Lucas felt the pain in his chest and tried to open his eyes. Maybe they were already open. He couldn’t tell. For a while, all that he knew was floating through the dark. Unable to comprehend the magnitude of it all.
This is it… the journey to the other side. The final unanswerable question and no way back.
He looked out into the vast chasm of nothing, expecting at any moment for a hand to grab him, or maybe a monstrous mouth to swallow him whole. The manifestation of God in this inky pool in which Lucas was suspended.
In the distance, amongst the bed of pretty lights like an LED canvas on prom night, one light twinkled brighter than the rest. Lucas watched it, unsure if it was his imagination or if the light was actually growing larger. Was he travelling towards it, or was it travelling towards him?
“Maddie! Maddie! Stop!”
The tightening of his chest eased. He focused on the luxury of breath, absorbing every moment as his lungs filled and contracted with the air. That voice. So familiar. So far away.
The light was about the size of a balloon now, and growing quickly. Lucas couldn’t help but stare as it doubled, then tripled its size until all he could see was a burning hot white. He couldn’t blink. He couldn’t think. All that there was was this astronomical orb hurtling towards him now. His stomach jolted and something cold poured through his veins. It was over. This is it. The final hurdle. Death—
“Lucas?!” a hand slapped his face. “Luke, can you hear me?”
Lucas blinked stupidly, finding his paralysis lifted. He raised his hand and blocked the light to see three faces staring at him, haloed by a fluorescent light above. His comrades. Ani, Sammi, and Maddie. He tried to sit bolt upright, then found that his body felt heavy, almost quadruple its weight. He looked down to see Sammi with a stern hand on his chest. “You’re going nowhere, buddy,” she beamed, failing to hide the overwhelming relief on her face.
“How’s it going guys?” Lucas croaked through a throat that was desert-dry. He tried to chuckle but found himself coughing, gasping for liquid. He pointed to his throat, “Does anyone mind?”
“Of course!” Sammi disappeared from view. There was a noise, repetitive grunts and thwops from somewhere nearby.
“How’s he doing?” Ani asked someone out of sight. A moment later she shrugged and turned her attention back to Lucas.
Lucas turned his head and strained to see past Maddie’s body. His vision was a little hazy and the light was dazzling, but as Sammi returned with a bottle of water and offered it to Lucas, he could just make out Kurt’s head, lying on a gurney a couple feet away from him. Nodes and wires hooked to his body, and a machine with a green screen and no signs of response.
“Here, drink…” Maddie said.
“Kurt!”
Surprised by his strength, Maddie was pushed backwards as Lucas clumsily sat up, pulling wires plugged into machines with him. The water toppled to the floor, but Lucas didn’t care. He ripped off his own monitors and supported himself at Kurt’s side. Stan gave a frightened look, paused a moment, then continued compressions when he realised that Lucas meant no harm.
“How long has he been out?”
Maddie folded her arms and retreated, clearly not wanting to say what was on her mind.
Lucas turned to Ani, pleading eyes.
“We don’t know about him exactly. But you… you were under for twenty-two minutes.”
Lucas struggled to do the math in his head. He swung around and gripped Kurt’s hand, placing his forehead against the boy’s.
Maddie stepped forward and placed a hand on Lucas’ shoulder.
“Lucas… Kurt must’ve been under for nearly an hour now. We have to face it… He’s gone… There’s no coming back from that.”
Sammi and Anita watched intently, unable to do much of anything now. She watched as the man she’d respected for so long slowly started to realise, to break down.
“Lucas,” she said. “It’s too late.”
He shook his head in disbelief, tears welling in his eyes.
“Kurt… Not another… no…”
Kurt’s hand slipped from his own as he dropped to his knees, covering his eyes, shielding himself. Anita had never seen the man shed a tear. Never even seen the man look vaguely upset. She didn’t even presume that he experienced pain in the same way others did. He was a man made of stone with a beautiful smile. A man who could win over anyone and any heart he wanted and probably never feel the emotions he evoked. The only time he’d come close was all those years ago when Ira went under.
“Get something to cover him up,” Maddie breathed to Sammi. She nodded, turning to disappear from the room. “Lucas, I’m so sorry…”
“Wait,” Sammi said suddenly.
“What?”
Sammi sped over to Kurt’s bedside, held the monitor in both hands and stared at the line. She picked up a remote and played with the buttons, the numbers on the screen now moving backwards.
“Sammi, what’re you…?”
“There! Movement!” Sammi said, pointing excitedly at the EEG. “We have movement.”
They looked on in amazement at the faintest blip of the line, but it quickly died down again. The movement was fleeting. A couple moments passed before it came again.
Part 6
The Hunt Begins
51
The smell of ash and cigarettes was enough to make her sick, rising in a gentle feather from the flaming tip as Ani took another long drag.
She had always hated cigarettes. The smell, the taste and, most importantly, the cost. America racked up a premium on the white sticks that had taken more years of her life than men ever did. Back in India, the cost was less than double, a much cheaper habit to succumb to. But after hitting the US and realising that she was paying more in cigarette fare than she was on sanitary products, Ani had packed in the habit without so much as a goodbye glance over her shoulder.
Still, she had missed the warm entry of thick smog creeping down her throat. The sudden rush flowing through her body, waking up her system.
It was all Miguel’s fault. That was for whom her blame was placed. The cocky prick with his needle addiction.
Anita felt the warmth of the embers creep towards her fingers, threw the remainder of the cigarette on the floor and crushed it beneath her heel. How long had she been outside now? Watching the thin wisps of clouds lazily float across the sky? There was a sombre silence across High Point, and she had begun to wonder how much of that blame fell on them.
Probably all of it.
Ani straightened her pantsuit and headed back inside the empty medical practice. Through reception, down the stairs, pausing with her hand on the door to the basement. The people inside had certainly heard her, falling to a respectful silence as the clacking of her heels hit the stairs. She waited for a moment – inhaled deeply, counted to three – then made her entrance with a smile that she struggled to hide.
“Good morning everyone,” she said, looking across the long table at Sammi, Stan, Miguel, and Maddie.
“Morning”.
“I see we’re still waiting on our late arrivals?”
“Right behind you.” Lucas opened the door and waited for Kurt to walk past and find a seat. Kurt’s movements were slow, the impact of the last few days of events finally catching up with him.
All faces smiled warmly as they entered. Maddie pulled out the chair next to her and helped Kurt get comfortable. Lucas took the seat next to Kurt.
The meeting lasted several hours, each person taking their turns to ask questions and fill in the gaps in their knowledge of what had happened, and where they were to go next. Ani began proceedings, giving an overview of what was happening in the town, how the people were coping since the attack of the ferals. According to her sources, a town-wide ban had been enforced on the drinking water at High Point until the filtration system could be looked at. Prices of bottled water were jacked up for the third of the population left surviving after a heavy night of gunfire and bl
ood spill. Even now, there were cases of RevitaGo making their way into people’s systems – mostly those people dopey enough to fetch a glass of water in the middle of the night without thought – though, thanks to Stan, the remainder of the security team were on high alert and quick to respond. As for those ferals slaughtered on that fateful night of the Deadspace encounter, there were none left alive to accommodate them in the High Point crematorium, given that all of the staff had been affected by RevitaGo. Parents, children, distant friends all made spaces in their own gardens or in the fields at the edge of town to bury their dead and give them a dignified sending off. Hoping that at least some sort of ceremonial burial would ease their souls into the afterlife.
Kurt was the next to be addressed, and he felt hot under the collar as all eyes turned on him. Kurt gave a brief overview of his days of events, finding it progressively more difficult to continue the further down the line he went. It all seemed so far away now, so distant. As if it had all been one enormous nightmare that had yet to reach its conclusion. Colonial Williamsburg, the ferry, Sabrina and the Cooper’s. When he reached the part about his encounter with Lucas he paused momentarily, uncertain whether to go into the depths of it all. He had become so used to hiding the truth that he had yet to even mention Amy, let alone his encounters with Ira and the doors out loud. He looked at Ani, then Lucas, each giving their own encouraging nod, and, for the first time, reeled off the tale in full.
When he came to the part where he had stolen the needle and placed himself under, he paused. Lucas took over there for a bit, talking through the terrifying journey to High Point at breakneck speeds, arriving at the gates to a flood of ferals.
“We were so distracted with Kurt that we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. By the time I realised, it was too late. We smashed into them. Turns out sometimes you need to activate airbags…”
There was a general murmur of a giggle. Lucas rubbed his forehead.
Ani nudged Kurt on. “And while Lucas was playing tenpin bowling…?”
There it was. The part that Kurt knew everyone was waiting for. He took a breath, closed his eyes and remembered himself back there. He kept his eyes firmly closed through the entire tale, as though if he opened them it might break the spell and he wouldn’t be able to continue. He told them of the large grey facility, of the freedom he had felt at becoming fully submerged in the Deadspace. At this, there was a general murmur of “Aegis?”. Kurt told them of the flashback, of the corridors, the mesh walkway, the rooms that acted as cells. When he spoke of the blond-haired man in the first cell he heard Maddie rise suddenly.
“Fred? Fred’s in there?” There was the sound of a slap on material, followed by a disgruntled Lucas. “You waited until now to tell me?”
“Sit down, Maddie. I promise. We’ll get there.”
“But my—”
“Sit.”
Kurt continued, not pausing now. Keen to get the rest of the story out on the table. He hated being the centre of attention, and even through his closed lids, he could feel eyes burning into him. He told them of Lucas coming in after him. Of Lucas disappearing not long after arriving in the wooded area. Amy in the tent. At some point he started to cry. He felt like iron bands had wrapped around his lungs, constricting his airflow. He pressed on. Tried to rinse himself free like a dirty wet towel. And, in that moment of all moments, he needed to tell all.
He got as far as the words that Ira had used, ‘I shoot you with a gun here and you still die… because you believe it would kill you’, and how to him that really meant that the Deadspace was made of conviction and belief more than anything else.
And there he had to force his words through gasping breaths, trying to make sense of it to himself more than anything.
“I imagined a door to me. I imagined a door to what I feel inside. I…took…Ira there and I…”
“It’s okay,” Lucas said. “You don’t have to—
He pressed on, clenching his eyes tight, rubbing his hands through his hair. “I think I killed him. I think I ripped what remained of him to pieces.”
“He deserved it, kid,” Lucas said, now wrapping his arms around him. “That wasn’t Ira. That wasn’t a man… anymore. That was a monster, a fool who called himself Lazarus, some distortion of who he used to be.”
Kurt opened his eyes, biting his quivering lip, and tried to hold eye contact with Lucas.
“But I killed him.”
“And you saved many more. Plus, you didn’t really kill him. He died years ago when he went under with the yellow. I think you maybe helped that stuck part of him to pass through. Nobody should stay in the Deadspace like that. It’s only meant to be temporary. If anything, you helped him along the way.”
Kurt sniffed at the air, suddenly aware of the eyes staring at him once more, and didn’t even say the name, just had to think it before Lucas knew what he was about to say.
“We’ll get your sister, kid. Amy’s alive.”
“How do you know?”
A cough.
Lucas and Kurt looked over to Ani, her arms crossed.
“Kurt, we did some digging. Your sister is… was… in a toxic metabolic encephalopathy. She was admitted into the Fallen Oaks Hospital in Fort Wayne two days ago, she’s… well, she’s not been well.”
Kurt looked to Lucas.
“A coma, kid. She was in a coma.”
52
The flight to Fort Wayne, Ohio wasn’t eventful and Kurt was thankful for it. The only oddity to note was that Lucas, even after all that had happened, was scared to death of flying. Him of all people. He shook like a peeing dog as he popped three pills before they took off and slept until they landed.
Kurt tried to catch a couple of hours too but he couldn’t close his eyes for longer than a minute. There were too many concerns. Too many unknowns. Too many whispers behind his eyes. And a very real concern that he might close his eyes a little too long, might find himself back in the Deadspace with whatever remained of Lazarus.
There was far too much to deal with in the real world anyway. Karen, Beth, David, and his stepfather, Stephen. Kurt had run away and left them in that house in the woods to fend for themselves. A great shame fell on him as he thought about it. What did they think of him now? Did they hate him for leaving?
Ani had sent Miguel and the big one, Stanley to search for the house. All based on Kurt’s vague descriptions and Lucas’s memory of where he’d ran over Kurt.
“Wild goose chase,” Miguel had called it and he was right. It was. Still, they had found a house. Whether it was the right house or not they’d never know. Miguel and Stanley said it matched the description but they said it was empty. There was little to be found other than bottles of wine and blood. No vehicles and no weapons either. As if the survivors had driven off and away.
“We’ll find ’em, kid,” Lucas had told him after getting off the phone with Miguel. “We found Amy, didn’t we? We’ll find them too.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Kurt said, trying not to show the shame on his face. They were a family, mostly, and for a while it felt like he was being forced to be a part of it, like they were clinging to him because they needed someone innocent around, to prove to themselves that life was going to be okay for them. That life could to be normal again.
But Kurt wasn’t innocent. Not really.
Amy’s new parents, David and Gina, seemed nice enough. The bald one, David, had been doing some crying and praying of his own it seemed. His eyes were red and bloodshot as he greeted Kurt and Lucas at the Fallen Oaks Hospital entrance.
“It’s lovely to meet you, Kurt” the man said, still in a suit and tie, clinging to some form of professionalism and routine in a world gone haywire. He even shook Kurt’s hand like it were all one big business meeting and Kurt shook it, gripping the man’s hand as firmly as he could. He could have given the guy hell for taking his sister away from him.
Look what happened! You took her and look what happened!
He could’v
e laid it on thick for the guy, really tightened those screws, and David probably would have taken it too, would’ve broken down and given Kurt the apology the kid had felt was due ever since he and Gina had turned up on that autumn Monday morning and said we’ll take the girl but not the boy. The man had probably held a seed of guilt in his gut ever since. It had likely flowered and bloomed in the events that followed, even though that was a ludicrous idea and neither of them were at fault in any way.
“It’s going to be okay, Mr Hayes,” Kurt said, placing his other hand atop the two interlocked ones. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
The hospital was bustling. A line of parked ambulances lay down the road to the side. People in big blue coats with steaming coffees and cigarettes stood by them, talking about the horrors of the previous week, because sure enough, Kurt imagined work had been hell for these guys, even as far from the blast area as they were.
“And you must be?” David said, looking up to the big stocky guy in the leather jacket and the white shirt and tie.
“Call me Donny,” Lucas said with a smile. “I’m a friend of the kid.”
“He’s family,” Kurt added.
David took them inside and wheeled them through the labyrinthian corridors of the hospital. He filled them in on how Amy had fallen and banged her head on the toilet bowl. There’d been bleeding. A lot of it.
Lucas and Kurt looked at each other as they followed. Lucas mouthed the word, “Okay?” and he nodded in reply.
Now, though, more than any time this past week, Kurt felt nervous. He felt fingers on his heart, squeezing, restricting his ability to pump blood. He felt light-headed and like his ears needed to pop.
They moved past a nurse busying herself with a clipboard and walked into a hospital room that smelled clinical and reminded him in many ways of the smell of the RevitaGo pouches. A little like that stuff you painted on wood to keep it from rotting.
Lazarus Page 31