Georgia Walking chapter 2
Utter silence fell in the old building. Not a breath was taken as all looked between Miles and the stranger. The pain was now unbearable and she let herself sink to the hard floor. With hands cuffed behind her, there was no defending herself. "Miles, you have a daughter?" the same girl asked confused. There was almost a hint of disappointment in her voice.
Miles rapidly began to move towards the girl who was kneeled for all to witness. He drew the sword that hung on his hip and let it dangle in front of her. "No, I had a daughter," his tone was nothing compared to what he stood for. Ruthless, bitterness, anger. They were all replaced with a sound of grieve, pain and hidden memories. He was close to having the girl hanging off the tip of his sword when a cry filled the tense air.
"Miles! Don't," a woman pleaded. She rushed to the girl's side. "Lucy, are you alright?" her voice trembled as she took the girl in her arms. Lucy responded with a whimper. Even if she tried to hide her pain, it was hard now that the truth had come out. What she had been looking for, for almost seven years, was now in her reach. The problem was that this person held a sword in front of her face without a single thought to keep her alive.
"No, Lucy is dead! She was murdered seven years ago! Lucy is dead!" Miles Matheson yelled. There were tears in his eyes as the words stuttered out. "How? Explain yourself quickly Rachel before I slid her throat," he barked at the woman on the floor.
Lucy sat on the edge of a futon. A feeling of her being so hopelessly lost and tired overwhelmed her. "Hey, are you alright?" a sweet voice came to her. It stayed silent for a while as Lucy took in the girl in the doorway. She knew who she was, but it felt so strange finally seeing her in flesh and blood. "You're Charlotte," it was a weak statement. A certain one nonetheless. The piercing blue eyes that they both possessed stared back at each other. The girl nodded with delight. Her wavy brown hair was a bit lighter than Lucy's but they could be sisters for all anyone knew. The family resembles was definitely there.
"I go by Charlie," she responded. From underneath the floppy pillow, Lucy took a leather bound book about the size of half a magazine. On it dangled a small lock. Before her cousin, she let a picture of her family fall out of it as she shook it slightly. She noticed the puzzled look on Charlie's face.
After a deep sigh, Lucy motioned to the centre of the weathered and quite aged photo. "My mother always loved photography. This was taken three days after I was born. Miles and your dad used to be so close." That was true. In the photo, they stood smiling and Ben had an arm slung over his brother's shoulders. Beside him stood a woman Charlie presumed was Lucy's mother. She held the bundle of purple blanket that contained the tiny baby they were celebrating. Beside Ben stood Rachel who had Danny on her arm. A four year old Charlie stood all smiles right in front of her dad and uncle. "This was one of the last days where I've see Miles happy, genuinely happy. The blackout happened when I was only two. When I turned four, Miles was barely around, and on my eighth birthday he decided it was best for me and my mother to walk away from us." Lucy remembered a time in which Miles became visibly distant. Charlie had to admit that she didn't remember seeing her uncle much. There would be the occasional phone call, but when she found him in Chicago a few months ago, she hadn't known who she was really looking for. All she had had was a name.
"We managed to walk to random cities. My mother was obsessed with photography and for a long time she was able to keep a dark room, having the supplies stock pilled for years. When we began to move around, I carried most of the life supplies like food and clothes. She took care of our Polaroid camera. Every once in a while she decided it was a special enough moment to take a precious picture and add it to the book. It lasted her for almost five years, until the day she died. I was almost twelve." Lucy wasn't paying much attention to the book in her hands. But Charlie could only imagine the pictures of her and her mother in places like the Yankees' stadium, Empire State Building, the White House, and the Library of Congress. From meadows and abandoned amusement parks to crumbling bridges and beautiful sunsets. When Lucy fell silent again, Charlie couldn't help but reach out to touch the brittle paper of the small photo. She hadn't seen anything like this in ages, and now her long lost cousin took care of it like it was normal but so valuable at the same time.
"After her mother died, she said she fought for herself for a while," Rachel tried to explain to a still angry Miles. He had stomped out the building for some much needed fresh air. His head couldn't rap itself around the fact that even though he hadn't attended his daughter's funeral, he knew it had happened; and now she was standing in the middle of this rebel base camp.
He stared out at the river banks when he answered, "How can a twelve year old fend for themselves, Rachel." It wasn't a question. It was a statement of his disbelieve.
His sister-in-law sat down beside him in the long grass. "She saw her mother get raped and murdered. She is also blood related to you, Miles."
"How do you know this?"
Rachel took a deep breath. "In the New York area, the Militia takes kids who are own their own and force them into minor training camps. There they are first branded, then trained to become soldiers. When you left Bas and the Militia behind, you pissed off a lot of people. Many of them knowing you had a daughter somewhere out there. So every now and then, they would force me to walk the line up of girls around her estimate age to pick out potential victims to pose as her dead look alike," her voice grim. She remembered the pleading looks on their faces. "At one point in time, I couldn't take it anymore and just picked someone." She waited for a response from him, but got none. She tried to lay a hand on his back but he shrugged it off.
"The only reason I choose someone that day, was because in the same line up, stood a girl that reminded me too much of Charlie. I recognized the eyes, the way she carried herself. It turned out that just a week earlier they had picked up Lucy, the real Lucy." Rachel turned and began to gaze into the setting sun. "She must have somehow recognized me because she almost made a step towards me as I walked by. That is what gave her away to me. The look I gave her was pure shattering."
Lucy set the book aside again. Her eyes locked on the 'T' scare that had finally stopped bleeding. "I knew the woman scanning the lines look familiar. And when my feet responded by almost reaching out to her, she gave me a look that I will never forget. That looked changed everything about me."
Charlie found her mother and uncle sitting outside. She heard her mother talking about the same story. "The look I gave her was pure shattering." Charlie cleared her throat to let them know she was there. They turned to her.
"That look made Lucy realize she had no real idea of what the world had become. The only thing she did know that admitting who she was and being with her family would get her killed. When she somehow escaped a few months later, she thought that being with ANY family would get her killed. She heard the stories being said about the famous Miles Matheson. What a traitor he was, the amount of bounty money that stood on his head. She was only thirteen and all by herself." Charlie sounded disgusted by her uncle. He knew she had a right to be.
Darkness would soon set in. "If I had known she was alive and alone, I would have gone looking for her."
"Would you really?"
A rumble in the bushes made them fall quiet immediately. Miles responded by once again reaching for his sword. Charlie loaded her crossbow. In the setting sun, a strange shadow formed on the forest ground. Two glowing eyes peered at the trio from the bushes not too far to their right. Charlie set aim for the perfect kill. She took a deep breath and waited for the animal to come out of hiding. "Please, wait," a voice said. Heads turned at the sound of the struggling words coming from the girl. The bruises and cuts had started to become dark around the edges and now very noticeable. She actually looked quite terrible and Charlie was surprised she had made it outside without being totally exhausted.
"It's a wolf, Lucy. Now step aside and let me shoot it before it bites your head off," Miles' voice rose with tension. He came a step closer to the animal. A blood thirsty growl escaped him. Lucy moved so that she stood between the loaded crossbow and the snarling beast. He was a colouration of dark and light browns with black mixed into it. With a pale area around his mouth, his clenched jaw looked even more fearsome. His grey eyes stared them down. "Lucy!" Miles snapped.
The wolf let out another growl, and crept towards the injured teen. "You have no idea what I've been through since the day you left. You have no right to tell me what to do. This here is the only reason I survived after my mother was murdered by Militia!" She yelled. All the strength left in her came out in a spam of hateful words. She could see Charlie's eyes widen as the words were almost a like a slap to the face. "After being on the run from the Militia army for a few days, I was starting to run out of food. I found this wolfdog stuck in a barbed wire fence. I rescued him and cared for it. Because saving something so helpless was the only thing I could think about doing. The day he could walk, he ran off. Of course I thought I was alone again. Everyone that I ever cared about left me anyways! It was nothing new to me. But a few hours later, he came back with two rabbits. Laid them out as an offering to me. Since I was twelve he has cared for me, fed me, and saved my ass from many people. He isn't a wolf, he is a trained wolf-dog hybrid and the closest thing I have to something I care about." She spat out the words.
Miles still hadn't lowered his weapon. Charlie and Rachel however could tell she wasn't lying as the wolfdog had stopped growling and sat beside her at the snap of her fingers. "You can shoot him, Miles. But know this; he is the only one that gave me everything you didn't!" With those words, Lucy walked off again. Before reaching the gate of the hospital, she turned to look at her father. There was a hint of hurt in his posture. Lucy could care less about how he felt or if her words had meant anything to him. "By the way, his name is Ripper." The mentioning of his name made his ears perk up the way domestics dog do all the time. Walking so closely beside her Rachel could see the strong bond that was developed between the pair.
