Dark Paths: Apocalypse Riders
Read Dark Paths: Apocalypse Riders Online
Authors: Britten Thorne
Copyright 2014 Britten Thorne
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, places, events, or locales, is purely coincidental.
Warning: contains adult content
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They clasped their hands and bowed their heads. The long dining table was lit by candles, the dim orange light flickering with the faint breeze that drifted in through the boarded up windows. There were nine at the table - four down one side, four down the other, and the minister himself sat at the head and lead the prayer.
She peeked at him now as they sat in silence, waiting for him to feel the moment was right while their food grew cool in front of them. Lia always jumped when his booming voice began to speak.
“Bless us, oh Lord, my children and myself and the food we are about to eat.”
They called him Father, like a priest, a spiritual leader. All of their real fathers were dead.
“Bless our loved ones who have passed. We pray for their souls.”
There were a disproportionate number of young girls at Father Speer’s table. His son sat at his right side. Mikey. A younger version of the broader older man, both had the same thick black hair, the same disapproving brown eyes. The rest were his adopted family, his people that he’d taken in and sheltered.
“Bless those living who look to you now, who live virtuous lives during these trying times.”
Lia had kissed Mikey once, behind the barn at sunrise. Both still bore the scars of their punishments. They hardly even looked at each other anymore.
“Shelter us from the living corpses. Shelter us from evil men. Protect this farm, that we may continue our good works for you.”
Good works like turning away travelers? Good works like pointing guns at trespassers?
Lia wrung her hands.
Good works like protecting each other, taking care of each other.
It was important to focus on the positive. She always tried her hardest to do so, though it grew harder every day.
"Keep my son strong and my flock of young ladies virtuous, that they may praise your name with pure hearts through these, the end of days. Amen."
"Amen," they all replied. Lia poked at her plate - a formless mound of meat and beans. Probably dog food.
Better than starving.
She ate without tasting anything. There was no conversation over dinner - just the metallic clinks of forks on plates. Father Speer's calculating eyes roamed over each of the girls as they ate. His little parish. His flock.
"Mikey and I are going foraging again tomorrow," he announced once his plate was empty. "We'll be back before dark." Lia's eyes flickered to the minister and back to her plate. "Something you'd like to say?" he asked, one thick eyebrow raised.
"No," Lia said softly.
Just that you went out only two days ago. Just that this must mean our stores are really low. You have seven other able-bodied people who could help out there.
He wouldn't want to hear it. The girls didn't go further than the perimeter of the farm. Not because of the dead - he'd taught each and every one of them how to deal with the corpses - with guns, with knives, with blunt objects. He wanted to keep them away from the living. To "protect their purity." "Unclean women" were turned away from the farm almost as quickly as any wandering men. Only one type of woman was allowed on his farm.
Virgins.
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Lia lived with eight other people but was starved for human touch. Father Speer allowed none but what he allotted out himself. Her kiss with Mikey behind the barn had lit a spark in her belly - a glowing ember that wouldn't die, despite the incident being weeks ago. But she didn't have the freedom even to soothe herself.
"Harlot!" Father Speer's bellow was followed by a light pair of feet running down the stairs. Lia slept in the corner of the living room, as the third upstairs bedroom was full. Two other girls slept in the other corners and they stirred at the sounds as well. The room was cramped between their mattresses, the coffee table, the couch, and the separate chests for each of the girls’ belongings, but it made it easy for her to remain unseen if she kept her head down.
She had full view of the foyer as Emily descended, tears trailing down her pale cheeks. A ball of dread formed in her stomach. She sat frozen, not daring to draw any attention to herself.
Father Speer stamped down after the raven-haired girl. "The devil is in you, Emily. I've always seem him there."
"No!" She crashed into the front door, only briefly holding the knob in a trembling hand before sinking to the floor. "No."
"You would defile the temple that God gave you? It isn't yours to spoil!" She sobbed, once. "Your breasts are instruments of lust and sin, not tools for your depraved pleasures. Stand up!"
Caught touching herself. Likely totally innocent, too.
"Please," she begged, "They only ached, it's just-"
"The devil's work," he finished for her. "Rise."
Poor Emily stood, her knees trembling. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
Father Speer regarded her tearful face for a long moment. "You will be forgiven. But you must atone, first. You must be purified. Tomorrow night."
"Yes, Father," Emily said, her voice wavering somewhere between relief and fear.
Father Speer guided the girl back up the stairs. Lia released the breath she was holding and sank back onto her mattress. Purification. Punishment. It was just part of their routine, part of their ritual. They'd all been through it, some many times. Better to go through it than to witness it. Nothing turned Lia's stomach more than seeing someone else in pain, no matter how "good for the soul" it was.
Try harder not to cry this time.
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Lia avoided speaking to Emily the next day - all the girls did. They went through their routine of cleaning house and tending their failing garden and repairing and washing clothes in relative silence while the minister and his son were away, searching for food and supplies.
There'll be nothing left anywhere, eventually. We've got to get this damn garden working.
She looked down at the withered tomato plants and sighed.
I wish I knew what I was doing.
The garden was mainly her responsibility but no one blamed her for its failing. “You’ll get it eventually,” Father Speer told her when she tearfully admitting that all her plants were sad and weak little things, producing no food worth speaking of. “The rest of us know as little as you, and we know you wouldn’t deliberately fail. We know you’re trying. You’re a smart girl, Lia.”
He’d returned with books after one of his trips. Illustrated guides to vegetable gardens, as simple as could be. Her garden grew a little better after that, but never as well as in the pictures. And sometimes the plants still died.
This is a farm and we keep failing at growing things. We must be under a curse. This place is haunted, why not hexed as well?
The afternoon meal was ready when Father Speer returned on foot, Mikey trailing behind. “Did something happen to the van?” Lia asked him softly as he stood over her shoulder, watching her pulling weeds from the ground around the garden. The girls had expected them to be gone until late at night.
“Flat tire,” the minister said. “It can be fixed. Don’t you worry.”
“Yes, Father.” He rested his hand on her head before continuing on to the house and entering through the creaky-hinged back door. She watched him go, following only a moment later; she suspected it wasn’t a flat tire at all. He just wanted to rush home to dole out Emily’s punishment before sunset.
To make one of us do it.
Probably Lia herself. She was the last one who’d been on the receiving end.
Lunch was a much more informal affair than the evening meal. Some of the girls grabbed their bowls and retreated to other areas of the house or back outside. Father Speer himself ate standing at the kitchen counter, watching everyone moving about with glazed eyes. His mind was elsewhere; Lia darted in and out of the kitchen before it could return.
Maybe he’ll wait until later after all.
Emily wisely chose to skip lunch for the moment, making herself scarce where he might notice her and remember.
But it was foolish to imagine that he would forget. “Lia,” he called out to into the yard, “Fetch Emily.”
Her heart sank. She hated this. But she obeyed - she found Emily hiding behind the barn, pretending to pull weeds but really just watching her back and waiting for Father Speer to leave. Wordlessly, Lia gestured. Emily blanched but she stood and followed her inside the barn, where Father Speer and the other girls waited. Mikey was nowhere to be seen - he was never invited to their punishments. A small mercy.
Father Speer held a long, stiff whip in his hand. It had once been used for dressage, teaching horses how to trot and leap and put on a show. Now it was used to train the girls. “Purification,” Father Speer called it. But Lia couldn’t believe that violence cleansed the soul.
She was no longer certain she believed in souls at all. Though she would never tell the minister that. He would never forgive her.
“Emily,” he said, his voice carrying through the dark space. The girls stood behind him as Emily got into position against the wall in front of him, placing her arms and her cheek against the rough wooden wall. They’d all been there at one point or another. They all felt her pain. “Tell the girls your sins, Emily, so that others may learn from them.”
“I touched myself in a sinful manner,” she said, her voice cracking.