Released (7 page)

“I can’t lose you Abby.” He put his hand on my good shoulder and I saw the fear in his eyes. I knew my brother loved me, but it was nice to see such brotherly love from him.

“I’m ok now. That was just a close cal.” I tried to reassure him.

“Wel, I don’t know how many close cals I can take.”

“Me neither,” Max added as he handed me a can of pineapples and a bottled water.

I took a seat against the guard rail and ate, while everyone else decided what we should do next. Taya and Carter seemed to be getting along nicely and I was starting to think she might have a crush on him.

“I think we should stay on I15 as planned. It is the most direct route,” Carter said.

“I agree with Carter,” Taya added a little too eagerly. Carter’s chest seemed to puff up a little at having someone agree with him, and I was sure he had no idea of Taya’s feelings.

“That wil take us right through Salt Lake City. That’s a highly populated area. You don’t think we should try to avoid it? Maybe there is another way around, how about this?” Max pointed to a place on the map.

“No that won’t work, it’s almost too isolated.” Carter explained. “If something were to go wrong, we would have no where to go. Besides I think its been proven that it doesn’t matter if the area is populated or not.”

“He has a point,” I added trying not to let my gaze linger on Max for too long. He was just so hot I couldn’t help myself. “So are we ready to go?”

“We need gas,” Taya announced while holding up a long hose for display.

“Not it!” I caled out quickly before downing the rest of my water.

“Don’t worry, Carter lost the bet already so he has to do it,” Taya said with a smile. She tossed him the hose without warning and Carter juggled it in his hands before catching it.

“Oh realy?” I looked over to Carter with my eyebrows raised and he just waived me off.

“Now are we ready to go?” he asked.

Taya saw my questioning look and answered it, “There is a street a few blocks down that have quite a few cars. We are going to head there and see what we can find. Do you want to stay here?” She asked, letting the question hang in there and flashing her eyes in Max’s direction quickly.

“Oh.” My cheeks started to blush realizing she was trying to give Max and me an opportunity to be alone. “No, I need to stretch my legs a bit. It’s not far, I’l go with you.”

“Then it's settled.” Carter grabbed our empty gas can, tossed it to Max and closed up the Bronco as we started to head down the street.

It was early afternoon and the sun was starting to warm things up. I felt naked without my shotgun, but I needed to let my shoulder heal and carrying that heavy gun wasn’t going to help any. Max had offered to carry it before we left when he saw me glance at it longingly. I declined when I saw he was already carrying a backpack of water bottles and the gas cans. Carter, of course, carried nothing but his book and the knife strapped to his leg, which I was fairly sure he had forgotten about.

“So why do you think this al happened?” Taya asked completely out of the blue, directing the question toward Carter.

“Huh? You asking me?” She nodded at him.

“Wel there are lots of theories realy. Some people believe God is punishing us, some believe they are aliens taking over our planet, some...”

“What do you believe?” Taya interrupted.

“Honestly I am not concerned about the how or why. I just want them gone.”

We al nodded silently at that. Trying to understand why this was happening or how, was just too much to fathom. Al our minds could realy think about was survival. Even if we did figure out why this was al happening, what could four smal town teenagers realy do about it? Either scenario had ominous outcomes for us.

We had to try four different cars before we found one with any gas left.

“Damn! That was a lot worse than I thought it would be.” Carter wiped his face with his sleeve after vomiting. He had nearly puked al over Taya’s sneakers, but she jumped out the way with a squeal.

“That house is realy creeping me out,” Max said as he screwed the top onto one of the gas cans.

“Which one? That blue one?” Carter questioned pointing to a smal one story house.

“Yeah, I could have sworn I saw someone peeking through the blinds,” Max said.

“What?” Taya’s mouth fel open in shock and she ducked behind Carter. He looked at her a bit confused and turned back toward the house. I thought her reaction was a little dramatic, but she was young.

“Should we go check it out?” Max asked.

“Don’t look at me. I don’t want anything to do with this.” I put my hands up in the air like I was surrendering and took a step back. I saw Max smirk at me as he set the gas cans by my feet.

“Ok then, you ladies stay here. We wil go check it out.” Max tried to sound galant, but I could tel he was half sincere and half trying to be a smartass.

“Here we go,” Taya said under her breath while she flopped into the empty driver’s seat of a nearby car. I watched her as she bit at her nails and wished I had brought my radio; it had been a while since I tried to hear if the transmission was playing and I was desperate to try it.

“Are there keys in that car Taya?”

“How should I know?”

“Wil you look please?” She roled her eyes and looked about the front seat.

“Nope, no keys. What the heck do you want keys for?” She asked keeping her eyes on Carter as he approached the house.

“Nothing, forget it.” I was starting to get tired and dug into the pack Max left on the street for a bottle of water. I chugged the warm water as I watched Carter and Max disappear into the front yard of the house.

We were in a typical rural neighborhood, but this house stood out like a sore thumb amongst the rest, even during a demon apocalypse.

The entire property was lined with a four foot high brick wal and appeared to stil be currently worked on, and the more I started to look, the more I realized that the cars were positioned in such a manner as to look like barricades. They were al placed closely together, and I guessed that was to prevent a demon hound from getting around them easily. This house was some sort of fortress of some sort. At the thought of the hounds I sniffed at the air, just to be sure there weren’t any nearby even though if there were we would have known already. Their overpowering stench was hard to miss.

“What do you think is taking them so long?” Taya asked sounding impatient. I noticed that she had given up biting her nails and reverted to pacing.

“You sure seem worked up. What’s the matter? They know what they are doing, even if it doesn’t seem like it.” I tried to make light of the situation and I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince Taya or myself. That was always Max’s tactic and it seemed to work for him most of the time.

“I just have a bad feeling. Don’t you? It’s too quiet. I can’t stand this waiting, I am going to go check on them.”

“What? No Taya, wait. Shit!” I knew I was going to have to go after her and I realy didn’t want to. She had already made it to the yard before I had even started to move. I could see her black-haired head moving around behind the brick wal.

“Are you insane? You can’t just go stomping around like that,” I said as I ran up near the entrance to the yard just a few feet from where Taya stood.

“Ssshh!” She snapped around and pointed along the side of the house. I jogged the few feet to her side and tried to see where she was pointing.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Right there.” She shook her first finger toward what she was pointing at. Along the back wal of the house, I could barely make out what looked like a sliver of a door. “It looks like an open door. They must have gone inside.”

Taya scurried ahead before I could protest and held the door open wider for me to see. A triumphant smile grew on her face as I approached. “See… I told you Abby.”

I bit my tongue when I wanted to snap at her and puled out my knife before entering the room ahead of her. There was no way I was going to let her lead the way if there was some sort of demon waiting inside to kil us. I could at least fight it off and maybe even kil it, I had already kiled one, but Taya wouldn’t stand a chance.

The room we entered was a standard laundry room, but the fresh scent of detergent alarmed me. A folded stack of towels was on top of the dryer.

“Someone is here,” Taya said sniffing the towels and sighing deeply.

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Voices. I think I hear voices. That sounds like Carter.” I rushed out of the laundry room and into a halway. I turned to the left toward what I thought were the sounds of Carter. Taya trailed behind me clinging to a towel.

When I reached the living room I was in complete shock. Carter and Max were seated in a gaudy flowery orange couch and standing in front of them was a very pissed off looking old man holding a rifle. I guessed he was in his late sixties, but his face was layered in wrinkles giving it a permanent scowl.

The sight of me seemed to have caught him off guard for a moment, but when he saw Taya come barreling in behind me with one of his towels in tow, his face became red.

“I thought you boys said you were alone?” His voice was deep and scruffy, like he’d spent too many years smoking.

“You little thieves were trying to pul a fast one on me weren’t ya?”

“We aren’t thieves!” Taya blurted.

“Oh realy? What is that you got in your hand then, kid? Is that towel yours? I suppose you were trying to sneak up behind me?” He said eyeing my knife.

“No.” I slid the knife back into my pant leg. “Listen, we were just worried about them when they didn’t come back, so we went looking for them that’s al.” I tried to inch my way closer to the couch and Taya folowed, stil clinging onto her stolen towel.

“No, you kids listen. You think you can sneak in here and steal from an old man! Isn’t the world in a bad enough state?”

“I didn’t mean to steal it.” Taya stepped closer to him, offering the towel. “It just smeled so good and clean. It just… just reminded me of my mom. That’s al.” I saw his face start to soften a bit and I knew this was our chance. I tried to telepathicaly tel Taya to keep it up; we needed this man to feel sorry for us. I knew it was hard for her to speak of her mother, but if that’s what would get us out of this mess then that is what had to be done.

“She used the same detergent,” Taya said sounding much like a little child. He looked down at the towel and then at her.

“You can keep it.”

Taya’s face instantly lit up and she hugged it like it was a teddy bear.

“Ah hel,” He said lowering his rifle and I saw Max and Carter start to relax. They each released a deep breath and I tried to curse them each out for being so stupid, hoping that they could read lips.

“What are you kids doing?”

“We are trying to get to New Mexico. We heard a transmission that there is a safe zone there.” Taya blurted out like she was teling someone she knew wel. I thought that I was going to have to yel at her too. We couldn’t go around teling every crazy person we found what we were doing. We didn’t even know this man.

“That transmission cut out weeks ago kid, what are you going there for?”

“There are stil people there,” Carter quickly corrected him. “They just don’t have the power to run the transmissions anymore. They are stil there.”

“You’re grasping at straws kid,” The old man said as he settled down in an arm chair. “Go ahead sit down you two, I ain’t gonna bite ya.” Taya and I sat on the couch with Carter and Max. Fear was starting to trickle through me, causing the hairs on my arms to stand on end. My biggest fear was exactly what this old man was saying. There was no one left in New Mexico. My urge to find a radio grew even stronger. Hearing the transmission was our only way to know for sure that we were making the right choice. That we hadn’t come al this way for nothing.

“How do you know that no one is there?” Max asked after looking at me and realizing the fear written plainly on my face.

“They ain’t playing the transmissions any more are they? Isn’t that proof enough for ya?”

“Obviously not,” Carter said with disdain. I knew he didn’t want to be wrong. That we had risked our lives to make this journey for nothing. He had promised us al that going there was our only way to stay safe, that it was the only way we would survive. It was because of his urging that we left home. I didn’t want to think of what Carter would do if he was wrong.

“Look, sir.”

“You can cal me Charlie.”

“Look Charlie,” I said. “We are just passing through. We didn’t mean you any harm. We can just leave and be out of your way.” I looked to the others and started to sit up. “Ya’l wanna stay for lunch?”

“Huh?”

“Listen, I haven’t seen much of anyone since… since, it happened. I’ve got plenty. Why don’t you stay and have lunch? Maybe I can talk some sense into you kids.”

At that, he rose from his seat and headed to his kitchen. We al looked at each other and everyone just shrugged. He seemed nice enough, now that we got things cleared up, and it would be crazy to turn down food.

Carter stayed on the couch with his arms crossed over his chest and Taya stayed with him making comments about the living room. She was particularly interested in a photo of a kid at a circus and went into a long discussion about how much she liked going to the circus, and how she hoped she would get to go to one again someday and maybe Carter could take her.

It was obvious none of this was sinking in, but he was nodding his head like he was listening so she just kept chattering away. I envied her ability to be so cheerful, but I guessed that was her defense mechanism. She had chosen to overlook the way things were and pretend everything was ok. I couldn’t blame her; she had been through some pretty rough things. Watching your mother get eaten by giant demon birds has to screw up a person’s head. I hadn’t had to witness my father’s passing, but the loss of him would haunt me every day the rest of my life.

“You kids like Spaghetti O’s?” Charlie asked holding up a giant can of it. We spent the next hour sitting around Charlie’s dining table talking and eating.