The Risen: Courage by Marie F Crow Page A

voice melding into more with each voice that joins the choir. It ranges in the highs of the females to the lows of males like sections of songs, but it is wordless melodies of what our days are now. We no longer need words to move us. Screaming seems to work just fine.
    “You’re not going to see Aimes, are you?” Marxx stares down at me with amusement and hesitation.
    “No,” I say to him and we both smile with it.
    The men have come to know me well. I’m not one to run and hide, praying for someone to come save me. I don’t expect for someone to take the bullet for me. I can light my own cigar and take it just fine on my own while bitching about it the whole time. I am more damned than I am damsel and I don’t cower in the corner from the big baddie or hide under the bed with my hand clamped over my mouth. Unless that big baddie is Rhett. Then all bets are off. Even Superman has his kryptonite.
    “You have a plan?” he asks as the seconds shave hours from time.
    I glance behind me and watch the monsters that stalk us now overtake the area outside. I watch as those who try to run trip and fall with their feet clumsy in their haste to get away only to be set upon by greedy hands and starving mouths. I see all those people who were just moments ago staring at us with hate running to the very men they placed that hate on with prayers of salvation. I stare as the only ones Karma has left me head once again into the danger and dare Death for the third time today.
    “Yeah,” I tell Marxx, “the same plan I always have. Stay alive.”
    “Solid plan, but I was thinking of something with a touch more details.” He is watching the start of a war outside with his mind racing for solutions. One man can start a war, but can only one end it?
    I stare out the window with him, so close to where we use to sit and have our morning chats. The landscape is something much worse now. “If you have any suggestions, you should hurry.” I prompt him into plotting.
    “They can’t shoot. They are running too low and there is too much risk of hitting someone - ”
    “ – Not that Rhett would care.”
    “ - Or your boy.”
    I ignore his tone and ask, “So? What is the plan?”
    “If we don’t take them from the other side, they will be overrun.” He leaves it as simple as that. Simple, as if I should be grasping the hidden threat he has seen. Staring at the massacre, I do.
    Following in his long stride, I slip into the leather vest they wear marking them as a group. The extra layers I wear of winter protection absorb some of the extra space left from the older man’s size. The leather still wears the previous owners scent like a denial of my right to wear it. For a flash of time, I can feel his corded arms around me like a ghostly hug, lending me the strength I will need to face what is waiting for us. His laughter once again floats behind the locked doors of my mind. He would not be surprised to find me back on the cement standing beside them. I have become either suicidal or stupid with illusions of grandeur. The wound left on my arm enflames letting me know it’s suicidal because my worn out body has no illusions at all of what I am.
    The screaming was muted behind the thick, grey walls. The safety glass constructed windows with its wire embedding dulled the colors of the murders. When Marxx opens the door, the safety blanket is stolen with savage brutality. Standing in the center of the chaos, there is nothing to soften what is happening all around me and my heart fights to stay the course. Its pattern is no longer the steady rhythm of a conqueror it had on the walk here. Now it is the pounding of a deserter. The sights, the sounds and the smells all add layer upon layer to the continued shocks to my confidence.
    The burning bodies cloud the closed courtyard with smoke and wisp-like ashes that dance with the snow like demons with angels. The smell of the roasting flesh pairs with the copper blood as if Death walks in the