The Risen (Book 4): Courage

by Marie F. Crow

  Lawless follows the logic, standing to further add to the division and my heart sinks at what I may have caused.

  “His is the heaviest. He was upset when he came back. He might have not had the stand all the way down…” My voice dies as my mind runs out of steam to fuel the argument.

  “You really think they are brave enough to do that?” Chapel takes the dare to a different level. He isn’t accusing them of doing it. He is accusing them of being too scared to do it. It brings the argument to a different thought and yet a whole circle of closing it, too.

  “Nah. He’s right. Isn’t their style,” Rhett says as he pats Lawless as if to snap the other man out of the glare. Lawless doesn’t “awaken” though. His eyes have found the man he would place the bet on and that same man is staring back at him - Dolph.

  “Larance,” I whisper his name with hopes that a gentle approach will bring him back around. He tilts his head in my direction, acknowledging my voice, but he doesn’t look away from the other man. “It wasn’t him.” He gives me an eyebrow for my sentence and I hear the words come from me before I am aware I was going to say it. “I did it.”

  If I wanted his attention, I got it, his and the rest of the men. Marxx sighs with his hero attempt blown and Chapel smirks and coughs in hopes to cover the smile. Rhett and Lawless are not as amused.

  Rhett takes a step closer to me, towering over me, and the sun casts him in a sudden shadow as if it is too scared to watch. “What?” It’s one word Rhett says to me but it might as well have been a death threat in many languages. Chapel is already moving to me when Law places a fist on his chest to stop him. He is waiting like Rhett for me to explain.

  How much of the truth do you tell a man who may just kill you for it? How far are you willing to spare your soul if your body is in harm’s way?

  “It was an accident,” I start, rushing through every word I hold in my vocabulary that may save me. “I use to sit on it all the time and he would laugh at how I couldn’t reach the ground. I just wanted…” My lies stall as Rhett’s eyebrow rises.

  “ – that moment?” Lawless finishes for me and I pounce on the opening.

  “Yes. That moment.” I stare into a killer’s blue eyes and lose all value to my soul. “I just wanted that moment, Rhett.”

  Lawless’ fist melts like an ice sculpture on Chapel’s chest, flattening itself in slow motion before is slips away. He comes to me and wraps those arms around me and even Rhett has to look away from my imagined weakness.

  “Why didn’t you just say so?” Rhett asks me and I have to almost laugh with his question. Only half-hidden by Lawless can I look at Rhett and keep my composure.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Marxx says, once again trying to cover my recklessness. “It’s done and everything is fine. Can we get inside now?”

  “Shouldn’t we go over there?” Chapel asks, motioning with his head to the space across from us. The gap seems to have grown even further as we talked. “See if they need help or something?”

  “All out of patience and marshmallows,” Rhett says with his first steps away from us. “I’m going in.”

  “How about bullets? You out of those?” Chapel’s low voice crawls up my spine like fingernails. I shiver with it making Lawless pull me tighter to him.

  “Running a little low,” Rhett says. “Why?”

  It’s Marxx that answers him, not the preacher’s son. “We missed some.”

  I don’t know what is happening behind me. Whatever it is, it sets the men on edge. Lawless holds me like man drowning, pulling my head to his neck. He whispers into my hair, “I want you to go inside. Get to Aimes until someone comes for you. You don’t come back. No hero shit.”

  I stiffen to argue with him, but he pulls me tighter, letting me know he isn’t starting a debate. “Walk calmly in. Don’t run until you have to.” He pulls me from him with a sideways pushing motion. He doesn’t want me to see whatever is behind me that have them rattled. “Marxx, get her in.” Lawless is no longer whispering. His tone is harsh, sharp with his command.

  “I should be out here with you.” Marxx steps forward, his voice raw with the insult he feels has been given. I guess he feels over qualified for babysitting. Maybe he has forgotten the amount of trouble this baby can find for him.

  Lawless turns to the taller man, giving him the full weight of his brown eyes. For a moment, they remind me of another set. A set that was steel-grey and just as angry under the surface. “You should do what you’re told.” Lawless doesn’t yell. He doesn’t let his voice climb even one pitch with his command. The steadiness of it gives it all the volume it needs.

  For a moment, I think the two are going to argue, but Marxx nods with his jaw set. Taking me by the arm, he starts to pull me towards the door with his fingers taking out his anger on my skin.

  “You really think they are on just that side?” I ask him as he leads us away. I don’t have to look to see what has started this. Like a kid who never lets on to understand the word their parent’s are spelling instead of saying, I know from what Lawless is sending me running from.

  “I wasn’t asked to think,” Marxx tells me, still wounded from being sent away and his pride is making my arm pay for it.

  “If you were to think, if you were to stop pouting like a child and think, would you think they are on just one side?”

  His jaw slides side-to-side with his thoughts before he turns to me, “No. I don’t.”

  “Looks like we get to have some fun, too.” I smile at him. I smile letting it reach my eyes like a mischievous thought.

  He stares at me, half dragging me still with a face that is searching mine. “My job is to get you to Aimes; to keep you girls safe. Your job is not to be a pain in my ass.”

  “Now Marxx,” I smile again as he shoves me through a door into the school, “when have I ever been a pain in your ass?”

  He doesn’t have a chance to answer me. There is no charming come back to make me behave. He doesn’t because as he opens his mouth, the screaming starts. It’s a ripple effect of fears with one voice melding into more with each voice that joins the choir. It ranges in the highs of the females to the lows of males like sections of songs, but it is wordless melodies of what our days are now. We no longer need words to move us. Screaming seems to work just fine.

  “You’re not going to see Aimes, are you?” Marxx stares down at me with amusement and hesitation.

  “No,” I say to him and we both smile with it.

  The men have come to know me well. I’m not one to run and hide, praying for someone to come save me. I don’t expect for someone to take the bullet for me. I can light my own cigar and take it just fine on my own while bitching about it the whole time. I am more damned than I am damsel and I don’t cower in the corner from the big baddie or hide under the bed with my hand clamped over my mouth. Unless that big baddie is Rhett. Then all bets are off. Even Superman has his kryptonite.

  “You have a plan?” he asks as the seconds shave hours from time.

  I glance behind me and watch the monsters that stalk us now overtake the area outside. I watch as those who try to run trip and fall with their feet clumsy in their haste to get away only to be set upon by greedy hands and starving mouths. I see all those people who were just moments ago staring at us with hate running to the very men they placed that hate on with prayers of salvation. I stare as the only ones Karma has left me head once again into the danger and dare Death for the third time today.

  “Yeah,” I tell Marxx, “the same plan I always have. Stay alive.”

  “Solid plan, but I was thinking of something with a touch more details.” He is watching the start of a war outside with his mind racing for solutions. One man can start a war, but can only one end it?

  I stare out the window with him, so close to where we use to sit and have our morning chats. The landscape is something much worse now. “If you have any suggestions, you should hurry.” I prompt him into plotting.

  “They can’t shoo
t. They are running too low and there is too much risk of hitting someone - ”

  “ – Not that Rhett would care.”

  “ - Or your boy.”

  I ignore his tone and ask, “So? What is the plan?”

  “If we don’t take them from the other side, they will be overrun.” He leaves it as simple as that. Simple, as if I should be grasping the hidden threat he has seen. Staring at the massacre, I do.

  Following in his long stride, I slip into the leather vest they wear marking them as a group. The extra layers I wear of winter protection absorb some of the extra space left from the older man’s size. The leather still wears the previous owners scent like a denial of my right to wear it. For a flash of time, I can feel his corded arms around me like a ghostly hug, lending me the strength I will need to face what is waiting for us. His laughter once again floats behind the locked doors of my mind. He would not be surprised to find me back on the cement standing beside them. I have become either suicidal or stupid with illusions of grandeur. The wound left on my arm enflames letting me know it’s suicidal because my worn out body has no illusions at all of what I am.

  The screaming was muted behind the thick, grey walls. The safety glass constructed windows with its wire embedding dulled the colors of the murders. When Marxx opens the door, the safety blanket is stolen with savage brutality. Standing in the center of the chaos, there is nothing to soften what is happening all around me and my heart fights to stay the course. Its pattern is no longer the steady rhythm of a conqueror it had on the walk here. Now it is the pounding of a deserter. The sights, the sounds and the smells all add layer upon layer to the continued shocks to my confidence.

  The burning bodies cloud the closed courtyard with smoke and wisp-like ashes that dance with the snow like demons with angels. The smell of the roasting flesh pairs with the copper blood as if Death walks in the past and present among us. He causes this loop of time where hope fades and depression holds to our hearts, robbing us of any possible victory.

  “Helena!” Marxx’ voice pulls me forward as my mind tries to hold me back. I don’t need my mind for this. My body has learned long ago how to do this. We know what it takes to survive and as my blade finds the throat of the first glaring face, it’s nothing personal. It’s just them or us and today we are the good guys. Tomorrow, tomorrow we might all be dead.

  The blood bubbles across the gash of the Risen’s neck. Air that was trapped in his windpipe causes the blood to froth like thick coffee before it slides down his chest. Marxx finishes him when he drops to his knees with a quick kick to the head. It snaps the neck, leaving him a pile of useless limbs, but his eyes still watch us as we walk away.

  Marxx grabs me by the vest I have placed upon me, pulling me to him. “You want to wear this, then act like it. You follow my lead, no hero bullshit.” He has to shout over the screams of the dying and frightened. I nod, not trusting my tongue to obey me, but for it to say something that I might come to regret later. It does that sometimes.

  With a shove, he turns from me and together we fill in the space needed that the other leaves, mirroring as we reduce the numbers of the Risen to make our way to the center where the rest of G.R.I.T. stands. I know the moment Lawless spots us through the weaving crowd. With his fist dripping from the assault he just landed, he mouths a word that I don’t need to be near him to understand. That one syllable is easy to read on his lips even from this distance.

  When Marxx loses a path through, he says the same word. This time, I am near enough to understand. We have fought our way into the eye of the deadly storm. My body that was once exhausted now quickens with the effort to survive. Adrenaline touches every muscle, feeding it with a false vigor. For a period, it fed me with victory. As Marxx and I watch the circle we had cleared enfold us, I know it fed me lies.

  Marxx is spinning, desperately slashing at the ones closest, trying to keep space between them and us. My hand is trembling as I clutch my knife in front of me. The blood falls from it, sprinkling the ground around me with the shaking of it. I don’t look at the female inching towards me. She knows my body is giving out, something that hers will never do. She is waiting for it to happen with arms wide to block anyone else from taking me first. I don’t want to see my death coming for me and when I feel Marxx stumble against me as they overtake him, I know this is how my life will end.

  I don’t hear the screaming anymore. I don’t smell their deaths. There is nothing in this white noise of a moment. I have no fear. My heart holds nothing at all. I guess this is the peace people speak of when the last moments come for their loved ones.

  She is just a hand’s reach away now. Her steady eyes hold the same illusion of peace in them. She is no longer growling or threatening me. Like an executioner giving the condemned their time to prepare for the death that awaits them, she silently watches me.

  I look to where I know the men were. Chapel is gone. He is lost among the crowd of murderous forms that feast from their kills. Rhett is pulling Lawless back into the school. There is so much ground lost between us, making it impossible for them to reach us in time and Rhett knows it. Lawless is screaming for me as he struggles against Rhett’s arms, but the words don’t reach me. I watch Simon leading as many as he can to safety as he watches so many of his friends being destroyed, but his eyes flicker one last time to the two burning white sheets.

  One last time, I tell myself, just one last time.

  Exhaling the air from my lungs, I set my blade tightly in my hand. For Lilly, for Ashley, for Conroy, for those they took from me, just one last time I will fight. One last time before I let them take me, but if they want me, they are going to have to take me. I am going to make it very personal.

  CHAPTER 11

  With nothing left to lose, Marxx has drawn his gun and begins firing into the skulls of the ones on top of him. The rapid shots shatter the bones into dark sprays that drip down his face layering it like demonic tears. He is baptized by their blood, and like a sinner praying for salvation, he is saved. The woman who was so certain of my doom melts back to the savage her nature now claims. The deep growl starts in the back of her throat before erupting into a screaming snarl at me. Her eyes glow with the hate and hunger that guides them to find us.

  The sounds of Marxx’ firing propels her into rash action. I don’t challenge my body. I brace, letting her weight take me down. She rides the blade down so when we both slam against the concrete it is propelled under her chin by the impact. I shove it the rest of the way into her, past the solid structure of her upper jaw. The jawbone makes the sound of crunching as the blade is forced through. It reminds me of candied brittle being snapped and crumbling into pieces as she becomes a heavy weight with her second life ended.

  Marxx crawls to me as I roll her from me. My blade is wedged tight into the roof of her mouth making the last victory hers. “Leave it,” he says. He is panting as his hand reaches out to me. His shoulder has been torn open over the joint of his arm leaving it limp. His face is thick with blood, leaving me unsure if it belongs to him or what he has killed. “I’m not going to die on my back.” He holds his hand to me again, pleading with me without words.

  I stand first, testing my quivering legs before I help him up. His body is as exhausted as mine is as I pull him to me. He sways, going pale beside me with unfocused eyes. He was my hero once when I needed to be saved. He was my protector when I felt the world had turned against me.

  We survive because we are together, not because of you or me or anyone else alone, but because we take care of each other. The words echo inside me. Just one more time.

  “Marxx, you want to wear this?” I ask him, grasping the leather vest watching him try to focus on me as if I were a mirage in the heat. “You follow my lead. No hero bullshit.”

  He smirks, swaying against me. “Sweetheart, I’m all out of bullshit and running low on hero.” His voice is gruff with his normal gravel-like tone but now it also has the tone of defeat. Marxx has given up.

&
nbsp; “Not yet you’re not. Not yet…”

  We are the only two left standing in a sea of stalking shapes. The silence now seems louder than the screams with just the guttural growls and deep throat callings of what stands around us. Those that are not stalking towards us linger over the fallen bodies not willing to leave their meal. The dark clumps they pull from the fallen are fresh and warm, simmering with the steam that escapes the ruined body cavities and it is enough to sate their hunger. Now they watch like macabre dinner theater guests as their companions come for us.

  “Got a plan?” Marxx asks me with a growing smirk.

  I have to chuckle as we stand here with no hope and less answers. “Yeah, the same one I always have.”

  “Stay alive,” we say in union, our voices filled with more amusement than we should have at the situation.

  I shrug, wincing against the complaint of pain my shoulders scream with the movement. “Seems to be working so far.”

  Marxx hands me a small, serrated blade he keeps in a holster at his waist. “We’ll see,” he says to me. I take it giving him a smile as he places his last clip into his gun. “We’ll see,” he repeats again. We turn, ready to become either survivors or victims as Karma inhales a deep breath as she watches the show.

  We stand back-to-back, inching our way to the window tinted black by the sun’s rays that vibrates with blows from hidden fists. I know it is Lawless and Rhett screaming for us through the thick glass, willing us forward to them with their desperate commands. My mind’s eye can see them pleading with us to make it to them. I can see their anguish having to watch us like ancient roman gladiators battling against death. I can hear their phantom screams pleading with any deity that is still listening for our lives. Seeing the many that lay torn and spread into nothing more than warm meat around me, I’m not sure there are any left to pray to, much less any to reach down a divine hand to save us.