Read Online Revenence (Novella): Dead Red by M.E. Betts - Free Book Online Page A

okay?"  His voice paused until the woman at the other end responded. 
         "Okay," she said, "I will."
         "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," the man said through the speaker.  "Don't go after Heather.  Let it go, and we'll go someplace else, get on with our lives."  He paused again, waiting for a response.  "Michelle?  You hear me?"
         Michelle sighed, leaning her chair back onto all four legs.  "Yes, Evan, I hear you."
         "Good," the nameless man replied.  "See you soon."
         Michelle hooked the radio to her belt loop, sighing again.  Daphne, still struggling significantly with the pain, listened closely to the sounds outside the room, or rather the lack of sounds.  Besides Michelle's disgruntled breathing, there were only the sounds of the moderate breeze outside and a clock ticking from elsewhere in the building.  For several seconds, Daphne sat with nothing but uncertainty to distract her from the pain burned into her back.  There were, of course, many unanswered questions regarding the circumstances in which she had found herself upon awakening.
         Where's Red?   The question presented itself first and foremost, a compulsory demand ringing through her head.  She racked her mind, trying to recall any snippets of memories she may have had while only partially conscious. 
         As she focused, she heard another sound, one of particular interest.  It was coming from outside, and if Daphne wasn't mistaken, it was a hunting rifle.  She didn't know a lot about guns, but she did have a knack for cataloguing the sounds of noises with which she was familiar.  Various types of hunting weapons had been in common use in Kentucky, audible year-round from the Andersons' rural home surrounded by dense woods.  She even recalled her adoptive father taking an heirloom hunting rifle out to the woods behind the hobbie farm when deer season rolled around.  He and his son would generally return empty-handed, the elder petulant and embittered from his failed expedition.
         Daphne and Michelle sat quietly, each listening for a return of gunfire.  After a moment, pistol shots rang out in response to the rifle.  Daphne felt every bang and boom in her traumatized flesh, rustling her distressed nerves.
         Michelle brushed past Daphne and out of the room, and a few moments later, she heard the sounds of zippers being opened and closed and fabrics being rubbed against one another.  Outside, the chorus of gunfire continued.  As Daphne listened, she became certain that she was hearing several long-range rifles, along with varying pistols.  She speculated on who it was out there engaged in battle with the sadists.  Although she knew that it could be her group, she also knew better than to assume.  It was well within the bounds of feasibility that Red and his group had crossed somebody else, sadists being unpopular as they were.
         As Daphne lay face-first, bound and agonized, she heard a dirtbike approach from outside.  In the next room, Michelle threw a few more things into her bag, zipped it and hurried to the front door.  Daphne heard the door swing open, and a moment later, the dirtbike sped away, in the direction opposite that of the gunfire.  The sound receded until it was gone entirely, and there was only the ticking of the clock in the otherwise silent building with the muffled chirps and barks of gunshots far beyond the walls.
         Daphne lay tied, driven nearly insane between the torture of the burns spread across her back and the rage induced by the fact that she was a sitting duck.  In her despair, she did something which she hadn't done since the day of her parents' and brother's funeral, when she was less than six years old.  Her chest began to convulse, and she struggled less and less to choke back the sobs working their way up from her lungs.  After a few moments, she wept freely, casting off the shackles of many years' worth of unshed