Released (5 page)

“Okay,” she said and looked out the window one more time before heading for the kitchen. I watched her walk and took notice of how dirty her clothes were. I made a mental note to offer her some clean clothes later. Her black hair hung in knotty, matted ringlets around her face and I could see her boney frame sticking out underneath her clothes. She caught me looking at her and I felt guilty for staring, but I truly did feel sorry for her.

“Alright Taya, why don’t you look in the bag over there and see what looks good.” When I heard her rummaging through the bag I began to open cabinets looking for anything that might be edible. In the end I found only some rice and a can of expired Campbel’s cream of mushroom soup, that I was hoping wouldn’t be too far past the expiration date.

“So… Taya, what were you doing out on that road al alone?”

“I wasn’t alone. I was with my mom, we were heading to New Mexico. We had heard over the radio that the military was there, so we were trying to go there.”

“What happened?” She froze for a moment while trying to open some canned chicken. I could tel she was struggling on whether or not to tel me. “It looks like you and your mom hit something in the road.”

“I don’t know what it was, ok? It was d-dark and I was sleeping while my Mom was driving.”

“How long were you stuck in that van?”

“Three days.”

“I’m sorry Taya. I’m sorry you had to go through that. We are headed to New Mexico too; you are welcome to come with us.” I put my arm over her shoulder and tried to comfort her.

“I wil take care of you.” I meant it too. “How long ago was it that you heard the transmission over the radio?” I tried not to sound too excited about my question. I was growing more and more obsessed with checking the radio as we made our journey, any tiny bit of transmission I could hear would give me the hope I needed.

I wanted so badly to know that there were stil people at the military base, that there were stil people who could help us, who could save us.

“I don’t know. It was a while ago.” She simply shrugged and didn’t look at me. I wanted to ask more questions, but I could tel how difficult it was for her.

We continued with dinner and I tried my best at making casual conversation. Taya told me about her life before. She was a freshman in high school and was excited about making the cheerleading team.

“Your nails are pretty,” she commented as we were setting the table.

“Thanks,” I said looking down at my bright red fingers. While she was sleeping in the Bronco I dug out my polish and against the protests of Carter and Max, I painted my nails. It was a ridiculous thing to do, but I needed to do something normal to take my mind of reality, anything to keep from thinking that the world was overrun with demons. At the time I had thought red would be a fitting color to represent al the demons we had kiled so far. As scary as it was, I was proud that we had managed to kil them, hopefuly it meant that, in some way, we had saved someone somewhere from being their victim.

“I have more colors in my bag if you want to try them later.” I adjusted the pitch in my voice in an attempt to sound light-hearted, hoping that maybe spending some girl-time with her would help her to feel more comfortable with us.

“That would be cool, but why did you bring them?”

“I don’t know. I guess I wanted to have something normal to do, ya know? They don’t take much room and I kinda have the habit of painting my nails like once a week. Or at least I use to.”

“Cool.”

The door then suddenly flew open sending a dead potted plant crashing to the ground causing both Taya and I to jump, nearly spiling dinner al over the dirty linoleum floor. Carter stomped in, his arms filed with wood, folowed by Max who was carrying two galons of paint and tons of sheets.

“Looks like you got what you were looking for,” I said smiling at them. I had been worried about them wandering around the camp alone, even if it did look safe to them. Sometimes a guy’s standard of what is safe is much different than a woman’s, and neither of them were ever described as being very perceptive. Who knows what could be hiding in some vacant cabin.

“Yeah. What smels so good?” Max asked sniffing the hair like a puppy.

“We made dinner,” Taya said a little hesitantly, but I could tel she had warmed up to us a bit. I decided to introduce everyone more formaly and after a couple handshakes we al sat down to eat. Our dinner concoction had turned out pretty good. It had been a while since any of us had eaten a real cooked meal.

Living back at the house with the guys, we rarely sat down together to eat and typicaly would each grab something to eat when we were hungry, eating alone in our rooms or somewhere else in the house. By the way Taya was eating, it was obvious it had been a while since she had eaten anything and I smiled at her wondering if she could even taste it.

Dinner was mostly quiet, Carter flipped through the pages of his book as he ate while Max and I stole glances at each other between bites. I thought about what he had told me in the Bronco and wished we were alone, so I could ask him about it. Did he realy think about asking me to Prom or was he just teasing me like he usualy did? It was so hard to tel sometimes. I must have drifted off into a daydream because when Carter spoke it almost startled me and I had to prevent myself from jumping in my seat too much.

“We can settle down for the night, but I want to get these windows painted before we try to turn any lights on or light any candles ok?” We al nodded at what Carter had said. Leaving the dishes on the table, Taya and I grabbed a galon of paint and got to work on the kitchen windows. There were only two so it didn’t take long. There weren’t enough paint brushes to go around, so I simply used my hand, dipping it in the can and then smearing it on the glass.

The paint was warm and thick as it dripped al over the floor.

The color of the paint was a dark green and I joked with Taya about what place in the camp they would want to paint such a hideous green. She added that it probably was the color of the boy’s bathrooms and we both laughed. It felt good to laugh and I thought to myself that it was nice to have another girl around.

After al the windows were painted over, we drew al the curtains on the windows that had them and pinned al the darkest sheets over the windows as wel, leaving the lighter or white sheets for ourselves to sleep in.

“Carter, what do you think we should do about the front door?” Max asked.

“Let’s carry that dresser from the bedroom over.”

“Good idea.”

The two men made a lot of noise moving the furniture to baracade the front door, but once they were finished and the cabin was as secure as we could get, we al started to feel a little safer. I know Taya and I both felt much better after we took turns taking the world’s shortest showers. It wasn’t much, but it did feel good.

After cleaning up, Taya and I curled up on one couch, sharing a warm wool blanket that was in a terrible yelow and orange plaid pattern. It was itchy and had a strange odor, but it was better than nothing. I had set out al the different color polishes I had brought and Taya was busily surveying the lot, trying to decide what color she wanted.

“So… Taya,” Max said, flopping down on the couch across from us. “I hear your going to go to New Mexico with us. I am glad you decided to stay. I could use another person to help keep brainiac…” he pointed over to Carter with his thumb, “and little miss troublemaker over here in line.” Taya giggled and I joined in when Max waggled his eyebrows at me. Once the laughter had subsided we al became quiet once again.

“My mother and I were on our way to New Mexico before… before you found me.” Taya didn’t look up when she spoke, but simply analyzed each bottle of polish like it was incredibly interesting. “We listened to the transmissions and when they stopped, we got scared. She preached that the prophecy of our destruction had begun. I thought she was crazy at first…” She was starting to struggle with her words, so I put a hand on her shoulder and she took a deep breath to calm herself.

“It’s ok. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I know how you feel, I lost my parents too and Abby and Carter lost their dad.” I felt my body stiffen when Max mentioned my father. That wound had not yet healed and it probably never would.

Taya nodded and began painting her fingers a very bright pink. I chose black again. It took me longer to finish than normal because I kept glancing up to watch Max by the smal fire he had built. He was holding his mother’s gold cross necklace in his hand while staring into the fire. He never spoke of what happened to his parents, but I knew that it was probably a subject I shouldn’t bring up.

I remembered the night he had shown up at our house. There was a huge rain storm and he must have been pounding on the front door for a long while before any of us heard him. When he finaly made it inside he was soaked to the bone. I watched from the stairs as my Dad and Carter spoke to Max, trying to comfort him.

He didn’t have to say much for us al to know what happened, the rain had not washed away al the blood on his clothes nor could it hide the tears and sorrow on his face. Never before had I seen a person look so completely broken and it hurt me to see him that way.

He must have felt my eyes on him because he looked up and quickly dropped the cross back into his pocket. I gave him a smal smile in comfort, which he returned before heading over to the dining table with Carter.

“What is he writing over there?” Taya whispered to me.

“Oh, Carter? He has this book that he likes to write everything in.”

“Like a journal?”

“Sort of. He writes down everything he learns about the demons, and then when we get to New Mexico we can show it to the military and maybe it wil help them.” She just nodded silently and after a long silence she added, “That’s a good idea. He’s realy smart.”

“Yeah… and it helps him too. Helps him deal with everything I think.”

“Did you see the size of that thing?” I overheard Max asking Carter and I wished he had said it a little more quietly. I knew instantly what he was talking about and I didn’t want him to cause Taya to be on edge again. She had already come so far in such a short amount of time. She was realy proving to be very strong for such a sensitive looking girl; most people would crack under such circumstances.

“Yeah, it was damn near the size of a frigging bear. Abby said Taya isn’t ready to talk about it yet, but obviously the thing is strong enough to flip a van.”

“True, but they must’ve hit it pretty hard cause it looked dead to me,” Max said.

“You’re probably right.”

I shot them both a look that shut them up quickly, but I knew Taya had heard them. She had paused for a moment and her breath trembled, but she held it together.

Taya and I decided that we should share the bedroom and the guys were happy with getting the couches. None of us had any pajamas so we just wore what we wanted and crawled into bed. I had given Taya a clean shirt to sleep in and she had quickly falen asleep almost as soon as she hit the pilow. It took me longer though. I was exhausted, but it seemed that as soon as I laid down, my mind just started to race with thoughts and I couldn’t relax.

I tossed and turned for hours and dreamt that Max and I had gone to Prom together, but a giant beast ran through the crowd causing complete panic. People were screaming and the sounds of the demon’s claws against the gymnasium floor made my skin crawl, like nails against a chalkboard.

I bolted up from sleep just when the demon was about to grab me and realized I was in the cabin. I looked over at Taya; she was twitching softly but stil asleep thankfuly. I tried my best to crawl gently out of bed, not wanting to disturb Taya. I crept down the halway to take a look at Carter and Max in the living room before I went to the bathroom. Carter was sprawled wildly with his mouth hanging open, luckily he wasn’t snoring. Carter could take down wals with the sound of his snores.

When I looked over into the other couch it was empty and I quickly searched for Max. Just as my heart started to thump in my chest I found him. He was slumped over in an arm chair near what remained of the fire. The embers glowed very faintly and I guessed the fire had gone out a while ago. I walked over to him and a sparkle on his hand caught my eye. His mother’s necklace was wrapped around his fingers and my heart broke for him. Having to see the pain of what Taya was going through, must have brought back his own painful memories. He kept them buried inside and that burden was obviously weighting heavy on his mind.

I puled the wool blanket I had used earlier off the couch and draped it over Max. I wanted to hug him, to kiss him, but I was too afraid. I had known him my whole life and always considered him like my second big brother, but there was something about him. There had always been something about him that made my heart beat harder whenever I saw him. I had always been hesitant to be the one to take that first step, and see if we could be something more.

I wanted there to be something more, but with the state of the world it made it much more difficult. I studied his strong features a moment longer before I turned to leave. His thick dark lashes cast shadows on his cheeks through the soft glow of the fire and I noticed that his lips, that I so longed to kiss, were slighted turned downward revealing the slightest hint of a frown. I realized at that moment how very much alike as wel as different we were. When he started to stir I quickly retreated, not wanting to get caught looking like I’d just been staring at him.

Heading back to bed from the bathroom I had thought I heard a scratching sound, but figured it was the last of the embers popping and disregarded it.

I crawled back into bed next to Taya and finaly fel into a deep sleep until I felt skinny fingers clenching my arm in a death grip, shaking me very hard.

“Abby. Abby wake up.”

I roled over sleepily not wanting to be rudely removed from the sleep I just finaly started to enjoy, then my eyes popped open. “Taya?”

“Abby you gotta wake up.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked as I grabbed a match to light a candle. The room faintly lit up in a orange glow and I saw Taya’s terrified face. She looked a tiny bit relieved when I finaly started to wake up even though I wasn’t very happy about it.