Page 39 of The Red Rider
“It was so perfect, and I can hardly keep my eyes open.”
Aeron just chuckled and kissed the top of my head.
“Sleep, Speedy, because we are going to do this again.”
“Promise?” I yawned.
“We’re so going to do this on the desk in the Oval Office to celebrate killing your father.”
I just grunted and closed my eyes. It was getting harder and harder to deny that Oval Office orgy was going to happen. I pretty much fell for Dice and had an orgy with three of them. I didn’t know the first thing about Asher, and by all reports, he wasn’t down for having sex with me either.
Still, something seemed to be drawing me towards the Horsemen if I was now dating three of them.
Chapter 20
I
didn’t remember a lot of my life, but between Dice and Aeron, I remembered more. Sure, there were still bad people out there, but I honestly couldn’t remember people coming together this much before the world went to shit. Sure, if there was a disaster, people forgot their differences and tried to work together to fix things, but this was an extended disaster. I’d been to Gabriel’s Haven, California, Mexico, and now Florida. We met some bad people on the road, but the only arguments I’d seen and people threatening fistfights were Aeron and Dice.
I’m sure there were arguments in the privacy of people’s homes, but for the most part, Florida was all working together to get those bombs and planes performing to kill the Rage Heads. They’d managed to scrounge up satellite phones, and there was constant chatter all around the theme park from all corners of the world. It was pretty amazing. There was either one person there who spoke English who could translate or someone here who could.
It was finally coming together, and we were celebrating minor victories. Dice had trained a shit load of soldiers and civilians in his odd methods of techno hacking. I was convinced Dice was some kind of angel MacGyver and probably could have built something to kill the Rage Heads with a tin can and one of his toothpicks.
There were so many people here, and Dice ran a tight ship. I felt like I should have a job because everyone else did. Aeron walked around, asking if we could help people because I wanted to contribute. People let me try to be nice.
I learned the hard way farm animals fucking hated me. Cats and dogs always loved me, but livestock was an entirely different story. I was now totally on board with Aeron’s theory that chickens were evil velociraptors with no soul. I couldn’t even help collect eggs because they ambushed me with those nasty beaks.
I was high tailing it out a chicken coop with hay in my hair, bleeding peck marks, and broken egg goop on my clothes. Aeron refused to set foot in the enclosure and was waiting for me when I got out.
“See? Straight up evil mini dinosaurs.”
I pulled a piece of hay out of my hair.
“Okay, that was totally unprovoked. It was like they took it personally I was harvesting the eggs. How do humans have like, a million egg recipes, and put it in so many foods if they fight back when you try to get their eggs?”
Aeron just ran his fingers through his hair and led me away from the coop.
“Have you noticed none of the farm animals here like us? It’s always been like that. We draw some animals to us, and others don’t want to be around us. We’ve never figured out why. You know how much Meremoth scares you when you’re on his back? Being on a regular horse is so much worse. They don’t obey us and want us off their back. We don’t generally use regular horses, but one time, Dice and I got called, and this general insisted his warhorses were better than ours, and we couldn’t fight by his side unless we used his. Cluster fuck doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
“Why didn’t you warn me before I tried hanging out with cows and chickens, Aeron? Those chickens tried to eat me!”
“I wasn’t sure if it would be the same for you since you’re a Nephilim, and it seemed important to you to help out. Maybe you don’t need to farm or tend to the animals. Art is still essential, Ariel. Never think it isn’t just because of what’s going on. There needs to be a record of everything that has happened and everything that was done. People aren’t exactly taking photos anymore.
“You’ve been a lot more places than most people have since all this started. You’ve seen Gabriel’s Haven, California, Mexico, and now Florida. You’ve seen the good and the bad in people. I know there was a lot you missed, but you’re witnessing history. You were there when the vaccine was made, and you’ll be there when the modified bombs.
“You’re an amazing artist, Speedy, and you should draw what you’ve seen for historical purposes. It’s going to take time for things like the internet and publishing to come back. By the time it’s back up, memories won’t be fresh. Things will get embellished. People who didn’t see what you have seen will write about things they only heard secondhand. Draw and paint history, Speedy. The apocalypse still needs artists.”
I flung myself at Aeron so hard, he practically fell over. I wrapped my arms and legs around him like a spider monkey and kissed him with everything I had. That was pretty much exactly the right thing to say, and I loved him for it.
My only actual skills were drawing, sarcasm, I had an excellent throwing arm, and I could hit a curveball. The throwing arm and curveball thing came in handy for bashing in zombie's brains, but painting and a potty mouth weren’t exactly survival skills.
In Mexico, I knew my actual job was getting my blood to Leif, but I had hard drives I could go through to contribute in my own way. I didn’t have that in Florida, and I was feeling self-conscious I was the only one not working. No one said anything to me about it, and it honestly felt like they were humoring me when they did let me help, but it was shit that had been running around my head on repeat.
I’d always been proud of my art, and I’d managed to turn it into a pretty successful career. Sure, the drawings I’d done since I woke up from that coma had saved some lives, but I kept telling myself they didn’t count. I didn’t have a choice about those drawings. Aside from sketching Aeron, I hadn’t sat down and drawn anything just for fun or to make some statement I wanted to make since I left that research facility.
Aeron was right. I’d seen some shit, and I could document it. I hadn’t seen a single person with a camera in any of the places I’d been, even the ones with working electricity. That didn’t mean there weren’t people documenting things and trying to store them on a laptop if they managed to find one, but I’m sure SD cards were scarce, and hard drives eventually got full.
“Have you been taking cues from Leif? That was exactly the right thing to say.”
