Thanks to the readers, and reviewers Allie, JuneBug672 and Guest! And for the Story Favorites! (especially with Original Characters!)
Here's chapter six...where the plot thickens...muhahaha!
Musical inspiration for this chapter in particular: "Monster" by Imagine Dragons. I love them. ; )
Chapter Six
Bryn and Ethan are gone early the next morning.
I wake in my room with the memory of dreams but they slip through my grasp when I reach for them. I sit up, climb to my feet and move down the short hall to the bathroom. I use the facilities and then stand before the reflective glass in its silver metal frame trying to see what Libby did last night.
I have never spent much time looking at myself. It seemed a silly thing to do when little ever changed. I did not have a mirror where I was before; but I would sometimes catch my reflection in the shiny smooth surfaces of glass and metal around section six.
I know that my eyes are dark green—almost blue, I have sixteen freckles on my right cheek and eighteen on my left one just under the corner of my eye on that side. My skin is pale and tinted faintly pink, my nose is normal I suppose—it seems to fit my face unlike Dr. Goligk's which jutted out from his face distractingly with a large downward hook to it.
My hair has always been cut to hang just below my shoulder blades, it is a bit longer now since it has been a while since they cut it; I was probably due any day. I ponder for a moment cutting it shorter like Libby's or letting it simply grow. I slide my fingers through the thick locks most of them a deep rich red-brown.
Someone pushes open the door and shuffles in. Libby stares up at me blurry eyed. "Morning," she tells me, nowhere near as bouncy as the night before.
I return the greeting while she takes a moment, obviously not as shy about nakedness as Bryn. When she shuffles to the sink I move back to make room for her. She rinses her hands and splashes cold water on her face slapping her own cheeks with her fingertips for a moment staring in the mirror. "Ugh, Mornings without eyeliner," she tells me then twists to prop one striped pant clad hip against the sink's edge. "Alright, let's eat!"
Again?
I find I like Libby's animated company. I have never met someone so bouncy and loud; other than Griss who did not make my lips feel like turning into a smile when he shouted things. Libby is also an overflowing source of information, and eager to talk. Sometimes her answers are cryptic—most often it seems unintentionally so, she has spent a lot of time absorbing information two decades old about what life was like before what she calls 'The Turn'. Her brother, Ethan, and Bryn are both Pickers, like their fathers were; both of whom are no longer around. I learn that their mothers are dead as well, Bryn's mother killed in what Libby calls 'the war' though I've never heard the soldiers speak of it and her own mother was eaten by one of the Others when Libby was only ten.
"It happens sometimes, you know?" she tells me shrugging. "They make it over the mountains sometimes and out here without patrols or sirens like in the city things just happen."
I have seen many Others in the lab. I always knew when they were going to be there; their movement and handling carefully controlled to prevent accidents. I cannot imagine simply finding them, or having them find you; but Libby does not seem to be bothered by that.
"Have you ever run into one?" I ask.
She nods patting her belt where a knife sits in a leather case, "Never leave home without it," she tells me. "Especially since only the rich people can afford the vaccine."
"There' a vaccine?" I stare at her while she nods flipping through the thin colorful pages in her lap still, ever so careful with the paper so it doesn't rip.
"Yeah, but it just keeps you from going all dead-face," she tells her lap not looking up. "It doesn't stop them from eating yours."
She tells me about what it's like to live in The Valley, which is hundreds of miles long and half as wide, most of the people out here are what she calls poor. And then she tells me about The City, which used to have a name she says but no one bothers to use it anymore because there is only one. Life in the City which she has only visited once is a whole different world she tells me, the Good side is where the government officials and all the rich live; they do not even have to comply with the mandates she tells me eyes wide. They can buy their way right out of them for enough credits, or the right favors. The Bad side is worse than life here, people working to earn their freedom in factories and industrial houses; many of them chained to their stations so that if they drop dead in the middle of a shift they don't rise up and eat the rest of the work force.
"Course that doesn't stop them from attacking people if they happen to fall in the streets." She tells me shuddering for the first time even with such dark topics.
"So what Bryn and Ethan do," I start and she cuts me off looking up again tossing her magazine down gently to land flat beside her on the bedspread where we're sitting.
"—Being pickers?"
"What exactly does it mean?" Libby explains how they go over the mountain or sometimes bribe their way through one of the outlying tunnels for a price taking one of their trucks so they can search the areas outside the Valley for items people can use; clothes, shoes, furniture; really big hits are things like rechargeable car batteries and something called solar panels—as long as they aren't cracked selling one of those to a distributor in the Valley feeds all three of them really well for a few months. "We're much better off than most people in the Valley, but it's dangerous…" she pauses. "It's like being a family of Pirates!" She winks trying to lighten the mood.
I know what a Pirate used to be from my previous readings…but I have yet to see a ship. I frown. "So by 'picking' they are breaking the law?"
"It technically makes them criminals." She informs me then shrugs. "But the law sucks ass, and I can't grow shit so there's no way we're farming."
I don't know how to respond to that.
There is a loud sound I have never heard before. It comes from everywhere at once. Rumbles through the house like an angry growl. I glance up but Libby does not seem to have noticed.
"What is that?" I ask.
"It's thunder," she replies then she glances up at me. "Wait, you've never heard thunder before? How deep was the hole they threw you in?" Her eyes are a little too wide when she asks, but her lips quirk up in a way that makes me not sure how to answer. "You'll be fine, just don't go outside." She tells me turning back to her strange blank book the utensil in her hand still making flicking scratches over the white surface.
I turn to stare at the window in time to catch a flash of light like someone flicking a light off and on quickly. "Is it dangerous?"
"Only if you get struck by lightening." Libby tells me, but then she pauses. "And sometimes Geeks come over the mountains in a big storm, gets them all stirred up and wandering around."
"Geeks," She means the Others. "Why would they do that?"
"I think they're trying to follow the sound." Libby replies her lips pursed like she's planning to give something a kiss. "But that's rare," She adds waving a hand between us.
There is another flash of light and a deeper rumble. I get up from the couch and move to the front window. It is dark outside, but every few minutes a flash bright as mid-day gives me glimpses of the world beyond strangely painted in dark shades of black and white and a blend of greys.
"If you go outside just stay on the porch," Libby calls from the other room. "Bryn will be pissed if I let you get fried the first time I babysit." She adds.
I had not thought about going onto the porch, but being outside would offer me a greater viewing advantage. I open the front door and pull it closed behind me, find my butt pushed up against the glass a moment later by a huge burst of wind pushing into me. The hot invisible fingers of wind tug at my clothes and lift the hair Libby fixed earlier tangling it around my head in a wild halo. I raise my arms to slide my palms over my head, trapping the majority of the wild waving strands against my head with my fingertips and moving towards the edge of the porch.
There are more flashes of light, and resounding booms that fill the space press against my skin. They grow brighter, and louder until they rattle the windows behind me and shake my heart in my chest making my breath catch. The flashes are no longer directionless flashes that seem to come from now-where and everywhere all at once. I forget to hold down my hair, too fascinated clinging to one of the porch poles watching the silver strings of brilliant light dance across the sky cracking so ominously when they appear they make my skin hum and my heart race.
And then there is a different hum along my skin. A prickle slides down my spine twists with the razor sharp jab of hair fine needles in my gut. I swallow and stop watching the sky. Staring instead into the darkness surrounding the house, but I see nothing in the tall grass even in the bright several-second long flashes of light. And then I forget about the warning playing across my skin, droning at the base of my skull because the sky opens up and water fills the air. It beats down all around the house pounding against the roof, like the feet of a hundred soldiers.
It's cold where it hits my hand and tickles dripping down my forearm to my elbow. I want to ask Libby what it's called but that would mean going back inside and I do not know when it might stop. The wind whips through the narrow space under the porch roof rattling against the house and pushing me forward, my leg already raised to step down off the porch of its own violation. Unable to resist knowing what this cold outdoor shower will feel like on the rest of my skin.
I'm soaked in seconds, the ice cold trickle sliding down my spine, draws me further into the storm searching in the darkness. The once solid earth of the trail between the house and barn looming huge and black in the night squishes under my bare feet, squelches between my toes. Fat drops of earth colored water splashing back up from the ground to soak into my already muddy pant legs. I keep walking towards the outline of the barn, and then pass it continuing down one long side the pins and needles in my belly like an invisible hand fisted in my gut pulling me out.
Someone is calling my name, it sounds like Libby; but it is hard to tell over the roar of water filling the air, the stinging wind slapping me in the fast whistling in my ears, and the heart pounding crack overhead that rattles my chest forces me to straighten back up from my crouch a moment later though I don't remember dropping to my knees in the first place.
Someone is moving in the yard. I catch their outline in the flash of silver forking across the sky and move towards them in the crashing darkness their voice drowned out by the rumble of sound that follows.
He's facing away from me, when the next flash of light gives me a split second to direct my walk with a moment of sight. It is either Bryn or Ethan, they must have come back, and not finding me on the porch as Libby said wandered into the yard to find me.
"Bryn!" My voice is carried away by the wind only snatches of the first syllable even audible to my own ears, the sound winding around my face in the twisting wind.
He turns, and even in the near pitch black I feel my stomach lift, my face breaking into an absurd smile. I say his name again and thunder growls through the air, snarling angry and very near…not thunder I realize when another white flash splits the air lighting up the whole sky in a series of flashes so bright they paint the world in color like high noon.
They show me the dark black stains on a green striped shirt, and the wash of bright red coating his chin and throat. His eyes are not the amber of warm honey; they're yellow and cloudy grey. But that is not the worst of it; part of his nose is missing leaving an empty red and black maw above yellowed teeth with a missing top lip. When he reaches for me still standing frozen in place he is missing a hand, part of his arm below the elbow simply torn away leaving two askew stark white bones and an uneven threading of gory wet flesh at its base like the sickening rotted petals of a flower.
I know what I am supposed to do. The knowledge beats at me, slithers up my spine coating the back of my throat burning and thick like bile. The roar of my heart beating double time in my ear sounds like a chant with its two tone pulse; Do it, Do it, Do it! I can hear Griss's snarl in the words.
I raise my arms feel the freezing cold shower of water still washing over us both from the sky pound against my skin. The drops so forceful now they pelt me like tiny rocks, prickle like needles and I shiver; shudder. My whole body rolling, contracting with the wash of sensation and the sudden flood of a very different kind; this one infinitely more painful.
Names and places in an ever tangled jumble of leaping images, some too bright, some too dark, a tan and brick house on a quiet street, a woman with dark brown hair, Olivia my wife, a young boy with light brown hair pushing a plastic truck across the floor… he smiles missing two front teeth, a job, a commute, dinner on the table by six, the news…something terrible...fear as everything stops, breaks down all around me…how will I protect them, what do I do…someone is at the door…forcing their way in…snarling…Olivia, Oliver…no…No…NO!
"NO!" I scream it right alongside him drowning in pain that isn't mine. I'm collapsing back onto the sloppy ground shuddering and convulsing his grip on my wrist taking him down with me. Thunder cracks and the night turns to day snapping my concentration, severing the thread of contact.
The searing stab at my skull abruptly ends and with it the man once called Roger tries to eat my face with renewed vengeance.
"I'm sorry," I gasp wrestling with him "God I'm sorry…" I grapple with him, manage to get my knees between his chest and mine so I can start to push him away, but he is heavy...nearly twice my size. Wet grass and mud press shivery cold and slick against my back.
"Charlie!"
Roger snarls his spine bowing forward impressively despite his lack of flexibility with being very dead making a dive for my throat nonetheless. I grunt pushing my forearm against his throat my muscles burning and shaking with the effort. Where the hell are the damn soldiers?
Roger shifts over me and freezing cold water slaps me in the face. I'm staring up at a rolling white grey cloud covered sky drops frozen in time in the current silver ribbon slashing across the angry sky.
There are no soldiers. I am alone.
And about to be eaten…
Something deep inside me snarls, jerking both my knees up and shoving. Hard. Roger's wrist is ripped right out of my grasp with the backwards force that sends him sailing through the air a good ten feet in the darkness. Some dark part of me I'm not familiar with baits me to follow him, rip and tear him into little tiny still squirming parts…I get a flash of my own fingers buried in blood and gore slicked flesh.
I blanch, rolling to sit up searching for Roger in the darkness eyes wary as I leap to my feet slipping still pelted by ice cold rain.
And then I am not alone.
A clap of point blank thunder explodes in my ears. But the flash is from the wrong direction, it's not in the sky but on the ground. Bryn's standing ten feet from me, a long barrel gun in his hands leveled at Roger's now silent form. Bryn drops the gun to his side.
"Charlie!"
I move towards him quickly. My entire body on some strange autopilot, bare feet slipping on wet slick grass and cold mud that tries to suck around my toes. I stumble. "Charlie," His arms are around me suddenly, grip iron strong around my back hauling me against his broad chest somehow still hot against my face when the water beating down on us has leeched all the warmth from my own skin.
His hands cup both sides of my face, trace down the sides of my neck his palms cupping and following the lines of my collarbones to my shoulders, searching for injuries his eyes more intense than I've ever seen them catching the silver strings branching overhead. His hands clench over my arms for a single heartbeat before slipping down my arms to my fingertips making my stomach flutter and my breathing hitch.
His hand cups my cheek again, eyes dark against the night boring into mine. "Are you alright?" He has to almost shout it to be heard. I realize his hands are slightly shaky the vibrations telegraphed to my already summersaulting stomach zipping down my spine to my belly, my skin tingling where the calloused pads are pressed against my face.
Something inside me is trembling as well, spirals with a weightless curl of anticipation for something I can't name just under my skin. I stare up at him blinking the heavy fall of water from my eyelashes droplets tickling ice cold down my neck. I find myself raising a hesitant hand between us while he watches me, eyes guarded and dark but he makes no move to stop me. He says nothing, frozen like stone even as I trace my fingertip across the beads of water gathered on his full lower lip.
My lips part on an little sigh as something shifts behind those eyes, an expression flitting across his features that makes my heart leap into my throat and my stomach clench even before he dips his head to mine and…
Oh god.
A sweet rush of pleasure enthralls me when his lips brush over mine. I freeze for a moment, bewildered and equally intrigued. Feel a spiraling trickle of two very different sensations at once sliding down my spine. The pin prick of a hundred needles of awareness crawling over my nerve endings and then his hand is tangled in wet hair, and my arms are around his neck. His hands slide lower to grip my ass and he lifts me up a moment later. I wrap around him wet clinging clothes and soaked skin and my mouth moves against his while his breath mingles with mine and when he parts my lips with his tongue, swirls the heady unique taste of his mouth with mine I whimper…moan like I'm in pain at the hot wet caress but it isn't pain crashing through me.
It's the polar opposite of pain. It's shiny and sparkly and swirling low in my belly and humming along my veins and it makes me tighten my arms around his neck and drag my teeth over his bottom lip feeling the thick springy flesh give under my touch while something inside me purrs and he groans eyes slipping shut and my whole body starts to tingle and flush. It makes my head rush and my pulse race and my breath catch when he pulls away without warning. Both his hands suddenly framing my face, his eyes dark and rich in the little light there is between the blinding flashes of white.
I think for a moment he is going to lean into me again, and a whole body shiver rolls through me. But he drags in a ragged breath tilts his head back letting it hang there for a moment catching drops of water on his face. When he dips his chin again his head shakes the barest discernible movement so minute I'm not sure he's even aware he's made it. He shifts my body against his setting me down on the ground.
He keeps one hand on my arm steadying me on legs I'm not sure are that reliable right now as he bends over and picks up the gun he must have dropped. He slings the muddy grey strap over one shoulder and bends forward so he can scoop me up again, carrying me the way he did the first day.
I watch him in the flashes of light but his eyes are locked straight ahead. His jaw clenched tight enough to make the muscle in his face jump in the washes of light. He looks pissed. My stomach drops growing heavy, matching the lead weight sitting in my chest. Libby and Ethan are on the porch as we draw closer.
"Oh my god! Is she alright?!" Libby's hand is clapped to her mouth dark eyes wide most of her dark hair plastered against her face and neck from the wet wind.
"Inside." Bryn barks voice sharp like a whip.
He doesn't set me down until we're back inside the house. When he does set me down he is still not looking at me, ignoring the wet puddle mixed with mud we're both leaving on the hardwood floor.
"OhmyGod," Libby grabs my shoulders shaking me hard enough to rattle teeth. "CrazyTown! I said don't leave the porch!" Her eyes are wide orbs of brown so dark it's almost black in this light, her fright managing to make her normally tanned skin almost white only increasing the stark contrast.
"Charlie, go upstairs and put on something dry. Now, before you freeze to death." His tone is low and tight and makes Libby wince her eyes darting from my face to his.
"Come on," Libby says grabbing my arm.
"No." Bryn barks. "I'd like to have a word with you. In the kitchen."
"You can't go in the kitchen like that!" Libby starts voice higher pitched than normal, "You're already dripping all over the floor!" She blanches taking in Bryn's expression though a second latter and amends, "Alright, alright, this is me going…" she makes jogging motions with her arms speaking over her shoulder as she walks away her eyes wide as she stares at me. "Into the kitchen, to be flogged to death by an angry Bry!"
"Ethan, could you take Charlie upstairs?"
"Yeah, sure." I frown watching Bryn stalk after Libby, ignorant of the boot shaped puddles he's leaving on the floor.
He stops for a split second turning back to face us catching my gaze for the first time since the yard with narrowed intense eyes flashing fiercer then the still raging storm outside. "Try not to get naked in front of him." He growls then he stomps into the other room.
I turn to stare at Ethan who's watching me with calculating eyes. I flush wondering if he is looking at me like that because he knows what we did outside. I look away and shiver once more remembering the pressure of Bryn's lips firmly pressed to mine, the feel of his exhale brushing against my mouth. I shudder and wrap my arms around my waist. Ethan mistakes the sensations coursing up my spine breaking me out in gooseflesh for a reaction to the cold.
Which is a lot less embarrassing than the truth.
"Let's get you upstairs." Ethan places one hand against my lower back pushing me towards the staircase. He does not try to pick me up the way Bryn seems to do with any minute excuse. I find myself oddly grateful for that. I pad up the staircase ignoring the squeak under my bare feet.
"Bryn will not really hurt Libby will he?" It is not her fault I went into the yard.
Ethan scoffs shaking his head, "Bry? No, he's just going to chew her head off."
I pause in the hallway staring at him eyes wide imagining Bryn eating Libby's face the way one of the Others once devoured a soldier who got too close. Something in my expression must betray my revulsion at that memory because Ethan shakes his head suddenly raising his hands and waving them both furiously. "No, no, no; it's an expression. He's going to yell at her." Ethan tells me.
"But it is not her fault." I frown, turning to move back down the hallway. "He should be yelling at me."
Ethan's hand on my wrist stops me short. "Yeah, well I wouldn't be surprised if he does that too, but let's get you into some dry clothes first; otherwise he'll be yelling at me. And I don't need that kind of extra stress in my life. Have you met my sister?"
I stand torn between dry clothes and Libby being disciplined for something that was not her fault. The hard shiver; this time very much related to the cold cloth clinging to almost every inch of my skin that rolls through me rattling my teeth decides for me. And Ethan as well.
"Clothes, now." He ushers me back down the few feet of hallway and opens the door to my room watching me shiver again. "I don't think dry clothes are going to be enough." He says eyes narrowing. "Grab your dry clothes," he tells me starting to turn away before wiping back around finger pointed at me obviously remembering Bryn's words. "But don't take your current ones off yet! I'll be right back."
I still don't understand everyone on the outside's reaction to naked skin; until I think about the shivery liquid silver feeling curling in the pit of my stomach with Bryn's arms wrapped around my back and his hands sliding down to grip my ass. I bite my lip imagining how that would feel without clothes and my knees suddenly feel weak and even my insides tremble, and okay. Suddenly I'm not so sure I could handle being naked in front of Bryn anymore.
Ethan returns a moment later waving me back into the hall. The door to the bathroom is open and there's water hot enough to steam the room pouring into the tub where it stays because he's done something to the drain. "You know how to shut it off?" he asks me.
"I will not flood the house." I inform him aware of his suspicions.
"Great, I'm going to go save Libby; take your time. There's no rush Bry can simmer for hours."
I watch him leave down the hallway not sure exactly what that means. The muffled sound of a male voice snarling in the kitchen reaches my ears, but it's too low to make out individual words. The sudden thought of Bryn directing that same voice at me has my stomach plummeting to my toes and the rest of me scooting into the bathroom firmly closing the door between us.