AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I-I’m sorry,” I stammered.
He bent down low, so we were nearly eye-to-eye. “You’re nothing!” Bly shouted, and spittle from his lips landed on my cheeks. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, but no less filled with rage. “You are nothing. You and your stupid little friend. Neither of you even deserve a name, and when you die, we’ll toss you in for the zombies to eat. There will be no headstone, no mourners, not even my fawning brother Waylon.”
I didn’t respond. I stayed curled up against the fridge, avoiding his eye contact and trying not to upset him further.
“How dare you leave my niece and nephew alone?” He straightened up. “You are so damn lucky that no harm came to them. Because if something had happened to Alma or the kids….” His scowled deepened, and he kicked me in the side hard enough that I barely kept the vomit down.
“You ran off to protect a slave, and you left two Loth progeny open to danger!” Bly yelled, and then kicked me again to punctuate his fury. “You should put yourself in front of danger to protect them! You are meant to sacrifice yourself for this family’s well-being! We are all that matters. You are nothing, and you always will be.”
He kicked me again, and I couldn’t focus on what he was saying any longer. All I could really do was try to shield myself from the pain that was already overwhelming me. I was curled up in a ball, and his steel-toed boots still found the tender flesh of my abdomen, kicking it over and over.
“Bly, please!” Elmyra interrupted his assault. “She still has chores to do. Who will serve the dinner if she can’t?”
“She deserted the family when we needed her,” Bly insisted, but he had finally stopped kicking me.
“And you have punished her enough,” Elmyra said. “Harlow, have you learned your lesson?”
I swallowed back my tears so I could answer, “Yes.”
“You will never desert your post again?” Elmyra pressed.
“No, never, I promise,” I said emphatically.
“See?” She smiled over at her son. “It’s all taken care of.”
Bly grumbled some complaint, but he stalked out of the room and let me be. Elmyra frowned at me for a moment, then shook her head and called for Tallulah.
“Help Harlow get cleaned up,” Elmyra commanded when Tallulah arrived. “Then both of you return to your chores. I still expect you to finish everything you are meant to do. Your injuries should not slow your work at all.”
Tallulah helped me to the bathroom, where I threw up and washed my face, but there wasn’t time for anything more than that. The linens in the bedrooms needed to be changed, the laundry needed to be washed, the bedroom floors needed to be swept, and there was still more to do beyond that.
When I finally returned to the stall, it was late in the evening, because I was still finishing my chores until after dinner. Kimber was curled up in the fetal position, and her clothes were still damp, so someone had actually hosed her off.
My body hurt all over, but I kept it to myself. Kimber had been through enough today. I piled the hay around her, and I lay down behind her and wrapped my arm around her.
“We have to get out of here,” she said, and her voice was hoarse from all the crying and yelling she’d done today.
“We will. Soon.”
She rolled back, so she could look over her shoulder at me. “I don’t know what I would do if something like that happened to you. I’d go crazy and try to kill every one of those assholes.”
“Same.” I kissed her forehead. “I don’t think I could’ve survived any of this without you.”
As I held her, I softly sang an Emeriso song that I had loved before the virus took over, and the music stopped.
“In the darkness of my mind, I'm lost and feeling blind/A heartache that won't fade, a love that can't be saved/I'm suffocating in the shadows of my fears/But I'll wear this broken smile to hide my tears.”
“Is that an old Emeriso song?” Kimber asked.
“Yeah.”
“Music used to be so melodramatic before the world ended,” she commented, and I couldn’t help but laugh, even though it hurt my ribs to do it. “But you should keep singing it anyway.”
So I went on: “The echoes of a love that's lost still haunt my soul/I'm battling these demons, trying to be whole/But I'll rise from the ashes, stronger than before/And in this earthly symphony, I will roar.”
36
Harlow
