The Survivor Chronicles: The Risen (3 page)

"I'll talk to her, or I'll try at least," he
assured her.

"Thank you." Mary Ellen smiled at him before
releasing his arm and heading toward where Donald, Josh, and Peter
stood by the Caddy.

Taking a deep breath, John turned and headed
back to the open passenger side door of the truck. Rochelle's head
was bent; her gaze on her hands folded before her. Grabbing hold of
the handle, John pulled himself into the cab of the truck and
settled in beside her. Carl was standing at the front of the truck,
smoking a cigarette while he and Al studied a map. John grabbed the
Twizzlers off the dashboard, he held them out to Rochelle but she
shook her head no.

John leaned back in his seat. He didn't know
what to say to her but when he grabbed one of the licorice sticks
from the bag, he recalled something he used to do as a kid. "You
know what one of my favorite things to do as a kid was?"

Rochelle glanced at him before turning her
attention back to her hands. "What?" she mumbled.

"I would bite the ends off." He bit the head
off the Twizzler and turned it around to bite off the other one.
"See?" She stared at the Twizzler before frowning at him. "Then I
would take it and shove it into a can of soda and use it as a
straw. It was an extra sweet sugar bonus that I'm sure my parents
loved for me to have."

She looked at him as if he had just hopped
onboard the crazy train. "
That
was
your favorite thing to do as a kid?"

"
One
of my
favorite things to do. My favorite was blowing up soda bottles or
jumping off the porch roof into a pile of leaves, building forts or
riding my bike, or just being
free
.
The Twizzler straw was a good time too. Have you ever tried
it?"

She shook her head. "No, I've never even
heard of it."

"We'll have to fix that when we get a
chance."

"
If
we get a
chance."

"Don't start going all Peter on me kid,
we're going to make it."

Tears shimmered in her deep brown eyes. She
looked more fragile than he'd ever seen her with the shadows under
her eyes and her brown hair pulled into a ponytail. "I'm sure Bobby
thought the same thing."

John took a bite of licorice. "I'm sure he
did too, but you can't think like that."

"Look at what's going on around us, look at
all the people we've lost already. Why
can't
we think like that?"

John didn't know why, not really, he just
knew that it would end up destroying the outgoing young girl he'd
come to care for a lot. He wasn't willing to lose more people,
especially not her. "Because it's not good for you."

"Easy mom."

John shot her a look. "Easy there
yourself."

A small smile actually curved her mouth.
"Nice comeback."

"I try my best."

"That you do," she agreed.

John continued to nibble on his Twizzler as
he studied the highway before them. "What was your favorite thing
to do before all of this?" he asked.

"I loved to ride horses," she said
wistfully.

"
That
was
your favorite thing to do as a kid," he teased and leaned playfully
against her shoulder. "There's something about being around an
animal that can bite me
and
kick me
through a wall that makes me a little nervous. Plus, did you know
they can also stomp on your foot? And they weigh a lot."

The sound of her giggle was better than a
Twizzler straw he decided as she grinned at him. "I did know that.
Had it happen once," she admitted.

"Ouch, bet it broke your foot."

"It actually wasn't as bad as you would
think." She stretched around him and pulled a piece of licorice
from the bag. John fought to hide his smile as she bit into it.
"Only bruised my toe but it's not something I'd want to experience
again."

"But riding them was fun?"

"Riding them was the best," she said
wistfully. "I don't know how to explain it but when I was on
horseback I was free. I didn't have a single problem in the world.
There was no school, no homework, no boys. There was no home, no
mom and dad, none of the awful silences and even more awful…" her
voice trailed off, her eyes became distant as she held the Twizzler
before her.

He knew Mary Ellen had tried to keep the
worst part of her marriage from Rochelle, but he also knew there
was no way to keep it from her entirely. Rochelle was too smart and
too observant to miss much. They hadn't fought a lot but he'd
always known when his parents were mad at each other, no matter how
much they tried to pretend they weren't.

"It was that bad at home?" he asked.

Rochelle shrugged absently and bit into the
candy. "My mom tried to hide it but yeah, it was that bad. I loved
my dad, he always treated me well, but the things he said and did
to my mom…" Her brown eyes came back to his. "No one should be
treated like that."

John didn't know what to say to her. All the
words that ran through his mind were horribly inadequate as she
unflinchingly met his gaze. "I'm sorry." They were the lamest words
in the world but they were the best he could come up with.

"I think she stayed with him because of me,
which made it even worse."

John pat her shoulder awkwardly. "I'm sure
she was only trying to do the best for you."

"I know she was."

"She still is."

Rochelle sat back in the seat. "Look at you
being all mature and adult-like."

"I think I preferred it when you weren't
speaking to me." A small laugh escaped her before she grabbed
another Twizzler. "Or eating my stuff."

John pulled the water bottle from the
dashboard of the truck. He grabbed another licorice stick and tore
off both ends of it. "I liked tag too," she said.

"Who didn't?"

"And dodgeball."

"You were still allowed to play dodgeball? I
thought they were banning that now."

"I got a few years of it in," she replied.
"It was fun."

John smiled wistfully as he twisted off the
top of the water bottle. There had been many hours of playing
dodgeball in his life, some of it hadn't been pleasant, but it had
always been a lot of fun. He'd still whip a large rubber ball at
someone if given the opportunity.

He shoved the shortened Twizzler into the
bottle and handed it to Rochelle. "Water's probably not as good as
soda but I can guarantee it's going to make it taste better," he
informed her.

Rochelle studied it for a second before
taking it from his hand. "Can't make it any worse."

"That's the attitude."

Rochelle grabbed the Twizzler and drank
through it. She lifted an eyebrow as she gave an approving nod.
"Not bad."

"Not bad? You're not doing it right
then."

"It's no horse, but I can see the
appeal."

"That's good at least." The door beside her
opened, he turned as Carl jumped into the driver's side seat beside
Rochelle. "We have our route planned out?"

"For the most part. What are you doing?"
Carl asked Rochelle.

She held the bottle out to him. "Twizzler
straw, John showed it to me."

"I remember those," he said with a nod.
"Best with Ginger Ale."

"Orange soda," John disagreed. "Are we
staying on the highway?"

"Until we run into trouble," Carl answered.
"Some of the roads branch off toward New York City but we won't be
going that way. It doesn't look like we'll be traveling through any
heavily populated areas until Newburgh. But we'll have another
problem when we get there anyway."

"What's that?" John asked.

"The Hudson River," Carl answered. "We have
to cross the Newburgh Beacon Bridge to get over it. Al said it's a
good sized bridge."

"That sounds like it could be a pretty big
problem," Rochelle said.

Carl stared at her before glancing
questioningly at John. Rochelle wasn't back to her old self, John
knew that, but she was speaking and smiling again. It was a step in
the right direction. She'd never be the same girl who had jumped in
front of their truck what seemed like forever ago now, but she
appeared to be coming back around to them again.

"It could be," Carl admitted as he started
the truck.

"What are we going to do if we can't get
over the bridge in Newburgh?" Rochelle asked.

"There's always another way." Carl said with
confidence.

John really hoped so but he refrained from
saying those words. They'd just gotten Rochelle speaking again;
they really didn't need her going catatonic on them like he had
before. John munched on his licorice while he took in the scenery
around them. The higher they rose into the mountains the more rock
walls began to press against the road.

The best thing about the increasing rock
walls beside them was that he didn't see any of the sick humans
running beside the truck. Most of the towns he spotted were nestled
into valleys far below the guardrails that would pop up to replace
the walls.

They could do
this.
The belief hit him out of nowhere but he felt a
growing confidence as they wound their way in and out of the
vehicles cluttering the road. They could get somewhere remote and
they could make a stand. They could
survive
.

He didn't dare say the words out loud. There
was no way he was going to jinx himself and the others, but he was
really trying to believe them. The only problem was going to be
actually getting them all there alive.

Mary Ellen,

Mary Ellen stared at the jagged rock walls
that made up the sides of the highway as they climbed higher into
the mountains. These mountains didn't have the craggy peaks like
the ones she remembered from her one trip to New Hampshire. She'd
been ten then, and on a school fieldtrip that was also her only
camping trip. In the beginning , she'd been so excited for the
adventure. She'd been so thrilled to have something to do, people
to talk with, and maybe even new friends to make.

By the third day she'd had enough of
mosquitos, dirt, and peeing in an overheated, foul smelling
Port-O-Potty. There were no new friends to be made; in fact, she
barely spoke to anyone as she felt completely out of place amongst
the girls who were throwing themselves into making tie-dyed
t-shirts and candles. Her t-shirts came out almost completely one
blurred, icky color, and her candles were nothing but blobs on a
string. Her excitement rapidly faded to misery as the week
stretched endlessly on and the bug bites on her arms and legs
turned into raw welts. She'd never gone camping again.

The mountains in New Hampshire gave the
impression of touching the clouds; these mountains rolled out like
hills that had grown far more than they were supposed to have. It
was a beautiful view as they topped over one crest and the sky and
woods stretched out before her. Houses were speckled through the
valleys and mountains that dipped and rolled out before her.

She could have stayed and stared out across
this view for hours, but she didn't even have minutes to linger
upon it. She drove the car around a truck with two flat tires and
back onto the roadway. Up ahead she could see a pile of boulders
scattered across the road and some pines that had toppled from the
top of the rock wall.

Carl was already driving the truck into the
median of the highway to avoid the vehicles. She swerved off the
road as they crested another hill. Her breath caught in her chest,
the green pines and oaks continued to fill the mountains around
them. A large patch of charred forest could be seen in the distance
but the blaze had burned itself out before it had overtaken the
forest.

"It's so much greener here," she
whispered.

The pen stopped scratching across the paper
as Donald froze. He'd been busily transferring the pages that she,
Carl, Al, Xander, Riley, and John had given him this morning into
his notebook. She'd never enjoyed writing before. She'd always
hated having to do any writing for school, and book reports had
been a special form of torture as she'd never been much of a reader
either. When Donald had asked if they would be willing to write
about what was happening to them, and about some of their life
before all of this had started, she'd assumed that she would hate
doing it. In fact, she'd never thought she would be
able
to do it.

Surprisingly, the words had just poured out
of her and she'd probably revealed more of herself than she'd
intended to a man she barely knew. However, once she'd started
writing she couldn't stop. The experience had been almost
cathartic, as she'd poured her heart and soul onto those pieces of
paper. There had even been things she'd forgotten about, like
Rita's dog, Moogie. Writing her experiences down had helped her to
recall things that had been buried beneath the continuous demands
of their every day survival.

Glancing over at the papers in Donald's
hands, she recognized Carl's chicken scratch at the top of the
pages. She was curious what the others had disclosed about
themselves in the pages on Donald's lap. She'd never look at their
words though, just as she expected the others to be curious about
what she had written, but to never have that curiosity
satisfied.

Donald would be the only one that ever knew
what had gone onto those papers. She didn't really know the man,
but for some reason she trusted that he wouldn't reveal the secrets
and truths she had written. Maybe one day someone else would read
it, but she wouldn't still be here when that day came.

Peter mumbled something that pulled her
attention away from the rock walls closing in on their sides again.
"What did you say?" she asked and then wondered why she'd
bothered.