Unsaved

Unsaved: The Small Hours, Book One

By Raven McAllister

Copyright 2012 Raven McAllister

Smashwords Edition

Cover design by Francesco De Luca

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Unsaved

The Small Hours | Book One

2015.

After 767 miles of continuous walking, the figure in the vintage twenties overcoat and fedora came to a standstill. It was 1:46 a.m. Wheat fields swayed peacefully for miles on end around him. Overhead, a three-quarters moon cast spectral illumination on the far-stretching solitude. About twelve miles back along the interstate, a big blue and white sign had welcomed him to Nebraska.

There wasn't a trace of humanity out here. That was the point.

The bearded man took his gloved hands from his pocket, and lifted his arms out to his sides semi-ceremoniously.

"Orroman Gyr!" he called out into the darkness. His deep tenor, accented with the slightest southern drawl, punched through hundreds of yards of the quiet. When his shout had died away altogether, he dug within his inner coat pocket and produced a cigar and lighter. The lighter lost its gold color in the pale light until he flicked the flame into service. It was a good lighter. He'd taken it off an old pal of his back in '88. Lighting up and tucking the memento away, he began to address the empty Nebraska nothingness again.

We need to talk, old boy, he said in a slightly raised tone. Pacing slowly as he puffed, his eyes wandered between the dirt of the waist-high young crops in front of him to the horizon beyond that intertwined with the abounding blackness.

There was no response, but he hadn't expected any.

I've had to make arrangements to talk to you, the man said, ending with a chuckle. All sorts of arrangements. Lot of backs scratched, favors done, concessions made.

The figure halted his pacing, and stared into the darkness.

And you probably know how I feel about concessions.

With that, the older gentleman slowly lowered to the ground. He sat Indian-style (something about it seemed appropriate) amidst the wheat, occasionally working the cigar.

I gotta story to tell ya. It's a story about a girl. And you're gonna want to listen carefully. Alright?

No response. He took a prolonged puff, smiled, and lowered his head.

Alright then. Story time.

2005.

Samantha Cass placed her small hands under the backyard water faucet, and began scrubbing off the dried blood. Sending people to Heaven just kept getting messier. Reading the last words had always been easy (she had won the Super Reader Superstar Award last year in Mrs. Thompson's class, after all). But Daddy had taken to getting her more involved in the end of The Process. Climbing down the bank of the bend left her shoes muddy. Helping him move the bodies into the water always ended up flooding her rubber boots. But pressing her hands against the bleeding skin for the final shove-off…even though she was a little squeamish about it sometimes, she was getting better at it.

Her father emerged from the woods on her right, the rifle slung over his shoulder. She was scraping away the last streaks of crimson when his hand grazed through her curly blonde locks. A thin man with a bit of a belly and receding hair, James Cass bent with cracking knees next to his daughter. He smiled at her.

Want pizza tonight? he inquired.

Her blue eyes sparkled at the idea. Oo, yes, yes!

Stuffed crust?

Yeah!

Sure thing, sweetie. That way you can take some for lunch tomorrow in case the cafeteria decides to start the year off serving that nasty corn mush.

Excellent, Samantha remarked with a mock decorum. She could pull off eloquence well for an eight year-old, which is why James kept seeing her as a lawyer one day. She was good with words, and confident. She was more sure-handed than a lot of the adults in his congregation.

Dad, she continued, who are we sending to Heaven next?

He shrugged. Depends on who God sends us.

Samantha stood up from the faucet, and her father began working the blood from his own hands. She stared at three foot by three foot iron box at the end of the backyard. Her eyes wandered about the thin, dark slit cut near the top of the deadbolted door.

Is Mr. Kurt going to be next? she asked. James glanced at the box, in which Kurt Yancy had sat for the past two days. He went right ahead scrubbing his hands.

That’s going to be up to Mr. Kurt, he replied.

The preacher twisted off the flow, stood, and wiped his hands on his stained old jeans. Looking up into the mottle of pink-grey sky above, James drew in a deep breath, and exhaled with a peaceful grin. Samantha glommed on to his leg, and he patted her back.

God will send us the right soul to save, sweetie. We just have to keep at it.

I. Unto Oneself

1.

Her thin fingers gripped the wheel of the parked SUV to focus on the here and now. She couldn’t let herself slip into any kind of recollection or horrible imaginings whatsoever. This had to be done, just like it had to be done last week. One last tight grip and she inhaled deeply. She bailed from the vehicle, holding her breath, with a look of desperate purpose on her forty-five year-old face.

Emille Hashter slowly let this breath out as she popped the gas cap, slid her debit card (there was a time when she could have skipped this step because it didn’t exist), punched in her PIN number, and set the nozzle into the tank with the auto-pump lever in place. She began to walk away quickly from the SUV, and involuntarily let out the last of her breath to gasp for air. She wasn’t nearly far enough from the pumps at this point. She smelled it. Gas.

She diverted her walk towards the convenience store entry to the blue American Press vending box on the corner of the building. She didn’t even come close to making it that time. Those horrible imaginings were here, and Emille fought to swallow back most of the tears. She pretended to dig through her big green purse for exact change that she knew wasn’t there.

So stupid. This would be the last time she tried to get the milk here, too. Next time, it was the grocery store, even if the nearest one to Alouise Bend, Alabama was fifteen miles away.

The blonde (a dull, aged blonde that tattled through her last dye job) took out the shades from her purse and put them on. Trying to collect herself out here was pointless; she could still smell it. A brief scan of the parking lot turned up one good old boy towing a boat behind his unnecessarily large truck with his back turned to her. Another man, older, was walking toward the store but pretending not to notice her distress. She wiped her cheeks with her hands and proceeded into the store behind him. Milk. All this because she didn’t want to drive out of her way for milk.

Because driving fifteen miles out of the way for milk you really don’t even need today is totally sane, she told herself. Regardless, she was in, out, and back holding her breath en route to the gold SUV. She removed the nozzle, hung it up haphazardly, and hopped back into the driver’s seat. She exhaled again. And again, it came--the Old Self Argument reared its head as she turned the engine.

You didn’t have to move here. Maybe if you hadn’t run away from everything you knew, you would still be walking two blocks to Kavanaugh’s for milk back in Hartford instead of driving fifteen miles to Grand Sticks or whatever that town’s called—

Grand Junction, Emille corrected herself aloud as she pulled back onto the main road. "You know why you left Hartford. You know why."

Emille sniffed, and blinked back the tears again beneath the shades.

They were everywhere you turned. Tyler and Craig were just…everywhere...

She could smell gasoline. She knew it wasn’t there. It was back at the gas station. It wasn’t in the cab. It wasn’t in her living room. It wasn’t in her bedroom. It wasn’t ever there, and instead of lingering on the possibility that it really was, Emille shook her head and focused on the road ahead. This was what her counselor back in Hartford had taught her to do: she had to focus on the here and now, and choose not to let the emotion of the memory sweep her away. Her counselor had called it being mindful. She had made Emille practice being mindful—holding green stress balls and focusing just on them for three minutes, staring at the clouds and observing nothing but the clouds for five minutes, noticing the feel of the fabric of her shirt on her shoulders and nothing else around her—but not once had the skill ever saved her from a strong rush of memories. This time, it wasn’t so bad; the widow found the anxiety relaxing its hold on her mind, and she began to let herself wander into topics like what she might make for dessert and who might be voted off American Idol tonight.

Unspoken, unthought, but still at the back of her mind was the knowledge that at some point, it would strike again, and it might be too strong to shrug off. She wouldn’t be able to sleep, and she would give in. That’s how she saw popping one of the Seroquels her doctor back in Connecticut had given her six refills for: giving in, saying that she couldn’t fight off the memories without tranquilizing herself. Every time she took one of the pills, Emille felt as if she was a step further from moving on. Not to mention she read online that they made you fat.

Moving on was a terrifying idea, too. They were dead, and she was moving