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Chapter 20
Cameron
When I woke up the next day I felt better. More coherent at least. Pain radiated through me when I breathed, but that was the price I was willing to pay to be able to do that.
I sat up, fire and ice ran over my spine. I ran my fingers through my hair and looked around. So this was Brian's house. Brian's bed.
Absently I had wondered where he had slept last night.
I decided that wasn't important and tried to test what hurt. Take an innovatory so to speak.
I flexed my finger, moderate pain there. Twisted my writs, a slight twinge, nothing too hard to deal with. I stretched my hands out in front of me, turned them palm side up, closed my fists and then bent at the elbow to touch the fists to my shoulder. OK, that hurt, but I could still do it so we're OK.
Next I turned my head to the left, and then back, then to the right, and then back. The only pain that seemed to be there was in my head. It felt like someone had put a metal bucket over my head and started beating on it with a sledge hammer.
I could see fine now, so yesterday's worry over lost vision was gone now. I touched my face, I felt a little scab here and there, nothing too big. I opened my mouth and tested my voice. A little scratchy and a bit more shaky than I had hoped, but I had a voice.
My mid section hurt to high heaven so I left it alone in my check, when it hurt less, I'd do some moving around. I flipped the covers away, examining my bare legs and feet. Burns and scabs covered them. Flexing my toes and lifting one leg, as gingerly as possible, to rotate the ankle at a time I found nothing broken. Just little spurts of pain. My knees bent with a few pops from the bone and cartilage rubbing together and a few groans from my mouth.
I heard a whimper and looked to my side and saw Bruno lying on the floor next to my bed. I smiled. "Hey there buddy." Still a little shaky, but better.
Bruno sat up next to the bed and put one paw up softly on the mattress, his wagging tail showed he was trying to contain his excitement.
I put my hand on his paw to pet it, but he leaned forward and licked a wound that was there. I smirked thinking of how he always tried to take care of me like I was one of his pups.
"He's been staking out your room since you've been back. Hardly let any of us in here to see you." Brian was leaning against the frame of the door.
"He's my very own bodyguard."
"How are you doing?"
"Fine. My only complaint is that every time I woke up there was someone standing over me like a doctor with terminal news for a cancer patient."
Brian looked guilty.
"What?"
"There was a doctor here."
"What?!" The shout hurt my throat but I ignored it.
"Cameron, we had to." Brian said, coming into the room and sitting dangerously close to me. I was ticked and it didn't seem to bother him. That made my temper spike higher. "I don't know anything about burns or bullet wounds. It was infected. The hole I sewed up. I knew it would be."
"Brian. Didn't Kevin tell you?" I asked, looking at him in a little more than shock. He should have been told by now.
"Tell me what?"
Obviously not. "Those weren't fire burns."
Brian's mouth slacked, but he kept quite.
"You did a good job with the sewing, if it had been an ordinary bullet, I would have been fine."
"What was wrong with it?"
"It was laced with a plant called Tidendra. It's a plant from his planet meant to kill animals. They formed and grow them in laboratories."
Brian didn't know what to say obviously.
"Brian, say something."
"You're still alive."
"He let me live."
"Then why do this to you?"
I looked at him. He was so worried about me and he didn't have a clue on the half of it. "We never should have met. I should have told you no when you asked me to come with you."
"Maybe so, but you did and now I'm in love with you."
I closed my eyes and turned my head from him.
"Cameron what do you want me to say? That what happened at the hotel meant nothing? That every time I kiss you I get turned on for the heck of it? That your stubborn headiness makes want to hate you when it really makes me love you more and more?"
I snapped my head back. Pain. Blind furry. "Why are you getting mad at me? What do you want ME to say? That I love you too? Fine I love you! You drive me crazy! I don't know what you do to me and it makes me mad because I know my self inside and out and I don't know what this is!"
"Tell me what's wrong." Brian said, his voice softer. "I'm not going anywhere."
Still furious , with my self with him and with Brian and with this whole situation I just blurted everything out. "He killed our baby. Yeah Brian our baby. It happened yesterday but he knew and he didn't like it. We weren't supposed to be together so soon. We're messing up his plans for his future so he burned my insides out. I should be dead, but since I've been recuperating I can feel myself going back to normal." I took a deep breath and stared at him.
"You were pregnant?"
"I guess so."
Brian
I couldn't believe it. Our first time together and she was pregnant. Our first baby was dead before it even had a chance.
"Is there anything else you have to tell me?" I asked.
"Yeah. I have to pee."
Nick
Sitting downstairs I could hear the couple on the upper floor yelling at each other. At least they were sharing feelings.
"Man, that's gonna be one loud house hold when she gets pregnant. Can you imagine her midnight cravings and when she's got morning sickness?" AJ laughed.
"Shut up AJ." Kevin demanded. "Don't say anything like that ever again."
"What's your problem?" AJ spat back.
"Yeah, you've never exactly been on her favorites list and as far as I can tell, she's never been on yours. Why are you defending her and chewing AJ's head over it?" Howie asked.
"She's been through a lot."
"No and I though she's been leading the Grand March on a velvet float." AJ replied sarcastically.
"Shut up. You don't know what's she's going through." Kevin said.
"And you do?" I asked.
"More than you do. He came into her bedroom when I was in there."
"Who?" I demanded.
"Her master or who ever." Kevin said impatient.
"You saw him up close?" AJ asked, the steam gone from his voice.
"Yeah and he told me, in detail, what kind of pain she's in."
"So why are you barking at us? We know she's in pain." I said.
"Didn't you even try to listen to what they're screaming about up there?" Kevin asked, looking at each face. "She lost her baby."
"She was pregnant?" AJ asked.
"They slept together?" Howie was more interested in knowing the answer to this question than the other.
"Obviously." I murmured. "Wow, things are defiantly more interesting with her around then before." I still couldn't shake the thought though. A bomb. Behind my bed. I put my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. I would have died without her. She's hurting so much because of me.
"Nick, man, she's OK." Howie said, his hand stroking my back. Trying to make me feel better.
I nodded, it hadn't helped, but it was the thought that counted.
"Nick." I looked up at Brian. "She wants to see you."
I was a more than a little surprised. "Me?"
"No, the blonde named Nick behind you." Brian went into the kitchen and I walked upstairs.
The sight before me made me smile. Bruno was on the bed, his front legs draped over Cameron's thighs and Tyke was standing on his hind legs beside the bed, trying to look up at them. Cameron, looked in pain, but wasn't complaining as she scratched Bruno's ears. She leaned over a little and looked at Tyke.
"That's not a dog, Nick. Not by far." Cameron said. I didn't think she had noticed me, so I looked up with a start.
I smiled. "Don't tell Brian, he's in love with him." I walked over and picked up Tyke and then sat in the chair next to the bed. "What's up?"
"The slot for pain relievers on my list of favorites."
I chuckled.
"You're not to blame for any of this, you know that right?" She looked me square in the eye and I got the feeling she was trying to read my mind.
"It is sorta, but I think I get your point."
"How's that?"
"It's not my fault I was picked. But it is my fault that I never listened when you talked. I sorta just thought you were nuts and ignored you."
"You sorta thought that?" Cameron asked.
"OK, so I thought you were certifiable, but you can't blame me." I smiled. "How are you?"
"Sick of hearing that question. When you go down stairs, tell everyone I'm living and to quit asking me that. If I'm dying I'll go with you to the funeral home and pick out a casket."
"That's a grim sense of humor."
"Sorry." Cameron scratched her finger over Bruno's snout. He sneezed and she grinned. "I've never much liked funeral homes so I just try to make humor out of it to shake the feeling."
"You've seen a lot of death I'm guessing."
"More than anyone could ever know."
I could tell she was right. She was so young, older than me true, but still she looked like, in her eyes, that she had seen World War I, II and Vietnam and come home that evening to watch The Exorcist only to laugh at it.
"You ever talked about it?" I asked.
"Nope." She said and I didn't think that was the way of getting her to talk about it.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah." She looked at me.
"Do you remember the first time you killed someone?"
"The first time, I laid hands on someone to kill them or at my orders?"
Wow. That was deep. "Um, how about at your orders?"
"I was seven."
I was glad she was responding. And surprised. Why she was telling me this, I had no clue, but maybe it would make me understand the way she was. Why she wanted me to understand, I didn't know either.
"This guy, I don't know why he was picked, he was about thirty, late thirties maybe." She seemed to slip into her own world as memories of the past tumbled out her lips.
*** Now Cameron, he's been a bad man. He stole money from a drug dealer. Drugs are bad, aren't they?
He was crouching next to her, looking soft and gentle and fatherly. Nothing like the man he had been when he killed her parents. She nodded.
He's a bad man.
Right, a very bad man, don't let him be bad anymore.
How can I make him stop?
The man was named Don Mitchell. He had never smoked a thing in his life, but Cameron didn't know that. This was just a test anyway.
You have to kill him Cameron. Are you brave enough to make him stop hurting himself?
Cameron nodded. Then shook her head. I can't hurt him, he's too big.
You don't have to touch him. I wouldn't let you. You're too young and sweet to be a murderer. See that man over there?
There was another man. Tall, dressed all in black, mean looking to the core.
Cameron nodded.
Just wave at him, he'll do it for you.
Just wave?
MMhmm. That's all. It's easy.
Cameron waved to the man. He didn't look at her, didn't even seem to see her. He left from his corner on the street and walked over to the man sitting at the outside dining table. It was late and no one was around. Don had just wanted to sit under the lamp light and ponder over why his relationship was in shambles. The man from the dark corner walked from behind Don and slit his throat, walking on without a second glance. Don fell limply to the ground, the sound of his neck snapping made a small echo.
Her third death. She had witnessed her mother's murder. Her father's murder. And now this man's. She didn't cry and she didn't feel anything. She hadn't touched him. It wasn't her fault the man was an addict. ***
I watched her. Visions of it must have been playing in her head.
"When I actually killed someone at my own hand I was thirteen. I was cold and heartless. I still am, but at that age, no kid should be."
I wanted to protest, but she was already describing what she had done to a pregnant woman name Maria.
*** Stealthily Cameron pressed against the wall of the outer apartment building. This test hand been easy. It hadn't been hard at all to discover what the crying meant. Just seconds after she woke up from sleeping on a bus bench, a pregnant woman walked past. He would be proud at her progress.
She waited until the lights in the bedroom turned out. She counted to two hundred before moving to shimmy the lock and get into the bed room.
Opening the window, one black clad leg slid inside and then the other. She replaced the window to it's original place and walked over to the bed. The woman was indeed pregnant and indeed a sleep, evident by her high mounded tummy and her slack jaw that dispensed a snore or two.
She pulled a gun from the holster under her armpit. She always kept it there. She pointed the gun at the woman's head and then thought the baby would suffer this way. She aimed it at the stomach. The woman would suffer, but she was bad anyway. Let her suffer.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Cry's of pain and torture rang out in the room before Bang! The room was silent. Blood was splattered over the white walls and the creamy bed covering. The sight was one no teenager, or adult for that matter, should ever have seen. A baby and a woman was dead. Point blank range.
Cameron looked down at herself. Blood. All over her. She looked at her hands. Covered with little splatters of blood. Walking to the vanity three steps away, she was exactly as she thought. Covered from head to toe in blood.
She dropped the gun on the floor. Starred at it like it was a poisonous snake.
He was there then. He sensed she was learning right and wrong. That wasn't a good thing. His hands curled over her shoulders.
You did good. Very good. She was a bad woman. Her baby would be no better.
Blood. Everywhere.
He waved his hand in front of her face. There was no more blood on her when she opened her eyes again.
No more guns, not ever.
A knife then.
He held his hand next to her and she looked at the shiny knife. She would have to touch the ones she killed now, but then the blood would only be on her knife, not her hands. She took the knife. She would use a knife. ***
"After a while I felt like some super hero. Like I was protecting everyone from the evil doers of world, but I was nieve and stupid. After a while I realized what I was doing. Common sense must have been a delayed development for me because when it hit me it cold cocked me."
I couldn't believe all this. It was to scary to be real. Cameron really did see more than we'd ever know. "It's over now though."
Cameron made a small sound. Half a snort and half a cynical laugh if it were my guess. "It's never over." She looked at me. "When I was younger and still wished, I wished I had died on that planet."
"And now?"
"Now I'm just here. There's no sense in wishing and hoping for anything; happy or otherwise. He'll take it from me, no matter what I wish for."
"You're gonna make it."
"You seem to thin that very thoroughly."
"Yes, because if you don't, it'll kill Brian."
Cameron looked back down at Bruno. She didn't say anything else so I stood.
"We're going to take care of you, if you'd let us. You were there for us, it's time to repay the favor." I put Tyke on the floor and he scampered out the door, having seen enough of Bruno. I walked out behind him.
"Nick?"
I turned and walked back to the door frame. "Yeah?"
"Don't tell anyone what I told you today. I'll tell Brian in my own time, but I should have never told you in the first place."
I smiled. "I'll feel special then. I won't tell. Get some rest."
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