Biting my lip, I placed my index finger and middle finger on Faith’s neck, while begging God to please let me feel blood moving through her veins.
Horror overcame me and my hand wouldn’t move—as if it was glued to the silent body of my friend’s dead mother.
“Mom is resting,” Sara repeated. She dabbed at her mother’s forehead with the cloth. The wetness running down Faith’s lifeless face dampened my fingers. The water woke them from their shock. I pulled them away.
The room spun. I fell to the dirt.
The contents of my stomach were forcing themselves upward as I sprinted from the tomb.
Twelve
The town was gathered. Some were singing. By its slow, tearful rhythm, I could tell it was a song made for churches, when there had been such places. Jonah stood by my side, his face hard, as if he were afraid to allow emotion in.
I understood, though for me it was too late.
All I could do was feel the pain and sorrow of the loss of someone great and needed. I felt too, the anger rising from deep within me. The anger at whoever had created the lights in the sky that destroyed everything. But more than that, I felt rising anger for God, for allowing not just the light, but the virus and the death of a good person, when he allowed so many vile ones to live.
Sara’s face had remained unchanged for the almost ten hours since I’d found her at her mom’s side. Her mind had broken.
Perhaps it was for the best—that it was better in this moment not to understand that her mother’s body was about to be burned on a funeral pyre.
I wished I didn’t understand.
East stood behind Sara, a hand on her shoulder as if trying to give her the strength to survive this loss. The girl was there too; she slipped her small hand into Sara’s. Tears ran down her cheeks, her quiet love willing Sara to be okay. It made no difference to Sara; she could not feel them. She could not feel anything. We all had our breaking points and her mother dying in front of her was hers.
Sage stood between Blaise and Becca, each of them holding an arm. Unlike her sister, Sage was not broken; she was very much aware of what was happening and for that I was sorry. Her sobs were gut-wrenching. Her body barely able to support the pain, her knees buckling again and again. Josh brought a log for her to sit on. Becca and Blaise helped her down as the flames grew.
How I wished we could bury Faith, how I wished I would not see the flames engulf her. But the ground was too hard, full of rocks that could not be moved or dug through. Had we not seen the helicopter, we might have been willing to carry her body down, off the hill, to the open space below. But that was not an option now.
Faith lay in a wooden box on top of several large logs. The bottom of the box was thin with many holes, so the flames could reach the body before the sides of the box burned away. The fire burned brightly now, and my head felt as though Trent had just brought the handle of a pistol crashing against my skull.
The smell of the smoke changed to the odor of burning flesh and hair. I glanced at Sara, there was no change. I exhaled relief, trying to force the smoke from my nostrils. Sage screamed out in pain, reaching and clawing for her mother. Haz came behind her and held her from the flames. Her body collapsed against his arms. This was her breaking point. He lifted her into his arms. Blaise walked with her, holding her hand as Haz carried her limp body to the open space behind us. The smoke would not reach her there.
Beside me, Sara stirred. My empty stomach silently heaved as the sides of the funeral box turned a bright yellow in the orange flames. My arm stayed around Sara as the sides burned away, exposing the bones of the woman who had given every bit of herself to her daughters.
Jonah sang in sorrow with the townspeople. I heard the words “rise again from ashes” and within me felt the pain of millions lost. These people here were mostly Christians; they believed Faith would rise again and she would be at peace in heaven. I wanted to also, but to believe in a God who loved his children, at this moment, was almost impossible. I understood that this wasn’t what he wanted, but he could have changed it and didn’t.
Sara moved, taking a step toward the flames. My arm tensed around her, holding her in place. She took another step, and I pulled her back. Her eyes were no longer without understanding.
Her mind had returned at the worst possible moment. She threw off my arm and ran toward the flames.
Jonah pushed in front of me, using his body to block her from the fire. East’s arms wrapped around her, pulling her back.
“No,” she cried. “Let me go, let me be with her,” she said between sobs.
“No, Sara,” Jonah said as he lifted her onto his shoulder.
She fought hard against him—clawing, punching, kicking, and screaming.
“It isn’t your time,” I said, and grabbed her hands to stop her attack on Jonah’s back.
Her eyes were wild with pain, jabbing her nails into my skin. East came as Jonah flipped her from his back.
It took four of us—Josh, Jonah, East, and me—to carry her far enough from the flames.
“Please, please let me go,” she sobbed. “Let me be with her. Let me be with her.” She cried over and over again as insanity gave way to reality. A reality that was more insane than could ever be imagined.
Thirteen
A week passed. Sara had begun to eat again, though barely enough to survive. She spent most of her days in wordless agony. Her tears had dried up days ago, her eyes staying red and swollen.
After the third day, Blaise told me it was time for Sage to take care of Sara. That it would be good for her to have something to do. I disagreed, at first not wanting to abandon my friend, but then I saw the need for Sage to be needed, and I understood. When Jonah had lain dying, my focus was not on the death of Pops or the attack, or even the likelihood that Jonah would die; it was a constant focus on the minutes, ensuring I wasn’t even a second late in giving him his broth. I had needed that—to take care of him—or I would have lost a sense of purpose and with it, life. So I stayed near Sage, but didn’t help her care for Sara. The sisters had lost their mom. This was their journey together, and no amount of love and support from the rest of us could take away their pain.
When Faith passed, we left the quarantine of the sick huts and moved closer to town. Sage and Faith previously had shared a house with Becca, but now Sage preferred to stay with us in the lean-to Jonah and I had built. In that open space with nothing more than tree limbs covering our heads, there were fewer memories. And I knew memories of those you loved were the sharpest of double-edged swords. You never wanted to lose them, but to remember them caused immeasurable pain.
The few good memories I had of my mom had brought me the most tears when I was kneeling on her snow-covered grave. Perhaps it would be different for my friends. The loss of their mom in this world, where loss was so common, might seem more normal. Part of my pain had always been being alone. I knew no one else who understood what it was like to lose their mom before they turned four—to be alone in the world, with no one but nannies to raise them. Sara and Sage had each other; they were not alone.
It was nice to be part of a community again, even if we weren’t really part of it. I knew everyone’s name by now, and for the most part, they were all nice. I think having children around increased people’s hope or perhaps gave them someone to think about other than themselves. Each child had at least one relative who had survived, though it was not always a parent. Perhaps, seeing the children continuing on was what strengthened Sage in her resolve to heal and move forward.
Now I wondered how long we would stay. We had come to find Sara’s family, and we had done that.
Every day we spent here was a day we were not searching for Blaise’s family. She loved Sara too much to ever say anything, but at the same time it wasn’t fair to Blaise. Sara at least knew where her family was. She had her sister by her side and she had the gift of saying goodbye to her mom. In many ways, that was more than most people had been given.
&n
bsp; “Is this your secret hiding place?” Haz’s voice rang out from the trees behind me.
I laughed. “It’s clearly not a secret anymore, and it was never meant to be a hiding place, just a place to be alone.”
“Because a town of sixty people is an overwhelming number of people for a girl who grew up in DC.” He smirked as he sat beside me on the edge of the stone outcropping, the trees behind us.
We were fairly concealed, but we could see for miles. I liked it here. It brought me peace to see open fields and trees in the distance. This land was not scarred with burned buildings. This land would have appeared the same six months ago, except that the cars sitting randomly on the road would have been moving. Sometimes if I tried hard enough, I could, at least for a second, trick myself into believing they were moving and everything was back to how it had been. I could pretend I was on a camping trip, sitting on a massive boulder and enjoying the view.
I turned my head. Haz was watching me, a lightness in his eyes I didn’t usually see. “I never thought of that.” I laughed. “I guess I’ve changed more than I realized,” I said, twisting a twig in my hands.
“You’ve changed a lot in the six weeks I’ve known you,” he said, watching me twirl the stick.
“In what way?” I asked.
I didn’t know how to explain it, but when I was with him I felt something that made me want to stay longer to talk to him, to know him better. Perhaps it was because we met in a time when there was no one else to turn to. Or perhaps it was his steady way.
“Hmm.” He leaned back, appraising me. “You are … more alive.”
“I am definitely less fatigued,” I said, rubbing my hand through my short hair.
“No, that’s not what I meant. You seem more alive, more who you really are. That probably makes no sense, but it looks good on you, whatever it is. That, and your hair is almost long enough to cover some of the scar your ex gave you,” he said, his jaw clenching at the reference to Trent.
My expression darkened as heavy clouds began forming in the distance. Thunder bounced off the open plains below us.
“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have brought him up.”
“No, it’s okay. My past is my past. I can’t hide from it, but I’m not going to let it control me, either.”
“See? That’s what I mean. More alive, more … fight.”
“Thanks,” I said, nudging him on the shoulder, appreciating the compliment and his friendship.
Thunder cracked in the silence.
“So, what about you?” I asked. “Is that why you cut your hair? To be free of the past?”
He exhaled a loud breath, and said, “What did Mrs. Pryce tell you?”
I felt bad, but I wanted to know. He knew of my past; it was only fair that I know something of his.
“She told us you did everything you could to try and save her foster daughter, but—”
“In the end, I failed.”
“In the end, she passed away,” I said, my voice firm.
“That was the worst case of my life. The worst failure of my life,” he said, staring out at the storm moving closer. His body leaned against the broad tree my back rested on.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I underestimated evil,” he said, his eyes boring into my own.
I blinked. “I didn’t used to believe in evil.”
“But now?” he asked.
“I do,” I answered. “It took seeing it and recognizing it for me to believe in it. Were you the same? Was it Jazmyne—I mean, what happened to her that made you believe in evil?” My heart was racing for a reason I didn’t understand.
“No, I knew it was there long before her. Even before I became a cop. Maybe that’s why I wanted to be a cop in the first place. To try and save people, to protect them from the darkness I knew was there.” He rubbed his hair. “That was a lifetime ago.” He smiled at me in a tired sort of way.
“I grew my hair out so I wouldn’t be recognized. So, I could get close to the ones who—”
“Who trafficked Jazmyne?” I said.
He nodded.
“Did it work?”
His face changed, as if to match the impending storm. “I’d been with them two months when the EMPs hit.”
I trembled, the comfort I felt with him leaving. I could sense a darkness in him that I’d never sensed before. He saw the fear in my eyes; I couldn’t hide it.
“I didn’t …. I never did anything to hurt anyone, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
In a soft tone I said, “Then why are your eyes so … dark?”
He inhaled and exhaled, visibly trying to calm a storm that raged within him. “I had never seen violence like that. I thought I had. I thought I’d seen it all. I was wrong, so wrong.” He stared past me to somewhere long ago.
“What happened to them?”
“We set up sting after sting. As more were arrested, I became more important to them. I got everyone except for one. The one I wanted most. But I tell myself he’s dead now. He’s got to be.” His voice faded as if trying to convince himself of a lie that he desperately wanted to be the truth.
My voice barely above a whisper, I asked, “Where are they now? The guys you got, I mean?” I wanted to stand and move from his side.
“Locked up.”
“Are they still?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, that was before the light. What happened to the people in the jails? Did they escape?” I wasn’t sure which thought was scarier: a mass exodus of our jails and prisons or people remaining in cages, left to die slowly of starvation and dehydration.
His body shifted, softening a little as the conversation no longer focused on Jazmyne and her attackers. “When there is a loss of power, the doors shut and can’t be opened until power is restored. It was on generator backup, so ordinarily a loss of city power wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But the EMP would have destroyed the generators too. I don’t like to think about what would have happened in the jails and prisons. My job was to lock them up, but even I recognized that not everyone in there should have been there. Most were mentally ill or addicted or both.”
I lowered my head to my knees. They didn’t deserve what happened to them, but then, neither did the people on the crumpled train or my friends who watched their dead mother burn.
“Can I ask you something?” Haz said.
The wind had picked up, the smell of distant rain surrounding us. He sat in a casual position beside me. I remained on edge.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Has Jonah told you why he was in prison?”
My mouth went dry. I shook my head.
“That doesn’t matter to you?” He pulled his legs toward his chest, wrapping his arms loosely around them.
The sky was filling with billowing shades of blacks, blues, and purples, like a giant bruise.
“I know what you think about him,” I said. “But I’ve seen him surrounded by violence and darkness, and he’s never laid a hand on me. He’s never even raised his voice to me.”
Haz’s face showed concern and condescension. “You’ve only known him a few months? How long did it take for Trent to do those things to you?”
Anger burned my cheeks, as the cool wind whipped through the trees. “That was out of line. I am not that girl anymore. And Jonah has never been that boy,” I said into the wind.
Haz leaned his head back, inhaling the smell of the advancing rain. “You’re right. You’re not that person anymore, and you’re probably right that he isn’t that guy.”
I knew there was more. More that he wanted to say, but didn’t. I finally asked, “What is it?”
He turned to face me. Lightning flashed in the distance. “Do you ever think … no, never mind,” he said, shaking his head.
“Think what?” I asked.
He hesitated. “That you aren’t good enough for him?” he asked.
My body tensed. “What do you mean?” I tried to keep my v
oice steady.
“That sounded awful, didn’t it?”
I said nothing.
“It’s just, Jonah is so, I don’t know, so holy. He prays all the time, you know. It’s like when there is silence, he is there with God.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, for him, I guess. But what about you?”
Thunder rumbled above us. A wall of rain hovered a few feet from the stone outcropping.
“What about me?”
“It’s just, you aren’t holy.”
My face burned hot with the truth of his words.
Haz added, “You don’t even believe in God. So how can you two work out? I mean, at the real level. The important level.” He sounded sad, almost apologetic.
I stood as the first drops of rain fell, bouncing with force against the stones. I turned as tears began to form.
I stared at him, incredulous at his words. “I thought he was a criminal and you were trying to protect me from him. But really, you think he’s too good for a sinner like me?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” He kept his eyes trained on the ground.
I scoffed and returned to the shadows of the trees. The truth was that as much as I wanted to hate Haz at that moment, I couldn’t. He hadn’t meant to hurt me, and that was what caused his words to hurt so much. They were spoken not in anger, but in truth.
My pace slowed as the rain fell faster, soaking my clothes, hiding the tears I could no longer hold back. He had known every word to say. The mistakes of my past filled my consciousness with each step I took. I was blinded by pain and tears and rain.
My body jerked to a halt when I hit something and fell to the forest floor.
“Are you okay?” Jonah asked, his left hand pulling me up. “I was trying to find you. Wait, are you crying?” he asked, concern in his voice.
I couldn’t stop myself. I buried my face into his chest and cried like a lost child. He wrapped his arms around me.
From the Shadows (The Light Book 3) Page 8
