The Risen: Courage (28 page)

“Yes, you did,” the one named Horrence says before he can stop himself.

The corners of Travis’ mouth actually rise higher. I didn’t think that was possible.

“Like I said, a misunderstanding,” he says.

Horrence shakes his head, still not understanding the subtitles Travis is doing his best to spell for the man. “No, Boss. You said to be sure to take the unusable meat and place it along the fences. I understood just fine.” His words spill forth with the worry Travis might think his every command wasn’t obeyed.

I relax into the arms of Lawless as we watch the comedy hour. Horrence is a large man; someone who would live in a gym as long as that gym was walled in mirrors. He most likely used to catch every woman’s eyes with his extremely toned body, but lost their attention just as fast when he opened his mouth. The more he opens his mouth now, the more attention he gains. Not all of it is good.

Travis’ eyes hold the same gleam I saw when I was at his feet while he was holding that perfect smile.

“You just have to hate it when a plan almost kills people,” Lawless says while resting his head on my shoulder. He reaches into his vest pocket and pulls the baseball hat from its hiding place. “Unless that is the plan.”

The room is in an uproar of hushed whispering over the little memento of a tragedy still unanswered. Travis shows no sign of recognizing the hat, but one of his Squad does. The man pushes through the line ignoring their looks of disapproval. He reaches for the hat like a starving man stretching for one final sip of decadence. His fingers tremble as they slide over the stiches and the many worn spots from years of wear. Each discoloration holds some memory for him and his smile flashes before it fades with each spot he remembers.

“How?” he asks as his tears start to glide.

“We found it under the tree you left your son in,” Lawless says. He doesn’t mince words or try hiding his disgust for what the man has helped happen.

The man turns to Travis with shock. It steals his breath and his chest rapidly rises and falls with the emotions coursing through him. “You said you buried them. You told us you would honor our sacrifice.” The man steps towards Travis with clenched fists. The line of protection Travis depended on steps aside from the man’s anger. “Our wives? Did you leave them too?”

The room starts to ring out with questions over what they are watching.

“What tree?” comes from one side of the room.

“Leave them where?” comes from somewhere else.

“What sacrifice?” comes from somewhere deeper in the room.

Travis’s eyes bounce from each section that calls out. The mounting panic radiates from behind those eyes.

“What is Selma doing out there?” Leslie is staring out the fogged windows with squinting eyes. Set after set of eyes join hers as they try to peer through the hazy windows at the woman standing by the cross outside.

“She has Cole!” a woman shouts, shaking her husband’s arm as she points.

“Is that Harper?” another woman asks with the same shaking of fear as the first woman.

If the room was electric before, it’s pulsing now. Rhett grabs Aimes as the bodies force forward to see what is exactly happening outside. I want to stop them. I want to warn them, but I have nothing to offer and Travis’ smile is growing.

It’s a different smile this time. He’s not nervous anymore. He’s not the least bit worried about what the people think of him or his. I watch as he takes out a small red beaded necklace with it’s gold cross and brings it tenderly to his lips. He closes his eyes as he kisses the flesh-warmed metal. I know it will all be over soon. I’m about to bleed.

CHAPTER
34

T
he dropping temperatures of the night have allowed the snow to float again. It’s the start of a winter paradise and the children dance and run under the frozen flakes. They extend their tongues, trying to capture the flakes in the centuries old tradition of winter fun. Their laughter is the soundtrack of innocence. The unease that was shared inside the cafeteria dissipates watching them celebrate the snow.

Selma is winding the handle of an old styled record player. The needle plays the ancient strands of “Amazing Grace” with the white noise only a true record player can produce. The melody mingles with the laughter, and what was originally composed to inspire faith, only paints an eerie backdrop.

“What the hell?” Chapel mutters, but we all have an idea of exactly the hell we are about to witness.

The missing members of the Squad stand between the line of people and Selma. Her hands temple in prayer with a mouth silently moving as she recites whatever message to God which she hopes he is listening to. A large crate sits by her feet. It’s wooden structure hisses a warning no one is listening to with their eyes locked on the children they can’t reach. Panic with the event they just narrowly escaped a month ago inspires their bravery. I watch as the man named Ryan pushes against the men blocking them and he is shoved to the ground with an answer to his attempt to reach his daughter.

The barrels are lit one-by-one around the yard while Selma continues to pray, oblivious to it all, or either very well aware and ignoring it. The members of their community pour the sharp smelling gas from the generator’s stockpile into the barrels. The flames catch with an almost hell-like heat. The crowd winces from the mini explosions of light, settling their voices and their fight to reach their kids.

As if the sudden blaze was a rehearsed signal, Travis walks solemnly from another exit of the school directly across from the amassed crowd. What rests across his arms sets my knees to water. His head is bowed over the long stretches of rope. Their nooses sway with his steps like silent chanting and I am chanting in my mind. As I watch Selma praying I can mentally hear my repeated refusal of what is about to happen and my own prayers to not let it happen.

The men are loading the chambers of their spent guns with stealth-like movements. They hide each other as golden bullets are passed between closed fists. Their practiced moves are normally calm, but now they hold an air of urgency making their cold fingers clumsy. Like the Risen that was held hostage by the fence, I could scream at them with my frustrations.

“Give me my clip.” I try to shield my voice from the crowd watching Travis’ painfully slow procession.

Lawless only shakes his head, answering me and ignoring me at the same time.

“Larance,” I clip between my teeth, “give me my clip.”

He lifts his head only high enough to look at me. “No,” he tells me, returning to slipping his clip full of the little golden cylinders. “You’re going to, for once, since this thing has started, stay out of it.”

“You really think that is going to happen?” Aimes asks him and her amusement is audible in her whisper.

Lawless lifts his head again to stare at me. Our breathing becomes a pattern that echoes the feelings in our eyes. Every fear he has laid behind his tall walls is now bare to me. I can almost hear the beat of his heart.

I forget sometimes the man behind the mask. I have lost him to the weight he now bears on his shoulders and the strength he has to summon to endure it. I begged Truth for his life. I fell to her feet with her black gown engulfing me. I wore my misery like a widow wears her scars, but he was returned to me on a night much like this. As Mother Nature kissed the earth, he was returned to me and all I have done since is throw myself at Death.

“Please?” Lawless asks me in this bubble of time we have captured.

I nod. I nod because my voice wouldn’t hold the strain of my thoughts or my regrets that constantly encase me. I nod because to put the agreement into words would be a lie.

He holds me in a tight embrace and now I can feel his heart just as I imaged hearing it. He is frightened of what this night might bring. In some tragic way, it’s all repeating.

He kisses me and I let him gather his strength and the belief in himself from my lips. I let him hold hope in himself to do what has to be done. All a man wants is someone to love him and someone to protect. I give him that and I let him take it from me.

“I love you,” he says against my lips and it sounds heartbreakingly like a goodbye.

“I love you, too,” I whisper, frail and frightened of what he must imagine tonight to entail.

“You ready?” Marxx asks, crashing us back to the present like a meteor to the ground.

We both nod, still holding to the other with the last moments of our bubble dissolving into the cruelty slowly becoming true; a cruelty we have seen swinging from large tree branches and left in ashes in the many rings upon the ground.

Aimes pulls me to her knowing I won’t be able to let go of them on my own. I will march right through the crowd beside them if left to my will.

“Congrats,” she whispers into my ear as we watch them walk away, “you get to be a girl. It kind of sucks, but you’ll get use to it.”

“Don’t cry.” I tell her hearing her voice quiver.

“I’m not crying. This is totally my game face.” She sniffles with the secret knowledge of what Travis is about to do. “I’m just really sad about the game we are going to have to play.”

Travis has made his way to the front of the wooden cross and the area that has served as his pulpit. Selma stands beside him with a look of rapture on her face. As she calls the children to her, she almost glows with the compassion of motherhood. Her smile is the sweetest I have yet to see grace her face. Selma may very well have a sweet side, but it is coated in cyanide. One smile she gives to the children and they run to her. One smile she shares and their lives are hers with the strands of “Amazing Grace” floating around her.

“My friends,” Travis shouts into the night air, “not all of us are made to walk in God’s glory. Only the most refined, the most tested by temptations, can truly know the suffering of reclaiming their lost divine grace. Only when we are stripped from all we cling to with false declarations, can we truly see the power of salvation. Tonight, I will show you that grace. You will feel that power and a few of you will even rise from the flames.”

Travis kisses each rope, bowing his head as he anoints them with prayer before handing them over to a member of his Squad. My heart breaks hearing the children still laughing as they run in circles around a playful Selma with the music enhancing their joyful steps. The snow looks like magical fairies again as it twirls around them as if it’s marveling in the children’s beauty.

Time slows as we watch the ropes being secured from the extended arms of the cross. Voices begin to rise with curiosity and anger over the obscenity of it. Little feet prance and the ropes begin to sway in time. Travis watches it all from above on his self-built stage.

Aimes holds me in a reverse style of a hug. Her arms are draped around my shoulders, pulling me to her so that my back is to her chest. We can’t look away, but we aren’t strong enough to watch alone. Her arms tighten every time I instinctively pull to rush the stage. She swears under her breath with each new rope hung and I’m not completely convinced she is keeping me here for my good or for the good of her sanity.

“We just can’t watch this happen,” the man from earlier says. I never saw him come to stand by us. My focus has been torn between the children and the nooses, letting the rest of the courtyard slip away. He is holding the blue hat in his hands, twisting it between his fists as he stares at me. “They have to be stopped.”

“We can’t do anything until he does something.” Aimes tells him still watching it all unfold. “If we rush him now, he will just use it to convince them more of his God-power.”

“It’s not us who have to stop him. Simon has to lead us all now.” My voice is a strained whisper with my doubts.

“If he waits too long, it will be too late.” He steps towards us with a threat and yet pleading with his eyes for Aimes and I to listen to him. “I won’t let him do it again. Not again.” He is gone in the mass of moving bodies before I can do anything. I have no name to call out to stop him, or to regain his attention. I send a prayer, if anyone does still listen, for the man. My prayers are more riddled with demands than questions though as of late.

Paula finds Aimes and I in the cluster. Her face is blanched and it sets my stomach deeper into a pit of rolling sickness. She is saying something, but I can’t hear her over the screaming of the crowd. I turn my eyes from her as Aimes whispers another pretty little syllable behind me.

Selma has the children now lined up and still playing like this is a game. Each child stands under a rope, reaching for it on their tiptoes like the brass ring from an old merry-go-round. To the children, it’s a fun game, but to the parents, it’s proof of what the lengths mean. Selma is showing us all that their tiny little hands can’t reach the ropes and their tiny little feet won’t reach the ground, either.

Paula is shouting again. I can hear the sound of her voice, but the words are just melodic with the amount of chaos now inspired around us. Women wail for their children as the men scream for blood. Both sets are lost as to what to do not wanting to risk any harm being brought to the smiling faces watching them.

“It is time to prove to the Lord how thankful you are he has kept you safe. He has saved you and your families when so many others have been brought low. He has guided you here, as he has us, to rebuild in His name. He will purify your souls so you may truly know His love for you. All He asks is that you believe in Him and He will grant you everything,” Travis says. He is pacing along the wooden beams nearest to the crowd. His fists are raised, shaking to accent his words with religious passion to draw attention to the syllables and to hide the definitions. “Are you ready to believe in Him? Will you give everything to prove it or will you let your everything be taken from you because of your fears? All He has ever wanted is your trust, your belief and your love. Can’t you give that to Him? Do you have the courage to prove your beliefs?”

The crowd is shouting every possible phrase of “yes” they can remember. I bet the crowds always do as they watch their children make toys out of the tools of their deaths.

“Bring me the mothers. Mothers, come to me. Come to your children who God has blessed you with,” Travis demands and turns his back to solemnly stroll to the far side of the stage to not block the show.

Paula is screaming now. She is waving her arms and pointing to the forgotten crate with its hissing warning sitting by Travis. I still can’t make out her words and my curiosity doesn’t hold strong enough to try.

Women shove their way to the stage. Some don’t even bother with the steps, hauling their bodies onto the wooden platform with assistance from the men behind them. There are no manners as they rush to make it to their children, pulling them away from the ropes they saw as swings.

Travis and Selma let the moms touch and hug their children as the line of God Squad fights to keep the men back from the stage with frightening force. I can see random flashes of the grinning skull on its black leather moving through the area like shadows. They are attached to the drama, but adrift from it as they keep their own plans to heart. If they could give me some hint to what those plans might be, my heart might climb down from my throat. It also might climb right out of my mouth if I knew.

“Are you listening to a word I have been saying?” Paula shouts into my ear as yet another person sneaks up on me. The bell threat from before comes back to mind.

“I can’t hear a word you’ve been saying!” I shout over the crowd’s anxiety, keeping my eyes to the stage.

“That crate. I know that crate,” Paula says as if that is the most important thing up there. The look on my face must have expressed my doubts. “I was there, in the meeting at the lab, when the Ice Queen, as we called her, told us the truth. She told us the vaccines were corrupt and causing side effects we hadn’t prepared for. As I was leaving to take this assignment, we were being told there was another strain of the vaccine that had been released to humanitarian workers. It was designed to be faster and stronger to help combat the illness that seemed so abundant in third world countries. It was supposed to have been confiscated, but some were shipped before it could happen.”

“Wait, you’re telling us this isn’t just local? This… thing… is global now?” Aimes’ eyes are the size of saucers as she is shocked at what Paula is trying to say. It was depressing to think this had become our life, but it’s terrifying to know that it could be everyone’s life, everywhere.

“Yes, it could be, but that isn’t the point.” Paula says, sounding colder than I have ever given her credit for. The “Betty Crocker look” is long gone. “That is one of the shipments of the vaccine. I would know that crate anywhere. We called them Pandora’s Boxes and Travis is about to open it right here in the middle of the school.”