After The Apocalypse (Book 5): Retribution

by Hately, Warren

  Her boyfriend’s arm slowly circled her and she exhaled, melted.

  Beau kissed the top of her head and then somehow facilitated Lila sitting on the edge of the bed even though it was the contact with him she wanted. Then he walked off a couple of paces and sat cross-legged on the bare floor and started working his boots free.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep downstairs with your family?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  Beau’s labors with his boots spared him a returned look.

  “No, you’re . . . whatever you want.”

  “It’s not a dormitory,” Lila said and smiled even though it was wasted. “It’s the only time we’ve had to ourselves. I thought we were going to get this . . . this time, after movie night . . . the last movie night . . . but you never showed.”

  She was irked at herself that she even said it, but it was a thorn in her foot she’d never worked loose. Beau pulled the second boot free, looked her way, then cautiously arose – looking almost like he was going the other way around from her to the bed – and then he came and sat beside Lila at the edge.

  “I was just caught up in some things,” he said and took her hand.

  “And you ‘just happened’ to be out tonight when you found Luke?”

  Beau took his hand back and went into shutdown mode. Lilianna sighed as much at herself as him, then took his hand back forcibly.

  “Are you OK?” she asked, and turned more into him. “That movie night seems like a lifetime ago, given what happened tonight . . . and. . . and Teddy. . . .”

  Her own night crashed like a freight train through her thoughts and she completely lost the thread of anything else to say as the sight of Montana in the grip of the Fury’s curse, that poor girl Mercy shrieking at them from the upturned Jeep, the terrified look on Carlotta Deschain’s face, and then Aurora, and all the others, escaping the shrieks and murderous cries inside the City Council meeting – and everything else that came after it.

  If Beau grieved his friend, he did nothing to show it, though he discerned Lilianna’s shivering at least and folded up one of the blankets over her as he eased himself back into the bed, scuttling backwards against its metal headrest. Lila set the blanket aside, wiped her eyes and stood, readjusting the bedding one last time to her satisfaction before circling the bed and squeezing into it alongside Beau, both of them under the covers now, snuggling into his rigid form with her teeth chattering a sufficient excuse as she burrowed down. Beau relaxed slowly as the warmth between them grew. Lila kept wriggling into positions of greater comfort, finally no longer digging her elbow into Beau’s ribs as she settled into the crook of his shoulder, reached across, and slowly drew his free hand onto her.

  And there they lay.

  Shit’s getting real now, she thought, and Lilianna was glad Beau couldn’t tell she could barely swallow her own spit as her heartrate climbed above a hundred and she took a few gulping breaths to steady herself. Each one accompanied a slightly more panicked thought about why Beau lay beside her with the passion of a garden statue. She scolded herself, trying to banish the madwoman’s thoughts that maybe somehow all along she’d misinterpreted his affection – that it was some awful practical arrangement, to couple up with her, almost like Dkembe had with Gonzales – but their previous kisses, and the dozen-odd thoughtful things her Beau had said and done came slowly back to mind, and now Lilianna twisted into him further as she made a low noise of appreciation.

  Her hand snuck across the clasp of his belt.

  “These must smell of smoke too,” she said and almost giggled, again glad to avoid his eye.

  Beau’s fingers grasped hers, as if to still her, and she looked up then.

  He looked as frightened as her.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” Beau replied.

  She started with the necessary paperwork, and Beau hummed, hesitating as he spoke again.

  “Listen, I just . . . um . . . You should know. . . .”

  She smiled, almost teased.

  “What?”

  Kneeling on the bed now, she slowly shucked down his jeans.

  A rolled-up pair of socks tumbled free.

  The smile on Lila’s face paused.

  Beau stammered something other than coherent words, and Lilianna scanned down.

  And her heart stopped.

  She couldn’t understand what she was seeing for a moment. The light from the single candle flame obscured as much as it revealed of the scarred cavity between her boyfriend’s legs.

  *

  THE SHOCK TURNED quickly into an awareness of Beau totally stricken, jeans still around his ankles as he turned sideways to conceal his shame. Now Lilianna’s heart broke completely and she exploded in tears – shocked gasps crushed by deep retching sobs – and she threw herself atop him and buried her face into Beau’s neck. Again, his arm came around her as if starstruck, and Lilianna’s tears intensified even as she tried to gag herself.

  She heard herself muttering to God over and over again, which was a bad habit she thought she’d quit in the first year after the world went to hell and she was still a little girl, angry, beyond furious, really, with the world’s greatest imaginary friend who’d failed everyone, including the terrified eleven-year-old she’d been. But Lilianna’s miseries paled in sight of the pain etched bodily into Beau’s perfect masculine frame, and she extracted her wet-faced, straw-haired mess from him long enough to check up at her would-be lover’s own tear-streaked face, lower lip trembling like the boy he’d once been confronted with the face of some manner of pure evil.

  “I didn’t know what to say.”

  He moaned the words, desperate to keep his voice low and their theatrics private from everyone else beyond the walls outside their quarters. He slapped a hand across his face as if to hide from her and Lilianna reined in her own free-wheeling chaos as well as she could manage to maintain their silence. The job was almost beyond her. Hand over her mouth, she dipped her head to the mattress and felt overcome once more. Beau’s hand smoothed her hair inexpertly, like he was carved of wood, and it was only the defeated sorrow sweeping through her which at last allowed Lilianna to become still.

  “Oh Beau,” she said softly.

  Lila wiped her face with a fistful of blanket, then looked at him.

  “What happened?”

  “What do you think happened?” he whisper-hissed. “They . . . cut me.”

  “Who?”

  But he doubled over then, lost to her for the next ten minutes. It wasn’t clear if he sobbed in silence, or just played hide-and-seek with the world. Lilianna rearranged their bedding, nestled behind him, shock still competing with anguished sympathy, and then her hand stroked back along the side of Beau’s chiseled back, desperate thoughts of him and her giving way to memories of her mother, for that brief time after Tom went back to save her and Jasmine – and then the chill thought that she’d only ever be such a mother figure to Beau swept into her awareness and Lilianna lay there, the gentle stroking increasingly automatic, glad he couldn’t read her stricken face.

  He moved, eventually. Sat up. Lila dutifully squeezed to the edge. Beau looked away from her, almost anywhere else, a thousand-yard stare piercing the rough-painted bricks of their bedchamber. The Curfew bell started tolling again outside. Lila could taste ashes, not entirely sure it was real or just a signifier of everything else.

  “I’m really . . . so sorry, Beau,” she said. “I wish you’d told me.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “What happened?” she asked after the bells finally went quiet. “Would you tell me?”

  Beau put his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, turned back once more against the straining bedframe.

  “There’s so much about you that you haven’t told me,” Lilianna said. “Now maybe I understand why . . . but I still want to know.”

  “What’s the point?” It didn’t sound like a question, muffled through Beau’s hands.

  “Becau
se I care about you.”

  Beau dropped the palms from his clammy face, expressionless now, restored to a functional automaton, his handsome features rubbery like half asleep.

  “You care about me,” he said in a flat voice.

  Lilianna nodded, guilty because she’d told him so much more – fallen in love like some ditzy girl from an old Hollywood DVD.

  Her father’s words, reproachful of her during an incident a few years back, shot back into Lila’s mind. You didn’t check for damaged goods.

  Lilianna shivered with violent body shock and almost wished she could throw up. She gave Beau her hands instead and tears started falling silently once again. It became harder and harder to speak, but she choked out another, “I’m sorry,” while Beau continued staring hard at the wall.

  “Told you I was from Florida,” he said a minute later. “Football team. Dad was a pastor. Oldest of six . . . or I was.”

  Beau deflated a little. Lilianna extracted her hand, wrapping a blanket around herself. Beau had his pants up by now, but he wore the other covers across his lap like a tangible denial of the madness from his waist down.

  “What happened?”

  “Huh,” Beau said and it was almost like he laughed. “The world ended. My dad, he just went, like . . . completely bug-shit mad . . . he was Old Testament, you know . . . you know what that is?”

  “It’s in the bible,” Lila replied.

  “Yeah,” Beau said and looked away again. “The wrath of God. They got him, the Dead, and my mom, too, just because they didn’t even . . . didn’t even try to protect us. That . . . I guess that fell to me.”

  “Your brothers and . . . sisters?”

  “Four brothers,” he said. “Eleanor was just a . . . baby. A little girl.”

  Lila felt completely unprepared for the harrowing story and it hadn’t even started. She grit her teeth, conscious of her shallow breathing, what her fucking father would say. She sucked in another breath, still hating it sometimes when he was right – because he was right, but not always right, as the past had shown. Maybe she hated him more when he was fallible – just like the Almighty.

  “We lost her first,” Beau said.

  It was all he said for a while. The hour was late. The compound was silent, though less so the noise outside. A man’s voice called out a woman’s name somewhere. Beau paused for so long they were almost startled when the mournful cry came again, even closer in the street outside.

  “Tell me what happened,” Lilianna said.

  He nodded slowly and still took his time.

  “I was . . . about the age you are now,” Beau said. “Senior year. I just . . . can’t. . . .”

  He gave another subdued moan of inner turmoil. It took long minutes before he was good to speak again, and both of them by now had abandoned any pretense about their bedsheets. He blow his nose and wiped his face.

  “I wasn’t old enough,” he said. “It was stupid. My dad shouldn’t have . . . It was nuts. No one can blame me. I blame myself. I know that’s natural. I know I was just a kid, really.”

  Beau’s eyes switched to hers, but just for a flash.

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “Seventeen, back then . . . you’ve lived through all of this, Lila. It’s not the same.”

  “I get it.”

  “I got us out of the city,” he said. “Tampa was one of the last places it hit, here. You’d think . . . you’d think they had a chance to plan, to control the Furies, but it just . . . it just turned into this police state, like, overnight, and . . . it wasn’t the Furies. They weren’t the first problem. It was all the people. Some . . . some sickos in a car, they got Tommy, my brother . . . the second youngest. Just grabbed him off the street. I was trying to find food and I couldn’t leave them . . . My brother Wade, there was a five-year gap between us, he wasn’t . . . I couldn’t leave the others with him. I thought . . . if we stuck together. . . .”

  “They abducted your brother?”

  “Yeah,” Beau said. “And we just stood there on the sidewalk with everyone watching, and I didn’t know what to do, how to go after them . . . there weren’t any cops nearby, no one helping. So much for a police state, you know? And . . . I just stood there and I couldn’t understand it when they just came back.”

  “The men in the car?” Lila frowned. “They came back?”

  Beau hung his head.

  “You don’t understand what it was like,” he said wretchedly. “The city was in chaos. It was . . . looting, you know?” Lila nodded that she understood. “We were looting too, trying to avoid . . . the police were shooting looters on sight, and taking everything themselves. And there were people – people getting raped – right there in the aisles, and my brothers and me, and I’m carrying Eleanor, and we have to . . . just step past these women. . . .”

  “Jesus Christ.” Lilianna steadied herself. “What happened to the men? The men with your brother?”

  “Didn’t realize we needed to run until too late,” Beau said. “I didn’t understand people would do those things. I can still see my brother in the car, men in there with him with their hands over his mouth. He was waving for help. Two of them just came right on out and we ran and I had Eleanor. She was only little, but I had her hand, sort of . . . carrying her along . . . and I just followed Wade and Archie as they ran across the street and. . . .”

  He groaned, covering up his face again as he said Lilianna’s name a half-dozen times.

  “She just kind of . . . fell in the road,” he said with his face still masked. “And we were running. I sort of only . . . really understood . . . I didn’t have her, when she was already behind me . . . and the men were there . . . and then. . . .”

  Beau sighed and dropped his hands.

  “Jesus,” he cursed as well and took a steadying breath. “This is the worst part.”

  Lila wanted to say, “Surely not,” but thought better of it.

  “We were running through traffic,” he started again. His voice was hollow now. “We hadn’t even seen a Fury yet. Television was still working. Things were going crazy. Out of control. There was a rush on gas, you know . . . to keep all the cars running . . . and from there it just got worse –”

  “What happened to your sister?” Lila asked as gently as she could. “The men. . . ?”

  “No,” Beau said and snorted an awful chortle. “No, there were too many cars. I looked back for her, in the street, and someone’s Chevy truck – it just ran over her and kept going.”

  “Oh God,” Lila said. “That’s . . . awful.”

  “Yeah,” Beau said. “From then on it was just me and Wade and Archer.”

  Beau adjusted the pillow, lay down, and threw a forearm across his face. The candle guttered and went out. Nascent light edged into the room through the half-shuttered windows.

  “And then the Furies came,” he said.

  The pit of Lila’s stomach dropped, and the sick feeling with it urged her to remain upright while Beau finished his dismal travelogue, outlining how he led the two younger, traumatized boys out of the chaos of Tampa, all the way to Tallahassee, hugging the coast, fighting for survival and mostly just hiding out from Furies and marauding survivors as well. Beau said it was “like all the sins of the world got tipped out of a bucket,” and he and his bible-reared siblings weren’t prepared for the enormity of what that meant.

  “Almost three months in, we were in the . . . in what was left of a little fishing town,” he said. “We’d hide out, and then go out in one of the little boats we could row, and then we fished, and we were safe,” he said, unmoving on the bed with his arm crucifying his face. “My brothers got really skinny. Me too. It was so cold then, it was December time. Should’ve stayed further south for the weather, but the whole Panhandle was . . . it was like someone lit a fire in it, you know? I mean for real, the whole of Florida, there were so many fires . . . never found out why.

  “This lady came,” Beau said and sat up, sniffled, haggard gaze on the blanket
now. “We just trusted her and that was . . . dumb. That’s how they got us. Walked right into their camp with her, and she . . . she made this flourish with her arm. Like, ta da! And told their leader, “That’s how you get it done.” We were, like . . . gifts.

  “He took us after that,” Beau said. He chewed the memory for long moments, face gaunt and expressionless, though maybe just thoughtful. “The cutting didn’t come till later. Months, probably. I don’t know. They just kept us there, you know, like dogs. Dogs you could fuck. And then . . . cut up, when you want some sick kind of thrill.”

  The harsh language was triply shocking in what it described and that it came from Beau’s mouth. He delivered the sentence – and death sentence, it was – harshly, yet unemotional, just like any old grievance polished for so long it gleamed until it slid free with ease, like a knife in the darkness filling the bedroom.

  “But you escaped,” Lila said.

  “Eventually, yes.”

  He flicked her a look as if asking permission to quit the confessional now, but Lilianna held his gaze, and then he lost the staring contest.

  Contrite, Beau lowered his eyes and said, “When they ate Archer, and then they tried to feed him to us . . . and Wade went by choice . . . that’s when I knew. I up and ran. Knew I’d rather be dead. I should be grateful . . . Big Dog’s men, they found it so funny, me running for it, they let me get a lead . . . Maybe thought I’d come back because of Wade . . . but no, I left him too. I never looked back, just ran as fast as my legs would take me . . . north.”

  *

  THE CALL CAME from the Bastion, and after that, Lila felt so hollowed out, she said almost nothing when Beau wanted to go. She had a mind to go with him, though the heavy lifting involved with her father was more than she could face right then and there, and the next few days passed with her keeping out of sight in the room upstairs as much as she could, unable to reconcile her loss.

  Beau knew and she knew that whatever platitudes she could offer, his injury meant things between them could never be anything like what Lilianna imagined – and she’d maybe never know what Beau’d imagined, keeping his secret all that time as he had. It was beyond Lila’s ability to reckon.