The Risen: Courage (13 page)

“I had sex with Rhett.” Her words are rushed and stacked on top of one another with such speed it takes me a moment to collect them. Even then, my mind can’t put them in correct order. Surely, I did not hear what I my mind is telling me she said.

“What?” I ask, not willing to trust my ears.

“I had sex with… Rhett….” Aimes holds the name in whispered confession letting the sentence drag between us.

I still can’t believe it. I ask her again thinking it will magically change if I keep asking her to repeat herself. “What?” This time she will say something that makes sense. This time we will laugh over what I think she said.

“Really?” Aimes asks and sits up to glare at me with exaggerated annoyance. “How many times do you want me to say it? I had sex with Rhett. I had sex with Rhett. I totally did Rhett.” She throws her arms up in frustration and her eyebrows almost match the height.

I stutter a thousand responses that catch in my throat. None of them seem correct. They seem as mismatched as the woman and the man she just admitted to sleeping with. I can only sit staring at her until my mind chains something together.

“When?” I ask her and out of all the “W” questions I want to ask, this one seems the most fitting place to start and the least harmful to my brain.

She flops back on the cot making the springs curse with the abuse. A less secure woman would feel nervous over the marked complaint by the bed. Aimes is more worried about the conversation. Her eyes move more rapidly as she stares at the ceiling. The words she was reading now are full sentences as she picks and chooses which way to let this conversation head. This might just take the full five minutes.

“When I finally escaped from Paula, he was like my shadow. He was like always there. If I so much as winced, poof, there he was suddenly doing whatever I was trying to do for me. It was kind of nice at first, but it got old fast.” Aimes says, reading the ceiling again like her favorite novel. “Plus he and Law were always fighting. No matter what Law said, he had to disagree with him. He didn’t just disagree. He dared Law to call him out on it, but Law never did and each time Rhett just grew more angry. It was like he wanted to fight with Law, but Law wasn’t taking the bait. If Rhett wasn’t trying to pick a fight or stalking me, he was sitting in the dark with you. Literally, in the dark. It was creepy.” She pauses like the novel has abruptly stalled at the cliffhanger, and like an addicted reader, I grow frustrated left with my questions unanswered.

“…and?” I finally ask her when her silence seemed to last longer than I could handle.

Her sigh is heavy. Like a high school girl waiting to hear the latest gossip, her full exhale of a sigh only adds to my mounting frustrations. “He was sitting in that dark room with you when I came to check on you one day. He was like, crying. It was so odd and scary at the same time to see Rhett like that. He was so broken.” She pauses, turning the page on the ceiling before speaking again. “I put my hand on his shoulder to give him comfort. It was totally innocent! He pulled me into his lap and….” her words fall off, leaving me leaning in to hear more, “…it just happened. I didn’t go in thinking, hey I’m totally going to go get me some Rhett. It just happened and I let it. After that, he avoided me and Selma went to work on him. She never lets me forget that fact.”

“Wait, you had sex with Rhett while I was lying there?”

“Way to focus on the not important here.”

“…but you did?”

“…but we did.”

“…and now Selma is using it to tear you apart?”

“…and now Selma is using it to tear me apart.”

“Glad we are both in agreement,” I say holding my head with my hands.

How did everything go so off course? How did in a matter of a few weeks everything become too tangled? Why is it with the world ending brutally all around us it still all boils down to who-is-sleeping-with-who in the constant never ending circle of drama? We have people who were once normal turning cannibal, but please, let me focus on how to fix your love life. I have nothing better to do with my afternoon. Kill people trying to eat me, solve love lives and separate male bullshit. Yup, nothing exciting going on here.

“So, what are we going to do?” Aimes asks me with a voice as deflated as I feel.

“Don’t know.”

“Where was he buried?”

I’m startled by the sudden change in conversation. Like a scratched record, my mind is still skipping over her confession of having sex with Rhett and it keeps repeating her words. “Buried who?” I ask her with the confession silently looping.

“J.D.,” she says it as if I should have known who she was talking about and I roll my eyes with her annoyance.

“We didn’t bury him. We burned him just like everyone else.”

“You should have buried him.”

“What difference does it make?”

“When you bury people there is a spot to go to remember them. Now, there is nothing.”

It seems Lawless isn’t the only one with “daddy issues”. It’s amazing how a man who lived a life’s mission based around revenge can still be missed. I suppose I shouldn’t throw rocks when I live is a glass house so haunted by the past.

“You want me to take you there?” I hold my breath after I ask the question with hopes she will say no. I’m only kidding myself. I know what she is going to say.

“They wouldn’t take me. They said it wasn’t worth the risk. How would we get past them?” Aimes asks and for the first time I can hear the hint of mischief returning to her voice since we were left alone.

In depth planning is not really my strong point. I prefer to run blindly into the thick of it and pray it works out. So far, for the most part, it seems to be working. Why change it?

“I’ll think of something,” I tell her and it’s the best plan I have at the moment.

“We are so going to get in trouble,” she says smiling.

“It’s what I do best,” I tell her.

Trouble and I have a complicated relationship. Like an addict who swears to never touch the substance again, I always do. I always end up right back at the very rock bottom I swear to avoid. As much as people complain about me being there, my addiction to trouble is what makes them always come to me for help first. I won’t shy away from doing what has to be done because I’m not afraid of the fall. The long, dark tunnel that trouble leads us down doesn’t frighten me. I’m comfortable in its darkness. That is what frightens me. When the darkest corners of humanity become your home, what does that say about your soul?

CHAPTER
17

S
lipping past the main guards was easy. The fact the guards are made up of members of the new religious high order, and not our crew, is most likely what made that fact true. The fact they are the new home team favorite, and not Lawless and sidekicks, should worry me. Maybe because we are doing exactly what will bring their anger down upon us, and that I am once again blowing Death a kiss-laden dare. I don’t think about the oddity of it. Some blessings come with the sparkling bows of obvious. Some slip past you only to become an afterthought. Whichever this one is, I’m just going to bow my head in silent thanks and worry about it later. I hope someone is taking notice because slowly, and one scar at a time, I’m learning.

My heart is in my throat as Aimes and I cling to the rough mortar of the grey bricks on the outside courtyard wall. The snow is slush under our boots. The weather in our part of South Carolina hardly ever reaches the cold temperatures needed during the day to keep it powder fresh. There is great irony in the truth of feeling like we are in hell in the summers only to be surrounded by slushies in the winters.

The blade I am gripping in my hand has become as much a part of my limited apparel as the boots now protesting against the watery abuse. My other hand is extended, palm flat against the bricks like a blind woman searching for answers as to what is around her. Unless the bricks are dripping with blood or hold the stains of murders past, they can’t help me decipher any clues as to where the Risen might be lurking, but I cling to them just the same.

Aimes is my shadow. Her feet root into each print I am leaving. She slides along the wall as if she is a reflection of me. Her eyes are just as wide and scan the wooden barrier of the forest with the same determination as mine. We both know the risk we are taking. I just wonder if the man we are risking it for is worth it.

“It’s just a little further,” I whisper, worried over how far the winter wind will carry my voice. In the truck, it didn’t seem this far. Now, we might as well have marked a place near Grit for the miles that seem to stretch to the little piece of land we used.

“You don’t look so hot,” Aimes whispers, staring at me as we slide along the wall.

“I’m fine,” I tell her, remembering another woman who once called me on that lie.

“You look like you are half dead.”

“I’ve been half dead. Compared to that, I’m fine,” I tell her, ending the debate. She’s right, though. I’m not fine. As I stare at the make shift marker for J.D., my body is slick with sweat from the nausea and pain. My stomach feels like it is on fire and aching at the same time from the wound. The two sensations are dueling to compete for my suffering like a badge of victory. I’m willing to call one a winner if it would lessen their battle. I point to the marker ahead of us and say, “Right there.” It’s not as exciting as anything Columbus might have said, but he didn’t have flesh-eating people hiding around corners.

Aimes takes the lead now with her fascination for finding the spot like a knight looking for the Grail. I follow slowly behind her, already knowing what is there. She stands staring down at the ground covered in the disguise of snow that allows for it all to look so peaceful. I know what that lie is covering.

The sheet burned away quickly with its worn cotton threads. The heat of the fire, even with the accelerant of the gasoline, never reached the required heat to fully burn the body we left behind. Hiding underneath the thin layer of snow is J.D.’s scorched remains and I pray the sun is not cruel enough to melt the lie.

“We should have buried him. We would have a place to remember him. He would have liked that,” Aimes says. She is sullen, staring at the attempt of a marker.

“That’s a comfort for the living. The dead don’t really care if you come or not. They are dead,” Rhett says from behind us.

His voice doesn’t startle me. It does Aimes. She spins with his voice like it belongs to some dark fear of hers. Since it’s Rhett, it just might.

“What do you want?” Aimes asks like a fragile child. Her voice is sad and hopeful at the same time.

Rhett looks away from us scanning the area around us and says, “Nothing.” Everything about him says the opposite. “What are you two doing out here alone?” he asks, changing the subject.

“We were never really alone,” I tell him and earn a smile from the man with pride pulling at his lips. I have spent so long avoiding Rhett that I have learned to spot him a mile away. He has been following us since we entered the courtyard where he was mingling with the newly saved or doomed depending on your point of view. Some things haven’t changed for either of us. “Selma tell you I was looking for you?” I ask him and watch his smile freeze and become a different animal.

“Nope,” he says. He is daring me to call his bluff and I totally would if I was not already holding onto my own making me an easy target for him. “Have something you want to talk about?” he asks me, pushing the matter further.

“Yes, but not out here.” I tell him looking around fully aware of how exposed we are.

“Figures she wouldn’t tell you. For someone so secure in the fact that she owns you, she sure does do a lot to keep you under her thumb,” Aimes says. She crosses her arms glaring at Rhett. She has missed the innuendos and has chosen to take us down a much bumpier road. In her mind she hovers somewhere between a discarded friend and scorned lover. The bite behind her words proves it to be true.

“It’s not her thumb she keeps me under.” Rhett’s smile is genuine and it adds to the “ick” factor of it all. Didn’t I warn about calling the man’s bluff when wounded?

“Either way, you admit you are now her little bitch,” Aimes says, pressing the conversation forward. I mentally applaud her bravery because mentally is silently.

Rhett shrugs nonchalantly with the smile still stuck to his lips, but his hand twitches. It’s a small, sudden spasm and most would never have seen it, but I do. Aimes might have too if she wasn’t so lost in the turbulent storm of her emotions.

Rhett’s eyes focus past Aimes on the marker before floating down to the thin layer of snow. His eyes swirl deepening and lightening their shade with emotions, but his face stays the passive blank mask of their training.

“One might think that I am finally not someone’s little bitch,” he says and his eyes meet mine with private knowledge.

I’m starting to understand how Selma found his hidden buttons. It is starting to become clear how she was able to turn him from us. She just didn’t count on a few things in her equation. There is a comfort in shared pain and she can’t measure the meters Rhett and I have swum together. Nor can she compete with the many different life vests we have shared to keep us from drowning. No matter the depths of her passion shared with him at night, we have all learned the dawn always comes, leaving us vulnerable to the light of the sun. It’s when lovers can no longer ease your suffering, but only those who have shared the darkest hours of your life.

“He needs you,” I say, watching the life return to the set of eyes holding me captive. “He may not know it, but he does. I know it. Chapel knows it.”

He looks to Aimes when I leave her name from the list and her eyebrow arches as if a string had pulled it. She says, “I don’t know what she is talking about.”

“Do you need me?” Rhett asks her with a voice that would shatter into thin pieces if pressed too hard. It completely steals any fight from her, relaxing her posture.

“Didn’t concern you before.” Marxx’ voice does startle me. I was so lost in the domestic scene before me, I never heard him walk toward us. With his smile proudly displayed, that might have been his goal. “When will you learn to listen?” Marxx asks me. He boldly ignores the set of eyes watching him with unmasked hostility.

“When will you learn to keep her safe?” Rhett returns the question asked with an accusation of his own.

Marxx’ head turns slowly to the man behind him. He never turns his shoulders making sure that his back is kept to Rhett. It’s a screaming insult done silently without a single word needing to be said. “Last time I checked,” Marxx says in a voice deep with anger, “you made sure to let everyone know they weren’t your problem anymore.”

“It’s so endearing to be coined a problem,” Aimes says rolling her eyes.

I guess when it is she and Rhett fighting that’s okay, but should anyone else argue it is annoying. Good thing no one ever asks me my take on it all. Far as I am concerned, they are all annoying and there are not enough “time out” corners in the whole place in which to put them.

“You know what I meant.” Marxx offers, but he doesn’t take his eyes from the man he is poking with a stick. He is willing to put his back to him, but only as long as he can keep tabs on Rhett. Interesting to know.

“You’re right,” Rhett says. “They aren’t.”

The shock of his words radiates out like a bomb dropped leaving us all wounded from the shrapnel. The vulnerable side we saw of him has passed. Now Aimes and I are the ones stripped bare in front of him with the aftermath leaving us gasping. I look away from the man, not willing to let the sting of his words be seen reflected in my eyes. Aimes takes a different route with her emotions.

“I hope she swallows you whole,” Aimes tells Rhett. Her voice is shaky with the damage from his words. “You and your stupid pride.”

“She swallows me every night and it brings me great pride.” Rhett leers with this words and I roll my eyes with how, once again, Aimes has been led into a pitfall of word play. It’s one of his best games.

“We really have to learn better insults.” Aimes concedes as she watches Rhett walk away.

“We? Don’t drag me into your fights.” I answer still staring into the forest border ignoring Marxx who is shuffling from amused to anger as he watches Rhett walk away and listening to our banter. “I stayed quiet.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Thanks for the back-up there, gal pal.”

“Anytime.”

“You mean anytime it doesn’t involve Rhett?”

“Exactly.”

“He really makes you that nervous, Hells?” Marxx is genuine in his interest but the up lifted corner of his mouth suggests that he is holding another emotion within. “You go toe-to-toe with those things but Rhett makes you nervous?”

I know what to expect from the Risen. Their motives and desires remain constant no matter where we encounter them. They want us dead. It’s rather simplistic.

Rhett’s motives, not so much. You never know at which station the mood swings of his crazy train will stop. Some days, he may just make a complete round trip in one conversation. Where as most times he isn’t plotting your death directly, but that is always up in the air, too. The Risen, I understand. Rhett, not at all.

As I watch Lilly run a jagged path in-between the tree line, I know it’s not just Rhett who confuses me with hidden desires. The dead seem to be just as twisted with their motives.
They are not dead. They never were.

“Who is that?” Aimes whispers the question as her eyes squint to fight against the sun’s rays. It’s amazing how far a whisper will carry when every moment is now swathed with last minute dangers. Rhett pauses in his stride to see where Aimes is looking and when I follow their gaze, I’m shocked. Their eyes watch the apparition that stalks my mind play among the snow-hazed trees. I look to Marxx and see that he too is staring at her.

“You see her?” It’s my turn to whisper. I don’t do it out of fear of what I am seeing. I do it with the fears of what they are seeing. I know I’m one stumble from insanity if Aimes calls out to Lilly.

“Yeah, who is it?” Aimes squints her eyes harder trying to make out the damning details.

I am ready to answer her when Rhett curses under his breathe and answers for me. “It’s April, ” he says and I want to argue with him.

I want to tell him how I am not amused with his joke, but I don’t. See, I’m learning in leaps and bounds – whatever that means.

“When will you learn to keep her safe?” Marxx repeats the question that was asked of him and I can hear the smirk coating his words.

Speaking of “time out corners” I ask, “Who is April?” before I need to find a few.

“Selma’s daughter.” Marxx tells me still wearing his smile.

I understand now why his question is so satisfying to him. I don’t understand how a woman with such traits as she has could give birth to a blonde, ivory skinned child running amok in the woods but I admit that I might have slept through high school biology. Right now, I’m just satisfied that my personal ghosts are laying in wait to ambush me in the dark and not under the noon sun.

“You should probably go get her. You know, earn you some pink points with Selma for later.” Aimes teases Rhett with her verbal jab, but her innuendo isn’t easy for her to accept or to say.

“We should go get her,” I say. At once, the three of them turn to me mirroring the same expression of shock from my proposal. “All of us.”

I don’t stand still waiting to listen to their outburst of bickering. I do what I always do when I know I have stirred the pot. I walk away. I walk, hiding from those behind me the grimace of pain it causes me. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other with silent prayers that this won’t become the time I am left to walk alone. Mostly, I’m just doing what I do best, chasing rabbits and making up stuff as I go.