Laughter fills the courtyard now, his laughter, my tears, and Aimes’ squeals of joy vibrate the walls around us. This is not one of my haunting ghosts that demand to walk beside me. This is not a judging memory to shred me with its presence. Lawless stands beside with his warm eyes watching me, battle worn and tired. Only Aimes is secure enough in her emotions to fully embrace him as the rest stare wide-eyed and slacked faced at someone we had thought forever gone from us. Truth howls in the winter winds that whip around us with the disappointment of her failure and I know she is plotting to make us pay.
CHAPTER 54
“Pass me the bottle would you?” Lawless still takes all of this calmly as if it is every day that someone walks back from the grave. I guess now, it sort of is.
Aimes is huddled under one of his arms, her tears freezing on her cheeks with the openness of her emotions. Lawless knows I am not as brave with my emotions, and has given me the space I need to collect myself from the shock. A task at which I am failing.
“How the fuck…” Is all Rhett says as he hands the bottle across the fire. The statement is repeated in the men’s faces around us.
“I told you. You have to catch me to kick my ass.” Lawless drinks deeply from the bottle, keeping his eyes on the man across from him. His eyes shine with laughter at their perplexed looks.
Chapel comes to him, the first of the three, wrapping him in a giant hug mixed with many hard pats on the back. Aimes has to escape from their bonding before being broken between them. She comes to my side, holding my hand, as we watch the men rebuild their bonds.
Marxx comes next, shaking his head with a smile upon his face, embracing Lawless.
“You are one tough son of a bitch and just as dumb.” His voice is more gravel filled than moments ago as a new emotion stirs inside him. He roughly rubs Lawless’ head, shaking him with his joy of seeing him again. The three men now stand laughing together and patting their backs, lost in their amusement and pride of the one that they thought they had lost.
Rhett still stands alone watching them. His face is locked tight from any seepage of emotion. His eyes roam from one to the other watching, but not joining. “I saw you. I saw what was left of you. I saw what they did to you. I’ve seen it each time I close my eyes.”
Rhett’s voice brings stillness to those around him. It is icy, and frost ridden, with his confusion. Anger treads lightly on the tips of his words.
“It wasn’t me,” Lawless drinks the dark liquid as memories form for him. “It was one of those damn parking lot dogs that always seem to be lurking around. It was huge. The type of dog, that if a bunch of people eating other people weren’t screaming behind me, I would have been afraid of. Fido wasn’t so scary after the shit we’ve seen.”
He pauses. Each word seems to lower his head as he seeks the answers for Rhett’s confusion.
“The damn thing ran right at me when it saw me, so used to strangers for its survival. I kicked it. Kicked it hard enough to break something. They fell upon it. It never had a chance the way they tore into it. They spread it wide. I just wanted it out of my way. I never meant…..”
He pauses again, taking a deep breath and exhaling it. His breath floats around him as the temperature drops, anticipating the ending of his tale.
“I’ve seen it every time I close my eyes, too.” He takes another long drink from the bottle to dull the guilt he is feeling.
“That wreck a bit back along the road, I jimmied the trunk of one of those cars. It wasn’t the warmest bed I have ever had, but I figured all the dead from the wreck still in the cars would cover my tracks from those things. It was still another full day’s walk this morning. These boots were made for a lot of things, walking isn’t one of them.” He smiles, encouraging Rhett to relax.
Rhett and I both have yet to come to terms with his being here now. We are locked tight behind our wall of emotional safety. We had just begun to accept his death, to fully embrace the truth of it, and the pain that goes along with that. Now he is here and our minds do not sync with our hearts. One is screaming how impossible it is, while the other beats in celebration. Our wires are crossing, refusing to connect the two.
Lawless comes to me slowly, with timid steps, not risking the chance of my spooking with sudden movements. His cold hands slide along my neck and into my hair, pulling my forehead to his. He stares into my eyes, trying to reach behind the wall he has so declared as a source of his suffering.
“I told you I would always come for you.” With his whisper, the wall is broken. The bricks are tumbling down around us, and he catches me in his embrace with his arms, and with his lips.
I cling to him in our kiss. It deepens with the need to comfort one another. He feeds me the reassurance that he is here. I feed him the relief of making it home. Winter sends her tears at our reunion as snow begins to drift around us. She blesses us with her cold sprinkling of frozen water, sealing our souls together again.
Rhett’s sharp whistle cuts through her approval as the men around us give their own with clapping and jeering. Still, all the noise they make, it is not enough to cover the sound of the first shot fired. Nor is it enough to cover the screams that follow.
CHAPTER 55
Screams shred the celebration with many sets of razor-sharp talons. Windows flash, white bright, accompanying each shot that cracks like a drum inside the walls of the third floor. J.D.’s words roll back through my mind as I listen to the sound track of horror from above. The men are already running into the high school, preparing clips and loading chambers without a second thought of what may be occurring above us.
“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?” Aimes stands beside me as we watch the men in our lives once again run into danger.
The screams seem worse now, being alone in the dark with them radiating all around us, in an illusion of their source. We both know terror is waiting for us inside, but our protectors are in there also. Damned if we do….
The first body lays twisted, and distorted, in the hallway we enter. I cover her mouth to stifle her screams, still unsure of what to expect deeper in. Unseeing eyes stare at us as we tip-toe past the body, but even in death, he seems to watch us. I expect his body to twitch towards us at any moment with how his eyes seem to follow us. The blood is already thick and discoloring around his fallen form. The broken neck gives the body a more visually disturbing allure than normal as his head rests at the wrong angle. I know this image is now stored with so many other sources of nightmares for me.
The heavy metal doors are propped open by something we cannot yet see. Everything inside me clues me in to the fact that it won’t be something I want to see, and yet I creep closer anyway. Sometimes I give myself very good advice but I seldom follow it, said Alice when in Wonderland. There is nothing to wonder in this land, and I seldom follow it.
Legs are stuck between one of the doors keeping it open. A fragile ankle is twisted the wrong way in broken stilettos. Her toes point with rebellion in the opposite direction of her other leg. The heavy door has slammed against her legs, lacerating them. Her blood mingles around her in separate thick, cooling pools her twisted legs blocking their joining.
Aimes shudders, hiding behind me. The many constant screams only adds to the climate of the room. I push against the other door and feel it rub against something before opening. The sharp metal edge of the door’s bottom has serrated the flesh on the woman’s face. Blood oozes, but does not flow, from where the flesh once sat. It gives her face an evil mask of dark crimson as it coats her, slipping into her once pretty features. The cause of her death still protrudes from her blood soaked chest. It is J.D.’s hunting knife.
Shouting now melds with the screams from above and it fills us with a false energy to run up the steps. There are more bodies waiting to shock us with their tortured deaths as we climb. I pull on Aimes, keeping her close to me, as we avoid deep pools of dripping crimson that slides down the stairs and outspread limbs to trip us. We focus our eyes on the space above
the steps, praying to save our minds from what lies around us. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you can’t help but see. When have I ever been one not to look?
We rush through the final set of doors, hoping to leave one nightmare behind us, but we have only stepped into a much more horrific version of it. Bodies lay dropped like used dolls around the common area. The walls are bathed in the brutality of the murders, dripping with the evidence of it. So many sightless eyes stare in random directions that all seem to find their way to the double doors behind us.
The mammoth evergreen now wears a cloak that Red Riding Hood would envy. Its branches are heavy with the gore that shimmers in the light, like the decorations it has been waiting for. Its lights are now red-rimmed remnants of those that once sat around it and it sparkles more than any tinsel we could have applied to it. It even has a topper now as in some strange karma like act, a real doll has been thrown into the branches. It rests with a smiling face and its arms spread wide for the one that used to own it to save it. It too wears the red baptismal of their deaths.
We step over the many dead residents as their faces match with memories, and their damning eyes stare coldly at us while we try to make our way to the shouting further in. Aimes is whimpering from the sights around us, as her panic flutters in her chest, like a hawk fighting to take flight. She slips on a pool of thick substance, applying a thick covering to her body. I pull her to my shoulder as she vocally releases the build up of her terror when seeing the cold film on her body.
I pull her with me as I walk backwards through the hall. I keep her head down, sparing her the chest full of new materials to feed our nightmares. The red smears from the falling bodies that are resting against the walls. The handprints on the floor as a few tried to drag their bleeding bodies to safety. Most of all, I save her from the children that are now mingling with the other dead.
The many broken porcelain dolls that lay limp and shattered around us. Red flowers bloom underneath their bodies with petals that reach long and wide. Their winter pajamas in soft shades of childhood innocence now turned dark shades of corruption with the sin committed on them.
I recognize one of them, and my stomach clenches with her death. Sweet, laughing Kira stares up at the ceiling from her deathbed. J.D. did not shoot her. No, that would have been too easy for such a perfect victim for his rage. Her head lies unevenly with the damage from her crushed skull supporting it incorrectly. Dark fragments and long streaks of thick splattering surround her broken head from the assault. Her fingers are disjointed and bent at strange angles from her desperate attempts to fight against the large man for her life. The long tee-shirt is rumpled, exposing too much of such an innocent. She never stood a chance, and yet she fought. Everything about her utterly still form says she fought against her death. It makes it so much more tragic than the rest.
I spare Aimes from this even as I absorb it all. The blood running together in thick dark rivers between the grout of the tiles, the bodies spread wide across the spaces that seem to watch us as we creep past, and the heavy scent of the slaughter is waiting with sharp teeth to tear into my sanity when I sleep. If I ever find the courage to sleep again.
A door opens to our left, startling us both. A man waves us over through the small crack the opening provides for him. His eyes are wide with the horrors he has witnessed tonight.
“They got him cornered down there. You’ll be safe in here.” His voice is barely a whisper with his fears.
“Go.” I tell Aimes as I push her to the door. “Don’t open this door until one of us comes for you.”
My words bring her to a level of awareness she has tried from which to hide. Her face is no longer fear-filled. It is sadness that she wears now, furrowing her soft features.
“I can’t just sit by.” I tell her as an apology for leaving her here.
“I know. You always were the strong one.” She hugs me as the screams start again. This time I know the voice that holds it. J.D. has found Shelia.
CHAPTER 56
Lawless, Chapel, and Rhett stand with pointed guns at J.D. He is holding his own long handgun to Shelia’s temple. His black vest shines under the overhead lights with the many layers of his victims. His hand shakes with confusion and fear at the sight of Lawless standing in front of him. The gun in his hand trembles against Shelia, unsettling her more with its vibration.
Ross leans against the wall, bent over from a wound to his stomach that stains his clothing. Richard is pressing against it to slow the blood flow with a frozen face of wrath. Dolph stands, blocking his friend with his body. His eyes dart from J.D. to the men that are trying to defuse the situation, as Simon kneels before them, keeping his eyes on Shelia.
“They had to pay. You understand, don’t you boy? They had to pay for what they did to you.” J.D.’s voice is high-pitched with his pleading. “I couldn’t just let it slide. Not for you. Not for my boy.”
Lawless remains mute. His mask, like those around him, is firmly in place, giving no hints to his thoughts or emotions. Their fingers resting firmly on their cold, metal triggers are the only clues to their mindset.
No matter which road J.D. takes us down now, someone is going to die. Marxx side steps, blocking me from any crossfire that may occur. He places his hand on my arm, telling me to remain silent. It won’t be me that fixes this tonight. Another nightmare is about to be made for someone, if not for all of us.
“I raised you like you were my own. All those times it was unsafe for you, it was my house you came to. I taught you how to shoot that thing. I taught you how to ride. I taught you how to be a man. I raised you. You were mine, and they took you from me. They took my boy. My boy that was worth more than all of their lives combined. My boy.”
J.D. continues to talk to the Lawless from his past. He is either unaware or not understanding that he is here with us now. He is pleading with the ghost of Lawless to understand and forgive him for his actions. Our once powerful leader is now crushed from the weight of this world. He is shattered with the loss of the only child he was ever able to claim as his. His son, the man he thought he watched die for him, Lawless.
“I am going to make them pay. I will make this place pour red for you. For my boy. You’ll rest at peace then. Won’t you? You’ll rest knowing I made them pay for you. Don’t stare at me like that, son. I’ll make them pay. You’ll see. I’ll make them pay.”
J.D.’s eyes leave Lawless, and it is the signal that ignites the room. The gunfire is ear splitting with its reverberation in such a small space. J.D.’s body jerks with each round that lands, causing blow out to spray the space red behind him. Shelia’s body falls forward, limp with the life that J.D. has attempted to steal from her. I hear my screams tear through my body with the same burning fire of the bullets that tore through J.D., and I fall in time with him as our legs give out from under us, with Simon echoing our misery. J.D. watches me as we fall, the gun slipping from his hand that now reaches for me in his death. Only Marxx’ weight keeps me from crawling to him as he pins me with his body to the cold tiles of the floor. Tiles that are as cold and unfeeling as the faces of the men that have stolen from me the only Father to ever hold me.
J.D. stares at me as he fights for his breath. Red bubbles form at his mouth in a soft foam. The color matches the life spilling from him, soaking the tiles with his final judgment for the crimes he has committed. Crimes that have colored the hall with the same shade of red as he now does.
Lawless walks to the dying man he once thought of as the Father he never had. A Father that supported him when his father had hurt him. A Father that had taught him how to stand up for himself when his father had beat him down. Their bond was iron-clad with the many private moments they have built between them. Their eyes lock one final time as they exchange the knowledge of what is about to happen.
“My boy. So proud of my boy.” J.D. tells him, as Lawless puts the final bullet into his head.
All of this time, we have been fighting to keep this place safe f
rom the monsters outside that may harm us. We believed that they lurked with glazed eyes waiting for us around shielded corners of the dark. I hear Truth laughing again, as I realize, the monster was with us all along. It is not the Risen that have destroyed this safe haven, but J.D. The guilt and betrayal flows through me, turning my body into a pain-racked casing of torment, and even as I hate him for what he has done, I weep for the man I have come to love and depend on.
“Do you know what today is?” The soft whispering sound of Aimes’ voice draws the attention of everyone. “It’s Christmas.”
She falls like a marionette with its strings cut, exposing a red flower blooming on her chest.
“No,nonono.” Rhett screams with each inch that she falls. He runs to her, pulling her limp body to him, rocking her in his arms as her eyes close against the world.
J.D. fired twice when he was shot. The first shot found his target, hitting Shelia as his goal was set. His second shot went unknown with his death and found another target just as precious. Now that target lies in Rhett’s arms as he screams his frustration into her hair with the full force of his lungs. In a sick joke, the Fates gave us back Lawless, but want to take our pixie. Chapel is screaming for help, as he presses against Aimes’ wound with Rhett still rocking her.
The world slows for me as the sun rises on this Christmas morning. There are no sleepy-eyed children creeping from warm beds to see if Santa has come. No cookies and milk to be inspected for its consumption. There are no brightly wrapped packages for them to open, just the red, red blood of so many spilled, decorating the halls like the Devil’s ball. There is no naughty or nice list, just the list of the living and the dead. That list causes the voices from the halls to lift up, not in songs of the season, but in screams of misery.
Dawn does not wait today anymore than it has any other morning since that first day that the dawn watched it all start. It comes with the same blinding cruelty, disguised under soft pastel shades marking another day we must live through. It always comes, forcing us to accept that another morning is here with no degree of tragedy to spare us from the bright beams of the sun.
The Risen (Book 1): Dawning Page 35