The Survivor Chronicles: The Risen (15 page)

Al,

Al stood in the doorway of the living room
and watched as Riley tenderly washed the arms and chest of the
little boy. She placed a clean t-shirt on him before grabbing a
fresh towel and dipping it into a different pot of clean water. It
took a few minutes but she finally succeeded in scrubbing the dirt
and smeared food from his face. She settled back on her heels to
study the child.

Al couldn't tear his eyes away from the
little boy. The slender frame, and the slack expression on his face
conjured memories of his siblings when they'd been at their
sickest. He found himself hoping just as badly as she did that
Riley's plan would work. He hadn't been able to save his siblings,
but just maybe they would be able to save this lost child.

When she was done, Riley pushed the pots of
water and towels aside. She lifted the bottle of L-Dopa and turned
it around in her hands before pulling the top off. Her fingers were
nimble as she pulled out two pills and used the top of the bottle
to crush them on a book. She brushed them into a glass of water
that was about a quarter of the way full. She sniffed at the water
before taking a small sip. Her nose wrinkled and she quickly pulled
the glass away from her face.

"I don't think the taste is going to bother
him, Ri." Xander's tone was kind in order to ease the harshness of
his words.

"Not after what he was eating," John
muttered and Carl elbowed him in the side. Al shook his head as
John shot Carl a look and rubbed at his offended ribs.

Riley turned her attention back to the boy.
"Can you help me?" she asked Mary Ellen.

Mary Ellen nodded and took hold of the boy's
chin before tipping his head back. "I wish we knew his name," Riley
murmured as she forced the glass between the boy's lips.

"Victor. His name is Victor," Jim said from
behind him. Al hadn't even heard the man approach; it amazed him
that someone Jim's size could move so silently and with such ease.
Al stepped aside to let Jim further into the room. "I saw it on a
basketball trophy upstairs."

"I like it." Riley poured the liquid
carefully down the boy's throat. He swallowed it but he showed no
sign of the medicine tasting as nasty to him as it had to Riley.
Like a robot, or a puppy,
Al
thought. "I played basketball when I was your age," she said to
Victor.

"Peter doesn't want you to do this?" Jim
inquired.

"No, he doesn't," Carl said.

"Can I ask why?"

"He thinks they'll be a threat if we can
cure them, that they'll be a drain on the food supply," Al
answered.

Jim frowned as his gaze went from Al to the
boy again. "I can see his point on that, but he's a
child
."

"They aren't all children though," Al
said.

Jim leaned against the wall and folded his
arms over his chest. "True, but they are all
people
. Besides, this might not even work."

"Peter has the same amount of concern for
people as he would for a snake," Riley murmured and wiped away a
trickle of water that ran down Victor's chin.

Al rubbed at the stubble lining his jaw as
he watched Riley with the child. It was going to break her heart if
this didn't work; he knew the promise of being able to help someone
had been the main thing driving her since Bobby's death. It was a
good part of what had been keeping him going too. There had to be
something good left in this world, something worth working toward
other than just fighting to survive day after day. There had to be
something
more
out there.

Were they making a mistake? Al tried not to
think about that question, it was too late now to change anything
anyway. There was no turning back and he wasn't about to take the
hope of curing this child away from Riley, the others, or even
himself. In this room was the possibility of something good. Beyond
this there was only the broken roads they'd been traveling and the
promise of a cabin that may not even exist anymore.

Victor finished off the rest of the water
and Mary Ellen lowered his head back down. The boy's eyes remained
distant as he stared blankly at the wall across from him. Riley set
the glass down on the floor and stood up. "How much time do you
think it will take if it's going to work?" she asked.

"It could be an hour, a day, maybe even a
week. There's no way for us to know Riley," Xander said as he
rested his hands on her shoulders and began to massage them. "We'll
just have to wait and see."

"If we have to put him in the car like this
Peter will fight us on it."

"That's something we can figure out
tomorrow," Al assured her. "For now let's just watch over him and
see what happens."

Riley nodded and knelt before the boy again.
She moved the glass aside and leaned against the loveseat at her
back. The shadows under her eyes made her appear even younger and
for a second she looked more like one of The Lost Souls than she
did a healthy human. Al shook his head to clear it of the haunting
image and turned to walk out of the room. He wouldn't mind a drink
himself; he'd actually prefer something a little bit stronger than
water if there was any liquor in this house.

In the dining room, he searched through the
bottom of the hutch before uncovering a bottle of whiskey. It
wasn't his drink of choice but when he unscrewed the top and
savored in the scent, he decided it was perfect.

"You read my mind."

He glanced over his shoulder at Carl and
rose with a pop of his knees. "It's needed," Al said.

"You're not going to get any argument out of
me," Carl told him.

Al handed the bottle to Carl and pulled some
glasses down from the top of the hutch. He glanced at the shadowed
stairwell but he didn't hear any movement coming from above. "Let's
hope they're sleeping," he said.

"I'm sure they are. Let's drink this
outside," Carl suggested. "The smell of that rotten food will have
my stomach turning before the whiskey does."

Al nodded his agreement and followed Carl
out the door to where they had left the truck and cars. John and
Donald followed them outside. Al gave Carl the glasses after Carl
had settled himself onto the lawn. He watched as Carl poured the
amber liquid into the glasses and passed them out to the others.
Donald waved the glass of whiskey away before settling onto the
ground beside Carl.

Al's gaze turned to the sky as the stars
began to appear. The twinkling lights were such a beautiful
display, one that he couldn't tear his eyes away from as he sipped
at his drink. No, whiskey wasn't his drink of choice, but he
thoroughly enjoyed the warmth working its way through him as the
alcohol seeped into his system. The familiar chirrup of crickets
began to fill the air. The overwhelming desire to cry seized him as
he savored in the familiar sights and sounds that had once filled
the night on a regular basis.

Human, he felt almost human again.

"At least they had good taste in liquor,"
Carl said.

"That they did," Al agreed.

"What if this works on the boy?" John
inquired. "Are we going to try to round up more of The Lost Souls
if it does?"

"I don't know. That's too far ahead to even
think about," Carl answered.

"If this is the way to help them than we
should try to save as many of them as possible," Donald said.

"I think Dick, that's what I think of Peter
as now, is going to blow his top," John said.

"I think Dick is a much more suitable name."
Carl lifted his glass and saluted John with it before downing the
rest of the contents. Carl refilled his own glass before topping
off Al's and John's.

"Peter might just be all growl and no go,"
Donald said. "You know, maybe he's all bluff and bluster but no
bite."

Al swirled the liquid in his glass before
lifting his head to meet Donald's rust colored eyes. "I really hope
you're right."

"He's still a dick," John muttered and
sipped at his whiskey as he walked over to the edge of the
driveway.

Dancing through the woods like fireflies, Al
spotted four sets of eyes about three feet off the ground, and
watching them, from the trees. He froze, his pulse nearly doubled
in the course of a second. Al couldn't tear his gaze away from
those vivid, eerily disconnected eyes. At first he assumed they
belonged to humans that had crouched to watch them from the
shadows. He almost dropped his glass on the ground to grab for his
gun, but then one of the sets of eyes swiveled to the side and he
was able to see the long neck of the animal.

He still might need a gun, but he slowly
felt his blood pressure return to normal as he kept a tight grip on
his drink. "Coyotes," Carl said and rose to his feet.

Al nodded as John retreated a few steps from
the edge of the driveway. Another head turned away and then the
animals were slipping through the shadows so stealthily that Al
couldn't hear their passing over the sounds of the crickets. "I
don't want to tangle with one of those things but every time I see
one, they give me a
happy
feeling,"
John said and took a sip of his drink.

"Glad to hear they made your night," Carl
said.

John chuckled as he moved closer to them.
"Well they don't make me as happy as a girl would, but yeah, they
did make it a little better."

"I hear that," Donald said.

Al tilted his head back to look at the stars
again; he took a deep breath and felt some of the tension ease from
his shoulders and neck. But then, good friends always had a way of
making even the worst of circumstances feel better, and he
considered these people closer than others he'd known for forty
plus years.

"To surviving," he said and raised his glass
to cheers with the others.

"To surviving," they said. Their glasses
clinked together and Donald raised his finger to flick it against
John's glass.

Al was turning away with his drink when Jim
stepped into the doorway. "I think you guys had better come back
inside," he said in a tone of voice that made Al freeze mid
sip.

Donald rose to his feet. "Is it the
boy?"

"No, it's Peter."

Those words made Al go cold; there was
something in Jim's eyes that brought to mind death. The glass
tumbled from Al's fingers, it landed on the grass and broke into a
couple of pieces. Fear spurred him onward but Carl made it to the
doorway first with John close on his heels. Al followed behind with
Donald at his side. Jim swiftly led the group toward the living
room where they had left the others.

Even before they made it to the den, Al
could hear the raised voices coming from the back. He recognized
Peter's deep baritone and Riley's higher pitch as they spoke in a
tone that made Al realize the situation was beginning to
escalate.

"He's a child, an innocent child. You can't
hurt him!" Riley said fervently.

"I'm not going to allow this to happen! I'll
kill him before this goes any further!" Peter spat.

Al slid the gun from his waistband and held
it before him as he stepped into the living room. Jim, Carl, and
John spread out, moving closer to Xander. Donald moved in the other
direction, toward Mary Ellen. Al froze when he spotted Peter
standing in the middle of the room with one gun pointed at Riley,
and the other aimed at the back of Victor's bent head. Riley had
her hand on Xander's arm, holding him back as he tried to get in
between her and Peter. Mary Ellen stood by the wall next to the
loveseat; her empty hands were raised in the air by her head.

"How did he get
two
guns?" John asked in a low hiss.

"Shh," Carl silenced him.

"Oh look it's the cavalry," Peter snarled.
"I bet every single one of you knew about this scheme of hers. I
bet every single one of you were plotting on how to keep me out of
this." Peter moved the gun away from Riley and trained it around
the room at each of them as he spoke.

Al stiffened as Carl lifted his gun and
pointed it back at Peter. "Don't Peter, just put the guns down and
we can talk about this reasonably," Carl grated through his
clenched teeth.

"There is no talking about this. This is
something that cannot be allowed to happen. This is an abomination
of the worst form. This child shouldn't even
exist
in his current state and what
she
is doing shouldn't be allowed
to happen!" Peter retorted.

Xander pushed Riley's hand aside and took a
step in front of her as Peter swung the gun back toward her.
"Don't!" Riley cried and tried to push Xander out of the way but he
remained planted where he was.

Al's heart began to pound a little faster as
a muscle in Peter's jaw started to twitch.
Donald is wrong,
he thought. There was far more
than just bluff and bluster to this man. There was a madness that
had seeped through his mind and rotted his soul. It radiated from
his eyes; it showed in the sweat beading across his upper lip, the
florid color of his face, and the large vein pulsing in the center
of his forehead.

This is what insanity
looks like
, Al realized.

It had finally happened, whatever thin
thread of control Peter had been holding onto had been shredded by
the discovery of the child. This world had been eating away at his
sanity for a long time now, but the discovery of Victor had caused
whatever façade of normalcy Peter had been exhibiting to slip away
completely.

Peter swung his gun toward Carl when he took
a step forward. "Don't move!" Peter spat. "Or I will kill him."
Carl glanced at the gun Peter still had aimed at Victor. "Put your
hands up!" Carl's jaw clenched, his eyes hardened, but he raised
his hands into the air. "You, you put your gun down!" Peter barked
at Al. Al glanced at Carl and the others but when Peter's finger
tightened on the trigger of the gun he was aiming at the little
boy, Al lowered his gun to his side. "On the floor!"