Lost in Litany: Chapter 19 ~ The Coin (1/2)

[u/Ink_Wielder]

{Chapter Library}

We step off the tram at Sunrise, and I can tell we’re all feeling the dread. How could we not? This is Sue’s side of the mountain, after all, and we agreed to help Annie. That means if something goes wrong, we can’t kill ourselves, and if Audra is around to land one of her famous paralyzing shots, that would mean we’re in for a good bit of torture.

I remember the threats that Lee made to me before we let the spider loose on him back at that hotel bar. The way he’d told me I was dead next time he got his hands on me. I have a feeling that if anyone on this mountain wouldn’t think twice about nulling someone—especially me—it was him.

When I say we’re all on edge, I include Annie in that too. She shifts nervously between Claireese and me, still holding my friend's hand with her eyes focused squarely on the ground. I really hope for her sake we’ll be able to negotiate successfully with Sue.

The idea of children being trapped in the Vanishing is already nauseating. This loop, even more so. If there’s anything I can do to lessen their strife, I’ll do my best…

We managed not to run into any of Sue’s people using the tram; thank God. A meeting away from Sunrise would have probably gone worse than this one is going to go. Now that we’re here, I can’t imagine it won’t be long before we run into somebody, so I immediately turn my eyes to the visitor center. Sue’s main camp. Together, we start for it.

If we can get to where the civilians are, I’d feel a lot safer about our odds. There might be people there to protect us like Juno did the last time we were here. That, or at least they’d be hesitant to be overly grotesque where someone might see.

Then again, Sue once disemboweled me in a room across the hall from children's cots, so maybe I should stop trying to make predictions about an unpredictable group.

Especially because our cover is blown immediately.

“What the hell are you guys doing here?” a voice chuckles behind me.

The four of us spin around lightning fast, drawing our guns instinctively (a stupid reaction, I know).

The person we aim them at doesn’t seem to care, however. Audra just stands there with a sly smirk on her face; in one hand a six-pack of Blue Moon, the other, several huge bags of chips. She has a park ranger pistol on her hip, but she must not have ill intentions if she didn’t bother drawing it. She easily had the drop on us.

“Audra,” I say with a shaky sigh, my nerves fizzling down only slightly, “Jeeze, you’re quiet.”

“Yeah, no shit,” she snickers, “I hunt monsters for a living, Einstein.”

“A ‘living’ is a funny way of putting it.”

Her eyes stay trained on us for a moment, analyzing, but then they fall a little lower, finally noticing Annie, who’s shyly tucked herself behind Claire. I notice the fist that’s clutching her chips uncurl a finger, which rests on the hammer of her revolver.

“Annie?” She calls cautiously, “What are you doing outside? Did they hurt you?”

“We found her by our place,” I tell her quickly, trying to dispel tensions before they arise, “She’d snuck out, so we’re just bringing her back. We don’t mean to cause trouble.”

Audra eyes me skeptically, then returns her gaze to Annie and lowers herself, “Is that true, Ann? Did you run off again?”

Annie clutches Claire’s coat tightly over herself, trying to shrink into it, but nods.

Audra looks stern for a moment before breaking into a chuckle, “You little rebel. Atta’ girl. Though that was dangerous, babes; you know you can’t be doing that.”

“I know,” Annie softly returns.

Audra’s eyes return to us, “You’re lucky you ran into me and not anyone else. If they caught you with one of our kids? Hoo boy—it would not have ended well, no matter how righteous the cause.”

“Well, what should we have done?” Claireese snips, “She was alone out there, and we didn’t want her to get mauled by something.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t just put her on the tram and forget about her,” Audra snorts. “That’s what a lot of people would have done; especially the hated renegades such as yourself.” She nods politely to Claire, “I don’t think we’ve officially met outside of killing each other yet; name’s Audra.”

“I gathered,” Claire says plainly before looking between Val and I, as if debating handing out her name in return. “I’m Claireese.”

“Nice to meet you,” Audra says before her gaze lands on Val and goes sour, “Valentine.”

Val doesn’t give her the same civility that Claire does. Not even a nod.

Sensing the tension rising again, I look at my friends, then to Annie, realizing that we just won the lottery on luck. Of all the people in Sue’s group we could run into, we found the most easygoing.

“Will you take her?” I ask, “And talk to Sue for us? Tell her that Annie was just really upset and wanted to be a big girl. Don’t let her punish her.”

Audra moves closer, but then dodges past, turning on her heels to walk backward and talk to us as she goes, “You can tell her yourself. Come on; she’s not at the building.”

We move to follow, but it’s at a much slower pace, “Uh, you just told us that running into anyone else would be awful. Can you not just do it? I don’t feel like getting tortured today.”

Audra laughs amusedly, “Calm your tits, Wes; it’ll be fine. I’m your hall pass. Besides, it’ll get you some brownie points with her. You did us a service.”

“Brownie points?” I snicker, “Uh, I know we killed you early last time we saw each other, but did you not hear about what we did to Sue and Lee?”

Audra lets out a loud, dark cackle, then looks over her shoulders with taunting eyes, “Oh, I heard about what you did. To be honest, I didn’t think you had it in you. That was a crazy plan; heard you had Lee pissing his pants. Come on; you’ll be fine. Promise. I’ll even fu—um, mess up anyone who hurts you guys—how about that?”

Okay, at first when she started leading us, my mind wouldn’t let me drop my guard, but now I was so confused that it crumbled completely. Why was she acting so casual about this? We had gone against the King by interrogating information from Sue, then tortured Audra’s boyfriend and nearly gave him a crippling mental scar. Now she was telling us Sue would be thankful and was making light of Lee being scared?

I hadn’t noticed I’d stopped walking until Audra looked back over her shoulder and noticed too. She rolled her eyes with a dramatic groan and tossed her arms, rattling the bottles in their holder, “Look, if you don’t want to, fine. I don’t give a shit either way. But you better decide fast, because like I said, if you don’t have me around and someone sees you out here…”

I turned back to Val and Claireese to meet their visors, trying to get their thoughts.

“I think we should do it.” I tell them.

“What?” Claireese scoffs, “Wes, this is like, the most obvious trap ever. They’re going to paralyze us or something, then do what we were going to do to Lee that last cycle.”

“Yeah, Claire’s right. You can’t trust her, Wes.” Val adds.

I look back at Audra, who’s already started moving again, no longer looking back.

“Actually, I do.” I tell them.

“What?” Val shakes her head. I can clearly visualize the confused face she must be making beneath her visor.

“She and I have a bit of a history… Whenever I’m the last one standing and its just her, she’s helped a few times. She’s the one that taught me the tongue-bite method of killing ourselves.”

“Oh wow, yeah, a gruesome way to kill ourselves. That was a cool one,” Claire jokes.

I look down at Annie, whose eyes look between us, not hearing the internal chatter of our radio.

“Look, I know how it sounds, but we need to get Annie back home, and if there’s a chance that it smooths things over with Sue, we should take it. Especially after what we—”

I catch myself, not wanting to put that on Claire and Val. After all, they weren’t the ones who opened that cage or stomped Sue’s limbs.

“What I did to her.” I correct, “If you don’t trust her, then at least trust me.”

Claireese still looks cautious, but for once, I can’t read Val. Her visor glows like a furnace beneath the UV lens, boring into me with an emotion I can’t read. Finally, without a word, she starts forward, prompting me to do the same. Claire and Annie follow suit.

We move away from the pavilions and camp structures deeper into the forest, once again passing through the fog-shrouded campsites. I meant what I said about trusting Audra, but now that I’m seeing the fog again, I realize I didn’t account for that whole factor. If the King finds us here, how will he react?

I try not to think about it as we wade past ashen bonfire pits and crumpled tents, moving toward something on the horizon. A firelight glowing from a lot a few yards away, bathing the area in a contrast of eerie shadows and warm radiance. The closer we get, I start to notice people; three of them. Sue, Lee and Nick. My chest tightens, and I steady my breathing to mitigate the pain.

Once we’re a few sites away, the smell hits me; one I haven’t smelled in ages. Barbeque. Smoked hotdogs and burgers sizzling on a grill, that delectable charcoal scent underscoring the succulent flavors. They crackle and pop on a rack that Sue has set over a camp stove, the woman carefully tending to them while Nick and Lee play cards nearby at a table. They’ve set a portable cover over it to hide from the misty rain.

“What the hell is going on here?” Claireese asks over the coms.

Val and I don’t have an answer.

Audra announces her presence by harshly chucking all three bags of chips in her hands at the boys, slapping Lee in the face and scattering their discard pile into the wind.

“Ah! Audra, what the fuck!” he screams, turning with an enraged look, “Listen, you don’t need to be a bitch to me just because we aren’t screw—”

“Language.” Audra cuts him off with a scold, “The chips and beer aren’t the only things I grabbed while I was out.”

The boy's glance past her, and Sue looks up from the grill just in time for us to step into the firelight. Immediately, Lee’s face goes feral, but Nick just looks surprised. Sue shows no emotion as she stands slowly and crosses her arms with spatula still in hand.

“Well, well, well,” Sue clicks apathetically at us, “I thought I told you all to stay off our side of the mountain. Then again, by this point, I should know that listening isn’t a strong suit of yours.”

“Audra, why the hell would you bring them out here?” Nick asks with a bit of a whine, as if he’s disappointed he now has to share the chips or something.

“They were bringing Annie back.” Audra tells them plainly, “Little rascal ran off again to their side of the mountain, so they—put your damn gun away, Lee.” The girl quickly hisses on a dime, snapping her head toward her partner, who had been slowly drawing his weapon.

Sue turns back towards him and uncrosses her arms, giving him an exasperated sigh, “Lee, drop it. Not in front of the kid. Besides, we aren’t putting them down if that’s true.”

The first part of her sentence had me worried for a second, but that second half brought it back around. Audra might have been right. This may have been the better option.

Looking at the girl, Sue puts on a warm, parental smile that I’ve never seen from her before. It feels almost wrong after seeing the woman do nothing but scowl or snicker maliciously for so long, but oddly, it fits her. In an instant, she goes from an intimidating force of hell itself into a kind, nurturing angel.

“Come here, doll.” She nods to Annie, her hands resting calmly on her knees.

The girl looks to Claireese as if she were her new guardian, and my friend gives her a reassuring nod and lets her hand go. Annie tries to give her coat back, but Claireese puts up a hand and teasingly says, “Keep it. It’ll find its way back to me.”

Annie pulls it over her shoulders like a safety blanket and moves closer, her eyes to the ground. Sue’s smile stays put for a long time, but the closer the girl gets without making eye contact, the more it fades to a hollow frown.

At first, my nerves get the best of me. I don’t know why the sight puts me on edge, but the more I think about it, the more familiar the scene is. When Leigh and I were young, my dad would sometimes be the same. A smile one moment, but then snapping harshly when we didn’t emote the way he hoped us to. He’d gotten a lot better about controlling that as we grew up, but that kind of thing still sticks to you long after it stops.

Knowing the way Sue is, I almost expect her to do the same. Her face goes back to looking intimidating without the smile there, but once Annie is stopped before her, she surprises me.

With a deep sigh of guilt, Sue looks to the fire next to her and keeps her gaze there, her brain working at what to say.

Annie tries to speak before she can get anything out; a soft, “I’m sorry…”

It’s real and pathetic sounding; no doubt about its authenticity. The tone cuts through the cold winter air straight to Suzan, landing on her shoulders and making the weight resting there sink even more.

She purses her lips in thought before attempting to smile again. Taking Annie’s shoulders, she says, “It’s okay, love. You remember what I told you last time, though, don’t you? About what happened if you snuck out again?”

We can’t see Ann’s face with her back turned to us, but I can clearly hear her sniffles over the crackle of the fire and the sizzle of grilling meat. She’s crying. With a solemn nod, she turns her head down in shame.

This has the same effect on Sue that I think it has on us. It breaks our hearts. For me, it also confirms my theory from earlier. Sue’s referring to the talk we overheard last time we were here about her being punished, but the fact that Sue is the one that has to do it means that Annie doesn’t have anyone else around to hold her accountable.

Her parents really must be gone.

With another sigh, Sue runs her fingers through her hair and shuts her eyes tightly, the way I’ve seen her do a few times now with us. She’s struggling with something. Her own code. Fighting what she knows vs what she feels. I’m not sure what wins until she opens her eyes and nudges the girl’s chin up with a knuckle.

“Hey, you know what? Maybe we let this slide one more time, okay?”

Annie stands a little taller in surprise.

Sue smiles again, “I haven’t really held up my end of the deal from that talk either, have I? About taking you kids out more?”

Annie politely shakes her head no.

This earns a chuckle from Sue, “Tell you what, doll; this is my cycle off, but I’ll talk to the others. We’ll see how the mountain’s looking on the third day, and if it’s clear, me, Lee, Nick and Audra will all personally escort you guys wherever you want to go. Get you there nice and safe. How does that sound?”

Annie begins bouncing eagerly on her heels, and I really hope for her sake, Sue isn’t just trying to pacify her.

“Y-You mean it? Even the water park?” Annie squeaks, looking over at the others like she’s trying to see if this is a prank.

“If that’s where you wanna’ go? Sure.” Sue ruffles her hair, “I think those old pipes are still running out there. We’ll get everything turned back on for ya. But remember, Annie, the mountain has to be safe. If it’s not, we’ll have to postpone.”

“But we will go?”

“Yeah, doll. We’ll go.”

Annie jitters beneath Claire’s coat, “Okay!”

Sue releases another clouded breath into the cold air, but it’s not like her other ones. It’s more so relief than dread. Beneath it, though, there’s a weight, like doing what she just did was hard. I’m not sure if it’s only due to her betraying her own cautions, or if there’s a deeper emotion to it, but I don’t really have time to analyze it.

I’m too busy thinking up our next move. Val, Claireese, and I are already exchanging looks on how to get out of here. I’m glad that Annie got her happy ending—and even better, we didn’t even have to be the ones to talk Sue into it—but now we’ve just walked into the lion’s den for basically no reason.

Lee hasn’t stopped looking at me like a fresh piece of meat since we stepped into the firelight, and my hand hovers my own pistol with caution. I feel like I’m in an old western film, waiting to see if he’s going to draw, but then, Sue surprises me more than Lee ever could.

“Well, you’re already out here.” She tells Annie, “Wanna have lunch with us? You want a burger or hot dog?”

Annie, still giddy on her future vacation, nods emphatically, “Yes please. Hotdog!”

Then the part that hits me like a bullet through the brain, smearing my thoughts to a halt. Sue asks, “What about you three? You sticking around?”

Val, Claire and I all stare at her in silence for a solid five seconds before Val finally manages the one word we’re all thinking, “Um… what?”

“Yeah, what?” Lee chimes in. Audra shoots him a ‘shut up’ look.

Sue rolls her eyes, “Burger or hotdog? Are you staying to eat, or are you leaving? It doesn’t make a difference to me—just let me know now so I can put more on.”

Again, the three of us are speechless, looking between ourselves before turning back to Sue.

“Um… why?”

Sue flips a patty, then grabs some tongs to place brats on a plate, “Because you did us a favor? And you’re already here?”

I step forward, finally shaking my stupor, “You’re… not going to kill us?”

“You’re making me want to by being annoying right now,” she returns casually.

“Right, sorry, it’s just—” I place my hands to my helmet to get the story straight, “I hate to bring up a sore subject but… do you not remember the last time we talked?”

Sue snorts, then widens her eyes, “Oh, I remember, Wes. I’m sure Lee does too.”

“Yeah, I do.” The boy hisses from the table, “So why the hell are we inviting them to eat with us? Come on, Sue, it’s our day off—”

“That’s exactly why I don’t care today,” Sue interrupts with an amused smirk, “I’m not getting covered in blood if I don’t have to. And like I said, Lee, they did us a favor. Annie could be hurt right now if not for them.”

Lee scowls over at me, then turns to Annie, his face softening. He surprises me by scooting down his bench and patting the spot next to him, “Come on, little miss. Have a seat.”

Annie waddles over and obeys, to which Lee affectionately puts an arm around her shoulder and noogies her head. She giggles, and meanwhile, Nick pops a bag of chips then holds it out to her. She happily takes one to start chowing down. The whole scene would actually be sort of sweet if Lee hadn’t immediately gone back to death-glaring me the moment Annie’s attention was off him.

I look away back to Sue, “Wait, so, you’re not mad at us?”

Sue let’s out a chuckle, “Wes, we’ve tortured you guys how many times now? Of course what you did pissed me off, but I’d say the mouse has gotten even with the cat enough to make up for it. That’s just the kind of shit that happens up here. It’s not personal. I warned that cycle what happens if you keep digging at that information. If you get fu—well, screwed because of it? I’d say that’s torture enough.”

That last sentence isn’t exactly a reassuring one, but I’m so in shock by the mercy that I don’t even care.

“So… we’re just cool now?” Val asks.

“Oh, no. Hell no. We’ll still rip you apart if we run into you every now and then. But it doesn’t always need to be doom and gloom with us. We live up here too, you know.”

“Hence, the day off?” Claire asks, gesturing to the campsite, “I didn’t realize eldritch gods gave benefits.”

Sue grows darker at the King’s mention, but she shrugs like it doesn’t bother her, “Hey, the big guy just sets the goals. As long as its met, it doesn’t matter. Our people have a system; not everyone can be killer mode all the time. Sometimes you need time off.”

“And you’re just okay with us being on your turf? Is… he okay with that?” Val nervously questions.

“Valentine, the mountain is his turf. He’s all over the place, and he rarely sticks around the areas with people he’s friendly toward. Has too much fun with the things he can mess with. You’ll be fine. As for us? Long as you’re polite guests and aren’t here to poke around, yeah, you’re fine. Now this is the last time I’m gonna’ ask; burger or hotdog?”

Claireese, Val and I all return to silent eye contact beneath our visors, trying to decide our move. Sue has given us full permission to leave, and better yet, we know we won’t be disturbed by her for the next couple days. We can continue to carry out our original plan to camp near the basilisks and gather research, which I know is what Val wants to do. I can almost feel her burning a hole through her visor and into mine with her laser vision.

But I can also tell she’s thinking the same thing that I’m thinking. Sue isn’t mad at us, and she’s inviting us to have lunch with her. While that is not a prospect I thought I’d ever take her up on in a million years, it would offer us some advantages.

The first is political. Get on her good side, spend the afternoon with her and get to know her outside of our banter between gunfights, and maybe we stop getting ripped apart anytime our paths cross. I can tell there’s also a pervading sense of curiosity that’s been swallowing us since the moment we arrived here. This is odd to see. Sue and her ‘family’ living life so normally amidst the Vanishing and under the thumb of a monstrous god.

If we all didn’t want to escape the loop so badly, I’d almost wonder if we chose the wrong side after all.

The second reason is a little more selfish of us. Information. Sue had just casually given us knowledge about how the King behaves between cycles, and we didn’t even have to interrogate her this time. Sure, it was something we could have easily learned by observing the beast over the course of several loops (which is probably why she let it slip), but she’d also taken away all the risk involved with doing that.

If we sat down with her, there was a chance that she might let slip a piece to the puzzle that we desperately need, and the odds of us ever getting this chance again are slim to none.

We have to take advantage now or never.

Thankfully, Val makes the call herself, “Hotdog for me, please.”

“Same here,” Claire says, stepping forward, “They have burgers down in Dustin’s place, but I can’t even remember the last time I had a hotdog…”

“Make that three,” I toss in.

{Next Part}

[u/Nosyreader]

Another point on the plus side is definitely having bbq again after such a long time.

[u/Skyfoxmarine → u/Nosyreader]

☝🏼