SIXTEEN

A Chapter by Maddox

~Jake~

She was tired. Crying did that to her. Her eyes felt like they could swell shut, sore and dry. Adrian still had his arms around her as they sat together in a small red booth. He stopped murmuring into her hair, now his cheek was just resting against the top of her head. She wasn’t crying anymore. She was just hollow. What did she expect? That after a year, she would still be one of the most important things in his life; no, she hadn’t been expecting to ever see him again. She couldn’t imagine what Adrian must think of her, of everything that was going on with them. Sitting up, she twisted in her seat and looked at him. His watery grey eyes were focused on her face, watching her. She sighed and put a hand gently on the arm wrapped around her.

“Adrian,” she whispered.

“Mhm,” he mumbled, eyes still trained on her. She smiled and reach an apprehensive hand up, soft red hair curled around her fingers.

“What are you thinking?” she asked. His eyes went wide, shocked by her question.

“I don’t know. I think I wish that you weren’t sad. You are so sad right now, and it hurts. It hurts me. I don’t get it though. Why does what he said, hurt you so bad?”

“We were friends,” she choked. “Best friends, actually. And-“

“And he asked ‘who are you?’” Adrian gasped. He reached over and grabbed her free hand. The repeat of the question threatened her tears again. Unable to open her mouth without sobbing, she nodded. His grip on her hand tightened. “I am sorry.” The pain in her chest swelled, pressing against her heart. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest. His warm, heated arms encircled her. She felt safe.

~Richard~

What’s going on? Where was he? Why was he here? Who were these people? Where were the Returned that were chasing him? His thoughts were spinning, whirling, smashing its way through his head. The entire time he kept his eye on their dog.

The gigantic, ferocious beast paced around the coffee shop, keeping its dangerous eyes on the couple sitting in the booth. That malicious fiend paced around on muscularly lethal legs, not even trying to hide its brute strength.

Richard shivered, goosebumps raised on the arms pinned down against his sides. Why was he tied down? What was going on? That dog could come attack him and he would be helpless to defend himself.

As if sensing his thoughts, the black creature spun around and glared down its long snout at him. Long yellowish teeth exposed. What were they thinking? If this dog got bitten, it would, too, become a Returned. That’s what happened to his grandmother. Her cat was bitten, thinking nothing was wrong; his grandmother took the cat and snuggled up on her lap. The cat, dirty thing, bit her right in the neck. This happened the day he stayed over, the next day they were both leaving to go back…somewhere. He couldn’t remember where just that it was safe. He woke up that morning, expecting to collect his grandmother and found that he had to protect himself from the one woman who accepted him as he was and her damn cat.

He had no luck in the world what-so-ever. That afternoon he got into a car crash. Him vs. tree. Tree won. It wasn’t bad enough to kill him, obviously, but it was bad enough to cause his head injury.

There were two girls here. The red head in the booth with the boy and the small brunette hovering around him with a pistol. She could shoot him anytime…and then the dog would eat his carcass. Why was the world like this?

Anger surged through his body, ripping away at his soul. His thin muscles struggled against the bonds around him. He watched his own body fold around the tight rope. The boy, the red head boy, he tied him up. Made the brunette girl point the gun at him and had the ginger girl hold him down while red boy tied the knots. He hated the red boy. Red boy was taller than him, and stronger. Even ginger girl was stronger than him. Was he just very weak? He could never remember being very strong.

The ginger girl was crying, again. Why was ginger girl crying? She cried when he told her that he didn’t know her. She hugged red boy and they went to sit down at that booth. Then they talked with their strong tanned arms around each other. Then ginger girl cried again. There wasn’t going to be a lot of crying was there? Maybe they were just going to kill him. Maybe they were Brusco.

Brusco, he knew, was Spanish for sharp. Technically you can’t call them Bruscos, which meant sudden. To him this didn’t make a difference. From what he could remember that his grandmother told him was that the Voc virus mutated, creating the Brusco. People contracting Brusco were diseased Returned. The difference was that the Brusco were ‘preserved’. Their bodies didn’t go through any of the normal stages of decay that a Returned did. Brusco were deadly mostly because they were intelligent. His grandmother told him that instead of chasing after you down the street, they will lure you; make you believe that they are alive and then, supposedly, seduce you and kill/eat you. Nobody knew about the seduce-then-eat part because nobody ever survived. Shocker.

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