But three miles away from that, at the McCarthy house, Nigel arrived.
He got out of his car and walked right up to the house. Becca was in her room, reading a book and trying not to think about her parents’ upcoming deaths. They might not, since her father had come up with a temporary cure. If one concentrated the use of a CAT scan machine, over the period of a few hours, then the NaU could be brought to one part of the body, and then it became dormant. It was still killing them, but at a slower pace. They were still dying, but slower, and now they couldn’t use their powers anymore. Robbie was thinking of trying to use this method on Matt and his friends before the rot got too bad. Kent had already lost both of his legs. He was up at the Argyle lab. As far as his mother was concerned, he was helping out at the lab these last couple of days.
The boy was poised to lose his arms by the end of the week.
Becca heard the front door slam open. She put down her book and exited her room.
“Hello, Robbie.”
“Nigel, I don’t have time—” A pause. The house was as silent as most houses are in upstate New York when it snows outside. “What happened to you?”
“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know? Or rather, you already do,” Nigel laughed then, his laugh seeped and greased the air with the sound of hysteria and desperation.
“You did this to me,” he said. Becca heard the sound of Nigel activating his NaU. The house smelled like ozone.
“What about you two?” Nigel said. “You seem pretty healthy. I thought all of us were dying, Robbie.”
“We are,” Carol said. “We found a way to minimize the damage for a bit.”
“I’m guessing you were going to tell others about this cure,” Nigel said. “Weren’t you?”
“It isn’t a cure,” Robbie said. “It’s only a way of slowing down the illness. We’re dying the same as you.”
“Oh, I very much doubt that.”
Becca started to walk down the stairs. All she had for possible defense was a pencil that she kept hidden underneath her sleeve.
Nigel looked different.
He looked like he hadn’t showered in a week, and the clothes he was wearing hadn’t been washed in an even longer time. But that wasn’t what attracted Becca’s eyes.
The man had a rash.
This wasn’t the typical type of rash that people got when they were allergic to cats or dogs, and one of those cute little human companions comes up and licks them, nor was this the sort of rash one might get when they eat something that they are allergic to. No, this was something else, something more severe.
Half of the man’s face had sunken in.
The skin was red and spotted. Becca thought she could see bone underneath it. His left eye was deflated, peeking out of the eyelids, now looking more closely attuned to a curtain then a part of the human anatomy. Through it all, were white veins as well, stretching all along his face and arms. Part of his mouth seemed to be missing, causing Becca to see the man’s teeth even when he wasn’t talking. A small amount of drool was seeping out of that mouth and slowly dripped down onto his shirt.
The man didn’t seem to notice her, his back being to her, or at least, part of his back. If he could still see out of his deflated eye, then perhaps he could have seen her. But as it were, the man remained ignorant of the thirteen-year-old girl with a pencil behind him.
Neither one of her parents made any move to signal her, even though they could both see her and him.
“Where’s my son?” Nigel said.
“Our son is—” Carol said.
“No, no,” Nigel said. “None of this ‘our.’ In all of the years we were together, you were looking for the first attempt to jump ship. You hated Matt for not being good enough, and you hated me, didn’t you, you bitch? Harboring your resentment so that the first chance you got, the first time a college boy swooped down into town, you pounced on the opportunity to get rid of Matt and me. I was the one who helped him use the bathroom. I was the one who washed his clothes. Sure, I wasn’t able to give you the strong, healthy boy you wanted, but Matt is still important—to me at least. I made him stronger with that belt, made sure he knew that he could overcome any pain, any obstacle. I’m not convinced that you and I aren’t in the same boat of that accord.”
“I was trying to—” her father said.
“Oh shut up, Robbie,” Nigel said. “You weren’t trying to do anything for my son or my ex-wife. You were trying to come up with a cure to your own illness so that the only thing you and Michael J. Fox had in common was hair color and bad acting. You were sick, and you couldn’t handle it, so you used Carol as a test to see what would happen, and lo and behold.”
Giant blades shot out of Nigel’s arms. They were almost a yardstick in length.
“This is what happened,” he brought one of the blades close to his face, the light illuminating his scarred face. “But this happened as well.” He was showing off his scarring. “No one has seen Kent in a while. Whatever happened to that boy, or is he in your basement or cellar, slowly rotting away with the nanites that you put inside of him?”
“We’re doing what’s best for him,” her father said.
“What’s best for him?” Nigel threw his head back in laughter, spit spraying out of his mouth. “The
