by Tara Brown
The Last Hour
Book Two to The Seventh Day
A Novel by Tara Brown
Copyright 2017 Tara Brown
http://TaraBrown22.blogspot.com
eBook Edition
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Cover Art by Broken Arrow Book Covers
Edited by Andrea Burns
Other YA Books by Tara Brown
The Devil’s Roses
Cursed
Bane
Hyde
Witch
Death
Blackwater
Midnight Coven
Redeemers
Betrayers
The Royal Trilogy
A Royal Pain
A Royal Affair – coming soon
The Born Trilogy
Born
Born to Fight
Reborn
The Light Series
The Light of the World
The Four Horsemen
The End of Days
Imaginations
Imaginations
Duplicities
Reparations – coming soon
The Blood Trail Chronicles
Vengeance
Vanquished
Valiant – coming soon
Crimson Cove Mysteries
If At First
Second Nature
Third Time’s a Charm
Four Crimson Corners
Hang Five – coming soon
The Seventh Day
The Seventh Day
The Last hour
The Earth’s End – coming soon
First Kiss
Sunder
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
Chapter One
Day One
Liam
“The world didn't end in fire.
It didn't end in ice.
It didn't end at all.
It changed, becoming a faceless mess.
A horde of death and pestilence.
And mist.
I cannot forget the mist.
Taking everything.
Everything all at once.
But I didn't see it.
I ran before the mist hid me too.
I was alone.
I am alone.
I am forgotten, already before I am known.
My name is lost on the wind, gone before it was spoken.”
I pause and glance up at the circle.
“Brilliant, Liam. Brilliant poem. You really recreated that Robert Frost feel to it and made it your own.” Celia nods.
No one claps. We don't clap for each other. We praise in different ways. But making loud noises in this group is frowned upon. Sometimes it’s called a trigger and sometimes triggers go off.
“Did you write that this morning?” Meredith asks quietly. She does everything quietly, it’s annoying. Annoying because I sense her need to scream. It’s there, bubbling below the surface, roiling under her skin. She acts like she’s better than us, keeping so calm all the time. I hate it. I hate how smug she is in her ability to pretend she’s not one of us.
The silence is a lie but it’s also a truth, one she doesn't see. It tells the world just how crazy she is, though she thinks otherwise.
Most days I try to avoid my desperate need to make her scream, shattering that silence. Most days.
“Did you write it this morning?” Meredith repeats herself.
“I did.” I don't tell her about the dream it came from, the one that ripped me from my sleep. My mother, a person I vaguely recall and dislike recalling at best, was shrieking and telling me to run. She said something about the mist and then she was gone. I woke up, sweaty and gasping for air, with shaking hands and a rapidly beating heart. I remembered the dream perfectly. And the mist. And then I wrote the poem.
“Because of the mist?” Meredith asks.
“What? What mist?” I’m lost.
“The mist,” she whispers and giggles, being annoying.
“What mist?” My patience slips away. Her incomplete silence, even when speaking, pushes me to commit crimes, more crimes. New crimes and old ones.
She’s silent while making noise, it’s infuriating. She does it on purpose. Knowingly holding something back, teasing you with a bit of what she has to offer.
But I know the truth of her. I know that deep down, Meredith is just as crazy as we are. Just as loud. Though she’s a much better liar than I am and that pisses me off more.
“The mist.”
“What mist, Meredith?” I demand before peering out at the sunny Florida morning. Is it possible she knows about my dream?
“Okay, Liam. Meredith’s obviously confused. Let’s not start the morning this way,” Celia speaks quietly, showing us authority with her tone. I hate that more than Meredith.
“I’m not starting anything, Celia. She doesn't make sense. She never makes sense. She does this to mess with us all, to get us worked up. She’s a trigger on purpose to get us punished.” Her lack of sense has my hands balled up and words coming out with vibrations. How can she not see Meredith does this on purpose? Celia is one of the sheep who fall for Meredith’s simple act. She sees the weird quiet way Meredith has of speaking and existing and breathing and assumes it’s because Meredith doesn't want to be noticed. Except she does. That’s why she does it. People who don't want to be seen, aren’t. They move like a wild cat, they stalk and listen and wait. Meredith is fucking annoying, so loudly silent while pretending she doesn’t want to be noticed. And of course she ends up the center of attention. I hate her. I hate them both.
Meredith’s eyes nervously land on my fists but reveal her satisfaction in knowing it’s working. Again, she’s used her lies to work me up, something I swore I’d stop doing. The look she gives me, the satisfied one, makes me want to smash things so I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
I want to go outside today and Meredith isn’t worth solitary.
She isn’t even worth the vibrant display she might eventually create if provoked or attacked.
People like her always do.
They snap.
Sooner or later, they snap and it’s colorful and crazed because the silence was a lie, an act to get pity and be treated like an infant, coddled.
But we’re not infants, we’re a pack of wild animals. We’re unable to watch someone become colorful without all of us becoming that way.
And Lester cannot get colorful, not without someone dying. Of course, if I could guarantee Meredith would be the one to die, I might risk it . . .
“The mist was on the news. It’s on the news. Mist in other countries. Evil mist—” Meredith mutters, not meeting my eyes, provoking me further. She stares off to the side, as if she isn’t fully engaged in the conversation and she isn’t completely on her own. She’s here
and she’s not. She’s silent and yet she speaks. Her act is flawless, I have to give her that. So flawless I fall for it every time. I fall hard.
“WHAT MIST?” I snap and scream, sending a shock through us all. I lose it.
But fire-breathing dragons wake the animals in this cage.
It hits Lester first.
His fists are balls of steel and his face is crumpled like tinfoil when he screams, reminding me of an ape, a pasty ape. A disgusting bald ape.
“Liam!” Celia jumps up, blowing her whistle and pointing at me. “You shut it down.”
“I just want to know what goddamned mist she’s talking about! She never explains anything. She sits there with that daft look on her face, half drooling and half living and half knowing how to breathe! It’s like having a conversation with a coma patient whose eyes flutter every now and then for responses and you idiots eat it up! She’s doing it on purpose!” I’m lost in my own mist. It’s a red mist and Lester is there with me.
“SHUT IT DOWN!” Celia warns. I’ll be in solitary for the day if I can’t stop.
But I can’t.
If I had an ounce of self-control I wouldn't be here. I’m smart enough not to be here. I wouldn’t fall for Meredith. I wouldn’t let her work me up.
But I do. Because I’m weak and foolish.
“I hate her! I hate her stupid goddamned face—” I’m midway into the tantrum that will send Lester over the edge, the one that’ll guarantee he and I aren’t in group again together for a while, when Celia’s whistle cuts me off, but I keep screaming, “She never shuts up but she’s silent about it! Silent noise! And you all fall for the act! It’s fake!”
Guards enter but it’s too late. I’m gone. I’m frothing and screaming and throwing things at stupid Meredith. A chair hits her in the face, making her flinch and fall over, though she never stands up anyway, not all the way. She never fights back. She’s so feeble. I laugh as she cowers, refusing to let herself out of the cage she’s made of.
Even when my face hits the floor and a knee crushes my back as cuffs force my arms into positions they don't like to be in, I laugh at her. “I hate you, Meredith.” I spit blood onto the cold cement floor. “I hate you!”
Her eyes don't meet mine.
She’s pathetic.
She’s not my equal.
Except in this moment, this angry moment, it’s me that isn’t her equal. Meredith is winning. I just can’t see it yet.
My screams become sobs as my feet drag down the long white corridor.
I’m halfway to the cell when I realize Meredith has won again.
I have lost. Again.
Lights flash in sync, I swear, in sync with my sobbing.
The end of the journey involves slamming.
Slamming the door open and slamming me onto the bed as the cuffs come off and slamming a hand on the door to close it. All that noise should lead to an end.
But first I have to make my noise.
I rage.
I want her dead.
Then, in the silence of solitary, when I lose my rage and can’t scream any longer, the sounds eventually stop leaving my lips and I hate her even more. Only now I hate her and Celia together and I blame them for everything. And it’s my turn to be silent.
Pacing like a tiger in a cage, like the jaguar I once saw in its Plexiglas surround, I plot.
It starts violent. When I’m angry my imagination is weak, I’m weak. I make foolish mistakes and let things that are below me dictate how I act. Celia and Meredith are below me but I let them set me off.
As I calm, the answer is before me.
I can’t kill her, I won’t win that way. Despite my desperate urge to see what her blood would look like spread across a wall or a floor or the driveway. Or what kind of sound her head makes when smashed into bricks.
It will be a short-lived joy and I’ll be stuck wondering what it would’ve been like to see her lose it. And as much as I want to provoke her to the point of losing her mind, she has too much self-control and I’ll end up being the asshole.
No. I only need to strip away that self-control and show them, all of them, she’s a fucking liar.
She’s fake and she lies, and if I show them her real side, she won’t be able to hide the monster she is. They’ll see that I’m the one who’s been trying to protect them from her. That she’s the one who provokes us in group, on purpose. That she shouldn’t even be in group. She’s making us worse. She’s sick and provoking rage on purpose.
But how?
How to prove to them she’s the problem?
Meredith needs to be baptized in the bloodbath she wants to create.
She did it once before, that’s how she ended up here. That alone is how I know this is a pathetic act and is faked for their sakes. And mine.
She’s going to do it again. She just needs a little help remembering who she is.
I’ll help her.
Maybe I won’t hate her so much if she stops being pathetic.
But how?
The answer smacks me in the face.
A smug grin pastes itself across my chapped mouth as my plan begins to form.
Drugs.
I already know what drug to give her.
Last spring when she had a severe cough, they wouldn't give her cough medicine because it had hydrocodone in it. Celia said it would make her angry. We spent a month listening to the most annoying cough in the entire world. Well, they spent the month listening to it. I spent most of the time in solitary.
But how to get into the doc’s office? I need a distraction, and while Lester is my best bet at one, there’s a good chance he’ll be kept separate from me.
A sound disturbs my planning.
I turn toward the small window, hearing it a second time as I walk to the light. What I see through my squinted gaze doesn't make sense. I blink but it remains so I close my eyes and count backward from ten. I haven’t hallucinated in years and this isn’t the moment to start. Not when I have a firm plan to ruin Meredith.
My heart races, contemplating the madness that’s linked to seeing things that aren't there. Rage and psychotic tendencies are one branch of the crazy tree that is controllable. Hallucinations are another.
I barely recall the last time I imagined things that weren’t there. It was years ago, when I was on the drugs that were forced on me. And I haven’t taken anything like that in a long time, so if I’m seeing things, I’m in trouble.
This is something new.
I have never hallucinated drug free.
When I open my eyes, the scene is the same.
Red.
It’s red.
Blood sprays from the neck of a patient.
It’s Old Mike.
I’d recognize his holey sweater anywhere. His daughter gave it to him and he wears it every day.
He’s screaming and some lady I don't know moves like she’s biting him in the neck and maybe the arm.
When she pulls back, her face is red.
The grass and their clothes are red.
The air around them is red.
It’s red mist they’re struggling in, but Old Mike isn’t giving much of a fight. He’s old . . .
She wins and pins him against a post, biting down, sending more blood shooting into the air around them as she pulls back her face, screaming into the mist.
“Holy shit.” I blink once more, not trusting the things I’m seeing. I rub my eyes but it’s still there.
What if it isn’t me?
What if it’s really happening?
Someone else runs out onto the grass, tackling the woman.
Old Mike collapses, twitches, and lies motionless for a moment.
Butterflies and shivers attack my body as I step back from the window. “What the hell?” This is really happening.
Old Mike stays down. He’s dying, bleeding out on the grass as the random lady bites the nurse who tackled her.
The woman screams again, sending more shivers up my body. H
er screams are mad, truly mad. A sound I realized I hadn’t heard before this moment.
She rages and then she goes quiet.
Red-faced and covered in blood, she falls limp, facedown into the grass.
The nurse scrambles along the lawn to Old Mike, dragging her own bleeding arm. She’s screaming for help as she attempts to save Old Mike. Her hands are covered in blood, hers and his and maybe the biting lady’s, as she holds them down on his throat while blood gushes through her fingers.
I stand frozen, staring for a long time, I don’t know how long. I wait for someone to come but no one does. I wait for something to make sense. But nothing does.
At some point the nurse falls to the ground next to him. I don’t know if she got bit bad enough to bleed out too. I can’t see. She and Old Mike lie there next to the biter lady for so long, I swear it’s an eternity.
My mouth’s dry and my heart’s racing, and I’m not sure when I blinked last, but what happens next is something out of a science fiction movie, the kind we aren’t allowed to watch here.
Old Mike’s hands lift, twitching and shaking. He convulses, jerking to life and crawling up from the ground, backward like something from The Exorcist.
Despite being inside, locked up tight, separated from everyone else, I take another step back.
Old Mike stands next to where the nurse collapsed on the grass. He sways on his rickety old legs for a second before he freezes.
His head jerks to the left three times.
He walks in a slow circle, his body covered in blood.
He pauses, twitching like some of the palsy patients I’ve seen and then jerks his head to the right, also three times.
“Oh shit.” I can’t think or feel anything beyond the shivers. I’m freezing.
The cold breeze of the air conditioning blows down on me from the roof, creating the tiniest whistle. It adds tension, reminding me of the soundtrack from The Shining.
Old Mike pauses again, tilting his head as if waiting for someone to pour something in his ear. His head jerks—perhaps he’s heard something—and he’s off. I’ve never seen the old man run like that. I’ve never seen him move much at all, except when they try to take his sweater on washing day.