The Lola Chronicles (Book 2): A Day Without Dawn (12 page)

“Don’t so what?” he said innocently.

“Touch me.”

His head canted to the side as a mischievous little grin lifted the corners of his mouth. “But I like touching you.”

“This isn’t the time or the place.”

“You’re right.” He tucked his hands in the front pocket of his jeans. “But when all this is over I’m going to find the right time and it’s going be in the right place. That’s a promise.” He glanced behind him when one of the boys called his name. “Gotta go. We’re parking all the four wheelers in the bus garage behind the gym. Are you okay now?”

Was I
okay
? Aside from the fact that my father was probably behind tortured in a dark basement and my emotions felt like they were on the mother of all roller coasters and we were being hunted by real-life freakin’
vampires
then yeah, I guess I was okay.

“Sure. I’m fine. You better get going. Stevenson looks pretty impatient. By the way,” I called out when Hunter turned around and started to walk back across the gym, “Thanks for what you did back there.”

He frowned at me over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

Thinking he was being modest, I rolled my eyes and pointed to my sling. “You know, bandaging me up in the alley and bringing me back here. I treated you like a total bitch and you still saved my life. I owe you one, Golden Boy.”

“Lola…this is the first time I’ve seen you since you left. Not that I wouldn’t have done all that if I could have,” he said hurriedly when my smile faltered. “But we’ve been on the other side of town all day. I’m glad you’re okay, though. Really glad. And listen, all that stuff we said before…let’s just forget it, okay? Water under the bridge.”

“Water under the bridge,” I repeated numbly as he hurried away. Mind racing, I stared down at my sling and then at the clean, crisp white bandage wrapped around my knee. They weren’t a figment of my imagination or a bad dream.
Someone
had pulled the metal pipe out of my leg and carried me back to the gym.

But if it wasn’t Hunter…then who the hell was it? 

Ready, Aim, Fire

When I woke up the
next morning I was so stiff and sore I could barely move. Groaning, I climbed out of my sleeping bag and staggered into the shower. The water was freezing cold, but I was used to it by now. It was just one more sucky thing in a whole long list of suck.

Livy was in the stall next to me. I could hear her humming to herself as white frothy bubbles made their way from her shower into mine. There were only three stalls and they all shared one drain which meant my feet always smelled like cucumber melon whether I wanted them to or not.

I’d taken my sling off before getting into the shower, but my wrist was still pretty much useless which made everything take twice as long. Squirting a big dollop of fancy shampoo I’d stolen out of Hayley’s bag – it wasn’t as if she wasn’t going to be using it anytime soon – directly onto my scalp I rubbed it vigorously into my hair. After two days of not showering and rolling around in a dirty alley I was Gross with a capital G. Blood and dirt ran down my goose-marked skin in a slimy trail of brown and red as I scrubbed my skin clean with a loofah, hissing in pain whenever soap got into an open cut or scratch.

And to think I used to believe papercuts were the end of the world.

By the time I stepped out of the shower my teeth were chattering and my lips were tinged blue. Clumsily wrapping myself in a towel I stepped around Livy who had finished a few minutes ago and was applying her makeup in front of the middle sink. Our gazes met in the mirror but we both looked quickly away without saying anything. Holding tight to my towel I brushed past her and hobbled barefoot past the long line of lockers and metal benches. When I turned the corner I found Rose sitting cross-legged on my sleeping bag reading a book. She looked up, brushed a tuft of hair out of her eyes, and smiled.

Like Hunter, Rose had been quick to forgive me for acting like a complete and total ass. The others not so much. With the exception of Ms. Siegel politely asking me to pass the peanut butter when we’d been making sandwiches for dinner no one had spoken a word to me since I’d returned. Not that I could really blame them. If the situations were reversed I didn’t think I would have talked to me either. With time – and a little bribery – I was hoping they’d come around. Because nothing said “let’s be friends again” like giving someone a gun and teaching them how to shoot.

“How do you feel?” Rose asked.

“A little bit better.” My wrist and my knee were still swollen and bruised and two different shades of purple, but it could have been worse. A lot worse. “Do you think I should bandage my knee back up?”

Rose’s nose wrinkled as she looked at my leg. “Um, probably. You don’t want it to get infected or anything.”

Die from infection when I could have my neck snapped or all the blood drained out of my body?

No.

We wouldn’t want that.

“Want to come with me to the nurse’s office? I need to get some more tape and gauze.”

“Sure.” Setting her book aside Rose stood up, stretched, and followed me out of the locker room and across the gym. Bright morning sunlight reflected off the wooden floorboards, bouncing back up into my eyes and causing me to squint. I didn’t know exactly what time it was, but it was early. Early enough that we were the only ones in the gym.

“So,” I said conversationally once we were out in the hallway, “have you ever shot a gun before?”

“Yes,” Rose said.

I glanced at her in surprise. “Seriously?”

“My dad is – I mean he was – a big outdoorsman.” She bit her lip. “He taught me and my sister to shoot a rifle when we were only eight.” 

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Peony,” Rose said softly. Her gaze fell to the carpet. “My mom was the one who named us after flowers. Every night when we all sat down for dinner she would always say, ‘Look at my garden. Isn’t it beautiful?’ I – I’ve been thinking that Peony might be in the farmhouse. I know it’s probably sounds silly,” she said in a rush, “but she might not have been home with my parents when – when the drinkers came.”

“Do you live in town?”

“No.” Her frizzy hair bounced off her shoulders as she shook her head. “We live…I mean…we
lived
in the blue house on the corner out by the old quarry. It used to be my grandparent’s house and when they died they passed it on to my mom.”

“The one with the white shutters, right?”

Rose nodded. “And the big oak tree out front. My sister loved to play in the woods behind the house even when it got dark. She had her own secret treehouse. Mom would always have to send me out to get her when it was time for dinner. But I wasn’t home the night that the drinkers came so maybe…maybe my mom didn’t go get her and maybe she stayed out in the woods and the drinkers didn’t find her until later and they brought her to the farmhouse like they did Hayley,” she said in a rush, as though saying it quickly would somehow make it true. “Do you think that’s possible?”

We both stopped outside the nurse’s office.

“Umm…” Was it better to give someone false optimism or make them face the truth? I didn’t know what the right answer was. I didn’t even know if there
was
a right answer. But looking at the glimmer of hope on Rose’s face I knew what I had to say. “I think anything’s possible. Just… be careful, okay? Don’t let yourself get hurt any more than you have to.”

I pushed open the door and Rose followed me inside. She waited silently by a crowded desk while I rummaged through the cabinets and piled everything I needed, including gauze, tape, scissors and some anti-bacterial cream, into the duffel bag I’d brought with me. “Okay,” I said, slinging the bag over my shoulder. “Good to go.”

“What about your family?” Rose asked as we made our way back down the hall. “You have an older sister, right?”

“How did you know that?”

She shrugged. “I remember seeing her last name on the honor roll. I think you’re the only Sanchez’s in the whole school.”

That sounded about right. While Sanchez was one of the most common surnames in Spain, it tended to stick out in Revere among the Jones’s and the Smith’s and the Brown’s.

“Yeah, I have an older sister. She lives in California with my mom and her new husband.” Had the drinkers gotten to California yet? Without access to a phone or the internet or even a radio it was impossible to know. There was a part of me that recognized I should have been more upset about my mom and my sister. I mean, there was a good chance they were both dead. But I’d gotten so good at blocking them out that I didn’t feel anything at all. Not sadness. Not anger.

Not even hope. 

“I didn’t know your parents were divorced. I’m sorry.”

It was my turn to shrug. “Don’t be. It all happened pretty quickly.”

“And your mom just moved to California?” Rose looked appalled. “What about you?”

What about me?
Talk about a loaded question. It was the same thing I’d asked my mom when I realized she wasn’t coming back. And do you want to know what she said? What my
mother
said to me when I called her up on the phone and gathered up the courage to ask her why she’d flown all the way across the country?

It’s time I focused on myself, Lola. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. You always did better alone.

Aside from a few text messages here and there, it was one of the last times we ever spoke.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “It didn’t even bother me that much. My dad and I are better off without them, you know?”

“I guess so,” Rose said, although she didn’t sound very convinced. We walked passed the front office. Our reflections rippled across the glass, distorting our features. “Do you think what’s happening here is happening all over? Even in California?”

Well Rose was a barrel of laughs this morning. I guess she just needed someone to talk to about everything that was going on, although I didn’t know why she thought that someone should be me. She might not have picked up on it yet, but I wasn’t exactly Miss Sunshine and Rainbows.

Hope was good…to a point. But when you stretched it past that point it became dangerous.

“If it isn’t yet I think it will be soon.”

Rose’s nervous laugh echoed down the hallway. “But they can’t
really
take over the world.”

“Why not?” I yanked one of the gym doors towards us. “They did it here.”

After snacking down on granola
bars and cookies – the breakfast of champions – we split into two groups. Those who already knew how to shoot a gun or didn’t want to learn stayed behind to ration out our supplies while the rest of us walked the mile and a half to the elementary school. We could have taken the four wheelers, but Hunter wanted to save gas.

“Back here,” I said, motioning for everyone to follow me as I walked around the side of the school and past the playground. The shooting range Maximus had constructed out of straw bales spaced evenly apart with red plastic plates taped to the front was almost exactly like we’d left it.

“Where are the guns?” Hunter asked, stepping up beside me.

“In there.” I pointed to a plastic tan garden shed with a green roof. “We locked them up, just in case.”

Letting out matching whoops of excitement and carrying the hammers we’d grabbed out of the bus garage, Stevenson and Greg sprinted for the shed.

“What do you think the chances are they shoot themselves in the foot?” I asked dryly. 

Hunter rubbed his chin. “Fifty fifty.”

“There isn’t that much ammunition, so we’ll have to be careful with how many rounds we use,” I said, raising my voice so Hunter could hear me above the hammering.

“Got it,” he shouted back.

After busting their way into the shed, Stevenson and Greg sauntered back out a few minutes later. His grin a mile wide, Greg pointed two matching handguns straight at us.

“FREEZE!” he shouted.

“Put it down,” Hunter ordered, “before you kill one of us by accident. Those are loaded, dumbass.” 

“Buzz kill,” Greg muttered under his breath, but he did as Hunter asked and set the handguns down on a weathered picnic table. “There’s a couple of knives in there too. Want us to grab those?”

“Grab everything,” I said.

When all was said and done the picnic table was weighed down with two shotguns, four handguns, and five knives of varying lengths. Studying the small arsenal, Greg whistled under his breath and rocked back on his heels.

“Damn girl, you taking over a small country or what?”

“Nope.” Knowing I wouldn’t be able to support the weight of a shotgun with only one hand I picked up one of the handguns, stepped in front of a hay bale, clicked off the safety, and fired. The bullet tore into the plastic plate a little high and to the left. Not perfect aim, but not too bad either considering the last time I had fired a gun I’d aimed for the head and hit the leg instead. Blowing across the muzzle of the gun I turned around and smiled coyly. “Just killing a few drinkers.”

Greg blinked. “That’s hot.”

I couldn’t help but glance at Hunter. Catching my stare he inclined his chin ever-so-slightly as though to say, ‘
Thatta girl
’. One corner of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile, revealing the hint of a dimple. I felt a dull flush creep up the back of my neck. Who knew dimples could be so sexy? I’d certainly never paid attention to them before. And I shouldn’t have been paying attention to them now. Swallowing, I forced myself to concentrate on the matter at hand. The quicker I taught these lug heads how to shoot the quicker we could go rescue Hayley and my dad.

“Livy and Becca, I want you to try the shotguns. They’re going to give more kickback than the smaller guns, but they’re easier to shoot. Just keep the stock pressed firmly against your shoulder.” When they came reluctantly forward I quickly showed them how to hold the shotguns and pull the trigger before sending them over to the furthest target. Then I handed out the remaining handguns to the boys.

“These all have safety mechanisms,” I warned them, “so make sure those are off before you try to shoot anything otherwise the gun is going to be useless. Remember: one shot to the head and one to the heart. Anything else will slow them down, but it won’t kill them.”

“Where’s the heart?” Greg asked.

“You don’t know where the heart is?” Stevenson shook his head. “No wonder you failed biology.”

“Just aim for the middle of the chest,” I said. “And keep shooting until they fall down.”

Everyone marched off to their respective hay bales, leaving Hunter and I with the last one.

“That one’s yours,” I said, nodding down at the remaining handgun. He picked it up.

“It’s heavier than I thought it would be.”

The muscles in my stomach clenched as the warm glow in my chest turned to ice. Hadn’t I said the same thing to Maximus when we’d been standing together in the tiny storage unit? So much had happened since then.

Fighting.

Lust.

Love.

Death.

Betrayal.