14
Chapter Fourteen
REESE
Retracing the stepsinto the center of Chipley is unsettling but we haven’t crossed anyone’s path just yet so it feels like the calm before the bloodbath.
The sheds are now in view as we pass by what was once the safe area. There is no part of Chipley that would be considered safe at this point, though.
“I say we go to door to door, recruiting help. Finding each person individually might give us a better chance of gaining camaraderie,” Sin says, downing the rest of his bottle of water.
I agree in silence as an ache brews in my gut. The memory of what some of these people did to me when they thought I was weak enough to be taken down is still fresh in my mind. None of them are right in the head and I know from experience that reasoning with the insane is nearly impossible.
Sin wraps his arm around my shoulders, placing a quick kiss on the top of my head. He seems less nervous than I am, and I wish I knew where he was getting his confidence from because I could desperately use some of that right now. Maybe he’s ignoring the possible outcomes, going into this blind with simple hope. I’m not naive enough to believe there is a high likelihood these people will look up to us, respect us even. It almost seems impossible, as if we’re being used as a decoy. While I would like to think Sin’s mother wouldn’t use him as a disposable distraction, she also left him in Chipley to rot and I don’t trust that woman for as far as I can throw her.
By the time my thought is complete, Sin’s fist meets the wooden slab of the first shed. He knocks tersely but not in a threatening way. I doubt the people here knock on each other’s shed doors. I doubt the people here are friends with one another. I doubt the people here would trust anyone, especially us.
The door opens slowly, the creak from what sounds like rusty springs whines loudly against the silence in the air. “Who are you?” A woman answers.
“My name is Sin. I’m here with Reese, another prisoner of Chipley. We know of a way out and we are seeking your help, as well as the help of others.”
The woman laughs, a loud, harrowing laugh. “You think you know of a way out and you wantmyhelp?” she says, taming her outburst.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Sin responds, still even-toned.
The door opens a little wider, allowing the light to pour into the shed. It looks similar to the one I lived in, a mattress surrounded by four wooden panels, two buckets in the corner—one for disposal, the other for drinking and washing water, and tiny cracks of light beaming in from random holes in the wooden walls. Of course her shed isn’t locked, she is free to come and go as she pleases.
The woman takes a step closer to us, the sun illuminating her entire body. Her skin is so pale, it’s nearly translucent as it glows under the sun. Her eyes are swollen, the whites surrounded by a web of red veins as if she has been crying, dirt is caked beneath her nails, and her clothes are torn and covered in filth. She smells the way I assume I must have smelled while living here, in fact, until this morning, and I believe the only reason I can tell the difference between what smells and what is clean is because I am currently clean. She looks as if she might have been an attractive woman at one point in her life, but now she looks like she climbed out of a trash bin. I wonder what she did to earn herself a ticket to hell. Would she have been better off committing no crime and instead turning into a Juliet, or worse?
“There is a way out?” she asks, a serious inflection saturating her voice.
“We were just out,” I tell her.
Her eyes widen as a look of hope washes over her face, the grime on her forehead crackling against the strain of her skin. “What do you need from me?” she asks.
“We’re all going to need to fight for our survival, but I believe we can win. I believe we can start over outside of this town.”
If every person in Chipley is as easy to convince as this woman, we may have little to worry about, but I doubt everyone will be as gullible. “Hold on,” she says, closing the door gently. I look at Sin, gauging his thoughts, but before I have a chance to look back at the door, it’s open again. The woman steps out in a robe covering her white t-shirt and blue scrub pants. Cradled within her arms, she has a small wooden plank no longer than the length of my arm, with two nails spiked out from the end. “I’m ready now.”
“What is your name?” I ask her.
“Cora,” she responds. “But that doesn’t matter here.”
“It will matter again soon,” I tell her, making a statement that could very well be no more than a blatant lie.
We walk up to the next shed as Sin knocks again. He gives the same speech to the man who opens the door. He spends more time staring at Sin with curiosity than asking questions or making decisions, but after a few minutes, he decided to follow us as well.
Six more people agree, followed by three who refuse. One even tries to attack us just for knocking on their door.
Now that we have approached each person in this town, we have less than a third of the people in agreement with our makeshift plan. We only have about thirty people, which is still more than we had two hours ago.
Standing in the center of Chipley where the food typically drops, we’re surrounded by thirty criminals who all want a lucky break—a way out. “I need you all to stay here while I collect the inmates from the solitary confinement cells on the hill. We believe we have a solid plan, but before we explain more, we must tell you what you don’t know. The world as we know it is…well, interesting. Our country has suffered a massive terrorist attack. A toxin has wiped out seventy-percent of the United States’ population. I will explain more when I return with the rest of us.” The volume of the voices around us grows. Concern, questions, and anger filter through the conversations. There is no easy way to explain what we saw without proving it. If someone told me the world ended outside of this town, I wouldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes. Now, I wish I could unsee what I’ve seen.
I’m questioning whether these people will actually stay put while we visit the dark prison up the hill, but for anyone with a hope of escape, I’m guessing they’ll wait here. Sin and I leave quickly, heading up the hill as he loads his weapon. “You think it’s going to be that bad when we let these people out?”
“They’ve been locked in the dark for who knows how many years, Reese. You know what the darkness does to a person. We can’t take any chances with these people. Every one of them has either murdered or committed an act so violent that they didn’t even deserve to be free in a condemned town where people feed off each other for survival. These are the people who have earned a free to ticket to death row, which means they could potentially make the best combatants for us.”
We reach the front door of the prison and walk into the darkness. Sin pulls his bag off his shoulders and slips his arm in, retrieving a flashlight. He powers it on, pointing it down the long hallway of cells. There is a stirring of people moving around, grunting, and firing questions at us from every direction. “Listen up,” Sin shouts. “There’s a way out. We need to fight for it and we need your help doing so.” Sin takes a few steps down the hall, placing himself in between the rows of cells. “We want you to fight alongside us; you must, however, follow us and adhere to our direction. You will not act out of haste or disorder, or you will be shot immediately. If you agree with this accordance, hold your hand out of your cell and I will release you.”
