Today for #TeaserTuesday, we’re going to explore what life was like at the abandoned monastery where 19-year-old Rhys Cooper has been sheltering from a deadly plague and its aftermath with his sister, nephew, and a handful of other survivors.
Here are the other #TeaserTuesday and #SevenSentenceSunday excerpts I’ve shared from Strain.
As always with these snippets, the text is not yet edited. Any mistakes are my own.
“What happened to your knuckles? That’s not all from trying to punch out that other guy.”
Rhys looked down at his bloodied hand, red meat showing raw through cracked, bruised skin.
“Doesn’t matter. Won’t be happening again.”
“Think you can stand? Otherwise, if you want to sit in the shower, I can turn it on for you while I go find a blanket.”
“I can stand.” With her help, he pushed himself to his feet and staggered into the shower. The shredded remains of his clothing still littered the bottom of it. Jesus, his jeans must have really been threadbare if they’d just managed to rip wet denim off him like that. He leaned against the tile of the mildew-spotted wall and let Xolani turn on the cold spray.
“I’ll be right back. Try not to fall over.”
Nodding hurt too much, so Rhys just grunted and began scrubbing off the mud. The longer he was on his feet, the steadier he felt, until he got brave enough to bend over and pick up a scrap of his t-shirt to use as a washcloth.
She came back a moment later with another blanket like the one he’d lost when he attacked Jacob. Rhys turned off the water and wrapped it around him.
“Interesting marks there on your hips and thighs. Last time I saw a set of bruises that looked like that, they were on a guy who’d been beaten with a cane.”
Rhys flushed but said nothing, clutching the blanket tighter.
“The old man had a cane lying beside him where he died.”
He glowered and stomped out of the bathroom, trying to ignore her when she followed.
“I notice that guy you tried to clobber the shit out of wasn’t wearing rags like you were.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t outgrow all of his clothes,” Rhys muttered. “I was twelve when we got here.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“Seven years.”
Why was she following him, much less asking all these questions? “And it was— what? Just you and your sister, and Jacob and his father?”
“No.”
“That’s right, there was the baby and a kid, too. Who else was here?”
He sighed in annoyance. He shouldn’t be so unfriendly to her—after all, she did help save his life, and stitch him up—but he really wished she’d stop probing for information about things that weren’t any of her business.
“My mom died a couple years ago,” he answered shortly. “We think it was cancer. She had some, uh, lumps. Gabe—Gabriel—ran away and his parents went to try to find him and never came back. Guess they must have all died, too.” Rhys grimaced, trying not to think of why Gabe had run off. “The eleven-year-old boy you found out there today was Gabe’s little brother, Jeff. When they went after Gabe, they left him behind here where he’d be safe. There was another family, too, in the beginning. The Merkles. Holly got appendicitis. Her dad committed suicide. Her mom was stung by a bee. Now we’re all that’s left. Anything else you wanna know?”
Xolani shook her head and took his arm without asking, helping him down the stairs. Her grip was really strong, but then, even though she wasn’t tall, her shoulders were broad and she had a solid, muscular build. A scar ran down her cheek, a light line puckering and pulling at the skin and making her look tough. Even without it, she wouldn’t have ever been called pretty. Darius was a lot bigger than her, but something told Rhys that if it came down to a fight between them, she could probably hold her own.
And she didn’t try to apologize or sympathize as he cataloged their losses. He appreciated that.
“Look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a jerk, and you’re being nice and all, but my head hurts and can we just not talk about all that?”
“Okay,” she said with perfect equanimity and fell silent.
Darius was outside—along with some of the others whose names Rhys hadn’t gotten yet—standing beside a large pile of scrap wood. Father Maurice, Jeff, Cady and Caleb were laid on top of it and Rhys had to swallow hard seeing them just draped limply like that. On the far side, Jacob was watching him with eyes that glittered with hatred, but Rhys couldn’t be bothered to care. All he could do was stare at the dark gold of his sister’s blood-matted hair hanging down.
When he drew near, he could smell kerosene fumes.
Darius grabbed a length of wood and lit it from the fire still burning the remains of the revenants. But before he could touch it to the other pyre, Jacob lifted his head and raised his voice dramatically loud.
“Dear Lord, we commend to you these loved ones, my father, wife and son . . .”
No mention of sister or nephew, of course.
“Oh, shut up.” Rhys snatched the torch out of Darius’ hand, setting the whole thing ablaze. The last damn thing he needed to hear was about God and heaven and salvation. After a moment of glaring, Jacob continued droning on, but Rhys didn’t hear the trite platitudes. The pompous voice was drowned out by the roar and crackle of the flames.
The fiction of Amelia C. Gormley 