Arcadia (Book 1): Damn The Dead by Phillip Tomasso

We’re going to get them back.”

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
     
    “Anna?”
    Char looked at Grace. The woman struggled against the seat belt; her eyes were open wide. It was as if she wasn’t seeing, though. The laceration across her forehead looked deep. Thankfully it was no longer bleeding. It might be what caused her to lose consciousness. A concussion needed medical attention. Char had no idea what to do to help.
    “Anna!”
    Char reached out a hand and gently placed it on the woman’s arm. “Grace. You’re okay. It’s okay.” She was not sure who Anna was, nor was she sure she’d ask. People’s pasts were haunting.
    “No!” Grace kept her mouth open long after the word was screamed.
    Char needed to get Tony and Sam’s attention. They were too far ahead. The last thing she wanted to do was pull the cord to activate the rig’s horn, the blast would give away their location to anything even remotely close. It wasn’t like she was in a compact car where the honk sounded more like a feeble sneeze. She decided to apply the clutch and brakes. They were smart guys; they would realize she had stopped. They’d turn around and head back.
    “Grace,” she said, as the rig stopped. The motor let out hisses and moans. It exhaled a puff of smoke out of the pipe over the cab’s roof, as if a dragon were settling down for the day.
    Grace held onto a startled expression. Her hands shot forward and braced on the dash as she looked left and right. “Where are we?”
    “You’re safe. We’ve got you. We saved you from those people,” Char said. She tried to speak softly. She had no idea what horrors Grace endured. She shuddered just thinking about the endless list of possibilities. It was surely the kind of things that nightmares were bred from.
    “Charlene,” Grace said. Normally she’d have protested. This time she let it go. Grace was working to get her bearings in check. It was okay, forgivable.
    “I’m here.”
    “Sam? Where is he?”
    “He’s safe, riding horseback with Tony.” She looked out the front window. She had expected to see Tony and Sam returning. There was no sign of them yet. She didn’t think they were that far ahead. “We’re far, far away from those bad people.”
    “They were bad people,” Grace said. Her voice fell flat. Her eyes lowered, looking down at nothing, maybe the gearshift.
    Char found it hard to swallow. “Who. . .who is Anna?”
    Grace’s head snapped up. She locked eyes with Char.
    Char knew better than to have asked. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
    “She was my baby. Anna was my daughter.”
    There was really no need to say more. Char had lost her family, friends, to the infected, to battles against crazy people she’d come to know as raiders. If Anna wasn’t here, it didn’t require much imagination to figure out how it ended. The only difference might be some specifics.
    Grace’s expression softened. She took her hands away from the dash and folded them in her lap. “Anna was just ten years old. An itty-bitty thing. She looked so much like her father, I always tried not to hold that against her. He was such a son of a bitch that man, but he was handsome. I won’t lie. One of the first things that attracted me to him was his looks. He had these big broad shoulders and arms that looked more like marble than muscle. He was tall and dark, and had a deep raspy voice. The kind of voice that, when he whispered —it melted your heart. I don’t know if it was infatuation, or plain and simple lust. We were no good together. He drank too much, and I guess I did, too. Our arguments oftentimes became physical. He could have killed me if he wanted to, a single punch would have shut my lights forever. No. He never hit me. I guess what I mean when I say that our arguments became physical, is that I used to beat the shit out of him. Hit him till my hands hurt too bad to hit him anymore, and then I’d find something else to use to hit him with,” she