This Would Be Paradise (Book 2) (29 page)

John got up and tossed out his empty paper plate. “Let’s go.” He pointed to Sheri. “You too, missy.”

“Okay,” she grumbled. “Let me find Crystal first.”

Sheri wheeled away slowly. She kind of veered off to the side before getting her bearings. Perhaps one of us should have offered to help. Crystal was chatting with one of the guards who’d been on rotation, and Sheri grabbed a handful of her shirt at waist level; it was all she could reach. Crystal said a few more words to the guard before pushing Sheri back to us.

“Some nurse I am,” Crystal said when they met us at the door.

Together, we carried the wheelchair, with Sheri in it, down the steps, then I helped a stumbling Colin down. He almost took me down, when he leaned his entire six-foot frame against me.

“John!” I yelled as Colin and I toppled toward the ground.

John grabbed the falling tree trunk that was a drunk Colin. “I got ‘im.”

“Thanks John Wayne. Where’s your horse?”

“I’m gonna ignore that ‘cause your drunk,” John said.

We must have looked like quite the group, walking down the cul-de-sac at night with one gangly, drunken teen and a girl in a wheelchair. Thanks to the solar lights plunked along the sidewalks, we could sort of see where we were going.

“Hey, you guys see that?” Sheri yanked me to a stop.

“What?”

“Something’s moving behind those bushes.” She pointed to the tall shrubs across the street. It was hard to tell if they were moving with just the streetlights though.

I started toward it, when John hissed, “What’re you doin’? You have your weapon on you?”

I wasn’t sure how weddings worked here in the South, but I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to be armed at them. I shook my head.

“Grab mine.” John jerked his head. Looked like he didn’t obey the Hargrove’s rules of signing in weapons either.

He produced a handgun from his waistband before hoisting Colin upright; he’d begun to slip off his shoulders.

“Let me set down the kid, and I’ll back you up.”

“If it was an infected, it probably would have stumbled out by now.”

I ignored John’s protests and hurried across the street, with his gun in hand. I flipped off the safety and held the slide as I pushed the gun handle forward to chamber a round. Maybe one of the chickens had escaped again, or more than likely, a drunken villager had fallen over, but there was no harm in being cautious.

I approached the hedges and peered over them, squinting through the shadows. I dropped my arms, the gun forgotten at my side. My heart lurched as my brain recognized the matted blond hair on the ground. I staggered forward, ignoring the prickly bush scraping at my arms.

No, please no.

My mouth gaped open. Someone was kneeling over a very
dead
Darren, their arms pumping back and forth as if they were sawing plywood. They stilled when they realized I was there, then whirled around, the knife in their hand ready to go.

Byron. He was covered in so much blood that it looked like he’d rolled around in it. A menacing mask of red was sprayed across his face. I raised the gun just as he stalked toward me.

“Don’t fucking move!” I yelled, the gun aimed right between his eyes.

He stilled, his eyes boring into mine. “Now come, cher. I can explain dis.”

The dim streetlight reflected off the bloodstained knife clutched in his guilty hand.

“Bailey!” John barreled through the bushes behind me. “What the—ho-ly shit.”

John was a smart man. He put two and two together pretty quickly. “You’re the asshole goin’ ‘round killin’ when we got enough shit to worry ‘bout!”

“Dis looks pretty bad, I’ll say dat,” Byron said.

My eyes slipped back to Darren’s lifeless corpse. His head was barely attached, his mouth hanging open in a silent scream. Byron must have been trying to decapitate him. Poor, poor Darren.
My friend is dead.

Apocalypse or not, that was a brutal way to go. This was worse than finding Reina’s cut up body; I hadn’t known her, but I knew Darren. Not two hours ago he’d been at the party. Now he was dead—at the hands of this psycho.

I took a small step forward and jerked the gun, ready to pull the trigger, my finger no longer ruled by my brain. What was going to happen to Zoe? This would destroy her. I had to avenge my friend. Darren would have wanted that.

“No, Bailey! It’s not your place to punish ‘im. We’ll decide as a group what to do,” John said, a few steps behind me.

The gun vibrated in my hand, demanding its pound of flesh. An eye for an eye and all that. John didn’t move to stop me. He wasn’t trying to restrain me. He was telling me it was my choice. But neither choice—kill Byron or leave him at the mercy of the community—would leave me fulfilled. Who was I to play executioner? I’d done it before and all it had left me with were nightmares and guilt. Killing Byron would make me no better than him in the end.

“Drop the knife,” I demanded.

Byron cocked his head as if testing the waters. I didn’t have to kill him, but I could make him suffer. I aimed lower, and before he could move, I shot his leg above the kneecap. He screamed in agony and dropped to the ground. John burst into action and kicked the murder weapon away. He rolled Byron onto his stomach and gathered his hands. John looked up at me and nodded.

He was glad I hadn’t killed Byron. What John didn’t know was how badly I’d
wanted
to.

Alerted by the gunshot within the walls, two of the guards ran up to us and stopped in their tracks when they spotted Darren’s corpse.

“What’s going on?” the taller one asked.

“We caught the killer,” John said, still holding down Byron underneath him.

I walked over to where Darren was lying and kneeled down.

“Rest in peace, friend.” I closed his eyes for good.

All the mirth from yesterday’s festivities had been long forgotten as people rallied for justice. Civil unrest ruled in Hargrove as the villagers finally smartened up. Too bad it had taken the death of one of my companions to get them there.

It was early, the sun having risen a couple hours ago. None of us who’d witnessed the atrocity had gotten any sleep. Everyone else was hung over and tired. Not the best time for a trial. Well, “trial” maybe wasn’t the right word; it was more like a democratic vote. Wyatt had been forced to take action in the face of the evidence. Byron was the killer, and Wyatt couldn’t sweep it under the rug this time. Everyone had gathered to decide what to do and came up with the idea to vote on the murderer’s fate: death or exile.

Witnessing the killer in action could have ended like the situation at the apartments with the angry mob, but these people were more organized. Everyone over eighteen had been given a paper to cast their vote, and a group of randomly selected villagers were tallying the votes in front of the crowd. If the majority voted for death, then the issue would become who would carry out the execution. Unbeknownst to them, I’d turned down the role of executioner earlier this morning.

Byron hadn’t said a word in his defense since I’d caught him. He didn’t even deny being the killer. His plan must have been to kill Darren while everyone was preoccupied with the wedding party, assuming we’d be too drunk to notice him in the shadows. As he had been since his capture, Byron was sitting in a condo, under the constant supervision of a guard, awaiting the decision.

Zoe was … not doing well. She’d demanded to see the body, even after we’d tried to talk her out of it. She’d been almost catatonic since. I kept thinking back to yesterday. I’d spent most of the day with Darren, then suddenly, he wasn’t here anymore. He was really gone.

His body had been moved by Oscar and the guards to the clinic, where they’d prepare him for his funeral this evening. I’d watched as the last evidence of Byron’s horrendous crime was washed into the sewer grates, the grass and pavement hosed down until they no longer ran red. Wyatt’s announcement that the votes had been tallied drew me out of my sad recollection.

“Folks, we have a decision. It was close, but the majority voted for exile.”

The crowd erupted, some yelling about how killing Byron was more just, while others were glad their choice had won. John stood beside me, his approval of the town’s decision evident in his face. I’d honestly been torn while filling out my “ballot.”
If we merely shoved Byron out the front gate, what was to stop him from coming back and killing us all? Wyatt could sneak Byron back in. I knew John would have been disappointed, but I’d voted for death; I just didn’t want to be the person who pulled the trigger. Cowardly, I know. 

“You’re the one who found ‘im?” The groom from last night stood next to me. This probably wasn’t what he’d had in mind for a honeymoon.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“I’m sorry ‘bout your friend. For what it’s worth, I knew Darren wasn’t the killer,” he said softly.

I turned to face him fully. “What do you mean?”

John leaned in, our conversation catching his ear.

The groom looked around, then whispered, “There were other murders before Darren arrived. Wyatt told us if we wanted to stay in Hargrove, we had to keep it to ourselves. He said he was takin’ care of it.”

“And that didn’t set off any alarm bells in your head?” I scoffed. Just when my opinion of these people was improving, he tells me that.

“Of course it did, but we kept quiet so we could stay here.” He leaned in closer to me. “There’s goin’ to be a meetin’ later tonight ‘bout gettin’ rid of Wyatt as the leader.”

I raised a brow. “You’re talking about a coup?”

“Not like we’re goin’ to raid his place and drag him out into the street or nothin’, but he and his associates need to step down.”

“Where and when?” John interjected.

“Right after Darren’s funeral, in unit number eleven.”

He distanced himself from us as Wyatt addressed the rowdy crowd again. In light of the situation surrounding Darren’s death, there wouldn’t be a party—like the one after Reina’s funeral—once Darren was buried.

John and I shared a look; we’d be attending that meeting. I’d have to tell Roy, who was currently babysitting with Colin because most of the adults were here. Colin hadn’t volunteered for the job, but his nasty hangover was keeping him housebound.

Someone from the crowd scurried off to fetch Byron.

“He won’t be getting extra supplies, will he?” an enraged villager yelled from the front of the group, and the question was met with a resounding murmur of agreement.

Wyatt didn’t look pleased. “Surely we can spare a water bottle and some food.”

“But that’s it. No weapons. The murderer doesn’t deserve it,” another added.

I agreed. If it were up to me, he’d be thrown out of the gate, naked, without so much as a granola bar. Wyatt would undoubtedly sneak something extra for Byron; he was his crony after all.

Wyatt was obviously frustrated with this new democratic decision-making process; he was used to acting as the sole judge and jury of this place. He wasn’t his animated self. He only moved to crack his knuckles when more people spoke up against him. Perhaps Wyatt sensed the end of his reign was near.

The guards brought Byron out, and they were met with a chorus of boos. Someone even threw a shoe. It landed a good couple of feet in front of them, but the message was clear: Get out. They walked him to the gate, the rest of us trailing behind like a lynch mob.

A guard handed Byron a small plastic bag with enough water and food to barely last a day. The guards cracked open the gate before untying his restraints.

“Any last words?”

Odd thing to ask a person getting exiled. Wyatt didn’t offer anything to Byron: no goodbye, no handshake. He didn’t want to further tarnish his reputation.

Byron didn’t answer. He simply limped through the opening in the gate as if he were taking a stroll. The guards quickly shut it behind him.

“He’ll be dead within the hour,” the groom said.

Later, Darren’s funeral was sparsely attended. The small number of people that showed up was insulting, actually. I had to fight the urge to go bang on everyone’s doors, demanding they show their respects to the man they’d had no qualms about pointing a finger at. Darren may not have been here as long as the others, but he’d contributed. He’d gone on supply runs that had kept them fed.

I placed a hand on Zoe’s shoulder, but she didn’t even look up from the coffin lying in the ground. She was beyond crying at this point. Her face was swollen from the tears she’d shed. There was no way she’d slept a wink since Darren had left her last night to go cool off after his fight with Byron. I let my hand fall back beside me as I looked around. All of our friends were standing front and center. Even Colin had managed to drag his hung over butt off the couch to attend.

If someone who’d only known Darren for a day could pay his respects, then the other villagers could have damn well shown up too. I took a few deep breaths. I was tired and needed something to focus my rage on; I’d be bringing up this slight at the meeting later. I turned to Zoe as they started to fill the grave and watched her wince every time dirt hit the pinewood coffin.

Under the guise of the night sky, John, Roy, and I snuck out to the meeting. Zoe was still in shock from the funeral. It probably was a good thing she hadn’t come to Byron’s farewell, seeing how he’d gotten off too easy for his crimes. Ethan hadn’t gone to the exile show either, but I wasn’t sure why. He’d been rather quiet since Darren’s death. While Ethan watched the two girls, John had snuck over to my condo. Colin had been sleeping, so he was out.

We stood in the crowded living room, the groom—Henry, as he’d finally introduced himself—greeting everyone. So many people had shown up that there was no room to sit. Sheri and Crystal waved from their spot on the other side of the room.

“When’s this meetin’ goin’ to start?” an impatient villager asked.

“Just a few more minutes to see who else trickles in,” Henry said.

Another ten minutes passed as people chatted, and just as Henry was about to start, the front door cracked open.

“Got room for one more?” a serious-faced Ethan asked.

I was sure there wasn’t a more surprised face than my own. Everyone knew him as one of Wyatt’s associates, even though he was a recent addition to Hargrove. People whispered amongst themselves as he made his way to us.

“You were right ‘bout this place,” he told me. “We need to do somethin’.”