Paula reaches for Terrence and Kent, leaning with her whole upper body to grasp their hands. They connect for a brief moment before everything goes horribly wrong. The truck strikes a Risen, bouncing the truck and slipping their hands apart. Terrence is shoving his son forward, but it’s no use. Kent’s leg is no longer absorbing the abuse, it’s cramping. Terrence, seeing this, switches his strategy, lunging for the truck’s tailgate, he lifts himself onto it with Paula steading him. Terrence turns, reaching for his son. Their fingers are just shy of the other’s, causing Paula to shout for Rhett to slow down.
Rhett won’t. Rhett is not going to risk our family for another’s. We have played the hero before for a school that let us fall. Rhett won’t fall again.
Humanity is so hard to hold onto. Compassion is even harder. We aren’t the only monsters. We have just become more comfortable with being them since that blood-covered day in a snow-filled courtyard.
Terrence is screaming for Rhett to stop, to slow down, to do anything but what he currently is doing. Paula is slamming her fists against the back glass in anger and venom-filled threats. Even Aimes is shouting at him, motioning wildly with her hands in her agitation, but Rhett ignores all of them. Like an empty void of concern, April is watching it all with her large, brown eyes from where she sits facing us.
I can hear Dolph cursing over the engines surrounding me. He knows as well as the rest of us what is about to happen. The truck is driving right through the center of the pack with Kurt running behind it.
Terrence is screaming for his son to jump, motioning with his hands to try. Kurt has no choice. He has only seconds until Rhett lures him right through Death’s army. He jumps, bouncing his chest against the tailgate, and for a moment I exhale. One small moment, everything seems to be okay. Lawless throttles his bike ahead of me, leading our group towards the road before we too ride into them or the trees growing steadily thick ahead of us.
As I lean, praying Rhett’s Harley doesn’t test me again, I glance again to watch Terrence and Paula fighting to pull the male teen in. Their faces are adorned with their relief. I smile too; a brief ‘thank you’ to Life. She doesn’t smile back.
Turning the truck to glance past the tree trunks, Rhett has no choice but to tilt the back-end right into the waiting arms of the Risen. They waste no time clutching Kent’s legs, yanking him from his father’s grasp with the help of the truck’s forward speed. Time slows as Kent is hauled from their grasp. He slides backward from the very arms that were just holding him. His head bounces as it strikes the hard ground. He never screams when they overtake him. There is not a sound of his death from his lips, but it is being screamed just the same.
Paula is fighting to keep Terrence in the truck. He is clawing his way out, screaming for his son who has disappeared under the murdering mass. Kent’s name is a wail behind me from Genny’s lowered window. I recognize her tone. I held it in my voice for the man who refuses to look backward in front of me. Still, my heart doesn’t constrict for her.
The few Risen that Rhett had missed fall to where the teen boy is bleeding as they tear him apart. They shove pieces of his body into their mouths with his clothes still attached to their blood-soaked hands. Kurt never made a sound. A part of me hopes he never felt his death. His father will feel it forever.
Terrence no longer fights to escape from Paula. He is broken, consumed, and may as well be dying on the ground by his son. One simple mistiming, and the world has stopped forever for him. Life didn’t smile tonight. She merely shrugged as she watched, and she’s already turned her back on us, yet again.
Having watched it all, still, we ride, heading towards another stretch of road with no destination in mind with headlights leading us in front and blanketing us from behind. The four of us don’t talk about what just happened. We don’t look to the one riding beside us. We keep our heads straight and eyes forward just as April had while watching it unfold. She never blinked. She never looked away. We don’t either.
It’s so hard to not become the monster. It’s so hard to hold onto the last handful of compassion when compassion can cause such anguish. I don’t miss my soul. I miss the man who had tried to save it. I’m not the only monster. I’m just okay with admitting that I am one.
Chapter 4
“We have to find somewhere secure, somewhere we can set up and stay,” Dolph whispers to our huddled group.
We drove for as long as our bodies and minds could handle. I thought I knew this state with as many road trips the club would take to escape life. Honestly, I have no idea where we are anymore. We may have crossed into Georgia or another bordering state with as much as we have run, constantly moving to survive what seems to always find us. It’s draining on more than just our supplies. It’s draining to the small slips of souls we have left. The small glimpses that try to still stare out of our red-rimmed and tired eyes keep disappearing with each cost of an escape.
If there was a division with our groups before, now there is a gulf. Terrence is an empty shell. He stares into some distant time, unwilling to see into the current world. Peyton is peering out the weather-coated windows of our latest rest stop with the same blank face. In a way, I guess they both lost a son tonight.
Genny sits close to the red-haired Ginjer. Ginjer is murmuring into the teen girl’s ear. I watch the two of them, further bonding in their grief, and for a moment a small flicker of sympathy threatens to flutter in the empty cavity of my chest.
Only my father either has the bravery, or a very cultivated death wish, to keep looking our way. I can feel his eyes on me, itching my shoulders with their intensity. We have been together for over a month now and I still don’t know what the man wants from me.
“You don’t think we all know that?” Lawless asks.
With their past histories, Dolph and Lawless are still walking on glass shards with each other. They tolerate the other because of the respect they have built as we have traveled, but a true friendship might never be in their cards. The fact Dolph is now riding J.D.’s bike does nothing to ease down the demons in Lawless.
“The only thing we have to really discuss is if we stay with them, or strike out on our own.” Marxx mumbles. He is staring across the imaginary line watching their movements as the Risen watched ours last night.
The empty gas station makes it hard to hide conversation with how it echoes every sound. The way Peyton twitched, I don’t think Marxx’s question was hidden at all.
No one answers him. Instead, we all stare at the round spot made in front of us by our formation like it’s some foretelling crystal ball. The floor is caked with spoiled food and other, darker stains. I could occupy my mind with guessing games over what each irregular pattern might be, but with as much as I have seen, my mind will only jump to the darkest of conclusions. It’s never a good thing to do before bed.
The shelves are barren and disheveled. The place looks as if it was hit by a Black Friday sale during a hurricane warning. Luckily, someone had stashed a box of goods behind the ice chest. Someone who never came back for it, and once upon a time, I might have argued to leave something for them should they, but not now. It was divided and rationed with no thoughts to whoever might have put it there or might be expecting it to still be there. Finders keepers.
I glance to Aimes sitting across from me, as we always find ourselves. She is dozing in the protective shadow of Rhett. April is on his other side, hugging close to his warmth as she finishes the last of Rhett’s jerky. She isn’t the least bit troubled over Kurt’s death or our lives. Watching her, I wonder if this is how my Angels would have turned out if I hadn’t failed them. A part of me, watching the complete lack of empathy in such a small child, is guiltily happy I did fail them. Besides, Rhett would never have bonded with Ashley.
“As long as we are making do, I say we stick together,” Rhett offers. “There is safety in numbers, or at least better victims than us.”
Every set of eyes still awake in our circle slowly rolls to Rhett whe
n hearing what he has said. Only Lawless dares to speak.
He says, “It wasn’t your fault. Those things, they are changing. They are learning, getting better. They are figuring things out faster than we can invent things to keep them away.”
Rhett shrugs, lifting only half his shoulder’s height, but his blue eyes are frightening when he says, “If I have to choose between us or them, it’s them every time. It’s just how it’s going to be.”
“Chapel would be ashamed to hear you say that,” Paula hisses with her whisper, trying to reach through the cold walls Rhett has constructed around his little family.
“Chapel is dead. He doesn’t give a shit about anything I may or may not say,” Rhett returns.
Lawless nods, sensing where Rhett is going with his dark thoughts, saying, “We tried it Chapel’s way. We tried bending to the other's needs. J.D. would never have done that. He never would have allowed Travis to set up his little Kool-Aide brigade, but we did. Now, Chapel is gone and that is our fault.”
Lawless pauses. He looks at each man staring at him, connecting their eyes and something deeper, making them each nod. Like always, I’m missing something again. When Lawless turns his dark brown eyes to Paula, he fills those of us lost into his little playground of mental games.
Lawless says, dark and menacing, “We won’t bend anymore, and it won’t be us to break. It’s going to be us doing the breaking.”
“That’s not what Chapel wanted,” I hear myself softly say, as I stare at my boots.
“Nope,” Lawless agrees, as he slides down to sleep, “It’s what J.D. told us to do in someplace similar to this. We didn’t listen then and look where we are now.”
“Right back in a rest stop sleeping on the ground?” Aimes asks.
“Not murdering small children to avenge our mourning?” I hear myself mutter.
I hadn’t thought to say it. I didn’t have any thought pattern to link Aimes’ comment or mine together. Like a train of destruction, it slipped out, derailing with just as much force whether it was an accident or not. As if there were not enough ‘daddy issues’ already in this building, I went and opened another scab, sprinkling myself with kerosene before the heat of Lawless’ anger ignites.
“What’s the matter, Hells?” Lawless’ voice comes from beside me. It’s dangerously low, making me lower my head as I wait for his verbal blow. “You still upset about that? Kinda odd from someone who did nothing to stop it. You can run right into those things without a second thought, but you never have been very good at standing up to your fathers have you, Babe?”
Daddy issues - fun for the whole family!
“J.D. had his strengths, I get that,” I cautiously say, still with my head low, trying not to smile over my most recent thought. “I do, but he had his demons, too. I know he wanted you to kill everyone the first night, Rhett. J.D.’s way was hit first, ask later, and never apologize. I’m not afraid to hit first. I just don’t want to always be asking why later. There has to be some middle ground, or we will find ourselves fighting the living and the dead. We won’t last.”
No one around me is shocked by my little confession about J.D. and Rhett. Not even Dolph inhales or widens his eyes. As far as Rhett’s reaction, I might as well have said I know what color shirt he is wearing. Maybe I was wrong over how far we have slipped. Maybe it’s only me slipping.
“She has a point,” Aimes’ sleepy voice says from Rhett’s casted shadow. “Besides, we didn’t pack any tape to put on the ground again when we left the school. We know how you boys just love your little squares.”
“I love it when you’re silent,” Rhett grumbles. He is pulling April into his lap as she begins to nod off to sleep.
“Then stop making her scream,” Dolph taunts, as he too slips down into his bag.
Lawless, with all of his dislike of the man, chuckles hearing Dolph’s jest. He says, “Don’t worry, Aimes. Hells here will fall to sleep soon and she will cover your moaning.”
“Yeah, pity for her, her screams are not from a man’s touch anymore, though,” Aimes says, with her signature smile.
Lawless chuckles again, before giving her a one-finger salute as his response.
Both of them missed Dolph’s hand roaming my outer leg. They didn’t see the way he looked at me when I turned to him. No one saw the question in his eyes. Dolph is staring at me the way I watch Marxx. His green eyes are filled with concern and they burn me. They slash at me deeper than anything J.D. had ever said, and open scars still raw, so much like my father’s eyes still do.
I don’t want his pity. I’m too tired to carry his fears or concerns over me or what Lawless may do. He and I both know Lawless will resurrect an old ghost of a buried man who tried to destroy us all if Law thinks it will keep us safe. There is no amount of begging that Dolph’s eyes can do to change that fact.
Home. Safe. Survival. Such simple words. Such deadly, simple words in such a simply, deadly time.
Chapter 5
When dawn finds us, Peyton and Lawless are already debating over a road map they found. More than just the vehicles are running low on gas and one wrong turn could leave us stranded. It’s a heavy burden for both men to bear.
Aimes and April are playing a game of chase with Rhett as their base. The large man takes it all in stride, watching the two with nothing more than his eyes as they run around him. It’s comical in more ways than just the obvious.
The three of them are oblivious to how both groups watch them. We each are seeing something different. A mixture of amusement and agony is spread across the faces crowded together. Some of us are dwelling in the memories they are innocently recreating. Others sit on the surface of now, happy to just have a distraction. Take one picture, pass it around, and everyone will see something different because we all want to see something else.
“She reminds me of Lilly.”
I jump hearing my father so close to me. Collin Hawthorn, in all his Greek God glory, rests his body on the truck beside me as we watch the game. My throat clogs with the taste of my panic dripping from my tongue. Lawless was right. Risen, demons, nightmarish gore-dripping children - check. Fathers? Nope.
“Lilly wasn’t so cold.”
I force my tongue to move, refusing to so easily fold under my anxiety over him.
He smiles before saying, “No, she was the sun and you were always my moon.”
Something on my face must have called his bluff. He squirms, adjusting his body as if suddenly uncomfortable. His head tilts back-and-forth as he searches for what to say to me.
“We weren’t close, I know,” he starts, “but I think you are starting to put it all together.”
“The fact you weren’t just a horrible father? You were a horrible husband, too.”
Collin sighs, searching for his words again. “I was a lot of things I wish I wasn’t.”
We both can agree on that one. Our silence does.
“You can ask me anything,” my father whispers when I don’t offer anything more to the conversation.
“Maybe one day. I have enough information to hate you with as it stands.”
“Your mother loved you. She was so like you,” he says, almost in a pained whisper.
“Maybe. One. Day.” My teeth are clenched, adding, “Not today.”
I don’t want to travel this road. I don’t want to bond over it or repair it. I don’t want to mourn for a woman I never met when my eyes burn from crying over those I knew. She didn’t want me then and I don’t want her now.
“Helena,” he whispers again, and I know by his tone what he is going to ask me, “where are they?”
“Right where you left them, Daddy,” I reply, coating what they used to call him with bitterness.
I look at his face. It’s contorted with confusion. His eyes sway, trying to read my face for some hint. I don’t make him search for long.
I say to him, wearing a smile Aimes would be proud of, “Haunting me.”
The hint registers. It hits home,
concaving his chest with the blow. I listen as he fights to inhale his breath. It doesn’t bring me any satisfaction. Sometimes the truth does that. It just is, and it weighs nothing.
Sometimes the truth is scalding. It burns with the pain and the guilt it causes. For my father, the latter is true. For me, it doesn’t bring me anything at all. It’s weightless and smothering all the same.
“You can ask me anything,” I whisper back to him, watching as his pain clouds his eyes.
“Maybe one day,” he returns, and I wait to see if he will go all the way. “Right now, I have enough information to hate myself with as it stands.”
A simple twist of my words and I can feel the blade slide into my heart for a small flash of an instant. I startle when Marxx drops a new collection of noisemakers into the bed of my truck with more force than needed. The various objects rattle and clang against one another, and the solid metal of the truck, as well. Loud noises and hushed conversations tend to make people jumpy these days. If anyone had missed my father and I having our little chat, they are aware of it now. I let my eyes express how thankful I am to Marxx over interrupting it.
“And here you thought we had nothing in common,” Collin tells me, reminding me of the conversation and its moment that has slipped away.
He pushes himself from my truck when the sounds of the many forms of transportation fire to life around us. Since becoming the center of everyone’s attention, my father doesn’t avoid the clump of Harleys. He walks right through them and their riders who stare at him with unmasked annoyance.
Lawless looks to me with his eyebrows arched over his dark sunglasses. I give him the same smile I gifted my father as Aimes, Paula, and April climb into my truck. He tries to hold his face neutral, but a smile creeps across those lips. When he fully gives in to his mirth, my smile changes from sarcastic to a teasing of a playful curve. If there were a more bipolar couple than he and I, I have yet to meet them.
The Risen Series | Book 5 | Defiance Page 3