The Night Will Find Us

by Matthew Lyons

  “That’s not true,” Nicky protested. “That’s a lie.”

  Nate ignored her, remaining focused on Parker. “You’ve been acting like a big baby this whole year, man. You used to be cool. At least you weren’t such a moody pussy all the time. But you know, I just can’t do it anymore, okay? I’m sick to death of walking on eggshells around you all the time, like you’re going to fly off the deep end and take all of us with you, just because your dad blew town or finally did himself in or whatever the fuck. I’m done with your moody orphan bullshit. Go kill yourself.”

  None of them saw Parker pull the gun. One second it wasn’t there, and the next second it just was, as if Parker had plucked it out of thin air to point at Nate’s head like a black metal curse, all lethal curves and angles. The muzzle was so close to Nate’s lips that he could have kissed it if he wanted to. Wouldn’t have even needed to lean forward. That mean grin, though—it hung on Nate’s face like it was stapled into his flesh. Like there was nothing in the known universe that could wipe it off, not even when he was looking down the barrel of his own annihilation. Behind the gun, Parker’s eyes had gone blank and still.

  Adam gasped. “Parker, what the fuck!”

  But Nate laughed—he actually laughed when Adam said it.

  “Jesus Christ, chill out, Jarvis. We both know he’s not going to shoot me.”

  “Shut up, Nathan. Just shut. Your. Mouth.” Nicky’s voice was drawn tight as a drum, nearly exploding with nerves.

  “Oh, whatever,” Nate snarled back. “None of you want to call him on his shit, that’s fine by me. I’ll say it—I don’t give a fuck anymore. Enough is enough. Ooh, scary, you’re a big man with your gun, right? What a joke.” He took another half-step forward and jabbed a finger into Parker’s chest. “You’re not gonna do shit, because you’re a fuckin’ loser, just like your fuckin’ loser dad—”

  The gun made a sound that slapped them all in the lungs and startled a wave of birds from the trees above as a red curtain blew out from the back of Nate’s head. Everything around them froze in place.

  For one long, horrible second, Nate stayed standing, trapped in time, his face twisted into something Chloe could nearly call a smile. You could almost look at him and think everything was okay, like there wasn’t a black, finger-thick hole poked in the middle of his forehead. The gun bucked in Parker’s hand, but he kept it outstretched, the muzzle still even with Nate’s face.

  The silence of it was terrible. It was as if Parker had cut the valve and cinched off every sound in the woods—the birds, the wind, everything—leaving only a great sucking emptiness behind. Chloe watched as Nate’s thick throat bobbed and worked against itself, wrenching a panicked, meaty noise from his lips.

  “Gkkk … guk … gggggkkk …”

  Nobody said anything. None of them even breathed, stuck in that moment just half a second too late to take it back or make it better. Better was little more than a myth now. A legend. A ghost story. Nothing was ever going to be better ever again.

  Nate tilted backward and toppled to the ground like a felled tree. Nicky screamed and buried her face in Josh’s chest. Chloe was frozen in place, unable to move, finding it impossible to process the horrible thing she’d just witnessed. Beside her, Adam stepped forward, hands out, moving slowly toward the big kid and the revolver in his hand.

  “Park, don’t—”

  Parker turned and ran into the trees.

  3

  Chloe had never seen a dead body before, not really. She’d seen them on TV, in documentaries and articles on the internet, sure. But never up close, never like this. She’d never even been to a real funeral. The grown-ups in their family had kept her and Parker away from their grandpa’s service three years ago, telling them that it would be too much for them, no matter how many times the two of them had insisted otherwise. After a while, she’d figured out that when her mom said that, what she really meant was that it would be too much for the grown-ups, not for Chloe and Parker, and Chloe had spent years hating her for it. They—she and Parker both—felt like they’d been robbed of something, somehow. An essential part of growing up, of becoming a whole person.

  It all seemed so goddamn unfair at the time. But now that she was here, staring at a bright, bloody mess spilling out of a body that wasn’t even cold yet, all she wanted was to go back to a time before she knew what this felt like.

  In the middle of the clearing, Nate bled into the earth from both sides of his skull, leaking red into the soil and dead leaves, his eyes rolled so far back into their sockets that all Chloe could see were the wet, gummy whites.

  She screamed. And then she kept on screaming. Standing there, watching her friend die, she couldn’t stop the sound from pouring out of her.

  It was Josh who moved first.

  Jumping to his feet, he broke away from Nicky and crossed over to Nate in four long, quick strides, dropping to his knees in a cloud of dirt and dust. Chloe watched as Josh felt at Nate’s soft, bloody neck with two fingers, searching for a pulse. Searching for anything that could take it back.

  “Nate? Hey, Nate, can you hear me? Listen, I need you to blink if you can hear me, man. Just give me something here. Anything.” His voice was strong and sure, nothing like the Josh they’d come to know up until now.

  Over by the tent, Nicky started to cry, collapsing to the ground as the sobs ripped their way out of her in giant, wracking heaves. Chloe had never heard Nicky cry like that before; if anybody had asked her an hour ago, she would have told them that it simply wasn’t possible. On numb legs, she went to Nicky and wrapped her arms around her, holding her as tight as her thin arms could manage until the worst of Nicky’s sobbing had abated.

  When she was sure Nicky wasn’t going to start crying again, Chloe stood and went over to Josh, helping him off the ground. He gave a little shake of his head, then went over to hold his girlfriend. Chloe’s eyes drifted back to Nate’s body and the horror show above his shoulders, feeling a sort of cold obligation take her over from the inside. Nate was an asshole, but he deserved better than this. They didn’t have to leave him sprawled out like that, all bent, twisted angles.

  “Adam, can you help me straighten him out at least?”

  Adam didn’t respond. Chloe looked around, but Adam wasn’t there anymore.

  Inside her head, the pieces clicked together.

  Of course he had. Probably didn’t even think twice about it.

  Adam had followed Parker into the forest.

  “Parker, wait up, man!”

  Adam’s voice rang out from behind him, but Parker ignored it, barreling through the scrubby underbrush, away from the blood and the looks on his friends’ faces and all the noise inside his head. The gun was still in his hand, his dad’s Smith & Wesson 586, the one he had taught Parker to shoot with once he was old enough to learn on pistols. Black with a worn-smooth walnut grip, it seemed so much smaller now that he was older. Back when he was a kid, he remembered thinking it was the same kind of gun old ships used to sink other ships. It sure made a noise like it was.

  “Parker, stop, please!”

  Louder now. Adam was getting closer. The panic and the rage and the hateful emptiness still raked at Parker’s ribs, white-hot claws bleeding him from the inside. He wanted to scream, to drop to the ground and cry, to put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

  He did none of it. He kept running.

  Up ahead, he could see a grove. Charging toward it, Parker wiped at his burning eyes with the backs of his hands. He wasn’t going to stop, not when he was so close. He was going to stick to the plan.

  Just behind him, there was a crashing of branches, and Parker knew that Adam was nearly on top of him. Fucking Adam. He couldn’t ever just leave shit alone, could he? He always had to be Captain America.

  “Parker, please—”

  Parker whirled around, gun out, finger on the trigger, muzzle trained on Adam’s face. His friend looked panicked, and angry, and scared. Out of control was a bad
look on Adam.

  “Leave. Me. Alone,” Park said, punctuating each syllable with a small thrust of the gun.

  Adam shook his head. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “You have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have a gun,” Parker snarled, “and you don’t.”

  Adam’s face was gray and drawn. “Nate’s dead, man.”

  A lump of bile formed in Parker’s throat, and he swallowed it back. “I figured.”

  “What, then? You wanted him dead? You wanted to kill him?”

  “I wanted him to shut up,” said Parker.

  “You don’t get to shoot someone just because they’re being an asshole.”

  In his heart, Parker knew that Adam was right. But Adam being right hadn’t been enough to stop Nate from scraping at him. Being right couldn’t put Nate’s brains back inside his skull, the breath back in his lungs. Adam could be right all he wanted. It was still too little, too late.

  “Come back with me,” Adam said. “We can still set this right.”

  “You know that’s bullshit,” said Parker.

  Underneath his gray tee, Adam flexed his muscular shoulders. At his sides, his hands knotted themselves into tight, bone-white fists.

  “Don’t make me make you,” he said.

  “You can’t make me do anything, Adam. You never could.”

  But Adam wasn’t listening. He was already moving, barreling toward him at what seemed to Parker like Mach 5 speed. Adam crashed into him, hard, and Parker went off balance, twisting against the impact as both of them spilled to the ground.

  Together, they scrabbled for the pistol—Parker trying to keep it away from Adam, Adam trying to wrench it free from Parker’s big hand as he peppered his ribs with sharp little rabbit punches. It felt like someone was setting off little flares in his belly every time Adam landed a blow, but Parker held on to the gun.

  Using little more than brute strength, Parker forced his best friend off the top of him, throwing Adam back so he could struggle to his feet. But Adam was already rushing him again. God, he was so fast. Adam hit him like a speeding car, leaping into the air to spear his shoulder into Parker’s chest. They both went tumbling back to the ground once more, a tangle of limbs and muscle. Adam locked both hands around one of Parker’s knees to try and drag himself up on top again, but the angle was bad, and Parker saw him coming. Sitting up quickly, he swept the pistol down into the side of Adam’s mouth, sending the smaller boy tumbling away with a yelp, clutching at his mouth, rivulets of red already leaking between his fingers.

  Unsteadily, Parker got to his feet once more, stepping back, creating distance between the two of them. He wiped the blood off the side of the revolver and raised it to point square at Adam’s heart.

  “Cheap shot,” Adam groaned as he stood, swaying unsteadily.

  “I told you.” Parker thumbed the safety off the pistol. “I told you to go away.”

  “Come on, you know I can’t do that.”

  Behind the black gaze of the gun, Parker rose to his full height, towering half a foot over the crown of Adam’s head, rolling his own broad shoulders, spreading them out like vulture’s wings.

  “No?”

  Adam wiped a trickle of blood from his lips. “You can’t just walk away from this. That’s not something you get to skate on. I can’t let you. I won’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” Parker said, hating himself for begging. “All you have to do is turn around and go home. Please.”

  “I’m not going to do that. I’m not ever going to do that. I’m your friend.”

  “So it wasn’t true, what Nate said? All that mean shit about you guys being sick of dealing with me, that was just Nate being Nate?”

  Adam’s mouth dropped open an inch, like he was searching for the right words. “I mean, what do you want me to say, man?”

  “Say that he was wrong. Say that he was just being an asshole because he liked to hurt people.”

  Adam’s eyes darted away for a moment, and Parker could see the shame burning there. In that second, hiding behind the revolver, he knew.

  “Parker …”

  A bitter sting drove itself deep into Parker’s heart. “Never mind. Sorry I asked. I’m going.”

  As he turned, he saw something change inside his friend. It was like all the kindness left in Adam’s body fell away from him in a single, awful rush, leaving only a hard, unfeeling mannequin in its wake. Parker barely recognized him.

  “Just put the gun down already!”

  Adam’s words came out sounding cruel and childish—so unlike the boy that Parker had known since elementary school. He’d always been the kindest of all of them, but it was clear that kindness didn’t apply to Parker anymore.

  Before Parker could react, Adam was racing toward him again.

  On a good day—hell, on any normal day—Adam was fast. Faster than Parker ever had a chance of being, even if he’d spent years training, which he hadn’t. Parker could never move the way that Adam could move. Parker was big, and he was tough, but speed, true speed, the kind that Adam held like a gift from the gods ever since they were little kids—that was something that had always eluded him.

  Adam could sprint a whole mile. He could tackle an obstacle course like he was standing still. He could run a marathon without breaking a sweat. Adam could move like nobody Parker had ever seen.

  Except right now, this wasn’t about fast. This had nothing to do with fast.

  Parker dropped the gun’s barrel by a hair and pulled the trigger. In a burst of bright red, Adam’s knee exploded.

  A scream split the air between them, an unbroken wail of agony almost as loud as the gunshot had been. It filled the forest, that scream. It sliced through Parker’s body and echoed inside his skull. He hadn’t ever heard anyone make a sound like that before; that it came from Adam Jarvis just didn’t compute.

  Adam collapsed to the ground in an instant, hands jumping to his leg, blood spilling out from between his knitted fingers in a messy rush. Parker watched him go down and let the gun hang by his side, momentarily forgotten. Standing still, he watched his friend, curled up in the dirt and yowling like a wounded animal.

  It felt good to watch him twist and writhe like that. It felt good to see someone else hurt.

  Inside Parker’s belly, the rage slowly cooled to a dim glow, while Adam screamed through his teeth and clutched at his mangled knee. His eyes had gone wide and white and full of fury, but it was obvious that Adam wasn’t going to do anything but lie there and bleed. Park could feel tears prickling the backs of his eyeballs again, and when he spoke, the words came out shaky and uneven.

  “I’m sorry. I’m … I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to,” Parker said. “I swear I didn’t. But I told you to leave me alone.”

  Adam twisted his head to look up at him, and for the first time in his whole life, Parker knew what real hate looked like. Not even Nate had looked at him like that. Nate had been a mean shit, but he hadn’t hated Parker—he’d just wanted to hurt him. But Adam? Yeah, he definitely hated Parker now. How could he not? It burned there in his movie-star blue eyes, a pair of red-hot coals fresh from the fire. There was no coming back from this.

  “I’m sorry,” Parker said again, as if it would help anything.

  Then he turned and walked away, leaving Adam to seethe and bleed while he headed deeper into the woods. He had other things to worry about now.

  * * *

  They all spun around to look when they heard the second gunshot roll through the trees in a single sharp POP. It sounded so far away; how had Adam and Park gotten so far already? The first shot had been so huge, like a car crash or something. The sound of it had hung in the air for what had seemed like forever.

  As one, Chloe, Nicky, and Josh all twisted in place and ran in what they thought was the direction of the gunshot, dashing away from the clearing and their tents and their gear and their dead friend, heading straight into the depths of the Pine Barrens.
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  “Adam? ADAM!” Nicky screamed into the empty distance, pumping her legs as Chloe and Josh struggled to keep up. “ADAM, WE’RE COMING!”

  It was Chloe who realized, after a moment, just how stupid they were being.

  “Guys, we need to stop,” she chuffed. “Guys, stop!”

  Skidding along the ground, Chloe whipped her hands out to try and stop her friends from going any farther. Nicky was well out of arm’s reach, but Josh was closer than she’d thought. Pivoting to try and intercept him, Chloe crashed into Josh with a bone-shaking smack. The two of them went tumbling to the forest floor. As she fell, she belted the back of her head against something cold and hard buried in the dirt. A second later, she heard someone approaching.

  At first, she saw double. Nicky loomed over her, hands on her knees, eyes wild. But there was another girl there too—older, dressed in all black, her face slashed with tears as she lurked behind Nicky’s shoulder.

  Who … ?

  Chloe blinked hard enough to see stars, did it over and over until the vision evaporated and it was just the three of them again.

  “Chloe, what the shit?” Nicky panted, her eyes big and wet with tears. “Why would you do that?”

  “We need to stay put,” Chloe said, prying herself off the ground, rubbing at the back of her head with dirt-smeared hands.

  “What!”

  “We have to go back.”

  “No, the hell with that,” Nicky snarled. “Adam is still out there. He could be hurt.”

  “Chloe has a point,” Josh said, rising to his feet. “Parker is out there with a gun, Nicky. He knows how to do this wilderness shit better than we do, and he’s already killed one of us, maybe two. What makes you think any of us stand a chance against those odds?”

  “Don’t say that,” Nicky said. “Don’t you fucking even—”

  “Nicky, listen.” Chloe shook off a fresh surge of panic, forcing a kind of calm into her voice that she truly didn’t feel. “Whatever made Park pull that trigger, are you so sure it won’t make him stick that gun in your face next? Or Josh’s? Or mine? He’s dangerous, and none of us knows where the fuck we’re going. We need to call the cops, and we need to stay put. Anything else puts us in harm’s way.”