Because You Exist (7 page)

“Good,” I replied. “'Cause we have some questions.”

“You get something for something,” said the man.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“You give me something, and I give you something.”

“Um. All right. What do you want?” I asked.

“I want her.”

I felt my arm jerk back behind me as Josephine began to stumble away from this crazed shell of a man who stood before us.

Is this what survived if we failed to stop the event?

“No deal,” I snapped. I turned and began to push Josephine down the road, but she stopped dead in her tracks. We were outnumbered. Before us stood three more survivors. The man who tried to make the deal stepped up behind me and leaned close to my ear. “I guess I’ll just have to take her then.”

Chapter 11

I was down on the ground before I even had a chance to make sense of what was going on. The side of my head was bleeding. Someone had punched me. One of the survivors was sitting on my back as I struggled to lift my head to see what was going on.

Our new friend stepped towards Josephine. She didn’t make a noise, her face remaining emotionless. It was as if something snapped into place within her, like a shield or force field. If she was feeling scared you couldn’t tell. The only sign of any emotion at all was her breathing. Her chest rose quickly up and down.

“Let’s see what’s under the pretty wrapping paper,” the leader said, stepping even closer to Josephine. He grabbed her by the pocket of her hoodie and pulled her close to him. He reached up and forcefully yanked down the zipper. Still Josephine didn’t protest. I continued to struggle to get up, but the man on top of me only laughed and pushed me back down. For every second that Josephine sat there still and quiet, I thrashed around more violently and cursed louder. The leader of the group grabbed underneath the shoulders of her jacket and pulled it off like a magician would when revealing his great trick.

“Hot damn,” he sang.

I stopped thrashing about. Under the hoodie, Josephine was wearing a tight-fitting, sleeveless tank top sporting the Shepherd High emblem, no doubt part of her track uniform. I couldn’t stop myself from looking. The girl had a body. Her arms were slightly defined, the arms of an athlete but not in a scary way. She also had a great pair of boobs. Yes, I noticed. I only looked for a second because I knew she didn’t wanted me to look at her.

“It’s been so long since we’ve had a girl,” the man said, slithering closer to Josephine. He reached out his palm, running it down the side of her face until he reached her neck. He wrapped his hand around her neck. Josephine still didn’t react.

“Don’t touch her,” I yelled out. Maybe we weren’t friends, but she was all I had in this world. I wasn’t going to sit back and let anything happen to her.

“I wonder if you’re the dark one?” he asked her, choosing to ignore me entirely. “I hope you’re the dark one. I’ve only ever had me a light girl before. They say it’s bad luck to mess with you shifters, but I figure we already have had our share of bad luck.”

“I remember the light one. I remember the light one. I remember the light one,” the third man began to chant.

“She didn’t even fight back. Fighting back is what lets a man know he’s alive. You know what I mean. Don’t you kid?” he said finally turning to me.

“Go to hell,” I replied.

This caused the men to begin to laugh. “Hell doesn’t want me, kid. Neither did God. If God wanted me I’d be dead like the rest of them. At least that’s how I look at it. You’re the hell and you’re the heaven. We’re just what’s left.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but the longer I kept him talking the more time I had to think of a way of getting out of this. Why couldn’t I shift at will?

“What did you mean about a conductor?” I asked, trying to stay focused even though the blood that was seeping out of my head wound was beginning to run into my mouth.

“You had your chance to get your questions. I said give me the girl, and I would give you the answers. Sorry.”

“Let’s make a new deal,” I replied. I just needed more time. I could think of a way to get us out of this. I had to think of a way. I was still pretty sure that whatever happened to us in this present would follow us to our normal present.

And maybe there were things worse than death. These weren’t civilized men. I didn’t know if I could buy all his heaven and hell talk, but I did wonder how they survived. Was it purely because of their predator sensibilities—some eff-ed-up version of Darwin’s theory? Or had they been allowed to survive, chosen by the same people or thing that allowed us to be shifters?

“No deal. But I do want to play a game. Can’t say we get much in terms of entertainment around here anymore,” the leader replied, pushing Josephine next to me on the ground. Her eyes met mine and I saw fear for the first time since the men had showed up. I wanted to find her hoodie and enclose her in it. I wanted to protect her.

“Here’s how it will work,” the man continued as he circled around us. His friend still held me down, and while Josephine was free to move, I knew she wouldn’t leave me. “I will give you a five minute head start. You hear me? Five minutes. After that, game on. But you should know that we love to play rough. We don’t care if you’re shifters. As far as we’re concerned, why save the world when they didn’t want us around in the first place?”

The man holding me down must have received some signal from the leader because he let me up. I scrambled to my feet and held out my hand for Josephine, but she didn’t take it. She pulled herself to her feet and looked at me. I looked back.

We were screwed.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Five minutes started thirty seconds ago.”

Chapter 12

I couldn’t keep up with Josephine. She was so damn fast. The girl could take state, or maybe she already had. Can’t say I was up on the track and field happenings at Shepherd High.  I was pushing my legs like my life depended on it because I was pretty sure it did, and I still couldn’t match her speed.

I simply followed.

I didn’t know where we were going, and there was no time to talk over a plan. Josephine seemed determined, and so I followed her. Every so often she looked back to make sure I was still behind her.

When we turned onto Jenna’s street I wondered if maybe I had been mistaken about Josephine’s focused state. Maybe she had no idea about what to do either. I couldn’t hear or see the survivors, but they were survivors for a reason. Which meant when they wanted to find us I was pretty sure they could. When Josephine finally stopped it was in front of Jenna’s house. I was about to question her when she turned her back towards Jenna’s house and jogged across the street.

I remembered her telling me she used to live there.

With astounding ease, Josephine lifted her body up and over the fence into the backyard. I was not as graceful. My chest was burning. I made a silent promise to myself to take up running in the mornings if we made it back. By the time I got in the backyard, Josephine was digging furiously into a flowerbed. I didn’t question her and began to dig alongside of her.

My body was humming with adrenaline, and I knew we were running out of time. I dug faster. The dirt wedged itself underneath my fingernails as it flew up into our faces. My hand collided with metal at the exact moment the survivors began to cat call and throw out insults to let us know that our five minutes were up.

Gotta love how timing works out sometimes.

I wrapped my hands around the bulky metal. With a loud grunt, I yanked it from the ground. Once the box was out of the ground, Josephine pushed my hands out of the way.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” one of the men called out. He sounded awfully close.

“If the future is only full of clichés, I am certainly not going to help save it,” mumbled Josephine as she pulled something dark from out of the box. Her back was towards me, so I couldn’t see what the treasured object was. Josephine stood up and I followed.

“What do we do now?” I asked, still struggling to catch my breath.

“We wait.”

“Um. What?”

“They’ll come to us.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I replied.

We didn’t have to wait long. Two of the men jumped over the fence and stalked towards us. My heart began to pound once more. I looked over at Josephine. Her calm façade from earlier was back.

“I expected a little better from a pair of shifters. It wasn’t hard to find you at all,” said the man who not five minutes earlier had been pushing my face into the cement.

“We’re just kids,” I replied.

We were. We were just teenagers. This wasn’t right. Why us? What kind of world was this that we lived in, and how much darker was our world destined to become?

“Boy, the moment you shifted your childhood was over,” the man replied. “We’re going to kill you, and then we’re going to play with her. Unless we make you watch first.”

Before I could reply, a loud noise busted through my ears. It sounded hollow, but coursed along my veins causing my teeth to rattle together. The face of the man in front of me contorted in pain. His eyes widened and a strangled scream issued from his lips. He crumpled to the ground and grabbed onto his leg, which was now bleeding profusely. His companion, the one who kept repeating the nonsense about the light one, charged towards us.

He didn’t get very far. The loud, jarring sound rang through the air again followed by a metallic smell that began to burn my nose. Like his friend, the man crumpled to the ground holding his leg. I looked over at Josephine.

She was pointing a gun right at the men.

I began to put it together.

The noises were shots.

Josephine had just wounded these two men. The two men who now began to call out for their leader, begging him to come take care of the boy and his bitch.

Why would Josephine bury a gun in the backyard of her old house?

How did Josephine even know how to use a gun?

How could she shoot these men without even flinching?

I felt nauseous.

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right. She had just shot two men. Granted, they had been trying to torture and kill us, but I had never even seen a real gun before. It wasn’t like the movies. Blood was thicker and darker. It ran from their legs onto the grass, clashing violently with the green of the lawn.

“Let’s go, Logan,” said Josephine. Even her voice sounded dead.

I couldn’t move. I wanted to go back. I wanted my life back. I didn’t do anything to deserve this hellish existence, to be trapped in this place. Maybe I was a bully. Maybe I didn’t go to church as much as I should or wasn’t particularly nice. But I didn’t deserve to be a part of this world.

We were running again. I didn’t know where we were going, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to follow Josephine anymore. Who was this girl? I kept telling myself that she did what she had to do. If she hadn’t shot those men I would most likely be dead, and they would be doing God knows what to her. She hadn’t killed them after all. She only wounded them.

She had saved us.

For now.

I just didn’t know if I would ever be capable of pulling the trigger.

I was so focused on trying to convince myself not to be petrified of the girl running in front of me that I never saw him coming. The leader of the band of survivors tackled me to the ground and pulled me up by the neck. His arm tightened around my neck making it almost impossible to breathe. I watched as Josephine slowed down. She took her time tuning around to face us, but at least she didn’t keep running without me.

She still held the gun in her hand.

I felt something prick painfully against the side of my neck. Josephine walked slowly towards us. Her eyes met mine and wouldn’t leave, even when the leader began to speak to her.

“I’d drop the gun, sweetheart. You might get me, but not before I pushed this glass right into his neck. And you don’t want him dying. Not unless you know for sure you’re the conductor. Because if he’s the conductor and he dies, you’re stuck here with me and my kind.”

Josephine lifted the gun up. It looked like some sort of handgun. I didn’t have an obsession with weaponry or violent video games like some of my fellow teenage males. Regardless of what type of gun it was, Josephine seemed like she planned on using it. Again.

The leader pushed the shard of glass deeper into my neck, and I couldn’t help but gasp out in pain. “You better hope you’re a great shot, darling. It’s a tough thing watching someone die. It might just distract you enough to miss, and then I’ll get you all to myself.”

“Stop talking. Let him go,” Josephine said quietly.

“You know wha—“

He didn’t get to finish his sentence. The gun rang loudly once more as Josephine fired a bullet straight into his chest. The man’s grip on me loosened and I fell to the ground, coughing violently. In between the tears that burned my eyes, I looked up to see the leader stumble towards Josephine, blood spurting from his wound.

Josephine’s eyes widened, and she dropped the gun. The man fell onto her, dragging her to the floor with him. He coughed blood into her face as his hands fumbled to grab hold of her.

“He let all the good people die, but us bad ones have been around the whole time. He let us exist too. You...you...you just...remember...when it comes time.” A loud chorus of racking, wet coughs filled the air before the leader finally died.

I crawled over to Josephine and pushed the man off of her. Tears were running down her face. Her breathing was ragged, and I wondered if she was about to lose it. I got up on my knees and grabbed her by the arms, helping her to sit up.

We just stared at each other. I had no idea who this girl was or what she was capable of. It scared me. It scared the shit out of me to be honest. But I needed her, and maybe she needed me too. I wanted to tell her these things. I wanted to ask her if she was all right, but I didn’t get a chance. Josephine shoved me away and climbed over me. I watched as her hand reached for the gun. She twisted her body around, lining her gun up on an unknown predator.

I twisted my body to see what the hell we had in store for us next.

“Wait! Don’t shoot! I’m one of you!”

Before Josephine had a chance to shoot or I had a chance to meet our latest attacker, I felt the shift.

We were going home.

But we would never get our childhood back again.