by Tracey Ward
She shakes her head, not having it. “No. No way. She has to be held accountable for her own crap. Why does that never happen?! She almost killed Gwen. She was messing with all of us for a long time. Why is that not something we ever talk about? And now this is being put off on Nick? No! No more! She’s trouble. She’s dangerous. I’m not just afraid of her because she’s sweating fear all the time. I’m afraid of her because she’s bad. She’s evil.”
Liam’s eyes flash. “She’s not evil.”
“Are you serious? How can you say that with a straight face?”
“Because it’s his sister and he loves her,” Justin guesses quietly. “He doesn’t want to see it, but it’s true. Britta’s right. Naomi is not… she’s not a…”
“She’s not a person,” Trina finishes for him, no hesitation. No reservations. “I don’t think she ever has been.”
Liam’s anger is a terrible, tangible thing. He quivers with it. His eyes burn and bulge under the pressure of it. But just because he’s offended doesn’t mean they’re wrong. In fact, I think they’re hitting pretty close to home.
Before Liam can lash out, we feel the Slip in the air. Just to my left, Alex is shimmering like diamond dust. Like a shooting star coming in to land by the window. Campbell and Beck are there with her. It’s not until they land that I see that they’re holding her up.
When the Slip is done, she sags in Beck’s small arms. He quickly carries her to the couch near the fireplace. I stumble behind him, collapsing down on the floor next to her when he lays her down gently.
I reach up to pat his arm with a limp hand. “Thanks, man.”
“Anytime,” he replies, looking down at Alex for a second longer, assuring himself she’s alright.
She looks drained, pale, but alive. Alert. Her eyes are clear, her chest rising and falling in a smooth, steady rhythm. I’m surprised when she smiles over at me. “I got them out.”
“The other girls?”
She nods faintly, blinking long and hard. “I went back and found the kitchen. I found both of them. They’re with the other girls at the U.S. Embassy in Morocco right now. I just dropped them in the street and disappeared.”
“They’ll be fine. They’ll find help there.”
“I hope so.”
I grin, taking her hand. It’s cold as ice. “You did everything you could for them. You’re amazing.”
“No. You’re amazing.”
“No. You are.”
“You are.”
“You.”
She smiles wider. “You.”
“Guys,” Justin whispers apprehensively.
I look over my shoulder at him, the movement painful. I’m tapped. Done for. After the effort of helping Alex Slip Naomi and all her crazy, I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to walk upstairs to go to bed. I might fall asleep right here on this couch next to Alex. But not just yet.
The warmly lit room behind me is dimming. Falling under a black fog that creeps in from every corner. Every shadow elongating, growing, and reaching forward. Reaching for Naomi.
“What is she doing?” Britta demands, backing away from Naomi’s body on the floor. She runs right into one of the shadows. It wraps around her ankle, latching onto her. Making her scream.
Beck is at her side immediately, pulling her away from it. Still it clings to her. Follows her. The other dark tendrils dart like snakes toward the rest of the group, snapping at everyone in the room. Anyone in their path to Naomi.
“Liam!” I shout accusingly.
He shakes his head, watching his sister closely. “I don’t know how she’s doing it.”
“At least you’ll admit she’s doing it.”
“Get her out of here!” Alex demands. She tries to sit up, but her arms shake violently under her weight, dropping her back down onto the couch. “Slip her back to the bunker!”
Liam takes hold of Naomi’s hand. He hovers over her, closing his eyes and focusing hard. Probably too hard. He handles his Slipping through meditation, through staying calm and centered, but that’s hard to do when phantoms are crawling across the floor toward you.
Finally, he shakes his head. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can! She’ll be safe there!”
“No, Alex, I mean I can’t!” he exclaims, turning to look back at us with panic in his eyes. “She won’t let me.”
I rise to my knees, putting myself in front of Alex. “What do you mean, she won’t let you?”
“She’s blocking me somehow.” He glances out the window to the darkness outside. The night that has every right to be there. But is that what’s outside the window? Is it the night? Or is it the nothing? The void?
“She’s trapped us inside,” I mutter in amazement. And horror. A whole lot of horror.
“What’s happening?” Trina asks, already crying. She’s pulling in closer to Naomi, trying desperately to avoid the shadows that chase her. That close in on everyone.
Upstairs, a window smashes in, glass clattering to the ground. The ceiling creaks and groans angrily overhead.
“She’s finishing what she started at the base!” Alex nearly screams, her voice cracking with fatigue and fear. “She’s tearing the house down! It’s disappearing into the void!”
“What does that mean?” Brody insists, sidestepping a shadow that’s reaching for him.
“It means she’s going to turn us into nothing.”
The window in the library cracks as the shelf on the wall next to it topples forward. Books spill onto the floor with a thunderous bang! that shakes through the whole house. If anyone had been under it, they’d be dead by now.
“If we live long enough to become nothing,” I mutter darkly.
The upstairs collapses in on the ceiling above us. I fall on top of Alex to protect her any way I can as dust and debris crumbles around us. The ceiling is holding, for now, but the pressure Naomi is putting on it is too much. The house can’t take it for much longer, meaning neither can we.
“Naomi, stop,” Alex weeps, clinging to me desperately. “Please!”
She should save her breath, her strength, because Naomi can’t hear her. Or if she does, she doesn’t care. I wonder if she ever did. I wonder if there was ever anything in her that was salvageable or did we all see her sweet exterior, hear her sad story, and hope that there was something to save? Did we want her to be worth it so we promised ourselves it was possible, while time and again she tried to tell us we were wrong?
I don’t know how many warning signs we missed. How many red flags went up that should have been the last one, the final straw that sent us running from her, but it doesn’t matter now. This is where we’re at. This is the end.
With an ear splitting boom, a beam drops from the ceiling. It comes down just above Justin and Trina. A piece of it breaks off, battering against my skull, sending stars across my eyes. Trina is crushed instantly. Dead. Justin’s neck snaps as he’s tossed to the side by the force, his body falling limply on the floor inside the swirl of snakes slithering toward Naomi.
“No!” Britta cries brokenly.
The ceiling cracks and pops above us, the sound of its bones breaking the same way Justin’s did; violently. The walls are closing in. Glass shatters, bricks break, wood splinters and cries out as it crushes in too tightly. As the floor trembles under my knees. As the house closes in on itself, pulling us into the center of a collapsing star. A hungry black hole.
And there’s no way out.
My head swims violently, making me sick. I definitely have a concussion. I can’t think straight, see straight. I pull my gun, but I’m wary of where to point it. There are too many people between me and Naomi, too much chaos to get them cleared. No one will leave her side because to step two feet away from her is to step into the sea of black swimming toward her. It’s creeping toward Alex and I even now. Slithering up the sides of the couch. Crawling toward my feet.
I can’t shoot Naomi from here, but I have other ways to end this.
She ris
es slowly as I reach in my pocket for the stones inside. Her eyes are still closed, her body lifting not with the strength of her muscles but with her mind. She’s floating in the center of the room, two feet off the ground with her hair flying around her peaceful, angelic looking face. But she’s a devil. A dark thing inside a shiny wrapper. A time bomb we sat on for too many months. And unless I can stop her, she’s about to go off. She’s about to kill us all.
I wrap my hand around the stone tightly. I have to make this count. This is our last hope. Our only chance at survival. I don’t feel fear, but I understand pressure, and the weight of it on my shoulders in this moment is crushing. Heavier than any burden I’ve ever carried before, even as a PJ.
I mold the stone in my hand, warming it as quickly as I can with what energy I have left. I won’t get a second chance at this. Alex and I are already on empty. Everything is a Hail Mary at this point.
When it feels right, I lift my hand into the air, ready to throw the stone at Naomi’s feet. My palm sweats against its smooth surface, my mind talking to it. Encouraging it. Guiding it to its target where I need it to detonate like a grenade that will end the madness without killing everyone else along with it. I only hope I have that kind of precision right now.
I toss the stone with all the physical strength I have left. I guide it with all the mental strength I ever had, and I point it right at Naomi. It falls at her feet. It skitters across the ground. It goes dead in my mind, the energy from it drained instantly. My connection severed. It’s nothing but a stone now, and that’s all it’s ever going to be.
“Nick,” Alex breathes brokenly.
She knows. The rest of them are panicking, screaming, but Alex is quiet because she knows it’s over. She knows we were the last hope but we’re nothing now. Naomi took everything we had in that last Slip. We’re totally and completely powerless.
We’re dead.
I turn to her, my face a mask of sorrow. Sorry that I failed her. This beautiful, wonderful woman who made my world worth living in, and I’ve let her die.
“I’m so sorry, Alex,” I whisper.
The ceiling gives way. I fall over Alex again, her arms going around me. Holding me as I cover her, my mind racing with the need to find an escape. To free her from this. But there’s nothing. I could pull the gun in my hand and fire every shot I’ve got but I’ll hit the others before I hit Naomi. And she’ll see it coming. She’ll put down the bullets the way she put down my stone; like they’re nothing because in the void, she is everything. She’s stronger than we are. She’ll pull us in with her and we’ll be hers. Forever.
I reach into my pocket for the other stone. Not the unused one. The black one. The bird. The piece of Alex and I that started this all. I pull it from my pocket where I had the jeweler set it on top of a silver ring, and I reach for Alex’s left hand. Cringing against the screams behind me, against the world collapsing down on top of us, I slide the ring onto her finger, leaning down to kiss it gently.
When I look at her, she’s crying. Openly weeping, but she’s looking at me with love. So much love it brings tears to my own eyes, and when I kiss her lips, I taste her feelings. They’re sweet and warm. They’re decadent. Delicious. The perfect last meal for a man about to die, and I think to myself that at least I had this moment. At least for one second she was mine.
“I love you, Alex,” I whisper against her mouth, hovering over her, my forehead pressed to hers. I fill her eyes with me and nothing else. Blotting out the terror surrounding us, giving her the last gift I can; peace. “Always.”
“Always,” she whispers shakily, her voice choked. She’s hyperventilating. Panicking as the fear and inevitability take her.
“Breathe,” I murmur, remembering her words the day she saved me. It feels like a million years ago. It feels like yesterday. It feels like today.
She takes a slow, shuddering breath.
The house trembles above us.
The void closes in on us.
A shot fires behind us.
I wrench myself away from Alex, turning to look behind me at Naomi, but she’s gone. Standing in her place is Campbell. His face is blank. His gun is in his hand. His shirt is splattered in red.
Naomi lies dead at his feet.
EPILOGUE
MAX
Eight Months Later
Luke Skywalker was a moisture farmer before he found The Force. Or before it found him. It all depends on your perspective, I guess. But he harvested moisture on an arid planet that could have used a good flood or two. That place was just praying for something Biblical to happen on the daily, but it never did. The suns rose, they set, and every day Luke woke up and harvested moisture, dreaming of something different. Something bigger. Something better. Eventually he got it, probably more than he bargained for, and I used to be envious of that, but lately I wonder what his life would have been like if he’d stayed on Tatooine. He’d have kept his hand for sure. He wouldn’t have kissed his sister. He wouldn’t have watched his dad die in his arms. Sure, the Dark Side would have taken over the galaxy, but Luke’s life on that craphole planet probably wouldn’t have changed that much. And he would have been miserable. He would have died a sad, embittered old man wishing he’d been more. Wishing he’d seen the stars up close. Just once.
There are days where I feel Luke. Days where I know I had to leave Tatooine. I had to see the world, the stars, for myself. But there are also days where I feel like Icarus. I feel like I flew too close to the sun and I was burned. Badly. There are days where the sight of flaxen hair blossoming red sits heavy on the inside of my eyes, tainting my vision. My heart. My soul. Those are the days I have trouble focusing. Trouble sleeping. Jonnie sees it. She knows what’s wrong, but she never asks because she knows I don’t want to tell. I just want to feel normal. I want to feel like me, but I don’t. Still, she stands by me while I try to find my way back, and that’s worth more than words to me. It’s worth more than anything.
“This thing is worthless,” she growls, yanking at the handle on the coffee pot. It comes loose in her hand, leaving the pot of cold, black liquid behind. She stares at it in annoyed amazement, looking like she wants to throw it. I kind of hope she does. I like it when she gets feisty. That usually ends well for me.
“Easy on the goods, Hulk hands,” I joke from the bar behind her. “We aren’t due to go back to town until next week.”
She drops the handle on the counter with a loud, dismissive clatter. “I’ll bring up the Keurig from the bunker.”
“But then what will we use when we’re living down there during the apocalypse?”
“Are you expecting the apocalypse in the next seven days?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out.”
She smiles, coming around the bar to kiss me quickly. “I’ll risk it.”
She goes to leave the room, but I wrap my arm around her waist, holding her back. Holding her to me. Her smile widens, her eyes finding mine as her hands come to rest on my shoulders.
“Hey,” I tell her quietly.
“Hey.”
“You look pretty today.”
She blushes. “Thanks. So do you.”
“New moisturizer.”
“It shows,” she chuckles. “You’re glowing.”
“Just trying to look good for you.”
“You’re doing a great job.”
“Really? I feel fat.”
“You look hot.”
I slip my hand down her waist to her butt. “You feel hot. Are you feverish? Should I take your temperature?”
“No.”
“It’s okay. You can trust me. I’m a doctor.”
Jonnie laughs, pulling out of my hold gently. “You’re an EMT, not a doctor, and for the last time, you don’t read a person’s temperature on their butt.”
“I do. It’s my superpower. I can read your temperature through your boobs if that’d make you more comfortable.”
“It wouldn’t.”
“You never know until you
try.”
“We did try. It was fun but it didn’t make my cold any better.”
“Your cold didn’t get better because you refused to fill my prescription for Vitamin D,” I complain. “I swear, you do not take my medical advice seriously.”
Jonnie smiles enduringly, kissing me one last time before darting away toward the door. “Get dressed, Dr. Campbell,” she calls over her shoulder. “We have company today.”
I roll my eyes, lifting my mug of cold coffee to my lips. I don’t want to drink it, but I do. I don’t feel frustrated by having visitors today, but I act like I am. It makes me feel more solid. More me in the times when I wonder who I am. When I wonder what I am. When I worry who I’m going to be.
Killing Naomi took its toll. I never thought I’d be the kind of guy who’d suffer from PTSD, but the night I put a bullet in the back of Naomi’s skull, something clicked out of place inside me. Or maybe it slipped into place. I don’t know the mechanics, I just know that it sucks. That it hurts. I know I feel scared and worried when I never felt that way before. I’ve tried to move past it, tried to outpace it, but it always finds me.
My family noticed it when they came to visit last month. My mom and dad flew out to New Zealand to meet Jonnie, the first girl they ever heard me put a name to. My Aunt Jenna and her husband made the trip with them. That helped me feel normal, seeing her. And when she told me I needed to get therapy for whatever was hurting me, that therapy had saved her husband’s life years ago, that it had gotten them through her fight with cancer, I nearly broke down and cried. I also promised her I’d talk to someone. I haven’t yet, but I will. I always keep my word to Aunt Jenna.
My dad loved Jonnie immediately. She’s his kind of person; smart, kind, hard working. My mom loved her because I admitted that I do; another first. The whole family was blown away by her and the ranch, especially the fact that we’re taking care of it all by ourselves. When my mom heard I shoveled manure, she almost fainted.
They stayed a week, and when they left, I was happy and sad to see them go. I like my solitude out here with Jonnie. I feel good here. Solid. I’m in no way ready to go back to California and my old life. I probably never will be, so the fact that Jonnie puts up with me out here is pretty lucky. The fact that she loves me is a miracle. But as much as I feel like shying away from my old life, I also liked having my family see me like this. I wanted them to see me in love. To see me trying with someone. Taking care of someone other than myself. I’m proud of me and the way I love Jonnie, and maybe it’s immature, but I want them to see that. I want them to be proud of me too.
