A short kid, maybe eleven years old, ran into the room, freezing when he saw his bloody father, and me with the rifle. “What?”
“Don’t shout, talk, or do anything stupid,” I said to the boy. “Get down on the floor, face down, and put your hands behind your head. Mrs. Butler, tie him up.”
“Why are you doing this?” asked Mr. Butler.
“Because I need information,” I said, “and I don’t have time to deal with you trying to fight back while I get it. Ma’am, tie him up. Use your husband’s dress shirt—those tear into strips really well.”
“You want me to take my clothes off?” he growled.
I pushed the rifle toward his face, and he stopped talking. “I want you to tie each other up before I just get fed up with how slow you are and shoot you instead.”
“Okay, okay,” said Mrs. Butler, walking quickly toward her husband. “I’ll do it, just don’t shoot anyone.” She pulled off Mr. Butler’s shirt and started tearing it into strips. Noah was crying on the floor.
What was I doing? This isn’t who I am. This isn’t who I wanted to be. I was doing this to help them, to kill a Withered who was murdering this town faster than we could even process the evidence. Derek Stamper wasn’t even in the ground yet, and already the morgue was overflowing. What I was doing was right and good, but … was this really the only way? Was it even the best way? That boy on the floor would remember this for the rest of his life. He’d have counseling and flashbacks and who knew what other trauma symptoms. Childhood victims of violent assault showed a tendency toward violence themselves—not all of them, but enough for me to wonder: was stopping one monster really worth it, if all I did was make another?
It’s not the same, I told myself. I can’t think like that. Giving one kid some bad nightmares and a short temper was nothing compared to the horror that was stalking this town. That was holding my best friend, my only friend, my only hope of ever finding the rest of the Withered and stopping them once and for all. Surely her life, in those terms, was worth at least three others. Surely it was worth far more. Was there an exact number somewhere? How many people would I bind or torture or kill before it became too many, and I had to let Brooke die? I was stymied, as always, by the math of morality. I couldn’t murder my way to peace.
“Done,” she said.
“Now tie up your husband,” I told her. “And make the knots tight. Killing you would break my heart, but it’s not like I’m using it for anything.”
She tied up her husband, binding his ankles, then tying his hands tightly behind his back, before propping him in a corner with their son. I used the last few strips of cloth to tie her hands and ankles as well, and then stepped into the kitchen to look for a knife. They always felt better than guns. There was a knife block on the counter. I pulled out a large, broad-bladed chopping knife and tested the edge. They kept their knives sharp. I took it back into the living room and held it up. “It’s a cleaver,” I said. “You don’t know why that’s funny, but trust me.”
“You said you wanted information,” said the father. “Just ask your questions and leave us alone.”
“Has your daughter been acting strange lately?”
“She’s heartbroken,” said the mother. “All of us are.”
“Does she act guilty at all?”
“Why would she act guilty?” asked the father.
“Yes or no?” I asked.
“No,” said the mother. “Nothing that happened to Jessica, or to that bastard Glassman, was her fault.”
“What about before that?” I asked. Attina hadn’t been born as Brielle—she’d taken her over at some point, killing the real girl and assuming her shape and identity. “Think back months,” I said. “Three, four, maybe as many as seven years. Was there a moment when her behavior changed suddenly?” I thought about Marci and Brooke and the adjustment period each had gone through when Nobody took over their bodies. “Did she go through a few days of complete isolation, cutting herself off from the rest of the world? It would have been followed by markedly different behavior. Has Brielle done anything like that?”
“You mean … puberty?” asked the mother. “I don’t understand what you’re looking for. What are you going to do to my baby?”
“If she’s still your baby,” I said, “nothing at all. Can you think of a sudden shift in her behavior or attitude or even her food preferences, something you can’t attribute to puberty? Like one day she suddenly stopped listening to the same music she used to love, or she changed all her friends at school?”
“Every teen goes through that,” said the father. “I did it, you probably did it as well. I don’t know what you’re getting at, or what you want from our family, but there’s nothing wrong with Brielle. She’s a wonderful person.”