d lock me in a closest the moment we got back to the Ark.
Find Me Series (Book 3): Finding Hope Page 8