CHAPTER 12
Xander,
The first distinct memory he had of his life was standing in a park. He'd been three and tottering awkwardly through the grass to get at a dandelion. His chubby fingers had crushed the yellow flower when he pulled it out of the ground but he'd still happily toddled back over to hand it to his mother. She'd oohed and ahhed over the crushed flower while she held a sleeping Carol against her chest. He could still see the radiant smile on her face; still clearly recall the cut grass and almost burnt aroma of the dandelion upon his fingers. The smell of dandelions still brought him back to that moment. His mother had looked so beautiful that day, so radiant in a way that he'd never seen her before.
For years, he'd never understood why that day had been his first memory or why he recalled it so vividly. Then, when he was fifteen he'd found that dandelion pressed into the pages of his mother's scrapbook, and he'd felt that love all over again. It was then he'd realized that he could remember the day so clearly because it was the first time he'd ever truly known what love was, and just how deeply he was loved. That ugly, crushed little weed had made his mother's face light up as if he'd just handed her a hundred roses, and she'd cherished it even more than she would have a hundred roses.
He didn't know where the memory came from now, his life didn't flash before his eyes as he'd heard it would before possible death. Instead, all he saw was that simple time of a little boy with his family. All he felt was the unconditional love of his mother as his ears rang with the resounding echo of gunfire. Maybe it was the burnt smell of gunpowder filling the room that had triggered the memory; maybe it was because he felt almost childlike again as he stood there helplessly amongst the chaos that had unfolded. Or maybe it was because the only woman he'd ever been in love with had shoved herself away from him. He'd been holding Riley, trying to keep her safe, but she'd jerked free of his hold. The motion had drawn Peter's gun away from him just as Peter pulled the trigger.
A simple dandelion from a field in a park had been his first knowledge of unconditional love. That park had played a part in even more of his memories as he'd grown from childhood to adolescence to adult. Riley had been in a good chunk of those memories over the years. Carol, Lee, and Bobby had also often been present during the laughter, and sometimes tears from skinned knees and broken bones, but those three were gone now. They were nothing more than the movies that played through his mind, he was terrified to look and see if Riley had joined the cast of his now gone friends.
It had only been seconds since the gunshots had sounded but he couldn't bring himself to move, couldn't bring himself to face Riley. But he had too; he couldn't stand there lost in his memories forever, it was simply impossible to do so. Gathering his courage, he forced himself to turn his head and look at where Riley had landed beside him on the floor.
He'd handed his mother a simple dandelion and she'd treasured it for as long as she'd been alive. It felt like someone handed him the most precious gift in the world when Riley's dazed eyes met his. The look on her face said she'd just seen into the eyes of the devil, and he supposed, in a way, she had.
Yellow stuffing had exploded from the ruined cushion on the couch behind her; bits of debris clung to her hair and shoulders. There was a still smoldering bullet hole just two inches to the right of where her head was.
So close, she had come so unbelievably close to death today.
Xander knelt beside her and before she could get herself into a full sitting position, he took hold of her cheeks and kissed her. There was no death here; there was only sweetness and love, and simple relief as he tasted her lips and mouth. He couldn't get enough of touching her as his hand slid away from her face to cradle the back of her neck. An out of control feeling tore through him as he held her against him.
Her breath came in rapid pants when she pulled away to look up at him. A small smile curved her mouth before her gaze slid over the others and the smile slipped from her lips. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to look away from her. Jim sat on the floor against the wall; his hands covered the chest wound still pulsing blood out of it. His chest rose and fell sluggishly but his eyes had closed and a strange rattling noise escaped him on every exhalation.
Al knelt on the floor near Jim, his hand was wrapped around the butt of his gun, but it hadn't moved from the floor. Blood splattered close to Al's hands and there were a few drops on his face. With a trembling hand, Al wiped the blood from his face. His mouth hung open in astonishment as he stared at the man lying just a few inches away from his hand.
A puddle of blood formed beneath Peter. The red liquid seeped from the black bullet hole in the center of his left temple. Blood, and bits of skull and brain had exploded over Mary Ellen, Donald and Victor, who remained on the floor unmoving and oblivious to the chaos around him. Mary Ellen looked torn between screaming, crying, and vomiting as blood dripped off of her cheek to land silently upon the cream colored carpet. Donald was the color of dry wall; even his lips had turned white. The only color on the man was Peter's blood, his hair and eyes, the blue shirt he wore, and his jeans. Donald's hands were still empty as they remained in the air over his head.
Xander had been looking everywhere but the other direction he knew Peter had shot in. Just as he'd known that he had to make sure Riley was still alive, he knew he couldn't deny looking in the direction of Carl and John any longer. Carl turned back toward the group; blood spilled through the fingers of the hand he had pressed against his forehead. Carl froze in mid turn as his gaze landed upon John.
The gun clasped in John's hands was still extended and Xander swore that a tendril of smoke curled out from the barrel. He wouldn't have been more shocked if it had been a dog standing there holding the gun as he was to see John with it. The expression on John's face was resolute; his hands on the gun were steady. Despite his calm exterior, the haunted look in his eyes told Xander that John would never be the same. He considered John one of his friends now, he knew that John would have his back, but he'd never been certain that John would truly have the ability to take a life if the situation presented itself.
John's gaze lingered on Peter's still form and then he turned to Carl. "I told you," he said in a voice that Xander barely recognized. "That I would do what had to be done, when the time came."
Carl continued to stare at him in disbelief before he gave a brief nod. After a protracted silence, Carl gently pushed John's left arm down with his free hand. John's arms remained unmoving at first but he finally relented to Carl's pressure on them. "You did the right thing," Carl said.
John turned to look at him. "I did what needed to be done, that doesn't necessarily mean it was the right thing."
Xander had never expected anything even remotely philosophical to come out of John's mouth, and yet those might have been the truest words he'd ever heard. Carl opened his mouth to say something but the sound of pounding feet coming from the front of the house snapped all of their heads around.
"Check on Jim," Al commanded. "I'll stop them."
There wasn't much to check on with Jim, Xander already knew that, but he moved toward the large man's side and knelt next to him. He pressed his fingers against the vein in Jim's neck. A weak pulse beat there but not for much longer judging by the easing of the blood from the wound. Helplessness swamped him, the only thing they could do for the man was sit here and watch him die.
"Where is Jim?" Claire demanded from what sounded like the den.
"What happened?" Nancy asked shrilly.
"Is everyone ok?" Josh inquired.
He heard Al talking to them in low tones but he couldn't make out the words as Al ushered the others back toward the dining room. "I'll go help him," Donald said in a tremulous voice.
Riley tore her gaze away from him and Jim. Bits of stuffing fell onto the floor around her as she rose to her feet. "Not like that," she whispered. "You're covered in Peter's blood."
Donald's hands limply fell to his sides as his gaze ran up and down his body. "
Shit," he muttered. "Just…"
"Shit," John finished when Donald's voice trailed off. "Yeah I'd say that's the best way to describe this situation."
A strange rattle and then complete silence drew Xander's attention back to Jim. Beneath his fingers, he no longer felt a weak pulse. He sat and stared at Jim's massive chest but it no longer rose and fell with his breaths. Xander's hand dropped down, he leaned back on his heels to study the unmoving man. "He's gone."
"This is all my fault," Riley muttered.
"You didn't pull that trigger and what we're doing with Victor is something we all wanted to try. This is not your fault," Carl said. "I wanted this as much as you did."
John grabbed hold of his arm to help him as Carl took an unsteady step forward. "Are you ok?" John demanded. Carl waved John's hand away but he sank onto the intact couch cushion. Beads of sweat dotted his brow and lip; his face had taken on the greenish hue of someone about to be ill. "Did you get hit by some debris or something?"
"Or something, I'm pretty sure I was shot," Carl mumbled.
"What!" Riley cried.
She hurried to Carl's side and dropped to her knees in front of him. Donald and Mary Ellen crept out of the corner but the both of them still looked as if they were about to pass out at any moment. Neither of them had made a move to try and clean themselves up, but there wasn't anything they could use within this room anyway. Victor remained unmoving on the floor, oblivious to the pool of Peter's blood creeping steadily closer to him.
Mary Ellen gathered herself enough to bend down and pick the child up. She carried him over and deposited him on the loveseat. Riley grabbed hold of Carl's arm and tried to pull his hand away from his injury. Xander had an awful image of a bullet hole in the center of Carl's forehead, of brain being exposed, or some other hideous thing. It could be possible, he'd heard of people surviving much worse from a gunshot wound.
Carl was walking and talking, but it could also be shock keeping his body going right now. He could actually be dying. These could be his last few minutes on earth, and the adrenaline coursing through his body was carrying him through like a chicken with its head cut off.
"I have to see," Riley said when Carl continued to hold his hand to the blood seeping down from his skull.
His injury had to be awful for it to be bleeding that much but Xander couldn't tear his eyes away as Carl finally relented to Riley's insistence. A gouge had been torn across Carl's head. It started on the side of his head, and was about an inch above and to the right of his right eye. The bullet had torn off skin and hair, leaving behind a clear trail of its trajectory. Blood oozed from the gash but Xander had a feeling the white bone of the skull would be evident when the bleeding stopped.
Riley placed Carl's hand back against the wound. "It's ugly looking but you're going to live," she assured him. "I need some supplies to stop the bleeding."
"I was never that good looking to begin with," he told her with a wan smile.
The fact that he still had a sense of humor was reassuring but they had to do something about the blood soon if he was going to continue to have one. "I'll get them," Xander told her.
"They're in the trunk of the Cadillac, or they were," Mary Ellen said. She was starting to regain some of her color but her hands were still shaking.
"I'm coming with you," Riley said as she rose to her feet. "We also need fresh clothes and water for Mary Ellen, Donald, and Victor."
Xander nodded and turned to leave the room. He instantly found it easier to breathe as soon as he stepped into the den and away from the massacre. He took hold of Riley's hand and pressed it against his chest when she joined him. For a minute he simply stood there with her and let some of the tension ease from his body.
"I thought you were dead," he said honestly.
Riley frowned as she glanced back at the room. "It probably should have been me…"
"Carl was right, this isn't your fault. If we can help those people with the L-Dopa we are going to do it. Peter has been slipping for awhile now. I think he's been waiting for an excuse to try and kill us."
"I would say you're right." Xander jumped a little at the sound of the voice in the doorway of the living room. "I didn't mean to interrupt you," Al apologized. "But I told Claire I would find out about Jim."
"He didn't make it," Riley whispered.
Al nodded and ran his hand through his disheveled gray hair. "I didn't think he would," he said before focusing on Riley again. "I truly believe Peter has been planning to kill us off for a long time now. I also think he planned to keep the kids with him after he did kill us. He was stronger than them and they would have to rely on him. If he could keep it hidden that he killed the rest of us, or somehow managed to twist the story to his benefit, he could have made it so they depended on him completely. Over time, he could have bent their minds to his will and he was manipulative enough to do so. We were always more competition and more mouths to feed than he liked."
Riley nodded her agreement but Xander could feel the tremor in her hand. "That's why he went for Jim first," Riley said. "Because he was the biggest."
"And the biggest threat. It was his son that Peter planned to take with him after all. You don't come in between a parent and their child," Al said. "I think Peter believed he had us at a disadvantage in that room. You're just lucky he didn't start shooting before we got there, but then I don't think he expected tonight to be the opportunity that he'd been waiting for. It just spiraled out of control, and when he had the strongest of us all together in one room, he decided to take his chance."
Xander released Riley's hand and pulled her against his side. "He's right," he whispered and kissed her temple.
Riley hugged him back before pulling away and taking a deep breath. "Carl's been shot, we need supplies, and Mary Ellen and Donald have to get cleaned up."
"Carl was shot?" Al demanded.
"He'll be fine if we stop the bleeding. I'm not sure we're going to be able to stitch it but he definitely needs some bandages and peroxide. Plus water and clean clothes."
"You two gather those and I'll talk with Claire and Freddie," Al said and stepped back.
The others looked up from the dining room table when they entered the room. Xander looked quickly away from the hopeful look in Claire's tear filled eyes. Freddie sat silently beside her, with Nancy and Josh. Rochelle stood in the doorway of the kitchen with her arms wrapped around her middle.
"Jim?" Claire inquired.
"I'm sorry," Al said.
"Come with me," Xander said to Rochelle, looking to get her away from the grief engulfing the room. He nudged her away from the doorway as Claire began to weep loudly and Freddie wrapped his arms around his mother.
"I'm going to get some pots, I'll be in here or the living room," Riley said and broke away to search the cabinets.
Rochelle continued to hug herself as they walked outside. "What happened in there?" she asked when they stepped outside.
"Nothing good."
Her eyes glimmered in the beam of his flashlight as she followed him over to the car. "Al said my mom is ok."
"She is," he assured her. He popped the trunk of the Caddy and hurried to the back of it. "Peter and Jim are dead."
Rochelle inhaled abruptly, her lower lip quivered but she resolutely held back the tears in her eyes. "Who are the bandages for?"
"Carl was shot, but he's fine," he rushed to get the words out when Rochelle gasped and her hand flew to her mouth.
"Thank God," she breathed.
"Do you think God has anything to do with this?" The sound of John's voice caused them both to jump in surprise. Xander leaned out from around the rear end of the Caddy to look at him. John stood half hidden in shadow by the backdoor of the car.
"Maybe," Rochelle answered. "Maybe not. But Carl is alive and that is something to be thankful for, no matter who saw fit to keep him that way. I'd like to think it might have been God."
John frowned at her before glancing at the sky. "Maybe you hav
e it right, but I think the only one looking out for us now, is us."
"I'm ok with it only being you guys looking out for me too," Rochelle said. "We've gotten each other pretty freaking far through all of this and we'll get each other the rest of the way through. I thank you all for that, and I will thank God just in case he or she is still listening."
Xander lifted an eyebrow as he studied the young girl beside him. There was so much maturity in her for someone so young, so much belief in them. But then maybe she had so much faith in them because she was so young. Whatever it was, she had pierced through John's odd demeanor as a smile tugged at his lips.
"After all of this, I'm leaning toward God being a she. Only a woman could be this temperamental," John said.
"Ha ha," Rochelle retorted.
"And are we really that happy Carl is still alive?" John's voice didn't hold the same note of teasing that it normally did when he unleashed his sarcasm, but Xander found himself immensely relieved by John's words and the fact that he walked around the back of the car to join them.
"We know you're doing cartwheels, even if you don't want to admit it," Rochelle told him.
"I don't do cartwheels kid." John told her as he took a bag of medical supplies from Xander and turned back to the house. "I only do handstands."
CHAPTER 13
John,
It took the rest of the night to remove Jim and Peter's bodies from the house and bury them. John went through the motions with an almost mechanical nature. He spoke with the others; he carried Peter's feet with Carl carrying his shoulders. He helped to dig Jim's grave with one of the two shovels they'd found in the shed, and though the man had been a murderer and most likely a psychopath, he helped to dig Peter's grave too. He couldn't bring himself to help lower Peter's body into the grave, and no one asked him to do so.
He stood silently by and watched the dirt being tossed onto the bodies. He'd just killed a man, he'd assumed there would be a million thoughts running through his mind. Believed he'd feel guilt, or hate himself. Instead, he felt this odd sense of detachment. He had the sensation of being outside of himself and watching while the shallow graves filled with dirt.