The Survivor Chronicles: The Risen (17 page)

Mary Ellen gathered herself enough to bend
down and pick the child up. She carried him over and deposited him
on the loveseat. Riley grabbed hold of Carl's arm and tried to pull
his hand away from his injury. Xander had an awful image of a
bullet hole in the center of Carl's forehead, of brain being
exposed, or some other hideous thing. It could be possible, he'd
heard of people surviving much worse from a gunshot wound.

Carl was walking and talking, but it could
also be shock keeping his body going right now. He could actually
be dying. These could be his last few minutes on earth, and the
adrenaline coursing through his body was carrying him through like
a chicken with its head cut off.

"I have to see," Riley said when Carl
continued to hold his hand to the blood seeping down from his
skull.

His injury had to be awful for it to be
bleeding that much but Xander couldn't tear his eyes away as Carl
finally relented to Riley's insistence. A gouge had been torn
across Carl's head. It started on the side of his head, and was
about an inch above and to the right of his right eye. The bullet
had torn off skin and hair, leaving behind a clear trail of its
trajectory. Blood oozed from the gash but Xander had a feeling the
white bone of the skull would be evident when the bleeding
stopped.

Riley placed Carl's hand back against the
wound. "It's ugly looking but you're going to live," she assured
him. "I need some supplies to stop the bleeding."

"I was never that good looking to begin
with," he told her with a wan smile.

The fact that he still had a sense of humor
was reassuring but they had to do something about the blood soon if
he was going to continue to have one. "I'll get them," Xander told
her.

"They're in the trunk of the Cadillac, or
they were," Mary Ellen said. She was starting to regain some of her
color but her hands were still shaking.

"I'm coming with you," Riley said as she
rose to her feet. "We also need fresh clothes and water for Mary
Ellen, Donald, and Victor."

Xander nodded and turned to leave the room.
He instantly found it easier to breathe as soon as he stepped into
the den and away from the massacre. He took hold of Riley's hand
and pressed it against his chest when she joined him. For a minute
he simply stood there with her and let some of the tension ease
from his body.

"I thought you were dead," he said
honestly.

Riley frowned as she glanced back at the
room. "It probably should have been me…"

"Carl was right, this isn't your fault. If
we can help those people with the L-Dopa we
are
going to do it. Peter has been slipping for
awhile now. I think he's been waiting for an excuse to try and kill
us."

"I would say you're right." Xander jumped a
little at the sound of the voice in the doorway of the living room.
"I didn't mean to interrupt you," Al apologized. "But I told Claire
I would find out about Jim."

"He didn't make it," Riley whispered.

Al nodded and ran his hand through his
disheveled gray hair. "I didn't think he would," he said before
focusing on Riley again. "I truly believe Peter has been planning
to kill us off for a long time now. I also think he planned to keep
the kids with him after he did kill us. He was stronger than them
and they would have to rely on him. If he could keep it hidden that
he killed the rest of us, or somehow managed to twist the story to
his benefit, he could have made it so they depended on him
completely. Over time, he could have bent their minds to his will
and he was manipulative enough to do so. We were always more
competition and more mouths to feed than he liked."

Riley nodded her agreement but Xander could
feel the tremor in her hand. "That's why he went for Jim first,"
Riley said. "Because he was the biggest."

"And the biggest threat. It was his son that
Peter planned to take with him after all. You don't come in between
a parent and their child," Al said. "I think Peter believed he had
us at a disadvantage in that room. You're just lucky he didn't
start shooting before we got there, but then I don't think he
expected tonight to be the opportunity that he'd been waiting for.
It just spiraled out of control, and when he had the strongest of
us all together in one room, he decided to take his chance."

Xander released Riley's hand and pulled her
against his side. "He's right," he whispered and kissed her
temple.

Riley hugged him back before pulling away
and taking a deep breath. "Carl's been shot, we need supplies, and
Mary Ellen and Donald have to get cleaned up."

"Carl was shot?" Al demanded.

"He'll be fine if we stop the bleeding. I'm
not sure we're going to be able to stitch it but he definitely
needs some bandages and peroxide. Plus water and clean
clothes."

"You two gather those and I'll talk with
Claire and Freddie," Al said and stepped back.

The others looked up from the dining room
table when they entered the room. Xander looked quickly away from
the hopeful look in Claire's tear filled eyes. Freddie sat silently
beside her, with Nancy and Josh. Rochelle stood in the doorway of
the kitchen with her arms wrapped around her middle.

"Jim?" Claire inquired.

"I'm sorry," Al said.

"Come with me," Xander said to Rochelle,
looking to get her away from the grief engulfing the room. He
nudged her away from the doorway as Claire began to weep loudly and
Freddie wrapped his arms around his mother.

"I'm going to get some pots, I'll be in here
or the living room," Riley said and broke away to search the
cabinets.

Rochelle continued to hug herself as they
walked outside. "What happened in there?" she asked when they
stepped outside.

"Nothing good."

Her eyes glimmered in the beam of his
flashlight as she followed him over to the car. "Al said my mom is
ok."

"She is," he assured her. He popped the
trunk of the Caddy and hurried to the back of it. "Peter and Jim
are dead."

Rochelle inhaled abruptly, her lower lip
quivered but she resolutely held back the tears in her eyes. "Who
are the bandages for?"

"Carl was shot, but he's fine," he rushed to
get the words out when Rochelle gasped and her hand flew to her
mouth.

"Thank God," she breathed.

"Do you think God has anything to do with
this?" The sound of John's voice caused them both to jump in
surprise. Xander leaned out from around the rear end of the Caddy
to look at him. John stood half hidden in shadow by the backdoor of
the car.

"Maybe," Rochelle answered. "Maybe not. But
Carl is alive and that is something to be thankful for, no matter
who saw fit to keep him that way. I'd like to think it might have
been God."

John frowned at her before glancing at the
sky. "Maybe you have it right, but I think the only one looking out
for us now, is us."

"I'm ok with it only being you guys looking
out for me too," Rochelle said. "We've gotten each other pretty
freaking far through all of this and we'll get each other the rest
of the way through. I thank you all for that, and I will thank God
just in case he or she is still listening."

Xander lifted an eyebrow as he studied the
young girl beside him. There was so much maturity in her for
someone so young, so much belief in
them
. But then maybe she had so much faith in them
because she was so young. Whatever it was, she had pierced through
John's odd demeanor as a smile tugged at his lips.

"After all of this, I'm leaning toward God
being a she. Only a woman could be this temperamental," John
said.

"Ha ha," Rochelle retorted.

"And are we really that happy Carl is still
alive?" John's voice didn't hold the same note of teasing that it
normally did when he unleashed his sarcasm, but Xander found
himself immensely relieved by John's words and the fact that he
walked around the back of the car to join them.

"We know you're doing cartwheels, even if
you don't want to admit it," Rochelle told him.

"I don't do cartwheels kid." John told her
as he took a bag of medical supplies from Xander and turned back to
the house. "I only do handstands."

John,

It took the rest of the night to remove Jim
and Peter's bodies from the house and bury them. John went through
the motions with an almost mechanical nature. He spoke with the
others; he carried Peter's feet with Carl carrying his shoulders.
He helped to dig Jim's grave with one of the two shovels they'd
found in the shed, and though the man had been a murderer and most
likely a psychopath, he helped to dig Peter's grave too. He
couldn't bring himself to help lower Peter's body into the grave,
and no one asked him to do so.

He stood silently by and watched the dirt
being tossed onto the bodies. He'd just killed a man, he'd assumed
there would be a million thoughts running through his mind.
Believed he'd feel guilt, or hate himself. Instead, he felt this
odd sense of detachment. He had the sensation of being outside of
himself and watching while the shallow graves filled with dirt.

The only thing running through his mind was
the belief that they would all end up here again. That some day
they would be tossing dirt onto someone else's body and it would
probably be some day soon. They would do this again and again until
only one person remained, and there would be no one left to throw
dirt on them when they finally passed too.

The last thing he wanted was to die, no
matter how detached he felt right now, he was going to fight to
stay alive. He didn't want to be that last person left standing; he
found death a far preferable proposition than being the only one
left standing.

The last shovelful of dirt fell onto the
mound. With an air of finality, Carl tamped it down with the head
of his shovel. The sound of the metal shovel tinging off of the
rocks in the dirt finally brought John back into his own body.
Claire and Freddie began to sob as Al stepped forward to recite a
prayer over Jim's grave. They all stared at Peter's grave but it
was Josh who finally stepped forward.

"Goodbye Mr. Dade," he murmured. "You were
once a good teacher and I thank you for that."

John stared at the young man as he remained
by the grave. In the end, none of them had liked Peter anymore, but
Josh had been the one with a real connection to the man. Peter had
been a link to his old life, a link now severed by Peter's death.
John didn't know if the tears in Josh's eyes were because he
grieved the loss of the man or if he grieved the loss of that
connection. Either way, the tears in Josh's eyes were real, and he
was
grieving.

Guilt trickled through John; he turned his
head away, unable to stand Josh's unhappiness any more. He stepped
away from the grave just as the first rays of the sun broke over
the horizon. The crystal clear blue of the sky looked like such a
promising sign but he felt numb as Rochelle climbed into the middle
seat of the truck. John glanced back at the two graves before
following her into the truck.

He hadn't seen the bag of Twizzlers in her
hand when she'd gotten into the vehicle, but she held one out to
him. "I can make you a straw," she offered.

Forcing a smile to his face, John shook his
head and pulled one from the bag. "No straws, not today."

She stared sadly at him. "Are you going to
be ok?"

"I'll be right as rain soon enough."

She gave him a look that clearly said she
believed he'd lost his mind. "Who says that? And what does it even
mean?"

John chuckled as he bit into his Twizzler.
"My mom used to say it all the time. I think it meant all good, or
something like that."

"Next time just say all good."

"Aye aye captain." She shot him a look as
Carl climbed into the truck. The bandage wrapped around his head
had a red stain on it but the blood was a dark rust color and John
didn't see any fresh blood seeping into it. The bleeding had
stopped but Carl's color still hadn't completely returned.

"Want me to drive?" John asked.

"No, I'll be fine," Carl answered.

Relief filled him, he would drive if Carl
needed him to, but he preferred not to have to concentrate on
anything right now. The sun cleared the horizon just as Carl
started the truck and pulled out of the driveway. John found his
gaze drawn back to the mounds of dirt now fading from view. They
drove a couple of miles down the road before returning to the
highway. His Twizzler forgotten, John sat back in the seat to watch
the trees and rock walls of the mountains pass by.

He really had thought he'd feel worse about
killing someone, and he was amazed to realize that what bothered
him the most was that he
didn't
feel worse. Maybe if it had been someone other than Peter, but no,
that wasn't the reason either. He didn't feel as if he were the
most horrible form of life because he
had
done what was necessary. It didn't make it
right but it also didn't make it wrong. It just made it life.

John inhaled deeply and took a bite of his
licorice. Yep, life was a crapshoot and he felt as if he were just
skirting the edges of rolling a snake eyes right now.

He was so busy staring out the passenger
window that he didn't realize they were getting off the highway
until they were in the middle of a winding exit ramp. Sitting up,
he dropped his feet from where he had propped them against the
dash. A four-lane road spread out before them, he wasn't sure if it
was a highway or not as a set of stoplights appeared about fifty
feet ahead. Another set of lights were a couple hundred feet past
the first.

The poles from the first set of streetlights
were lying across the road while the second set remained intact.
Another road branched up to their left; two gas stations were
across the street from each other at the top of the hill. Having no
choice but to go up the hill, Carl took the left. A diner came into
view as they cut through the parking lot and filling area of the
first gas station. The door and windows of the gas station were
still intact but John couldn't see much inside of the store.