But Walter hadn’t, or at least not yet. For all Becca knew, Walter was down the hall in that room, slowly talking to Matt over a radio and letting him know where he was and that they’d both kill her together.
Walter wasn’t that kind of guy, though. He might have been when he was younger, but age had done a number on him, and whose whole potential evil streak had run about dry in Becca’s estimation.
He had a life here once, just like Matt was probably going to have a life. Becca shouldn’t have asked him about the kids. She should have been able to figure out that he had lost his kids a long while back. Bringing it up hadn’t exactly helped her cause, and for all she knew was the reason he was down the hallway at the moment, wanting some time alone.
Robbie’s intrusion into trying to save Carol had doomed many people to horrible fates, sometimes turning them into animals. She still loved her father, but her last words to him had been true. If he had loved her, then he never would have done what he did, never doomed all of these normal and good people to these awful fates. He didn’t mean to, but that didn’t hold much salt to Becca. He shouldn’t have done what he did. He just shouldn’t have.
The door down the hallway started to open. Whatever moment Walter was having appeared to be done. Becca stood up but stopped. She heard a ringing sound, which was growing louder.
“Becca!” Walter said.
And then all of the windows shattered.
Chapter Nineteen
Matt’s known his friends for years. They’ve stayed with him through thick and thin. Without them, Matt might have gone off the deep end long before his father’s death.
-Robbie’s Journal
The bodies lay around the rest stop.
The NaU no longer being in them, the snow landed on them and collected rather than melting. Kent’s body would be the first to be buried by the white snow, it being the smallest. Then perhaps Danni’s, her head being buried before the rest of her body.
Jolie would be the last.
Her body had grown cold, yet Matt still held her. Her then warm, but now cold blood had stained and seeped through his shirt, but he didn’t care.
Her eyes were still open. He thought about closing them, but he just couldn’t move himself to do it. They were still beautiful eyes, even if there was no life to them. His child was going to have those eyes, he was sure of it, or at least he hoped. His eyes had been the ones of his father, and he liked them about as much as he liked every other part of Nigel. Nigel had been a bad parent. Matt was supposed to have been better.
But now he’d never know.
A plow truck drove by the rest stop, not seeing anything. Matt could feel the driver inside, feel his anger and annoyance at the cold, could hear him through the radio, talking about how much he wanted to go home and see his kids before it got too late. Matt wished he would.
Life was so short. One moment you planned on doing one thing, and then before you knew it, all of your plans, no matter how detailed and fool-proof, would go right up and under, and then your life would be placed in a new direction, usually in opposition to the direction before.
He could feel the NaUs inside of him.
Kent’s felt funny, different from the rest. It was like someone had shoved speakers into his ears and turned on every single radio station in the county. How the hell Kent stayed sane, if one could even call his last couple of days as sane, was a miracle to Matt. His arms and legs had bright pink veins in them, and they felt weaker than they had been before.
He’d already had one seizure, thanks to Jolie’s NaU. He felt more powerful than he thought he would. Jolie seemed to have been holding back, since Matt was pretty sure he could level a mountain with her power if he wanted to.
But he couldn’t bring her back.
A few snowflakes landed on her open eyes, not melting. He looked away.
He couldn’t stay there. He’d have to get up eventually. This snowstorm would end, and then there would be a tomorrow, assuming that he would even live until the following day. He knew where Walter and Becca had run off to, had listened to their breathing through the radio of Walter’s truck before the man smashed it. He felt where they went and knew where to find them.
He didn’t get up.
He reached down and looked at Jolie again. She would have been a good mom. That was a cliché thing to say, but Matt believed it to be true. Jolie would have been a good mom, and they could have had something. Not anymore. Because of him.
Sure it had been Robbie who initially doomed her, who had given her NaU, the nanites parasite that drained all life from her and would eventually end with her being dead. Then Becca doomed her along with their child when she didn’t give up, when she didn’t just hand over the NaU like she should have, and Matt was sure, deep down, she wanted to. And then Matt killed her.
The NaU had reflected off of Becca’s shields and shot right into Jolie’s chest. No party was at fault there, and Matt couldn’t feel any anger in his chest for his sister. All he felt was emptiness.
He reached up and closed Jolie’s eyes. He used his hand, not his NaU, to do it. Her skin was cold to the touch.
He set her body down in the snow and left it there. He might have been able to pull open the ground for Peter, but not for Jolie. Besides, who would want to be buried in a rest stop of all places?
What were her parents going to think? As Matt looked around at all of the bodies, that was all he could think of. Kent’s mother would be relieved. Danni’s parents would be upset, but not as upset as they might have been if they ever learned the full extent of Danni and Peter’s relationship. Peter was buried under the ground in the cornfield, and Matt thought that was right. The boy wasn’t from Greendale, but he seemed to like the place good and well enough. Always wanting to help—well, now his body would be helping to provide nutrients to the corn once that field became usable. Maybe in a hundred years or so, through erosion and weather, Peter’s body would spring up to the surface, but Matt wasn’t concerned about a hundred years from now.
It was amazing what death, or rather impending death, could do to one’s outlook on life. All of that other stuff, the important stuff, the kind of stuff that people worry about in between their nine to five shifts, no longer applied to Matt. He wondered if this was how his mother felt, back when cancer started to take her for a loop, but before she lost her brain function.
Matt took off into the air. Below him, Jolie’s body was already almost completely covered.
So many snowflakes, so little time. There was a world out there to see, and he could see it. Screw Becca and her NaUs—hell, he might already feel himself getting sick, but that didn’t mean that he’d be completely useless. There was so much he could do with the time he had left that it didn’t make any difference.
Jolie.
His friends, all gone. He was the last one.
It was never supposed to be him. That night at the fair, no one would have suspected that he’d outlive all of his friends. But he did. He did.
Tears ran out of his eyes and down his cheeks.
He looked up and didn’t see God. Matt believed that God existed, of course, but the Holy Father hadn’t exactly shown him anything much in the camp of compassion and respect. Sure, he was alive, and sure he was almost as strong as a God himself, but what did it mean? He’d give it all up again, all of it, just to go back to that night at the Washington County Fair. He’d take having bedsores all around his backside and not being able to move his legs if it meant that he could have it all back; every seizure, every attack, every second of having to look at his mother’s cancer-stricken face. If Danni had just let him stay over at his house that night, then there wouldn’t have been a problem. Sure, Robbie still might have tried to use the NaU on Carol, but there wouldn’t have been any extra bodies around for the NaU to latch to. They’d all be dead, sure, but Jolie and the baby would still be alive.
It wasn’t hatred that collected in his heart and body then. It wasn’t love either. It wa
s the same emptiness he had felt earlier, only slightly different. He felt the power inside of him, his body pulsing in the night. He had four NaUs inside of him; while they were killing him quirkily, then that meant they also allowed him tremendous amounts of power. It would be a shame for that power to go away, to go and latch itself just to someone else. Becca and Walter's problem was that didn’t even think of that; they were all too eager to wash their hands of the entire affair. They thought it was over.
Matt smiled. It wasn’t over, not even close. There was no right or wrong in this world. It was the jungle, and all things were permitted. The strongest would win, and then they would be The Keeper. His mistake was to put all of his faith and power in his friends to be weak and hesitant. Who’s to say that he should die that night?
What was it Kent had said before he died? That humor kept him warm. Well, Matt would have to find the humor in this. It didn’t matter that Rebecca was a good person or that Walter was innocent. All that mattered was what happened in the next hour, and whether or not Matt would have the strength to keep going and take what he needed. He might feel something when Becca died, or maybe he wouldn’t.
Only one way to find out, he thought, smiling. He activated Jolie’s NaU; green light arced all around him, shooting down from the sky. So much power. He flipped on Kent’s NaU and was inside every radio for miles.
He screamed.
Chapter Twenty
Every NaU came into being inside different people, reacting to different DNA. That makes every NaU unique. However, if someone else were to harness the NaU of a different DNA, would that make them stronger or weaker?
-Robbie’s Journal
Walter walked out of his house. Becca walked behind him.
Matt looked down at them.
His skin was a collection of colors, pink, green, blue, and orange. His chest was stained a dark brown, much the same as Walter’s flannel. There were holes in it, some of which were still simmering slightly. His skin radiated from the empty holes. He didn’t look happy to see them.
Down the street, every single window or glass fixture had been shattered. The bar at the end of the street had grown dark, and Walter hoped that everyone was all right. People were milling out of the bar in droves, only to run back inside when the cold wind hit them.
“It’s good to see you two,” Matt said. “You didn’t run as far as I imagined you would. This your house?”
He made a sweeping motion. Walter felt the boy’s touch on him. It seemed firmer than it had been back at the rest stop. He could break Walter’s neck at any moment he wished, rip his head off his shoulders. He was strong now, but if his head were to be separated from his body, well, then that meant that he could wish his newfound NaUs goodbye.
“Yes,” Walter said. “I’ve lived here for close to fifty years.”
“Alone, I sense,” Matt said. “I can’t feel anyone else in the house, nor any indication that anyone else had lived there beside you for quite some time.”
“Yes,” Walter said. “My wife and children are long dead.”
“So, you know how it feels?” Matt said, smiling slightly.
“No, Matt, I don’t know what you’re going through right now.”
“At least you’re still partially honest,” Matt said. “I would have preferred if that honesty had stayed intact earlier, and you could have just gotten Becca to come out.”
“You make it sound like I had any power—”
“Oh, Walter,” Matt said. “You had the most power back at that rest stop. See, I could have ripped the ground open underneath the force field and swarmed right in. I could have destroyed your truck, not allowing you any vestige of escape.
“Instead, I waited. I allowed you the time and space to do what I needed you to do, which you didn’t end up doing. It would have been easier if you had just kept to your word.”
“You make it sound like I could have gotten her to come out,” Walter said. “To lower the field. The NaU must be getting to your head if you’re crazy enough to think that. Now, you saved me, Matt, so you don’t want me dead.”
“Didn’t,” Matt said, “but I’m sure as you can imagine, the Matt before you is a tad bit different than the Matt that you last saw at the rest stop. I’m a little short on time at the moment.”
“So, come with us,” Walter said. “Come with us to Toronto, and then we can see what we can do.”
“Oh, Walter,” Matt said. “I won’t survive the night without Becca’s NaU.”
“She’s your sister, Matt! You don’t want to do this.”
“Just like she didn’t want to kill my father,” Matt said. “She did that all the same. When the dice were down, and real life demanded a sacrifice, Becca walked up to the plate and paid tribute. It would only be fair if I paid my own share.”
The boy wasn’t completely gone. He couldn’t be. He was just in an even deeper place, one where all light and method of escape seemed futile. He was like a kid who got off the wagon and the first real-time when they have to deal with something without alcohol in their veins and liver, they think why not go for it and do what you wanted to do anyway. Life had dealt you a bad hand, and what were you supposed to do with it?
You could try and play it, but flipping the table over is so much easier. It was like the time all those years ago when Beth died, and Walter bought some liquor, thinking about trying to get back on the wagon and just go for it. Like them, he had stopped. Matt could stop too. All he had to do was try.
“Killing us won’t bring Jolie back,” Walter said, regretting it immediately. “When my wife died, I wanted to do terrible things to people, even worse than when my kids died. I know what you’re going through here, Matt, and I doubt Jolie would approve.”
“No, nothing will bring her back,” Matt said. “If none of this had happened, then in a couple of months I too could have been a father, a better one then Robbie or Nigel. I could have made someone’s life better, making sure they felt loved. Becca took that from me, just like she took Nigel.”
The wind around them grew stronger. Snow started to fly about them. Down the street, police cars and sirens were blaring, along with an ambulance or two and a fire truck, though exactly what fire was going to be put out wasn’t apparent to Walter. If anything, a fire at this time would be good to warm up the cold air around them.
Matt laughed, two lines of tears running down his cheeks.
“I thought about naming the child Robbie,” Matt said. “If it was a boy. At the time, Robbie had given me everything. He had cured me, my mom, himself. Life was going all so well.
“But Robbie was a snake in the Garden of Eden, promising things and then biting you once it got its way. He never tried to find a cure for me until he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and my mother had cancer. I was always an obstacle to him. Becca herself is quiet on this matter because she knows I speak the truth.”
Rebecca stirred next to Walter.
“My father made many mistakes, Matt,” she said. “Stop being like him and don’t make any more.”
“So, you would have me die?” Matt said. “Wither away into nothing, so you get to live?”
“You saved me, Matt,” Walter said. “You could have let me die, let the life leave my body all of those hours ago at the rest stop. But you didn’t. You said it was because you thought you could turn me to your side, but I think it was something different.”
“And what, pray tell, is that, Walter?” Matt said. “What inherent wisdom can you bestow upon us?”
“You don’t want anyone to die here tonight, Matt,” Walter said. “That includes me, and it includes your sister. You don’t want to do this.”
“And here we go ’round and ’round,” Matt said. The sky around him started to radiate; green light flowed up and down his arms. “We’ve been through this all before, Walter, and I doubt that either one of us is going to make any headway.”
Becca activated her father’s NaU, her skin turning purple.
N
o, no, no. There didn’t need to be a fight here. There was still some way to—
And then Matt hit him.
Walter was thrown down the street. The pavement broke under him, and his insides turned to jelly. He crashed into a parked car down the street. The side of the car had jagged up and was sticking out of his chest.
He might be able to regrow back everything, but he still felt pain enough. He fell off the side of the car onto the ground.
Down the street, Matt and his sister were going at it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Becca and Carol resent me for making us leave Matt and his friends behind. They’ll get over it, though. Once they see the power that Becca has, they’ll understand why Matt and his friends would kill her for it. At least they have to see it. If only I see it, then it’s bad. If they see it, then I’m just logical.
-Robbie’s Journal
Becca tried to view the man above her as a monster, as someone who was going to try and kill her and hurt everyone else that got into his way. He had killed Kent only hours before, and he had stopped Walter’s death by giving him Danni’s and Peter’s NaU.
But instead, all she saw was her brother.
“I won’t fight you, Matt,” she said.
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” he said.
She felt his touch on her. She resisted it, though, bringing out her father’s NaU. Most of Matt’s NaU would be ineffective against Robbie’s NaU. Perhaps that was why he had given it to his daughter, knowing full well that Matt wouldn’t be able to stop her.
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