Travis was married.
I could still remember my dad giving his deep, stern talks around the kitchen table, the way he talked to the boys and to me, pled with us to grow up to be good people, go to college, find someone that makes you happy and marry them.
We had all laughed about it at that time. Travis and I especially since we knew what he was talking about, knew how far away it was. Now it was here. Travis had done it.
“Are you okay?”
My head jerked up as he pulled me from my reverie. “I’m just stunned, that’s all.” I could barely get the words out.
“Well, next time I will make sure to send you an invitation,” Travis said with a smile, his lips pulling in a way that I could see as being heart stopping.
“Gee, thanks.” I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice, the sarcasm running through it in a deadpan.
“Anytime sis.” Travis’s smile only grew as he threw himself back on the bed, a small plume of dust moving up from where he collapsed against it.
I watched the dust settle and lay myself back against the bed, pulling the stiff cotton comforter that I had hoped would be soft over me. Part of me wished I could just curl up and sleep, but I still couldn’t stop my mind from running rampant with the information Travis had just given me.
“Wife?” I suddenly spewed into the darkness.
Travis’s deep chuckle was unsurprising to me. “You are really stuck on this, aren’t you?”
“Well, forgive me if I can’t think of my fourteen-year-old brother being married.” My voice was somewhat hysterical, but I didn’t stop it; I only propped myself up on one elbow, turning to face Travis who was already turned toward me, staring at me with a wide grin on his face.
“Well, first, I’m not fourteen. And, it really isn’t that surprising given the whole end of the world.”
“Yeah, well… I guess it’s good you aren’t fourteen. You were awfully grumpy.”
The playful look on Travis’s face melted away as if I had slapped him, the dark brown of his eyes growing dim. My stomach twisted at the look he was now giving me, my head darting around wildly, dread that whatever Abran had sent after us had already found us.
We were surrounded by nothing but the darkness. Nothing except the dark grey of a shadow that moved as I turned my head, as if it was escaping my sight. My muscles clenched in fear as I watched it move, part of me relaxing at the thought that Travis might have seen it as well, that I wasn’t losing my mind. One look back at my brother’s bulky frame, though, and I realized it was only me.
My heart pulsed once in fear before it evaporated, the soft look in Travis’s eyes taking my fear away.
“I never did thank you…”
“Thank me?” I inquired, suddenly confused at the change of pace the conversation had taken.
Travis looked at me intently from where he lay, his shaggy, brown hair falling over his eyes a bit. The Nintendo blanket was not big enough to cover his hulking form, or his booted feet that stuck out of the bottom. I wanted to laugh at the image of him cowering under such a small piece of fabric, but I couldn’t make the sound come. Not with the way he was looking at me.
“For what you said. Mom didn’t even really notice, but you did.” Travis whispered, “What you said… it made everything feel less hopeless. I kept that with me even when I thought you were gone.”
Realization hit me like a battering ram, the weight heavy against my chest as I ran over the events of that day, the same as he had. So many times.
He had looked so sad as he walked through the kitchen, his heart broken, his soul pierced. I knew I had to say something – I couldn’t just let my little brother hurt like that.
You have to make your own decisions, no matter how hard they are. And sometimes they really, really suck
They were such childish words at the time. But somehow they had begun to mean more that that.
I wound my fingers around the blanket as I pulled it to me, the memories flooding me and loosening the fear that always lived inside.
“You just looked so sad…” I said, unsure of how else to explain.
“Yeah.” Travis’s voice was soft, the one word fading into the endless soothing crackle of the fire. I lay still as I looked at him, looked into the eyes that had lined my walls for all those years. Just like Jason’s and Tyler’s and Richard’s. Just like everyone I had loved and had never gotten a chance to say goodbye to, had never gotten a chance to hug and tell them how much they had meant to me.
I couldn’t let that happen again.
My brother sat right in front to me. A brother I had thought I lost. A brother that I could very easily lose again. I wouldn’t let that happen.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, scared to let my voice get any louder, scared that I would lose my momentum and not be able to say what I needed to say so desperately.
“Why?” Travis asked as he turned his head toward me, his eyes moist and glistening.
I sucked in breath as I looked at him, knowing that I needed him to hear this, but suddenly I was very scared and insecure about how he would react, what he would say.
“For never telling you all how much I loved you, how much I loved everyone. I never really noticed until you were all gone, until the house was quiet and dark, how much I missed you all. How much you meant to me.”
“I love you, Alexis,” he said, the tears falling down his face again, my own joining them.
“I love you, too, Travis.”
Chapter Four
“I like that one better.” My voice was low and deep as I spoke through the silence of the world, careful not to let the sound get too loud and attract the attention of the creatures I could still see moving through the dark out of the corner of my eye. I was sure they were just lurking in the shadows, right beside the army of assassins Abran had sent after us.
“Lex, someone obviously held up in that house for a while. There’s not going to be anything inside.”
I knew he was right of course. The house I had focused on was intact, glass in the window panes, car in the driveway, the door only slightly ajar. It might look like the logical choice, but it was obvious someone had lived there after the world had gone black and the Tar had taken over everything.
It didn’t mean I thought Travis’s choice was any better.
From the outside, this other place looked as though it was haunted, like the abandoned homes you would see on the edges of town. Old and forgotten. Shutters hung from the empty window panes, torn curtains had been pulled through the shards of glass where they sagged lifeless in the nonexistent breeze.
I stood before the house, the silence of the dark world drowned out by the gentle buzz of the light Travis always held, and the one I had strapped to my backpack before we left the department store sometime yesterday. I looked up at the house, the winding pit of fear I always held in my stomach tightening. I knew at once I didn’t want to go in.
I didn’t know if my desire to run away from the home stemmed more from a childhood of scary stories told around a campfire, or if it was just because a house this big harbored its own dangers. I had only found sanctuary in a broken house like this once before, and even then I had been lucky to make it out alive.
The empty shells we were surrounded by weren’t just houses; they were mazes of doors and hallways. At least the other one still had windows—it still had the false sense of security I had been raised to believe in and my mind still craved. Even though I knew it was only the illusion of safety, I wanted it.
Even though I knew better. Any safety you could find was always shrouded in the fear of what could still be on the other side of the door.
In a way the scary stories had come true.
Travis walked past me and toward the old door that hung awkwardly off its hinges, the ominous feeling the house was giving me not seeming to affect him, even though his shoulders seemed a little more tense than usual.
I grit my teeth as I watched him move away, trailing after hi
m as I followed the light, subconsciously keeping myself out of the shadows.
The light cast over the bald dirt as we walked across the yard, the wrought iron fence that was once a grand decoration to the old house left twisted and strung through the front yard as if someone had dragged it away in their attempt to survive.
My hand gripped tighter against the bright green gun I held as I walked closer to the door, my heart thumping the closer we moved to the maze that we hoped would include some food and possible shelter for the night.
I took one last glance back toward the dark, destroyed world that surrounded us, and regretted it immediately. The muscles in my back tensed and flexed as the same grey shape I had seen before ran through the edge of the shadows before disappearing into the night. My heart thudded wildly at seeing it there. The pain of fear only growing as I followed Travis into the house, needing to get away from what was haunting me while knowing the dark world would grow closer once I moved beyond this door.
Travis was right. No one had ever tried to survive in this home. Everything was covered with dust so thick that I couldn’t define the floor from the large piles of trash that had washed up against the walls like waves. Everything here was grey, the grey only deepened by the bright light that Travis held.
The light shone over the peeling wallpaper and fading paint of what had once been a very upscale home. Plush furniture sat torn and ripped around a flat screen television the size of a truck, the screen black as it reflected our gaunt figures back at us, the bright red of my hair looking alive before I defiantly looked away.
I walked past it quickly, not wanting to see the haunted look and emaciated body that would stare right back at me. I tightened my grip on the gun as we moved deeper into the dark, distraught belly of the house. Each step we took sent billows of thick grey dust into the air, leaving us walking into a dense cloud of dirt and who knew what else.
I covered my face with the sleeve of my leather jacket in an attempt to keep the dust out of my body as well as to keep our presence silent. I didn’t know why, but something about this house screamed danger, the ruins creeping up my skin and screaming at me to be quiet, that this was a place where I wouldn’t want to be found.
As we passed the once elegant kitchen, my eyes scanned the ground for food even though I already knew there wouldn’t be anything there. The Tar had taken all the food from the obvious places; it was the non-obvious places like department stores that we could raid.
It was probably a good thing we were here for more than just food. We needed sleep, too.
I only took one glance at the granite counter top that had been seared down the middle before continuing on, my footsteps muffled by dust as we began to proceed down the stairs into the dark belly of the massive building.
One step down the long tunnel and my muscles tensed in erratic fear, my heart pounding as I looked past the light Travis held and into the seemingly endless abyss we were now to heading into. The claustrophobic cavern was hung with cobwebs, the dust covered fingers stretching to the ground like the ripped lace of an antique gown. They drooped and sagged as we moved through them, our movements sending them from where they had perched for the last eight years to drape over us, covering us in the same layers of dust that we walked on.
I tried to swallow, to loosen the tight pit that seemed to have worked its way into me, but it wasn’t working. My blood only seemed to undulate with a fearful awareness as I looked down the staircase.
I wanted to leave, to find someplace new, but I knew that we couldn’t. We had been walking for fourteen hours straight; we needed to find a place to sleep, and after searching this neighborhood for the past few hours, this seemed to be our only viable option.
I would just have to suck it up.
“There is a step missing here,” Travis said, his voice low and rumbly in an attempt to be quiet.
“I think a missing step is the least of my worries.” My voice was a growl, but I didn’t try to restrain it.
I could barely see through the curtain of cobwebs that now covered me anyway. I continually pulled them off, but I would remove some only to have twice as many fall over me again. I stepped down as I wiped the screen of filth from me, only to have my foot fall through the same gaping hole I had just been warned of.
My heart fell through my stomach as I plunged through air, a gasp of surprise escaping my lips. I fought the scream as I futilely reached for something to hold onto only to have Travis’s arm wrap around me, the cold metal of his gun pressing against my cheek as he tried to stifle the noise that was building in my chest. I winced at the cold, my muscles knitting together tighter as I watched his thumb lift, pulling back the hammer of the gun with a soft click as he armed it.
His wide eyes met mine as he held me against him, his ear trained for the same thing mine were.
A scream, a noise, anything that would signify that they had heard us.
We had first seen the signs of the black team Bridget had warned us of about mid day, a path of dusty footprints that had cut through a store we had been scavenging through. At first, I just thought they were signs of other survivors, of perhaps people that could help us, but something in the perfectly arranged dust set Travis on guard.
Our only saving grace had been that they seemed to be heading in the opposite direction from us. We could use that to our advantage, or so Travis had said. But only if we stayed undetected, which meant remaining silent and virtually invisible in the darkness.
I didn’t dare breathe as Travis held me against him, his eyes continually darting as he searched for a shadow in the dark. I could only look straight ahead, my eyes piercing through the black we had just come from, the filthy cobwebs that swayed through the pitch.
My ears were filled with the deep thunder of my heart as we waited for noise, a noise that never came through the void. Travis released me as he took one last glance through the dark, only stopping to give me a stern look that should be unacceptable to receive from a brother that was technically younger than you.
“You need to be careful,” Travis grumbled as he un-cocked his gun, his movement quick as the green metal flashed in the light.
“I am careful, when not draped in a wedding veil of dead spiders and their webs.”
Travis only smiled in an attempt to restrain his laugh before moving down the last of the stairs and into the large family room, his steps careful as we began to move past the wooden shards of what used to be a pool table. It seemed darker down here. Perhaps it was the fact that the ceiling was so much lower than upstairs, but I felt like the whole house was going to come down on us at any minute.
I gripped the gun tighter, fully aware that, if the house did cave in, it wouldn’t make any difference how many light-based bullets I had. I walked to where Travis was, his body mostly hidden behind a large, white door.
“This will work,” he announced before he moved back into the room, his pace quick as he progressed from window to window, pulling the heavy curtains closed in an attempt to keep the light we would create hidden from the outside world, and in turn, keep us safe as we slept.
I followed his lead without hesitation, pillows of dust falling off the limp fabric as I closed each curtain. The strength of the lights we held seemed to grow as we pulled the last of the curtains closed, leaving us standing in the large space, surrounded by the gentle yellow glow of security.
Travis pulled a spotlight the size of a dinner plate out of his backpack and placed it near a door on the far side of the room, the beam facing toward the hall we had just come from. The light flared in a brilliant blaze that burned through my skull in a pleasant fire. It illuminated the hall, turning black to white as the glow floodlit the space more than the small LED lights we carried. While the light was enough to keep us safe from the Tar, it wouldn’t keep Abran’s men away.
“Nice light,” I said offhandedly.
Travis’s head shot up to look at me before going back to his work. “Yeah, it’s a Carson Light. It h
as a motion sensor too, but I figure, for what we need it for, the more light the better.”
My body seemed to relax a bit in the flood of light, the shadows of fear that I had grown used to evaporating into air as I looked into the room. The shadows that I had been so ingrained to fear were all but gone.
“Get the pillows off the couch, Lex,” Travis commanded, his voice low as he fished through his large backpack, searching for some other deterrent I was sure he would place.
I moved the second he asked, tucking the gun into the small loop of fabric at my hip that I had fashioned into a crude holster. While the strange gun sling was a little odd, it was better than my pocket. I would probably end up shooting myself in the leg either way, yet at least this way the chance had been lessened.
The dust didn’t seem to be as bad down here; everything still had a faded memory of color, and not the all-encompassing grey that had blanketed the upstairs.
“How many do we want, Travis?” I didn’t dare talk too loud, the ingrained necessity to stay quiet at all times making it difficult to speak to someone in the first place.
Travis didn’t even turn at my question, so I shrugged and continued toward the couch, figuring four would be enough, although I was sure I couldn’t carry all of them at one time thanks to my petite form brought on by years of starvation.
A plume of dirt erupted into the air as I grabbed the first one, the heavy dirt flavor embedding itself in my nose and mouth. I gasped and covered my face with my hands, trying not to let the mass of dust into my body, but it was too late. I could already feel my lungs restrict with the disgusting air I had just inhaled, the muscles seizing as they tried to cough it out of me again, only to leave me with an uncomfortable burn when I wouldn’t let it.
I made sure to inhale before grabbing the next one, only to freeze at the picture that looked up at me the second I had moved the pillow, the smiling faces of a family that had been hidden underneath the disheveled couch since the beginning.
Through Glass: Episode Four Page 5
