Dread Uprising

by Brian Fuller

  Trace balled his fists. How could he have been so stupid?

  He arrived at the living room, hoping reality would prove him wrong, but after a quick survey of the surrounding rooms, he found only Darcie out on the deck. She leaned against the rail with her back turned to the house, her face turned toward the lake. Trace’s knees felt unhinged.

  He stepped out behind her and slid the glass door shut. A chorus of crickets and frogs reverberated through the thick, stifling air, mixing with distant voices along the path to the private dock. Trace settled onto the rail beside her. She startled, a shaky hand wiping tears from her eyes and smearing her mascara.

  “How long?” Trace asked as she fought a shaky breath, tears rolling down her face.

  She wiped her eyes again. “A little over a month, I think. My housekeeper found them one day and told me. I haven’t confronted him yet. I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you earlier, but . . . you know.”

  A hot shame enveloped Trace, his face burning. He expected the Marine within him to emerge, to find Simon and break his perfect smile and bend his elbows backward. But home and marriage had changed him. Instead of rage, a wilting sadness paralyzed him. He buttoned the top button of his shirt and slid his tie back up to his neck. In agony, he wrung the deck railing, twisting it in his hands as if to squeeze blood out of the iron. His marriage to Terissa had always felt like the fulfillment of some undeserved fantasy. What had it felt like to her?

  “Where are they?” he asked.

  “The guest bedroom upstairs.”

  Trace clung to the railing and fought to keep the tequila and cream cheese hors d’oeuvres down. Everyone in the house probably knew and had laughed at him all night long. Where was the anger? Why was there only exhaustion?

  “You want a ride home?” she asked.

  He couldn’t see Terissa again. He had to get out. He straightened up and loosed his grip on the iron. “Yes.”

  Chapter 2

  Sacrifice

  Trace stepped out of Darcie’s BMW and shut the door. She sped away from the curb and into the dark. Her face had transformed from weepy to livid during their silent drive to his house. Two drowning people too tired to cry for help.

  There stood the modest home he and Terissa shared. Her home. The GI Bill paid for his education. She paid for the house. It was a stuccoed, California-style single level on a quarter acre with skinny trees still staked up to keep them straight in the spring wind. He’d been proud of those trees. Copper-colored sun lamps lined the walkway up to the door. He shuffled toward the entrance at a zombie pace, trying to formulate a plan out of the chaos in his mind.

  Every good memory had, in one night, turned what gave him life into bleeding wounds that drained it. Her adultery cast a shadow backward across his memory. The love, the laughter—all lies. All of it.

  Had she been unfaithful before? His mind dredged up every time she’d come home late or was alone with another man. He shook his head. He couldn’t do this now. He had to get out. His brown, beat-up truck waited in the garage. It wouldn’t take long to grab his stuff and pull out, though he couldn’t think of anyplace to go where comfort rather than judgment waited.

  He inserted his key into the door lock, suppressing the urge to break it off. He wouldn’t stoop. He wouldn’t go low.

  Once inside, he flipped on the lights in the living room, trying to keep his eyes off the enormous wedding picture that hung over the mantel of the gas fireplace. It was an unoriginal pose where he faced forward with a sloppy grin while she kissed him on the cheek.

  Again the urge to break and destroy beckoned to him, and again he shoved it down. Lifelessly, he tossed the keys he wouldn’t need any more onto the glass-top coffee table where they landed with a clink and skidded off onto the floor.

  He had to bust this out. When Terissa found him missing at the party, she would probably come home. Maybe. Pulling off his tie, he went in search of boxes. His leaden legs carried him down the small hallway next to the darkly tiled kitchen and into the garage. His beater truck, dented and rough, looked as out of place in the upper-middle-class garage as a pile of manure in a bank, and that’s the way Terissa saw it too.

  His dad had bought the ancient Chevy for him when he got his license, mostly because it was cheap. It still had the dent in the rust-mottled back bumper where he had backed into their family mailbox when he was seventeen, and in the front bumper where he had nailed a light post in the Walmart parking lot last week.

  Like a faithful dog, the truck had waited for him until he’d mustered out of the Marines. It had carried him to the watering hole near the college where he first met Terissa. As an infantryman in Afghanistan, he had seen plenty of action, and the ladies along the bar had absorbed his combat stories with wide, attentive eyes. He’d collected three phone numbers that night, but after one look at Terissa, there was only one he would call. She was it. She was everything. Beautiful. Smart. Affectionate.

  Adulteress.

  He gritted his teeth and fought the hot stinging in his eyes. In the corner of the garage, an impromptu pile of cardboard boxes awaited a recycling run. He grabbed two and marched to the bedroom. Like shards of a broken mirror, more memories flew at him, each one a fragment of ecstasy and warmth, each one now sharp and cutting.

  He didn’t have much. Clothes, books, and some portable electronics. Suitcases for the clothes, boxes for everything else.

  After packing the clothes into two black suitcases he had never used, he heard the door on the second garage hum and vibrate as it opened. His heart raced. He really wanted to be gone. How could he confront her? Why should he be afraid to?

  He stood frozen in the hallway outside the garage, mind churning to come up with something decent yet forceful to say. He would act the gentlemen even if she didn’t deserve it. Terissa killed the engine on her dark Acura, Katy Perry blaring from her radio and into the house.

  Muscling up his courage, he opened the door and edged his way out with his awkward load. He hefted the suitcases and let them fall into the truck bed with a noisy clunk. Terissa opened the Acura’s door, the music dying. She stepped out, face perplexed and worried. He’d loved that little black dress. It killed him now. Why couldn’t she have waited another half hour to come home? He would have been done by then. Now he was going to have to deal with her questions and explanations and unavoidable outbursts.

  Escaping into the house, he grabbed a box out of the hallway and headed for his office. How would she react to his leaving? They hadn’t had a real knock-down, drag-out argument during their three years of marriage. Maybe that’s what was wrong with it.

  Shoving his puzzle table aside, he whomped the box down on his desk harder than he needed to and filled it with books, reminding himself not to forget his laptop. Right next to his monitor was another smiling, sexy picture of Terissa from their honeymoon beach trip to the northwest. Another wound. He knocked it facedown with a flick of his finger.

  “Baby?” he heard her tentatively say from the direction of the living room. “Trace?” A slight change in the light let him know she stood in the doorway behind him.

  “Trace? What are you doing?” she asked nervously.

  Wow. Did she really think he hadn’t figured it out? He could hear the slight tremor in her voice as she fought hard to pretend nothing was wrong. He kept packing.

  “You just left without telling me,” she pressed on, her emotion thickening with each word. “Did Darcie bring you home? She took the car, and I had to give Simon a ride.”

  He couldn’t resist. “You gave him a ride, all right,” he said with a little acid. He dumped a programming book as thick as two dictionaries into his box with an emphatic thud.

  “Oh no,” she said to herself, turning away. He finally glanced up as she walked slowly into the living room, hand to her mouth. He took the opportunity to grab the full box and head for the garage. He would come by for the rest while she was at work. For now, he needed to get clear of the fog, then he could think about
a dignified way to tie off their relationship.

  Thinking of the shame he would endure telling his parents carved another hole in his stomach. And his brother. This wasn’t the time to think about that. He needed to escape.

  He lifted the books over the edge of the truck bed and set them in with a bit more control than he felt. When he turned back to get in the cab, he found Terissa slumped in the doorway, streaks of mascara transforming her face into a mask of tragedy.

  “I’ll get the rest of it tomorrow,” he stated flatly. “Just get the legal stuff drawn up at your office. I won’t fight anything. I know it’s all yours.”

  “Don’t do this, Trace. Don’t go. We can fix this. This is just a minor setback.”

  “A minor setback? Getting into a fight about who ate the last of the ice cream is a minor setback, Ter. Cheating on your husband is a setback as big as Jupiter. What? You didn’t think your dumbass Marine husband would figure out that your little smiles and your little touches and Dan the wingman added up to something?”

  She walked down the three steps into the garage. “It was just a stupid mistake, Trace. I’ll never see him again, I promise! Don’t go!”

  “Stupid? I think marrying a man you don’t love is a stupid mistake. Semper Fi, Terissa. Semper Fi! Isn’t that what you heard three years ago?”

  “I do love you, Trace. Please!”

  Her begging and messy sobbing failed to move his heavy heart.

  Time to go.

  He yanked open the stubborn driver’s side door and punched the garage remote, the door crawling upward. He grabbed the wheel to pull himself inside, then stopped. The growling whine of a bullet-bike racing and then screeching to a halt in his driveway stopped him. Simon, still wearing the same clothes he had on at the party, dropped his kickstand and jogged up the driveway.

  Unbelievable.

  Trace slammed the car door shut and met Simon as he came into the garage. Here was the smug face that had taken everything from him. Simon’s hands were up in a placating gesture. His stupid lawyer mouth dropped open to spew out whatever he’d come to say, but Trace belted him with a hard right cross to the cheek before a word could escape his stupid face. The man was solid and hardly flinched at the blow.

  “Trace,” he said, “you’ve got to—”

  Trace took him by his lapels and slammed him into the drywall. Hard. Simon tried to push away, but Trace shoved him back.

  “You got a lot of nerve coming here, you bastard!”

  “She’s lost her mind, Trace,” Simon said. “She’s got a gun.”

  “Who?”

  “Darcie! She’s lost it, man.”

  A car sped up the street at an RPM higher than allowed by the posted twenty-five mile-per-hour speed limit. Something had gone horribly wrong at Simon’s place. Trace let Simon go just as Darcie’s red BMW convertible slammed into the parked bullet bike, plastic and metal flying. The force of the collision sent the motorcycle tumbling into their yard with a horrible crunch, tearing up the grass.

  “I told you,” Simon said, trying to push his way toward Terissa. “She’s got a gun. We have to go.”

  Trace pushed Simon roughly out of the way and walked cautiously down the driveway.

  Darcie, still wearing the red party dress, shoved open the car door and got out, her face a streaked mess matching Terissa’s. She strode toward the driveway holding a Glock 9mm out in front of her in an amateur grip.

  “Where is she?” she yelled. “Where’s that whore?”

  Trace held up his arms. “Hold on, there, Darcie,” he said calmingly. “Put down the gun and we’ll talk this out, okay? I know you’re hurt. I am too. This isn’t the way.”

  “Get out of the way, Trace!” she ordered, using the back of one hand to wipe her nose. Despite her threat, she stopped.

  “Look, you can talk to Terissa, but not with that gun in your hand,” he said, trying to inject some reason into her fury. “You understand that, right? Give the gun to me, and we’ll all talk.”

  She turned her eyes fully on him, eyes burning with betrayal. “How can you defend her? The slut! Simon told me how she seduced him and threatened to blackmail him if he ever told or turned her down.”

  Trace blinked. Was that true? The way they acted together certainly didn’t seem adversarial. Someone was coming up behind them, and Trace glanced backward, finding Simon walking forward, arms out in a soothing gesture. Terissa had fled into the house.

  “C’mon, Darcie,” Simon said, turning on the charm. “Let’s talk this out. She really wasn’t blackmailing me. It . . . it just happened. That’s all.”

  “You lied?” she said, eyes scrunched.

  “I had to say something,” he explained. “You were acting crazy.”

  She swung the gun toward Simon.

  Trace saw it coming. Those unused to firing weapons often winced before pulling the trigger. He moved in front of the gun, “No, Darcy” on his lips. The gunshot drowned out his nascent words, the bullet ripping into his left thigh. He grunted and fell as the thunder of gunfire faded down the street. The gun fell to the driveway, Darcie covering her mouth with both hands, eyes wide.

  Trace grimaced. Something primal took over, an instinctual, animal-like need to flee. The wound stung, but he got to his feet and hobbled over to the truck. Simon blew by him and into the house while Darcie slowly walked off into the yard, face pale, weeping. Trace grabbed the keys from behind the visor and fired up the engine, senses cranked up and mind blank with the pure need to escape. He threw the truck in reverse and popped the clutch, hurtling backward and slamming into the side of the BMW with a thunderous crunch.

  The smaller car gave way in a spray of metal and plastic. Trace cranked the gear shift and sped away, heart pounding, a sudden sweat pouring off his forehead. For a while he just drove, the cars and trees he passed a blur of incoherent sound and light. The simple act of driving cleared his head. He probed his wounded leg. The bullet had entered the meaty part of the thigh, his slacks slick with blood.

  Hospital. He had to get to a hospital, but he couldn’t tell where he was. He traveled on a two-lane highway, the dark wall of hills and trees around him hiding any landmarks that might aid him. He tried to focus on the signs and mile markers, but his vision swam, and his eyes stung from the sweat. He felt weak, weak and tired, just like the sweaty day in basic when they had finished the fourteen-mile hike in high heat and full gear.

  A car horn blared, and he stiffened, trying to blink his eyes clear. He had crossed the median. Panicked, he rolled the steering wheel over—too far over.

  In the grip of implacable momentum, the truck careened to the right in a skid that turned into a brutal, pounding roll. The truck flipped and banged through spindly trees, snapping branches and flinging up dirt and leaves in a whirlwind of cacophony and metal.

  Trace slammed back and forth in the cab until he blacked out.

  His eyes struggled open sometime later. The rusty, beat-up truck had settled upside down. The soothing trickling of a creek and the smell of gasoline filled the cab. His body was broken. The darkness was total. Cars whirred by on the road above him. Maybe Terissa was searching for him. Then he remembered why he had run, and he closed his eyes. He was alone, blessedly alone. He couldn’t feel anything and found he no longer wanted to. So tired. He just wanted to rest, and now he could.

  Chapter 3

  Ash Angel

  Someone nearby sang quietly in a rich, sonorous baritone, a show tune about sunrise and a new life Trace recognized from somewhere but couldn’t identify. He was on his back in a thick darkness his eyes couldn’t penetrate. The caress of wind and the touch of light flakes drifting across his bare chest gave the impression of winter, but his senses and memory rebelled against that idea. The substance around his fingers felt powdery and cold but not chilling. The wind whipping and gusting surely would freeze him to the bone if it carried winter with it. Perhaps the wreck had snapped his back and numbed his extremities, but a few wiggles of his toe
s and probing of his hands dismissed that theory.

  It really was snow. He had wrecked in late June. How could there be snow? Who was singing? And why was he naked?

  Trace kept still, senses alive. Had he been abducted by some melodramatic musical madman and dragged out into the woods? The voice certainly belonged to a stranger, someone sitting a few feet behind his head in the woods, probably watching and waiting for him to move.

  The more Trace thought, the less sense everything made. His truck, his clothes, even the summer weather had all disappeared, replaced by a disembodied voice singing show tunes. Even more miraculous, he felt perfectly fit, not like someone who’d just been tossed around a passenger cabin like a raw egg in a dryer. Nonplussed, he sat up. The singing stopped.

  “There you go!” the unfamiliar voice said animatedly.

  A battery-powered lantern flickered on a few feet to Trace’s right and behind him. He turned to get a better look, coming up to a crouch. A slender black man in a sock cap and long, shabby gray coat rose from a stump he’d been using as a chair and fetched a nearby knapsack. He had a friendly face and big, warm eyes. Oddest of all, a white aura, nearly a glow, surrounded him.

  The man threw the knapsack at his feet. “Put these on, Trace,” he ordered. “You may have realized that Jack Frost isn’t exactly nipping at your nose—or any of your other parts, for that matter. But wearing clothes is still a good idea.”

  Was this man some sort of angel or spirit? His mother had corralled him to church as often as she could, but Trace didn’t remember too many doctrinal specifics. He’d spent most of his time making faces at his older brother, Brandon. As he recalled, hell was supposed to be hot and full of screaming, and heaven was supposed to be pleasant and bright. Missouri winters would be hell enough for most people, though this one had snow that wasn’t cold and wind that didn’t bite.