The Keeper

by Barr, Clifford

  Walter shook his head.

  I definitely have died, he thought, wondering which strange hell it was that he found himself in at the moment. The girl at least seemed to know how to hold a gun, never pointing it at him or herself, which comforted him only slightly. He would have preferred to be holding it himself.

  “What?” he said, his voice sounding much weaker than he would have liked.

  “The gun?” the girl said, looking it over. She unloaded the clip and checked the chamber.

  “A while,” he said.

  The girl rolled her eyes, and she reloaded the gun and flipped the safety off. She walked over and gave it to Walter.

  “If I give you this gun, will you use it?”

  “Will I have to?”

  “Not against me.”

  He looked at her. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he was sure that he was probably dead at that moment, and this was an odd vision that phased through his mind in his last few minutes of thought before everything went dark.

  He reached out and took it.

  “What is your name?” the girl said.

  “Walter,” Walter said. He put the gun in his holster and stood up. His knees were wet and soaked through with water. “What is yours?”

  “Rebecca McCarthy.”

  “Well, Rebecca,” Water said, looking down at his phone, his radio, and then at all the scorch marks around the entire room. “How the hell did you end up here?”

  Rebecca pointed over toward the eating area.

  “We can talk there,” she said, not waiting for Walter to reply. She walked over to one of the tables and took a seat.

  Walter imagined himself leaving at that moment, running back to his truck and booking it through the snow.

  He couldn’t call anyone. There was a radio at both of the other two stops, and he was confident that he would be able to make it to either one of them if he left at that moment.

  But some madness seemed to take hold of him. Something about the girl, the weird marks on the walls, and all of the other stuff, seemed to move him toward her. He walked over and sat across from her. He noticed that there was blood stained into her clothes, but she didn’t seem all that worried about it. She also didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere like it.

  “I think we got off to the wrong start,” Rebecca said. “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? I assume you are the maintenance worker on duty for this stop, and perhaps another?”

  Walter nodded.

  “That makes sense, why you’d be out here,” Rebecca said. “Making sure everything is in tip-top shape. I don’t apologize for what I’ve done to the place . . . and your phone, for that matter. It wasn’t all that nice, but I’m a little desperate at the moment.”

  “What are you?” Walter said.

  “That’s not entirely important,” Rebecca said. “What is, however, is that I need a favor. I gave you your gun back, didn’t hurt you too badly, and am still talking to you at the moment. Perhaps then, you can hear me out.”

  “If I can’t?”

  “Well, I think I’ll be able to persuade you,” Rebecca said. Walter could see something in the back of her eyes, but he wasn’t sure what it was. It seemed like a dark light coming forth from hell itself.

  “I need you to drive me north, to the Canadian border,” she said. “You don’t need to drive me across since they wouldn’t let me do that anyway. My passport isn’t on me per se, but let’s just say I know how to get into places. You take me north, let me out maybe a mile or two before we get to the border, drive in yourself. We might have to stop by your house to get your passport, since you’re going up north. Maybe your brother used to like to go up to Canada, and you want to revel in his last moments before you yourself meet the reaper for yourself. I don’t really care what you say, as long as you can get across the border, wait for me to join you, and then you can drive me to Toronto. After that, you can either enjoy your time in Canada or maybe head right back. It shouldn’t take longer than a day or so. And then you never have to see me ever again.”

  She grabbed the saltshaker next to the napkins and poured a handful of it into her mouth.

  “Any questions?” she said.

  She was obviously suffering from some sort of delusion. Walter had seen it many times. Someone would be in an accident, and the shock doesn’t hit them until much later. During the time before the shock ended, they would speak as calmly as a cucumber. Walter himself had been in a similar state of shock after what happened to his kids. He kept asking Beth when the twins were going to come home. Why the woman didn’t leave him at that moment, Walter never knew. Maybe she pitied him. Maybe she didn’t blame him, or rather, knew that Walter was going to have enough blame for the both of them on himself anyway, so why add more?

  And that’s what Walter felt for the girl at that moment, nothing but pity. All of this could still be rationally explained. He had allowed himself to be disarmed by a mentally unstable teenager who had a crazy plan to head up to Canada, and that was assuming the borders were still even open. During weather like this, there was no guarantee of that working. The Canadians were never reliable, something that Walter knew from firsthand experience.

  “I want to help you, Rebecca,” Walter said. “But I don’t think driving up to Canada is what you need right now.”

  “Walter, let me be frank,” she said. “You are in your sixties, with a high level of cholesterol in your blood and a brain tumor that will grow cancerous in a few years. You also have arteries full of fat that might give you a stroke or heart attack in the coming years. I don’t want your pity, and I don’t even need your trust. Get me to where I need to go, and everything will be fine.”

  White light erupted out of the girl’s arm. Walter put his hand up, instinctually, to block it. She brought the arm down on the table.

  Burned plastic and wood radiated through the air. There was another smell as well, but Walter couldn’t remember what it was.

  The table that they had been sitting at had been cut in half, with one part of it lying on the ground next to them.

  Rebecca brought the white blade up to Walter’s face. He could feel the heat radiating off of it, and he could even see the air ripple around it the way it does on roads when it’s hot out.

  “So, you are going to drive me north,” she said. “Or I will cut you in half and then take your car myself. I don’t know how to drive a stick shift, but I suppose I could learn. I’m a fast learner, after all.”

  “I’ll ask again,” he said. “What are you?”

  Rebecca brought the blade closer to his face.

  “I have killed people far more important to me than you today,” she said. “I won’t even flinch.”

  “Then do it,” Walter said. “I don’t know what’s happening now, but I’ll be damned if I let you talk to me in such a rude manner.”

  Rebecca rolled her eyes.

  “Now, I might not know what’s going on here,” Walter said, “but don’t think I’m stupid. You can’t learn stick shift overnight, and besides, it looked like you’re in a little bit of a hurry. I’m guessing you’re on the run, or at least think you are. From the blood on your jacket, it seemed like you might have been in an accident recently. You seem fine, though, but you still should run by the hospital.

  “Now, I don’t know what’s happening with your hand right now, and I don’t know how you were able to break in and break all of this stuff, but I can see when someone’s desperate, so I tell you again. Either kill me or be gone since I will gladly leave you out here to freeze to death until the next maintenance worker comes to warm the place up.”

  It was more than Walter had spoken to anyone in a long time. Rebecca squinted her eyes and looked him up and down. She retracted her hand, and the blade disappeared.

  “Yeah, you’ll do,” she said, walking around him.

  “I’ll do what?” he said. “Where are you going?”

  “To use the bathroom.”

  Walt
er put his head in his hands. Something odd was going on, but a part of him told him to keep on at it. He was in Wonderland or Narnia at the moment, and perhaps it would be best if he kept going along with it.

  He didn’t know how she was able to do the things that she did, didn’t really care. She had destroyed his phone and walkie-talkie, and she would have destroyed more.

  Why the radios? Walter thought, looking about.

  Of everything he had seen someone do when they were in shock, destroying radios wasn’t one of them. She would probably destroy the radio in his car, which he would—

  What am I even thinking? he thought. I’m not driving her to the border.

  Beth might have called such an event an adventure, though Rodney would probably laugh at him. He could imagine Rodney, with his big blue eyes, telling the world how old man Walt went about and drove a girl with magic swords coming out of her hands to the Canadian border, the same girl who had come in and broken every radio except for his stupid cat one.

  Not every radio.

  Walter’s heart practically stopped. He wasn’t sure why, but Rebecca seemed very adamant in destroying radios. But what if there was another reason?

  Rebeca walked out of the bathroom, carrying a backpack with an “I Heart NY” sticker on it.

  “What?” she said.

  “Not every radio,” Walter said.

  She turned her head, and then her eyes grew wide.

  “We have to—”

  And then the rest stop exploded in red light.

  ****

  Walter woke up covered in snow, shivering.

  He got up and looked around. There was a strange ringing in his ears. Bright purple and red light flashed in front of him. Snow landed all around him.

  He stood up and looked around.

  The building that used to be Stop 17 was now completely gone. Blood dripped down the side of his face. He reached up to feel it and found it steaming in the dark, cold air.

  Something flew in front of him. He ducked out of the way, but he didn’t need to. Another purple thing reached out and stopped it.

  It was dark, and he could barely see, but it looked like Rebecca was fighting someone, only she looked different. Her veins seemed to be shining in the dark, half of her body shining bright white, the other half a bright purple.

  The man she was fighting was shirtless. His veins were red and likewise shining as Rebecca’s were. The heat seemed to be emitting out of both of them. They clashed again, the man jumping ahead and Rebecca hitting him back.

  Green lightning crackled above them.

  In between each of the strikes, he could see a few forms up in the clouds above them. There were three of them, or perhaps three and a half. One looked to be a man with orange veins shining through his body. To his left appeared to be either a tall man or woman, Walter couldn’t tell from this distance. A green light radiated from their skin.

  To her left, there was something else. It was either a child or a person without any arms or legs. It floated there in the light above them, along with the other two.

  None of them seemed to be paying any attention to Walter.

  He stood up and walked over to his truck. There were more explosions behind him, but he didn’t turn to look. Today had been full of enough action to satisfy him for the rest of his life, no matter how long that would be. He would drive home and pretend like none of this had ever happened. And perhaps none of it had, in truth. No one would believe anything he said on the matter. They would chalk it up to old Walt finally starting to lose his mind, and then that would be that, and he’d be off to the old person’s home, with nothing to do but look through AARP magazines and collect his social security.

  He opened his car door and started his engine.

  The headlights blared on, illuminating the two fighters. Both of them turned to look at the truck. Rebecca seemed to take advantage of her opponent’s distraction. She lunged forward, her body becoming a purple blur. She knocked into the woman with her shoulder. She went flying, bounded through the snow, and crashed into a road sign. Then she turned back to Walter, her body turning bright purple.

  Got to go, he thought, pulling out of his slot.

  But Rebecca was faster.

  In an instant, she was holding onto the outside of the truck.

  Before Walter could even blink, she ran her shoes through the window and was sitting next to him.

  “I don’t have time to explain,” Rebecca said, her skin turning bright purple. “I don’t have any energy stored up right now. I’m going to move us about two hundred feet to the south. When we move, I’ll be unconscious for ten minutes or so. During that time, I need you to either bring us to another rest stop or another good place for shelter. Drive fast.”

  Walter almost said, “What?”

  However, before he could, the entire car was turning purple, and before he knew it, he was moving as fast as a bullet.

  It happened for only a second, leaving afterimages in his eyes. The truck had gone from the parking lot of Stop 17 to the southbound side of the thruway. Walter collected himself and stepped on the pedal. The sky grew green with lightning, and then very dark.

  What the hell is going on, he thought. What the hell is going on?

  Chapter Four

  Matt used his NaU to pull the road sign from Danni’s chest.

  The girl had been struggling to pull it out, beating the ground in frustration. Oh, what had happened to the quick-witted girl who always knew what to say? Why was she replaced with this monster, hell-bent on hurting herself but always able to heal?

  The girl growled at the sign and smashed it with her hands.

  Matt left her to her devices and floated over toward Kent.

  The boy got the rough end of the deal, at least when it came to the NaU. Nigel had had some pretty bad effects on him, but they paled in comparison to what had happened to Kent.

  Though never an attractive boy, back before the NaU, he had at least looked normal. Now, arm and legless, without a nose or eyes, he looked like a monster. Without Matt holding the boy up, he’d never be able to move on his own.

  There isn’t enough punishment in all of hell for you, Robbie, Matt thought.

  As Matt approached, another piece fell off of Kent. His right ear, branded with the infection of his NaU, cracked off and fell to the ground below. Matt used his NaU to catch it.

  “Leave it,” Kent said. “I still hear fine without it.”

  Matt let the ear fall to the ground.

  “Odd help that Becca is relying on,” Kent said. “I almost have his car radio. If you give me a couple more moments, I’ll be able to talk to him.”

  That’s how Kent was. Focused on the mission, as always. He had to be. When everything else is taken from you, you have to keep moving forward, no matter what.

  “They’re not going far,” Kent said. “I think she knows she can’t use this man as a shield for long. We’ve shown we don’t care about causalities, with what Danni did back on the highway.”

  Matt frowned at that. He spared a look down at the girl. After the incident with Pete, he had found the girl half-mad up in the mountain, attacking anything that moved. Something happened to her head.

  The plan was for no casualties. No one else was going to die but Becca.

  But Danni, in her current state, was like a rabid dog, attacking anything. The people who died on the highway from her attack didn’t deserve what happened to them. It was a mess, but if they could just get Becca, then it would all be worth it, and those people wouldn’t have died for nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” Matt said.

  “For what?” Kent said. “You’re still going to give me the NaU, right? I’m still going to be healed, so there’s no need to apologize.”

  He had to know it wasn’t going to him. But yet, he kept his focus on the mission.

  “Thank you,” Matt said. “You’re one of the greatest people I’ve ever known.”

  “Don’t get dramatic,”
Kent said. “Besides, I was never going to be anything anyway. Better for Jolie to have it. It just makes sense.”

  As the boy talked, the rest of his nose fell off. Matt thought he saw tears streaming down the boy’s face, water, and steam coming from where his eyes no longer existed.

  But then Kent’s new eyes widened.

  “I found them.”

  Chapter Five

  Walter, I know that you are stubborn. Hell, that was one of the main reasons I married you all those years ago. But I need you to realize that there comes a time in everyone’s lives in which they have to make a choice. I only hope that you’ll make the right one.

  With love, Beth.

  Walter drove through the night as fast as he could.

  Rebecca was sleeping next to him in the passenger’s seat. As right as rain, once they “moved” or whatever the hell the girl called it, she lost consciousness.

  His heart raced in his chest, and ever since the girl brought up the fact that he might have arteries and veins with high amounts of cholesterol in them, he was nervous that a heart attack was on his horizon. He took a sip of his lukewarm coffee, which was now past the lukewarm mark and was cold. Still, though, the caffeine tasted good for his throat and body. He tried to calm down, but he was shaking, and he didn’t think it had anything to do with the cold.

  And cold it was.

  It was now late in the afternoon, but for all intents and purposes, it was dark as night out with the heavy snow clouds above them.

  What I am doing? he thought as he drove. In all honesty, this was far from a simple stroke or anything like that. He had gotten himself involved in something that he was largely out of his element for. People shooting things from their hands, flying, and what the hell had been that thing next to the two people in the sky? It looked like it didn’t have any arms or legs, and Walter could see glowing pink orbs of light where the thing’s eyes were supposed to be.

  And the fact that they were flying alone was enough to show Walter that he had fallen down the tree into the well of Wonderland at the moment, and he desperately wanted to either wake up or go back to the way things were.