A corresponding rope is placed over the child it belongs to head and synched tight. The sight is enough to bring the women back to wails. The sound of the noose sliding taunt brings the whole yard to an uproar. The children’s sobs bring those who are mere onlookers with no children of their own to their knees.
“Round up the fathers,” Travis says, skipping along the unintentional path the women have made. Chapel’s glare as the path winds near him brings Travis back to his disguised senses. “Oh, and Rhett. Bring me Rhett. Let’s see if we can still save him after all,” he says this to Chapel, but it’s the God Squad who move into action. Chapel doesn’t give him an ounce of concern.
“Now, gentlemen, you will have a choice. I leave it in your hands entirely. One-by-one you will come forward as we come to your child and their matching mother. These ropes are very real, as Helena can assure you, and if the mother does not inject herself with the very shot that has turned so many into their true forms that now hunt us down for our purity, the man next to your child will pull their little legs,” Travis boasts and I was wrong. He is still going to stick to the Holy Roller façade for the whole crazy train ride.
A few mothers are looking for the first time at what is in their hands with fear. A few are staring at their kids as they chew to open the plastic wrappers that contain the shots. The remaining are lost in the disbelief of what is even happening.
They remind me of my mother, Carol, lost and waiting for someone to take them by their hand and tell them how pretty they are. My mother never would have risked her life for us. She would have had us killed and at her end, she did try to kill us. She tried to eat us.
A little girl is the first to be chosen. I know her and I know it is Ryan who will be the first father put to this test of “faith”. The matching mother has already chewed her way through the protective plastic bag. She doesn’t wait for any instructions for this game. I don’t know if she would have waited if her child was the first or not with the anguish on her face. She starts stripping the winter layers from her clothing to expose her arm. When finally she is in nothing more than her bra and pants, she pulls the cap from the needle and aims for the muscle of her arm.
“Vein, dear,” Travis says as he eagerly watches her show. There is a lust in his eyes that has nothing to do with carnal needs.
She doesn’t even question him. Finding the pulsing blue tube, she pushes the liquid into her body. She looks to Travis fully expecting him now to free her little girl. She doesn’t understand this is just the first phase of his evil.
The females of Travis’ cult pour a ring of gas around the women. I have to wonder about the logic of this on a wooden stage. I shouldn’t have. Travis had it all planned long before the first pew was placed.
Other than the men holding the children and the one now hugging my waist, the cult has departed, leaving only the victims to the flames should they spread. One quick step backwards and the executioners will be safe, too.
“Now,” Travis calls from one of the pews. He has taken a front row seat for the bonfire which is about to occur. “Drop the child.”
The little girl is shoved forward from the man’s shoulders by the one who placed the rope around her neck. They don’t want to run the risk of her neck breaking. They let her swing from the rope like the toy she thought it was. Her gasping sounds as she swings forward steals the air from everyone else, leaving the yard in shocked silence. The fire is lit at the same time as the girl begins to swing. It keeps the mother in place, yet still she runs towards it, testing the heat as if it might be a mirage.
“Who do you save?” Travis calls to Ryan, “Do you take God’s work into your own hands? Will you prove your faith in Him to save your family because of your love for Him?” Travis stands, lost in his religious disease. “Will God let your wife be turned into a demon or will He keep her safe, saving them both? Do you feel God’s hand Ryan?!?” Travis is screaming. He is shouting into the night air with his voice steaming the area around him.
Ryan reaches for the offered gun. He can kill his wife before she turns or he can kill his child to save her from the slow death of suffocation. His last option is to wait and see if God loves them enough to save them all.
The roar of a motorcycle is building as it races towards the courtyard. At this point of the night, it wouldn’t surprise me if it were J.D. riding back from hell with a new set of minions close at his wheels. I’m not exactly wrong.
Dolph tears into the courtyard astride Lawless’ pride and joy. He doesn’t slow to avoid the crowd of bystanders and they scatter amid the new threat. The Risen are running not far behind the roaring bike. In the confusion, Simon rushes the stage to hoist the little girl back into the air with Ryan running up right behind him, but Travis won’t be cheated that easily. Horrence raises his gun and I shout desperately to warn Simon. He turns hearing my drama, but it’s too late.
Simon twitches twice as he is hit with the gunfire. His chest explodes with the content of his coat spreading around him in a mockery of the snow floating in the air. I watch as he falls from the stage. He is gone before his body bounces on the ground, but his name still tears from my mouth with denial.
Dolph is off the bike and running to open the double metal doors to herd the screaming people inside. They follow his commanding shouts, and once his side is secure, Dolph shuts the doors, locking his side down. He never saw his friend fall. He was never aware he just lost the last of the family he built under this roof.
“Drop them! Drop them all!” Travis shouts as he runs with his pack of protection bearing Selma in their arms.
They do. I feel my body weightless for mere seconds before the rope catches my throat. It’s knotted fingers grip me as I stretch to touch the stage with my toes. My boots slide, slipping on the beams pulling me tighter against the rope as I sway. I can already hear my blood rushing as my lungs empty their last reserves of air.
Marxx is first on the stage but only a breath behind him is Lawless. As they reach for the children who dangle with kicking feet, Rhett and Chapel have put the ring of fire out, freeing the women from their prison before they rush to the cross to help free me. The women help each other lift the choking children who still remain in the ropes.
The fleeing executioners are the first to be overtaken. Their dying screams mix with the religious hymn adding yet another twist to the song. The screams of the dying have never sounded so sweet.
We run to Aimes and Dolph who stand at the nearest door, beckoning us to them with motions instead of sound. The men slide to a stop on the iced cement, waiting for the women and children to be ushered in before sealing the door on those who thought tonight they would be the ones dealing death. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
CHAPTER 35
Husbands rush to find their wives, to find their children. They fall into embraces with gratitude to find their family still alive. Half-hugs and handshakes are shared among the men who have once again risked it all to save this group. No one acknowledges the fact that right on the other side of the safety glass are men being devoured while their screams die in their throats or the fire that has mysteriously restarted. It eats the wooden beams faster than before, charring the wood of the cross with its still swaying ropes.
Lawless stares at me where I rest against the wall panting from pain. His eyes hold me with the same fire that blazes in the background behind him. We should be holding one another, spreading words of reassurance over us both with our lips. We aren’t, and when he turns from me, I fear the rope hasn’t fully left my neck.
A screaming woman has thrown the crowd back into a panic. Ryan’s wife is convulsing on the floor. Her body fights against Ryan’s grasp as she continues to slam herself against the floor. Paula watches with detachment as her name is being chanted to help the woman.
“Get away from her,” Paula says, pulling the crowd further down the hall. “Get away from her!” she demands as the nature of human curiosity slows their response to her comma
nd.
As quickly as the convulsing started, it stops. Now the crowd begins to back away from her knowing what follows from their own experiences. I don’t want to watch what has to happen next.
“Let’s go,” I tell Aimes. I turn my back as Ryan remembers the gun he was given and I remember those who gave it to him are still here.
“Shouldn’t we stay here?” Aimes hasn’t forgotten a thing.
“You want to watch him have to kill his wife while his child watches, go ahead,” I tell her as I walk. It’s a half-truth, but it’s a completely good cover.
When phrased like that, of course she isn’t going to stay. With the sounds of boots following us, our escape has not gone unnoticed. They don’t call out as they follow us and we don’t glance back to see who it is following us.
The candles have been blown out in the stairwell. The only light comes from the cloud-covered sky. It floats in with patches before fading us back into the shadows.
Aimes bumps into my back as we take the first corner, startling us both. She says with mild annoyance, “You know, life would be so much easier if it had a background track playing. At least then you would know when it’s about to suck. Happy music, we live! Violins and drums, kiss your ass goodbye!”
“Keep moving,” Marxx says from the shadows ahead where he forced his way past us.
“Keep moving, right. Why didn’t we think of that?” she hisses into my ear, not brave enough to give it full voice.
“Because they have the guns and we don’t,” I whisper back with less success than she had.
“Keep moving,” Rhett repeats with the same coldness from behind me.
Who’s the most hated woman on death row? I’m the most hated woman on death row! Three cheers for the home team!
Marxx nudges the door to our floor open with his foot. We listen for any welcoming noise. With nothing making an obvious introduction, now the hard part has come. Marxx has to enter the dark hallway with us right behind him.
The once familiar length has become a dark cavern of unexplored dread. The windows of the many classrooms cast a subtle glow into the hall. Nothing moves making the stillness as captivating as a charmer to a viper.
“I don’t think they are here,” Marxx calls back to Lawless. He is standing between the doorways. His attention is divided between our floor and the stairwell behind us.
“If it were me, I’d be upstairs packing to make a run for it,” Rhett says and finally Lawless acknowledges something with other than a glare in my direction.
“Rhett, Marxx,” Lawless almost barks the names, motioning with his head for them to follow him out. “Watch them as they pack. Grab as much as you can, as fast as you can,” he says to the only man left with us.
Chapel understands and starts pulling us to action. “They aren’t going up there to clean house,” he says as he hurries us down the hall. “They are just going to find another way out with the courtyard full now.”
Chapel clears the first room where Lawless and I stay. He nods as he walks to the next room that belongs to him and Aimes leaving me to pack.
When rushed, everything feels twice as slow as it is. Hands become clumsy and drop things with ironic glee. Feet will trip over invisible things and yet you will still stop to look as if to find something reaching for you. Bags won’t unzip, and then once packed, they refuse to zip. Irony – the ultimate leveler of life.
Hauling the duffle bags despite the screaming complaints of my stomach, I pause as I enter the hallway to wait for the other two. My heart stops when a shadow breaks the lighted square projecting into the hallway from the empty room across from me. Lowering the bags, I stare at the square mentally demanding for it to prove what I saw was true. It does and I gasp.
Aimes comes running from her room with enough noise to make a drum line envious of her skill.
I wave my arms, motioning for her to stop. She looks at me with confusion, enlarging her eyes before calling out into the hallway, “What?”
She’s about to ask another question when once again the same shadow streaks across the square at her feet. She doesn’t ask any more questions as I make my way to the entrance of the large room. She follows behind me like a living shadow. At least one person is appreciative of my knack for trouble.
“Any chance it’s Chapel?” she asks me with a glimmer of hope in her words.
“You saw him last. You tell me,” I whisper back still trying to see into the room without having to fully turn the corner yet.
“He said he was going to the armory.” She leans to look down the hall before becoming one with my back again. “Any chance he got lost and didn’t want to ask for directions?”
“It’s not Chapel. Chapel has no reason to be lurking in an empty room,” I tell her. Plus, I have never been that lucky.
Crouching low, I look through the opened doorway waiting for a hail of gunfire to explode around me like it always seems to happen in the movies. It doesn’t happen. This isn’t a movie. If it were, I would have ejected it long ago and left a scathing review as all people who are safe behind a keyboard do.
The room once served as a science lab, containing row after row of tables for someone to hide behind. To one side is a little room where the teacher would have taken anyone who had the misfortune of messing up their experiment. I know rooms like those well.
“Hello?” I call out creeping along the room like the wall is my long lost best friend.
“What are you doing?” Aimes shouts as soft as she can.
“Seeing if anyone is in here.”
“You think they are going to answer you? Yeah, over here around the corner. I’m waiting with a very large and sharp knife. Come on over. I’ll make you a sandwich.”
“Is this really when you want to start pointing out the lack of logic in my actions?”
“You’re right. I should have started months ago.”
I have been watching the room as we held our little exchange. Still, nothing moves. I’m about to chalk it up to something passing by the window when a little head peers around one of the table’s sides.
“April?” I call to the little girl who is staring at me.
“What are you two doing?” Rhett asks behind us and we both scream. He chuckles bending down to extend his arms to the little girl who is already running to them. “Hey, Pet,” he whispers into the girl’s hair, still smiling at how easily he frightened us. He leaves us panting from the shock while we lean against the wall.
“They are fine.” We hear Rhett tell someone who our screams must have alarmed. “Just a case of over active imaginations.”
“Jerk,” Aimes says, but I know the real word she wanted to use is taking a little longer to grace her tongue.
“Let’s go!” Chapel shouts from the hallway, and when asked so nicely, how does one refuse the request.
“Did you find them?” I ask Rhett when we catch up to him and Chapel.
“No.”
“Did you find a way out?” Aimes asks more interested in our well-being than that of a cult. I suppose she has a point.
“Yeah.”
“Want to share it with us?” she asks, a little kindly.
“That’s why I was sent back,” Rhett answers as if she should have already figured it all out. I guess our imaginations aren’t as vast as he mentioned because we haven’t.
We follow the men out into the bottom hallway. Our bodies are laden with the many duffel bags that carry our humble belongings. Rhett is whispering encouraging words to the little girl who hides her face in his broad shoulder. It’s odd to watch, and at the same time, my nonexistent, biological clock starts to tick.
“I wouldn’t head that way,” a voice purrs from the darkened library.
It stops us all with fear-filled curiosity. Rhett hands April to me as Aimes strips us both of the bags in preparation for running. No matter how it begins, there is always running.
Aimes and I melt backwards with April as the shadow steps forward. Ahead of its en
trance rolls shot vial after empty shot vial like the ones we saw brought from the crate.
“God works in mysterious ways,” Travis says as he emerges into the dim hallway. “Selma and I thought we would add to our flock here, but here we find our flock was added to the damned.”
“What have you done?” Chapel’s voice vibrates with shock. We know what he has done. Sometimes you just have to hear, or see, the evil to really believe it.
“Cleansed the world,” Travis says with the complete belief in his actions.
Something inside Chapel finally breaks. He reaches for Travis, pulling the man to him with the strength only rage can provide. “There is nothing holy about you.” Each word is clipped, spoken behind locked teeth.
“I never said there was,” Travis says.
The low lights catch the flash of the blade one second before we can shout the warning.
Chapel recoils with each stab from Travis. The knife slides in and out of his stomach and I scream with each motion. Chapel reaches for the neck of the man, but his hand finds only the red beaded necklace holding the cross he wears. I’m staring at the floor when the red beads drop to the tiles at their feet. Each ruby, red bead hits the tile before it slowly rolls. Before long, they are cascading down and rolling as a cloud towards me. I back away from them as if they are what my mind has made them. Holding April’s head to my shoulder, I step from their path as the imaginary blood from Chapel spills past me.
I glance up in time to watch Travis’ head explode from the side exit of a heavy caliber gun. Chapel staggers backwards into Rhett’s arms when Travis’ body falls. Dropping the gun that ended the life of the man who has stolen so many lives himself, Lawless runs to his fallen friend.
Marxx is blocking Aimes from making her way to Chapel. She is fighting and screaming to get around him. I stand, dumbfounded in the middle of it all, clutching a child who isn’t mine and avoiding the red beads still rolling around the tiles following the many worn grooves of the floor.
The Risen (Book 4): Courage Page 29
