The Survivor Chronicles: The Risen (20 page)

"Did you find anything of use?" Mary Ellen
almost screamed out loud at the voice that came from the left of
her. She jumped and spun as Xander emerged from the boulders by the
lake. "Didn't meant to startle you," he apologized. "I was just
keeping watch."

"There are a couple of stands that we can
use to watch from. They have to be fixed up a little but they'll
come in handy," Carl answered.

"Good," Xander said as he fell into step
with them.

Mary Ellen climbed the steps to the porch
and entered the cabin. The others looked half-asleep as they sat in
the chairs around the table and on the couch. Beneath the scent of
lemon polish and bleach, she could still detect the faint aroma of
musk and urine. The layer of dust had been removed from the
furniture. A slight breeze drifted through the open windows,
bringing with it the fresh mountain air. There was still more work
to be done inside, but it already looked better than when she'd
left.

"Dinner?" Riley asked and held up a bag of
chips. "I never thought I'd say this but I would give anything for
a veggie right now, even if it was cauliflower."

"I still can't say that," John said as he
took the bag of chips from her.

Mary Ellen glanced down at Victor, sitting
in a small chair in the corner with his head bowed. Halfway through
turning away from him, she almost tripped and fell over her feet
when he lifted his head. She managed to stop herself from falling,
but not her mouth from dropping when his eyes latched onto hers and
a single tear slid down his cheek.

Riley,

"Riley." Focused on trying to find something
at least somewhat nutritious to put in her stomach, Riley didn't
hear Mary Ellen say her name at first. "Riley."

Grabbing a can of beans, she decided she was
going to have to make do with them as she sat back from the pile of
food sitting on the table. Xander grabbed hold of her arm, drawing
her attention to him. When she looked at him, he nodded toward the
other side of the room. She held the beans in her hand as she
turned toward where Mary Ellen was staring at Victor. Tears
streaked down the boy's cheeks as he surveyed the room in wide-eyed
terror.

Riley's hand fell limply to her side; she
almost dropped the can as joy and disbelief crashed through her.
Her legs shook as she took an unsteady step toward the child. This
was everything she'd been hoping for, everything she'd been
fighting for since she'd read those library books, and yet it felt
too good to be true. It took everything she had not to lunge at the
child and grab hold of him in order to make sure that he was
real
. The look in his eyes tore at
her heart and held her back from frightening him more by grabbing
him.

"Do you know where you are?" Mary Ellen
asked in a gentle tone of voice.

The boy shook his head as his watery eyes
went back to Mary Ellen. Riley didn't know what to make of all
this. She'd believed saving Victor would somehow make everything
better, that it would somehow put the world to right again. Though
she didn't feel disappointed she realized the heavens weren't going
to part, the angels hadn't started to sing, and there wasn't a
tidal wave of answers pouring forth. Carol, Lee, and Bobby were
still dead, her family was gone, millions if not
billions
of people and animals no longer
lived.

The boy's blue eyes landed upon her, his
blond eyebrows furrowed over his nose as he stared at her. He was
so young and they had
saved
him.
There may be no angels singing down the answers from heaven but
they had the gift of this boy.

"There
was
a
reason," John whispered.

Riley glanced at him and was startled to see
the tears that had filled his eyes. She hastily looked away; she
knew he wouldn't appreciate her feeling bad for him. She didn't
have to ask John what he'd meant by that. Other than trying to save
all of them, John finally had another reason why he'd pulled the
trigger. The fact that this boy was now staring back at them was
well worth having incurred Peter's wrath.

Victor
had
to be worth it, but she realized that was too much pressure to put
on a boy who was staring at a roomful of strangers. He probably had
no idea what had happened to lead him to this room in the first
place, or why they were all looking at him like he was a savior.
Something they were going to have to stop doing if he was going to
have any chance of a somewhat normal life from here on out.

Carl rested his hand briefly on John's arm
before glancing at Riley. John was right; there was a reason. For
the first time the guilt that had been eating at her since Jim and
Peter had been killed, began to ease a little. She didn't think the
events of last night were something she would ever get over, but
she truly believed they'd done the right thing with Victor. They'd
saved a boy's life. Unfortunately, they'd lost Jim in the process
but she believed Al had been right and Peter had been plotting
against them. Peter would have eventually tried to kill most, if
not all, of them.

Everything that had happened in that living
room had happened for a reason and that reason looked as if he was
going to bolt out of the cabin at any second, or burst into tears.
"There was a reason," Riley said John. His eyes slid to her and he
nodded. "There
was
."

Riley stepped closer to Victor as his gaze
shot to the open doorway and he moved to the edge of the chair. His
gaze went to Rochelle when she stepped closer with a bag of
Twizzlers extended toward him. "Would you like one?" she asked.

The boy stared at the bag before giving a
small nod. Rochelle pulled a piece of licorice free and handed it
to him. Riley had never seen anyone eat something so fast in her
life as Victor shoved it into his mouth. He looked like a chipmunk
as his cheeks puffed out and he chewed eagerly.

"Everyone loves licorice," John said.

Rochelle handed Victor another red candy
stick and he shoved it into his mouth too. He chewed it eagerly but
Mary Ellen waved Rochelle's hand away when she went to give him
another. "Enough candy," Mary Ellen said kindly. "We have to find
him something a little healthier to eat, he needs some nourishment.
Do you know where you are?" she asked Victor.

Victor glanced over them before shaking his
head. His gaze focused on Riley over Mary Ellen's shoulder. Riley
offered him a tremulous smile and he gave one in return. She
started to approach him carefully again, she was a little anxious
that she would scare him away but he remained where he was as he
watched her approach.

"Where are my mom and dad?" His voice was so
tiny that Riley had to strain to hear it.

"We don't know," she told him. "Most of us
don't know where our parents are, not anymore."

Tears continued to streak down his face as
he looked around the room again. "The world isn't like you remember
it," Mary Ellen said. "What is the last thing that you do remember,
before being here?"

Victor's frown deepened as he tried to
recall his last memory. "I remember being in the car." His gaze
went back to Riley. "I remember
you
in the car, and something funny tasting. And then I remember being
here."

He'd been starting to come out of the dark
recesses of his sickness when she'd given him the fourth dose in
the car, Riley realized. He may not have even required the last
dose she'd just given him, but it didn't matter, he was with them
now. "And before that? What do you remember from when you were at
home?" Riley prodded.

He shook his head. "Waking up. But not to my
alarm or my mom, the house was shaking. My mom was crying and my
dad decided to stay home from work. I think I had a fever…" his
voice trailed off, his frown deepened but he didn't say anything
more.

Riley could sense the frustration and
distress radiating from him as he looked at the group of strangers
gathered around him again. He pushed back in the chair, drew his
knobby knees against his chest and hugged them. "Are my mom and dad
dead?" he asked.

"We don't know sweetie," Mary Ellen
said.

"Can we find them?"

Helplessness swirled through Riley; she
didn't know how to answer that. How did anyone tell a child that he
would most likely never see his loved ones again? She longed to try
and comfort him but he was staring at all of them as if he were
afraid they might try to eat him.

"Not right now," Mary Ellen answered.

"Later?" he squeaked.

"There's no way to know what the future
holds," Mary Ellen told him. They were such big words for someone
so small but Riley realized they were the only words they could
offer to him. They couldn't promise him anything, but to take away
all possibility of hope would only traumatize him even more than he
already was.

"Here." Riley looked down as Al held out a
can opener and a plastic spoon to her. When she frowned at him in
confusion, he nodded toward the can still in her hand. "For
Victor."

She nodded and took the can opener from him.
Adjusting the can, she pressed the opener against it and opened it
up. She placed the top on the table and walked over to hand Victor
the can of beans. He stared at it before looking up at her again.
"It will taste just like beans," she promised him. "There's no
medicine in this."

"Why did I need medicine?" he inquired as he
took the can from her.

"You were sick."

"Am I better now?"

"Yes." She wondered if he was with them for
good now, or would he retreat to his catatonic state and have to be
constantly dosed with L-Dopa? The idea of him going back to that
semi-comatose state terrified her; he
had
to stay with them. She didn't know how any of
them would handle it if they lost Victor after believing he'd been
saved. For him to come back to them, only to one day return to his
catatonic state was a possibility so unbelievably cruel that she
couldn't think about it.

He watched her as he dug into the can of
beans and began to shovel them into his mouth. "Slow down," Mary
Ellen urged and rested her hand on his arm. "You'll make yourself
sick."

Victor turned his attention to Mary Ellen
and nodded before fixating on the can again. Mary Ellen took the
empty can away from him when he was done. "Are you still hungry?"
Riley inquired.

"A little," he mumbled.

John stepped forward and handed him the bag
of chips. "Those aren't healthy," Mary Ellen said.

"I don't want to be sitting next to him if
he eats another can of beans," John told her. "Besides, all we have
is some peas, soup and corn which aren't that filling, or candy and
other assorted junk food. He's been in a semi-coma for weeks; I
don't think some chips are going to kill him."

Mary Ellen didn't protest that as she nodded
and sat back. "How old are you Victor?" Riley inquired.

"How do you know my name?" he asked.

"It was on one of your basketball trophies,
in your room," Carl answered.

"You were in my room?"

"That's how we got your clothes," Riley told
him.

Victor frowned down at his clothes. "But you
didn't see my parents?"

"I'm sorry, no," Mary Ellen said.

Victor's gaze ran over them again and then
the cabin. "Eight."
He is really small for his
age
, Riley realized. She'd believed him to be younger
than that. "How do I know you're not all in some kind of weird cult
or something and didn't kidnap me to kill me?"

"We'd have better food if we were a cult, or
at least some Kool-Aid," John replied.

Carl shot him a look but Riley had to bite
on her inner cheek to keep from laughing out loud. From the looks
on most of the faces around her, they were doing the same. Victor,
Rochelle and Freddie looked completely confused as they stared at
the rest of them with questioning expressions. "It was this thing,
years ago with a cult," Mary Ellen told them. "We're not a cult,
we're just…"

"Survivors," Donald supplied when Mary Ellen
struggled for an answer.

"Yeah survivors is a good name for what we
are," Freddie agreed.

"Survivors of what?" Victor asked.

"We're not entirely sure yet. We just know
that nothing is the same and you won't have to go to school again
anytime soon," Riley told him.

"That's good at least," Victor said as he
dug into the bag of chips. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"We can tell you what we know." Riley
grabbed hold of a chair and pulled it over to sit before him.

They all began to fill him in on the events
of the past few weeks and where and how they had found him. They
didn't go into detail about everything but by the time they were
done, Victor must have decided they weren't a cult as he'd taken
hold of Mary Ellen's hand.

"I was one of these sick people?" Victor
asked.

"You were but you're doing much better now,"
Riley said eagerly, refusing to acknowledge the fact that he might
backslide.

"Do you think that's what happened to my
parents?"

"It's a good possibility," Al answered.
"They wouldn't have left you behind if they were thinking
clearly."

"I don't think they would," Victor
murmured.

"They wouldn't," Riley assured him as she
stifled a yawn. She was finding it increasingly difficult to keep
her eyes open and Victor looked half-asleep as his eyelids drooped.
She placed the bag of cheese puffs she'd been eating on the floor
and rose to her feet. "I'm ready for some sleep."

"I think that's a good idea," Al agreed.
"We're all tired. There are some bunk beds in the bedroom," he said
to Victor.