“Will you give your life for what God has given you?” Travis asks the women before him, casting the vaccines into the wind to be harvested by desperate hands. “Will you put your trust in Him to redeem you both?”
Each woman agrees, grappling for the liquid death threats that roll around the wooden beams. The children are crying now as they watch their mother’s desperation with confusion. Their innocence keeps them from fully understanding how close they are to death. Some say ignorance is blind. Watching the children so close to the nooses that seem to constantly sway, I consider ignorance to be bliss.
An arm becomes like a vice around my waist, jerking me to a strong chest. Chapel’s voice is dangerously low in my ear. “What are you doing, Helena?” he asks me with the aggravation that I normally find in abundance from Marxx.
I try to turn around to look at him, but it only finds me forced tighter to him.
“Paula says what’s in those shots is twice as potent as the original shot,” I tell him with some small explanation.
Chapel is gone as quick as he came and I almost stagger with his exit. It leaves me stunned for a moment, losing the momentum that I had built for myself. He leaves me with something else as well. He had aimed his arm precisely to land across the wound of my stomach. The burning pain is almost crippling where his fingers dug across the stitches. I’m on one knee before I even have the time to exhale and I’m standing again before I can inhale.
Horrence is smiling into my cringing face. He tells me with no hidden amusement, “Travis says we have a special spot for their little savior.”
Chapel had meant to leave me in pain to keep me from venturing further into the line of fire. Now, Travis will have me standing in the middle of a ring of it.
I’m forced up the stairs by Horrence and dragged by another. Every pull I make to free myself only pulls deeper at the wound until I am gasping and broken of my will. It’s just how Travis now likes his women.
What were once dark shadows roaming the crowd have become a fighting force. I can hear their shouts through the white-haze of my pain. We had no reason to be under Travis’ thumb. We have no children for him to ply us into obedience. We have no need to seek for someone else to protect us or to provide for us the guile of safety. We take care of our own and fend for ourselves. We have accepted what this world is and what is to come, but Travis found a way to make us dance just the same – me.
I fight to stand, refusing to play into the show he has conducted. My bravery is rewarded with a knee to my already fragile stomach. I drop, never feeling the ground through the agony that is already cascading through me. I’m lifted by a fist of my hair from the ground sending waves of pain through my scalp, but I won’t cry out. I wont give Travis the erection he is seeking from this torment.
Bruising hands guide me backwards. I know what death sentence he has declared for me. In his little game, he wants to take out as many of us as possible; one for the money, two for the show.
An eighth rope is hung. Its length is shorter than the rest, and as I stare up at it, I know only the tips of my toes will reach the ground. Travis isn’t after a fast death for me. I will hang. I will suffer. I will feel every second of my death. Somewhere, Truth is watching with her sisters the twins, Karma and Fate. I thought I had escaped from them that Christmas morning, but they were just waiting. Feeding me fables, they waited for my perfect suicide.
“Seems we have something a little bit different here,” Travis says leaning side-to-side in front of me with a wide smile. “I don’t guess you have a mother in the audience to save you?” he asks me with a whispered sense of joy.
“Nope.” I tell him, smiling into those cold eyes of his. “I killed her.”
He shrugs, pressing his lips together to match the body expression. “…a dad, perhaps?”
“I guess you could say, I helped kill him too.”
Travis lets out a long whistle of fake shock. “I guess you deserve the rope more than most,” he says softly to me before shouting, “Rig her up!”
The hands that were holding my shoulders now lift me from the waist, keeping my arms locked to my sides. Their squeezing sensation makes me feel as if my stomach will escape through the tender stitches, leaving me too limp to fight against the man who places the rope around my neck. I’m hovering between the squeezing hands and the grey void of my vision.
“Who will save Helena?” Travis screams into the night with an excitement that curdles any strength I may have had left to fight him.
The noise of male shouting is abundant, but there is one who never makes a sound. Just like Eugene, Chapel takes the back steps one steady foot at a time. “I will,” he says and his voice is flat with fact. I know he feels the guilt as tightly as I feel the rope. He never thought his attempt to keep me safe could become so misguided. He will give his life to correct that wrong, and when it is done and he is standing with his family again, he will tell them it was a beautiful suicide.
Travis isn’t shocked to see Chapel, just disappointed. He wanted someone else in the ring, but he still has one more trick snarling from his sleeve.
“Well, the party is all here!” Travis spins slowly with his arms spread over the stage. The guise of religious fervor has vanished as it does with most cults when the deaths start. When people are already motivated to do as you say, there is no more need to herd them.
A corresponding rope is placed over the child it belongs to head and synched tight. The sight is enough to bring the women back to wails. The sound of the noose sliding taunt brings the whole yard to an uproar. The children’s sobs bring those who are mere onlookers with no children of their own to their knees.
“Round up the fathers,” Travis says, skipping along the unintentional path the women have made. Chapel’s glare as the path winds near him brings Travis back to his disguised senses. “Oh, and Rhett. Bring me Rhett. Let’s see if we can still save him after all,” he says this to Chapel, but it’s the God Squad who move into action. Chapel doesn’t give him an ounce of concern.
“Now, gentlemen, you will have a choice. I leave it in your hands entirely. One-by-one you will come forward as we come to your child and their matching mother. These ropes are very real, as Helena can assure you, and if the mother does not inject herself with the very shot that has turned so many into their true forms that now hunt us down for our purity, the man next to your child will pull their little legs,” Travis boasts and I was wrong. He is still going to stick to the Holy Roller façade for the whole crazy train ride.
A few mothers are looking for the first time at what is in their hands with fear. A few are staring at their kids as they chew to open the plastic wrappers that contain the shots. The remaining are lost in the disbelief of what is even happening.
They remind me of my mother, Carol, lost and waiting for someone to take them by their hand and tell them how pretty they are. My mother never would have risked her life for us. She would have had us killed and at her end, she did try to kill us. She tried to eat us.
A little girl is the first to be chosen. I know her and I know it is Ryan who will be the first father put to this test of “faith”. The matching mother has already chewed her way through the protective plastic bag. She doesn’t wait for any instructions for this game. I don’t know if she would have waited if her child was the first or not with the anguish on her face. She starts stripping the winter layers from her clothing to expose her arm. When finally she is in nothing more than her bra and pants, she pulls the cap from the needle and aims for the muscle of her arm.
“Vein, dear,” Travis says as he eagerly watches her show. There is a lust in his eyes that has nothing to do with carnal needs.
She doesn’t even question him. Finding the pulsing blue tube, she pushes the liquid into her body. She looks to Travis fully expecting him now to free her little girl. She doesn’t understand this is just the first phase of his evil.
The females of Travis’ cult pour a ring of gas around the women. I have to wonder about the logic of this on a wooden stage. I shouldn’t have. Travis had it all planned long before the first pew was placed.
Other than the men holding the children and the one now hugging my waist, the cult has departed, leaving only the victims to the flames should they spread. One quick step backwards and the executioners will be safe, too.
“Now,” Travis calls from one of the pews. He has taken a front row seat for the bonfire which is about to occur. “Drop the child.”
The little girl is shoved forward from the man’s shoulders by the one who placed the rope around her neck. They don’t want to run the risk of her neck breaking. They let her swing from the rope like the toy she thought it was. Her gasping sounds as she swings forward steals the air from everyone else, leaving the yard in shocked silence. The fire is lit at the same time as the girl begins to swing. It keeps the mother in place, yet still she runs towards it, testing the heat as if it might be a mirage.
“Who do you save?” Travis calls to Ryan, “Do you take God’s work into your own hands? Will you prove your faith in Him to save your family because of your love for Him?” Travis stands, lost in his religious disease. “Will God let your wife be turned into a demon or will He keep her safe, saving them both? Do you feel God’s hand Ryan?!?” Travis is screaming. He is shouting into the night air with his voice steaming the area around him.
Ryan reaches for the offered gun. He can kill his wife before she turns or he can kill his child to save her from the slow death of suffocation. His last option is to wait and see if God loves them enough to save them all.
The roar of a motorcycle is building as it races towards the courtyard. At this point of the night, it wouldn’t surprise me if it were J.D. riding back from hell with a new set of minions close at his wheels. I’m not exactly wrong.
Dolph tears into the courtyard astride Lawless’ pride and joy. He doesn’t slow to avoid the crowd of bystanders and they scatter amid the new threat. The Risen are running not far behind the roaring bike. In the confusion, Simon rushes the stage to hoist the little girl back into the air with Ryan running up right behind him, but Travis won’t be cheated that easily. Horrence raises his gun and I shout desperately to warn Simon. He turns hearing my drama, but it’s too late.
Simon twitches twice as he is hit with the gunfire. His chest explodes with the content of his coat spreading around him in a mockery of the snow floating in the air. I watch as he falls from the stage. He is gone before his body bounces on the ground, but his name still tears from my mouth with denial.
Dolph is off the bike and running to open the double metal doors to herd the screaming people inside. They follow his commanding shouts, and once his side is secure, Dolph shuts the doors, locking his side down. He never saw his friend fall. He was never aware he just lost the last of the family he built under this roof.
“Drop them! Drop them all!” Travis shouts as he runs with his pack of protection bearing Selma in their arms.
They do. I feel my body weightless for mere seconds before the rope catches my throat. It’s knotted fingers grip me as I stretch to touch the stage with my toes. My boots slide, slipping on the beams pulling me tighter against the rope as I sway. I can already hear my blood rushing as my lungs empty their last reserves of air.
Marxx is first on the stage but only a breath behind him is Lawless. As they reach for the children who dangle with kicking feet, Rhett and Chapel have put the ring of fire out, freeing the women from their prison before they rush to the cross to help free me. The women help each other lift the choking children who still remain in the ropes.
The fleeing executioners are the first to be overtaken. Their dying screams mix with the religious hymn adding yet another twist to the song. The screams of the dying have never sounded so sweet.
We run to Aimes and Dolph who stand at the nearest door, beckoning us to them with motions instead of sound. The men slide to a stop on the iced cement, waiting for the women and children to be ushered in before sealing the door on those who thought tonight they would be the ones dealing death. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
CHAPTER 35
Husbands rush to find their wives, to find their children. They fall into embraces with gratitude to find their family still alive. Half-hugs and handshakes are shared among the men who have once again risked it all to save this group. No one acknowledges the fact that right on the other side of the safety glass are men being devoured while their screams die in their throats or the fire that has mysteriously restarted. It eats the wooden beams faster than before, charring the wood of the cross with its still swaying ropes.
Lawless stares at me where I rest against the wall panting from pain. His eyes hold me with the same fire that blazes in the background behind him. We should be holding one another, spreading words of reassurance over us both with our lips. We aren’t, and when he turns from me, I fear the rope hasn’t fully left my neck.
A screaming woman has thrown the crowd back into a panic. Ryan’s wife is convulsing on the floor. Her body fights against Ryan’s grasp as she continues to slam herself against the floor. Paula watches with detachment as her name is being chanted to help the woman.
“Get away from her,” Paula says, pulling the crowd further down the hall. “Get away from her!” she demands as the nature of human curiosity slows their response to her command.
As quickly as the convulsing started, it stops. Now the crowd begins to back away from her knowing what follows from their own experiences. I don’t want to watch what has to happen next.
“Let’s go,” I tell Aimes. I turn my back as Ryan remembers the gun he was given and I remember those who gave it to him are still here.
“Shouldn’t we stay here?” Aimes hasn’t forgotten a thing.
“You want to watch him have to kill his wife while his child watches, go ahead,” I tell her as I walk. It’s a half-truth, but it’s a completely good cover.
When phrased like that, of course she isn’t going to stay. With the sounds of boots following us, our escape has not gone unnoticed. They don’t call out as they follow us and we don’t glance back to see who it is following us.
The candles have been blown out in the stairwell. The only light comes from the cloud-covered sky. It floats in with patches before fading us back into the shadows.
Aimes bumps into my back as we take the first corner, startling us both. She says with mild annoyance, “You know, life would be so much easier if it had a background track playing. At least then you would know when it’s about to suck. Happy music, we live! Violins and drums, kiss your ass goodbye!”
“Keep moving,” Marxx says from the shadows ahead where he forced his way past us.
“Keep moving, right. Why didn’t we think of that?” she hisses into my ear, not brave enough to give it full voice.
“Because they have the guns and we don’t,” I whisper back with less success than she had.
“Keep moving,” Rhett repeats with the same coldness from behind me.
Who’s the most hated woman on death row? I’m the most hated woman on death row! Three cheers for the home team!
Marxx nudges the door to our floor open with his foot. We listen for any welcoming noise. With nothing making an obvious introduction, now the hard part has come. Marxx has to enter the dark hallway with us right behind him.
The once familiar length has become a dark cavern of unexplored dread. The windows of the many classrooms cast a subtle glow into the hall. Nothing moves making the stillness as captivating as a charmer to a viper.
“I don’t think they are here,” Marxx calls back to Lawless. He is standing between the doorways. His attention is divided between our floor and the stairwell behind us.
“If it were me, I’d be upstairs packing to make a run for it,” Rhett says a
nd finally Lawless acknowledges something with other than a glare in my direction.
“Rhett, Marxx,” Lawless almost barks the names, motioning with his head for them to follow him out. “Watch them as they pack. Grab as much as you can, as fast as you can,” he says to the only man left with us.
Chapel understands and starts pulling us to action. “They aren’t going up there to clean house,” he says as he hurries us down the hall. “They are just going to find another way out with the courtyard full now.”
Chapel clears the first room where Lawless and I stay. He nods as he walks to the next room that belongs to him and Aimes leaving me to pack.
When rushed, everything feels twice as slow as it is. Hands become clumsy and drop things with ironic glee. Feet will trip over invisible things and yet you will still stop to look as if to find something reaching for you. Bags won’t unzip, and then once packed, they refuse to zip. Irony – the ultimate leveler of life.
Hauling the duffle bags despite the screaming complaints of my stomach, I pause as I enter the hallway to wait for the other two. My heart stops when a shadow breaks the lighted square projecting into the hallway from the empty room across from me. Lowering the bags, I stare at the square mentally demanding for it to prove what I saw was true. It does and I gasp.
Aimes comes running from her room with enough noise to make a drum line envious of her skill.
I wave my arms, motioning for her to stop. She looks at me with confusion, enlarging her eyes before calling out into the hallway, “What?”
She’s about to ask another question when once again the same shadow streaks across the square at her feet. She doesn’t ask any more questions as I make my way to the entrance of the large room. She follows behind me like a living shadow. At least one person is appreciative of my knack for trouble.
The Risen: Courage Page 29