Hella Rises: Dawnland

by Karen Carr

  Huck seized the stool and Zeke punched Santiago in the gut, making him cough and sputter and fall to the floor. Santiago grabbed Zeke’s pant legs as he stood up, sending him toppling to the floor. Huck took an arm around Santiago’s neck and got him in a headlock just as Hipslow entered the roadhouse followed by a pale looking Fareva.

  In three long strides, Hipslow was on Santiago. “Release him,” he said to Huck.

  Huck let go of his death grip and Hipslow took Santiago by the shirt. Santiago’s face was red and swollen and he was huffing out short breaths.

  Hipslow leaned in close to Santiago. “This is an honest, decent, establishment and I will not have you fighting in it like it is a trash bar. You are going to get out of here and back where you belong across the river.” Hipslow started walking Santiago toward the door.

  “You owe us the girl,” Santiago said in between breaths. He looked at me from under Hipslow’s arm and then dropped to the ground. The man wasn’t giving up.

  Hipslow pulled his gun, causing everyone else to draw their guns as well, including Trevan and Lily. I bit my lip as I sized up the situation. I looked to Huck and thought of my new house, realizing I probably wouldn’t be sleeping in it much longer.

  “You gave me two weeks,” Hipslow said in a quiet and calm voice. He held his gun parallel to his leg, pointing it toward the ground. “It’s only been a few days.”

  “Mace is too generous,” Santiago said. He spit on the ground. “If I were in charge, the girl would come with us now.”

  “Well, you are not in charge, are you?” Hipslow asked.

  “Mace wants us to stay here until the time is up,” Trevan said.

  “Over my dead body,” Zeke said.

  “That can be arranged,” Santiago said.

  “Be quiet, both of you,” Hipslow said. He glanced at Galen who had entered the restaurant.

  Trevan slapped Hipslow on the back like they were great friends. Hipslow’s face briefly flashed anger before he covered it with his relaxed expression again. I wanted to bat Trevan’s hand away from Hipslow’s shoulders. It made so angry to see Trevan pretend they were friends.

  “Hipslow,” Trevan said. “Why don’t you, Santiago and I talk while we leave Lily and Hella to reunite?”

  Lily was the last person I wanted to talk to and by the way she looked at me, I could tell she felt the same way. I was more anxious to spend some time alone with my friends, to plan my escape because I was getting out of Pittsboro first chance I saw.

  “Great idea,” Hipslow said. Hipslow caught me rolling my eyes. “You’re under contract, Hella. Please get back to work.”

  I was put off by Hipslow’s abrupt tone. Get back to work? I looked out the window and saw the rain had let up, but my red dot chores were done. I thought about the Hughes waiting for me in the field, that’s where I wanted to go.

  “I’m coming with you,” Zeke said to Hipslow. He grabbed Santiago by the shirt.

  “No, you are not.” Santiago tried to spit on Zeke, but must have run out of saliva. “You obviously know nothing about negotiations. You get your hands off of me you dirty filthy scum.” Santiago slapped Zeke’s hand and said some more stuff in Spanish that made Ana smirk. She didn’t seem to hate her brother as much as Huck said she did. I wanted to slap that grin off of her face, too. Traitor.

  “You are not negotiating anything,” Zeke said.

  Hipslow turned to Zeke with his hand up. “Zeke, please. I need you to go with Huck today.” Hipslow stared at Zeke intently as if he was trying to remind him of something.

  “Things have changed,” Huck said. “I’d like to stay with Hella.”

  “Galen, stay here with the ladies,” Hipslow said. “Huck, you are needed elsewhere. Both of you, get out of here, now.” Hipslow’s tone was relaxed but direct.

  Huck and Zeke exchanged glances. Finally, Huck nodded slightly and Zeke stormed out of the roadhouse. Huck came over to my side and put his lips against my ears. I didn’t know if it was because of the tension, but having Huck’s breath in my ear caused me chills and I began to shake.

  “Keep it cool,” Huck said. “And say nothing.”

  “I’m not stupid,” I whispered back.

  Huck touched my neck, causing Ana to jump from her barstool and come toward us. Ana had never approached me before, the girl had grown some balls with her brother in town. She said something to Huck in Spanish, with angered me even more.

  “I know you are talking about me,” I said to Ana. She kept talking to Huck in Spanish. “Huck, tell her to shut up.”

  Huck said something to her in Spanish and touched her forehead a little too affectionately for me. He pressed Ana away from us. “I have to go with Zeke, Hella.”

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  “She wants to go with us,” Huck said. “I told her to stay here.”

  “Goody,” I said. “I get to babysit.”

  “You’ll understand soon enough,” Huck said in a low and growly voice. He took my hand and squeezed it before he walked out the door with Zeke.

  Soon I was left alone with Lily, Fareva Ana and Galen who quickly excused himself to guard the backdoor. I was angry that they were negotiating without me. I was the pawn in their game, but I didn’t get to choose my own destiny. I had to trust Hipslow, at least for the next for minutes. If I didn’t like the outcome of their discussions I would head to the helo and fly out of there. Who cares where I went, it wouldn’t matter at that point.

  I glared at Ana and Lily, who were standing side-by-side. Lily had found a new best friend and it wasn’t me. All of my feelings for her crumbled up into a little ball and I pretended to throw it out the window. I didn’t want to speak to her, let alone have some jolly reunion.

  Fareva clapped her hands. “Let’s have some cake.” Food was the answer to everything in this town, but I wasn’t hungry. “Georgia baked a pineapple upside down cake. I was saving it for later, but we could use something sweet.” Fareva disappeared into the kitchen.

  I smiled at Lily, her Asian beauty still reflecting strong. My heart broke with her betrayal and I was determined never to let her in again. “Why don’t you and Ana take a walk? She can show you how they’ve improved the place.”

  “Trevan wants me to stay here,” Lily said.

  “Trevan’s puppet,” I muttered.

  “Trevan’s what?” Lily asked.

  When I didn’t answer, she turned to Ana. “What did she say?” Lily asked Ana in English.

  “She doesn’t understand you,” I said. “She only speaks Spanish, surely you know that.”

  Lily looked puzzled as Ana took a few steps backwards. “She speaks English,” Lily said. “Maybe not too well, but she’s almost as fluent as her brother. Santiago told me all about her before we got here. They’re very close you know.”

  “What?” I stepped toward Ana and shoved her shoulders. “You lied? Why did you lie to us?”

  Ana shook her head. “No. No English.”

  “You’re lying to me, and you lied to Huck.” I grabbed her throat, all sorts of emotions leaking into my fingers as they clenched around her esophagus. She started to gag and grabbed at my hands.

  “Leave her alone,” Lily said. She came up behind me and pulled my hair. I winced, but didn’t let go of Ana’s throat.

  I thought about biting Ana, turning her into a zero, but then she might kill us all. Instead, I pushed her backward and caught her ankle with my foot, making her fall on her ass. She scooted away from me on her rear, got up and ran out the back door.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Lily said. “She’s just trying to survive like everyone else.”

  I smacked Lily’s hand, which was still in my hair. “No, Lily, not like everyone else. She lied to all of us. She pretended she didn’t know our language so that she could listen in to our conversations.”

  Lily’s nostrils flared. She was actually mad at me. “You lied about something bigger, Hella,” Lily said. “You lied about your virus, w
hich could have gotten all of us killed.”

  “I protected you,” I said. “Ungrateful little baby. I protected you for months in Haverlyn Village. I didn’t have to do that. What has that girl ever done for us? She’s part of that psycho Mace’s clan and we don’t need her around here. We don’t need you either.”

  I was about to walk away, when Lily said, “You know Mace isn’t that bad.”

  My mouth fell open and I slapped Lily across the face. She winced in pain and rubbed her cheek.

  “What Lily?” I asked. “Are you nuts? Has your brain been eaten away and replaced by an alien’s? Better yet, did Mace do a lobotomy on you, because you didn’t used to be so naïve?”

  Lily closed her eyes like she was recharging and opened them again. “How do you know Mace is not the right choice? How do you know Hipslow is better than him?”

  “Right choice for what, Lily?” She was about to answer but I stopped her. I didn’t matter what she was choosing. “I’ll tell you why I would never chose him. He kept me in a cage for weeks. He almost killed Zeke and Saudah. He kept Ana prisoner, too.”

  I blinked thinking about what Huck had told me about his time lucked up with Ana. So much didn’t make sense. Why had she been locked up with Huck, if she weren’t a spy? My gut churned as I thought about how Ana took advantage of Huck’s goodwill. I wanted to go after that girl and chew her eyes out.

  “Right choice for a leader,” Lily said. She smiled. Her eyes were vacant. I was beginning to think she actually had been brainwashed.

  I pressed my hands to my temples. “Huck said Santiago killed one of their siblings. In. Cold. Blood. Isn’t that enough for you? He killed his own brother in a crazy experiment.”

  Lily looked at me like she heard it all before. “She told you that story? It’s not true. Ask Santiago. I’ve met all of her brothers, they’re all still alive. They have a great setup on Duke’s campus. We should have tried to go there in the first place. It’s so nice and wooded and walled.”

  I kicked a chair next to me, sending it sliding across the floor. “No, Lily. You’re wrong. Take off your freaking rose colored glasses. What happened to you?”

  Lily flipped her hair. “What happened to you, Hella? When did you get so paranoid? Mace is trying to figure out this world, to do the best thing. For all of us, not just the people in this town.”

  I raised my hand to slap her again. “You are nuts, Lily, if you think for one moment that locking people up is the right thing to do.”

  “Who knows what is right and what is wrong anymore?” Lily asked.

  I balled my hand into a fist and slammed it on the bar. “You did at one time, Lily. When I first met you, when Trevan wanted to kill himself. He wanted to kill us, too.” I pointed to her and then to myself. “Remember? He was going to kill us because it wasn’t worth living in this world anymore. Was that right?”

  Lily looked solemn. “Well, at the time Trevan thought it was, but no. That wouldn’t have been right.”

  I opened my hands wide, facing my palms to Lily. “Neither is what Mace is doing.”

  “Neither is what Hipslow is doing,” Lily mimicked me.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  We were disrupted by Fareva who brought out a silver tray with the pineapple cake on it. Around the sides of the tray were cookies with strawberry jam in the middle.

  “What’s Hipslow doing?” I took a cookie from the tray under Fareva’s concerned eyes. “Feeding us too much?”

  “I could tell you things about Hipslow that would make your hair curl.” Lily took a cookie from the tray and bit a small corner of it.

  Fareva took the treat out of Lily’s hand. “Don’t you dare say anything bad about Hipslow in my place.”

  Lily glared at Fareva. I did, too. I had never heard Fareva raise her voice.

  Lily took another cookie. “I know what he has in the old airplane hangar.”

  Fareva laughed. “Hipslow has nothing to hide.”

  “She’s right, Lily. I know what Hipslow has in the hangar, too. He has vintage planes rescued from the aviation museum in Asheboro.”

  “Yea, and what else?” Lily asked.

  “Why don’t you tell me since you are so eager?” Several thunder claps resounded in the air and it began to rain again. I glanced at the men talking outside, but they were in heavy discussion and the rain didn’t bother them.

  “Break it up, girls,” Fareva said. She put the cake on a table. I wasn’t sure if the worried look on her face was because we were fighting, or because she really didn’t want me to know what was in the hangar.

  “Tanks,” Lily said. “He’s got tanks. Big tanks with big guns and that’s not all. He’s got bombs, Hella.”

  I tried to cover my surprise with a blank expression. “Great news,” I said. “And I don’t care.”

  “Yea, he’s a real peace loving hippy,” Lily said. “Did he tell you what happened last December?”

  “He told all of us. Mace came and stole the Hind from him, out of that same hangar. We crashed it, remember?” I didn’t believe anything Lily said. Someone obviously told her a pack of lies, but why would she believe them?

  “Ladies, please,” Fareva said. “We have nothing to hide, Hipslow will tell you himself what is in there. In fact, he’ll give you a tour. Please stop fighting in my restaurant.”

  As if on call, Hipslow, Trevan and Santiago entered the roadhouse again. They were all soaked from the rain and walked in shaking the drops from their bodies.

  Hipslow came up next to me. “Hella, we’ve agreed that Trevan and Lily will stay. They will be free to roam the town, but Santiago will have to go back to Mace. I will not have him snooping around this place.”

  Lily gave me a nasty smile, as if to say I wasn’t getting rid of her.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “I don’t like it, Hipslow. I can’t work with them around.”

  “I know this will be hard for you, but we have to get through the next few days.”

  “And then what, I go back to Mace?”

  “That’s the deal,” Trevan said. “Why don’t we toast over drinks.” Trevan walked to the bar. “I would love a gin and tonic.”

  “I’ve got plans,” I said. I wanted to find Stan and Saudah to see what they thought of Lily and Trevan’s arrival. I trusted Stan and Saudah more than anyone because they had been my friends before the apocalypse. Saudah was my best friend.

  “Let me go with you,” Lily said.

  “No.” I pushed her away.

  “Hella, you don’t have a choice,” Trevan said. “One of us has to accompany you everywhere, so we make sure you don’t escape.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Like you could stop me.”

  Trevan patted his gun. “I will.”

  “Why don’t you just go home and tell Mace he can expect me when Hell freezes over. You don’t own me. None of you own me. I am not going with you—ever.”

  “Hella, please,” Lily touched the small of my back.

  “Get away from me,” I said. “Why don’t you go back with Santiago? In fact, why don’t you and Trevan go back to Haverlyn Village with Santiago? The three of you will be very happy there, I’m sure. Maybe you can have our old apartment? Solar heating. Hot water. Warm bed? Fireplace and marshmallows.”

  I felt repulsion and sickness and wanted to hurt someone. I shoved Lily, but she didn’t fight back. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you scared of me?”

  “Hella, what’s wrong?” Lily asked.

  I pushed her again. “Get away from me, Lily. You are sick.”

  I made my exit out of the roadhouse’s front door. I didn’t go back for my cart, choosing instead to run the short distance back to the community college. I was sure Stan and Saudah were there helping in the fields. They loved to garden.

  Unfortunately, I forgot about the rain and became soaked the minute I stepped outside. Where was the umbrella store? I remembered Zora and Boa’s store, only a few blocks from here and decided to make a mad dash
for it instead.

  Chapter 13

  I ran down the street toward Zora’s store, all the while thinking about what to do. I was surprised that there were so many people out, but I shouldn’t have been. Everyone had surely heard the news about our visitors. They were all moseying around in their golf carts, or walking under umbrellas. They waved and tipped their hats and shouted out their appreciation, my people. If I was to be the one to fight Mace, I would raise my own army. People would follow me anywhere.

  I ran past Georgia’s bed and breakfast and was surprised to see Stan and Saudah on the porch. They opened a large umbrella and rushed out into the rain when they saw me.

  “Where are you going?” Stan asked.

  “To Zora’s,” I said. “Come with me.”

  “Of course,” Saudah said.

  We walked swiftly down the street, all huddled under Stan’s umbrella. I cursed my Birkenstocks once more and hoped that Zora would have better shoes for me at her store. Saudah and I each had an arm around Stan to help us keep our pace. I knew these two were my friends, I trusted them fully. Zora and Boa, too, although they were comfortable in town and might want to talk me out of leaving.

  I looked over my shoulder to see if Trevan or Lily were following and didn’t see them through the rain. Trevan and Lily, my shadows, what was Hipslow thinking? My blood boiled over everything, especially the disappearance of Zeke and Huck. I didn’t want to leave without them, but I wasn’t going to wait for their return.

  We made it to Zora’s. There was a closed sign on the door, but trying the knob I found it wasn’t locked. We ducked inside, a bell ringing as I opened the door. I hadn’t yet explored Zora’s store and was surprised at the size. It was bigger than I imagined it would be, with stairs leading up and a vast long room filled with neatly arranged racks and cases and bookshelves filled with stuff.

  Zora came out of the back followed by Boa. They were both dressed in jeans and Zora wore a see through yellow blouse with a light pink camisole underneath and Boa was in a yellow and green long sleeved shirt.