16. Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Shelby
They say your life flashes before your eyes when you know you’re about to die. I can’t say that’s my experience because truthfully, the only thought that crowds my frozen brain is something along the lines of pride goeth before the fall.
I wouldn’t be here anticipating what happens next if I had just sought out Cason. Stupid, stupid fool.
“Don’t move.” I don’t respond to the husky tone because it wasn’t a damn question. I do, however, step away out of instinct which is possibly what saves me a great deal of pain in the end when the air whooshes around my head.
Staggering back, the thorny rose bushes I admired before, snag on my face. That’ll teach me to find humor in someone else’s pain.
Unfortunately, my shoe meets something hard in the darkness, and I drop to the ground with a groan before turning to my ass and looking up as the asshole snivels, “I told you not to move."
“What?” I whisper. What the hell is going on?
“You shouldn’t be here," he says and I’m not sure what I was expecting but it’s not a teenager with a bad case of acne holding a bat in his hands.
Eyeing his fingers flexing around the wood, I whisper, “We’re just resting here until we can move on.”
“This is our place,” he says with a sniffle before wiping his nose on the sleeve of his hoodie. A shock of dark hair brushes his cheek when he looks around and I slowly nod, eyeing the twitch in his shoulders.
When his bright eyes meet mine, he grimaces but the caricature is off as though his body isn’t in tune with his mind.
Is he high? I had a friend in high school who used to light up before class every day.
Unfortunately, after a time, he fell into the harder stuff and one morning his mom found him dead in his bed.
Before that though, half the time I was around him, he was beyond fucked up.
I always used to wonder what he was hiding from.
Maybe now I can understand but back then, all I felt was a trickle of revulsion, knowing he was wasting his life while my sister lay dying with no hope for a cure.
“We’ll leave,” I say when he nudges my foot, but he slowly shakes his head.
“You can’t leave now.”
Despite the chill in the air, his hoodie with the sleeves cut off reveals slim, wiry arms covered in dark ink and displaying pentagrams and skulls, interwoven with words in a language I don’t understand.
“Hurry up,” someone hisses behind him, and he turns. Beyond his shoulder stands a petite girl with flaming red hair. Dark eyeshadow makes her blue eyes pop while the glistening ring in her nose catches the light.
If I had to guess, she can’t be more than Amanda’s age. Where are her parents? Are these kids alone in this world together?
“What are you doing? I told you to wait inside with Malachi,” the boy growls.
With a shrug, she says, “He’s gone.”
“Gone?”
When the boy turns fully toward his friend, I scramble back and push slowly to my feet.
This is my chance to go but I can’t do anything to risk our group.
While I don’t think these teens are truly dangerous, I also have no idea what their plans are and the boy’s words from before weren’t exactly welcoming.
“Yeah. Said he’d be back. I think he was checking on that group we saw earlier,” she says.
What group? Who’s Malachi? It doesn’t matter, Shelby. Get the fuck out of here.
My options are to bluster my way back to the door and my friends or go around the side of the house to where we entered before.
If they’re that freaking keen on us going, we can just go. I don’t like this damn place anyway.
I am relieved though because as we stand here, dawn begins to brighten the sky. While I know what's out there remains unchanged, facing it in the light of day feels so much safer.
“He can’t leave. Dammit,” the boy cries and I hold up my hands.
“Sh.”
When he swings back toward me with his bat raised high, I say, “Please. Noise attracts them.”
Once again, I wonder what he’s on when he rolls his shoulders and says, “Don’t care. We welcome the end. It’s what we deserve for ignoring the past.”
“Okay,” I mumble because what do you possibly say to that? “Um, let me get my friends. We’ll go and you can do well, whatever . . . "
He cocks his head, while the girl behind him shifts, brushing the overhanging bush beside her as she says, “Cain? Maybe we should let them go?”
“No!" he says. "You know what we have to do, Lilith.”
“Do?” I say splaying my hands. “You don’t have to do anything.”
“You don’t understand,” he snorts. “Of course you don’t. Look at you. Your Christian bullshit brought us here.”
Apparently, this conversation has riled him up because he raises the bat again but just as I step back Cason says behind me, “Drop it.”
I’ve never been so glad to hear his voice, and I vow to be a more forgiving version of myself going forward. Cason may be a locked vault when it comes to his emotions but he’s still the man who wouldn’t leave me behind.
Grimacing, Cain looks over his shoulder once more, while Lilith raises her hands, eyeing Cason’s gun warily. However when Cain doesn't comply, Cason barks, “I said, drop it."
“Fuck you,” Cain hisses. “Pig.”
“Cain,” Lilith says. “Please.”
“No, Lilith, we talked about this.”
“What?” Cason says. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re a bunch of little punks. You think what you did up there is, okay? You sick fuck.”
Up where? What did they do? With a shiver, I step away from Cain and when his head swings my way, I meet his wild gaze. What the hell is going on?
A weird hissing sound slides from the boy’s lips before he raises the bat, and I skip further to the side just as Cason says, “I will hurt you. Touch her and find out.”
His gravelly tone warms me through, and I don’t know why but I suspect it’s because he’s threatening someone on my behalf or I’m seriously deluded. It could go either way at this point.
When Cain’s eyes narrow to the point all I can see are the dilated pupils, I shake my head. I just know he’s not going to listen, and my suspicions are confirmed when he lunges at me and Cason roars, “Dammit!”
Luckily, I step back just in time but end up windmilling my arms before I fall into another prickly bush. Ugh.
Lilith cries out, a scuffle that I can’t see ensues before Cain says, “Fuck you. The end is here, and your old ass is about to be judged.”
“For what?” Cason says. “Stopping a little shit like you from being a creep?”
Once the activity dies down, I peek through the branches to find that Cason has Cain on the ground with his knee pressed against his back. When Cain’s eyes roll before meeting mine, I suck in a breath and crawl from the bush, ignoring the sting from the tiny thorns.
I’m still confused by the turn of events, but I nod when Cason says, “Go wake the others.”
After stepping around the duo though, I pause when I don’t see Lilith and say, “Where–”
“Don’t know. Just get everyone up,” Cason says.
Without responding, I follow the path to the door and this time, I don’t bother trying to be quiet. As soon as I step through the threshold, Larry sits up and I say, “We have to go.”
Cason
I don’t know what these little fuckers were planning to do but I don’t much like the scene I left upstairs. These fools painted pentagrams on the walls and floor and if I’m not mistaken, caught a few wild animals to use as fodder for whatever the fuck they were worshipping.
Not long before this end of the world shit, Cap told us during our morning rounds about a satanic group roaming the neighborhood and vandalizing property. I’ve seen a lot of things working this job, but I never thought I’d run into a bunch of bored fools mutilating defenseless animals.
Although maybe this sniveling asshole is right. Maybe we pissed off the powers that be with our greed and violence.
Somehow, I don’t think the answer is tearing up poor Fluffy though.
With a sullen Cain in hand, I push him into the living room while my little group comes awake. The first to speak is the last I thought would though when Amanda says, “Matt?”
Her rounded eyes meet mine while Cain rolls his shoulders and hisses between his teeth. Shoving him forward, I say, “You know this creep?”
“Well, yeah. I mean we go to school together,” she says, nibbling her lip.
“You don’t know shit about me, bitch,” Cain says with a nasty chuckle.
When Zoey shrinks away, I smack the back of his head and say, “Watch your mouth.”
“I thought you weren’t afraid to hurt me. Pussy,” he snickers, and I eye the back of his head.
I’m tired and hungry. We’ve been running for our lives and now I have to deal with this.
Fuck me.
“Yeah, well,” I finally say, “just be glad I didn’t feel like killing a stupid little shit today.”
“What’s going on?” Nate interjects, pushing to his feet.
“Who the fuck knows but I have a feeling we’re not welcome here,” I say.
“Good. This place is creepy,” Nora says, and I smile.
“You have no idea.”