Fall (Roam Series, Book Two)

by Stedronsky, Kimberly

  “Roam.” He pointed to the water, narrowing his eyes. “You’re stronger than this. I know what you’re capable of enduring.”

  Ignoring him, I headed for the locker room. At the last moment, a rush of courage surged through my body, and I turned for the diving board. Holding my breath and closing my mind, and stretched my arms out in perfect form.

  And I dove.

  Once under the water, I opened my eyes, not having to worry about contacts. The mild burn of the chlorine was familiar, and the underwater so recognizable that I remained below for as long as my lungs would have me.

  After four laps, I came up at the edge of the pool, and Logan squatted to smile down at me. “Feel good?”

  “Thank you,” I said. He nodded once, glancing at his phone.

  “West said the meeting is running late, so to give you his key, and take you to his house, unless you want to wait until five when the meeting is over.”

  “No, I’ll go now. I’m tired.” I climbed out of the pool, reaching for my towel. “Are you sure you don’t mind dropping me off?”

  “No,” he smiled down at his phone, and then looked up at me. “You’re my best friend. That’s what we do.”

  Violet must be texting, I realized, smirking at him.

  Once at West’s, Logan turned the engine off, but I touched his hand softly. “I’m fine until West gets home. You don’t have to stay.”

  “Do not go in the basement.”

  “I won’t,” I shook my head adamantly, my wet hair pulled into a loose pony tail. “I’ll be fine.”

  Logan walked through the house, checking the basement before leaving. He came up the stairs, paled but calm. “He’s mumbling about something. Don’t go down there,” he repeated. “Call me if you need me.” I nodded.

  He left, and I waved to him from the doorway. The house was dark, the vaulted ceilings and long windows adding to the shadows inside. I turned on every lamp and light switch, glancing nervously at the clock on the microwave. 4:45.

  “Music,” I murmured to myself, almost making it across the floor to the sound system without my eyes darting to the basement door.

  He’s secured. There is no way he will hurt you. I breathed deeply, counting backwards from ten. I turned the music on, not caring about anything but noise.

  A phantom nerve in my stomach twitched, and I sank to the couch, tucking my legs under my body.

  Our child will save the world.

  I drummed my fingers along the back of the couch, glancing at the clock. 4:47. The conversation in bed with West weighed heavily on my mind.

  I found myself standing in front of the basement door, my heart hammering. Did I get up and walk to the basement? I turned to look at the clock. 4:49.

  I missed two minutes. Am I going crazy?

  Opening the door, I tentatively took three steps. The foundation of the first floor blocked my view until the fourth step. I took the fourth, my eyes fixed in Troy’s direction.

  As he came into focus, I held my breath, my mouth open but unable to scream

  He stood at the bars, staring at me.

  Don’t run, coward, I willed myself. He can’t hurt you. Still, I felt my fingers begin to tingle before I remembered to breathe.

  His deadpan stare snaked through my body, horrifying. I gasped, no longer able to withstand his eyes. Before I could climb to the step behind me, his voice made me jump and I missed the step, falling to my knees.

  “Now the sword of death approaches us, with pestilence and war more horrible than there has ever been - because of three men's work.”

  His arms, flat at his sides, were dirty, and dried blood was caked on the front of his white tee-shirt. His monotone diatribe sent me into hysteria. I cried out, a splinter digging deep into my palm as I clawed at the step for a grip.

  I was being lifted into the air. Before I could comprehend what was happening, the slamming of the basement door jolted me from the convulsions in my chest as my lungs protested every breath. West set me down on the countertop, and met me face-to-face.

  “Are you trying to die?” He asked, grabbing my hand. Blood trickled down from the deep gouge from the wooden stairs, and he cursed at the ugly splinter burrowed deep inside. “I’m going to dig this splinter out, and then I’m going to bury him in fucking concrete. Then he can’t talk to you. That is, assuming you’re not worried about his living conditions any longer.”

  “He’s so scary,” I cried, my words coming out broken. “His eyes terrify me.”

  “Stay out of the goddamn basement then!” He was opening a first-aid kit, glaring at me. “What did he say to you?”

  “He said… something,” I cringed as he cleaned the wound with an alcohol pad. “About three men, and war, and pestilence… it burns,” I grabbed his elbow with my other hand, balling his shirt sleeve tightly in my fingers.

  He gentled his touch, reaching for the tweezers. “Hang on,” he said, kissing my forehead. “I smell chorine. I’m proud of you.”

  “It felt good to swim,” I moaned as he went for the splinter, jerking my hand. He held it immobile, removing the shard of wood smoothly.

  “I’m sure…,” he stopped in mid-sentence, slamming the tweezers to the countertop. Leaving me sitting there, he hurried to his bag, removing his laptop. “Three men?” The impatience in his hands was obvious as he waited for the laptop to power up on the kitchen table. “War, pestilence…,”

  “What’s wrong?” I landed on my feet, hurrying to his side. “Does that mean something?”

  He opened the internet, loosening his tie. “Yes… it means something… damn it.”

  I watched him open Google and type “three men war pestilence.”

  “Apocalypse?” I read, narrowing my eyes. “What, he’s spouting stuff about the end of the world?”

  “Those aren’t his words.” West scrolled through passages, leaning forward. “He said ‘three men.’” West typed something else, and I lowered slowly to a kitchen chair next to him. “In a letter to his son, Nostradamus wrote, ‘Now the sword of death approaches us, with pestilence and war more horrible than there has ever been - because of three men's work.’”

  “That’s exactly what Troy said to me. Nostradamus… the sixteenth century prophet?”

  “Yes.”

  I sat back, staring at the screen as West read. According to the passage, Nostradamus had written a letter to his son, advising him and explaining to him that his prophetic visions were vague because he could not begin to determine what the things that he saw in his visions were.

  Eventually I moved my eyes away from the screen, staring at the open cut on my hand. The bleeding stopped, and the deep ravine that the splinter had gouged left a burning scrape in my palm.

  “Three men.” He turned to me tiredly. “The bringers of death. Troy, Logan.” He sighed deeply. “And me.”

  “I think I’ll go lay down,” I stood, walking to the stairs.

  “Roam.”

  He reached for me, and I turned into his chest. “Do whatever you want to him. I want it all to end. I don’t care anymore.”

  I curled up in his bed, closing my eyes. Around nine, he came in and undressed me, tucking the blankets under my chin as I shivered. He held me through the night, and I fought with sleep, letting it in just long enough to wake in a panicked sweat, clawing at him and crying. By morning, I was more exhausted than I was before I went to bed.

  He waited for me to shower and get dressed, and we were on the road by seven AM. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going? And if it includes caffeine?”

  He smiled lightly. “We’ll stop for breakfast,” he promised. We ate in the village, and I managed a little toast with two cups of coffee. The sun came out as we got back in the Pilot, and I turned toward its rays, relishing in the small bit of heat on my face.

  “Forty-eight degrees,” West gestured to his dashboard. “Not bad for December.”

  “Uh-huh,” I murmured absently. It took only a few minutes to realize wher
e we were going. “Paine Falls?”

  He nodded. I smiled, tucking my face against his warm coat.

  The park was empty, so we walked down to the falls hand-in-hand. I watched the water rush over the flattened rocks, remembering our first time there. He led me off the path and around a split-rail fence intended to keep visitors from passing. “Watch your step here…,”

  “We’re not supposed to be back here.”

  “I’m not concerned.” He caught me as my foot slid on a wet, snowy patch of dead oak leaves, pressing his lips to mine.

  “This is nice.”

  “We have something to do,” he continued on further, finally stopping at a large, granite flagstone nestled against the hillside. Where the sunlight touched, it appeared to reflect like diamonds in the cold grass. “We’re here.”

  “Nice rock?” I lifted my eyes uncertainly. He pulled me against him, pressing my head to his chest. I slid my arms around his back, inside his coat.

  “We need to say good-bye.”

  “What?” I started to pull away, but he caught me, breathing a soft laugh.

  “Not to each other,” he kissed my head. “To Eva.”

  I stiffened, trying to pull away. “West…,”

  “I’ve buried you, and our child, too many times,” his words fell down, and I lifted my face to his. Tears slid down his cheeks, and he let them come. “This is the hardest. But you’re here with me, and I’m here with you… and that, I’m grateful for.”

  My fingers twisted the back of his shirt, and the lump in my throat made swallowing impossible. I turned away from the rock, pushing my forehead against his chest as hard as I could. His fingers tightened on my head, and as his chest rose and fell in a tearful breath, I cringed at the anguish corroding my heart.

  “I can’t say good-bye to her,” I shook my head, soaking his shirt with tears. “I don’t believe she’s gone. I can still feel her.”

  “Roam…,”

  “No. She’s still here,” I begged, looking up toward the sun over the leafless treetops. “I just held her. I just held… her…,”

  We sat at the flagstone until the sun clouded over and the rain began to fall once more.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  West and I spent the entire weekend in each other’s arms. Grief was a transitory process, weaving in and out of laughter and anger, and settling into a permanent state of defeat. He continued to take precautions against another pregnancy, and when we talked about why, his answer was always the same.

  “We will find another way.”

  On Saturday night, I woke screaming, unable to remember my nightmare. Digging my iPod out of my bag, I lay next to West, finishing the nineties playlist he’d set up for me on the plane. I thought that he was sound asleep, but as I pulled my ear buds out of my ears, he turned to face me in the darkness.

  “Did you take notes?”

  I grinned, turning on the pillow we shared. “As you can see, Mr. Perry, I have no pen or paper.”

  “Nor do you have any clothes.”

  “But… my general impression… great music.”

  “Best decade?”

  “So far.”

  “I’d say I told you so, but you’ve never liked hearing that in the past.”

  “Good to learn from the past.”

  We had until Saturday to prepare for the inclined plane. Logan was going to skip school on Friday to pick Violet up in Virginia. I spent the hours in school preparing for every possibility of what to expect. We could go, and it could lead us nowhere… or it could take us to the wasteland of a world that Troy described. Either way, with Morgan and Jason joining us, we would assemble a small army to save Laurel.

  On Wednesday, West texted me and asked me to meet him at the library after school. I hurried into his Pilot, careful not to be seen. “Hi baby,” he smiled, squeezing my hand. “Didn’t you bring a coat?”

  “I have a sweatshirt on,” I gestured to my hooded, Aeropostle zip-up.

  “I need to show you how to shoot.”

  “Guns?” I asked in disbelief. “Are we taking guns with us?”

  “I haven’t decided what I want to take yet. Have you ever been shooting?”

  “No. Morgan has gone with dad, but I…,” I tucked my cold fingers beneath my thighs to keep from twisting them.

  He gave me a sideways glance, raising his eyebrows. “Do they make you nervous?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  He reached for my neck, brushing my hair away from my ear before slipping his hand behind my hair. “I don’t want you to be afraid of them. What about them make you nervous?”

  “That I know nothing about them,” I realized.

  “So, if I teach you about each one, and how they work, will that help?”

  I considered his question. “We could try that.”

  He nodded. “I can do that.”

  He pulled off the road and onto a back road thick with icy potholes. I followed the trees out the window, wondering if there were trees in the strange world where we would be going. “Where will we shoot?”

  He swerved around a water-filled hole, taking a quick right. “I have a lot of land. This is where it begins, and backs up to my house.”

  “How many acres? I can’t even see your house…,”

  “Twenty-three.”

  I climbed out of the SUV, watching him move around to the back of the vehicle. “Wow.”

  Between the natural setting of foothills and trees, targets in various sizes and shapes littered the landscape. Several round discs hung suspended from the air, and metal posts with colorful circles branched out on either side. Steel plates in the shape of small animals lined the ground, and plastic, one gallon milk jugs filled with water sat perched on various edges. A long, wooden table hosted plenty of space for loading and unloading weapons.

  “Okay,” he lifted the back hatch, and I gaped at the array of black and gray cases, varying in size and length. “There are a few that I want you to try. Come here,” he tugged me against him, catching my mouth open in his. Off-balance, I swayed, and he steadied me, tilting my face with his fingers. “Hi. How was your day?”

  I smiled, laying my hands against his cheeks. “Long. I missed you.”

  “Good.” He took my hands in his, brushing them rapidly. “You’re freezing.” He shrugged his coat off, wrapping it around me. “I’ll hold the coat when you shoot. I want you to start with this,” he pulled a small, black case toward him, snapping the plastic tabs upward to open. “This is a Glock 19. It is a semi-automatic pistol.”

  “My dad has one of those. He and Logan used to go shooting all the time.”

  He nodded, as if he already knew that information. “This weapon was invented by Gaston Glock, an Austrian engineer.”

  “It’s plastic,” I watched him push a magazine into the bottom of the pistol. “We don’t know who… or what… is coming at us. Will this be enough?”

  “We know we’re going to a castle surrounded by ice. I’ve fought wars in snow and ice. Glock’s knowledge of plastics improved the reliability of handguns… a million times over.” He removed a pair of yellow-tinted glasses. “You have to protect your eyes and ears here, but we won’t have that luxury later… so I’ll have you take the muffs off in a little while.”

  “West,” I pulled the ear protectors over my head, tugging at the hair that flattened against the side of my face.

  “I’m going first. Magazine in, cocked, thumbs together.” He kept the pistol pointed at the ground. “Ready?”

  I nodded.

  He walked forward slowly, lifting the gun and aiming at various targets. The first shot made me jump out of my skin, but by the fifth I was only flinching. Brass ejected from every shot, flying through the air to his left, right, and behind him. He hit each target, even the ones I had to squint to see with my 20/20 vision.

  “Don’t be afraid of it. If I’d been able to get my gun on Thanksgiving night, he wouldn’t have had a chance to touch you.”

&nbs
p; “Logan would be dead,” I pointed out.

  “That’s all that makes me feel better… about not being there for you.” He cleared his throat, moving behind me to wrap his arms around mine. After removing his coat, he lifted my hands and wrapped my fingers around the sandpaper grip. “Keep your finger beside the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. Don’t flinch or close your eyes when you squeeze. Lean in… move your legs apart a little.”

  My hands dissolved into tremors. “I’m not going to be able to hit anything.”

  “You just have to try this. I don’t expect you to hit anything. I just want you to know how to use it, if you have to.” He lowered his lips to my neck. “Lean in. Follow this sight. I’m putting a red dot sight on everything we take, so it’ll be easier…,” he brushed his lips on my ear. “Just lean in.”

  I chose a wide, blue target a few yards away. The first time I pulled the trigger, I automatically closed my eyes, recoiling with the shock. Brass expelled near my face.

  “Keep your eyes open. Use your mind. Picture what… or who… you want to take this bullet.”

  Opening my eyes wide, I saw Troy, but still balked at the incredible jolt.

  He watched me intently, and then glanced back at the Pilot. “We’re going to try a .22. You’re so small.”

  The .22 gave less of a kick, but I still couldn’t stop jerking every time I pulled the trigger.

  “What are you going to shoot?” I placed the .22 on the wooden table, recoiling as if it’d strike out at me like a snake.

  “Logan and I already discussed this, and we’ve agreed on AKs.”

  “What… like a machine gun?”

  “Whatever we take has to fit under our coats. We’re going in a public place.”

  I accepted his coat again gratefully; the wind picked up, and snow began to fly. I half-listened to West as he went on about the Russian sergeant who invented the assault rifle, reliability, charging handles, three-point slings, and folding stocks. A sulfur smell settled in the air. After a while, he lowered the weapon and glanced at me.

  “Nice shootin’.”

  “Is this helping at all?”

  I sighed deeply, pulling his coat tighter around my neck. “I just wish we could go into this music-montage, you know, like in the movies, where Rage Against the Machine plays and it takes me four and a half minutes to become a war-hardened samurai.”