the end of Everything (New Adult Erotic Romance) (2 page)

Fear wrapped its icy hand around my heart.
Did my being Left Behind mean I’d be among those destroyed by the
Horsemen of the Apocalypse? The thought brought on a fresh spate of
tears as I remembered every nightmarish thing I’d heard about them
or had read in Revelations.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, sobbing
my heart out but by the time I was in control of myself the
fireflies had disappeared. I went into the kitchen to check the
clock and it was after eight. I wondered what I should do. It was
an hour away from my bedtime but if the Rapture had come and gone
and if something had happened in Acadia I wanted to know what it
was. I picked up the phone book and found the name of the butcher
and his wife who were close family friends of my parents but, when
I dialled the number, the phone just rang and rang. I tried to tell
myself they were probably just out or maybe late getting home from
the butcher-shop.

Next, I called Miss Mae from the Beacon Bible
Bookstore, another family friend who’d been to our house lots of
times. She didn’t answer, either, so I called the bookstore,
itself, but nobody picked up. My unease grew. I dialled, maybe, ten
more numbers, including the sheriff’s in the next town over and the
emergency 911, before I gave up. Not getting any answer on 911
shocked me. I couldn’t deny the truth anymore. God’s plague had
finally arrived in our area and, somehow, my family had gotten
caught up in it.

I told myself I should lock the house up
tight, turn off all the lights and go to bed. It was dark and there
was nothing I could do about my family’s disappearance now. In the
morning I would walk to Acadia and find out what happened. But the
more I tried to tell myself I should remain in the house, the more
I felt I needed to go. Why wait? I knew the way well enough and
yes, it would take a few hours to get there on foot, but I was too
nervy to go to sleep. I’d just stay awake the whole night and then
I’d be too tired to go anywhere the next morning, assuming what had
gotten everybody hadn’t yet come for me. My mind made up, I grabbed
a flashlight from a drawer in the kitchen and set out after locking
the house up behind me. I turned off all the lights, too. I don’t
know what made me do that but I just felt like it didn’t make sense
to leave it all lit up. If there really were Risen Dead around it
might attract them like moths to a flame.

Luckily, the moon was half-f and it was a
cloudless night so I didn’t need to turn the flashlight on. In
about ten minutes, I reached the outer gate to our property, pushed
it open and walked through. I latched it behind me, wondering if I
would ever pass that way again. The thought made another sob catch
in my throat but I squared my shoulders and started off down the
road. I was letting my imagination get the best of me. I had no
proof anything had happened to my family. A sense of foreboding
wasn’t a fact, I told myself resolutely as I set out. But it
was
a fact that nobody had answered their phone, not even
the sheriff or the emergency responders.

There were no streetlights out our way since
we were so far from town but, like I said, the moon and the stars
lit up the night well enough so I kept the flashlight off to save
the batteries. The chirping of crickets and my own footsteps were
the only sounds but that didn’t disturb me none since it wasn’t
unusual. Noises would have been unusual. It felt eerie being on the
road like this all by myself but this wasn’t someplace like New
York City or D.C. where, like Pa always said, one had to fear for
one’s life just going to the supermarket.

I trudged on through the dark silence trying
to keep my spirits up by murmuring little prayers.
Dear God,
please let my family be alright. Please let me find them. Please,
please, dear God.
Like that. I don’t know if He heard me or
not. Pa and Pastor Joseph claimed to speak with God on a regular,
real conversations where they spoke back and forth, but I guess I
didn’t have that kind of relationship with Him. Or, maybe He didn’t
talk to women too much on account of their wicked sinfulness.

It had always made me feel strange and sad
inside when Pastor Joseph talked about Eve and about how bad women
were, that men had to be on the look-out all the time that they
weren’t led to sin by the women in their lives. He didn’t exempt
none of us, not even his wife. I guess he was trying to beat the
sin out of her which was how come she sometimes came to church with
bruises on her arms and face. At least, Pa never beat Ma and had
only lain a hand on me twice. First, when I was about seven and I’d
lied about breaking one of Mother’s vases. The second time was when
he caught me fingering myself between my legs in my room. That had
been years ago when I was just fourteen, but it still made my
cheeks hot thinking about it.

I’d seen Sargeant mount Brownie in the fields
and it had made me feel all tingly between my legs. It wasn’t the
first time I’d seen them doing it but it was the first time I’d had
such a good view of Sargeant’s huge member. It had hung down from
his body, thick and dark and so very long. When he’d risen over
Brownie and pushed himself into her I became so warm and quivery in
my own private parts that I’d rushed up to my room, thrown myself
on my bed, raised my dress, and shoved my hand down over my stomach
and past the elastic waist of my panties. To be very honest, I’d
done that before. It felt really good to play with myself like that
but I’d never done it during the day. Anyway, Pa saw me go into my
room and he came to tell me something. Well, he didn’t take too
kindly to seeing his little girl being wicked and nasty as he put
it.

If he’d known it had been Gideon I’d been
imagining impaling me on his penis like how Sargeant had impaled
Brownie, Pa would probably have flayed me alive. As it was, I
couldn’t sit down comfortably for a week after he’d taken the birch
rod to my backside.

It was years before I touched myself again.
In fact, I’d only just started a few months ago. I tried to think
of other boys I knew but my imagination always turned to Gideon. It
was his calloused hand I imagined stroking my soft privates and
making my juices gush from me. It was his lips I dreamed of kissing
as my hands caressed his nipples and wandered over his hard stomach
to touch his penis. I’d never seen it but I longed to hold it in my
hand. I knew my thoughts were sinful and wicked and that I was a
sure sinner for thinking of him in that way, but I couldn’t help
myself. Gideon was the most handsome boy around for miles and I saw
him every single day. I’d felt sure God would forgive me for my
impure thoughts but, maybe, he hadn’t and that was why I was
walking on the dust road, looking for my family. Because my
sinfulness had caused me to be Left Behind when they ascended to
heaven.

I thought it was unfair of God to blame me
for the kiss I’d shared with Gideon. It had just happened so
naturally. I’d been standing behind him in the milking parlor as he
fixed one of the machines and he’d stepped back, unexpectedly,
right into me. I’d almost fallen but he’d grabbed me and then it
just happened. The pressure of his lips on mine robbed me of reason
and filled my soul. It had lasted only a minute, one single minute
of heart-melting bliss. Then he’d wrenched himself away from me
and, without a word, strode out of the barn before I could say
anything or try to stop him. And I
would
have stopped him if
I could. Was that why God had left me behind? Did He think of me as
a modern-day Eve, steeped in sinful lust?

My eyes teared up thinking about all of this
as I neared the small covered bridge over Lacy Creek. The covered
bridge isn’t all that long since the creek isn’t very wide but I
guess I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I didn’t hear the
pinging sound of an open car door until I was on the bridge itself.
I stopped, startled. A dark-colored car sat in the middle of the
bridge, its engine on but its headlights off and one door open.
From where I stood it looked like Mr. Grayson’s old Chevy but what
was it doing there and where was Mr. Grayson? Had he been taken in
the Rapture? But, if so, why was the door open?

“Hello,” I called. My voice sounded quavery
and uncertain, strange to my ears. “Mr. Grayson?” I tried again.
“Hello?” But the only sound I could clearly hear above the pinging
was the thumping of my heart. My fingers turned cold with fright
but I gave myself a stern talking to. What was there to be
frightened of on the covered bridge? Not an old, empty car, for
sure. I suddenly remembered the flashlight I held in my hand and
switched it on. I played the light all over the car. As far as I
could tell, it was empty. I made myself keep walking. It felt like
the longest walk of my life to reach that car but, finally, I did.
There was nobody inside.

I closed the door to stop the annoying
pinging and that was when I noticed the dark stain on the wooden
planks right where the driver’s feet might have rested when he got
out of the car. I trained the flashlight on it and bent over,
sniffing. The strong metallic scent of blood threaded through with
a faint putrid smell which I recognized. The smell of decay. Had
the car struck an animal that had died on the bridge? I played the
light around on the ground and saw a few, much smaller stains
leading to the far side of the bridge where they disappeared. This
didn’t make sense. If Mr. Grayson had struck an animal there should
be more traces of it under his car but there weren’t. And, where
was Mr. Grayson, himself? The blood couldn’t be his. The dead rats
that sometimes turned up around the barn smelled like that but only
after a few days.

I stood beside his car, debating what to do.
If something bad had happened to Mr. Grayson and he’d gone to get
help or something he’d be mad if he came back and his car was
missing. But if he’d been taken to heaven in the Rapture then he
didn’t need his car anymore. I could back the car out, do a u-turn
on the road outside, and reach Acadia in less than half-an-hour if
I really floored it.

Driving into town was a much better plan than
continuing to walk. But, suppose I was wrong on all counts and Mr.
Grayson had just stopped the car to take a leak? It didn’t seem
likely he’d go very far but, just to be safe, I crossed back over
to the other side of the bridge where the blood stains had led and
shouted his name a couple times.

I played the flashlight on the nearby trees,
hoping that, if he was around but couldn’t hear me, at least he’d
see the light. I shouted his name some more, too. Mr. Grayson moved
to our area a few years ago. He’d bought the Campbell’s old house a
few miles down the road from us but he didn’t socialize with area
folks much. He didn’t even go to church, just kept to himself but
he always smiled and had a good word for people when he was in
Acadia so people liked him well enough.

There was no answer of any kind to all my
hollering so I returned to the car. Half of me was worried about
what might have happened to Mr. Grayson, but the other half was
elated at the idea of driving the rest of the way to town.

I was just about to open the car door and get
behind the wheel when I heard a strange dragging sound. I swung
around. At first, I couldn’t see anything and I thought maybe it
was just a log or something in the water below but then my
flashlight picked out the sight of Mr. Grayson lurching awkwardly
toward me. Except…except it wasn’t Mr. Grayson, not really. It had
Mr. Grayson’s features and general shape but this…this thing had
grey, unnatural-looking skin and its sunken, unfocused eyes were
bloodshot and red-rimmed. He was bare-footed and I could see that
his lower left pants leg was ripped and darker than his right. It
took me a minute to realize it was soaked in blood. The dragging
sound I’d heard was that of his mangled left foot which, dear God,
looked as if it had been gnawed to the bone by some wild
animal.

“Mr. Grayson!” My concern overcame my fear.
“Oh, my God. What happened?”

I’d already started to run to him when it hit
me. Mr. Grayson was one of the Risen Dead. That’s why he looked
like hell warmed over. If he reached me, he’d kill me. I wheeled
around, wrenched open the car door and dove inside but when I tried
to start the engine, the ignition wouldn’t turn. Oh, God. No! No! I
wiggled the key again and again. Nothing. He was close, so close. I
tried to roll up the window but I was too late. Mr. Grayson thrust
his arm through the window and the stench of rotting flesh almost
made me throw up.

“No,” I screamed, throwing myself backwards
across the passenger seat and twisting around to kick him. My foot
connected with his face and I heard an awful squelching sound. He
staggered back but nothing registered on his grey face, no
expression, nothing. Oh, my God! This was Mr. Grayson. Mr. Grayson.
I hadn’t known him all that long but how had he come to this? And
there I’d gone thinking he’d been Raptured.

He swayed for a moment then lunged mindlessly
at me again, launching his body almost halfway into the car. I
scrabbled backwards but I wasn’t quick enough. A swollen grey hand
grabbed my knee.

“No,” I shrieked. “Get away!” I kicked his
head with my free foot and then screamed even louder as I sloughed
off some of his scalp. He stank and he was falling apart but he
never relinquished his grip on my leg. I tried to tear myself away
but his strength was unbelievable. He grabbed my ankle with his
other hand and raised my foot to his mouth. I screamed again,
certain he was about to bite it off.

Next thing I knew I heard a whooshing sound
and then a dull thud. I had no idea what had just happened but,
whatever it was, made Mr. Grayson release my foot and lurch around.
I immediately scrabbled for the door handle and hurtled out on the
other side of the car. I sprinted to the end of the bridge and
looked back. A dark figure swung something like a baseball bat and
the side of Mr. Grayson’s head caved in. He fell to the ground but
his body kept twitching. The stranger raised his weapon over his
head and brought it down, again and again, on Mr. Grayson’s head.
Finally, the horrible thing that had once been Mr. Grayson stopped
moving.