The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

The bullets stopped. I heard the clacking of guns falling to the ground. There were cries of horror and recognition.

  I knew this: once the soldiers realized that their friends and family were nothing but zombies, they’d be furious at the girl who brought them back, namely me. We only had a few minutes to rescue Ryan and get out before the guards came to their senses and wanted revenge.

  Wait a minute.

  I suddenly felt at least a hundred more corpses digging their way up from their graves and I wasn’t the one controlling them.

  Turner.

  I guess he was using the same tactic I had, and apparently he needed a lot more bodies to get the job done. I was relieved he was using corpses as opposed to having his men mow down the townspeople, but I knew I needed to keep an eye on those dead bodies just in case he decided to do anything drastic.

  I made the thirty corpses I controlled mob their way into the guards. The screaming and the crying weren’t stopping. I felt bad for putting these poor citizens of Havenville through that kind of torture. I knew what it felt like having a decrepit version of someone you love attack you. It happened to me, and now I was doing it to these innocent people. I knew I was just defending myself and trying to save Ryan, but it still felt evil.

  I followed my mob of corpses with the gang surrounding me like a circle of guards. Even Jill had a protective stance like she wouldn’t let anyone hurt me.

  As we entered the room with Ryan, Elisha’s men were hysterical. They completely abandoned their posts, despite Elisha screaming for them to attack. I watched in pleased shock as all of her soldiers shoved their way through the throng of zombies and ran out the door, eyes wide with terror. They’d never be the same again. I knew how they felt.

  Only Elisha stood between me and Ryan. Her face was scared, no false bravado. An army of dead people behind me, she better be scared. I could tell she was furious as well. “How dare you bring Beth to me,” Elisha seethed.

  “How dare you kill her! How dare you bury me alive! How dare you strap Ryan up to those machines! Bringing Beth back only makes you face what you did!” I screamed. I was tired of people telling me what I did wrong.

  Elisha was completely taken aback. “I didn’t kill Beth. Why would you think that?”

  “Oh gee, I don’t know, let me think on that one: because you’re a psycho!” I said and realized how hypocritical that sounded with Beth on my right and thirty rotting corpses behind me.

  Elisha’s eyes filled with tears. “Beth killed herself.”

  “Is that why her throat is raw from screaming? Yeah, right, sell it to someone else,” I said not believing Elisha’s act for one second.

  “Her throat is raw from crying. She was inconsolable. I left her alone, thinking she’d cry herself to sleep and be better by morning, but she drowned herself in the bathtub. You really are an evil thing, you know that?” Elisha wiped away tears.

  My friends shifted uncomfortably. I felt a giant weight fall on my shoulders. I couldn’t think about this right now. If Beth killed herself and I brought her back, by accident or not, it was cruel to flaunt her in Elisha’s face. As loathsome as I thought Elisha was, I just didn’t have it in me to be that mean.

  I made a decision then. It might the end of me, but my conscience wouldn’t let me do anything else. I made all the corpses, including Beth, leave the building, return to the graveyard, and dig their way back underground. I couldn’t be sure they were in the right graves, but at least the townspeople wouldn’t be forced to bury their dead a second time. I just couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something to fix what I’d just done. I’d have to do the same with the people Turner brought up as well, but I’d wait until he had the twins safely away.

  Now it was just Elisha, Ryan strapped to the machine, and the gang standing on both sides of me.

  “I’m sorry about Beth,” I said before I could stop myself. Why was I treating Elisha like a person?! She’s evil! I had to keep reminding myself. I can’t tell you how hard it is to stay in hatred-mode while facing a seven-year-old child with giant, tear-filled violet eyes.

  “You have me outnumbered, you can have your boyfriend back, but please, Chelsan, listen to me, you can’t let Turner take the boys,” Elisha pleaded.

  She was serious.

  “It’s too late for that. He’s already breaking them out,” I said and I wasn’t going to budge on this one. The twins were too dangerous for anyone but my grandfather to have. Like I said, he’d proved himself by keeping them under lock and key for the last two-hundred years.

  “Did you ever wonder why Turner didn’t just kill Samuel and John when he knows how dangerous their powers are? Why risk them being alive?” Elisha asked.

  Yes, of course I wondered that very thing, but I wasn’t going to let myself be manipulated by her. “Bill, Jason, get Ryan down from there,” I said, not bothering to answer her question.

  “Chelsan, listen to me: I wanted you to break me out of the I.Q. Farm because Turner was about to use the twins for his own gain. I had to get them out of there!” Her eyes were desperate for me to listen to her.

  I really hated this yo-yoing, Elisha and my grandparents were doing to me. They both made sense in their own ways and it was driving me crazy because I didn’t know which one to believe. Elisha was a sociopath, but my grandparents were too.

  Bill and Jason carefully unstrapped Ryan from all the tubing connected to his head and chest. He looked so pale and fragile as his body slumped into Bill’s like he was a rag doll. This is what Elisha was capable of.

  Elisha’s eyes were pleading. “Think about it, why would I let you take Ryan? Why wouldn’t I be with Roland protecting the boys if I didn’t think you’d listen to reason?”

  I shook my head. “Um, the first words out of your mouth after you saw Beth were to kill me in the hallway, so yeah, you’re full of crap.”

  Then I threw caution to the wind and ran over to Ryan’s unconscious body. I knew I shouldn’t keep my eyes off Elisha in case she tried to stage another attack, but I couldn’t stand to be away from him for one second longer. I was terrified he wouldn’t remember me, but a part of me would be fine with that as long as he was okay. I could see Bill’s face looking down at me with his fatherly glare, whispering wordlessly that I should let Ryan go for his own sake. I didn’t want to concede.

  “He won’t remember you, you know.” Elisha almost grinned when she said this, and that’s when I knew everything out of her mouth was a manipulation of the truth. She wanted to see me suffer and she wanted my power for herself. Elisha saw how I could control the twins and she was salivating for it.

  I entertained the thought of bringing Beth back to torture her, but I respected Beth too much to do that. She couldn’t help that she was related to a psychopath anymore than I could.

  Ryan was barely conscious. He had to use Bill and I as crutches to keep himself upright. I couldn’t bring myself to look into his eyes. I didn’t want to see the blankness I knew would be waiting for me. After everything that had happened, it just wasn’t something I was ready for.

  A voice sounded on Elisha’s intercom. It was Roland. “Elisha! Elisha! Come in! Turner is using the corpses to kill our soldiers! We need more men. Now!”

  Elisha’s face went pale, then she was out the back door and running before anyone could move to stop her.

  My mind went blank from dread.

  I had been so focused on blocking out Elisha’s words and freeing Ryan that I had lost track of the dead bodies Turner raised from their graves. I nearly choked from tears as I realized he had used the corpses to kill at least forty more people. Their swirling holes were screaming at me that I had let them be murdered. How could he? He promised! Then it hit me. His promise was that he wouldn’t use any of his men to kill villagers. In his twistedly warped mind, he had kept his promise. Technically, they had killed each other. He didn’t even need to use his men, he could just use the freshly killed guards and make them kill more guards. This was going to sto
p right now.

  I slammed myself into every single black hole in Turner’s vicinity and made every corpse stand still. Gramps couldn’t break through my powers. He was trying, I could feel it, but I was stronger. There was no way I was letting him kill another innocent person. Not when I could stop him.

  “Let’s get in the van,” I said weakly.

  It was taking all of my strength to keep Turner from gaining back control of the townsfolk.

  Jill took my place and supported Ryan, while Nancy in turn supported me. They could see I was about to drop and I was grateful they were there. As we stumbled out of the building, I took the circular device out of my pocket and pressed down. The hover-van immediately popped into view and we hurried inside.

  I collapsed on one of the chairs next to Ryan’s half-conscious body. I could feel Bill’s eyes on me, pleading for me to keep my distance from Ryan.

  To let him go.

  I wanted to spit on Bill, but I knew that was my own frustration coming out. He was doing what he thought was right, I just couldn’t see it that way yet.

  I wasn’t ready to lose Ryan. The thought of him not being in my life was too excruciating to bear.

  On the pilot’s intercom I could hear Turner’s voice, “We have the twins. Drop your passengers off at the girl’s house and report back to headquarters. Tell my granddaughter she can release her hold on the corpses, we’re at a safe distance.”

  I wanted to take a hammer to both the intercom and Turner’s stupid smug face. I should be happy he had the boys, but at what cost? He’d murdered innocent people! And what if Elisha was right and he planned on using Samuel and John for some dark deed. What if he planned on using them to slaughter millions? I made a vow to myself I wasn’t going to let that happen. I seemed to be the only one who could control them and I intended to keep it that way.

  I felt Roberta trying to push inside my brain, but I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She was probably going to give me some lame excuse about why Turner did what he did, but I was tired of the lies. I was tired of it all. I dropped my link to the corpses. I didn’t have the energy to put them back in their graves. I couldn’t even tell which ones were the older bodies and which ones were recently killed by Gramps. Our van was moving too fast anyway and before I knew it we were at the four-mile mark and my powers were useless. I lay my head on Ryan’s shoulder and tried to keep the tears reined in.

  Nancy and Jill were looking at me with such sympathy I had to shut my eyes. Don’t look at me like that! Like I just lost the love of my life. Like their hearts were aching for me and what I had to do. It made it too real. Ryan had lost me and he didn’t even know it. I just wanted to pretend for a little while that things were okay. That Ryan was Ryan and we’d be together forever. So, I kept my eyes closed and my head on his shoulder. He was asleep anyway, so I could pretend he was still mine.

  We were back at Nancy’s in no time and my heart dropped. This was it. When Ryan had a clean bill of health, he’d be gone. Back to his house and out of my life forever. I tried to choke back my tears, but I wasn’t fooling anyone. The driver barked for us to get out of the vehicle. Bill and Jason peeled my head away from Ryan’s shoulder, carrying him out and away from my frozen body. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to walk out to a future without Ryan.

  Nancy and Jill each took one of my arms and lifted me to my feet.

  “You don’t have to let him go, Chelsan,” Nancy said. There wasn’t much conviction to her tone. As much as she wanted me to be happy, even Nancy felt that it was selfish to keep Ryan a part of the gang when he could be free and safe.

  “Just get me inside,” I said quietly. I didn’t have the strength to say anything else.

  As soon as our feet hit the ground, the van shifted to its invisibility mode, and was gone.

  I barely heard anything that was going on as Nancy and Jill led me inside the house. George and Vianne introduced me to the doctor that Turner had sent over to make sure Ryan would be okay. All I could do was grunt a hello.

  Nancy and Jill ushered me upstairs with the doctor and the four of us arrived at my room, where Ryan was already lying down in bed. Jason gave me a small supportive smile. Bill couldn’t even look me in the eye. A part of me was so angry at Bill! He was the one who came up with the idea to set Ryan free! I wondered if the idea would have even occurred to me if Bill hadn’t brought it up. Probably not. I was kind of blind when it came to Ryan, and the thought of him not being in my life would never have entered my mind.

  The doctor checked Ryan thoroughly, then nodded to me when he was done.

  “Guys, I’d like to be alone with Ryan,” I said as I shrugged off Nancy and Jill’s support to sit on the edge of the bed next to his sleeping figure.

  No one argued. They all left without a word. There was nothing to say. What had to be done, had to be done.

  I watched him sleep. Maybe it was creepy, but I didn’t care. It was the last time I’d ever be this close to him and I was going to savor every second. An hour passed. I barely moved. His chest moved up and down in peaceful slumber. I was glad of that. He’d probably have nightmares for the rest of his life, but at least for the moment, he was calm and steady.

  My heart leapt in my throat as Ryan suddenly stirred. His eyes opened and immediately found mine.

  “Where am I?” he asked. And his eyes were empty of any recognition.

  I would have cried right then and there if I didn’t think it would upset him. “You’re a few houses down from your place. You hit your head so we brought you in here to rest,” I lied. I figured it would explain what would probably be the worst headache of his life with all the probing Elisha did.

  “Who are you?” Ryan asked kindly and it made my heart wring in misery.

  “Just a concerned neighbor. You should rest for a while before you go home. The doctor doesn’t want you to move around for a few hours.” I was finding it harder and harder to hold in my tears.

  The love of my life didn’t even know who I was.

  I didn’t know how to handle it, so I just sat there and tried to look as “normal” as possible. Like I wasn’t about to bawl like a baby in front of the neighbor that “hit his head.”

  Then his lips turned into a sly smile. “I can’t believe you were going to dump me.”

  What?

  I mean, what?

  Before I could speak or move Ryan pulled me in close and kissed me.

  I lost it.

  I literally lost it.

  Tears streamed down my face as I kissed Ryan with everything that I had.

  I pulled away to look at him, to see if this wasn’t a mirage or a figment of my imagination. But there he was with his silly little grin looking at me with his sparkling eyes.

  “You remember me?” I asked. (Or sort of choked from emotion.)

  Ryan smiled at me and pulled me in for another kiss. My toes and fingers tingled in response, and my head felt like it was going to implode with relief and happiness. Ryan’s memories weren’t wiped. I could hardly believe it.

  “No… freaking… seven-year-old… head case… could take away… my memories of you,” Ryan said through his kisses. I pulled away, grinning from ear to ear, his smile just as big. “I’m way smarter than her.”

  “I thought… I mean… I was ready to…” I kissed him again. “I never thought I’d be able to do this again.” And I kissed him again just in case he lost his memory suddenly.

  Ryan kissed me more passionately than ever. “Why would you send me away? You’re everything to me.” His face was hurt and wracked with pain.

  I didn’t know how to respond. It wasn’t as if I’d wanted to let him go. I just wanted him to be safe, and that meant me being out of his life. “You’re safer without me,” I mumbled quickly.

  Ryan reached up to touch my cheek. “I don’t care about being safe. I’d strap myself into the brain machine a hundred times over to be with you. Promise me, you’ll never even cons
ider leaving me, no matter what happens.” His eyes were pleading and determined.

  “I… I promise. I thought I was saving you,” I said.

  Ryan kissed me lightly on the lips and pulled away with a serious expression. “I know you felt like you were doing the right thing, but splitting us up is never an option. Okay?”

  I nodded and collapsed into his chest. I just wanted to stay cuddled up to him forever. His arms wrapped around me and I nearly giggled from contentment. Ryan kissed the top of my head and I felt his chest move, laughing himself.

  “What?” I asked and started to laugh, too.

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said, laughing even harder.

  It was officially contagious and the two of us couldn’t stop laughing. It was as if all the pain and torture we’d both gone through in the last couple of days all disappeared because we were together again. Like we had defied death and won.

  We both let the laughter die out as Ryan slowly sat up, rubbing his head. “Man, my head hurts.”

  I sat on my knees next to him and kissed his forehead. “We’ll get you something for the pain.”

  “Did I hear laughing?” Nancy entered the room with a half-worried, half-hopeful look on her face.

  I smiled at her and she could see the truth from my expression.

  “So brain boy outsmarted the seven-year-old.” And then she was racing over to Ryan and giving him a giant hug. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Nancy hug Ryan before, but apparently the relief of him being all right was incentive.

  “Speaking of which, you should bring in the gang. I’ve got a lot to tell,” Ryan said. “And by gang I mean just the good guys, no Turners.”

  “No worries about that, they went back to headquarters after they rescued the twins,” I informed him. None of us had talked about it, but the underlying feeling was leeriness and distrust. I was furious at the way the rescue went down.

  Maybe Ryan had some more insight. He certainly seemed to be chomping at the bit to tell us whatever it was he was going to tell us.

  Nancy picked up on this, too. She immediately walked to the door saying, “I’ll go get everyone.”