Still Surviving (Book 5): Dark Secrets:

by Craven III, Boyd

  “I don’t even know what to think about any of this,” I said softly. “What is his connection to Spider?”

  “Guns. It has to be guns.”

  I thought about that, and then nodded. Les had said earlier in his life that he’d run more than just moonshine. Hell, he’d even worked as our armorer at the homestead. So using guns was a potential connection, maybe he started running them, and met up with Spider somehow. Another weird connection suddenly fell into place for me. I remembered the conversation I’d had with Mary, telling me that her father had worked for a bad man, and Emily said they were bad men. Was Emily’s husband one of Spider’s KGR? If so, her husband was a local. Lester was a local. Was Spider? That was still iffy, there was something tying Spider here to the area, and I had no idea what it was. I was guessing.

  “I think I’m even more confused now than I was before we’d started talking,” I said after a long pause.

  “Let’s take that packing out of your nose and see how bad it really is. It looks like you got someone to set it for you, but we need to get you laying down and check you out for another concussion.”

  “Duke checked me out,” I said softly, “and I think he’s working both sides against the middle.”

  “He better be,” Grandma whispered back to me, “or I’m going to cut his balls off and shove them down his throat, don’t matter to me none that he’s a big bastard.”

  I tried not to, but a chuckle escaped before I could clamp the rest of it down.

  18

  “Are you ready to talk to me?” Liz Flagg asked me, my mother by birth, but I couldn’t call her that. Not yet.

  “I’d rather eat, and not talk to you,” I said shoveling food in my mouth.

  Everybody who loved to hate on US Military MREs never tried the chili mac meal. I was convinced, plus it probably helped that I was starving, so it wasn’t horrible. I was working my way through the entire days’ worth of food. Since being choked out, sedated and then waking up, a couple of days had passed. This was brought down to Grandma and I as an afterthought, but Spider had insisted we leave the confines of the small room to eat.

  “Wes, I’m so sorry. I—”

  “Shut up, Liz,” I said softly, but with a steel in my voice.

  “Wes,” Grandma said, wiping her mouth with a napkin, “what if we suggested we have a little more privacy?”

  “Honestly,” Spider said standing from the couch, “I wouldn’t mind. Les, you stand guard top of the stairs. I want to stretch my legs. Duke, Emily?”

  “You want me to stay and make sure Wes doesn’t come unglued?” Duke asked.

  Was he staying to try to help me, or did he know something and wanted to pass it on?

  “No, I don’t think he’d hurt his own mother. Emily?”

  “I need to get some supplies out of the mail room, then I’ll be up. Duke, can you give me a hand?” she asked, her voice subdued.

  “Sure,” he said. His gaze locked with mine for a moment, and he gave me a slow nod.

  What was that for?

  I kept stuffing my face, watching them leave.

  “You’re all grown,” my mom told me once they were out of sight.

  “For a long time now,” I told her, taking a large bite so I didn’t have to talk as much.

  “Your head, what happened?” she asked, leaning forward, her hand outstretched towards my scar.

  I leaned back, out of her reach and decided to answer her. “One of your husband's men brained me with a rifle. Cracked my skull.”

  “They probably had no idea it was you…”

  “See Liz,” I said, spitting the word out deliberately, “I had gone there to free the women and children your husband and Lance’s gang were rounding up, raping and whoring out. By the way, I went there to do it specifically because I felt horribly that I hadn’t been able to stop Emily and Mary from getting captured… and I thought the same was happening to them! Your own daughter and granddaughter! You knew this was happening, yet you did nothing, and you want to try to explain some thirty odd years away?”

  “Calmer,” Grandma said, nudging my side.

  My mom looked pale, and the shakes she’d had earlier were back, more pronounced.

  “Please don’t scream at me,” she said softly. “I just… I don’t… I didn’t mean for this—”

  “So instead of me screaming at you, how about you tell me something instead. Like… who’s my father? Is Les my father as well?”

  “Your father? No, not Les,” she said softly, “he doesn’t know. Emily doesn’t even know he’s her real father.”

  “Where’s Mary, where’s Curt and Margie, where’s the rest of our friends?” I asked, changing tacks, hoping she’d let something slip, but unable to stop my voice rising at the end to near shouting levels.

  “Mary’s with the Marshall Kid, and all the other little ones right now,” my mom said, “and—”

  “She misses you,” Emily said, walking back, “and I know this is a shock, but we both love you in our own way, her especially.”

  I didn’t say anything, but tossed my food on the table. My appetite seemed to be gone.

  “I miss her terribly, as well as Jessica,” I said, watching her eyes.

  Duke had let me know that she hadn’t been captured. I was terrified she would try coming into the hornets nest here and her getting hurt. Or the baby hurt. I was also worried of what would happen to all of us if nobody came.

  “You know, pretending to be in love with you… It wasn’t… I mean… You really did save me from my husband. You really did get Mary and I out of that camp before anything horrible happened. I had no idea at that point you were my brother, but once I found out…” She coughed, dropping the backpack she’d grabbed from somewhere, and walked over to me, hugging me.

  I stood up slowly, something was happening to me. Something in my chest seemed to be breaking. My heart was beating fast and half of me wanted to rage, to pull the knife from my pocket and savagely rip her apart, but part of me felt her hug, and her love for what it was. My sister’s love. I was torn. I battled with myself. I hugged her back. I raged internally. I was so confused, I didn’t even know… what?

  “Why did you betray us?” I asked her.

  “I never did,” she whispered back, “I never checked in after I found out you were my brother. I went dark, even though Les knew. Rolston has my daughter, not Marshall,” she whispered back, “and we aren’t staying around here. When I get my chance, we’re going to break you all out.”

  That sent a jolt through me. She knew about Rolston, and if he was still here, his cover wasn’t blown. If his cover wasn’t blown, what was Mary doing with him? My arms broke out into goose bumps. What was it somebody said about her going off the reservation? Maybe they meant more than just her coming mentally unglued. That phrase Monty wrote, went through my head a dozen times in that next heartbeat. I pushed back and looked her in the eyes.

  “I’ve got a couple of cute kids, Mom,” Liz said from behind me.

  “I’ve got some adorable grand kids and a great granddaughter too,” Grandma shot back, her voice cracking.

  “I need to go,” Emily said loudly, “I need to check on baby cakes. Mom, make sure you take your meds, we don’t need you slipping again.”

  Meds?

  Emily hugged me, but I was shocked, too overwhelmed to think properly. Duke set his load of boxes down on the table, almost squishing the remains of my MRE. He smacked me on the shoulder with a meaty palm, then extended a hand to me.

  “Don’t do anything stupid. Les is right upstairs, and he’s a treacherous bastard. Don’t trust him,” he said as I took his hand to shake it.

  That was when I felt something digging into my palm. I slid the object between my middle and ring finger of my right hand, putting both hands in my pockets in shock at the both of them.

  “Les better watch himself,” I said, dropping the door key into my pocket, before pulling my hands back out, crossing my arms.

 
; I hoped my acting was better than it felt.

  “He’s got a gun,” Duke said, then dropped a wink that only Grandma and I could see.

  “So he lives another day. Listen, soon, I need to talk to you. It’s about… medical stuff,” I said lamely.

  “I know, and we need to work on that idea of yours for antibiotics. It might take us a year or more to isolate a strain of penicillin that’s useful for our needs. Now that you’re on board, right?”

  “No promises,” I shot back.

  Grandma gave them a small wave, but her eyes never left Emily. Not only had she missed out on a ton with my mother, she had an adult granddaughter that she didn’t know. She hadn’t known Emily was my sister until the revelations down here… and Mary was her great grandbaby! She teased Jess and I quite a bit about that, and now she would have more than one. If we survived this. I found it curious that both Emily and Duke were talking in code in front of my mom. At this point, I didn’t trust anything, or anyone.

  “So many times I’ve wanted to come see you, to call you,” Liz said, pushing the long sleeved shirt up until it bunched up around her elbows.

  “Why didn’t you?” I asked her, trying to figure out what had just happened and what was still happening.

  Emily knew about the secret way out, the ventilation shaft leading to the armory. Was it still safe? I was at least guessing the key Duke gave me was to one of the only rooms that locked down here, other than the lock on the outside of the door to the closet/room I’d been shoved in. So Emily was with Duke? Or was she still playing Spider’s game? I’d seen what she’d done upstairs, but her whispered words made me think something was in play, something was imminent. The KGR had been attacked and driven from their stronghold and had had to fall back here. This was a game of chess I was struggling to even follow along with, let alone play.

  “It was horrible at first, I kept telling myself that I was doing this for your own good. Your father … oh, he was so young and wild back then. He loved riding motorcycles when he got back to the states. Then he opened his business and you know, he said it’d be too dangerous for even me to stick around him for a while. I left… but I was pregnant with you. He didn’t know he was a father at first, but I tried to move on, because I wanted you and I to be safe. I forgot about him for a while. Then I fell under Les’ spell for a bit. Too much moonshine one night and…”

  “And that’s how you became pregnant with Emily?”

  “Yes.” My mom wiped her eyes.

  I could see her elbow on the inside was discolored, as if a strong hand had grabbed her there, thumbs biting into the flesh. Then I noticed it on the other side as well. Matching bruises?

  “But I knew I never should have slept with Les. It was just the one time, but one time’s all it’ll take. And Dad, Grandpa,” she said looking between me and Grandma, “would have killed him. He would have buried him the way he did to those fools who came and raped me when I was younger.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Knock it off,” Grandma snapped at her.

  “The dogs that were sicced on Grandpa, you know, the reason he hates dogs? The two men--”

  “Don’t,” Grandma snapped at her. “He doesn’t need to know this!”

  “Actually, Grandma, I’m really kind of curious,” I told her softly.

  I saw all her objections fall away and something in her crumpled. She turned, not meeting my gaze. My mom’s eyes bored into me for a moment, before she started speaking.

  “When I was sixteen, there were two boys a few years older than me who decided to take me for a night out on the town. Things… got very ugly. That was back a bit before the Jackson boy kept asking me out, you remember Mom?”

  “You really don’t need to tell him this--”

  “Jackson boy? You mean Sheriff Jackson?” I asked her.

  “He’s the sheriff now? Oh lord.” She put her hand to her mouth and giggled. “I never saw that one coming… Anyway, when the police went to pick those boys up, they up and disappeared.”

  “He killed them, didn’t he? Grandpa killed those boys?” I asked, my anger now long forgotten.

  “Yes,” Grandma said softly, looking at me finally, with tears in her eyes. “He buried them in the marshy spot in the back of the property.” Tears were running down her face.

  “Don’t be sad Mom,” Liz said to her. “I got over what they did to me. I just didn’t want my foolishness later in life to get Les in trouble with Dad. That would have been something he’d never forgive, and I couldn’t live with myself if he killed his best friend because of me.”

  “I’m so sorry for sending you away,” Grandma said, crying harder.

  My mom got up and walked to our couch. I scooted to the side and Mom slid in next to Grandma, holding her tight.

  “I thought it was a good idea too, I just wish I hadn’t have hurt our family, split it apart as badly as I did…”

  Her sleeve fell and she pushed it back up absently, showing a string of bruises. I grabbed her right wrist and pushed her long sleeve up to her shoulder. Needle tracks.

  “You’re still using?” Grandma asked her quietly.

  “I can’t stop. It’s been almost three decades of trying to quit. I’m running out medicine, and it’s—”

  “I never should have let you go out with those boys, I never knew what they were going to do. They ruined you.”

  “Nobody ruined me, Mom,” she said softly, yanking her arm back from me in a half-hearted gesture. “I just knew that after I got pregnant with Emily, I really wasn’t safe anywhere. Besides, Larry’s dangerous assignment was up, and things weren’t as dangerous as they had been. That’s why I left Wes with you and Dad.”

  “Larry?” Grandma asked, alarm in her voice.

  I had a sinking feeling.

  “Yeah, I went back to Wes’ father when I left here. We got married almost ten years ago, but we’ve been together since I left Murfreesboro.”

  “Larry?” I asked, feeling like the other shoe was about to drop. “Larry Killion?”

  “Of course silly, your father. I don’t know where he got that silly Spider nickname, but it's stuck over the years,” Mom said, turning to give me a smile.

  I got up and ran for the bathroom. I suddenly felt sick.

  19

  I needed space, I needed air. Spider was my father, Les had an affair with my Mom, who was a junkie now, Emily was my half-sister. My grandma had covered up the gruesome rape of my mom when she was younger, and the vigilante murder of the rapists. My grandpa had put two men in the ground, buried on what was now my land? And… I didn’t know that I felt any different than I had before. No wonder my grandma never wanted to talk about my Mom. It was more than just Lester and her having a baby together. It was the inevitable talk that would lead to this dark, dark family history.

  I took a lungful of air until I felt dizzy. I ran the sink, splashing water on my face. I tried to come to terms with what I’d just learned. Killion, the man who’d brought so much ruin and misery to this area, was my father. When I’d seen his wife for the first time, my mom, I’d had the half-formed thought, but I’d been thinking it was more Lester. Now? How much of this sordid history did Emily know? Probably most of it? I wasn’t sure. Hell, my Mom said Emily and Lester were unaware they were family.

  “Are you ok in there?” My mother’s voice came from the other side of the door.

  “I’m fine,” I lied, water dripping off my face as I stared into the mirror.

  I was looking for physical similarities, not sure if I’d find any. Was I really my father’s son? Was my more ruthless nature due to some dark inheritance from Spider? I always could see the family resemblance to my mother when I looked in the mirror, but my memories were more from a picture and things had changed. I had changed, my family had changed. Was this some sort of sick mind game of Spider’s? He’d played plenty of them since I’d made his acquaintance.

  “I just… I didn’t think things would go this way. I’ve wan
ted to talk to you forever and ever. The longer I waited, the easier it was to put it off… And I’m going to need the bathroom soon.”

  I turned the water off. I’d quit splashing my face with it while calling back and forth with her through the closed door. I thought about throwing up, but the nausea had passed. Instead, I grabbed some of the brown paper hand towels and wiped my face off before opening the door. My mom had a small brown leather handbag in her hand.

  “I’m really sorry we met this way after all these years,” she said again. “Can I get a hug?”

  I wanted to resist, but I stepped into her arms. I towered over her by almost a foot, but as soon as she wrapped those arms around me, long hidden memories of being impossibly young and missing her flooded my memories. My chest hitched, and soon we were both sobbing. My legs turned to rubber and I broke the embrace before I fell down or passed out. The world was getting dark and swirling. My mom pulled me to her, wrapping her arms around me. She pulled me down to the concrete floor gently. I leaned into her, sobbing.

  “I never meant to hurt you,” she said, one hand moving to brush through my hair. “I thought I was doing the right thing getting away. I’ve regretted it almost every day since. Larry, he always said he should get in touch with you as well, but… he’s not the same as he used to be. So much has changed with him.”

  “Do you see what kind of monster he is?” I asked her.

  “There’s nothing I can do about it,” she said softly.

  “Yes, yes there is. He’s holding people’s wives and daughters hostage, to force others to work for them. He plainly told somebody from our camp that he’d have the daughter’s rape videotaped while her mom watched, then rape the mom, before killing both ladies if he didn’t comply. That’s Larry, that’s your husband.”

  “It’s… I can’t stop him. I can’t go against him. I’m barely holding myself together,” she said softly.

  I pulled the hand that was tussling my hair down so I could pull her arm out. I could make out the old scarring up and down her arms, with new spots that had bruised where she’d injected something.