The Risen (Book 4): Courage

by Marie F. Crow

  “It’s pointless.” Aimes voices the same thing I have been refusing to think. “We have to get back inside.”

  “If we do that, the school is lost. This is the only way out. We will be trapped until they figure a way in.” Simon walks away, leaving Aimes and I here staring at the impossible.

  Impossible is what I do best. I reach down to that numb spot and spread it through my mind. I let it kill the doubts and the fears that cloud me. I use it like a shield as I march forward.

  Lawless’ eyes twitch to me sensing movement beside him before returning his focus on the fence. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mutters adding a few extra words under his breath to make sure his annoyance is completely understood. It is, all four letters of it.

  “Focus on the bottom,” he says to me and I don’t understand the logic behind it. The barrel of my gun rises back to the top of the fence as the male I am targeting gets tangled in the barbed wire. “The bottom, Helena. We have to stop them from climbing. Marxx has the ones that make it over.”

  I watch the male shred the skin from his face and hands as he pushes himself through the sharp teeth of the wires. He lacerates his scalp, peeling the hair from his skull. He never flinches nor does his growls slow as he mutilates himself, pouring the dark blood from his exposed skull down on the metal links.

  “Tell me you brought more ammo?” Marxx asks as he suddenly appears behind me, breaking me from the trance. I motion with my head to Aimes who waits with one of our black duffel bags stashed with various items that Simon picked out. Nothing was pink, so nothing called to Aimes to pack.

  “When you run out, let Marxx know,” Lawless says already taking aim again.

  “Why isn’t he on a section?” The gun’s recoil jerks my hand as I ask my question encouraging more four-letter words from Lawless.

  “His arm wont let him grip a gun for long. Now focus before you take your own head off.”

  It feels pointless. There are so many of them that I don’t even see them slowing despite the growing piles around the fence’s bottom. They have amassed in such numbers that the smell of them wafts towards us without any wind to help spread their scare tactics. In their eagerness they step on each other, they chew on the metal of the fence as they climb and a few have lacerated their faces or arms as they try to press through the metal diamonds. The fence buckles and moans under their abuse. The round posts are even vibrating in their cement homes.

  It isn’t hard to pick a target since they never look up as they climb. They focus on us and it seems their hands and legs work on their own accord. Their faces are almost dragged up the links as an afterthought.

  They can do anything you or I can do. They just make it look a lot more creepy, Aimes had said and now more than ever is the proof. I instinctively look for her to find her and Marxx running up the “battle field” reloading empty clips or handing off the guns completely. Everyone understands that if we lose this space, we lose everything and we are running out of time.

  There is too many of them for this to work. They will wear down our supply before we can stop them. What felt like an armory is quickly depleting. We have to think of something else.

  Removing what is left of my clip, I place it into the pocket of Law’s jeans. He only gives me the eye twitch again before returning to the fence. He doesn’t bother to question me. Half of me wonders if he’s just too afraid of what my answer might be. Tucking the gun into the line of my pants, I turn from him to find that mysterious solution I haven’t yet grasped.

  Rhett doesn’t share the same fears. “Where are you going?” he shouts as I begin to run.

  “Getting a faster solution,” I shout back still working out the details in my mind.

  To claim I am rationalizing a plan would be a lie. I’m going on autopilot, hoping some part of me has an idea which I don’t consciously yet hold. When I find myself running to the generators, both parts of my mind finally connect. Too bad I am not the only one here.

  It’s not only the front gate they have made as a source of entry. On a smaller scale, the same scene has started on the far side of the fence as well. Twenty or more heads snap in my direction as I come running around the corner. The growls start low and deep before swelling to almost screams. Unlike the ones we left on the road, these Risen are almost as fresh as when it started. Their bodies are whole, showing none of the signs of exposure due to the changing seasons. All of their outfits are the basic styles of life, not the combination of lifestyles we have become accustomed to seeing in their collection.

  The ones still stuck on the mechanics of the fence, they show the signs of the others we have been fighting since the start. Two groups. It has to mean these are two different groups, but it doesn’t make any sense. As they start to run for me, I don’t have time to debate the meaning.

  I race for the gas cans as they race towards me. Their excited screams almost seem to mock the ones still stuck on the metal barrier. Their slower counterparts scream with their frustration with their fence-embedded bodies. All they can do is watch, being too damaged for the task of breaching the metal line of security. A few hang, thrashing in the barbed wire topping of the fence. They scream with rage as they continue to shred their bodies with their frantic movements, much like the man I had watched earlier. Their dark blood makes the fence slick, resulting in the ones who haven’t figured it out to continue to slide down the links with the blood coating their hands like oil. Sometimes Karma is on your side, but she is still going to make someone amuse her.

  I reach the cans, leaving almost no room between them and myself. My heart is screaming my fears through my body as it pounds inside me. It’s the pure adrenaline from those fears serving me now. It keeps my body moving in ways it shouldn’t be able to. I run faster than I could if it were just a jog around the building. The cans are awkward, but I don’t notice their weight, as I should. Only my ragged breathing and the jolt of my feet hitting the ground are registering on my mind. I block out the screams from those behind me, refusing to accept how close they are to me. I pant through my mouth with hopes to not let their acidic rotting overwhelm me. I even tell myself the sharp stabbing of my lungs is nothing as winter rapes them.

  I’m Zombie Barbie, Rhett’s little combat doll. I can make it. I can make it back to them and hope one of them can finish the plan. Right now, I still don’t really have one. All I have is monsters behind me and I am running for my life.

  I turn the final corner with hell on my heels. Marxx runs to meet me when he sees what I have brought to play. Taking one of the cans from my hand, he opens the spout letting it pour as he runs backwards beside me.

  “Don’t stop,” he fights to say between his breathing. “Run to the fence and spread yours along the line.”

  I do as he says, too scared to add anything to the conversation. I don’t have to. In their typical skills of mind reading, Chapel has started towards us, flicking a lighter just like the one they all keep in remembrance of their smoking days. I coast past him letting them work out the details. Without thinking, I enter the firing range sprinkling the flammable fluid on the hands that reach for me. The ones climbing the fence turn almost upside down, suspended on the fence, watching me in resemblance to the monsters they have become.

  “Heads up!” Dolph shouts as I cross his section without thinking and one-by-one the shooting stops.

  I’m arching the can up, dousing every inch to which I can make the fluid cling. They scream like it’s holy water as it lands on their bodies. When I finally make my way to Lawless’ section, I walk backwards, extending the flammable trail to him.

  “Heads up,” Lawless says with less enthusiasm than Dolph had. One flick of his metal lighter that has traveled with us for so long and not even the damp winter ground can prevent the path of flames.

  It gains speed and heat as it travels toward the fence. Like flaming dominoes, one-by-one they catch fire as the gas fuels the flames. The fire climbs higher and higher, fed by the fluid and the bo
dies still racing to reach the top before it is too late.

  It’s the same scene behind me as Marxx and Chapel wait to see which ones will escape their flames, breaching the line of fire they have made. Flames surround us, and if the ground wasn’t so winter-kissed, I might hold concerns.

  The smells of their burning flesh and their screams of anger also surround us. They don’t feel any pain as the flames devour them. They don’t pass out from it, as we would have. The missing limbs the fire removes goes unnoticed in their attempts to reach us. They crawl, climb or almost slither until the heat finally cooks their brains, popping the glaring eyes that stare at us. They hang from the fence with their bodies trapped by those burning limbs as they roast. Some fall back to the ground, feeding those flames as they snap and pop like dried kindling.

  My body is foretelling the pain I will feel soon. Each inch that returns to life has its own complaints. I let myself sink to the wet ground, watching the burning line of the fence.

  “You make it hard to be a man,” Lawless says, staring down at me.

  “You mean because she is always doing the “saving”?” Rhett asks as he joins our little resting spot.

  “Every hero needs a sidekick.” I pant, still battling my lungs for control.

  They both laugh a laugh as if to say, never going to happen.

  “Remind me to look for marshmallows the next time we do a run,” Rhett says as he watches pieces of the burning bodies fall. “If we are going to keep burning stuff, I might as well get a snack out of it.”

  “You’re so twisted!” Aimes shouts to him from what would be the closest thing to the middle between the two groups.

  “Don’t,” I say, stopping him before his smile can reach its full potential. “Just don’t.” I know what that smile hides and I prefer to keep it that way – hidden.

  “Did you see any other spots?” Lawless asks.

  “There are some stuck on the side fence. That’s as far as I made it.” I watch the clouds float overhead. Like the laughter of little girls running down a bloodstained hallway, their puffs of white innocence seem so out of place looking down on the burning bodies we have caused.

  Extending an arm, Lawless pulls me off the ground to him. His brown eyes churn with concern for me. “If I ask you,” he stresses the word “ask” with an effort to appease my own ego before he continues, “to go inside and stay there, would you actually do it?”

  His voice is soft but it’s what his eyes hold that splinters my stubborn wall. I nod, accepting my limitations and his needs. Mostly, I am accepting my limitations and letting him think it’s his needs. It’s like the fluke thing, but more self-serving. I will never admit to either.

  “Do I have to go too, Dad?” Aimes is already reaching to help me, but she can’t resist a chance to climb under Law’s skin.

  “Just leave the bag. That’s actually useful,” he responds then places a soft kiss to my forehead telling me good-bye.

  Lawless whistles a sharp sound gaining the men’s attention. He makes a circle motion with his finger and those mindreading skills kick in again as they fan out to inspect the rest of the grounds. To me, he points at the courtyard entrance before returning to the task he has set into motion.

  “I bet you never thought you’d see this day,” Aimes says watching them walk away as I am.

  “What? The end of the world or its half-dead people trying to kill us?”

  “Nah,” she says tilting her head that serves as a warning for her sarcasm, “that’s just every Black Friday. I meant the day that Law would be leading. Our little playboy flirt is actually in charge. It’s kind of scary how much he has changed.”

  It’s not scary. It’s depressing. The smiling, good-natured boy I have been convincing myself I didn’t love all these years is now a sullen, reserved man. On a rare, private moment I get a glimpse of who he once was. They are few, short and treasured, but they happen.

  Truth be told, we have all changed into different people in some ways. Little things have amassed and built new wholes from the pieces we weren’t aware of having inside of us. Well, all of us but Rhett. He’s still the scary, bucket of crazy he has always been. It’s just splashing over the edges now.

  CHAPTER 33

  Aimes and I didn’t stop in the courtyard or pause at the cafeteria to answer any of the questions shouted to as we passed. I didn’t exchange glares with Selma or compare grins with Travis. I did avoid Paula’s shaking head as she rested her hands on her hips. I didn’t need to hear what she was thinking. Her frown and tightly pressed lips were plenty to provide the clues to her thoughts. If I look an inch of how I feel, she will be upstairs soon enough with her miracle bag of silence.

  Aimes and I walk to our space, watching our growing family dispatch the small pockets of Risen from the windows. They started using their knives once they discovered the few that are left. The way they each kill tells about their personalities. It’s not shocking that Chapel is the least engaged in the clearing. He, like myself, often wonders who these people were before becoming what they are now and if any of that still remains inside them. If they can think and work as a group to attain their goals, surely they must hold some small fragment of their former lives.

  “You’re doing it again.” Aimes pushes my shoulder letting my body rock to awareness.

  I look at her using my face to ask what she means instead of my voice.

  “They aren’t human, Hells. You know that, right?”

  “Paula said they aren’t dead. The virus just takes over like a switch to the programming. If that is true, could there be a cure?”

  “It’s not some super flu that some horse pills and three glasses of juice a day will get rid of. The fever cooks the brain, allowing whatever it is to take over. You can’t cure it.”

  I watch Marxx, my personal Superman, put one down with his blade through an eye socket. It doesn’t phase him when the gore backsplashes upon him. He easily moves to the next one, repeating the same action through the links of the fence. It bothers me some that it doesn’t bother them anymore. I’m not ready to accept that this is our life now. Wake, dress, kill a handful of people, rinse and repeat every day? No, I’m just not ready to accept the life we once had is over.

  “What happened to you?” Aimes asks another version of the question she has already asked me several times. “Where are they, Hells?”

  A thousand answers clot in my throat like a wound that keeps bleeding with the slightest touch. “I killed them,” I say with a voice as hollow as my heart. “It was my job to keep them safe and I failed them.”

  “Oh, Hells,” she barely whispers. “One day, I will ask to hear it all and you will tell me so we can nail this coffin shut.”

  I nod, watching the show end below us. “One day.” One day I will have to answer all of their questions, just not today.

  “Come on,” she says, rubbing my arm with an attempt to remove the ghosts that are haunting me. “Lets go down and meet them. If Lawless comes across Travis anytime soon, your face will just go to waste. It will be hard to keep playing the “good guys” if Law is smacking around the “holy guy”.”

  That’s not exactly true, I want to tell her. Nothing makes a bunch of middle aged, over-romantic women fluster faster than a man defending the wrongs done to “his girl”. It’s the middle chapters of every sappy romance book I have ever tried to force my way through with worries that something might be wrong with me for hating every book of that style. If the women really lived in a life where “the guy” was always “avenging wrongs”, they wouldn’t find it so romantic. Sweeping up broken glasses and bottles night-after-night at Grit became less romantic by the hour. I’m not trying to appeal to my sense of heroics though. It’s to the ideas of the people living here we have to cater. I need the home team to change back to us and everyone loves a good comeback story.

  “Think Travis is already preaching?” Aimes asks me as we take the stairs two at a time to reach the show.

  “He�
�s going to have to think of some way to spin it all.” I wince with every forceful step now, seeing as my body has rid itself of the super powers given by adrenaline. “He and his people keep staying safe behind the walls while we and our heretic-selves keep going out there. He can’t risk letting those thoughts start forming in people’s heads.”

  “Isn’t that the point though?” she asks with a toss between excitement and curiosity.

  “Yes, but not for him.”

  I reach for the metal door of the first floor as it flies forward. My fingers slip from the cold handle as it is forced past my hand and Aimes jerks me towards her, saving my face from any more added colors being distributed.

  Selma looks as shocked as we are to be suddenly face-to-face. “You better hurry,” she tells us. She recovers from the shock faster than we can, but she has the skill of plastic with her face that we lack.

  “Hurry where?” Aimes asks, feigning an innocence that would make a true priest proud.

  You can’t fool the puppet master. Selma doesn’t answer. She pushes her way between us, refusing to play our game. I hate poor sports. As Aimes skips down the last few steps behind me, I guess she enjoys them.

  “You know that woman needs a whore-fax, right?” Aimes asks as we walk towards the room, serving for more than just an eatery. “One owner my ass.”

  “You don’t think she wore white?” I smile with my questions as we both begin to build our confidence.

  “Everyone wears white. It doesn’t mean they should.”

  “So I guess you will be wearing white?”

  She gives my question the very special one finger acknowledgment. From here we can hear the shouting from the cafeteria is all male. The deep pitches of the voices are colliding with random louder noises as if the room is divided and cheering for each side.

  I have a moment of weakness letting my feet slow. Normal people don’t have this amount of constant drama surrounding them like a black plague. Normal people don’t have this constant fighting to navigate through, never knowing which step will be the one that finds the landmine. The things waiting outside for us, those sadly have become normal and even that I can’t really handle. I’m not sure what it really says about me when I would rather fight hand-to-hand with the undead monsters than to walk into a room fervent with male angst. I would rather be risking my life than to have to once again step into the middle of the flying fists and words. Bruises from words often last longer than any damage fists could cause. Bruises heal, but the words never leave you.