Her hair was gone. If not for the photos around them, Jolie wouldn’t have been able to remember what exactly her hair had looked like.
Instead, scars railroad crossed around the top of her head to down the back of her neck. Her eyes had a glazed-over look, staring ahead at the TV, which was muted. It looked like a rerun of a sitcom from the nineties or perhaps even older. A small puddle of drool was dripping from the corner of her mouth.
Every time that Jolie came over, she tried to talk to Carol at least once or twice. If her mind really was mush, then there couldn’t be any harm in talking to her. She wouldn’t remember or even understand any of it and would forget it the second that Jolie was out the back door.
But if her mind wasn’t gone, then perhaps Jolie’s words can provide the woman some comfort.
“Hey, Mrs. McCarthy,” she said. “I brought Matt to the fair tonight. We had a good time, me and him, and our two friends, Danni and Peter. Matt won me a stuffed lizard, and I won him one as well. He had a fun time and really enjoyed himself.”
Jolie didn’t know what more to say. She couldn’t comment that Carol’s son had vomited up blood, which had seeped through Jolie’s shirt to her bra. Something told her that while Carol might not find that all that interesting, the two men in the room would.
There was another topic to talk about. Jolie almost didn’t want to bring it up. She wouldn’t have to deal with the major repercussions of it until much later, close to the nine-month range.
But Carol might not live to see that. If the woman was in there, then she deserved to know before she died.
Jolie leaned over and got close to the woman’s ear.
“I’m pregnant,” she said quietly. “Matt’s the father. I haven’t told him yet but plan to. I hope you’ll get to see the baby sometime. It was an accident, of course, but I hope something good can come from it.” She leaned away from the woman’s ear. The men in the room were still yelling at one another. Who knew how Nigel would take that type of news.
Jolie was about to say something else, perhaps goodbye, or another message about the woman’s son, when Carol’s head turned.
Both of the men behind Jolie stopped talking.
She looked directly into Jolie’s eyes. There was something there, some deep semblance of consciousness that was disoriented by the woman’s glazed-over eyes. Her throat moved up and down.
Rasping noises that were the closest thing to speaking for the woman came out of her throat.
The noises, quiet as they were, seemed to speak volumes in the empty house. Matt should have been there, not off in his room sulking. How could he miss the moment when Carol McCarthy had a sentient thought?
Foam poured from her mouth.
Whatever semblance of conciseness that had been floating in the back of her eyes disappeared, her eyes rolled into the back of her head.
She fell to the back of the chair, her body shaking as though it were hooked up to electrical cables.
“Carol!” Robbie said, moving past Jolie. He was trying to get her to stop. He had a flashlight up to her eyes.
“Someone call 9-1-1,” Nigel said.
Yes, nine one one, that would be right, that’s what people did when there was a medical emergency. Why the hell was Jolie sitting there doing nothing? She should be helping, this was Carol for God’s sake, and she had to do everything in her power to—
“No.”
Robbie was no longer looking down at Carol. Instead, he seemed more interested in the wall behind her and was deep in thought.
Before Jolie or Nigel said anything, Robbie was running across the room. He went up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Jolie looked Carol over.
The machines around her said she had a pulse, but a weak one at that. Why would Robbie not want them to call the ambulance? Jolie was running circles around that thought in her head, when Robbie was bounding back down the steps again.
“Robbie,” Nigel said, “We have to call a—”
Nigel’s words stopped when Robbie’s fist dug itself deep into the left side of his face.
The man fell over and leaned up against the wall.
“No time, no time . . . better than nothing,” Robbie muttered under his breath.
In his hand was a syringe.
Before Jolie asked him what he was doing, he pressed the syringe into Carol’s heart.
And nothing happened.
“Jesus, man, what are you doing?” Nigel yelled.
“I had to try,” Robbie said.
“You’re gonna kill her,” Nigel said.
“She was already dead,” Robbie said.
The front door opened, and people rushed into the house. Jolie heard Matt’s door open, and the subtle slow crawl of his wheelchair over the wooden planks of the hallway.
The hair on the back of Jolie’s neck rose.
All of the air in the house went still.
A bright light started to run around the underside of Carol’s skin. Her eyes and mouth opened, showing only pure light, as though heaven itself was crawling out of her face. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees in an instant.
Everyone was quiet, everyone watching.
And then the lights swallowed everything, and they would not wake for some time to come.
Chapter Ten
I’m not sure what the future holds. The NaUs have started to come back. All of the people I’ve infected . . . I don’t know how to feel about that. I suppose I don’t have time to feel bad about it, though. I’m not God, but I’m pretty damn close.
Though I doubt God has to worry about having a conscience.
-Robbie’s Journal
“It would have been easier if you didn’t meet them,” Rebecca said.
Walter looked up from the ground. He had walked along this cement path to the rest stop many times before, ranging close to a thousand at this point. However, not one of those other times had he felt such a heavy weight on his shoulders.
“What would have
