“I have a strong suspicion that we do. If her NaU is like the others, then it will latch itself to only one person. In that case, I want that person to be you and the baby.”
Red and blue lights could be seen down the road. Matt kissed her and then took off into the sky, carrying Danni and Peter as he did so. It had started to snow hard, and it didn’t look like it would be stopping anytime soon.
Jolie looked around at Greendale. It was a nice town, all things considered, and she had planned on having her family situated there.
She still could, she tried to tell herself as she took off into the sky. There would be some way for all of this to come out all right. She didn’t see it at the moment, but Matt would see it. He’d fix everything.
****
Jolie fell back into the snow. She felt cold, very cold. Burned meat filled her nostrils. She tried to speak, but blood was coming out of her mouth.
Matt was over her. He was saying something, tears coming down his eyes. She tried to reach out to brush them away, to let him know that whatever it was, everything was going to turn out all right. He’d find a way to make it right. There was still time to get Becca’s NaU. Jolie thought she heard a truck start up, but her head couldn’t move. She felt sleepy, oh, so very sleepy. Maybe it would be all right if she just tried to take a nap for a bit.
Her eyelids closed, and she thought about the future ahead of her. All of this, this episode with the NaUs, it would just feel like a dark cloud in the middle of a pretty spotless life. She had no way of knowing if the rest of her life was going to be better, but she was pretty optimistic.
She started to open her eyes, to get one last look at . . ..
Chapter Seventeen
Nigel’s only redeeming quality was that deep down, I believe the man loved Matt. He just didn’t know how to show it. Who knows how Matt will be as a father. That is, if that ever happens.
I can imagine the only thing that could ever break the boy would be if something happened to Jolie and the child. With the power, the boy wielded, the entire earth might shake from his wrath.
-Robbie’s Journal
Neither one of them spoke as they drove through the night.
Both of them knew that Matt would be coming for them, stealing a glance or two behind them at any moment. The roads were largely bare due to the storm. The plow had cleared a pathway for Walter to drive through without any fear of collisions. The snow was still falling hard, but the roads were bare enough to drive.
Walter coughed.
His skin felt hot, and sweat was starting to collect on his brow and his back. Rivers of light moved underneath his skin.
Everything felt different. The car felt warmer than it should have, his eyes seemed better than they had in years, and he thought he could hear things almost as well as he did when he was a young man, before loud music and bad intentions removed the majority of his hearing when it came time to collect his AARP magazines.
Rebecca had largely been quiet when things hit the fan. After her incident with her brother, things seemed to speed up. Walter found himself moving toward his truck, starting it up and leaving that godforsaken rest stop. Matt ran over to Jolie, as anyone would if they were in his shoes.
He turned off the interstate and started heading toward Atkins. He threw his hand into the radio, smashing it to pieces. Matt would find him, though, even if he didn’t have an extra pair of ears to boot.
“Will he follow us?” Walter said.
The streetlights flickered around the car as Walter drove into Atkins. The town was empty, save for a dozen or so vehicles parked around the local bar. Walter hadn’t ever been in there, for obvious reasons, but he could tell what kind of place it was, especially on a night like this. Inside, you could find a couple dozen people, all too afraid to go out and drive, both because of the weather and because of their blood to alcohol ratio. Probably had a game from some sports team on loud, maybe a few people playing pool, and lots of alcohol to keep them warm.
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. The bar came and went, and Walter was driving down the street. “We might not have wanted to leave.”
“Matt just lost his girlfriend and child,” Walter said. “Best to leave the boy alone.”
“I don’t think he’ll be alone for much longer,” Rebecca said.
Walter looked in the rearview mirror. He couldn’t see anything, but the hairs on the back of his neck were sticking up, and he was sweating.
“Why did he do it?” Walter said.
“Do what?”
“Save me.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily call it that,” Rebecca said.
“Then what would you call it?”
“Maybe he thought he could get you to turn on me if you had powers,” Rebecca said. “Try and corner me. Besides, if I had gotten Danni’s NaU, I would have just been harder to kill. Matt’s got three NaUs in him now, and if my father’s theory about them expounding one another is correct, then he doesn’t have much time left. He needs all the help he can get.”
“Maybe he just didn’t want me to die.”
Rebecca didn’t say anything to that.
Walter drove down the street and pulled up to his house. Usually, whenever he returned home from work, it was late afternoon, and his house would still be covered in the light of the soon to be setting sun.
It felt wrong to approach the house when it was dark out. It reminded him too much of those times when he had stumbled home, or often drove home, and
