Theresa was still holding the box. Her eyes flicked to Aaron. He nodded.
She moved. The gun still pointed at Ken, but the box shifted toward the inside of the cab. There was a small cry – a voice that Ken recognized as Maggie’s.
He barely heard it.
What he heard was the squeal of the box as it increased. The volume rising as it moved toward his family.
Toward the girls.
He shook his head, not liking the implications of what had just happened. Not liking the conclusions his own mind jumped to.
Theresa turned back toward him. “The soldier – Captain Martin, he said his name was – died before he could say much. But he was looking for the broadcast source. He had this thing on him.” She shrugged again. “Two plus two is four.” She swiveled so the box was aimed back into the cab.
The shriek of the box couldn’t drown out the cry of fear that rose up in Ken’s heart.
56
“We weren’t there for you,” said Elijah softly. Even from the cab the big man’s deep voice carried clearly. “We were just following the sounds of the box. Trying to find the source – what we figured was the source. Trying to put things to rights. Or maybe just get humanity’s feet back under it again.” He shook his head. But like Theresa, his motions did not cause his aim to waver. “Just buy our side a little bit of time.” He grinned, a lopsided smile that spoke of dashed hope and life lost more eloquently than a long soliloquy could have done. “Just doin’ our best. But along the way we saw you needed help and went in to help you. Then we realized that your daughters were making the box sing loud and clear.”
“They’re good people, Ken,” said Aaron. The cowboy spoke loud enough for his voice to carry over the thrum of the train’s engine, the clack of the wheels on the tracks. But it still sounded soft, caring. Like he was breaking bad news to a friend.
“Good people?” Ken said. “Good people who were going to… what? Kill my kids?”
Aaron looked down. Not like he was ashamed, but like he was trying to figure out the best way to say what had to be said. “Yeah. Good people. Like you and Maggie and Christopher and Buck are good people. Like Dorcas. Like your boy. Good people, because they’re all willing to do what’s right.”
“Right isn’t killing –“
“It is if the people you kill are the people who are killing everyone else.” Aaron looked up now, his eyes clear and piercing. “Ken, you willing to keep your family at the expense of the entire world?”
“You don’t even know for sure the girls have anything to do with this!” Ken said. Desperation crept into his voice, cracking the edges of the words, raising them too high.
Aaron’s eyes hardened a bit. “They’re in it,” he said. “They haven’t been acting right. Not from the moment we found them. And you want further proof,” he added, and jerked his chin toward the cab. Ken saw Sally there, looking down at them with curious eyes. “How many kids you know got their own personal leopard following them around?”
Ken shook his head. Shook it and shook it like he thought he could dislodge what was happening, like it might all be a bad dream and if he just twisted his body hard enough he would wake up and find all had come back to normal. The family safe, Derek alive.
Especially that.
(Daddy, where are you?)
He almost jerked in place as the voice came into his head. The sound of his firstborn, faint but clear in his mind. He had thought he’d heard it before, when Derek – the thing that Derek had become – had been chasing them. But now there was nothing like that going on. Now he was alone in the rain.
Ken wondered if he was truly going mad. A body bent and broken beyond anything God could have intended, a mind pushed to the edge by loss and desperation.
(Daddy?)
Ken kept shaking his head. Not only to shed the strands of the nightmare that clung to him, but now also to shake loose the sound of a dead son in his mind.
“Ken?” Aaron sounded like he was choking back tears. “We don’t want to do this. None of us do. That’s why I went back to talk to you in the first place.”
“Then why’d you attack me, Aaron?” Ken nearly shouted the words. Bitterness replaced desperation; anger a welcome replacement to fear. “Why’d you tie up my friends and family?”
“Because we didn’t know.” Elijah. “Because we needed to figure out what to do, but the stakes are too damn high to take a chance on you running.”
“I wanted to see if you had any other ideas, Ken,” said Aaron. “Any other way of getting back at these things.” Ken looked at the cowboy. He was sincere. “I don’t want to be killing anyone, Ken. Never liked that, no matter what job I was doing. And I like your family. A lot.”
But….
Ken heard the unspoken word. But….
But I’ll do what has to be done.
But I’ll make myself do the unthinkable.