by J. S. Carter
“To put it bluntly,” said Kyle, “Juno's not going to bring back whatever Knox is looking for, which means that we have to take care of this on our own before it gets us all killed—before it gets your people killed.”
I didn't understand. I didn't understand anything. What the hell was Juno? Why did Knox even exist and why the hell would either of them be looking for me? I let my pistol slowly fall to my side and I stared at the opening in the doorway. If I showed them I was there, they could have answered all my questions. They could have explained everything that had happened since the beginning. All I had to do was step into the next room.
Chris grabbed my hand. He looked just as confused as I did until he pointed down at a pair of doors built into the floor. We must have missed it earlier. He carefully opened it up and then pulled me underground, making sure to close the doors behind me this time. He quickly cleared the room and stopped in front of a large wooden barrel before turning around to look at me. “Is there something you wanna tell me?”
Like what?
I stabbed the air with my gun. “I have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.”
He shot a hand over my mouth and we both waited until we could hear muffled words from above us again.
I shoved him off and kept going. “I told you everything I knew before.” I barely mattered to myself. Why the hell would anyone spend their time looking for me? The only person that had even remotely paid any attention to me since Chris was...
Jeremy.
A piece suddenly clicked into place. When I had found Jeremy in the station at Arrino, he had been in a fortified cell. I had barely paid it a second thought, but what if it hadn't been for him? What if the cell had been constructed especially for someone else—something else?
Back at Camp Maxwell, the man that had died with claw marks all over his body had said my name. I had gotten the heart pendant from him, but what if it wasn't his? What if he had grabbed it from whatever had assaulted him before it could finish the job?
I grabbed a hold of the necklace around my neck. It wasn't mine. It hadn't been Ryan's to give. It didn't even belong to the dying man. It was hers, the monster that Knox had apparently sent out to look for me. She had been the one to attack the camp and she had been the reason that Chris and I had made it out of Arrino alive. She was looking for me. She wanted it back.
I tested the word underneath my breath, and I knew that even if I was wrong, it was closer than anything I had fooled myself into believing thus far. “Juno...”
“Tess...” Chris peered at me while footsteps moved towards the kitchen, followed by the sound of Rick's voice.
“It’s over here. I keep it in the wine cellar.”
Are you fucking kidding me?
We both scrambled to look for a hiding place as the doors above us opened. I saw Chris run into the corner and I squeezed behind a wine rack just as the first pairs of feet hit the ground. I could just barely see Ryan through the shelves as he hobbled into the center and spit.
“So this is how you plan on spending the end of the world, huh?” He picked up a bottle from in front of me and Rick swiped it back. If he had paid close enough attention, he might have noticed that one of them was actually the tip of my pistol aimed at his kidneys.
“The end of the world as you know it is completely subjective. When one ceases to exist, the next one begins.” He looked at the bottle for a moment before putting it back. “But it never hurts to get a good buzz going.”
“Trust me,” said Ryan. “No amount of booze is gonna save you when this thing is out there hunting us down. And when it’s tearing out your lungs right in front of you, you’re not gonna care if it's subjective. It’s gonna hurt.”
I tried to stand still and keep my breathing as quiet as possible. I was glad to hear Kyle move them along.
“Who cares? Where is this thing?”
“Over here,” said Rick. He led them to another part of the wall that was just out of sight.
“And you’re sure this is gonna work?” asked Kyle.
“No. You came to me, remember? But apart from an industrial strength explosive, this is probably your best shot. The distillation process can yield a highly flammable liquid with a low flash point. All you should need is a spark.”
“Great,” said Ryan. “So if the damn thing burns, we might actually have a shot at this.”
“Why wouldn’t it burn?”
“You would know if you met it.”
I held my breath as they dragged a pair of white buckets past me and back up out of the cellar. They were gone, but I didn't want to leave my hiding spot. If even a quarter of what I had pieced to together was true, then nothing good was waiting for me up on the surface. If Knox really was looking for me, regardless of who or what he had sent to do the job, I'd be better off staying still forever. I felt like I would rather hold up in that tiny cave underground and forget everything else even existed.
Chris shuffled out into the open and called for me, careful to keep his voiced hushed as to make sure we remained hidden.
I slowly squeezed myself back out from behind my shelter and stared at him. He held on to Zach's M4, the blue ribbon still tied around the butt stock. It meant more to me than I could have ever explained, and for some reason the sight of it made me realize how different we really were.
Chris had been right. He was a solider and I was a survivor, and the things that I would have to survive would only change with time. Up until that moment, I had been running away from my problems, but sooner or later they would catch up to me. Maybe that was the biggest difference between us. Where a solider like Chris faced his fears head on, I ran. I turned the other way to survive another day. How long could I possibly expect myself to keep that up?
He lifted a hand only to stop, seemingly unsure. He must have known at least part of what I was thinking. He had always been good at that. He remained at the ready while my posture proved anything otherwise.
I shook my head.
He already knew. He grabbed my hand and I tried to block back tears. “Tess...”
I was barely holding on by a thread. I knew my eyes would be red and it was obvious I was about to break.
He made sure to keep me his the whole time. “It's okay.”
That's when I lost it. That's when it all came undone. All the worries, all the hurt, the exhaustion, the anger, the training, all the fear—all of it out and into the open for him to see, to bear witness at how much of a coward I'd been trying my absolute best to hide. I fell into his arms and let the streams go. I couldn't keep it in any longer. I was terrified. I didn't want to go back up. I didn't want to face my fears. I didn't want to go.
He held on to me for a moment while the footsteps continued upstairs. It was more than I deserved. When they finally died down, he gently pushed me back by the shoulders and held on. “We can do this.” He wiped a tear from my cheek and I felt like such a goddamn child. “You can do this.”
I nodded and took a shaky breath, already putting on the familiar mask. He had no idea.
“Come on.”
We waited at the foot of the entrance and listened as intently as we could. It sounded like the front door above us had opened and closed, and we gave it a few extra seconds before risking it.
Chris gently swung the doors open and marched back up into the kitchen.
I wiped my face and followed close behind, bringing my pistol up at the ready. I couldn't hear anything, but that didn't mean everyone was gone. We split off. I tiptoed through the kitchen and towards the living room when a younger man stepped into the doorway and stopped dead in his tracks.
He stared at the gun in my hands and watched it shake while my finger hovered over the trigger. My eyes must have still been puffy. What could he have possibly thought of the sight—a sad, scared little girl pointing a gun at his face? He was young, probably just a little bit older than me and his short, trim hair fell just onto the top of his forehead. He must have just gotten it cut.
He had never said anything. I had no way of knowing there had been more people in the room.
Rick's voice peeped in from just the other side as we held the rigid poses, our muscles tense. “I'll be back as soon as I help them fix this mess. Try not to touch anything.” A few steps bounced in, followed by more silence. “Hey, are you listening?”
I stared at the boy in front of me. I could only guess what was going through his head.
He finally decided after another unbearable second. “Yeah.”
More footsteps followed by the front door closing, then the sound of a car starting and driving off from outside.
I peered into the pale eyes in front of me, my own thoughts almost blank. I wasn't ready. I started to lower my gun when the body in front of me was pulled back like a whip and thrown to the ground. I ran into the living room to see Chris knock a fist across the boy's face to keep him there.
He kept the M4 trained down on him. “Don't you dare fucking move or I will put you down. Do you understand me?”
I reached for Chris's hand, but he pushed me back violently. The boy tried standing up and protesting, his words muffled with a hand pressed against his bloody nose.
I watched Chris bring the gun forward and tense, about to shoot. I lunged in front of him with my arms up, shielding the about to be corpse from view. “Stop!”
“What the hell are you doing?” He tried to clear the rifle up over my shoulder, but I kept myself in his line of fire.
“Don't do it.”
“Tess!”
“You can't kill him!”
“If anyone finds out you're still here—”
“NO!”
An arm grabbed me from behind and brought my pistol up to the side of my head, immediately moving us back towards a wall. The kid screamed past my ear, his breathe hot on my neck. “DROP IT!”
I watched the muzzle of the assault rifle hover in front of my face as Chris crept closer.
“Let her go—”
“I don't know who you are—”
“And you're not going to! Now drop her the fuck down!”
I winced as the pistol barrel scraped itself across my scalp. I struggled to push him off, but he was stronger than he looked. He had covered my hand over the gun and kept my finger hovering over the trigger. I wouldn’t be able to stop him from shooting.
The gun suddenly broke free from my skin and was redirected towards Chris.
I needed to move.
I knocked the hand to the side and swung my head back as hard as I could, connecting with hard flesh before grabbing the base of his palm and bending it towards his forearm to force a sharp pop.
I freed the pistol from his limp fingers as he fell to his knees and grabbed a hold of his broken wrist. I pointed the firearm at him just as his head shot away from me in a flash of light, the back of his skull flying across the wall behind him. I looked back to see Chris with a waft of smoke slowly drifting off the muzzle of his gun.
My ears rang with the intensity of bricks being forced into my head over and over again. I somehow managed to look at the blue ribbon tied around the M4's stock and the innocence that it had meant to me, then onto the dead body in front of the wall. The kid's face had been deformed, but the entire back half was gone. I peeled my eyes off of the carnage and dropped my gun. The two didn't belong together. That wasn't what it was supposed to be used for.
He didn’t have to die.
All the training, all the time I had spent with Chris, everything—what the hell had it been for?
I felt sick. My head was spinning and it was like somebody had stuffed me inside of an oven. I saw Chris's lips move but no sound came out. I ran out through the front door and dropped down onto my knees a few meters into the field and threw up. I clenched my hands around dry roots until the world stopped shaking.
I barely had to move my head to see a small pair of bare feet stop and press down the dead blades of grass in front me. I slowly looked up to see a young woman with black orbs for eyes and sharp points for teeth that ground into each other as she smiled. The ringing quickly died down and it forced me to realize her short, quaint, childlike laughter was sending a chill through my soul.
“I found you.”
Juno
She smiled again and I noticed the scars around her lips. She had been gnawing on her own flesh, but I was sure the faded blood stains across her mouth didn’t belong to her. She was what nightmares were made of, a monster wrapped in the soft and pale clothing of a young girl’s skin. Her eyes were as dark and smooth as marble, forcing my blood to run cold as my reflection bounced back from their endless depths.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe I was so close to a monstrosity and I was still alive. There was no mistaking it. There was no doubt. It was Juno.
“Jessica…”
I flinched at the sound of my name as she lifted a claw like hand with elongated fingers.
“Where’s mother?”
I trembled and tried to gouge my brain for an answer. I didn’t understand. I had to steel myself to let the words out. “I-I don’t know.”
She furrowed the thin lines of her eyebrows and placed her nails against my chin, tilting my head up as I struggled to stay still. “Don’t lie. I can feel her.”
I slowly shook my head from side to side and I could feel the hard points of her fingers draw blood near my throat. I couldn’t remember the last time I had started to cry from utter fear. “I’m sorry...”
She cocked her head to the side, but stopped there as a single nail reached down underneath my shirt and pulled the necklace back up for her to see. I expected the killing blow to come at any moment, the rage, the hatred manifest itself on her face and then through her arm as a swing across my eyes. But she smiled. Her voice danced like a playful nursery rhyme. “I know what you are...”
I could hear Chris run outside, the metal ring of the strap clinking against the M4 as he brought it up again.
“Don’t you fucking touch her!”
I didn't dare move to see.
The monster in front of me merely scoffed at the threat and kept her focus solely on me, then down onto the silver trinket again. “This belongs to mother...”
Mother...
My thoughts fell back onto the woman I had felt each time I had slipped away and relived moments of her life. The necklace didn't belong to Juno, it belonged to her mother. It belonged to the witch. The words left my lips when they shouldn't have. “It's not yours...”
Juno scowled at me and threw her open hand down across my face faster than I could react.
I pulled back, but I wasn't quick enough to dodge the fine blurred points that pulled against my skin and separated my tissue from the rest of the world. I instantly fell back and pressed a palm against my cheek and over an eye. I could feel the warmth immediately seep over onto my fingers and down my chin as the underside continued to burn. I thought I had gone blind.
Chris yelled like an animal and opened up on her. I throw my head underneath my arms as a hail of bullets flew over me and into Juno's chest. She flung her arms forward in defense but quickly began to buckle underneath the onslaught, the sound of each impact ending in a hollow thud as hot slugs of metal cut into her body.
The percussive bombardment suddenly ended with a subtle click. My exasperation was only drowned out by a bloodcurdling scream that managed to shake glass, a sensation so piercing that it felt like someone had sharpened two knives together inside of my stomach
I took my hands off my ears and peered at the inhuman shape above me. She was torn and tattered, and I could see large indentations in her body where each bullet had pierced her flesh and came out the other side with gaping holes. I stared, mortified, as her flesh slowly began to mend itself back together.
Chris continued to yell for me. He pulled me up by the arm and dragged me back into the house while Juno slowly stood up from a kneel. He threw me to the floor and swung the front door forward just as she slammed into
it, almost knocking him over. I watched as he struggled to keep it from moving and his boots began to slip on the hardwood floor, the subtle realization hitting my mind. She was stronger than him.
“Tess!”
I scrambled up to help him as he started to yell from the exertion and pushed on, vein’s popping out from underneath his skin. After a quick burst of strength, he finally managed to close the door and flicked the deadbolt. We quickly backed away as Juno started to slam into the thin barrier from the other side, the paint and wood cracking at the points of impact. She stopped just as I thought it would break altogether, the lack of motion haunted by my broken nerves and heavy breathing.
I wiped the blood from eyes. “Where is she?”
My question was quickly answered when the delicate fixture exploded off the hinges into a dozen pieces and flew into my shoulder, knocking me off balance and making me skid towards the wall.
Chris rushed forward, not even making it a single step before Juno grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up off the floor in her cold vice. She moved faster and stronger than any human being ever could with words that were poised like a toxic bane.
“You’re pathetic.”
Chris desperately tried to pry her hand off and it was all he could do as she slowly squeezed the life out.
“Why do you even try?”
His face started to darken from the excursion. He wouldn't be able to last any longer. She would snap his neck and snuff the soul out in an instant. I could feel his existence teeter on the brink. I instantly grew cold, but I could feel the warmth radiate from his body. I could feel the energy swell up in his navel and become dwarfed by my own. I wouldn't let it happen. I wasn't going to let him die.
“Stop...”
Juno looked over at me and she felt it. I knew that she had felt it to. I stumbled up from the floor with my palm stretched out ahead of me, dust and debris gently rolling off my shoulders. She glared at me as the room began to shake.