The Survivor Chronicles: The Risen (42 page)

The crunch of a footstep brought their heads
around. Rusty emerged around the corner of the rocks. "Carl sent me
to get you. John's waking up."

Riley pulled from his arms and leapt to her
feet. Turning to Rochelle, he gently shook her awake as the others
began to rise. "How is he?" Riley demanded.

"I don't know, he just started moving,"
Rusty answered.

He thought Riley was going to take off but
she held her hand out to him and waited. Her hand shook within his
as they hurried toward the cabin with the others. He tried not to
get his expectations up, tried to remain reasonable about
everything, but he was nearly running by the time they were halfway
to the cabin.

Their feet slapped against the porch, he
pulled Riley back before they could enter the cabin. He didn't want
her to see it if something had gone horribly wrong. She'd seen and
experienced many horrible things but he'd still like to try and
keep her sheltered from some of it, if he could. He should have
known better. There was no keeping her back from something when she
wanted it.

Xander braced himself to discover a monster
inside, braced himself for John already having been killed, even if
he hadn't heard a gunshot. He was ready for every horrible thing
imaginable, he wasn't ready for John to be sitting at the edge of
the table with his hands wrapped around it, his shoulders hunched
up around his ears, and his head bowed down chin to his chest.

John lifted his head sluggishly, as if the
gesture still hurt him, and blinked at them. Shadows encircled his
eyes, his cheeks were sunken, and his eyes were bloodshot but when
he saw them a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," John
muttered.

Xander glanced at all of the gaping mouths,
and stunned expressions surrounding him and couldn't help but
smile. It wasn't the incredulous looks of those surrounding him
that had him grinning like an idiot, but the sight of John looking
as if he'd been hit by truck.

"How do you feel?" Riley asked
anxiously.

"As good as I look, or so I'm told," he said
with a pointed look at Carl.

Carl shrugged, but he smiled as he rested
his hand on John's shoulder. "Well you do look like sh… crap," Carl
hastily amended when his eyes landed on the children.

John gave him a halfhearted finger but the
gesture almost caused him to topple off the table. Carl and Al
grabbed him back before he could fall. Rochelle broke away from the
others and hurried over to him, she hesitated for a second before
carefully wrapping her arms around John's neck. "I'm glad you're
ok," she whispered and took a step away.

"I'm not going to break kid," he assured her
but he looked as if he might.

"I love my present."

He appeared more like a scarecrow than a man
right now, but his smile lit his face as he squeezed Rochelle's
hand. "I promised you a horse."

Rochelle began to cry; she threw her arms
around him again and hugged him close. The others crept closer when
Rochelle stepped away. Hugs were exchanged; even Rusty's family
shared in the laughter as John was helped from the table and over
to the couch. Mary Ellen shook out another high dosage of medicine
for John but he waved the water away.

"I know I carried some beer out of Walmart,"
John told her.

Mary Ellen gave him a disapproving look but
John held her steely gaze. She finally relented with a nod. Carl
carried over a thirty rack of beer and placed it in the middle of
the floor. Alcohol probably wasn't the best thing for John to wash
his medicine down with, but no one argued his choice. Warm beers
were passed around the room to those that could and would drink. An
air of normalcy surrounded them as the pop of can tops filled the
room.

"To Josh," John said and lifted his can
toward the middle of the room.

"To Josh," a chorus of voices sounded.

The beer, though warm, was one of the most
delicious things he'd ever tasted, Xander decided as it slid down
his throat. "And to everyone else we've loved and lost," Xander
said and raised his half-empty can into the air again.

Another chorus of voices sounded, the cans
crashed against each other. Xander wrapped his arm around Riley's
shoulders and kissed her temple as he drank down the rest of his
beer. There would be a watch to take later, endless things to do
tomorrow, but right now was just for them. It was for the people
that had risen up to fight against a world trying to tear them
apart. Risen up against enemies and threats they never dreamt could
have existed only months ago.

They'd done some things they'd regretted
over the past few months, but they hadn't given up and they hadn't
given into the worst parts of themselves like Yosemite and others
like him had.

In the absolute worst of times they'd bonded
together with strangers and created a family that loved and cared
for each other just as deeply as a family of blood relatives
would.

Yes, this night was for them and them alone.
Tonight was for the survivors.

We didn't know what to do for the first
anniversary of the apocalypse, but the one thing everyone agreed on
was that no one wanted to sit around and weep. In the end the
decision was taken away from us by Carl, John, Xander, and Riley
arriving with an armload of whiskey and rum they'd raided from a
farm home in the nearby countryside. Maybe throwing a party wasn't
the best way to celebrate the end of the world as
we
had always known it, but that was exactly what
we did.

It was very tempting to give in and have a
couple of drinks with everyone but in the end I decided to forgo
it. I'd come too far to regress to my former self again now. The
celebration went on into the morning hours but the stories told
throughout the night were what fascinated me the most. The good
memories were shared this time around, not the bad. These stories
were all happy ones about families and friends no longer with
us.

We reminisced about how we met each other,
about the year that had passed and the stupid things we've done or
experienced. John was at the center of most of the mishaps. He
spent most of the night scowling, blushing and chuckling into his
beer bottle while someone teased him about the time he'd fallen off
of Rochelle's horse in his one attempt at riding, or when he'd
gotten his fishing hook caught up on a rock, but insisted it was a
fish and reeled himself right out of the raft.

The heartache from all of our losses is
still there, it always will be. We'll never be able to completely
get over what we experienced, but we are all beginning to live
again. The nightmares will haunt us for the rest of our days, but
we get to live those days and that is more than most people have
now. None of us ever properly grieved, there still isn't time to do
so, but from what I saw last night I realize now that we are all
slowly moving on. This past year hasn't been easy, I haven't even
taken the time to write until now, but we're getting there. We're
making progress. Things are definitely better.

The Nutters and Lost Souls who didn't perish
from the disease ravishing their systems before winter set in seem
to have been effectively killed by the snow, sleet, low
temperatures and ice that descended upon us. Al and Rusty both
agreed it was the worst winter they'd ever seen up here and it was
by
far
the worst I've ever had to
endure. Perhaps the unrelenting cold had been a way to offset the
high temps of the summer as the earth tried to stabilize itself
again, but there were more than a few times I didn't think any of
us would survive those brutal months.

There were endless weeks when we all sat
close together in the cabin, listening to the wind howl through the
cracks, and shivering in our blankets. The snow covered the windows
throughout most of December, January, and February. Keeping the
exit cleared became an hourly production and a tiring chore. It had
been a battle to keep a trail open to the shed where we'd stored
all of the meat, and to the lake where we had to break through the
ice every day in order to fish. The small barn we'd built for
Silver, John came up with the name for Rochelle's horse, had
collapsed once but Silver had survived the incident and the harsh
winter. So had Spooky, who had been miserable in the cabin with us,
but even more miserable when she'd attempted to go out into the
snow.

Huddled together with wood to burn, John's
heater, food, and a lot of melted snow water we still barely
survived the winter. There were definitely days when I was
convinced we wouldn't. But then the sky had cleared, the sun had
come out, and animals I was certain had been buried beneath the
eight plus feet of snow began to reemerge.

Crocuses, as always, were the first sign
spring was truly on its way as they poked their colorful heads from
beneath the frozen ground. Then the birds began to chirp more
loudly and the deer began to reappear too. The skunks, squirrels,
raccoons, and other forest creatures also started to reemerge from
their burrows and we've spotted a couple of black bear too. I'm
sure their population took a hit, but like us, some managed to
survive.

With the snow melting and the earth
defrosting we began to explore again. There had been talk of
separating and moving into the cabin closest to Al's until Riley,
Xander, Mary Ellen, and I discovered this large farmhouse in early
May. The large red home is out in the countryside and set off from
the road. It has three bedrooms on one side and on the other side
of the house is a small apartment. Another house sits on a lot
about a hundred feet away; it's close enough that Rusty's family is
able to stay in it and we can still see them and look out for each
other. There's plenty of land to grow crops on, a large barn for
Silver, and paddocks for him to run around in. A pond up in the
woods offers up numerous perches, sunfish, and pickerels too.

Acres of farmland are less than a five
minute walk from the houses. The farmland remains intact but the
house and barn that had stood on the property burned down, along
with whatever farm equipment the barn had held. From scavenging
other homes and farms, we've uncovered enough tools that we should
be able to farm a good plot of land next year. For now the corn,
peas, lettuce, tomatoes and other vegetables we planted on this
land are coming up well.

If Nancy had still been with us, I probably
would have moved her into the small apartment I'm now occupying
with Xander and Riley. However, even with my watch over her and the
beginnings of what I'd hoped to become a romance between us, along
with Mary Ellen's determination to draw her out and become her
friend, and everyone else's unwavering support, we found Nancy
hanging from one of the deer stands in early November.

It was the first time since all of this
started I found myself truly enraged and heartbroken. So many
things had happened since that first quake but this was the one act
I couldn't comprehend. In some ways, I still can't, but the anger
isn't there anymore. No matter how hard we tried, or what we did, I
have come to realize that some people are simply too tender to
handle this world and Nancy was one of them. It's sad but it's
life.

We've yet to see a Nutter or Lost Soul since
the start of the brutal winter. That doesn't mean they're all dead.
None of us are willing to let our guards down when it comes to the
Nutter's or Lost Souls but our stress level has definitely
decreased. The remains of the sick are everywhere and the smell of
them permeates the air whenever we leave the farm to raid the
nearby homes. A lot of the remains are being foraged by animals and
though it's disturbing, it's a relief to see their body parts
dwindling down.

There's never been another sighting of a
horseman either. They may still be out there, wandering the earth,
but we've yet to encounter them or any new mounds. Maybe they've
moved onto Europe or even Australia. I have a feeling their means
of travel is far beyond anything we would ever be able to do.

I wonder what the rest of the world looks
like but I imagine it is much the same. We've never seen or heard
anything from anywhere else. Maybe one day communication will be
reestablished with the rest of the world, or even another town, but
for now I think we're all content to simply just be. There was
enough chaos even before the apocalypse, now all we want is peace
and a chance to plant some roots again.

And we are planting our roots here. We now
have four horses on the farm and two cows. The cows were unfamiliar
animals to all of us but we've kept them alive and we've figured
out how to milk them. We also have four chickens, we did have ten,
but a fox took care of six of them before we were able to catch the
others and lock them in the barn. Two are giving us eggs; the other
two are beginning to look like dinner.

We've also encountered some other survivors.
A group of ten people is living only two miles away in another
farmhouse on one of the back roads. They're a friendly enough group
but for the most part we avoid each other. Al and Rusty have spoken
with them about a possible joint farming venture next year, as the
weather appears to have stabilized enough that we could plant far
more crops than we did this year. Or at least the spring and summer
were normal, hopefully that means the winter will return to normal
too. My bones ache just thinking about having to endure those
miserable months again.

The idea of going south was discussed and
then abandoned. We know what we have here and we know we can
survive the winter. There is a lot of farmland around us, with a
lot of abandoned homes. We're continuously exploring more and more
and we've established a firm, solid base here. We have no idea what
we would encounter if we left. The Nutters could have survived the
winter down there. They could be running free, and none of us
ever
want to take the chance of
encountering one of them again.