by W. A. R.
“Let go of him you bastard!” she roared at him, louder than she had ever yelled before. Here again was the loss of control, and here again was the truth slapping her across the face because despite everything she snapped and lunged at the man carrying Miles. She saw nothing but red and as Buddy removed Miles hastily from the man’s grip Amber barreled into him. Miles’s guns fell to the side and she had to admit that she was surprised he didn’t try to pick one up and use it on her. She grappled for control over him, her fists but a flurry of pain and agony she wanted him to feel. He didn’t protest, didn’t even fight back aside from trying to shield his face. She straddled him, her knees digging into the dirt as his blood began to coat her hands. She didn’t hear the men hollering at her to stop, and she didn’t hear the man’s screams. She didn’t care to hear them. She paused for just a moment, reaching to her side, her slick fingers searching for a rock to back his head in, and instead her fingers slid across the gun, Miles’s gun, at her side. Her eyes were wild, her heart damn near exploding with the rage and adrenaline she was feeling.
“No, please…” he begged. She cried. It was unfair; so damned unfair.
She pressed the barrel of the gun to his chin and cocked back the hammer and she pulled the trigger. He flinched, but…nothing happened. Her eyes widened in surprise but she wasn’t willing to give up so easily. It only served to make her angrier. She pulled back the hammer again and pulled the trigger, feeling the tugging of hands on her. Again, nothing happened. She gripped the man’s shirt and pulled the hammer back once more.
“Why won’t you die?! What else do you want from me?!” she screamed at him, pulling the trigger for a third time. Nothing but the click of the hammer against an empty chamber was what she heard. “You can’t have him! You can’t take him! You won’t touch any of them!”
“I want to help you…please…” the man begged. She threw her elbow back against whoever was pulling at her, Buddy’s cry of pain sounding as her elbow met his nose. She barely heard him yell at her over the screaming of her heart in her ears.
“You need to stop! Biters are coming in and we have to get you out of here!”
She didn’t care about that; she didn’t care about any of it. Her body shook as she pulled the trigger against his chin again and again, willing a bullet to lodge into his brain. “How can you be here?! How!? You won’t touch them!”
Buddy and Riley finally were able to pull her off him before Rusty went up to him and kicked him in his bloodied head, making him unconscious. She struggled against them, pulling the trigger, over and over, aiming it at the man on the ground, watching as two other people, a man and a woman rushed forward to grab him and take him to the truck. When she realized she had lost, she sagged against the men, crying as they lowered her to her knees beside a now unconscious Miles, beside a dead Biter and a puddle of crimson blood. Two men were carrying Larry to the truck carefully but quickly. Two more ventured into the woods to find Derek. Normal Biters were closing in and for a moment everyone but her fought them off. She couldn’t. She dropped the gun and scurried over to Miles, pulling his head into her lap, grateful to feel him breathe, even if it was raspy. He was alive for the moment.
How ironic that the very gun that the man had used to try and kill her had failed as she had tried to kill him.
Lance. That sorry bastard.
Lance had saved Miles, had brought him to her after having taken him away to begin with. She had snapped, had gotten reckless. Buddy’s voice reminded her of how she had once refused to fight in anger and here she was, trying desperately to kill a man out of this same anger. It hurt. Everything hurt. Ten minutes ago, everything was fine, but now…now it had all changed. The game had changed. One of Adrian’s men had come back to life. His experiments were ruthless and strong, cruel, and almost…angry. This was the war they were up against and two, maybe three of their people had been lost before it had even begun. Her body was wracked with sobs. She rocked on her knees, sobbing, screaming as she looked at her hands. She could no longer tell what blood was hers, her friends, her enemies’, or the Biter’s. That, in and of itself, reinforced what it was she needed to do if she wanted to win this war…if they wanted to win this war. She couldn’t just pretend to be the enemy; no…she had to literally become the enemy.
Chapter Thirty
Amber sat in her room, chair placed strategically facing the open window. The cool breeze in the bright morning sun was heaven and she breathed it in. Her room was clean, not that she really noticed, but still…at least there wasn’t the crunch of glass when she moved. Her arms were stiff, her back and shoulders sore and the dried blood from the wounds stretching and pulling against her skin. She sat there, her hands lifted and intertwined behind her head, resting there. The back of her head was pressed against her palms, and her knuckles brushed the back of the wicker chair. Her legs were spread, one knee bent and the other straightened as the heel of her foot rested against the open window sill. Her eyes were unfocused, lost in thought, staring into the distance, over the fence at the trees, at nothing but the wind. She listened for any sounds from beyond the walls but there was none. This knowledge relaxed her. She had been this way for the past few hours, unable to move. Her back and shoulders, the missing flesh and skin hurt her but she refused treatment, knowing that Jacob and Miles had needed the attention more than she ever did. Her jaw hurt, her cheeks and neck bruised from the monster’s hold on her, but she barely felt it.
The town was quiet…no movement from the other houses, not even from the ones that the others from her group occupied. She knew that they were all downstairs in every house, waiting with weapons ready until they were told to do otherwise. They weren’t allowed to leave the houses, no one in the community, and no one was allowed to make noise. The less attention they drew to themselves, the better. Amber could occasionally see a small child’s face, or the face of a father or mother peeking out of the windows of some houses, their eyes full of terror and uncertainty. She knew they were scared, shaking, and here she sat, calm. She wasn’t sure why she was calm…that emotion had come to her gradually. At first, she was angry, angry and fighting, struggling as Rusty, Buddy, and Riley tore her from both Miles and Jacob when they reached the town. It was a flurry of chaotic activity once they returned to the community…just minutes from taking down the last Biter. There were hands everywhere as soon as the trucks stopped, there were some pulling her back, others grasping at Miles and Jacob, some searching for Derek and Larry, and finally, some looking for Lance. There were screams, wails of misery, shouts of orders all around her. She grasped at all of this, trying to make sense of it all, but it was difficult because all she could see was deception, the play of imagination on reality. How had this happened? How was Lance even there? And so, she fought. She hadn’t wanted to leave their sides, and so she wrestled to stay beside them. That didn’t work, however, and they had taken her away from them, using every bit of their strength as they did so. She kicked and screamed, feeling lost and desperate, useless. And then she had stood motionless and watching as they carried the limp and bloodied bodies of her people away.
They had taken Miles to her room, Jacob to another, and Doc was right on top of it all. She rushed into her room with Miles as they placed his body on the bed before asking her to step back, if only to determine how bad his injuries were. And so, she went to the window, falling to her knees and pressing her forehead against the glass, watching as Michael, Buddy, and Riley all rushed wildly about, shouting orders at everyone to stay hidden, to stay ready. She couldn’t blame them. Lance was the enemy, right? If he was there then that meant that the others from the compound very well could have been there as well. They didn’t rule out that possibility. She sat there, tears streaming down her beaten face, blood coating her back and her arms, watching as they buried Larry and Derek, watching as they locked Lance away in an empty house with Rusty and Riley as his guards. She watched as all too quickly, the community became dead. Still, this didn’t stop the te
ars from flowing, the memories from playing. She cried for Derek, for Larry, she held herself and cried for Jacob and for Miles deep into the night, praying more than anything that they not lose them as well. It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t too long before Buddy came in to see her, bringing a wicker chair that she had seen on the porch with him. Amber, who had moved from her knees at the window to her knees by Miles’s bedside, had turned slowly to him, her eyes pleading as she took in his appearance. Buddy’s blue eyes were tired and his shoulders bunched up as if under extreme duress. His face held the five o’clock shadow that expressed his weariness. He appeared worried, sad and Amber felt her sore muscles tense. Michael sat in the room with her, both sitting silently and staring down at Miles’s body, the dark bruise appearing on his bare chest, the slow steady of his breathing. She turned from him as he nestled the chair against her back, and she knew that he was staring down at her. He didn’t say anything at first. In fact, Amber was the first to speak. Without turning her eyes to him, she told him that Miles would be fine, that he was still unconscious but that he would still wake up eventually, a little worn but alive. It wasn’t until her quivering lips asked where Jacob was and how he was doing that he finally spoke. He told her that Jacob was still in critical condition; that he had lost a lot of blood and was in shock from the pain.
He then told her that Cassie was with him, staying by his side. He told her that the others had searched the area to a five-mile radius of the walls and there were no other Biters, no other people. She asked about Lance, asked if he had spoken and Buddy told her that he had been unconscious until an hour before. Buddy told her that he had told them that no, he hadn’t led the monsters to the community, that he had just come across them when he did by happenstance and that he was alone. He had refused to answer anything else. Buddy told her already heavy heart that he would only speak to either Miles or Cassie, because he knew that Amber was dead. Since Lance had shared this request he had remained completely and totally silent. She had nodded then, never taking her eyes from the forest in the distance, from the town and its frightened people. She never uttered another word to him; she couldn’t. Her mind wouldn’t let her. She was in turmoil, in a state of revelation.
Amid the chaos with the Biters, with Larry and Derek dying, with Jacob and Miles falling in cold blood that was smeared and pooled on the asphalt, she had lost the control she thought she had. She had spared one glance at Lance and it was her undoing. In the back of her mind, as she had pulled the trigger, there were the faint echoes of her friends, some of which were wounded or dead, that told her she needed to relinquish her pent-up anger, to let go of the anguish that would have come to hurt them all. But she had shoved it back and acted, wanting nothing more than to kill him. That monster, the one that scratched at her mind’s door, had been welcomed and she let it take her, had let it take the control that she had lost.
Her senses hadn’t returned until she was left alone in that room with Miles. She sat there, unable to move, unable to function properly, watching with tears in her eyes as his chest moved with every breathe he took. She needed to fight, to help them! Her family was hurting, dying and she was locking herself away like some prisoner of war…like Lance. And then it hit her like a freight train. She was like Lance. She had become just like him. She recalled, not without bitterness and denial, how he had pointed the gun under her chin, pulling the trigger out of anger and devastation. She remembered how he had grabbed her and dragged her across the ground by her hair before slamming her head against the brick stairs, her blood coating his hands. Now…now, she was the one that had beaten his face in, had been the one to pull the trigger…all out of devastation, out of anger. Oh, how the tables had turned.
After Buddy left, Michael going with him, she was once again alone. She moved from the bed and sat with the chair facing the window, and in the need for fresh air she had raised the window. Though her back and her shoulders protested against the pulling of healing skin, she lifted her arms to the back of her head and she sat, resting, staring out of the window in search of anything out of the ordinary. She sat like that for hours, staring, thinking, considering. What had happened to her? How had she fallen so far? She had drifted so low that she had become the enemy. They, those deceitful human beings had come and taken away the very base part of who she was and she had let them. Hadn’t they wanted their people because of how they were? Hadn’t their morality and their unity been an asset that these people so cherished that they were willing to kidnap them and use them for their own personal gain? Now, she was just like them: fighting and killing out of anger, torturing, using, and manipulating…and she hated it. She wanted to change it. Kyle and Jackson wouldn’t have liked who she had become…in fact, they would have feared her and that alone was enough to shake whatever foundation she had. She had spent the last few weeks trying to adjust to the reality and the bitterness that clung to her soul…but she was slow in accepting and the bitterness was something she clung to. Those thoughts began to taunt her as she sat there and in those few hours she came to a few conclusions. If she continued to bottle up this hatred, this anger, it was going to hurt the others in the long run. When the others needed her, she had acted rashly, jumping on Lance and fighting him, struggling to kill him instead of simply rendering him helpless and aiding the others. No…she was wrong in doing that and she knew in that moment that had it been Adrian, or even Justin, that she had seen first, that she would have acted and that the others, everyone, would have died because of it. She needed to be stronger than that. She had been going about finding strength the wrong way. She came to the stunning clarification that these people looked to her for leadership, for guidance, Michael and the brothers included because for some horrid reason unbeknownst to her, that was exactly what she was. She realized that she needed to be a leader worth following. The time for mourning, for her anger, regret, and revenge was gone and that she needed to let it all go. She learned everything she needed about herself, things she had begun to realize within the last week, thanks to Miles’s friendship.
And she sat like this through the rest of the night, the stars fading out against the purple and gray hues of dawn breaking across the sky. This was where she found herself, arms behind her head, foot on the opened windowsill, and thoughts miles away. She stayed this way, her mind delving back into the chaos, sorting it all out, coming to terms with it all before it she was finally at peace with it all, with who she was and what she was going to have to do….no, it was more than that…it was what she wanted to do. She had Kyle and Jackson watching over her, she had Cassie and Elliot following her, and she wanted to do better, to be better. She wanted to accept her fear and face it; she didn’t want to be unafraid…that lacked conscious and spewed nothing but recklessness. She wanted better. She wanted to live what was left of her life for the betterment of the future. She wanted to go in and face Adrian with conviction, she wanted to take him down with morality and resolve, and she wanted to offer his people, and maybe even him, mercy…the same mercy they denied her father and her son among countless other people. This was going to be a war…one she intended to win by playing her cards close to the chest.
It was then she noticed movement from the left side of the window, and she saw Rusty leaving a truck that was parked in front of the house that Lance was locked away inside. He was running full blast towards the very house she was at, leaving Riley to guard Lance on his own. Amber remained seated, listening for some indication that Rusty was inside. It only took seconds for her to feel the satisfaction of knowing that he was there. She listened as his footsteps thundered up the stairs and she heard him as he rushed to whoever was outside her door. There were multiple voices of concern for the breathless man and his message. Her heart pounded a heavy, steady beat against her chest as she waited with baited breath for him to speak. After what felt like hours, he finally did.
“Ryder just radioed back. Brian is fine, safe, and Lance is considered dead at the compound. They believ
e him and all of his people to have died.” Pause. “He was telling the truth; he’s alone.” And just as quickly as they heard this news there was the bustling of movement, footsteps pounding down the stairs, her door swinging open, and proclamations of “we’re safe” and “there isn’t anyone out there” reaching her ears. Quickly, she stood, rising to her full height and stretching her tense muscles as people neared her. She turned to them just in time to feel frail arms wrap around her waist. She stumbled back from the impact at first before turning her eyes down at the top of her daughter’s head and wrapping her arms around her shoulders. She closed her eyes and nestled against Cassie, holding her tightly. Cassie didn’t speak; didn’t need to. Instead, she just held her mother close and Amber let her. After a long moment, she turned her eyes up to the other people that were in the room watching them. Rick stood there silently, his eyes full of regret and remorse.
“Are you alright?” Rick asked of her, his voice tender and tinged with concern. “Your back looks like hell.” His eyes kept darting over to her shoulder. She knew he had seen her wounds.
Amber sighed and looked between the two of them, hoping to avoid his question. “I heard Rusty. Does Shelly know?” and in that moment she heard the shuffle of other feet as someone else entered the room. All eyes scanned the entrance before landing on the frail pregnant woman that stood there.
Both hands on her swollen belly, she smiled, tears streaking down her face. “I heard him.”
Amber smiled at her, tears in her own eyes. “Brian’s fine.”
Shelly returned the smile sadly. “He’s alive.” And she released a nervous chuckle. “Brian’s alive and we are safe.”
