We do though. We slip right past them with their bone-like fingers scratching along the blood-caked paint of my warhorse like limbs from a tree. Within only a few following steps they stop, tilting from their staggering like misused toys left discarded by unloving hands. Accepting their fate, their eyes close as they lose animation with bowing heads.
For some reason, I’m almost saddened to see the sight as it shrinks in the mirrors. We are all going to die. It’s now just become a waiting game to see who will die first. Though, how do you out-wait Death’s army?
Lawless throttles past us. His bike growls with our less than miraculous victory, but we celebrate it anyway. We watch as he passes us, still lowered and hugging the tank of the bike with his legs. His smile is spreading wider with the space he rapidly puts between us, and when his back tire slips on a well-disguised patch of ice, Aimes and I laugh once he recovers from his almost mistake. Karma is a very busy girl, but she is always watching.
CHAPTER 26
The deserted neighborhood is different from this angle. The once crisp paint declaring how perfect it was to live here is scarred by the seasons. The homes around us seem more depressing with the destruction so much more evident than of those on the backside we had first encountered. There are no black wooden-barred windows. None of the doors are Tetris styles of wooden layering. It looks as if this is where it all went wrong, rippling its way through the place like a stone thrown into a still pond.
Lawless weaves in and out of the debris scattered by past hands that I just roll over with the large tires. The homes range from every size but with cookie-cutter mock-ups. This was once a dream life of factory built ambitions. Even the colors of the homes are repeating chants of shades. This was the “American Dream” destroyed by American aspirations of longevity and our obsessions for perfection.
The silence is just as unsettling now as it was then. Only our tires disturb the peace of what has become a tomb. The sun watches it all just as uncaring as she was when it happened as she is now that we are discovering it.
The tree isn’t hard to find. The building plans of this neighborhood were once to set this piece of land apart as a meeting place for the happy families. Here they could interact on grassy stretches of picnic-perfection. What it serves now is such defilement to that idea it’s shaming.
I kill the engine of the truck, but neither Aimes nor I make any motion to leave the safety of it. The large windshield shows us it all again, and it’s as close as we wish to explore it. The children still hang from the branches as we discovered them like fruit for the crows and the dark clouds of buzzing flies. Their tiny toes are mostly bones, pointing down to the piles of parents around them. Their clothes hang heavily to them from the weight of the water they have accumulated from the melting frost making them look even more skeletal.
Crows call angrily down from the limbs of the tree to Lawless as he strolls along the paths of decay. Their bodies are rainbows with their black feathers reflecting the light their eyes devour. They watch him with tilting heads and half opened beaks as he wanders their playground, disguising any emotion from what he is seeing. Aimes and I are feeling plenty. We don’t bother to disguise it.
“Do you really think Rhett knew about this?” Aimes asks, grimacing as a heavy black bird lands on one of the hanging children’s head.
“He did seem surprised by it when we found April,” I say pulling back the film on the memory as I try to focus on Rhett’s reaction.
He was stunned like the rest of us, I’m sure. I remember his eyes following the trail of horrors as each sight dragged us deeper into the madness. Was he stunned to discover it or to see it? Did he finally have to put what were once only words to Kodak-colored boldness?
“He came to us last night. If he knew, he can’t be happy with what they have done?” I’m asking us both because alone, I can’t figure it out.
“Rhett is twisted, there is no point in trying to lie about that, but this,” she stalls as she searches for what could best embrace such cruelty, “this is just distorted savagery. Rhett would never agree to something like this?” It’s another question because we both can’t find the answers.
I watch as Lawless leisurely strolls along the piles of burnt and discarded bodies. He randomly kneels to inspect what has been left behind using fallen sticks to poke or move the offerings. With his eyes shielded behind his glasses, he is a mask of boredom as his head tilts this-way-or-that to better search for whatever it is he is trying to discover. It’s oddly disturbing to watch him so passive in the midst of such butchery. I find myself once again wondering how well do I really know the men I call family?
He stands under a cluster of children who appear to be staring at him as well. He reaches a hand up to a little boy’s hanging feet, spinning him slowly around. The sound of the rope is like that of breaking bones as it twists under Lawless’ command. He leans down under the boy to collect a forgotten baseball styled hat. After he fidgets with it some, Aimes and I frown at one another as he secures it on his bike.
“Is he taking a memento?” She squints as if her eyes will help her justify his actions. “What do you think he is going to do with that?”
“Fire the first shot.”
She is silent as we watch him. You don’t confront someone like Travis with words and empty threats. Words are Travis’ weapons. They are what he uses to defeat and conquer his enemies and forge the blind following he amasses beneath his feet. If you wish to wake sleeping dragons, it’s not words you use, but the one thing that even the best of beasts can’t run from. You use the truth.
He sits on his bike staring at the scenic view of Hell. His thoughts are still a hidden passage that only he knows, but his shoulders seem to sag from an invisible weight pressing against him. His hand crushes and releases the tiny hat like the heartbeat of its owner that has stopped. Whatever resolve he is plotting with finally spurs him into motion. His bike rolls slowly from this spot of defilement with paid respect to those who have suffered here. This is not a throttle-filled, throaty exit or tires skimming across the asphalt with quickened haste. We depart with our heads bowed and we leave behind another small part of our souls to keep the ghosts that haunt this place now comforted. One day, someone may be doing the same thing for us.
Silence is like a quilt on the bed of an old, well-loved relative. We wrap ourselves in it letting the familiar smell soothe the worries and fears that are plaguing us. We bury ourselves in its heavy weight from the fabric, letting it shield us from the coldness of the outside. You can’t buy quilts like the ones we grew up with and you can’t find silence as welcoming as we do now.
Aimes and I don’t spare a word as we travel behind Lawless with the tiny hat braced under his leg. It peers out as the world flies by unknowing to what it is about to become. The youthful coloring and broad embroidered script carries a message of childhood innocence. It’s easy to imagine the little boy whose head it once graced and in that imagery lays the hopes of Law’s plan. Does Rhett know the serpents he has decided to sleep with, or like Eve, is he just a toy being tempted to anger a bigger target? Are we really ready to find out?
The courtyard gates are open and waiting for our return. It’s the first sign that something has happened while we were away. The wooden gates are the last line of protection. Once the courtyard is overrun, there is no way to escape. Leaving it open like this is pretty much a white flag to the world or a middle finger tempting Fate with your boldness. Neither is something I would recommend. Karma and Fate are two very twisted twins.
Marxx and Chapel step from one of the far entrances to the school as we park. They wait for us like gargoyles at the top of the stairs with stone faces of warning and a sinister appearance. If the ice-edged wind hadn’t already stolen my breath, seeing them standing there would.
“Ever just once want to come back to streamers and balloons?” Aimes asks as we follow like shadows behind Law. �
�Maybe a nice song playing or cake? I miss cake. Just one small cake?” She rambles like this the entire walk through the pews and the imagined glaring eyes of the wooden cross. Where Travis stood preaching the gateway of revelations, she skips across, foretelling the glories of cake. For all the sermons I have had to endure, I’m more moved by the gospel of the missing cake.
“They all left,” Chapel tells us with fear dancing in his eyes as his mouth sets in stone. “Travis and Selma wanted to show them the “Glory of God”.
“We stayed behind.” Marxx smirks as he says, “Was half-tempted to shut and lock the gates. Figure a few hours left in the cold and their prayers might change.”
“They aren’t at the tree.” Lawless lifts the precious memento into view. “It’s as bad as they said.”
“What did you notice?” Marxx asks him waiting for some secret suspicion to be confirmed.
“The piles were different,” he starts. “Some were just shot. Some were burned. Some were burned and shot. All of them though had fire to some degree around them. Only the kids were hung.”
“...but why?” Aimes is still fragile over the sight and her voice encompasses those raw feelings.
“April said her dad couldn’t be saved. That’s why he was in the pile not with her mom.” I recall the simple look she wore with resignation framing her slight frown.
“What pile was her mom in?” Chapel timidly asks me. His question has teeth but the answer will hold the bite.
“The burn pile,” I answer him and we both wince from the piercing canines.
“So her dad was shot,” Marxx says. Like the prince that he is, He says aloud what the rest of us were happy to figure out silently. If brutal honesty was a far away land, he would be king. “Why is the shot pile the ones not saved? What is the burn pile?”
The answer comes to me as bitter as the wind that whispers around my ears. It coats my throat with warm bile, burning me further as my mind pulls the answers together. I pray that I’m wrong. “The burn piles are the turned. They either shot their turned or they shot themselves while the children hung. It was a judgment call; proof of their faith.”
“Those bodies haven’t been there that long. If they were from the shots, they have been turned for a long time. Why would they keep them like that?” Aimes has a point.
The shots that started this nightmare were given months ago. To safely keep such a person would be incredibly difficult, not only physically, but mentally as well. If having to kill the ones you know is brutal to your soul, having to keep them “fed” would be butchery.
The men look to the other as they try to figure it all out. Slowly, each one gives a facial look of surrender as any logic fails to come to them. It gives me further hope that perhaps I am wrong. Sister-Slasher-Savior, check. Sister-Logic Solving-Liberator, pass.
“There is one person who might know.” Aimes is testing the temperature of the water toe first. She doesn’t trust her whole foot to the situation yet. “He’s been watching us the whole time. You know…inside…where it’s warmer…further proving who is the IQ holder of our group.”
Lawless smirks at Aimes over his shoulder. His smile is the boyish charm of his edged with a dangerous dare. He asks her with slow drawn out words, “Calling me stupid?”
She returns his charm with her own, matching danger with wit. “Asks the one who just had us go out there to rescue a bike?”
They stare at one another in a locked battle of returning smiles. It’s an old game of theirs and a part of me would celebrate this steady return to our normal if it wasn’t so damn cold.
“Did you want us to get some decorations for Valentine’s Day while we were out since your run for Christmas went so well?” Lawless’ smirk never shrinks, but hers does.
“Children,” I say pushing through their game of one-upping-the-other, “you two can continue to stand here and see who can make the other wince first, but I’m headed inside where it is warmer, Miss IQ.” I give her a warning glance as I make my way through the double barrier of safety doors. Once inside, I almost exhale with the comfort of the hallway’s air.
The school does not run the heaters due to the amount of strain it would place on the generators, but the stone walls horde enough heat from the many people who are normally roaming the place to make it comfortable. Just as she said, there leaning across from the row of double windows stands Rhett staring at me. His blue eyes glow like an enchanted forest’s beast as he watches our group’s silent movie from the shadows of the hall’s cavern.
“I have something for you,” Rhett’s voice calls from those same shadows and I’m reminded of the old stories of the maiden tempted into danger by the call from the male in the dark. Lucky for me, I gave up the maiden title years ago.
“Come give it to me,” I tell him. I might not be a maiden, but I’ve learned to stop skipping into danger.
My heart does skip when he accepts my command. Watching him walk towards me, I know why so many fear this man. I know why I fear him too, but as of late, I’ve seen a different side of him. I’ve seen what he has kept locked behind grins and masks of boredom for all of these years. I once thought their masks were made of steel or thick stone walls holding their hearts secure. I’ve discovered that it’s only paper mache and every day wears the glue that holds the strips together a little more thin.
He extends his arm to me and there in his clenched fist is the very thing for which I had warned Selma about. J.D.’s black leather vest hangs between us like a peace offering or a twisted replica of a white flag. With trembling hands and begging eyes, Rhett is telling me in as plain as he can how much he wants to come “home”. He is asking with his eyes the words his mouth is not strong enough to let out.
“I made a mistake.” Is the only thing he says as I take the vest. It’s the only thing he needs to say.
I let my fingers pause on his. His sigh is audible and visible. It rattles his whole body with the release of the loneliness he is feeling. Lawless had told me all a man wants is something to protect and someone to love him to explain Rhett’s sudden departure. Rhett thought he had found those things with Selma. He forgot he had them all along.
I watch him relayer his mache as the rest of the group finally comes in from the winter chill. Their rambunctious laughter abruptly stops when coming face-to-face with the one problem no one wants to talk about. I don’t even pause as I continue to take the peace offering, placing the leather vest over my own winter coat. Chapel had told me privately the reason Rhett had taken this same vest from me was because I dared to wear it. He saw it as an insult to the man it had belonged. Once upon a time, this would have been seen as a sin. Now, we have bigger sins being committed against us and greater rules being broken to harm us. Him taking the vest, I was told, was like a hairline fracture to the backbone that supported us. Him returning it is his way of trying to cast what has now become completely broken.
“Cute,” Lawless says as I adjust the vest while he walks passed. Leaning close into Rhett, he asks the man, “but where the hell is yours?”
We have watched everything burn around us, destroying us from the inside out. We have burnt our friends, our loved ones and bridges all with the intended goal to make things better. It would be so much easier to let it all burn down around me, to let the wind float the ashes to someone strong enough to carry them when the flames finally die, but it’s not in my nature. I can’t stand by and let the flames take us. I don’t know if I will have the courage to fix this, rising like a phoenix from this disaster we have allowed to happen to us. I only know that I’m not willing to let go. Not yet. I will fight just one more time. We survive because we have each other. It’s not because of me or them or anyone else alone. It’s because we take care of each other. Rhett taught me that in a blood-soaked hall when the weight of my doubts was enough to crush me. I had warned Selma that I always take back what belongs to me. Standing in that sa
me hall, Rhett very much belongs to me and to mine.
CHAPTER 27
Finally we are sitting as one again in our hidden little music room. The men are spread out around the room like beasts weary of the other being in their space. They watch with just as cautious eyes as we graze on the stashed food they have been hording from their runs. Aimes and I sit in our own little area relishing the chocolate bars they found on one of the last runs. We are keeping our heads low fully expecting the shrapnel to be sharper than the actual blast when the first rounds are fired. Men forgive easy, but it is one hell of a battle to wade through first.
“So,” Marxx is the first to break the silent standoff. His voice is rough with the anger he has over Rhett’s latest actions. So, it’s not surprising when Marxx steps up to the gun range first. It’s also not surprising to see Chapel slowly adjust himself between them and us. “Did you know what they do?” Marxx asks. It’s the only question he really cares about.
Rhett doesn’t move to acknowledge the question asked of him. He fidgets with the wrapper to whatever imitation of nutrition he picked from the pile. Every second he stalls the room grows that much more dangerous with tension.
“I asked you a question.” Marxx is standing now, not taking kindly to being ignored.
Lawless pushes from the wall he was leaning on. He is either ready to join Marxx or poised to intercept them both. He also could just be trying to get a better view of the show.
Rhett answers with his attention still rapt to the shiny wrapper. “I heard you.” The room waits for more, but that is all he is giving.
“Did you?” Aimes asks before Chapel or I could stop her. She has her own answers she needs him to answer for her sanity, but this is the only one she can ask publicly.
Ignoring the men for Rhett is most likely a source of enjoyment. Ignoring the tiny voice of Aimes, shielding the real questions they both know will be asked as some point, robs his composure. The wrapper is not nearly as interesting as it once was. “I thought it was more Jesus play. I didn’t think it was literal.” Rhett sighs leaning back into the plastic chair making it moan around him as if it knows what story he is about to tell. “Travis said something about rebuilding the world with just the strong and the devout. It made sense. I’m tired of having to carry people who don’t want to carry themselves. Like J.D. said, we do all the stuff around here and they just sit back letting us take the blame when it goes wrong. Travis said they have a way to prove it by using the “love of family”. He puts the children’s fates in the hands of their parents. If the man is brave enough, strong enough, he will prove it.” His head hangs low letting his dark hair cover his shame. “I didn’t know it was real.”
The Risen: Courage Page 21