He does look younger… a lot younger. It wasn’t until she felt a nervous flutter that she remembered something that had been lost twenty years earlier. She was attracted to Richard. Not since James had she looked at another man; especially not the way that she was looking at Richard now.
As she stared at him, fancying the curve of his shoulders, and peering in through the front of his open coveralls, another spray of ocean touched her, dressing her front in blotches of darkening grays. A chill ran through her, raising bumps up and down her arms. Shaking it off, she felt her nipples rise, along with a flush of embarrassment, and she was quick to bring her arms up to cover herself. Janice turned away, and mouthed a thank you to a pocket of heavy fog rolling in. A few hands more, and there would be enough gray between them to conceal her embarrassment.
“Now that wasn’t fair!” she exclaimed. “Not fair at all. I wasn’t paying attention.” Richard laughed again, kicking more of the water in her direction.
“What do you mean not fair,” he joked. “You can’t call not fair when you started it!” He was right. She raised her brow, realizing that this was her doing. The cold held the lift at the front of her breasts, but she didn’t care; she lowered her arms, running toward his voice, and kicked up the water. Laughing, Janice almost stumbled, catching herself before a breaking wave swept her legs. She was still laughing when she was up again, and kicking more, drenching Richard, until every part of his front had been soaked.
Janice slowed then, as Richard tried to hide from her playful advance, retreating into the fog. At once she stopped, and her smile faded. She had a revelation. She was starting to have feelings for Declan’s father.
But that can’t be, she told herself. Would twenty years hide what it was supposed to feel like? Guilt rushed into her heart, like the ocean cresting over her feet. Should she have feelings for him? Could she have feelings for him? Confusion teased her thoughts, and played with her emotions, kicking them back and forth, just like she and Richard had done moments before.
Is it okay to have feelings for this man? she wondered, and then fixed her eyes on him, as he suddenly rushed out of the gray. Trails of fog followed him, losing their grip on his body as he quickened his step. Then she saw that he wasn’t laughing anymore: his face was stricken with terror—his color pale and gray—masking the wispy fog chasing after him. The sight of him turned her newfound emotions into fear, and she instinctively stepped backward, away from the premise of danger, and away from him as he rushed toward her.
“There is someone out there,” he said hurriedly in a gruff whisper. He took her arm, and tried to lead her away from the ocean. “I think there are Outsiders coming this way. I heard five voices, maybe more. I can’t be sure though.” She held her place in the shallow water, afraid to move. His touch turned soft then, and encouraged her to follow. When she finally did move, he led her away from the ocean and to a steeper dune of black sand.
Janice nudged her face, nodding in Richard’s direction while he talked to her. An urge to pee was sudden, and her insides were heavy, like her feet, which had rooted into the beach’s thicker black sands. It had been a while since she’d heard any voices, other than their own; so when unfamiliar sounds found her ears, a jumble of nerves wrapped her in a blanket of angst, easing her reluctance to follow him.
The salty taste of congestion filled her mouth, and she could hear her lungs wheezing, while she tried to keep pace with Richard. As they ran in the sands, her feet were clumsy, and she tripped once, falling to her knees. When she tried to use Richard’s arm to get back to her feet, she almost pulled him down with her. He groaned against the strain, and lurched forward until her legs were underneath her again.
The voices became louder as they chatted back and forth. She listened to them jokingly berate one another, like her younger school kids liked to do; it was a rite of passage for all students. They jabbed witty comments at one another—back and forth—with no cares of being heard. She thought that they sounded too confident, and maybe even arrogant, and then she realized that, with their numbers, they deserved the boldness that she had heard.
The Outsiders closed the distance. Richard’s grip became stronger, until he dug his fingers into her arm, where she was sure that she’d later find a blossom of welts.
He’s strong, she thought, but not against a group. She was afraid for the both of them. What would the Outsiders do to them if they were found? Would they kill Richard without hesitation, but not her?
No, they’d wait, taking turns until they’re done with me. And there was no knowing how long that might be. When they’d finished, would they kill her? Terror and revulsion welled inside her, and suddenly she wasn’t sure if she was going to vomit or if her bladder would let go.
Outsiders had the advantage. They knew the fog; they worked the fog. Like the blind burrowing rodents from the deeper levels of the Commune, they survived on other instincts. They’d grown them, and perfected them, and they could survive without sight. Richard was digging before Janice understood what he wanted to do. Without a word, he showed her his plan: to dig, and then lie in the groove of the black sands. With a thick enough pocket of fog, the Outsiders might pass right by them; they would maybe even walk over them, without knowing that they were there.
Dropping to her knees, Janice drove her fingers into the moist sand, and scooped handful after handful. Pebbly grains stung the soft skin beneath her fingernails, like resentful salt-gnats biting for the sheer pleasure of it. Working together, they hurried, and had emptied an area big enough for the two of them to lie in and hide. With the sound of the breaking ocean, she wondered if they should have hidden there instead. But she couldn’t see the surf. The fog was thicker there, and if they hid in the ocean, then they would lose sight of the beach.
She felt herself being pulled. Richard wrapped his arm around her waist, dragging her closer to him. His height gave him a great advantage, and she admired the stretch of his arms as he covered both of their bodies with loose sand. She offered to help, shoveling in what she could, and peppering it over their gray coveralls, hoping that it would be enough to blend into the vast blackness of the beach.
Some of the fog is loose, she thought. A little heavier, and we’d nearly be hidden.
Huddled in the sand crevasse, they listened to the approaching voices over the breaking surf. Richard’s smell, and his warm breath touching her neck, caused an unexpected sensation: something physical, something carnal. She was quick to dismiss the abrupt feelings, but the effects lingered, and she found herself shifting her middle, embarrassed and unable to remain still. When she began to apologize, Richard placed a finger across her lips, and lifted his chin slowly, motioning to the patch of fog behind them.
There was silence. Janice didn’t know exactly when the chattering voices had stopped. With only beach sand under their feet, counting footsteps wasn’t possible. There was no listening for the occasional scuff of a toe against the heavy resin paint of a Commune’s morse-line; there was only silence, and it told her that their safety in hiding was a lie. The approaching Outsiders had heard something other than themselves, and now they were hunting.
The first hit came out of the fog in a blink, startling Janice, but not Richard. He’d never even seen the attack. The back of his head opened up against the fat end of a club, spraying blood onto the side of her face. The impact of the hit drove Richard’s face forward into hers, knocking her back, and crippling her vision with a flash of dizzying light. Reaching to hold onto Richard, she gripped his open collar, while gnarled and dirty hands saddled the back of him, pulling on him. When he shook his head, blood spilled down his face; relief came to Janice when she saw that the blow hadn’t killed him. He was still awake—dazed, but conscious. Richard turned to fend off their attackers, and then tried to get to his knees. His scalp bled profusely, washing into his eyes, and turning his coveralls dark red from his shoulders down to his chest. He screamed at their attackers, punching the air with the same profanity sh
e’d heard him use in the Commune’s courtyard.
When Janice pushed up to her knees, all of the air in her lungs disappeared, as the world suddenly seemed to land on her back. Her body was thrown into the black sands, and her insides were pressed until she thought she’d explode. As the pressure on top of her increased, she understood what a salt-gnat must feel like when being pinched to death between two fingers.
“Get off of her!” Richard screamed, and Janice saw a club swing from in front of him, and then connect with his middle. Richard fell over, and was shoved onto the sands, as more hands wrestled him down. When the air came back to her, and she coughed a haggard breath to replace the explosion in her lungs, she heard a deep, throaty voice. The owner of the voice lay on top of her, pressing his knee into the small of her back, causing her to cry out in pain. The voice had a hand and the hand wriggled beneath her, approaching what had stayed untouched for two decades.
“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this?” she heard in her ear. The voice sounded menacing and raspy, but it was vaguely familiar. “Maybe today, I’ll teach you something!”
Janice gasped when she recognized whose voice it was. Harold Belker had survived his exile from their Commune, a punishment for having killed Sammi Tate. It pained Janice to realize the level of evil in a boy whom she’d known for most of his life. He’d had no repentance for having killed Sammi, though, no remorse. Instead, he’d found the Outsiders, and had become one of them. Maybe he’d always been one of them; maybe he’d been an Outsider the entire time.
Janice tried to pull in more air, breathing in the salt and the sands, until she coughed out the pain of the attack. Janice’s fear quickly turned to anger as her strength returned, but Harold was strong, and he had her pinned with his knee to her back. When Harold removed his knee, she felt him press something else against her, and dread and vileness filled her, sickening her. She cried out, cursing him, and swinging her arms, clutching at handfuls of sand and air. When she tried to get up, she heard his heinous laugh, and he gripped her hair, driving her face into the damp, pebbly sands. The immense pressure forced sand into her eyes, nose and mouth while she struggled. But the struggling only made the attack worse, as the coarse sand peeled away the skin on her face. When the hand against her head relaxed, she lifted her head, gasping for air.
“What… what happened to you?” she asked, unable to think of something else to say. Harold only laughed as he groped her some more.
“I found my home,” he answered, and then pushed her face back into the sand. Her eyes remained above the edge of the crevasse that she and Richard had built, allowing her to see the beach ahead as more Outsiders approached. Her nose and mouth were covered, and her senses were limited to the sound of shuffling bodies, and the salty taste of blood on her tongue. She reeled up one more time, forcing every muscle, fighting until she felt her arms and legs give out. Harold pushed harder, shoving her down again—which was where she stayed, unable to breathe. Soon, her pulse slowed, and she welcomed the increasing distance between her and what was going on around her. The scene quieted; the approaching feet had all passed. She stared absently ahead, until their gray world invaded her eyes, stealing what little remained of her sight. When her senses were gone, and everything around her went black, Janice was grateful.
Blinded By Sight (Gray Series Book 3) Page 12