Sin’s hands cradle my body, making me feel small and delicate, out of control, yet safe in the midst of this chaos. A quick pause in action to roll on the condom makes me want to take the reins back and show him what I’m capable of, too, but before I have the chance, his lips are back doing what they do so well. They’re moving, torturously slow, down the center of my body, causing an ache to erupt in my core, then spread throughout my every inch of me. He has the ability to make me feel so many conflicting feelings at once, and it’s the only reason I give up the fight and allow myself to melt into putty beneath him.
With the slight bit of strength I have left, I press my fingertips into the muscles on his back, pleading without words, without sound, and the message is clearly delivered as he gently slips inside of me. The release and tension is like a schizophrenic attack of sensations within my body. With the mind numbing pleasure working through me, my head sinks deeper into the pillow. I almost forgot what a pillow felt like.
“Oh God,” I cry, feeling a relentless buildup growing without an end in sight. “Oh my God, don’t stop. Please.” My breaths quicken and an explosion of warmth and tremors quakes through my body, releasing all evil, horror and fear from my body and replacing it with every ounce of Sin’s goodness.
He presses into me a few more times, groaning against my neck. “Shit, you’re fucking amazing, Reese.” He falls heavily beside me, causing us to sink deeper into this most wonderful bed. “Told you.”
“Told me what?” I ask, breathlessly.
“Sounds like you pray to God more than you realize.” He smiles this smile, the rare one I have only been lucky enough to witness less than a handful of times, and it’s the most amazing smile I have ever seen.
I nudge my elbow into his chest and place a kiss on his nose. “Clothes. I need to see if there are new clothes.” I take one of the sheets with me, wrapping myself up, enjoying the silky sensation touching every inch of my skin.
“A chick who is good in bed and doesn’t like to cuddle. Now I know I’m in heaven,” he laughs.
“I’ll be back, don’t worry,” I wink.
Opening the closet doors, I find an entire row of clothes hanging on hangers. I pull a handful out, revealing a heart-stopping, breath-stealing sight. Without a further thought, I drop the clothes to the ground, taking steps backwards until the backs of my knees touch the edge of the bed.
“What’s the matter?” Sin asks.
I can only point because there are no words to describe what I just saw.
The air escapes Sin’s lungs loudly enough to hear. “Jesus.”
That bible might come in handy after all…
9
Chapter Nine
SIN
Pulling Reese up onto the bed, I switch spots with her. This is shit no one should have to see. I grab my boxers from the floor and quickly slip my clothes back on, trying to get the burnt image out of my head before I turn back to face it again.
“This is too real,” Reese says. Her words don’t make a ton of sense considering what the past few hours of her life has looked like.
“Just look away. I’ll take care of it,” I tell her. When I say I’ll take care of it, I mean I’m going to throw a sheet over them and close the doors back up.
Reese slips back down into the covers and pulls the sheet up to her chin. Her eyes are wide and I want to focus on her more than I want to turn around and place the sheet over this family of four. “They look like a happy family,” she says. I don’t know how she can tell that by the rotting corpses we’re looking at, but I suppose she may be looking at the dress the woman is wearing, the pearls around her neck, and the large diamond ring dangling from her half-eaten, bony fingertip. The man is in a suit, maybe a businessman and the two little girls are both in what looks like school uniforms. They must be twins, same size, same color hair, same everything. The parents are holding hands, which are looped tightly around the two little girls tucked between them.
My heart aches like it hasn’t ached in a long time. I know I never grew up with a normal situation. Dad lived his life to hurt mom, to make her feel like she wasn’t worthy of being his wife. Mom was too ignorant to do anything about it until it was too late, and I never could figure out why the two of them got married. The only logical explanation would be an oops—me. When I got old enough to understand what was going on and how incredibly wrong it all was, I told Mom to leave him. I thought it was a simple matter of walking out the door, but what I didn’t understand was Dad had deeper issues than I ever could have comprehended during my younger teenage years. He was obsessed with mom, yearning for control and domination of every aspect of her life. He was a scientist too, and she was always one step above him because of her previous experience and knowledge—this made him crazy and jealous, I guess. I don’t truly know the truth behind their relationship or the lack thereof.
“Sin,” Reese snaps me out of my foggy haze. I look over at her, noticing the pale hue coating her face. She looks like she might get sick.
“Hand me one of the sheets,” I tell her. Reese quickly slips her clothes back on and hands me the sheet she had wrapped around her.
I kneel down and move closer to the closet, inhaling the rotting scent of corpses that was released into the room when she opened the door. I swallow hard and pull in a sharp breath to hold for as long as I need to be within reaching distance of this family. I pat my hand down the man’s sides, looking to see if he has any other weapons on him, but there’s nothing except a baby doll lying face down by the side of his leg. I take the doll and tuck it between the little girls’ arms. As I pull the sheet over them one by one, my hand runs along something firm when I rest the sheet over the woman. God, this is fucking horrible. I didn’t check the pockets of her apron, so I feel around inside, finding a pistol. Who would have thought? I pull it out and place it down on the ground beside me. When I move back to cover them up, the four of them fall over like a stack of dominos, revealing their backs, all of which are hollowed out, gutted, with maggots crawling out of every opening. “Oh my God, those fucks must have sat them like this when they were done with them.” Gagging against the bile rising in my throat, I quickly finish covering them up and slam the closet door between us.
When I turn back to Reese, tears are trickling down her cheeks, one by one. “I can’t comprehend any of this; it’s like a bad movie. This stuff isn’t supposed to happen. They must have been hiding from the Juliets. They must have heard them coming while they were eating.”
“The Juliets apparently found them,” I confirm.
She pulls herself up on the bed, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Did you see that jug of water in the fridge?”
“Yeah.”
“You think it’s okay to rinse off with that?” she asks.
“No. The water could be contaminated. The only thing we can trust is rain. I’m sorry.” I hate the disappointed look in her eyes. She hardly complains about anything and I know the feeling of wanting to take a shower—being clean would feel so good, but we can’t. It’s not worth it.
She slides off the bed and walks into the master bath, closing the door behind her. I can imagine going to the bathroom herself without someone watching her, or using a toilet instead of the pail she was forced to use in the shed might feel like a luxury right now. Though, I’m not sure how she can see in there with no electricity. The sun is almost completely below the horizon and darkness is beginning to cover the white-colored room in a gray hue.
With the little light left, I go back through the drawers, seeing what else I can find. For a well-off looking family, they don’t have much to show for it. There’s a backpack propped up against the nightstand with a laptop inside, but it’s completely useless without any electricity or Internet.
Rummaging through the drawers, I take out a few clean shirts and pants while also stumbling across deodorant and a small wad of cash. “Forgive me,” I say quietly. I take it all, robbing this family of whatever they had left.
>
Reese steps out of the dark bathroom, bringing a breeze of fresh air with her. “You okay?”
She smiles a touch as she runs her fingers through her hair. “She had some dry shampoo and lotion—I don’t remember smelling something so beautiful.” A nice fragrance is something I used to take for granted; now it’s a treat to smell something that isn’t rotting. And Reese definitely isn’t rotting. She’s incredible and smells the same.
“I found some stuff—a laptop, clothes, and cash.”
“I found painkillers and a first-aid kit in the bathroom. Oh! Come here!” She walks back into the bathroom, and I follow, but she meets me at the doorway with a folded towel. Pressing it up against the side of my face, she says, “Smell. Inhale as much as you can.” I do. Fresh laundry, it sends a chill down my spine and I want to suffocate myself in this scent. I would never have thought that the day we left home before coming to Chipley would be the last time I’d smell fresh laundry.
We lived in a large ranch style house and the laundry room was in the bathroom, centered in the middle of the house. Whenever Mom did a load, the entire house filled with the scent of fabric softener. It always made our house smell like a home.
I figured we’d have the same amenities in our Chipley house, seeing as we were told we’d have a working kitchen, bathroom, and a place to sleep. We did have a dishwasher, but no washer and dryer. We had to wash our clothes by hand, which left the material of all my clothes kind of stale and they smelled like fragrance-free soap water, or a little like mildew if they took too long to dry when it was cold out. There was nothing homey about our house in Chipley, but I was told it was temporary. Plus, it was a way to get away from Dad, and a way for Mom to further her career of what I now know to be torturing people.
Reese and I stand still, both of our cheeks pressed against this towel. “We should sleep on this tonight, breathe it in all night.”
“We should,” she agrees. “But before we go to sleep, I want to eat some more.”
She lifts her cheek from the towel and heads out of the bedroom. I follow her, tossing the towel onto the bed. I find her in the living room, rather than the kitchen, though. She’s walking toward the blind-covered window. “Reese, what are you doing?”
“I thought I heard something,” she says, continuing toward the window with slow and cautious steps—questioning steps.
“Don’t touch that window,” I tell her. She doesn’t listen to me; instead, she reaches for the blinds. I hear the sound now too—a soft tapping. “Reese!”
She shifts to the side of the window and separates two of the blinds just slightly. I sprint across the living room to stop her, but it’s too late. She releases the two blinds and backs away. “Okay,” she says.
“What are you doing, Reese? Come on now. Don’t press your luck with this shit. There could have been someone out there.”
“There is someone out there,” she says, walking into the kitchen. I close my eyes briefly, trying to tame the anger raging through me.
“Who is out there?” I walk into the kitchen, finding her digging into another can of Spam. “What is going on?”
“Spam?” she holds the can out to me.
I take one of the chairs from the table and pull it out to sit down. Resting my elbows on my knees, I lean forward and calmly ask, “What did you see out there, Reese?”
“So,” she says mid-bite, swallowing the mouthful. “You know how we thought the patrols took that family away?”
“Yeah,” I say, having a hard time swallowing against the sudden dryness in my mouth.
“Well, that isn’t exactly the case.” She takes another bite, chewing it much longer than Spam needs to be chewed. Her eyes are wide, and she isn’t blinking as she stares past me to the tiny-checkered papered wall behind me. “That man’s family…half of them are standing on the balcony of this apartment. They’re covered in blood. They were staring into the window as if they were waiting for something, as if they could see inside past the blinds. They’re going to kill us, Sin. They’ll blame us for the man’s death.” Reese walks past me and begins moving the furniture away from the front door.
“What are you doing?” I ask, frustrated. “Stop. Reese, you’re obviously not thinking properly right now. You’re going to get us killed. Stop!”
“Either help me, or I’m doing this myself. I need to see something.”
“See what?” I try to pull her away from the furniture she’s moving, but she’s shrugging me off, pushing me away from her.
“They’re dead, Sin. Those patrols are not the people we need to be worried about right now.” I suddenly get what she’s thinking, and she’s right, we have to see. I give in and help her move the furniture away from the door. “Do you remember how many of them there were?”
“There were ten family members including the man, so nine left,” I tell her.
“There are only six of them out there. But, the others might not have made it. They were fighting for a good while.” Please don’t let these fucks be out in the hallway right now, unless they’re dead.
I unlock the deadbolt and pull the door open slightly, nervously poking my head out. “Dear God.”
Pulling my head back in, I re-lock the door and lean up against it, letting my head fall heavily against the cold wooden slab. “I don’t think either of us comprehended their capabilities. Those people. The patrols are dead, but the way in which they were killed is—I’m not sure I could even explain it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” My stomach churns at the thought of what that fight must have looked like, but after seeing this, I think I just figured out what the hell Mom has been trying to do. Holy shit, I get it. I was wrong. I was so wrong. “We have to get back to Chipley. Now,” I tell her.
10
Chapter Ten
REESE
There was a time in my life when I would have cried at the sight of this scene sprawled out before me. There was a time when I couldn’t fathom this being a reality. It was like one of the scary movies I used to watch late at night with Mom. We had this thing on Wednesday nights, her nights off, where we would pick out the scariest movie we could find on TV. We’d make a huge bowl of the butteriest popcorn and curl up under our knit blanket on the couch. With the lights turned off, the movies always seemed so real. We hid our faces behind the blanket for half of the movies, but we still loved watching them. It was because what happened in those movies was unimaginable—isn’t that what people desire when getting lost in a book or a movie? They want to escape into another world, sometimes one they’ve never considered the thought of, or would ever want to actually experience in real life. None of the horror movies Mom and I watched can even closely compare to any of this…my current reality. If only I could pull a blanket up over my face and hide from it all. But I can’t. Because this shit is real.
“Search those two for weapons,” Sin says, patting down the guys on the other side of the hall. “Take their masks too.” As Sin says that last part, he freezes and looks up at me. “If people are contaminated through the water, why are they wearing masks?” He’s asking me like I should know.
“I don’t think anyone knows how it is spread. It seems like everyone has their speculations but no evidence to back it up with.” This adds another level of fear, though. The thought of avoiding water was manageable for the time being, but not knowing what to stay away from isn’t manageable at all.
As I peek through the tiny slits of my nearly closed eyes, I pat the man down, finding nothing more than a knife in his side pocket. Blood is coating the plastic protective biohazard suit and the skin on his left arm is gone, exposing muscle and bone. The right side of his face looks the same. “That family tried to eat them?” I somewhat ask, somewhat confirm what I’m looking at.
“Yes. It’s similar to what was going on in Chipley.”
“But you said that was because of the food we were eating,” I remind him.
“That’s cor
rect,” Sin says, standing up and wiping his hands down the length of his sides. “It isn’t the food here, though.”
“How do you know?”
“It would be impossible to ensure seventy percent of the population were eating the same food. Water is a more feasible solution to that, but even still, there’s more to this than we know.”
“Chipley was conditioning us to fight the rest of the population,” I say, realization pulsating through my head.
Sin drops his hands in his back pockets and leans up against the wall. “That’s exactly what my mom is coordinating. They can control us by the food we eat in Chipley.”
I look back down at the men, wanting to look away, but also needing more confirmation that this is real. “It would be a bloodbath.”
“Yeah.”
“Your mom doesn’t care because all residents of Chipley are criminals,” I add in.
“Yeah,” Sin says again. “They’re testing out a new kind of warfare. This is what the world has come to.”
“But if you think about it, if the people in Chipley become strong enough to win this fight, and they stop eating the food that’s altering the chemicals in our brains, society could potentially return to normal.”
“Exactly.” Clearly I’m late to the party of understanding, but it all makes sense now.
“So now what?” I ask, sort of knowing the only option left. I want to hear him say it first.
“We join forces with my mom. We tell them what we saw here and help train the people of Chipley to become better and stronger.”
The question of “how” lingers in the back of my head. They fight each other for food. They kill each other out of hunger. I don’t see how any of them could be trained to do anything.
Unlocked (No Way Out Series Book 3) Page 7
