“No,” Becca snapped back. “This is all your fault. If you had let her die, then none of this would have happened.”
“Watch your language,” Carol said.
“Oh, boo-hoo, Mom,” Becca said. “Unless you forgot that you wanted to die and, in fact, actually begged me to kill you in case things got too bad.”
“What?” her father said, looking at his wife.
“That was a long time ago, honey,” her mother said, with the stern voice of someone who is clearly angry but wants to keep it contained within themselves.
“But still true,” Becca said. “God, if you could only have let her die, and then none of this would have happened. We wouldn’t have to be afraid of Matt, I wouldn’t have had to kill Nigel, and no one would be dying.”
She got up from the table and walked out of the room. Her parents called after her, but she didn’t pay them any mind. Instead, she walked up the stairs to her room and slammed the door behind her.
They could be damned to hell for all she cared. Matt might be angry, but he wouldn’t really try to kill her, would he?
She sat down on her bed and put her head in her hands. It wasn’t fair, none of it was fair. Nothing in her life had been fair, so why should she have dared to expect anything different?
Matt’s face kept rolling around in her head. The boy who had looked at her that morning had been her brother, at least, the majority of him had the same qualities as her brother. He looked the same, had the same NaU, and spoke with the same voice.
But there had been a change in him. The way he had looked down at her and her father that day spoke not of forgiveness and understanding.
He has his father’s eyes, Becca thought, remembering how those two orbs seemed less like inquisitive lens into the boy’s mind and more like those of a demon or a vulture, kneeling down and looking down upon its prey.
If he figured out what his sister could do, her father had said, he might become desperate.
The chances of coming up with a cure were slim to none. The scientists up in Toronto were pretty smart, but Robbie had been pretty smart when he dragged everyone into this mess, so perhaps intelligence wasn’t everything. It might have been what put them into this disaster in the first place.
No, Becca thought, looking up from her bed.
Intelligence wasn’t to blame; it wasn’t anything related to how smart people were. All of this stemmed back to one thing and one thing only.
Love.
As much as she liked to paint her father as this ghoulish doctor, doing terrible experiments for self-gain, that wasn’t who Robbie McCarthy was. His methods were coarse, and his results not always the best. But he never set out to hurt anyone. He was trying to stop the woman he loved from dying and stopping his own decay as well. What could be more human and loving than protecting others?
Killing for others, she thought, remembering how easily the pencil had gone through Nigel’s neck. That too had been love, an odd sort of love, an overbearing kind, but love all the same. It was the same sort of love that Matt must’ve had for his father—why else would he have acted in such a way only hours earlier?
Becca stood up from her bed and looked around her room. It was a nice room, all things considered, and she was going to miss it. Sure, they might make it back from the trip to Toronto, but maybe not. Either way, it was good to be prepared for these sorts of things. Neither one of her parents ever came to knock on her door, but she felt their presence, their unease. She took out a suitcase and started to fold her clothes.
When her parents saw the suitcase in her hand as she walked down the stairs, they got the message. Robbie walked into the other room to make a call. No one called Matt, or any of the other’s infected with the NaU. They were being left to die, but perhaps not. If Becca could come up with a cure, whatever slim chance that there could be, then maybe she’d see them all again.
But another voice, this one wearing and acting the persona of “reality,” told her a different story, one that didn’t comfort her heart but made sure to comfort her mind. Her mother wrote a note on a piece of paper and left it on the table. She reassured her husband that it didn’t tell Matt any of the details of where they were going. That should have calmed them down, but it didn’t. Matt and his gang would find them, and once they realized that they had been left for dead, then they wouldn’t be too happy to see them, not at all. All three of them brought their things to the car and headed out.
Becca watched the house disappear as they drove down the road. It looked peaceful, being empty, alone amongst the snow-covered branches and trees.
Goodbye, she thought, knowing full well she was saying goodbye to more than a house.
She turned back and took out a book. Her parents would expect her to read, to calm their minds, and let them know that everything, while not completely normal, was still at least in the same ballpark as normal, that they hadn’t left four high school kids to potentially die because of their mistakes and shortcomings.
The book was interesting, but Becca found she couldn’t read any of it.
She didn’t think anyone could, given the circumstances.
Chapter Twelve
Peter could tell that Danni was angry, even before he pulled over and walked into the cornfield.
The snow was starting to fall. Peter liked the snow. He liked the way it felt when it landed his body, the way it melted off. He also liked being able to walk in the snow without fear of getting
