Through Glass: Episode Four (7 page)

“
Yeah, well… I guess it’s
good you aren’t fourteen. You were awfully grumpy.”

The playful look on Travis’s face
melted away as if I had slapped him, the dark brown of his eyes
growing dim. My stomach twisted at the look he was now giving me,
my head darting around wildly, dread that whatever Abran had sent
after us had already found us.

We were surrounded by nothing but the
darkness. Nothing except the dark grey of a shadow that moved as I
turned my head, as if it was escaping my sight. My muscles clenched
in fear as I watched it move, part of me relaxing at the thought
that Travis might have seen it as well, that I wasn’t losing my
mind. One look back at my brother’s bulky frame, though, and I
realized it was only me.

My heart pulsed once in fear before it
evaporated, the soft look in Travis’s eyes taking my fear
away.

“
I never did thank
you…”

“
Thank me?” I inquired,
suddenly confused at the change of pace the conversation had
taken.

Travis looked at me intently from
where he lay, his shaggy, brown hair falling over his eyes a bit.
The Nintendo blanket was not big enough to cover his hulking form,
or his booted feet that stuck out of the bottom. I wanted to laugh
at the image of him cowering under such a small piece of fabric,
but I couldn’t make the sound come. Not with the way he was looking
at me.

“
For what you said. Mom
didn’t even really notice, but you did.” Travis whispered, “What
you said… it made everything feel less hopeless. I kept that with
me even when I thought you were gone.”

Realization hit me like a battering
ram, the weight heavy against my chest as I ran over the events of
that day, the same as he had. So many times.

He had looked so sad as he walked
through the kitchen, his heart broken, his soul pierced. I knew I
had to say something – I couldn’t just let my little brother hurt
like that.

You have to make your own
decisions, no matter how hard they are. And sometimes they really,
really suck

They were such childish words at the
time. But somehow they had begun to mean more that that.

I wound my fingers around the blanket
as I pulled it to me, the memories flooding me and loosening the
fear that always lived inside.

“
You just looked so sad…” I
said, unsure of how else to explain.

“
Yeah.” Travis’s voice was
soft, the one word fading into the endless soothing crackle of the
fire. I lay still as I looked at him, looked into the eyes that had
lined my walls for all those years. Just like Jason’s and Tyler’s
and Richard’s. Just like everyone I had loved and had never gotten
a chance to say goodbye to, had never gotten a chance to hug and
tell them how much they had meant to me.

I couldn’t let that happen
again.

My brother sat right in front to me. A
brother I had thought I lost. A brother that I could very easily
lose again. I wouldn’t let that happen.

“
I’m sorry,” I whispered,
scared to let my voice get any louder, scared that I would lose my
momentum and not be able to say what I needed to say so
desperately.

“
Why?” Travis asked as he
turned his head toward me, his eyes moist and
glistening.

I sucked in breath as I looked at him,
knowing that I needed him to hear this, but suddenly I was very
scared and insecure about how he would react, what he would
say.

“
For never telling you all
how much I loved you, how much I loved everyone. I never really
noticed until you were all gone, until the house was quiet and
dark, how much I missed you all. How much you meant to
me.”

“
I love you, Alexis,” he
said, the tears falling down his face again, my own joining
them.

“
I love you, too,
Travis.”

“
I like that one better.”
My voice was low and deep as I spoke through the silence of the
world, careful not to let the sound get too loud and attract the
attention of the creatures I could still see moving through the
dark out of the corner of my eye. I was sure they were just lurking
in the shadows, right beside the army of assassins Abran had sent
after us.

“
Lex, someone obviously
held up in that house for a while. There’s not going to be anything
inside.”

I knew he was right of course. The
house I had focused on was intact, glass in the window panes, car
in the driveway, the door only slightly ajar. It might look like
the logical choice, but it was obvious someone had lived there
after the world had gone black and the Tar had taken over
everything.

It didn’t mean I thought Travis’s
choice was any better.

From the outside, this other place
looked as though it was haunted, like the abandoned homes you would
see on the edges of town. Old and forgotten. Shutters hung from the
empty window panes, torn curtains had been pulled through the
shards of glass where they sagged lifeless in the nonexistent
breeze.

I stood before the house, the silence
of the dark world drowned out by the gentle buzz of the light
Travis always held, and the one I had strapped to my backpack
before we left the department store sometime yesterday. I looked up
at the house, the winding pit of fear I always held in my stomach
tightening. I knew at once I didn’t want to go in.

I didn’t know if my desire to run away
from the home stemmed more from a childhood of scary stories told
around a campfire, or if it was just because a house this big
harbored its own dangers. I had only found sanctuary in a broken
house like this once before, and even then I had been lucky to make
it out alive.

The empty shells we were surrounded by
weren’t just houses; they were mazes of doors and hallways. At
least the other one still had windows—it still had the false sense
of security I had been raised to believe in and my mind still
craved. Even though I knew it was only the illusion of safety, I
wanted it.

Even though I knew better. Any safety
you could find was always shrouded in the fear of what could still
be on the other side of the door.

In a way the scary stories had come
true.

Travis walked past me and toward the
old door that hung awkwardly off its hinges, the ominous feeling
the house was giving me not seeming to affect him, even though his
shoulders seemed a little more tense than usual.

I grit my teeth as I watched him move
away, trailing after him as I followed the light, subconsciously
keeping myself out of the shadows.

The light cast over the bald dirt as
we walked across the yard, the wrought iron fence that was once a
grand decoration to the old house left twisted and strung through
the front yard as if someone had dragged it away in their attempt
to survive.

My hand gripped tighter against the
bright green gun I held as I walked closer to the door, my heart
thumping the closer we moved to the maze that we hoped would
include some food and possible shelter for the night.

I took one last glance back toward the
dark, destroyed world that surrounded us, and regretted it
immediately. The muscles in my back tensed and flexed as the same
grey shape I had seen before ran through the edge of the shadows
before disappearing into the night. My heart thudded wildly at
seeing it there. The pain of fear only growing as I followed Travis
into the house, needing to get away from what was haunting me while
knowing the dark world would grow closer once I moved beyond this
door.

Travis was right. No one had ever
tried to survive in this home. Everything was covered with dust so
thick that I couldn’t define the floor from the large piles of
trash that had washed up against the walls like waves. Everything
here was grey, the grey only deepened by the bright light that
Travis held.

The light shone over the peeling
wallpaper and fading paint of what had once been a very upscale
home. Plush furniture sat torn and ripped around a flat screen
television the size of a truck, the screen black as it reflected
our gaunt figures back at us, the bright red of my hair looking
alive before I defiantly looked away.

I walked past it quickly, not wanting
to see the haunted look and emaciated body that would stare right
back at me. I tightened my grip on the gun as we moved deeper into
the dark, distraught belly of the house. Each step we took sent
billows of thick grey dust into the air, leaving us walking into a
dense cloud of dirt and who knew what else.

I covered my face with the sleeve of
my leather jacket in an attempt to keep the dust out of my body as
well as to keep our presence silent. I didn’t know why, but
something about this house screamed danger, the ruins creeping up
my skin and screaming at me to be quiet, that this was a place
where I wouldn’t want to be found.

As we passed the once elegant kitchen,
my eyes scanned the ground for food even though I already knew
there wouldn’t be anything there. The Tar had taken all the food
from the obvious places; it was the non-obvious places like
department stores that we could raid.

It was probably a good thing we were
here for more than just food. We needed sleep, too.

I only took one glance at the granite
counter top that had been seared down the middle before continuing
on, my footsteps muffled by dust as we began to proceed down the
stairs into the dark belly of the massive building.

One step down the long tunnel and my
muscles tensed in erratic fear, my heart pounding as I looked past
the light Travis held and into the seemingly endless abyss we were
now to heading into. The claustrophobic cavern was hung with
cobwebs, the dust covered fingers stretching to the ground like the
ripped lace of an antique gown. They drooped and sagged as we moved
through them, our movements sending them from where they had
perched for the last eight years to drape over us, covering us in
the same layers of dust that we walked on.

I tried to swallow, to loosen the
tight pit that seemed to have worked its way into me, but it wasn’t
working. My blood only seemed to undulate with a fearful awareness
as I looked down the staircase.

I wanted to leave, to find someplace
new, but I knew that we couldn’t. We had been walking for fourteen
hours straight; we needed to find a place to sleep, and after
searching this neighborhood for the past few hours, this seemed to
be our only viable option.

I would just have to suck it
up.

“
There is a step missing
here,” Travis said, his voice low and rumbly in an attempt to be
quiet.

“
I think a missing step is
the least of my worries.” My voice was a growl, but I didn’t try to
restrain it.

I could barely see through the curtain
of cobwebs that now covered me anyway. I continually pulled them
off, but I would remove some only to have twice as many fall over
me again. I stepped down as I wiped the screen of filth from me,
only to have my foot fall through the same gaping hole I had just
been warned of.

My heart fell through my stomach as I
plunged through air, a gasp of surprise escaping my lips. I fought
the scream as I futilely reached for something to hold onto only to
have Travis’s arm wrap around me, the cold metal of his gun
pressing against my cheek as he tried to stifle the noise that was
building in my chest. I winced at the cold, my muscles knitting
together tighter as I watched his thumb lift, pulling back the
hammer of the gun with a soft click as he armed it.

His wide eyes met mine as he held me
against him, his ear trained for the same thing mine
were.

A scream, a noise, anything that would
signify that they had heard us.

We had first seen the signs of the
black team Bridget had warned us of about mid day, a path of dusty
footprints that had cut through a store we had been scavenging
through. At first, I just thought they were signs of other
survivors, of perhaps people that could help us, but something in
the perfectly arranged dust set Travis on guard.

Our only saving grace had been that
they seemed to be heading in the opposite direction from us. We
could use that to our advantage, or so Travis had said. But only if
we stayed undetected, which meant remaining silent and virtually
invisible in the darkness.

I didn’t dare breathe as Travis held
me against him, his eyes continually darting as he searched for a
shadow in the dark. I could only look straight ahead, my eyes
piercing through the black we had just come from, the filthy
cobwebs that swayed through the pitch.

My ears were filled with the deep
thunder of my heart as we waited for noise, a noise that never came
through the void. Travis released me as he took one last glance
through the dark, only stopping to give me a stern look that should
be unacceptable to receive from a brother that was technically
younger than you.

“
You need to be careful,”
Travis grumbled as he un-cocked his gun, his movement quick as the
green metal flashed in the light.

“
I
am
careful, when not draped in a
wedding veil of dead spiders and their webs.”