by Rowan Massey
He looked around at the kids, all of them plotting to mug me or else pick over the pieces after another kid’s attack. He nodded agreement. Instead of giving me paperwork to fill out, he handed the papers to me already signed and sealed. Confused for a moment, I paged through them while the man fetched a gun from under his table and gestured with it for me to follow him. Ryker was getting even more tense because of the attention I’d gained from his peers. He took a plastic shiv from his pocket as we walked and made sure it was visible to everyone. I made a mental note to confiscate it when we got home. Two older boys emerged from inside, looking unpleasant. They both followed us all the way to the SUV.
When we were both safely inside and on the road, I had a nervous rush at the knowledge that I more or less officially had a son. I was a father, finally. My brother had told me many times that there was no good reason to wait or that I didn’t need to do it through the usual official channels, but I’d been a little stubborn about setting some kind of example of high standards to other parents, most of whom parented so casually that they thought it was perfectly acceptable to kick their kids out onto the streets at the first sign of trouble.
So, my new son was a teenager, definitely an addict, his age was hard to determine because of the hardening effects of a rough life, and he’d very possibly been abused and very definitely had seen abuse happen to others. This was the person I was willingly taking into my home.
“Do you have any family?” I asked him.
“Not really. Kinda. My mom lives here still, I think.”
I nodded. That was about as vague as it got.
“Do you want me to fix your pipe for you?” he asked.
“My pipe?”
He turned and fished into my jacket pocket where I’d put the drugs the girl was smoking.
“No, Ryker, stop,” I batted him away.
“Sorry,” he said, putting his hands in the air. “I wasn’t trying to steal it.”
“It’s alright. I didn’t take it to smoke it, okay? I don’t do drugs.”
“I don’t care if you smoke in the car. You’re the boss. Some people like to smoke and drive. Just trying to be useful.”
I sighed and looked over at him. Smoking in the car would have given him a contact high. He was obviously disappointed and kept glancing at my pocket.
“What are you going to do with it?” he asked.
“Put it in the trash.”
“What! Why? Man, I’ll take it if you don’t want it.”
I didn’t answer. It wasn’t the time to tell him not to do drugs or to find out what his poison was. I wanted my first impression to be positive, not judgmental. Despite the obvious problems I would have with him, I was allowing myself a small feeling of happiness. Parenting had been a lifelong dream. I didn’t care how difficult it would be.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
He was silent for a beat.
“I can’t tell if you’re joking,” he said cautiously.
“Look in the back. I brought you some food.”
He twisted around and found the small cooler I’d stashed behind my seat.
“Oh, wow!” he exclaimed. “What is this? Are you for real?”
Cooler in his lap, he went through the items I’d carefully picked out—things I could safely assume every kid would like, not that I’d met a picky eater since I was a kid myself. It was well known since the introduction of vitamin stew that it was always so reviled by all children that they would eat anything with gratitude just because it wasn’t stew. Making the first meal I would feed my son or daughter had turned into a bit of an indulgence for me. I’d known it would have been a long time since they’d had real food. I’d chosen a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on honey wheat bread, two flavors of corn chips, both grape and apple juice, and I’d baked oatmeal cookies. It wouldn’t have taken more than just the chips or juice to impress him, but I wasn’t about to half ass anything, no matter what he was used to.
He seemed to be in awe of the feast before him, and he examined one item, then looked at me for confirmation, then examined another one, and so on until he was satisfied that it was all his. The sandwich was what he bit into first, making a hmm noise while he chewed. He had a grin on his face that probably hurt because he was chewing. His dirty fingers poked at the buttons on his door while he ate. The window opened beside him and he rolled it all the way down to crook an arm out the window and form his hand into an airplane, making whooshing sounds as his arm moved up and down against the wind.
A terrible rupture of pain, barely contained in my chest. The horrific memory of Wally’s innocent smile in contrast to his frozen death mask. The instinctual and startling scream contained in my head is a keening wail of grief, but outwardly, I’m silent, choking on desperate breaths.
On my hands and knees over him, I wrapped my arms around his chest and pulled him off another dead fielder, intending to lay him down on the ground with his eyes looking up at the darkness, the way he would have wanted. But his weight in my arms was too much for me, and I held him close. The sobs finally fought and clawed their way out of me. If I held him tightly enough, he had to come back. I just wanted him to come back.
Flashlights and footsteps behind me. I’d fired two men in my personal security team for letting Wally go towards the battle the day before. Another two had evacuated Emporium with their families, leaving me with two bodyguards. Not an hour ago, after searching the house for Wally and realizing he was gone, I’d left with one guard to search for him, leaving only one person guarding my house, but when I arrived at the field to find a massacre, we’d coordinated a search up and down any street he could have taken while I myself searched the remains of hundreds of fielders on my own, heart pounding wildly in my chest. My flashlight had gone from bloody face to bloody face, ready each time to find myself looking at Wally’s corpse, but never believing it could really happen, that any of it could touch the boy that I’d only just recently admitted I wanted as family.
“Atul,” a sad voice said behind me, “let’s take him home.”
“No,” I said. It was the only word I could say. I was saying no to all of it; to all of my fielders dying of poison and gunshots, to losing Wally, to my father causing the destruction of the world, to my part in everything, to the pain. Pressing my face into Wally’s cold, bloody neck, I kept saying no. I refused to receive any of the horrors the world was presenting to me.
In time, my guards pushed me away from Wally, my sweet, forgiving child, and one of them hefted the body over his shoulder. The second man put an arm around my shaking shoulders, and we followed the careful and heavy steps of the large man carrying my boy’s weight. We were a procession of three, weaving carefully through the young dead who lay at our feet.
At my SUV, one of them folded away the back seat, and the other carefully placed Wally inside, but his legs had to be bent up so that he could fit. I got in next to him, sitting on the floor of the vehicle. The back door slammed shut, and the SUV jerked forward. With soft pressure, I closed his red mouth. His eyes, which I’d seen so recently bright with happiness, dull with grief, and wild with madness, were empty and still. Countless times, I’d seen him open the eyes of his dead friends. I didn’t have it in my to try to shut his eyes now. I tried to turn his head to the side so that he’d be looking upwards, but I ended up having to hold his head in position, brushing my thumbs along his ears.
“I wouldn’t have made you stay in Manhattan,” I told him. “You would have hated it there. I was going to tell you my plans when we left. Tonight just didn’t seem like the right time to go into it. You’re my priority, so I was going to go live near the new factory. You would have come with me. I just don’t have a house ready yet. Jace likes you. Did you know that? He’s moving there now, and you two would have been friends. I’m sure of it. I was going to teach you to read and write better so you could eventually have a high school degree. I wasn’t going to try to get you off fielders. I wasn�
��t.”
My lip curled when he didn’t respond. I sobbed and felt myself start to hyperventilate. Saying his name, I bent down in the small space to put my head to his. I’d done this to him. My attempts to cure fielders who didn’t want a cure had brought Emporium into destruction. I was no better than my father. The Sardanas were death incarnate, and I would never escape my legacy, no matter how hard I tried to do good.
I gasped when the SUV pulled to a stop. My guards got out and came around to the back to open the door and take Wally again. With exhausted muscles, I slowly made my way out of the vehicle and up the steps of my front stoop. He took Wally to the clinic at the back of the house and placed him on the cold, metal exam table. I watched as his body was positioned respectfully, legs and arms straightened, but stopped him when he moved to close Wally’s eyes.
“Leave him,” I said, my voice broken.
The two of them left the room, and I stood over my boy with a hand on his blood stained chest. There was no life in it.
I had no right to mourn him. He’d hated me in the end. He’d rightfully blamed me for Spitz’s death, beating on me when I told him, then running down to the lab to try and destroy that which seemed to matter to me the most. The dead mouse was still down there on the floor. Remembering it rattled me. I ran a hand down my arm and over my chest where Wally had left bruises. If there was any justice at all, those bruises would stay there for the rest of my life.
I was a mass murderer.
My father had killed more people than anyone in history.
My brother blissfully reaped the benefits of all that death.
Making my hands into fists so tight they shook with rage, I hit myself in the head and face. I had to kill them. I would kill my father and brother. My mother would probably be relieved. Then I would kill myself. The world couldn’t be saved, but I could do that much.
Ignoring the boot steps coming towards me, I continued to beat myself, gritting my teeth and crying out with each blow. An arm went around my chest, and a needle entered my arm. I was being sedated when I only wanted to take the punishment, but I deserved that small satisfaction taken away too. It was what I’d done to Wally. I’d done it to Jace before too.
“I’m sorry,” I cried before the drug could kick in. I wanted to hug Wally one last time, and I laid myself over him, chest to chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Look for the rest of Doc’s story on Amazon.
