His breath was rank and she couldn’t see much detail. This was not Mr. Banks, or Jacob, or any other of the town residents. Her jaw ached and she could taste coppery blood where her teeth and tongue had connected in his initial blow. And now, as they wrestled on the floor, the memories of those first few days in Tent Five came flooding back. Jess felt her breath coming in hitched gasps, terror over just who this man was and what may have happened to Mr. Banks flooding through her, adding to her panicked punches. In the other room she could hear the thumps clearly now, the sounds of someone trying to break free of his bonds. Her attacker’s hands closed on her throat, narrowing her world, edging it in blackness. She tried to reach his eyes, to tear them from their sockets. She kicked with her legs, hoping desperately to connect with some part of her attacker that would be made of soft, vulnerable flesh. He blocked every move, pinning her beneath him. The blackness closed in and Jess’s arms and legs felt heavy, impossible to move. She tugged at his hands weakly, scraping him with her fingernails before succumbing to the all-encompassing dark.
Consciousness returned slowly. Air moved over her. Jess struggled to remember where she was. A small lantern now lit the room and she pulled at the bindings around her wrists. Some cord tied them tightly together above her head. It was immovable and it cut painfully into the flesh of her wrists.
“I know you.” Her attacker’s voice sounded mildly amused. She felt his hand on her leg, felt his knife cut through her pants, slicing the fabric from her body. “You are the whore who got away.”
Jess felt a scream bubble up in her throat. He had gagged her though, and all that could be heard was a guttural whine as she struggled to free herself.
“I was on top of the world before that,” he continued, now running his knife up her other pant leg. Her shirt was already gone and she shivered in fear. “Right after you and those others took off, things really went to shit.” He reached out and grabbed her right breast, squeezing it painfully in his hand, “But I’m thinking that you and I are going to have some fun now. I’d take the gag off, but I really can’t risk it this close to others. That family on Kentucky sure was a lot of fun. And I must say I even enjoyed slicing on the old man.”
He cut the last of her clothing off and settled himself on top of her; Jess felt the tears slide down her face. His voice was soft, almost conversational, and she wanted to scream, to buck him off, to stop him, but all of the horror, the memories of those months of hell, they had made her limbs rigid and unresponsive. In her mind she was screaming.
He sighed in her ear, “I really, really wish I could hear you scream. I think it would make me feel better.” His mouth was at her ear and she shuddered in fear, “And the time I would spend with you, let it last for a few days, maybe even a week; it is a shame that I can’t. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m out of time already. But life isn’t any fun if you don’t take a few risks. Don’t you agree?”
The cold blade of his knife slid along her side, before viciously slicing into the muscle of her upper arm, her right arm. Hot agony flooded her and she did scream then, although the gag blocked most of it. She felt him reach down, fumble with the waist of his jeans and her limbs were energized with a new panic. Her mind screamed in terror, the thought of him raping her now, all of these years later, violating her body after she had spent so many years trying to forget, terrified of ever having any man come near her. She thought of the baby inside her. He would kill her, and her child. David’s child.
The fear lent her body more energy than she thought possible. She bucked against him, kicking, pulling at the bindings at her wrists with such violence that her skin was torn and began to bleed.
He laughed with delight, “Now that’s the whore I remember!” She could feel him becoming even more excited, struggling to push her legs apart, eager to take her violently. His hands once more closed on her throat. She wondered, as her vision began to narrow, if he even particularly cared if she was alive or dead when he got around to raping her.
The thumps from the other room had stopped, and as she struggled against Cooper, as the will to fight slowly left her body, she looked up and saw why. Jacob had managed to break loose. He stood above them both with a baseball bat in hand. She blacked out again as she watched the bat come crashing down on Cooper’s head.
“Mom? Mom? Mom!” Jacob’s voice sounded very far away. Jess coughed and tried to roll to her side. Her bones felt like mush. Jacob’s hands were on her, helping her to turn on her side. She felt his absence keenly for the few seconds it took for him to run to the other room and find a blanket to lay over her.
“Jacob?” her voice sounded as if it were full of gravel. Her throat ached. She coughed again.
“I’m here, Mom. I’m here.” His hand draped the blanket over her, covering her exposed skin, his work-chapped hands busy trying to loosen the bindings on her wrists.
“Where is he?” she managed to croak. She struggled to sit up.
“He’s here. I think I killed him.” Jacob looked over at Cooper’s limp figure. “He isn’t moving.”
“Good.” With her son’s help she sat up. The boy nestled his head against her and she crumbled, dissolving into tears. “I love you, Jacob. I’ve always loved you. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about him sooner. I just didn’t know how to. I never wanted you to think less of yourself, to think you were anything like him. Because you aren’t. You are good, you are kind, you are my son. You are nothing like him.”
Jacob clutched at her, staring at the prone form of the man on the floor. Jess winced as his hand tightened on the stab wound on her arm.
“Is it him, Mom? Is he the one?”
It was hard to force the word out, “Yes.”
“He killed Mr. Banks.”
Jess felt a stab of deep pain. The old man had been so kind to them. He hadn’t deserved that kind of an end. How many times had they sat together? Eaten meals side by side, planted trees, harvested crops, and more. He had been like a grandfather to them. He had held baby Jacob in his arms. After all of these years, he had been family. She had imagined him passing someday, but in a non-specific sentimental sort of way, surrounded by those who cared for him as much as if they shared blood with him. The thought of him dead, at the hands of that monster on the floor, was too terrible to comprehend.
She looked around the dimly lit room. How long had he been here? How long had Mr. Banks been dead or dying in this house and they hadn’t even known? She clutched her son to her and felt a deep cold inside and out, despite the lingering summer heat. She reached out with her left hand and took ahold of the knife lying on the ground near Cooper’s body. Her right arm was bleeding freely, but she barely noticed.
“We need to get out of here, Jacob.”
She levered herself up painfully. Her head was pounding, and the side of her face that Cooper had struck felt like raw meat. One of her teeth felt loose and the coppery taste of blood was still on her tongue.
“We need to make sure he’s de...”
Her words fell away as she turned and saw Cooper rise up, blood running in a thick rivulet of gore down the side of his scarred face, and absolute murder in his eyes. He reached for her throat.
Hope and Loss
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” – Hilary Cooper
David stood at the gravesite clutching Tina’s hand. She had returned from Kansas City with Penelope and Kip when she had heard the news. She was fourteen now, and she had grown nearly as tall as her brother. She stood quietly by his side, her long fingers clutching a bouquet of flowers.
The masses of people gathered around the gravesite were a testament to the mark left on so many. In their loss, and everyone had lost so many in the past ten years, the grief had not lessened at the passing of someone so intrinsically a part of the community.
Nearby, another grave had been dug, but no one paid any attention to it or cared. It had already had a body lowered into it, b
een filled, but there was no marker. It wouldn’t take long, perhaps a few years at most, for the wound in the soil to become grass. And then no one, not a single person, would remember that he was buried there. And that was for the best.
On David’s left side stood Tina, and on his right was Jess. Her arm was heavily bandaged, and her neck bore livid bruises, the sharp outlines of fingers now smudged in red and purple. Her left eye was black and her cheek still swollen. Despite her appearance, Jess felt stronger than she had ever thought possible.
That night, as Scott Cooper’s hands had closed around her throat, she had held his knife tightly in her hands. The nightmares, filled with darkness and fear and hands groping her, touching her body, using her—those nightmares had resolved into one clear and focused thought.
This man before her had to die. Despite his strong grip on her already bruised throat, despite the screams of her son as he struggled to stop the man he shared a genetic heritage with, she had kept that one thought firmly in mind. She hadn’t panicked.
The knife had slid in...softer, easier than she had expected. Scott Cooper had looked...surprised...and rather shocked. She remembered to use a sideways motion, a quick slice to the left, and to the right, severing arteries, intestines, spilling waste inside the abdomen, ensuring a horrible, elongated, and certain death.
As if in slow motion, his hands had fallen away. His body angled backwards...slowly...as if time had reduced itself to a crawl, especially for them, in this moment. She fell with him.
Together, Jess and Cooper connected with the floor, Cooper’s knife between them, slamming into the carpet, the knife finding his spine beneath. This close to him, she could feel his heartbeat, strong at first, but slowing as his life drained away. Cooper’s face wore surprise, a look of mild alarm, and he stared as Jess slowly pulled away, Jacob frantically searching her for wounds, asking if she was hurt. His voice was muted compared to the dull roaring in her ears.
All she could do was stare into Cooper’s eyes—locked in that moment. She would not look away until it was over. There was so much blood. It was black in the weak moonlight, warm and wet, bathing them both in a pool of it.
It wasn’t her blood though; at least, not the majority of it. She let Jacob wrap the blanket around her once again, never breaking eye contact with the man on the floor. Jess stared at the monster from her dreams...bleeding out...his body disjointed and slack, a puzzled look on his face. There was a pounding at the door and Jess could hear David, her brother, and others. The door crashed open and people poured inside—militia members, her brother and David, everyone heavily armed.
The moment though, stood suspended. Like a mosquito in amber, a fish frozen in ice. She stared into Cooper’s eyes, ignoring the sounds around her, the shouts of the others as they moved into the house and found the old man’s body. She ignored David asking her if she was all right.
Nothing else mattered in that moment. Cooper stared back at her, his eyes slowly glazing over. She stood there, unmoving, unresponsive, until she saw the life leave him. The eyes are the windows to the soul. She had heard that once. She waited, until the lights turned off for the very last time.
Only then had she allowed David and the others to lead her away.
Now, standing at Thurman Banks’s graveside, she felt a strange sort of bittersweet peace. The old man had been Cooper’s last victim. And he was mourned. Not just by her little family, but by most of the town. There were people all around her, and their low murmurs saturated the air, reminding Jess that even in death, life goes on. The pastor had given a short speech and now it was her turn, as the town historian. She stepped forward, out of David’s protective embrace, unfolded a piece of paper and began to speak.
“I shared many moments with Mr. Banks over the years. The first two years after we returned he made sure we stayed fed, he shared his harvests with us, the meat and eggs from his chickens, and his knowledge. He was the grandfather I never had.” She paused, and felt the emotion swell up inside her, “Last year, he asked me if I could write down his story, and I of course told him that I would. And here it is...
Thurman Banks was born on a hot September day in 1946...”
Hours later, after the grave had been filled and the tears had been dried, the dark beauty of the late summer night stole over them. The cicadas hummed noisily, their rhythm rising and falling in a cadence known only to them. The house was full, but everyone inside was preternaturally quiet. Jess felt as if everyone was hovering around her, nervous and watchful. Jacob and David had maintained a regular, almost obsessive presence around her, barely leaving her side at all in the past two days. She could feel them watching her now as she pecked at her food, not really seeing it, the vision of Cooper’s death replaying in her mind.
David’s hand on hers, “Jess? Are you okay?”
She returned to the kitchen, looked around and saw all those who she loved. David, Jacob, Becka, and Erin, along with Tina, Penelope and her husband Kip, Chris and Carrie. There was concern written on many of their faces, held quietly in their eyes as they stared back at her.
Jess felt her mouth tug and re-shape, lips curving into a huge grin, “Yeah,” she said simply, “I’m okay. I really am.” She took David’s hand in hers, “We are going to have a baby.”
The room erupted with surprise and excitement.
Outside, the cicadas sang.
Life is Precious
“I finally understand it. The meaning of life. Life is love and hate, pain and bliss, gain and loss, life and death. And in between, among the cracks of all that we have endured, life is precious.” – Jess’s Journal
The room was full. David was on one side of Jess, Carrie and Erin on the other. Tina stood at the foot of the bed with Dr. Farley and was speaking in low tones to the doctor about the healing properties of a certain native plant as they finished putting the room in order.
The baby lay nestled in David’s arms, her blue eyes wide open and staring at the world, a look of bewildered amazement on her tiny face. David stared at her intently, surprised when he had discovered his cheeks were wet with tears. He gazed at his newborn daughter, shocked at how tiny she was, and how perfect.
Twin wails began piercing the room as Chris bustled in, a tiny bundle in each arm. As usual, they were wailing in symphony, one after the other. “I held them as long as I could,” he said to his wife, “but they definitely want their mama.” Carrie’s thin face lit up, and the circles beneath her eyes were testament to the lack of sleep she had been receiving as of late.
“I think they just wanted to meet their new baby cousin,” Carrie said, as Michael and Julie instantly quieted in her arms.
Her heart surged with happiness. Her pregnancy had coincided with Jess’s, but Carrie had been terrified to hope, even once her belly had pushed out to an enormous size and Dr. Farley had told her he thought she might be pregnant with twins. Her labor had been quick, and the babies had been tiny, not quite five pounds each, but perfect. There hadn’t been a whisper of complications and both were thriving, despite being born nearly a month early. That had been nearly two weeks ago.
How many times had she despaired of ever having a child? Of being able to hold her own flesh and blood in her arms? And yet, after all of the years of pain and misery, of miscarriage and stillbirth, she held two perfect and beautiful babies in her arms. How she wished Gramps could have seen them.
Joseph, newly arrived from Tennessee, stood uncertainly in the doorway. He had come out with traders and a stack of hand-bound journals to sell, somewhat rudderless since Mr. Liles had passed away last summer. Tall and handsome, he had locked eyes with Tina and suddenly a short visit had turned into a semi-permanent stay. He had stayed in the city, welcomed instantly into the large, brick Victorian that housed Penelope and her husband Kip, along with a small health clinic and dorms for the interns. There they had stayed until two months ago, when Chris had asked for Joseph’s help cleaning up Mr. Banks’s home.
There were new
families moving into the area, but Mr. Banks had willed it to Jess and David, and they had in turn given it to Carrie and Chris. It didn’t feel right letting it sit vacant, despite what had happened there, and the homes were close to each other, allowing the siblings, along with their families, to be within walking distance of each other.
Chris and Jacob’s relationship had smoothed out in the months following the deaths of Cooper and old Mr. Banks. Seeing how much the boy had tried to protect his mother from the psychopath’s attack had brought home to him how different Jacob was from his father, and how much of Jess’s goodness he held within him.
Jess smiled at Chris’s brother-in-law. “Would you like to hold her?” she asked.
Joseph nodded, and David handed the newborn gently to the teenager. Joseph was well familiar with babies, from Liza’s to the recent birth of Carrie’s twins, and now this one.
Her tiny eyes opened briefly and he smiled at the flash of blue, “What is her name?” he asked, staring transfixed at the newest member of his extended family.
“Hope.” Jess was surprised as she uttered the name aloud.
She and David had stayed up late so many nights, working through names, trying different combinations. Nothing had seemed to stick and eventually they had agreed that they would just have to wait and see who their baby was—boy or girl.
“We will know when we see the baby,” she had told David. “We will just know, I will know, in that moment.”
And that moment had arrived.
For all that they had been through. For all that they had endured and lost and for the friends and family gained along the way.
For the nation they had seen crumble and the new world that they had built with their hands, sweat, blood, and tears.
A Brave New World: War's End, #2 Page 24