Good Intentions (The Road to Hell Series, Book 1) (3 page)

River

Twisting the knob, I pushed the door open and stepped into the shadowed interior of the house. From the room on my left, I could hear the drone of the TV. I stepped into the room to find my mother in her customary spot in the armchair. Tufts of yellow stuffing poked through the worn brown fabric. She had to sit on two pillows as the springs had busted out of the seat years ago.

Her blonde hair waved around her face. A face that had once been pretty, but the bitterness of her soul had made it impossible for me to see any prettiness in her. Dark circles and bags lined her watery blue eyes. She was smaller than I was at five foot two with a slender build. I was almost five-nine with an athletic build honed by years of walking, fishing, and working outside.

Her mouth was always pursed, and in my twenty-two years, I’d rarely seen her smile. There may have been a few smiles before my stepfather, Gage’s dad, had taken off after Gage’s birth; there had been less after.

I’m not sure if she knew who Bailey’s father was, I certainly didn’t, nor had I ever known my own father. The only thing I’d ever been told about my father was that he was a bastard she’d met while in high school and he’d been passing through town. I didn’t know his name. He’d left her when he found out she was pregnant and had never been heard from again. I’d once seen a picture of him—there was no denying my resemblance to the man—but she didn’t know I’d ever seen it.

She called him the prick, and throughout most of my life, she’d referred to me as a bastard, useless, or the evil being who had ruined her life, which was fine by me. I didn’t think much of her either. I would think even less of her than I did, but she had at least succeeded in creating Gage and Bailey, and they were the lights in my life.

My mother glanced at me before focusing on the TV again. Despite her hair being a stringy, unwashed mess around her face and her near constant frown, she looked untouched by the years with her smooth, wrinkle-free skin.

“Did you eat?” I asked her.

She didn’t bother to acknowledge me as she listened to the news anchor drone on. She could sit there for days listening to these reports and being completely useless. I had no idea how she could tolerate it as only two TV channels came through anymore, both of which were news stations that reported from close to the wall and said the same things over and over again.

After the war, the government had taken control of all utilities and media, dealing out electricity and news amongst the surviving states and towns. Bills no longer came, taxes had ceased, but somehow the government kept some things running. It may not be smooth, but it worked, for now.

Looking at the man on the screen, I saw the wall in the distance over his shoulders. He was positioned in front of one of the better built sections of the wall, instead of one of the more haphazardly tossed together parts constructed of whatever debris could be found to create it at the time.

I’d come to realize most of the news reports came from the better-built sections of concrete stretching high into the sky. Probably to make everyone think everything was completely under control.

I tried to believe that, but I didn’t understand why the wall had been built in the first place. What was in the middle of our country they were so afraid of us seeing, or were they afraid of it reaching us? Had the nuclear attacks created hideous monsters on the other side? The frightening possibility might not be too far off.

I’d never seen the wall in person and probably never would. It had been constructed all the way around the country, separating the states that had survived the attack from those that had been lost. What had once been fifty states was now only twenty-three states, plus Alaska and Hawaii. Parts of Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas were on our side of the wall, with the rest of the surviving outer states, but the interior states had all been lost to the war and bombs.

I’d heard the swirling questions as to why the invaders had attacked the middle of the country and not New York City, Washington D.C., Boston, or Atlanta. Why hadn’t they gone for more populated and political areas of power when they’d attacked us? But then, they had also taken out the main source of our food supply with the attack.

They hadn’t wiped out our government and military in one swoop, but they had taken a good chunk of our population and many had starved to death in the chaotic months following the bombs. Some probably still did starve to death in some areas. In some ways, their attack on the Midwest states had been the cruelest option.

Gage walked in from the kitchen. His dark blond hair stood up in tussled disarray, and his brown eyes were focused on me. The bottom of the linen pants he wore, which I’d purchased only three months ago, hung to the midpoint of his shin. I’d made the right choice going for pants for him instead of a new pair of shoes for me.

He grinned as he nodded toward the fish slung over my shoulder. “Good catch, Pittah.”

I smiled at the name he’d called me ever since he’d learned how to speak and hadn’t been able to pronounce my name correctly. “Thanks.”

I walked past him and into the kitchen. Opening up the small ice chest, I dumped the fish inside. Like Mrs. Loud, we had extra ice in there in preparation for the blackouts, but sometimes the blackouts lasted days and nothing helped to ward off spoiling then. Gage would have this fish filleted and ready to cook before it could spoil and the other one would be going to Volunteer Day with us.

Gage had once insisted he should be the one doing the fishing and me the cooking. He’d given up after two days when the only fish he could catch, I burned to a crisp, and not on purpose.

“Did she eat?” I asked him and waved my hand at the living room.

“Naw, she’s been watching that TV like a zombie.”

I rolled my eyes and pulled the tin of ointment from the pouch of my faded green windbreaker. My finger got caught in one of the holes on the outside of my pouch. I’d have to take the time to stitch it again tonight, before the hole became too big. I placed the tin on the counter.

“Mrs. Loud is going to make you some new pants,” I told him.

Gage glanced at the bottom of his pants. “They’re fine. You need new shoes.”

“They’re not fine. You look like you’re going wading, and I can make it a couple more weeks with the shoes I’ve got. Where’s Bailey?”

I’d just gotten his name out when I heard a giggle from one of the kitchen cabinets. I glanced at Gage who smiled back at me. “I have no idea where he is,” Gage said.

Another giggle followed his statement. “I wonder where he could be,” I said, playing along with Gage.

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s run away,” Gage replied.

“I hope not. I sure would miss him.”

Bailey’s laughter grew louder before becoming muffled. The image of him with his pudgy hands over his mouth, trying to stifle his laughter, burst into my mind. Taking a deep breath, I rested my hands on the counter as the clear picture of Bailey hiding beneath the sink in only his diaper grew stronger in my mind before fading away.

Gage rested his hand on my shoulder, drawing me back to the “real world.” His mouth compressed as his eyes surveyed me. “You okay?” he demanded.

“Fine,” I croaked out.

“Vision?”

“Sort of,” I murmured and opened the cabinet next to the sink to remove a glass.

Turning the water on, Gage took the glass from me and filled it before handing it back. “What did you see?”

“Where Bailey is hiding.”

“Not much of a secret,” he replied flippantly, but I heard the undercurrent of tension in his tone.

He hated it when the “weird occurrences,” as he liked to call them, took me over.
I
hated it when they took me over, but I tried not to let him see that. The older Gage got though, the more he saw through my ‘it doesn’t bother me’ façade. Neither of us knew what caused the strange happenings or why.

For the most part, they were innocuous, but once, when I’d been exceptionally pissed off at my mother, the curtains in my room had caught on fire. To this day, I still wasn’t
sure
it was me who had started it, but I couldn’t rid myself of the sinking suspicion it had been my fault. I was touching them at the time after all.

Gage had helped me douse the flames and dispose of the curtains, but we’d both been rattled by what had happened and never spoke of it again.

I also didn’t know why a couple of times golden-white sparks had danced across my fingertips and hands. I repeatedly told myself it had only been static electricity. I may be the queen of denial, but I had no idea what else it could have been, and trying to figure it out only made my head hurt. Besides, that had only happened a few times, and there was no reason why it couldn’t have been some strange electrical phenomenon. Thankfully, it had never drawn the attention of anyone else when it happened, so I’d somehow managed to keep one oddity to myself.

The visions, and glimpses of things I had no way of knowing about, happened more often and were more difficult to keep from Gage. The only other person who knew about them was Lisa, but she knew nothing of the curtain incident. I saw no reason to freak her out over it.

These strange occurrences were a few more of the things I assumed I’d inherited from my father; the man had left more than his child behind when he’d abandoned my mother. I sometimes wished I knew how to contact him, not because I would like a father in my life, but because I wanted to know if anything like this had ever happened to him.

There were times I felt completely alone in the world. A freak living in a world that had become pretty damn freaky on that long ago July day.

“I don’t know where to look for Bailey,” I said, forcing the words out and giving Gage a smile as I returned to playing the game. “We’ll have to go into town without him then.”

Gage’s brown eyes were still troubled, but he didn’t question me further. It was risky for us to talk of such things. If someone ever overheard…

I shuddered at the possibilities. Today would be the day, if something were to happen, but I knew I had nothing to worry about from Gage and Lisa, so I would be safe. I glanced at the living room doorway, but the only sound I heard out there was the continuous update from the news.

“Guess I’ll get to play on the swings all by myself today,” Gage said loud enough that Bailey could hear him.

The laughter from beneath the sink stopped. My smile was genuine now as I finished off my water. “Maybe we could find him,” I suggested.

“Do we really want to try? It doesn’t seem like he wants to see us.”

There was complete silence from under the sink before the door creaked open a little. I pretended not to notice it, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of Bailey’s blue eyes press against the crack.

“We might as well try, but if we can’t find him, we’ll have to leave without him. Bailey!” I called. “Bailey!”

The door closed again and another giggle sounded. I bit my inner lip to keep from laughing as we went through the kitchen, opening and closing the cabinet doors. Gage opened the closet door in the hall before closing it again. We were halfway through the charade when I saw the cabinet open again and Bailey’s eye peeping out.

Growing tired of waiting,
I thought.

Bending down, I pretended to search the cabinets on either side of him before closing the doors. “Only one place left to look,” I said loudly. Bailey’s laughter increased, and I cracked the door open and poked my head inside. He was exactly as I had pictured, tucked beneath the sink in only his diaper. “There you are!”

Bailey squealed with laughter when I grabbed hold of his plump belly and pulled him from beneath the sink. “Here I am!” he cried and threw his arms around my neck. “You’re a bad searcher.”

“I am,” I agreed and placed him on the counter.

His blond hair hung in disheveled ringlets around his flushed, round cheeks. He was only two and a half, but like Gage and me, he was tall and his legs hung down over the counter to kick against the silverware drawer. I poked his round belly before checking his cloth diaper. My nose wrinkled at the potent aroma wafting from it.

“You stink,” I told him and kissed the tip of his nose.

He giggled then laughed when Gage handed him a small piece of bread. “Eat this, B,” he told him. Bailey held the bread as I gathered a towel and spread it out on the counter. “What are we feeding this kid?” Gage asked when I pulled the diaper off.

“I don’t know, but we’re going to have to stop,” I replied and Bailey giggled again. He may be the worst smelling kid on the face of the planet, but he was also the happiest.

I would have given anything to be able to toss the diaper out, but we couldn’t afford to waste anything. I dropped it into the can Gage held out for me. I really hoped Bailey would get the hang of toilet training soon, but so far, he’d been stubborn about it.

“I’ll take it outside to hose it off,” Gage offered.

“Thanks.”

“I stink!” Bailey declared proudly.

“You do,” I confirmed as I cleaned him up and pinned a clean diaper on him. “Now we’re going to get you ready for town.”

“Town!” he shouted gleefully.

I lifted him off the counter as the lights went out. Heaving a sigh, I listened to the last, fading words of the news broadcast. Gage’s smile vanished when he stepped back through the door. His gaze went straight to the now-hushed living room.