"Are you okay?" Jade asked quietly, getting some residual of my shit swimming.

"Yeah," I said just as quietly, "I get kinda carsick and this sucky weather..."

"Yeah," she agreed and I cracked an eye open, taking in her beat up face. I stroked a rough thumb as delicately as I could over the raw surface. "Who gives a ripe shit how I'm doing, babe?"

God, I'd beat her up. The nausea surged worse at my emotions and I clamped down on it. I swallowed over my raw interior. "It's you I'm worried about," I finished my thought.

She smiled a little. "I'm okay, but my stomach's not doing too great either."

Whose would be? It'd been a hell of a day.

"Come here," I said and she scooted into the cradle of my body as I palmed her head against my chest.

I might've dozed but was jolted awake as we rolled up to... the hospital.

There was an ongoing argument about the difference between a cuff versus a full beating. Clyde was heatedly letting Jonesy know that a cuff was an affectionate beating as opposed to a real one.

Right, a cuff hurt like hell, I thought, silently agreeing with Jonesy.

I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and Jonesy turned around, his arm dangling over the back seat. "He's here with Tiff somewhere."

I was fuzzy from the sleep and sat up, Jade sliding off me and I held her as she woke up too.

"It works out, bro," Jonesy said like he'd just executed the best maneuver in the world and said, "Jade can get patched up and we can go kick Hamilton's ass and save Tiff."

"Just like that?" Clyde asked with a marked lack of believing.

"Hell yeah... just like that," Jonesy challenged and Clyde hissed at him.

Jonesy got the hell out of the car.

Clyde was creepy as hell when he hissed.

Bobbi giggled. "You're so cute when you hiss, Clyde."

He frowned and opened his mouth again and she pressed her finger against his lips. "I know, lover. It's supposed to be frightening...."

"I suppose a lesson on scare tactics are in order at a future time," he deadpanned.

Then I looked at Bobbi. She had blushed and did a whoa... okay.

Jade broke in awkwardly. "Right, well, let's... get in there and let an Organic fix me."

We piled out of the car, none of us talking about the undead foreplay.

I held Jade's hand as we walked up to Valley General's entrance.

I didn't like her going in without me.

She turned, taking both my hands, looking so fragile with her swollen face and small body. My chin dipped and I cast my eyes down at our feet, so close to each other, mine so much bigger and I took a deep cleansing breath.

Didn't work: I still felt like shit for beating up my girlfriend.

"Look at me, Caleb," she said in a commanding tone I'd never heard.

I opened my eyes and met hers.

"I know you love me. I know it was Howie. Remember? Remember Brett?" she said, embarrassed, but determinedly searching my eyes.

I did remember. I'd never get the image of her climbing his body out of my mind.

I said nothing, just nodded.

"I don't blame you." She cupped her hand around my jaw, her tenderness undoing me like glue gone bad and I snapped my arms around her, hauling her against me.

"No more sadness, Caleb. Promise me." Her green eyes captured mine and wouldn't let go.

I paused, promises meant something to me. "Okay," I said, releasing her.

"You can't go in, man." Jonesy looked at us. "They'll throw your ass in jail, no matter what she says."

"Don't take him!" Jonesy squealed in a high-pitched, white trash female voice, "I love him!" Jonesy ran around feigning high heeled slut shoes running after a wife-beating spouse while dodging the gutted car on cinderblocks.

Pulsevision. Screen. In. Head.

I guffawed and Clyde scowled at my inappropriately timed laugh. "I think it would be better that she say nothing, it will open Pandora's box wide open," Clyde said, forcing the dumbass troop back in line.

Jonesy opened his mouth and Bobbi interrupted, "Clyde means, that one confession will then lead to questions about bodies."

There were plenty of hidden corpses piling up, I noted.

"Oh, yeah," Jonesy said, frowning. Then he perked up. "Listen, that signal is really close and there's no telling what is going on with Tiff." Jonesy's brows lifted.

I knew Tiff was in danger, Gramps and John were recovering in this very building, and I had to let my girlfriend, who was so much more than that lame identifier... go. So she could be healed. So Jade could be out of harm's way, as Clyde would say.

Because I needed to help a friend. Two, if you counted John in the hospital. Right now I was hoping that Tiff was holding her own but I wasn't sure.

After all, Carson Hamilton had attacked her before and was now in possession of her again. Time was running out.

Too bad I'd had the dual threat of Frazier and Jade. Actually, it had been a terrible choice.

My girlfriend or my friend.

Life was always that, choices without a promise of outcome.

Jade slipped away, my kiss still a spot of heat on her forehead and lips.

I turned away from the double glass doors of the hospital and went after my friend while Jade, Gramps and John were in various stages of healing.

Safe.

Or so I believed.

*

Tiff

The panic attack had hit Tiff like a ton of bricks. The instant her home had started to burn a single word sifted through her brain.

Hamilton. A heated whisper that accompanied the flames.

A normal person would have assumed a reason for the fire that was explainable within the norms. But Tiff Weller wasn't "normal;" she was crafty and an outside-the-box thinker.

She'd always been.

Instead of taking the intellectual pulse of the moment, she'd raced around the smokey house, searching for her four younger brothers, the littlest not yet six, the cuff of her sleeve crammed against her face, trying desperately not to inhale. Her lungs burned for oxygen.

Where are they? Tiff scrambled, finding her youngest brother passed out from smoke inhalation in his room, her parents busy with the others.

Tiff hit the deck of the outdated shag carpeting her parents insisted on keeping until all the messy kids were out of the house.

Well, Tiff thought, that'd probably be replaced now.

She swallowed semi-clean air near the floor and GI-crawled across brutal Legos and other sharp, flesh mutilating, invisible army men. Reaching out her hand, she grasped a pajama clad ankle, pulling her little brother into her arms.

Tiff frantically searched for an escape route, the door she'd closed against the flames hotter than hell. There was no going out through there, she thought, dismissing that route. Her brother's limp body gave testimony to where she'd be in about three minutes.

Tiff had to get them out of here.

She caught sight of his window and hauled them both to the ledge, coughing hoarsely into her hand. Tiff's eyes were streaming with tears as she opened the window with one hand and rolled him out onto the ledge, cool air fought itself inside the heated and smokey room.

Her eyes met those of a firefighter and he grabbed her brother to his chest, cradling him. Tiff watched him jog to a waiting ambulance, the pulsing red and blue strobes piercing through the haze of smoke and she pressed her forehead against the cold sill in relief.

Her little brother was safe, she thought, shuddering in relief.

When she felt strong arms jerk her through the window she didn't resist.

Help had come and Tiff allowed herself to be saved for once, exhausted and weak from smoke inhalation, she willingly moved into the embrace of the firefighter.

But the crinkle of the fireproof jacket didn't meet her cheek as she had unconsciously anticipated.

Tiff opened her eyes and met those of her attacker.

Carson Hamilton carried her away, slamming a depressant, shaped like a star, into the tender flesh above her breast.

It silenced her scream before it could alert those who were true saviors.

*

Tiff opened her eyes, moaning. See, now this was why she didn't use drugs. Besides the fact they cost so much, even though they were now legal and regulated (her home state had been the first to legalize weed); she hated that disoriented and thick feeling pot gave.

It just wasn't for her. She liked to be the master of her body and mind.

That wasn't the way it was right now. Tiff felt like she'd toked up good. Her tongue was swollen inside a mouth that was drier than a popcorn fart and her body and mind were mush.

Hamilton, she remembered suddenly.

She sat up too fast and her head swam from the residual sedative and adrenaline that began to pump to her extremities. Tiff pulled her shirt away, uncovering the angry star-shaped pinpricks left by the shit Carson had dosed her with. She fought the feeling of her chest being constricted like a hippo was sitting on it.

Tiff fought the fear battling to consume her.

She began her deep breathing techniques, trying to gain calm and stave off the panic attack. Once that took over, she would be a flailing fish on the ground, opening and closing her mouth, eyes bulging, screams of terror captured inside her throat.

Tiff knew she couldn't survive this if she had a panic attack.

She clenched her eyes thinking about his hands on her, in her.

Tiff bit her lip until she tasted copper.

"Hey Tiffany," Carson said, enunciating that last part of her name like an open wound.

She watched him like caught prey and stood, putting her palm on whatever was behind her.

Cold and rough chunky bark met her touch, tree trunk, she thought. The environment came crashing into her. They were outside and snow fell all around them, the large flakes like God's salt shaker.

Tiff saw him notice her looking around for options.

"Don't bother, you little slut," Hamilton said, his broken ankle cuff still dangling in a tangled mess. He strode toward her and Tiff had a moment of fear that was so intense her bladder almost released.

Then, rage followed on its heels and she'd never been more glad to be who she was.

Tiff might die this day, but she would never submit.

Of this, she was sure.

"Bring it, dickless," Tiff growled, crouching like she'd been trained.

"Oh, I will," Carson said, unbuckling his belt and jerking the belt through the loops in a series of snapping pops of denim against leather.

The sound made Tiff flinch.

Hamilton laughed and came for her.

*

That fucker tried to kill my whole family, Tiff remembered as he circled her slowly, whipping his looped belt up in the air, he slapped it in his open palm and she fought giving him the satisfaction of cringing at the sound. The belt was a trigger and he knew it. Not in the front of whatever brain matter he had, but in that deep primal subconscious criminal layer of slime that coated his unconscious. He kept popping the fucking thing against his palm and Tiff struggled to keep her anger as a focus, sharpening her defenses instead of sliding into the mindless panic that threatened.

"I'm gonna finish what I started with you, bitch. What you've been giving Terran for free, will be mine for the taking."

Tiff thought furiously.

"Rape is violence, you sick turd," she told him in a low and furious voice. "You're not proving you have a dick by raping me, you're just proving the obvious."

He inched closer. "What obvious?"

And Tiff jumped from her carefully constructed cliff of balance, like a skydiver. "That you don't have one," she uttered in a soft and strong voice of steely resolve.

With a roar, Carson came and Tiff glanced to the side, very accustomed to the size difference he brought, her brothers were all big apes too. But apes that loved her.

Therein lies the difference.

Carson missed purchase on the wily Tiff and realizing it, swung the forgotten belt around, making a lucky hook of her head and jerked her backward by the neck.

Tiff felt the noose close and fell limp in the best attempt to make her dead weight difficult for Carson to manipulate but he followed her move, dropping the belt, and her along with it.

They fell together, she on the bottom... right where she didn't want to be and he on top, his pants already partially undone.

"Get off me!" Tiff screamed, freeing an arm, she clawed his eyes out, and he shrieked, covering a bleeding orb as it lay in its socket like a mutilated and hardboiled egg.

"You cunt!" he bellowed into the still and frozen air as Tiff scrambled from underneath him, his blood falling on the white and slippery ground, his hand covering his eye like a pirate's patch.

She gave a hysterical laugh, the imagery striking Tiff silly at exactly the wrong moment.

His face became a thunderstorm of anger. "Forget bitch splitting!" he screamed at her, spittle flying in her direction as she drove her fingers into the icy ground, doing an awkward backwards scuttle.

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