“Here we go again,” I sigh before pushing through the last set of protective doors.
The noise explodes without the metal to dampen the flaring tempers. Tempers are burning hotter than the many candles being used to combat the early darkness of the season. The voices flicker back-and-forth as fast as the light being cast upon the walls. Right in the middle of it all, is shockingly not a single member of G.R.I.T.
G.R.I.T. stands like tall pallbearers along one side of the fighting. Dressed in their black vests and wearing serious faces, they stand watching and waiting as Simon and the God Squad exchange verbal beatings. Travis is firmly behind the row of protectors wearing the same slimy smile as always, being the constant instigator that he is. For a man of God who believes He will protect him, Travis is never standing anywhere to test the theory.
“That’s Horrence.” Leslie’s voice slips behind me, giving a name to the man battling with Simon. “He is the newest one trying to prove his dedication.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask her without turning to look at her.
“Why are you talking to us at all?” Aimes asks, taking her discomfort a tad bit further than I had.
“I thought you would want to know,” Leslie says. Her red hair is a deep mahogany with nothing but the soft candlelight casting on her loose waves. It’s hard to not hate her. Or maybe, it’s just hard for me not to hate her. Her natural perfection just makes it more justifiable. I am woman. Hear me compare.
“So what is the deal, Miss Helpful One?” Aimes asks with the most sincere attempt to be nice I have seen her put forth yet.
Leslie accepts it for what it is – sarcasm. She explains, “When your group came back in, Selma made some offhand comment about Rhett changing sides more than Lawless changes partners. I guess she thought something so simple would get under Rhett’s skin, or Law’s skin, but Rhett just laughed and asked her if she missed him that much. He then said something about her wanting other people’s toys more than Travis does. The rest was really kind of hush-hush but whatever was said aggravated Simon enough to start defending your crew. It’s been going back and forth ever since.” She made motions with her hands to help separate the events as she was telling them. It was a mistake. We have had our own little past dramas, and with the one raging on in front of us, the room is waiting to see if ours is about to reopen, thinking her hand motions were more than what they really were.
“How long do we let them ego it out?” Aimes whispers to me. “I mean, welcome back Simon, but this could go on for awhile.”
“You mean because they wont throw a punch like yours would have by now?” Leslie wants it to sound like an insult, but she has a trail of longing at the end of her sentence that ruins her intent.
Aimes just smiles her the normal cocky expression, which often adorns her face. “Try to keep your vagina from your voice if you want to try to be insulting. Otherwise, you’re just being pathetic,” Aimes tells Leslie as she turns to walk towards the commotion.
“I don’t even know what that means?” Leslie looks to me for help and I just laugh.
What else can I do?
I listen to the shouting match as I follow Aimes into the thick of it. I’m not sure what they are fighting over. I’m not sure if even they know at this point. In every fight, there comes a point when it’s just venting and no longer holding to a true path. I think not only has this one reached that point, but also it has gone past it, resulting in almost random insults. Now it’s just whoever can shout the loudest will win.
I can feel Travis watching me like the snake he resembles for me. I can almost hear the warning rattle and it adds more of a glide to my steps. Other women feed from the hands offering them compliments and whistles. I graze from the looks of contempt and whispering judgments. At least those are honest.
Every step I take towards them, Travis copies in a mimicked attempt of provocation. The room begins to grow still seeing the new drama unfolding. Everyone knows the main event is about to start, and like those who bet on a fight, people are debating which side to place their faith on.
“Helena dear,” Travis calls to me from behind the security of his lesser-than-stellar-brain-powered security team, “where have you been? You’ve been lacking in your duty to keep the peace.”
“I had to powder my nose.” I call to him without turning my head to see him. “The shine was contrasting with the bruising.”
“Hmmm,” Travis almost moans the sound as he stalls to collect his thoughts. After all, it’s going to take something creative to make him sound like the good guy now. “Yes that was unfortunate the way you made me defend myself. It takes a brave woman to initiate a fight between herself and a man, as you can see, it’s not always a wise thing to do.”
Reaching the wall of the men I have come to trust with my life, I finally give Travis my full attention. “It’s sad you felt the need to have to use your fists to defend yourself from me. I was just a girl asking … questions.” I pause, extending the last word, letting it hint to what he really hit me over. “Good thing Rhett has better self-control than you do, Travis. Your face might match mine otherwise.”
“Want it to?” Rhett almost purrs the question and the men softly laugh.
“Violence. That is all your people know!” Travis exclaims and it doesn’t take any brainpower at all to know he is about to start preaching to distract from what has been said against him. “They bring violence. They encourage violence. They live it. They wear those vests declaring it!”
Aimes makes a grand show of a yawn while staring straight at Travis. Leslie was wrong. It’s not the men who always swing first. Aimes just doesn’t use her fists.
“We have been safe behind these walls this whole time. They go out one time and look what follows them back?” Travis is spinning now using the cafeteria like a stage. “You call them heroes for going out there to destroy the demons when the demons came because of them. Like calls to like!”
“Or deer meat calls to hungry.” Paula’s voice silences the room. She doesn’t need that little bag after all. Who knew? “Someone’s been dumping the remains left from cleaning the meat by the fences. Oddly enough, the same spots where they climbed over today.”
I notice how Paula calls the Risen “them” and not “things” or “demons” like Travis has trained the place to do.
“Isn’t it Dolph who hunts for us? Now he stands among them. Rather fitting wouldn’t you say?” Travis feels like he’s played his ace. Too bad he’s playing cards with a woman like Paula. She knows that the ace is never played first. You hold that card until you have more than one to boast.
“Except that it’s your man in charge of removing such things as per your order.” Paula says, crossing her arms to wait for his answer.
“If someone said that, it was untrue. I never placed such a suggestion.” Travis wears his smug grin. I’ve come to learn that the wider that grin becomes, the deeper the lie. Right now, he’s lying through his perfect white teeth.
“Yes, you did,” the one named Horrence says before he can stop himself.
The corners of Travis’ mouth actually rise higher. I didn’t think that was possible.
“Like I said, a misunderstanding,” he says.
Horrence shakes his head, still not understanding the subtitles Travis is doing his best to spell for the man. “No, Boss. You said to be sure to take the unusable meat and place it along the fences. I understood just fine.” His words spill forth with the worry Travis might think his every command wasn’t obeyed.
I relax into the arms of Lawless as we watch the comedy hour. Horrence is a large man; someone who would live in a gym as long as that gym was walled in mirrors. He most likely used to catch every woman’s eyes with his extremely toned body, but lost their attention just as fast when he opened his mouth. The more he opens his mouth now, the more attention he gains. Not all of it is good.
Travis’ eyes hold the same gleam I saw when I was at his feet while he was holding tha
t perfect smile.
“You just have to hate it when a plan almost kills people,” Lawless says while resting his head on my shoulder. He reaches into his vest pocket and pulls the baseball hat from its hiding place. “Unless that is the plan.”
The room is in an uproar of hushed whispering over the little memento of a tragedy still unanswered. Travis shows no sign of recognizing the hat, but one of his Squad does. The man pushes through the line ignoring their looks of disapproval. He reaches for the hat like a starving man stretching for one final sip of decadence. His fingers tremble as they slide over the stiches and the many worn spots from years of wear. Each discoloration holds some memory for him and his smile flashes before it fades with each spot he remembers.
“How?” he asks as his tears start to glide.
“We found it under the tree you left your son in,” Lawless says. He doesn’t mince words or try hiding his disgust for what the man has helped happen.
The man turns to Travis with shock. It steals his breath and his chest rapidly rises and falls with the emotions coursing through him. “You said you buried them. You told us you would honor our sacrifice.” The man steps towards Travis with clenched fists. The line of protection Travis depended on steps aside from the man’s anger. “Our wives? Did you leave them too?”
The room starts to ring out with questions over what they are watching.
“What tree?” comes from one side of the room.
“Leave them where?” comes from somewhere else.
“What sacrifice?” comes from somewhere deeper in the room.
Travis’s eyes bounce from each section that calls out. The mounting panic radiates from behind those eyes.
“What is Selma doing out there?” Leslie is staring out the fogged windows with squinting eyes. Set after set of eyes join hers as they try to peer through the hazy windows at the woman standing by the cross outside.
“She has Cole!” a woman shouts, shaking her husband’s arm as she points.
“Is that Harper?” another woman asks with the same shaking of fear as the first woman.
If the room was electric before, it’s pulsing now. Rhett grabs Aimes as the bodies force forward to see what is exactly happening outside. I want to stop them. I want to warn them, but I have nothing to offer and Travis’ smile is growing.
It’s a different smile this time. He’s not nervous anymore. He’s not the least bit worried about what the people think of him or his. I watch as he takes out a small red beaded necklace with it’s gold cross and brings it tenderly to his lips. He closes his eyes as he kisses the flesh-warmed metal. I know it will all be over soon. I’m about to bleed.
CHAPTER 34
The dropping temperatures of the night have allowed the snow to float again. It’s the start of a winter paradise and the children dance and run under the frozen flakes. They extend their tongues, trying to capture the flakes in the centuries old tradition of winter fun. Their laughter is the soundtrack of innocence. The unease that was shared inside the cafeteria dissipates watching them celebrate the snow.
Selma is winding the handle of an old styled record player. The needle plays the ancient strands of “Amazing Grace” with the white noise only a true record player can produce. The melody mingles with the laughter, and what was originally composed to inspire faith, only paints an eerie backdrop.
“What the hell?” Chapel mutters, but we all have an idea of exactly the hell we are about to witness.
The missing members of the Squad stand between the line of people and Selma. Her hands temple in prayer with a mouth silently moving as she recites whatever message to God which she hopes he is listening to. A large crate sits by her feet. It’s wooden structure hisses a warning no one is listening to with their eyes locked on the children they can’t reach. Panic with the event they just narrowly escaped a month ago inspires their bravery. I watch as the man named Ryan pushes against the men blocking them and he is shoved to the ground with an answer to his attempt to reach his daughter.
The barrels are lit one-by-one around the yard while Selma continues to pray, oblivious to it all, or either very well aware and ignoring it. The members of their community pour the sharp smelling gas from the generator’s stockpile into the barrels. The flames catch with an almost hell-like heat. The crowd winces from the mini explosions of light, settling their voices and their fight to reach their kids.
As if the sudden blaze was a rehearsed signal, Travis walks solemnly from another exit of the school directly across from the amassed crowd. What rests across his arms sets my knees to water. His head is bowed over the long stretches of rope. Their nooses sway with his steps like silent chanting and I am chanting in my mind. As I watch Selma praying I can mentally hear my repeated refusal of what is about to happen and my own prayers to not let it happen.
The men are loading the chambers of their spent guns with stealth-like movements. They hide each other as golden bullets are passed between closed fists. Their practiced moves are normally calm, but now they hold an air of urgency making their cold fingers clumsy. Like the Risen that was held hostage by the fence, I could scream at them with my frustrations.
“Give me my clip.” I try to shield my voice from the crowd watching Travis’ painfully slow procession.
Lawless only shakes his head, answering me and ignoring me at the same time.
“Larance,” I clip between my teeth, “give me my clip.”
He lifts his head only high enough to look at me. “No,” he tells me, returning to slipping his clip full of the little golden cylinders. “You’re going to, for once, since this thing has started, stay out of it.”
“You really think that is going to happen?” Aimes asks him and her amusement is audible in her whisper.
Lawless lifts his head again to stare at me. Our breathing becomes a pattern that echoes the feelings in our eyes. Every fear he has laid behind his tall walls is now bare to me. I can almost hear the beat of his heart.
I forget sometimes the man behind the mask. I have lost him to the weight he now bears on his shoulders and the strength he has to summon to endure it. I begged Truth for his life. I fell to her feet with her black gown engulfing me. I wore my misery like a widow wears her scars, but he was returned to me on a night much like this. As Mother Nature kissed the earth, he was returned to me and all I have done since is throw myself at Death.
“Please?” Lawless asks me in this bubble of time we have captured.
I nod. I nod because my voice wouldn’t hold the strain of my thoughts or my regrets that constantly encase me. I nod because to put the agreement into words would be a lie.
He holds me in a tight embrace and now I can feel his heart just as I imaged hearing it. He is frightened of what this night might bring. In some tragic way, it’s all repeating.
He kisses me and I let him gather his strength and the belief in himself from my lips. I let him hold hope in himself to do what has to be done. All a man wants is someone to love him and someone to protect. I give him that and I let him take it from me.
“I love you,” he says against my lips and it sounds heartbreakingly like a goodbye.
“I love you, too,” I whisper, frail and frightened of what he must imagine tonight to entail.
“You ready?” Marxx asks, crashing us back to the present like a meteor to the ground.
We both nod, still holding to the other with the last moments of our bubble dissolving into the cruelty slowly becoming true; a cruelty we have seen swinging from large tree branches and left in ashes in the many rings upon the ground.
Aimes pulls me to her knowing I won’t be able to let go of them on my own. I will march right through the crowd beside them if left to my will.
“Congrats,” she whispers into my ear as we watch them walk away, “you get to be a girl. It kind of sucks, but you’ll get use to it.”
“Don’t cry.” I tell her hearing her voice quiver.
“I’m not crying. This is totally my game face.” She
sniffles with the secret knowledge of what Travis is about to do. “I’m just really sad about the game we are going to have to play.”
Travis has made his way to the front of the wooden cross and the area that has served as his pulpit. Selma stands beside him with a look of rapture on her face. As she calls the children to her, she almost glows with the compassion of motherhood. Her smile is the sweetest I have yet to see grace her face. Selma may very well have a sweet side, but it is coated in cyanide. One smile she gives to the children and they run to her. One smile she shares and their lives are hers with the strands of “Amazing Grace” floating around her.
“My friends,” Travis shouts into the night air, “not all of us are made to walk in God’s glory. Only the most refined, the most tested by temptations, can truly know the suffering of reclaiming their lost divine grace. Only when we are stripped from all we cling to with false declarations, can we truly see the power of salvation. Tonight, I will show you that grace. You will feel that power and a few of you will even rise from the flames.”
Travis kisses each rope, bowing his head as he anoints them with prayer before handing them over to a member of his Squad. My heart breaks hearing the children still laughing as they run in circles around a playful Selma with the music enhancing their joyful steps. The snow looks like magical fairies again as it twirls around them as if it’s marveling in the children’s beauty.
Time slows as we watch the ropes being secured from the extended arms of the cross. Voices begin to rise with curiosity and anger over the obscenity of it. Little feet prance and the ropes begin to sway in time. Travis watches it all from above on his self-built stage.
The Risen (Book 4): Courage Page 27
