The Risen: Remnants (9 page)

“We aren’t going to find anything useful here. These people have been disturbed enough. Dead or not, some things just don’t need to be disrespected; even in these times.” We agree with Peyton with silent nods and down cast eyes. We return to the car and leave this behind us to the nightmare that we know is coming. Nightmares that will find us tonight filled with the creaking ropes and the bodies of the dead children swaying in the breeze with their tiny shoes and missing eyes.

The ride back is thick with silence. It is heavy and oppressing as if it should hold weight on our shoulders. We each replay what we imagined may have happened to those people like a black and white film. Each time the version is more horrific than the last. In our minds, we don’t just hear the creaking ropes, but the screaming also. We see their kicking legs as they choke. We can smell the smoke from the fires. The cries of the tormented begging for their lives fill our minds.

The children in the trees gain faces as we fill the last hours of their lives with imagined mental clarity. Did their necks break or were they forced to hang, kicking and fighting for air? Did their parents watch or were they the ones surrounded by the fire like a private ring of Hell? Where are the rest of the homeowners? Most of all, we are all wondering for what reason did God condemn these people and who carried out His judgements?

What irony would it be if those left to rot, discarded, tortured and forgotten by God’s servants are now standing staring down from Heaven, free from this nightmare while God waits for those who misused His name? What injustice would it be if they are not?

Chapter
10

“A
re we the first back?” Alicia asks Ginjer who is filing her nails with boredom. The look she casts Alicia expresses her doubts over the woman’s IQ.

“Obviously,” Ginjer says with a hint of bitter, but when she sees Peyton, her bitterness is dipped in honey. “But I am sure they will be back soon.”

As if the universe wanted to prove her right, slowly cars fill the area around us, returning from their trips. Some faces are hollow with the haunting of what they have discovered. Some are void of any signs of emotions, as it is just another day in “paradise” for them. There are returns met with supplies and novelty items met with halfhearted laughter as greetings are exchanged. None of it holds any meaning for me as I still try to hold on to my outsider status, so I search for Genny wanting to hug my own child after seeing the ones that belonged to others.

“She is still with him,” Inspecting a nail for imperfections, Ginjer motions with her head. “She has been the whole time. I guess she is happy to find someone to talk with, but I still don’t trust him.”

“You don’t even know the kid.” I don’t want to take his side. No mother wants to take the side of the other person, but I am right. We don’t even know him.

“No, I don’t. But I have a pretty good idea of what he will become.” Once again, Ginjer leaves me confused by her thoughts, leaving me behind so she may offer Peyton any needed help to take a tally of what was brought back.

I feel almost guilty intruding on Genny when her laughter surrounds me. They are both sitting on the hood of the Jeep, lost in conversation. With my mind constantly on the thoughts of survival, I have taken for granted the need for social aspects of life, too. I am a hamster on a wheel running with all that I am from my fears and just trying to keep us safe. Watching her now, I know there is no backing out from taking them with us and that scares me more than the vision of children swaying in a tree with their bent necks and pointed toes.

“Have fun?” Genny’s smile is genuine and full of mirth with her question.

“Barrels,” I tell her, noticing the body language in front of me. “Have
you
had fun?”

My question inserts inches between them and a glare from my daughter. The world may have come to an end, but I can still suck the fun right out of an afternoon. It’s another “mom talent” of mine. Another talent is the ability to talk in code and understand the great riddles of what is being said.

“I’m going to fix some lunch. Are you hungry?” The real translation of my question is: “I think you have been alone with him long enough. Let’s go.”

“Sure, I guess I can eat.” Genny’s real translation is: “I can’t believe you are doing this to me! I hate you!”

“I’ll catch up with you later?” Genny asks Kent, but what she is really saying is: “I’m so sorry. My mom is so lame. We’ll talk all about how unfair she is later.”

“Yeah, sure.” Kent’s translation is: “This is super awkward so I am just going to sit real still and agree to whatever is said and smile. Can’t forget to smile.”

Kent smiles. Genny blushes. Genny glares at me as she walks past. The world keeps turning. Que Sera, Sera….

Sitting in the backseat of the car, the metal edge of the can opener seems harder to twist than normal. The added pressure of keeping what I am doing a secret is not helping the matters I am sure. I may not be able to avoid taking them back with us, but I am not FEMA. I don’t have to feed the whole place.

“It smells horrible.” Genny’s nose wrinkles with disgust as the “stew” slops its way into the plastic camping containers with which we use to eat.

One night left stranded in the car will make you rethink what to store in your glove box. Now, at all times, there is a flashlight, plastic compact bowls that store mini silverware from our camping days, dry socks, can opener, a map and “snacks”. I try to keep the basics of first aid in there too just being me, running on my wheel.

Genny’s first taste is timid, a small bite that she rolls around in her mouth before committing to a larger sample.

The gourmet dog food is not the processed can of thick, gelled substance I was fearing, but closer to the style that Ginjer used to feed Mintzy. It is chunks of meat and a blending of vegetables with a gravy sauce. I hate to admit it, but minus the smell, it really does pass as stew and most likely, better than anything I have ever tried to put together. With Genny already being accustomed to food with questionable substances, this may go over better than expected.

“If I can close my eyes, get past what it really is, it’s not the worst thing I have had to eat.” She says and I love when Genny proves me right and insults me in the same breath.

“What are we going to tell Ginjer it is?” To answer her, I hold up several cans showing that I have already stripped them of their paper labels, hiding the truth of what they contain.

“Stew. We found lots of stew. If she asks why we went to the “store”,” I pause, letting the word sink into her dictionary, “we tell her it was for the water and stew.”

“There is something else we need to talk about.” I say watching her as her walls come up with our earlier meeting not forgotten. She watches me, wearily waiting for the words that she is prepared to battle.

“You know we can’t stay here. It isn’t safe.” I ease into the conversation with hopes she will at least listen to me before erupting with teen angst. “We can’t take them all with us. That, too, wouldn’t be safe.” I stir my “stew” avoiding her stare.

“...but Alicia?” She has dropped her voice to a whisper.

“Of course I am going to approach Alicia. My fear is though she may already have emotional ties with them not allowing her just to leave. If she asks us to take them all, what am I suppose to do?” She understands my dilemma and nods with her eyes staring off into the math of the problem.

“What about Kent and his dad, Terrence?” She is hesitant with her question, fearing my answer and my reaction to her curiosity.

“Terrence seems to be one of the main guys here. I don’t know if he would be willing to leave either. I really doubt he’d let his son leave if he is staying.” I know this is not the answer she wanted, but the truth is often not what we want to hear. Her shoulders sag with the defeat of it.

She stares at me, her mind trying to keep pace, outwitting my arguments. “It would be safer with us, though. Isn’t that what parents are suppose to want for their kids?”

I smile at her, a soft smile of sadness and say to her, “He doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know us. I would not just trust someone that says it’s safe because they say so.”

“You came here.” She says to me and she stuns me with her logic. I have no defense to it.

“…but I will try to talk to him, okay?” I reach out to her, hoping to instill some form of hope. Her face tells me how disappointed she is with it all with her creased forehead and sad eyes. A part of my heart breaks for her, and for a moment, I am willing to risk it all to keep her happy. “I’ll figure something out.” I whisper it and I am not sure to whom I am trying to convince that I can fix this.

“No, you are right,” She says to me, her voice like porcelain, thin and fragile. “It’s not safe. Not only will we be risking us, but we might be risking them, too. That’s not fair to any of us.”

“I’ll figure it out.” I repeat again, this time for her and the hope of seeing a smile return to her face.

She nods with no more joy than she held before. “It’s okay. We are safer in our small number. I know that. The more people there are the more risks we take. It’s more supplies that we will need. The longer it takes us to mobilize if something goes wrong. There are greater risks of infections if someone gets sick. We have to think with our heads now. We can’t afford the risk.”

There is a moment when every parent realizes that our children are not babies anymore. Most times it is caused by a joyous event such a their first prom, the first time they pull out of the driveway in a car, when they walk across a stage in cap and gown or for some it comes with a white dress and silk lace. Not for me. My little girl has grown up in a matter of months not because she wanted to; she was forced.

There are no more proms or stages. There are no more white gowns with bouquets of flowers grasped in nervous hands. There are just the thoughts of life and death with the risks that go along with them.

This is not the way for a sixteen-year-old to have to live, but it is. This is how we now live; alone and disjointed from the world. Friendships are weighed by the risk it involves to maintain them and the supplies it would take to nurture them. The risk I stand of losing the Genny I once knew outweighs it all.

Chapter
11

I
have gone over the words a thousand times in my head. I have mentally approached it from every angle, but I can’t make the words form. My mouth opens, but I stand there mute and blank like an idiot.

Genny now talks to Kent as if it is the last time she will ever see another human being. She hangs on his every word. She laughs a little too hard at his jokes. She stares at him so hard I wonder if she is trying to memorize his features or just freak the kid out. I think she is accomplishing a little bit of both with her actions.

I think I am most afraid of the fact, that when I do say the words, of how things will change for us. Right now, I don’t have to face the fact that Alicia may not want to leave with me. I don’t have to finally pull Genny away from Kent and watch the crushing sadness that it will cause her. In a weird twist of fate, the reason we came here may just become the reason that we have to stay.

“What-cha doing?” Alicia says with mischief, thinking she can tease me by catching me doing something naughty. “Going all Dear Diary on me?”

“Nope, just trying to keep from going insane.” I smile back at her, closing the notebook of my ramblings.

“Soooo, you’re telling me you are out of tequila?” We both smile at her joke.

I remember those nights of shots and bonding over the injustices of mankind. I also remember the rounds of “Truth or Dare” that it resulted in and at our age, we really shouldn’t have kept calling “dare”.

“Yup, all out of tequila.” Half laughing with the thoughts of another time, we fall into a comfortable silence with one another.

The group, “townsfolk” and all, sit around a low burning fire to help fight off the winter chill. The benefit of coastal living of South Carolina is the almost lack of winter. Where we are, snow is an oddity and most nights barely dip to the border of freezing. Come summer though, we will all wish we lived elsewhere.

The flames dance with each pop and crackle, casting sparks into the air that scatter before wilting away. There is a constant low murmuring as conversation flows, melding with the chirping of crickets. It is sometimes punctured with an overbearing laugh that stalls the flow of the conversations with imagined fears, straining to hear any hints of having disturbed something in the woods before the whole process starts again. Everyone glances over their shoulders into the darkness surrounding us randomly. We are like children fearing the monsters from camp stories that our minds imagine for us with vivid detail.

“How well do you know these people?” I am trying once again to build the courage to speak what is on my mind.

“How well do we know anyone, anymore? I have seen people change their whole demeanor when things start to go wrong. Sometimes it’s for the better, but most times for the worse.” She stares at me, her teal-green eyes searching my face. “Why?” Her question stalls my tongue with the moment being here that I have been scared to attempt to reach.

“Just curious. I was wondering-” Before I can start my dreaded question, the conversation around us shreds into silence. The way so many are staring into one spot of the darkness, my stomach clenches before dropping into a nervous pit.

I don’t know who heard what first. I am only part of the staring contest with the woods that has started. Eyes squint, trying to decipher what the sound was that someone signaled, attempting to coax knowledge out of the shadows. A few stand, thinking it will help their senses to verify if there even was a sound, but it is the silence that now surrounds us that is the best clue that something is watching us.

There is a part of us, even after all these years of compliancy, which still understands the way of nature when the only division of the world was once hunter or prey. For a time, we were the hunters. Now, we are the prey and we freeze like prey, searching for a hint of the direction of our deaths.

He comes out of the darkness like a demon from a dark corner of dread. The flesh of his face is torn in long, furrowed lines as if at one point someone tried to claw his face in the fight for their survival. His clothes are stained and gaping where they have snagged, tearing themselves on objects in his path. His faded eyes stare at us with intent, roaming our gathering as one would pick the best cut of meat from a butcher. He possesses the steady calm of what they are, just watching and waiting for our first move with his arrival. When it comes, he swells with the excitement of the hunt.

The screams explode around the camp with sudden intensity, bouncing off the trees to send the sounds back ringing out in the night. It fills the woods with our panic sending birds to flight like dark silhouettes against the night sky. Strategic plans are left unanswered with the minds around us racing with fears of their deaths. It is exactly what he wanted.

With a blank face he comes straight into the group, sending them running with a divided wave to either side. Alicia and I stand in the back watching it all with wide, fear-filled eyes. Something inside me knows, this isn’t right. I stand mute, watching the demon section off parts of our group. His eyes are always moving as he keeps his plan in motion. He isn’t attacking. He is herding. There are more coming.

“Genny!” The group has parted, crowding the area into small sections, blocking my path to my daughter.

“Genny!” Alicia screams with me. Both of our hearts are pounding in our chests with our panic adding strength to our voices.

“Mom? Aunt Alicia?” We turn and pivot trying to pin-point her voice amid all the screams and disorientation of the running people around us with bodies bumping against us.

The screams change from the onset of his arrival. They are no longer the notes of panic, but of pain before falling into the gurgling pitches of death. Just as I had feared, the camp is now over-run with them and the help the first one gave separating us into smaller herds of prey to be fed upon made it so easy. From the same pitch-black darkness, they emerged, silent shadows of death wearing stains like badges of honor from past battles. They destroy body after body with their madness, spraying blood in high arches or letting it pour straight from the font in their suckling mouths. Either way, it is red and it coats everything around us. The air is desecrated with not only the sounds of so many deaths, but also the sharp, metallic scents.

“GENNY!” I am screaming with the strength of my soul now to find her, fearing that it might be her under claw-like hands and tearing teeth.

“Mom! Aunt Alicia!” I hear her again and my heart soars when I finally see her. My daughter, my brave, genius daughter, is sitting in the car flashing the high beams at us with Ginjer waving franticly in the seat beside her. She did just as we have always practiced. When the shit hits the fan, you get the hell out.

My knees are weak with my body’s adrenaline release when I know she is safe. Alicia half drags me, half leaves me, with our escape, forcing me to keep up with her or be left behind. All around me, screams are dispersing with the sounds of engines or the gurgles of death. Bodies lie twitching as their flesh is chewed from their limbs or torsos by who were once the true inhabitants of this town.

Wearing everything from tailored suits to cotton nightgowns, they crouch or bend over the steaming bodies, pulling the torn flesh or thicker, darker parts into starving mouths that drip with the blood from the meat upon which they are feasting. Wet, suction like noises fill the void of screams as they dine from body cavities in small groups. My stomach turns rancid from watching it and it feels as if we have been running for miles to reach the car while those fall around us only had the chance to take small steps.

“Go!” Alicia screams before she and I are firmly in the car. Genny slams the car into reverse, thrusting me side ways as I slam the door shut, attempting to seal the sounds away from us.

The headlights illuminate what was just a moment ago a peaceful night around the fire. It has turned into a banquet of mutilation. If Norman Rockwell ever painted with Alice Cooper, he would have the perfect motivation with what is before me. Some of the turned town stare at our departing cars with eyes that flash bright when the lights hit them, taking notice of which way the cars are leaving. As cruel and as damning as it is, I hope that enough have fallen to feed them well enough to forget about us.

“Where do I go? Where do I go?” Genny is near hysterical. Her voice vibrates in high pitches with her stress.

“Follow the cars.” I reach around her seat to hold her the best I can, trying to ease some of her fears.

“They should all be heading to the movie theater. Just head to the theater.” Alicia is watching the back of the car, fearing that at any moment we will see them following us into the night. Their eyes watching us as their bodies glow in the taillights with a demonic red tint. Their bodies covered in the still dripping gore of their murders while seeking for ours.

The car is filling with our heavy breathing, panting from the run and from the emotions that fill our bodies. Alicia’s mind is with those that we have lost and may have lost. Ginjer’s mind is with the thoughts of how close she came to joining them. Genny is fighting to see through her tears with the visions of what we left repeating in her mind and I know she is concerned for Kent, the only friend she has had in months.

My only thoughts are of gratitude for my daughter’s safety and the relief that she kept to the plan. Her first, the rest of us if possible, but always her first to escape is what we agreed on the day we had to leave the mansion. I would gladly accept my death if she stuck with the plan, thinking of herself first. I could not accept my life if I lost her to save another. I might be forced to kill the one that cost me her life, making me no better than the things we run from now. Just like them, the death I cause would be slow and painful.

There are a handful of cars in the dark parking lot. Electricity stopped long ago, leaving the tall lamps that once provided light for the lot useless and menacing with their scrolling metalwork setting a gothic feeling. They leave us only the moon’s light to search for any signs of the group among the other cars parked here.

“Do you see anyone?” Ginjer leans high on the dash, peering through the windshield waiting for any small movement to spook her. Her hair glows a darker shade of orange than her normal strawberry coloring with only the moon to guide us.

“We don’t normally pull up front and start waving our arms with every car we see.” Alicia leans closer to the door’s window staring into the darkness. “Normally we try to blend in with the other cars and wait to see what happens.”

The moon is often paralleled in romantic sonnets, but when it is just the dim white light hindering the search for what may be waiting to kill you, there is nothing amorous about the situation. Searching the lot to discover a parked preschool van proves how correct I am. The white converted van is painted in bold colors with the name of the school it once serviced. All around it there are dancing clowns with their large smiles and floating balloons. The smiles may as well have held rows of pointed teeth for the way my heart skipped when passing it.

“Maybe we are at the wrong theater?” I ask with hope, unable to take my eyes from the van and what it may imply by being here.

“No, this is the one. We double-checked it on the map. It is pretty much the center of town, making it easy to get to for everyone even if separated.” The logic behind her idea makes sense. I wish it didn’t.

“Maybe they went inside? Hoping to hide just in case we were followed?” Genny is slowly running out of rows of cars and wants to believe we are not the only ones to have escaped.

“It’s possible,” Alicia says and then smiles. “Very possible. Look!”

We turn to see where she is pointing and spot the very southern Jeep with the large tires and its decals declaring for the South. The smile is contagious, spreading quickly through the car. We know at least one other set made it out alive. We just have to find them.

“Guess Lover Boy is tougher than we thought.” My smile is mockingly returned to me by Genny from the rearview mirror. She turns her face from me before the genuine smile pulls on her lips.

“Lucky us…” Ginjer mutters, earning her looks from the other two women in the car.

“Park the car and let’s find them.” I instruct Genny before more comments can be made.

Her apprehension for breaking what was once a basic law stalls her mind for a fraction of time. “…but this is handicapped?” She blushes and blurts out, “Never mind.” She quickly tries to counter before the teasing can begin. She wasn’t fast enough to avoid the snickering, though.

We ease out of the car with the grace of one being stalked. We each cringe with the sound of the doors closing. The still lot allows for every sound to be intensified, amping-up our nerves to new heights. We glance in every direction as we make our way to the tall cement building plastered with posters peeking out from grime-covered glass. Behind the thick layers of neglect, their colors are faded, as almost everything is now. I wouldn’t mind having a few of the weapons the actors are posed with before entering the place.