Static: Fade to Gray by James Hunt

Author:James Hunt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic, General Fiction, Dystopian, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Published: 2016-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

It was abnormally cold just before the sun broke over the horizon. Goose bumps rose on Wren’s arm as she sat on the front steps of Nathan’s porch, alone except for the nearly empty bottle of whiskey to her left. She’d found it in the cellar where Addison, Chloe, Zack, and Doug were hidden. She didn’t remember much of returning to the cabin, but the gunshots from Edric’s pistol still rang as clearly as they had nearly ten hours ago.

Wren curled her fingers around the bottle’s neck and lifted the rim to her lips, the brown liquid sloshing back and forth inside then sliding down her throat. The whiskey’s burn had numbed her senses and slowed her mind. But the one thing it hadn’t done was blur the vision of the young man who was killed at her feet, nor the screams from the fellow captives right before Edric’s men silenced them as well.

Murderers. They came here to kill your family. But even as Wren repeated the mantra that Edric had used to justify the deaths of the captives, she couldn’t rid herself of the trembling boy at her feet, his eyes wide with fear just moments before his death. There was no trial, no talk of their reasons, no explanation of who shot first. Justice. That wasn’t justice. It was revenge.

Wren circled the rim of the whiskey bottle with her finger, the glass warm from the heat of her lips. If there was one thing that came out of the altercation from the night before, it was Edric making a point of who was really in charge of the community. While he was gunning down the enemy, Iris and Ben were held to little more than a few words before Edric disappeared with his goons.

A shudder ran through her at the thought of his little army, his disciples that he’d trained so well. They’d listen to anything he said and would follow through with anything they told him. The only question was how much of the rest of the community would? Her wall failed, the people in the community saw her refuse an order from a man they either feared or respected, or both. Whatever little headway she’d made disappeared the moment she lowered her weapon.

A part of her wanted to do it. That much she was sure of, or else the shame from last night would have worn off hours ago, before the bottle between her knees was drained. She’d tried to find a way to justify killing the boy, but no matter what excuse she set in front of herself, she came back to the same conclusion: all those people wanted was help. They asked for it before, and we turned them away. We never even considered working with them.

The community’s policy of isolation was one that was well accepted, and if it weren’t for Nathan, she and her family would have been in the same boat. She thought about everything she did to keep her family safe back in Chicago, never stopping to think about the repercussions.

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