The Risen: Remnants (15 page)

Authors: Marie F Crow

Tags: #Science Fiction

“The notebooks?” I prod her, helping her to focus and remember. Nails claw at the paint, unable to fully press the door open yet with my weight blocking them.

“Use the notebooks to figure out what stores have been looted and which ones have not. Keep track of where people have set up to avoid them. Use the side roads. Never the main ones.” She recites the words we have practiced knowing that this time it is not just a rehearsal.

“You’ll be fine. You’ll be brave. Keep close to Peyton. Find that high school and you live. You survive this.” The first real push comes and I stumble before reapplying pressure.

“You can’t leave me! I can’t do this alone…” She has already begun to take small steps backwards, still praying I will join her. Her face begs me to run with her, attempting to call my bluff, but I’m not bluffing. There is too many of them for us to both run and survive. I can buy my daughter the time she needs to make it.

The door bounces again, and I know this is what I have to do, because the truth is, I can’t do it without
her
.

“Yes, you can. Listen to me,” I talk over her moan of refusal. “Listen! Nothing is how it used to be. I don’t know if it ever will be again. You will have to do things now that you don’t want to do. Some things will rip your heart right out, Genny girl. It won’t make you a bad person. It just makes you a survivor. You remember that.” I tell her, fighting against the door. As their eagerness grows, so does their strength. “Not all choices are easy anymore, but we have to make them. Just like what you are going to do now. You are going to run. Stick to the plan. You have to survive. You have to survive for me and for your aunt. You have to keep going to wherever this takes you. Don’t you ever give up, Genny. Don’t you ever give up on life.”

Each sobbing step leads her further away from me. I fight back my tears. Her last sight of me will not be of me sobbing and scared, but of a strong woman that believes in her. I know this moment will haunt her, but she won’t be haunted by my weakness. She’ll be haunted by my love.

The door presses harder against my back, thumping me with a sudden shove.

“Go Genny. Go! I love you. Now run. Run, Genny girl! You run!” I shout at her, commanding her to move before it’s too late. Genny breaks down in sorrow, but my voice finally reaches her and she turns from me to run.

She runs from the sight of what is inevitable. She runs from her shame of living another day while I stay behind. She runs from the pain of losing her family. She runs. My little girl runs away.

I slide down to the floor, wedging my knees up to provide better traction to fight against their strength and the desperation to be free from that room. Their savage nature that craves our flesh forces them to beat against the metal with no concern for themselves.

A piece of paper crinkles in my pocket and reminds me of the treasure I hold. Pulling out the purple and pink card, I open it to stare at her smiling face. Genny’s grinning face of innocence with the joys of wonder that each day brought to her at that age smiles up at me. I am reminded of Becky and I wonder if somewhere a mother is staring at a similar photo of a little girl that never was able to grow up. A little girl that was never returned to her.

“Happy Mofers Day”, it tells me. Today is my mother’s day. Today is the day I do what all mothers know they would do for their children. Happy Mofers Day.

Staring at the paper, I remember an inscription of a blood-baptized angel with sad pale eyes and crumbling stone wings.

Stand not before me and weep. Let not your wails of mourning fill the air around me. For from this life’s suffering I am free. Soon, all will join me and we will rejoice in our victory.

Clutching the card to my chest, I stand, stepping away from the door and letting what will be, will be.

Please Lord, don’t let my daughter see me die today.

Chapter
18

I
explode through the door, almost falling from the ice on the cement. Mr. Peyton is standing by our car with the rest of the group. Mrs. Ginjer stands when seeing me and she knows that something is wrong. She knows that three went in, but only I am coming out. Her fear-filled posture turns the rest towards me with slow, hesitant movements.

I refuse to think of my mother waiting in the hallway or thoughts of my aunt dead in the locker room. I try to block out the picture of them attacking, killing the women that I have known as my rock, while I run away like a coward. My feet slip, almost gliding towards the group with my haste.

“We have to go. Now!” I don’t stop to explain anything more. The words will destroy me if I have to speak them out loud.

Mr. Peyton slides in the driver’s seat of our car not asking for any explanations. Mrs. Ginjer runs to the passenger side, leaving me the back seat. Mr. Collin opens the door for me, helping me inside. I can’t meet his questioning eyes. I just can’t.

Mr. Terrence hurriedly pulls himself behind the wheel of the Jeep and Kent rushes to get in on the other side. Their southern Jeep pulls around our compact, letting their larger tires make a path in the snow and ice for us to follow. Kent is pressed up against his window as they pass. My eyes lock with his and their many questions place a crack in the resolve I was fighting to hold.

My mother’s notebook sits on the floor in front of me. Picking it up, I run my fingers over the worn cardboard. I flip through the pages of her script where she has left all of her secret thoughts and fears from that which she protected me. I remember going through the Ziploc bag just hours ago with the many versions of myself that stare back at me. There are no pictures of my mother or aunt in this bag. My resolve is gone and I let forth the pain that I tried to deny.

Soft sobs turn into wails that shock me. My chest feels as if it is bursting and breaking at the same time from the pain of their deaths. I can’t pull in enough air to keep up with my misery. I am alone. My family is gone. I left them behind to die so that I may escape.

Mr. Collin pulls me to him and rocks me. I hear his whispered words through his chest. Their soothing rumble contradicts with the fast beating of his heart. He is fighting his own misery over losing my aunt.

“I don’t think we have ever been properly introduced,” He tells me, whispering the words into my dark brown hair so much like my aunt’s. “My name is Collin Hawthorn. Your aunt and I had a daughter together twenty-four years ago. That makes you my niece in a way, too.”

He pulls my face from his chest with gentle hands, holding my face so that I am looking straight into his blue, blue eyes that are spilling forth as many tears as mine.

“So, you see, we are family. You and I. You’re not all alone now and neither am I.” He tells me, reading the thoughts of my drowning soul.

I hug him, clinging to him like a port in a turbulent storm. Almost a year ago, I stayed home, avoiding a vaccine shot that brought the world to its knees with its domino effect of destruction. My mother and I ran from the monsters with Mrs. Ginjer, fighting to stay alive. Fate brought us to this group and to my aunt. We learned to trust again through them and through us they learned to live. Fate brought us to this Welcome Center that hinted at past hardships, but we didn’t take heed of its warnings. We ignored the whispers left in the bones strewn across the parking lot and the mayhem inside. Now my mother and aunt are two more victims it has claimed with a chain of misery that was started long ago. I will tell everyone that asks that my mother died for me. She died so that I may live.

Once upon a time, there was a perfect girl, with a perfect life, in a perfect world. Once upon a time, that was me. Someone threw it all away for love; the love they held for me. Now I am shattered, rebuilding my heart and soul with the promised hopes of what a high school scrawled on a long forgotten note may hold. I am a remnant of the girl I once was; the life I once had. We are all remnants now, stalked by the ghosts of those we loved, just trying to form a new whole.