The Risen: Courage (14 page)

CHAPTER
18

“A
pril!” Rhett shouts into the forest with less than an ounce of concern for what may be lurking in it. The rest of us just hope with nervous, swaying eyes that his love affair with danger won’t catch up with us. It most likely will.

From where April has squatted to draw with a broken branch in the dusting of snow, she gives Rhett one glance over her shoulder before she is off like a startled deer. With the same lack of concern he displayed moments ago, Rhett is right behind her. He crashes through the trees trying to keep her in sight and we follow behind him, trying to keep him in sight. It’s the proverbial game of “follow the leader”. Since he “leader” is a scared little girl this might become the longest round of the game in my life.

The snow is thicker among the trees with their heavy branches blocking the sun’s warmth. It’s no longer the slippery mess but almost soft like a carpet under my boots. The vibrations from our running sends it cascading from above before the wind picks it up, swirling it like a snow globe around us. Quickly the icy breath of Mother Nature steals the air from our lungs, cramping our sides. I surrender to the pain of my stomach, slowing my speed until my attempt to run is nothing more than an unflattering jog. Between me with my wounds, Aimes with hers still healing and Marxx unwilling to risk leaving us behind, the gap between Rhett and us grows.

We rest against the tree trunks, our lungs aching from the extent we have pushed our bodies in the winter weather. I’m grateful for the several packs a day life style Marxx led before all of this. His panting is keeping him from saying the words his face is wearing as he stares at me.

To say that Rhett crashed through the forest before would be an under statement to the amount of noise he makes as he backtracks to us. “I lost her,” Rhett says and his hand does that same twitch from before.

“When you talked to this kid last,” Aimes says bent over to help reduce the cramp in her side as she pauses to take a few deep breaths before she can continue, “she didn’t happen to say meep meep at any time did she?”

Rhett wants to glare at her, but even his face is too tired to form the expression.

“It won’t be hard to find her. We’ll just track her in the snow,” Marxx says as he points to the trail we have left in our wake.

The relief his idea grants Rhett makes him exhale a long drawn out sound. Rhett’s shoulders sag with the release of his worry. For a brief exchange, the two men seem to bridge a crevice between them before they can remember which side of the line they now sit.

“We’ll find her,” Marxx tells him. He gives Rhett one solid pat on his chest when walking past. It’s a small thing, hardly even an event in another time, but right here it’s a miracle. Under the limbs of snow-hidden trees, it’s a start.

It doesn’t take Marxx long to discover her path. We zig and zag with her tiny footprints leading us along a twisting path. When we exit from our shelter of trees, my heart drops. All of our questions as to where the Risen had come from lie expanding before us. It was only a matter of when, not if, they would come to test the brick walls of the high school. It was built in their back yards. A masterpiece of a suburban maze sat behind us the whole time.

The wooden privacy fence that separated the neighborhood from the tree line has been torn down in places. The missing wooden slats are broken and splintered as if a battering ram was taken to it. Shards of the boards lay scattered around our side of the divide with ruptured chaos. In some spots of the wooden mile, tops of the boards show the proof of what has happened with the dried, darkening evidence still staining them. This place should be filled with the sounds of children playing in the yards and the homes being tended to, but instead there is just the crowing of the birds circling overhead.

“What is a bunch of crows called, again?” Aimes is staring at the same ominous sign as I am that something bad has happened here. Not that we need the birds to tell us what we have come to expect.

“A murder.” Marxx says answering her question with half-interest. His eyes are scanning for the lost trail of April’s. Under the shelter of the trees, her little feet made perfect impressions where the snow was like white carpet. Now under the sun’s assault, the melting ice crystals are not deep enough to fully impact a print into.

“Well with that comfort-inspiring fact from Marxxipedia, who wants to go first?” Aimes asks.

I’m not shocked when her head turns to me first. Annoyed, but I’m not shocked.

It’s Rhett who steps up to the fence first, calling over his shoulder, “I will. She’s my responsibility.”

We don’t argue with him. Perhaps I would have if I wasn’t fighting to cover the fact my legs are weak from the burning-like pain of my stomach. Its fire-laced aching is an agonizing remembrance of the dangers that might be waiting for us. It’s robs me of the self-confidence I once had and replaces my mind with causations that never lingered there before.

With the first step through the splintered mess I am nervous. I can feel my shoulders cramping with tension from the imagined pictures in my mind. The only sounds around us are the birds and the ice giving under our feet. I have learned that silence is sometimes more frightening than a thousand screams. Screaming lets you know where the danger is waiting. It warns you, where as silence keeps her secrets guarded until you are the one screaming.

“Here,” Marxx calls out. It seems to be his own scream with how it violates the stillness, making even Rhett twitch with the abruptness of it. “She went this way.” Marxx has somehow found the lost trail that went unseen by the rest of us. It is just indentions in the slush, but when looking at the whole area, it is easy to see how they line up to lead off in the direction of one of the backyards. It’s like one of those pictures where you have to stare just right for the image to appear and Marxx has. He is still staring when he says, “She skipped past the first three homes and went for the one at the front of the cul-de-sac.”

“Why?” Aimes asks as if the melted mess holds that answer as well.

It doesn’t and the look Marxx gives her confirms it.

“Let’s go find out.” Rhett doesn’t leave time to stand around to form a plan. In his mind, the plan has been made. We find her and we go back. It seems simple enough and just how he likes plans to be. Apparently, I am not the only one who takes a while to learn things.

Every window we pass is blacked out with some material. The lower windows have boards nailed across them. Doors hold wooden beams of varying size and thickness like children playing at building forts. Wooden decks have been destroyed to supply the wooden hopes of protections and to help slow anything from making its way to the back doors. This was a group effort fulfilled by those who stood their ground here. These people went on with their lives in a fragile attempt of waiting this out. Now, the same people who once fortified these homes are either lying dead inside or worse. They may be the ones we burned. The Risen don’t roam like cattle with mindless actions. It’s only when something stimulates them to action do they travel. It would only make sense the ones that once stood like Death’s army would come from a place so near. With April leading us behind enemy lines, I hope their numbers have been decreased.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Marxx mumbles his disbelief, pulling my focus back to the house in front of us.

“Still leading the way?” Aimes asks Rhett. She is daring him as we stare at what only the sickest of minds could recreate.

The home is a sprawling one story of pastel blue vinyl and red accent bricks. Streamers hang from the open back doorway alternating between faded shades of pink and yellowing white. The back yard is littered with brightly patterned paper. The pink gingham tablecloth is still sitting on the picnic table. It waves in the soft wind like a last attempt to call for help from someone dying before going still. Like one of the discarded bows wrapping all around the scene lays the half snow-buried dead. The children stare out at us with animal-scavenged skin and torn body cavities. Some still wear their pointed paper hats of pink and white.

The vinyl wears the smears from the attacks showing the escape path of those who tried to make it. In the middle of a celebration of life, Death came. It came with clawing hands and tearing teeth. It came and stole its victory, leaving the proof of its act to be witnessed for years to come and we haven’t even gone inside yet.

Rhett climbs the stone steps to the open doorway with his blade in hand. He signals for us to give him a moment to look inside before we follow him. Seeing what is staring at us with unblinking eyes and weatherworn paper hats, I would rather take my chances inside.

The changing of seasons is evident on the tile floor of the room we enter. Water stains the entrance from snow that has been blown in only to melt to form irregular markings. The house smells of a stagnant lake if lakes were decorated with streamers and sagging balloons taped to its edges.

The many handprints and long lines of dried darkness ruin the neutral colors chosen for the walls. I want to convince myself that it is only mud. The markings are nothing more than over zealous children and the natural damage they can cause. I want to convince myself of that, but I can’t. I’ve seen too much since this all began to ever be able to lie about what the marks are and what they mean. These same experiences allow me to know that one of the many layers of what we are smelling means we are not alone. We just haven’t found them yet, and they haven’t found us, yet.

Both of the men are twitchy. Every noise we make pulls their shoulders taunt. Each doorway we pass is a building of courage to look into. When Marxx signals for us suddenly to stop, the snow might as well have been poured down our backs for the icy chill he gives us.

“Not that way.” Marxx mouths the words, too afraid of how they might carry. He is staring at an arched entrance into a den. The taller house beside this one blocks the sun’s light leaving the room in long shadows and an unwelcoming feel.

Rhett arches one eyebrow with his unformed question wondering what he isn’t seeing that Marxx has. The way Marxx’ eyes are darting around the home, I have a feeling he is seeing a lot that we aren’t.

“No breeze.” Marxx adds just the smallest level of a voice to his words. We look to the streamers and see what we missed. The streamers are still swaying. The many pinks and decaying whites intermingle with each other with an invisible wind. The wind was not caused by nature, but by something else passing near them.

“April?” I mimic Marxx with my mouthed question refusing to add my voice to it.

“Don’t know,” Marxx answers, “but I’m not going that way until we check the rest of the house.”

Rhett teeters on both sides of the fence about the plan. A part of him wants to rush into the den and either find the little girl or kill what is in there. I can watch the pros and cons of the plan work themselves out by the expressions on his face. Marxx leaves him to his demons, leading Aimes and I further into the house. Rhett follows, but he doesn’t turn his back on the room and its shadowed secrets.

Down the long hallway, I watch as those who once lived here age from framed square to framed square. Sweet faced babies turn to toddlers who turn into children. The holidays come and go like a slide show as I walk past. Halloweens to Christmases blend with birthdays all framed in their monuments of times gone by. With so many signs of the attacks around us, the smiling faces somehow appear that much more delicate.

Aimes stumbles into a wooden hall table. Mementos fall to the ground like porcelain explosions. Each crash seems louder than the first. The twisted irony is how they fall slowly, one after another, dragging out the duration of the sound. The silence that follows is engulfing. Each of us strains to hear any sounds from inside the home alerting us to dangers. When nothing moves, Rhett tears down a section of streamers and begins to beat Aimes with the thin paper. Watching her being mock assaulted with the crumbling pastel pieces breaks the tension that has been building. Marxx even finds himself joining in with the subdued laughter.

“Alright! Alright!” Aimes whispers, finally throws her hands up to shield herself from the paper. “Death by paper cut was not my exit plan!”

“People plan that?” Rhett asks, giving me a heavy stare as he drops his sorry excuse of a battered weapon. My response is a middle finger before I turn to follow Marxx again on our hunt for a little girl who has mastered this whole hide-and-seek game as well as she did follow-the-leader.

“Hells, you and Aimes finish scouting out down here. Rhett and I will head upstairs,” Marxx whispers. He is motioning with his head as if “here” and “upstairs” were hard to figure out in his directions.

The fact that I feel the need to give him the same answer as I gave Rhett means that I am recovering faster than expected. The fact that moving is still a small form of torture tells me that I have a long way to go still.

Aimes and I watch as the two men climb the stairs to the room over the garage. We don’t move until the two men are out of sight and realize Marxx was serious about his idea. Leave us down here and the two men go upstairs? Surely he was joking and any moment his head will pop down with his twisted smile asking, “Scared ya?” I think Aimes is, too. She tilts her torso to see up the stairs as if waiting for the same thing.