The Risen

Chapter Thirty Six

Aftermath
Dante

Five Days after last chapter...

I sat in the market, after eating my breakfast I looked up to the remains of the church, Jeff and his men did a number to it with all the bonfires, we had to make alot of serious repairs to the entire building, Edwin's old office is nearly completely destoryed, the lookouts nests ladder was snapped in random spots, many of the tents and trailers were burnt out or to bloody to use. The river was covered in corpses, the gates were completely destoryed, and we tried our best to repair those, but they are hardly as strong as they were before. And the belltower...well...

We did the best we could, the pile of rubble was very difficult to move without some sort of construction vehicle and we don't have any, nor does Ace know where we can find any.

Luckily we found most of the people who were inside almost instantly, with Jayce and Maya being put in medical with Jerry, Jerry learned that Maya is in the very early stages of pregnancy, and although we're unsure if the baby survived the fall, we decided not to say anything outside of the circle of trust until she is further in the pregnancy.

Then there's Ryder, we didn't find him.

We came to the conclusion yesterday that he's dead, even if we found him now, five days of being trapped under a buildings worth of rubble would've killed him, the only reason Jayce and Maya bearly surivied the fall was because pieces of the rubble caught them in mid air, and both we're only trapped under a thin layer of rubble, we assume Ryder fell right near the bottom.

Jayce, dispite his injuryes dug with his hands until his fingernail snapped off and his fingertips bled.

Even then he didn't even flinch, it took Ace, Jerry and myself to drag him away.

I've never seen him so broken.

He's been blamming himself for Ryder's death, and both Jayce and Maya haven't said a word about what happened on the bell tower up there that night, any useful information we got was from Maya, and even then it was mumbles, from what Kiera, Ace, Cassi and I have put together Ryder was trying to kill Jayce, and somehow they ended up on top and somehow it collpased.

Cassi wasn't as bad as Jayce, she was sad, but to her she was more worried about Jayce then grieving over Ryder. I asked her about it, she and I have been talking alot about it, she said that to her, she already lost her brothers. And for only a moment did she get Ryder back, before he lost his mind and then died.

I tried talking to Jayce, but he's been spending all last night at the grave we built for Ryder, another bodyless grave, it was terrible.

Kiera has fully taken over as the leader, Ace has created a new main Scvanger team with me on it, Charity and her Scvanger team has decided to focus on repairing the church.

I stood from the wooden table and dropped off my plate, I walked over to the graves, and as I expected there he was, Jayce.

He was on his knees in front of Ryder's grave, with streams of water down the sides of his face.

I walked up and placed my hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry" I started.

But he didn't even move.

I exhaled loudly and continued.

"He was a good man, but...he was corrupted, this world, that infection did things to him that we can't explain" I ended, taking my hand off his shoulder.

Jayce wiped the water from his face and sniffled then in a mellow and broken voice he spoke.

"He wanted this-" he practically whispered.