The Reaping (40 page)

There was nothing I could do about that now, though, so I scanned our surroundings, looking for a place to take my mother—a
safe
place.  But there was nothing around for miles it seemed, nothing but the house, the field and the dense forest on every side.

“Come on,” I said, pulling her along behind me.  We ran toward the black house.  I had no idea what I thought we might do once we got there, but it appeared to be the only viable option for shelter and safety. 

It wasn’t that far, which was good, but that also meant that it didn’t give me much time to think before the dead reached us. 

We climbed the steps and stopped on the stoop.  I looked down at the doorknob, knowing what was coming if I touched it.  But what choice did I have? 

Gritting my teeth, I curled my fingers around the silver knob.  And, as I expected, the pain arrived almost instantaneously.  Gasping, I bit my lip to keep from crying out and, just like before, I was temporarily immobilized by agony. 

Focusing on my fingers, I waited for the worst of it to pass so I could grip and twist the doorknob and get my mother to safety. 

And then I heard her scream.

Fighting against the pain, I was able to turn my head just enough to see what she’d screamed about.  It was the dead.  They were all around us, many even up on the steps.  They were grabbing and snapping at my mother.  She had flattened herself against the door as much as possible, but they were quickly closing in on us.

I called my reluctant muscles into action, using every ounce of strength I could summon.  I tightened my grip on the doorknob and twisted.  Inch by excruciating inch, it turned and, as it released, I all but fell through the door.  Just like last time.

Landing on my back knocked the breath out of me, but other than that, I was feeling much better.  The pain was subsiding much more quickly than it had the previous time.  Gingerly, I turned my head and looked around.  My mother was neither to my left or my right. 

I pushed myself into a sitting position and, through the invisible barrier that covered the doorway, I saw my mother’s back pressed up against it.  She was trapped outside.

“No!”  I screamed, finding my feet and launching myself toward the door.  I grabbed my mother by the shoulders and tried to pull her through into the house, but I couldn’t so I walked back through the doorway and tried to
push
her inside.  That didn’t work either; it was like trying to stuff a doll through the cracks in a brick wall. 

I turned my back to her, pressing my body against hers, effectively shielding her from all the hungry mouths and greedy hands that were reaching for us.  I kicked at them, forgetting that it was useless, like raising my leg into thin air.

My mother squealed at my back, jerking her leg away from something.  I looked down and saw that several staggering dead had found their way around to the sides of the steps where they could just reach our feet with their greedy fingers. 

Time was running out.  I had to act quickly. 

My father’s words,
you’re truly a light in the darkness
, mingled with something Derek had said about my skin and melted into understanding. 

Looking down at my arm, I pushed my sleeve up and dug my fingernails into the tender flesh of my wrist, exposing the pearly white layer beneath.  Immediately, I could feel something crackle in the air around me, a power I’d not felt before. 

Just then, a woman I’d seen previously, the nearly-beheaded one, lunged at me, bearing her blunt teeth as if she intended to take a bite.  I raised my bent arm and slammed my elbow into her face, knocking her backward into the throng.  I wondered briefly if I’d detached her head, but when she stood back up, it was still in place atop her shoulders.

Blood was in the water, though (or, in this case, in the air).  My actions seemed to enrage and innervate the dead.  They became frantic and desperate, more so than usual.  I kicked and punched, clearing out a spot from which to defend us. 

When I looked out at the sea of bodies in front of me, it seemed to be ever-growing, like they were multiplying right before my eyes, sprouting from the ground or crawling out of the trees.  Seeing them begin to close in on us again so quickly, I realized that I couldn’t fight them all.  We wouldn’t stand a chance.  I needed something…bigger.

I was afraid to close my eyes, but I knew that if my plan was to be successful, I needed to focus.  I scanned the mangled faces on the steps then quickly closed my eyes.  I brought the faces to mind, one by one, and then pictured them all on fire.

The screams were muffled at first.  Then they became loud wails of agony.  I opened my eyes and watched as the torn and broken bodies of the dead stumbled down the steps and into the yard, flailing blindly, their voices crying out from among the flames. 

Satisfied, I pictured the crowd to the left of us next, the ones on the ground that were reaching for our feet.  In seconds, they were on fire as well.  I repeated the process with another section of the group, then another.  It seemed I’d dispatched hundreds of the dead, but each time I looked out there was more rather than less.

Trying to get ahead of the endless ocean of snapping teeth, I shook the earth and opened up a huge crack that swallowed dozens and dozens of the unsuspecting dead, catching them unawares. 

That worked so well, I was deciding where else I could put such a crevasse when it began to sprinkle.  Faster and faster, fat drops flew past my face, rising from the ground in a torrential rain that quickly extinguished the writhing, burning bodies scattered about the yard.  I watched, mouth agape, as many began to make their way to their feet.

Looking wildly around for the location of my next chasm, I stopped when I saw bodies floating to the surface in the one I’d just created.  The upside down rain was flooding the gorge, pushing the dead up and spitting them out onto the wet ground, where they quickly found their legs and started toward us once more.  My confidence faltered, quickly succumbing to the panic that was blossoming in my gut.

Then I saw Grey. 

She came strolling out of the woods, as carefree as if it were a sunny afternoon in the country.  She stopped at the edge of the horde and smiled.

“Not so easy when you have a capable opponent, huh, Sis?”

A wind arose so quickly, so strongly, it almost knocked me off the porch.  I was nearly horizontal as I held on to the door frame.  My mother seemed unaffected by it.  It was as if I alone was in a wind tunnel.

I turned my face away from the wind and tucked it into my arm.  I opened my eyes just a crack and saw my mother.  A frown came over her face then a look of surprise as she fanned her hand in front of her face.  As I watched, her eyes grew round and her mouth opened up as if she was taking a deep breath.  Only she didn’t.  Her chest didn’t rise at all.  She started shaking her head and squeezed her eyes shut.  When she opened them again, they were watering and her face was turning red.  Engorged in her strain, the veins in her neck and forehead stood out as she began to claw desperately at her throat.  Her mouth opened and closed several times like she was trying to speak or breathe, but nothing was happening.  That’s when I realized she was suffocating.

I looked back at Grey, her focus concentrated on our mother.  “What are you doing?”

She didn’t even glance my way, her empty gaze never wavering from Mom.  “Showing Mommy Dearest how it feels to live inside a vacuum,” she sneered, then dropped her voice to a loud whisper and cupped one hand around her mouth like she was telling me a secret.  “Here’s a hint:  there’s no air in a vacuum.”

In the blink of an eye, the wind died completely and I came crashing down on the hard stoop, face down.  I scrambled to my feet and rushed to Mom’s side.  Her eyes were bulging and tears streamed down her bluish red face.  Her tongue was protruding grotesquely as she tried to take in a gulp of air, but found none.

“Stop it!  Stop it!”  I shouted over my shoulder to Grey.  Her bark of laughter drifted to my ears followed by a mocking, “Stop it, stop it.”

As I watched my mother suffocating and could hear the dead scrambling toward us once more, panic rose inside me and a thousand things drifted through my mind in an instant. 

I thought of the years with my mother I had missed out on.  I thought of the past months I’d spent nearly hating her.  I thought of what she’d done to save me and my sister and how much she’d suffered because of that choice.

I thought of my father.  How he’d taken care of me all my life, of how he’d shown me the meaning of commitment and sacrifice.  I thought of how he’d taught me to survive and not to be a quitter.  In the end, he’d traded himself for me, too.

Then I thought of Derek.  A mixture of complex emotions flooded my heart and mind.  I didn’t know how much of our relationship, if any, had been real, though I desperately wanted to believe that it was.  It felt real to me, still did, and maybe right now that was enough.

I knew that I’d never see any of them again.  If I killed Grey to save my mother, I’d be condemning Dad and Derek to eternity in the Darkness.  Yet, I couldn’t stand idly by and watch my mother die right before my eyes.  The only choice I had was to try and make another deal.

I called out to Fahl.  I knew he would be nearby, watching.

“I’ll give you my life for hers.  No one has to take it.  You’ll have us both, me
and
Grey.  She won’t have to kill me and I won’t have to kill her,” I shouted, my voice ringing out in the night above the moans and grumbles of the dead.

Like it was coming from miles away, I heard my mother scream, a shrill and panicky, “No!”

And then I heard a familiar deep voice, a voice that I literally felt from head to toe like the brush of velvet against my skin.

“Carson, don’t!”

I turned and saw Derek emerge from the woods to my right.  I could tell he was trying to run to me, but it looked like he was moving through tar.  With each step he struggled all the more to put one foot in front of the other.

Then Fahl appeared, looking just as he had that first night.  His black hair danced around his head weightlessly in the light breeze and his black suit was as ill-fitting as ever.  He looked like death.  And rightly so.  He’d come for me.

“A new deal means the other is broken,” he advised pleasantly, as if we were discussing the NASDAQ over coffee.

“I know, but Dad and Derek still go free, and my mother, too.”

“And you’ll reap for me in exchange?”

“Whatever you want, just let them go.”

With a smile that would’ve given the devil pause, Fahl whispered, “Done.”

As soon as the word left his thin lips, I heard my mother gasp, drawing in a huge breath.  I turned toward her as she sputtered and coughed.  I held out my hand to touch her, to make sure she was alright, but my fingers met with nothingness.  She fell through the doorway, into the house and disappeared. 

I stepped forward to follow, but the threshold sealed after she passed through, the barrier once more firmly in place.  I leaned my head against the invisible wall and breathed a sigh of relief.  Even though I wasn’t sure where she’d gone, I was comforted by the fact that she was no longer in any immediate danger of being suffocated or eaten. 

Tears burned my eyes when I felt the air thicken at my back, my tormentors closing in around me once more.  I turned, back pressed to the barrier this time, to face the gruesome dead head on.  My fate was sealed and I was trapped, by my own design, forever.  But it was my decision and I was going to go on my own terms.  Fahl wasn’t going to get everything, tied up nice with a bow. 

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.  As I exhaled, all my turbulent emotions drained out of me.  There was no fear or heartache or regret or sense of loss, just acceptance, the sense that I’d done what needed to be done, that I’d made the necessary sacrifices to ensure the safety and wellbeing of my loved ones.  Most of them anyway.  Leah was a whole other matter.  She’d already made her choice.  She’d sealed her own fate.