“I just wanted to build a family,” Matt said. “To make a better life for someone than what was given to me. All I wanted to do was build a good life with Jolie. Your father took all of that away, took away my life, took away Jolie. All my friends, everything’s gone because he wanted to save the woman he loved.”
“And how,” Becca said, “does that make you any different, with everything you’ve done tonight and yesterday to try and save Jolie?”
Matt was silent for a moment. The snowflakes fell all around them. He bowed his head and looked at the two people around them. He waved his hand, lifting the wooden log off of Walter. The old man shook free of the snow, his body starting to rebuild.
Matt turned back toward his sister. Grief and anger had turned the boy into something terrible. They had afforded him powers, like most emotions, but they had also killed him, just like they had killed his friends. Emotions were universal. All the NaU had done was bring them to the forefront and use them as fodder to keep the fires warm.
Becca felt Matt’s touch on her again.
“None of it was fair,” he said. “I was supposed to build a life for myself, and now I can’t.”
“But I still can.”
Matt’s touch was all over her; Becca couldn’t move. Terror flooded through her veins, and her breath stopped. She was foolish to allow him to get so close to her. He was blocking her NaUs. She couldn’t move. Walter was moving to their right.
Matt activated his father’s NaU inside of Becca and brought the blade through his chest.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It had felt good, as Matt felt the blade enter his chest. He threw back his sister’s arm and NaU and started to walk off. A lumber yard was a terrible place to die, and there was a hill to the side of the lumber yard that had a nice vantage point that would be a good place to die.
No one stopped him, at least, not yet. He threw open the side of the yard and walked through the snow toward the hill. He found a downed log, perhaps placed there by the lumber workers that allowed them to look down the hill into the valley whenever they had their lunch or subsequent smoke breaks. He brushed the snow off and took a seat.
His chest was bleeding, causing steaming NaU-filled blood to wash down into the snow below. He could have made the cut less severe, given himself more time. But he had been living on borrowed time anyway, and who knows, maybe the life after this one, or whatever the hell happens when you die, would be better. Jolie and their child might be waiting for them there, and there wasn’t much point in making the two of them wait longer then they had to.
He wished that it wasn’t snowing. It would have been nice if, instead of dying during the middle of a winter storm, it could have been on a spring day, with the birds chirping and flowers blooming. That would have made a much better ending picture than the one out in front of him.
He sighed and leaned back slightly. His hands were stained red, but the blood felt soothing to his frail and cold body. Becca had been right in the end. Somehow the girl was always right. Robbie and Matt were two sides of the same coin, and while they were opposed in many things, in what they agreed upon, they were the same.
A couple of seconds later, Matt felt Becca walk over to him. He wished that Walter had come over as well, but it didn’t really matter what the old man thought. It was over, and Matt would have a lot to atone for, but he had succeeded somewhat with sacrificing himself. He hoped that other people would be able to see it as such.
His sister sat down on the log next to him.
After a second, Becca turned toward him.
“Why?” she said.
“You know why,” he said. “You got what you wanted in the end.”
“I didn’t want any of this,” she said.
“Neither did I.”
“You could have done it. I was willing to let you do it. This wasn’t like earlier when we were still in Atkins. This time you had no power over me. All you had to do was do it, and you didn’t.”
Matt didn’t look at his sister. He kept his vision on the valley below them. There were spots of light here and there from cabins and other houses sprinkled all throughout. They were nice cabins, probably filled with people trying to go about their days. He liked to think that they were happy down there and that they would have everything they ever needed.
“Killing was never something I was fond of,” Matt said. “If it was, I would have killed Walter long ago, or not given him Danni’s NaU.”
And he’d been thinking lately, thinking about that night of the fair.
He had gone to the Washington County Fair every year, for almost his entire life. He used to go with Nigel before the man lost his job and grew fonder of having liquor in his system and a belt in his hand. Then he went with Robbie and that section of his family, and then eventually with his friends, all of whom were dead now. That’s what really kicked Matt’s head, thinking about all of the people that would never have any answers, never have any closure. Seven people dead or missing, four of whom were children. They would never know what happened to their children. Matt didn’t think he could go on living, and actually looked forward to the coming darkness, something he hadn’t felt ever since he was much younger, when death looked almost preferable to living in the way he did at that time.
But the fair was supposed
