Apokalypsis Book Three

by Kate Morris

  “Anyway, I know we’ve talked about this before. I’m just worried about ya’. It’s a lot to deal with.”

  “I’m fine. I’ve got it. I’m not gonna wreck this, Alex. I know this is our way out.”

  “Your way out,” he corrected for the millionth time.

  He just shrugged. If he made it to the top, his brother wouldn’t have to work construction jobs because Elijah was taking him with him. He could pursue other things in life. Maybe he’d actually find someone and fall in love and have kids. He dated Lila, but Elijah didn’t think it was serious for either of them. She didn’t want a commitment, and Alex just needed the companionship of someone other than his brother, who was still in high school. She was a single mom with commitment and trust issues when it came to men. They were perfect for each other, for what they both brought to the table and what they both needed right now.

  “Well, like I said earlier. I’m working later now. I’ll probably not get home until around eight or nine for a while. This project on the new dome stadium is a rush job. Concrete’s gotta go in next. That’s gonna be a huge part of the project. They want it done by next season’s start. What do I care, right? We’ll be gone by then. But, as usual, they want a three-year job done in one.”

  “Yeah, that’s gonna be a cool stadium, though.”

  “New guy started last week on our crew,” Alex commented as he shoved a giant bite of toast into his mouth. Elijah didn’t have toast. He was on a stricter diet.

  “Yeah? Is he cool?”

  His brother frowned, contemplating how to answer that. “He’s different.”

  “How? Is he a weirdo like the ones your boss sometimes hires?”

  Alex chuckled. “No, not a sex predator hiding out or an ex-con.”

  They joked a lot about the creeps and ex-criminal elements that Alex’s boss hired. The men Alex worked with were real men, though, and sniffed those scummy characters out really quick. Then they gave them the boot, literally. Concrete work and construction were hard jobs. Not everyone wanted to work such a difficult trade. Alex said he liked it, though. He always said it was like a free workout. Elijah wasn’t so sure he didn’t just say that to make him feel better about having a crappy job and being stuck as his guardian.

  “I guess that’s good.”

  “No, just different. Doesn’t talk much. Seems way too smart to be on a labor crew. When he does talk, he…I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “It almost sounds like he’s got an accent or something.”

  He’d only been minimally interested in learning about this new co-worker of his brother’s. Now his interest was piqued by about a million percent.

  “An accent?”

  “Yeah, British or something. I don’t know. I asked him if he was from England, but he gave me a weird look and said he just came from California.”

  Alex shoveled in more food and shrugged.

  “That’s interesting,” Elijah remarked.

  “Yeah, I thought so, too.”

  He considered it another minute before saying, “I think I might be going to school with his niece. There’s this new girl, and she said she and her uncle just came from California. I called her out on having an accent, and she got all pissy about it.”

  “That’s weird,” his brother commented. “Maybe just their family’s own accent or something.”

  “Mm-hm,” he concurred and finished his food, placing his dish in the sink to be washed later. He usually took care of dishes and cleaning because his brother worked so much. The big old house required a lot of dusting and vacuuming. Elijah was very familiar with dusting cloths and lemon-scented wood polish.

  “You’d better run,” his brother said. “I’ll see you sometime tonight. Get your leg day in. It’s Tuesday.”

  “I know. I’ve still gotta work on this Chemistry project, though.”

  “Well, fit it all in,” Alex ordered quietly.

  “Yep,” he agreed and grabbed his backpack by the door. It was going to be harder than it seemed to get that paper done. His lab partner was a little angry at him. He wasn’t too thrilled with her, either.

  The Charger fired right up, and he backed out of their rear drive. The radio system was original to the classic car, so it didn’t come in so great, didn’t sync with devices, and had zero satellite capabilities. He tuned it into one of the few channels that came in. Unfortunately, it was an all-day AM news station. The discussion was about some sort of flu virus. It sounded pretty serious. He always got the flu shot, per his trainer’s health regimen. They kept a strict and keen eye on his diet and doctor appointments.

  He was out of weight-builder protein shake mix, so he stopped at the large pharmacy on the corner where his trainer always had him and the other players go for their supplements and shake mixes. They knew him there. He didn’t pay for the things he needed like that. His trainer called in the orders, and the players went in and picked them up. He wondered if it would be the same at Ohio State.

  He waited in line behind a few people at the pick-up counter in the pharmacy area and tried to be patient. He still had twenty minutes until he had to be at school and was only a few minutes from it.

  “Hey, great game Friday, Elijah!” a man, a total stranger, said to him as he walked past.

  “Oh, thank you, sir,” he acknowledged.

  “Man, you sure do got an arm on you,” he said.

  Elijah looked down a moment, embarrassed, as usual. “Yes, sir. Ate my Wheaties growin’ up.”

  The man laughed. This was always the same. He felt uncomfortable under people’s praise and even moreso under their scrutiny. If he messed up, they were just as bold in public about calling him out on it. He’d be glad to be on such a big campus as Ohio State. Hopefully, he would achieve some level of anonymity there.

  “Good luck Friday night! I’ll be there. Season pass holder here,” the man announced proudly.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” one of the pharmacy techs was saying to a woman at the drop-off window twenty feet down from him.

  Elijah’s eyes darted back to the man next to him again. “Yes, sir. Thank you. I’ll give it my all,” he told the older man with a nod.

  “Ma’am, I don’t understand you,” the pharmacy tech said.

  She started rambling incoherently.

  “My brother’s a lifetime season ticket holder,” the man in front of him was still rambling.

  “That’s great. Thank you from the whole team for your support, sir,” Elijah said, trying to see past the man’s shoulder to the commotion at the other end of the pharmacy’s long counter.

  The pharmacy worker repeated, “Ma’am?”

  The woman elicited a low growl in the back of her throat and continued mumbling. Elijah looked at her more closely. She appeared to be a middle-aged mom, but she was behaving strangely as if she were on drugs or something. Her hands were fidgeting down in front of her, and she seemed agitated. Her shoulder twitched repeatedly. She acted like she didn’t have total control of her motor movements. Perhaps she ran out of her meds that helped with whatever was wrong with her.

  “No problem. No problem. See you Friday,” the man said, shook his hand and walked away.

  “Bye, and have a nice day, sir,” Elijah said to him cordially. He was pretty sure in the span of their conversation that the man told him his name, but Elijah didn’t remember it. People did that a lot, too. They always introduced themselves. One time, when he was throwing the ball around in the park with Jeremy, a man came up to them and introduced himself and his four kids as if they’d remember everyone’s names. He and Jeremy had joked about it later. They were gonna have to get better at the public relations aspect of the game.

  “…not sure,” he heard one of the workers behind the counter saying to another pharmacy tech. Then she called out as if she were nervous, “Bob, you’d better get over here.”

  Another said something about a seizure. Maybe that was it. Maybe the poor lady behaving so strangely at the
drop-off window was having a seizure. Elijah walked closer in case she was going to fall. He didn’t want her to get hurt. He knew enough from his first-aid class he took three years ago that seizure patients needed to be handled with care to prevent them from hurting themselves. She looked like someone’s mom. He knew what it was like firsthand not to have one anymore, so he wanted to help.

  Before he got to her, she went nuts. It was the only way he could describe it. She screamed and literally flew across the counter with her upper body and gripped the man who had come to help her, the pharmacist as Elijah knew him.

  Elijah stopped dead in his tracks. He was stunned. She wasn’t having a seizure anymore if that’s what was happening to her before. She was in a rage. Although she was dressed nicely in casual ‘mom’ type clothing, she went crazy like a druggie needing a fix. She seemed perfectly in control of her movements now. It was as if she were on a mission, and that mission was to kill the pharmacist for some reason. Was she on some sort of drugs? Was she settling some sort of vendetta against the pharmacist? Maybe he refused to give her the drug prescription she wanted. She was scratching, clawing, and hitting the man with vicious intent. She even bit his ear before he lurched back and tried to get away. He couldn’t. Blood gushed from his ear and dripped down her mouth. She had him pinned to her.

  People scrambled. Most backed up. Women behind the counter began screaming. Someone yelled for 9-1-1 to be called. An older man in line stepped past everyone and attempted to wrap his arms around her waist. It didn’t work. She reared back and head-butted him in the face. He staggered backward and placed his hand on his nose. It was gushing blood all over the gray carpeting. The crazy woman didn’t care. She didn’t even acknowledge him. She just kept on assaulting the pharmacist, who she hadn’t completely released. He was in shock, too. His face was also bloody, and there were scratches on it and his bare forearms.

  Someone had to do something. She was seriously going to kill the poor guy or hurt others, too. She had her hands around his throat now, her claws digging in so hard he could see trickles of his blood squirting from beneath her fingernails. He couldn’t stand by another second. Nobody was reacting. There were plenty of people around. They were all adults, but they seemed frozen with fear.

  Elijah squatted low and rushed at her, building up speed and momentum. He took her down with a solid tackle around the middle. They hit hard, but he didn’t care. She took the brunt of the fall. It didn’t slow her down for more than a few seconds, two at the most. She had a new target. Him.

  Up close, he could see the brunette psychopath, dressed like a soccer mom in khakis and a purple sweater. He put her age at around thirty-five. He had a good eighty pounds on her. She was out of her mind with rage, but for some reason was now directing it at Elijah. Her fist lashed out and connected with his jaw but slipped when he deflected. His shoulder took the hit, which didn’t hurt. He tried to pin her hand to the floor, but she got it free and attempted to hit him again.

  Her legs were flailing, too. He didn’t exactly have on his pads or a cup, so he tried to avoid her kicks and the knees she was bringing up to catch him in the nuts.

  “Ma’am!” he yelled. “Stop. The police are on their way. Stop this now.”

  She didn’t, of course. Instead, her incoherent words and mumbled jabbering turned into a primal scream of rage as she attempted to thrust herself upward to get Elijah off of her. Man, he hoped the cops didn’t run in and shoot him thinking he was actually attacking her.

  She was attractive enough for a middle-aged mom, but the whole mom fantasy wasn’t his thing. Plus, her nose was running, her face was red and blotchy from strain, and her hair was now standing on end in a mess of brown tangles and sweat from exertion. She also had extremely bloodshot brown eyes that made him believe she was on some type of illegal drugs. Maybe meth or heroin. He wasn’t sure of that, either. They’d all had to take a class about the dangers of drugs and alcohol before their senior year. In the class, they’d learned what signs to watch out for in a person and which drugs caused a person to act or look a certain way. He hadn’t really paid much attention because, at the time, Elijah hadn’t planned on ever being around people like that. He wished he knew what drug she was currently under the influence of. It might’ve made this situation a little easier to handle.

  One hand lashed out at him again, and the madwoman actually landed an upward, open-handed hit to the underside of his chin. He was vaguely aware of people yelling and screaming at her to stop as this all went on. He didn’t want to hurt her, but Elijah was tired of deflecting her jabs and scratches. It went on for way too long. Then she growled and attempted to bite his neck and his cheek.

  That was it. He wasn’t getting bitten by her. She was probably a secret drug addict in her private life when she wasn’t running her kids to soccer or ballet practice. He’d seen once a person acting like this on the news when he was younger. They’d said the man was on ‘bath salts.’ He wasn’t sure what that meant, but that was exactly how she was acting. Crazy. Irrational. Unreachable.

  As she lurched upward again, Elijah said a fast prayer for forgiveness. Then he hauled back and punched her. She went instantly limp. He’d knocked her out.

  Then there was a rush of people around them.

  “Are you okay, son?” the same man who’d just praised his game last Friday night was asking.

  “Oh, my goodness!” an older lady was exclaiming over and over again and holding her chest.

  Outside, he could hear the distant sirens of police and ambulance vehicles coming nearer.

  Someone else questioned, “Was she on drugs?”

  It was a commotion of noise and questions and chaos. Strangely, nobody was accusing him of being a royal asshole for hitting a woman, although he sort of felt like one. Somewhere a child was crying. Everything just felt loud and overwhelming. He was still reeling from the fact that he’d physically assaulted a woman. Probably someone’s mom. It made Elijah feel a little sick to his stomach. Actually, a lot. He felt like he might hurl his breakfast.

  He touched the woman’s neck to make sure she was still breathing and caught a pulse. Elijah breathed a sigh of relief in the midst of the noise and bustling of people. He didn’t get off of her, though. He was still partially straddling her but was hesitant to get off. Instead, he knelt on one knee near her and waited to see if she’d wake and go nuts again. Within another minute, police officers jogged down the aisle. Without even questioning the situation, the first officer knelt, pulled back the woman’s eyelid, and nodded to his partner.

  “We’ve got it from here, Elijah,” the second one said with a nod, indicating he should move back. He obviously followed Tigers football, too.

  Elijah stood and stepped away. Then they rolled her over, causing her to snap to consciousness again. The first one quickly cuffed her. They hauled her out of the store, half carrying, half dragging. She resumed the incoherent mumbling of words and sporadic screams that weren’t in any particular language or in any known dictionary. Then she let out an ear-splitting scream that hit a decibel that seemed it should crack glass.

  He had to suppress the shiver that threatened to overtake him. Elijah bent to retrieve the woman’s purse. He needed to give it to those cops so they could give it back to her or her family once she detoxed and sobered up. Instead, he stood there, frozen and staring at the woman’s purse, trying to process what just happened. When he looked up, that new girl, Wren, was standing at the end of the store probably thirty feet from him near the makeup department. She had her hand inside the zipper of her hoodie with a wary but alert expression on her face. Once he locked eyes with her unusual, very wide at the moment aqua ones heavily lined again with black stuff, she took off.

  Chapter Six

  “What the bloody hell was that?” she swore to the empty car around her and sped away from the gas station, having stopped for an extra-large coffee with cream. Wren took a few relaxing breaths. She told herself she’d been in worse situations. Thi
s was nothing, just some freak on drugs.

  Wren had never seen a person trip out like that before. She’d seen a lot of things in her life, a lot, some that no person should ever witness, but that woman’s behavior was straight up something out of a horror flick. She wanted to run, but if she were being honest with herself, she hadn’t been sure at the time if she wanted the woman behind her, either. Her back toward that psycho? Not a smart idea in case the woman, who looked like she belonged in her first-grader’s homeroom class as a room mom handing out cupcakes to six-year-old children, came up behind Wren trying to make her escape and stabbed her to death with something. So, she’d waited it out.

  She parked in the student lot and made her way to the entry door. She was almost a half hour late. She hoped she didn’t have to go to that dickhead principal’s office. He was a real problem. Too many questions. Too nosy. Too much of a dick who stared at her breasts for too long every time she was around him. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be in this town long enough to leave an impression. But, she also didn’t want to miss her whole first class. She was caught up now. If she missed the assignment, she’d have to make it up. So, she rushed and picked up the pace even more.

  Nobody was in the parking lot. Everyone else was in class now, everyone but one. Unfortunately, Golden Boy was already there at the entry door talking to the cops who manned that entrance.

  “Yeah, it was weird,” he was saying as she approached.

  “You’re late,” the officer said to her in a tone that meant she was busted. “You’d better have an excuse slip on you.”

  The boy interrupted him and said, “No, it’s cool, Rick. She was there, too. That’s why we’re both late. She’s with me.”

  “Oh, no problem, brother,” Officer Rick said, changing his tune in an instant and offering the boy a smile.

  What a crock of shit! Golden Boy got away with murder because he was the school’s star quarterback, the golden boy, the chosen one. She’d seen the people in the pharmacy fawning over him like some sort of movie star. She also knew it because she looked it up on Lila’s laptop at her trailer this morning before leaving home. She wanted to know more about him. She also wanted to dig up dirt on him but couldn’t find anything. It had pissed her off a little. All of his photos were either holding a football or throwing one or taken for his team pictures. There weren’t photos of him with girls or on social media sites tagged on a date with some cheerleader or anything. Although quite a few girls had tagged many, many pictures they’d taken of him working out at the gym or on the field and marked them as ‘hot,’ ‘super cute,’ ‘stud,’ and the like. As far as Wren could dig up, he didn’t even have a social media account. Someone on Instagram had started a fan page. Get real. There were dozens, maybe five hundred pics of him on there, many of him in swim trunks and no shirt. Sure, he had a great body. She’d give him that. But he was an athlete. It was expected. She knew a lot of the rugby players at her former school were muscular. Maybe they weren’t quite as big as Golden Boy, but perhaps he was just on steroids or something.