The Risen: Courage
Page 31
April has long since fallen asleep and Aimes drifts in-and-out with her dreams sabotaging any hope for rest. I battle against my body’s fatigue with better efforts. I can only imagine the toll being taken on the bodies riding through the cold night in front of me.
“You could let me drive,” Paula offers. It’s the first sound to disrupt the silence of the cabin since April and Aimes had their little moment of bonding. “I know your stomach has to be hurting you. I wish you’d let me check the stiches like I have been asking you to.”
“Been a little busy with the whole death camp thing.”
She snorts to disguise her laughter. “Well you ain’t busy now.”
“Obviously you have never driven a large truck without power steering.”
“A list of excuses as the day is long.”
“- and I’m not even trying.”
“She’s really not,” Aimes mutters, resting against the passenger door.
I know Lawless and the men are searching for any place to pull over that might hold a hope of safety. Our bodies are too tired from the past day’s events to trust ourselves to be alert to danger and assigning someone as look out would just be cruel. It’s just mile after mile of open road on this small town’s highway and it feels hopeless as the miles continue to stretch on.
Only a few times have we come across a cluster of wrecked or abandoned cars to navigate through. Well the men navigated. I played bumper cars with my large grill demolishing the compacts in my path. It was a sick release of the frustrations to watch the metal fly in shrapnel-like pieces as I pushed the truck through the clusters.
Lucky for me, we have found another one. This one might not be as easy, though. A large Jeep sits parked across the road ahead of us. Behind it sits another car and I’m already mentally lining them up like a game of pool.
The men slow their bikes and I slow as well, just a little further back. I know I will need a decent amount of speed to topple that Jeep.
“You could just go around,” Paula says with a touch of motherly disapproval.
“Where is the fun in that?” I smile at her and receive an eye roll for my excitement.
“They are stopping,” Aimes says, sitting up with her concern.
“They just need to stretch their legs.” Paula still uses her mother voice.
“There are people out there.” Aimes is squinting to make out the moving shadows.
The men are stretching, but it’s to cover their motives as they reach for their guns. Aimes is obviously not the only one to have spotted the moving shapes. When the first shape comes around the corner, I highlight him in the brights of the truck. His hands instinctively come to cover his face, showing he is unarmed and now blind.
More men come around from the back of the Jeep. They each shield their faces from the burning light from my truck. Knowing any risk of danger has passed, I climb from the cabin to see what the people want. Mostly I just need to stretch too.
The sounds of their voices float to me on the night air. Fog forms from their breath as they speak, giving proof of who is speaking when. One voice, one voice from the circle ahead of me, makes the hairs on my neck rise. I have goose bumps and it has nothing to do with the weather.
I listen as he introduces himself with good-natured intent, but I can’t really trust what my ears have heard or what my mind is screaming. I couldn’t believe it until Lawless turns to look at me, squinting into the high beams of the truck. I didn’t want to believe it until Rhett and Marxx also cast their eyes my way. I wouldn’t believe it until the man, sensing something is wrong, stares trying to pierce the glowing veil that conceals me.
My whole body is trembling with a rush of emotions that for most I don’t have a name as I stare at him. Memories tumble through my mind and the door I have locked bursts open. I say the one name I never thought I would say again. I cast it into the winter night as Truth, Karma and Fate clap with distorted elation. “Dad?”
Selma sits in the blue mini-van left behind by those who once lived in the forsaken school. Her shoulder throbs, her arm feels as if it is blistering from an invisible fire, but it’s her head that is sending her into tears of agony.
Pressure thrusts against the walls of her skull. It ruins her vision as a fever-like fire blazes inside her body. A part of her knows what is happening. She has seen it enough times in the past. She has caused it to happen to every small neighborhood in their path as she and Travis played out their personal vengeance for what had happened to them. She, of all the people who are still cursed to walk the earth, should know what is happening. It just doesn’t make sense.
She never injected herself with the shots her and Travis had convinced the remaining believers to take. She sat, watching them self-administer the doses marveling at how Travis could so easily twist people to his plans. Plans that had involved their mathematical-like destruction of every pocket of life they discovered, until now.
Selma stares at the gaping, torn flesh of her arm where one of the believers had bitten her when he awoke. She stares at it as the first convulsions rattle her skeleton with the force of the contractions.
It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense! Are her last thoughts as her mind is destroyed by the very evil she had used to destroy so many others.
Additional titles by Marie F Crow:
The Risen: Dawning - Available now
The Risen: Margaret - Available now
The Risen: Remnants - Available now
The Risen: Defiance - Coming soon
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