“I don’t know.” She wept. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. He just gave up.”
McCardle’s boots trampled the wet grass. Rain now soaked through our pants, our hair, our everything. Lightning streaked through darkness like a network of blood vessels. He held the lantern over the pair. Meg’s hands were wrapped around her ankle. A trap bit through her foot. She rocked back and forth. Close by, another trap had caught Adam around the anklebone. He groaned but didn’t move.
I stopped myself short of blurting out the obvious. Meg hadn’t recharged him. Who knew how long it had been. Days? A week? My eyes darted to McCardle. I didn’t want to volunteer any extra insight.
No. That was all that was going through my head. No, and this couldn’t be happening. There was no one here to save me. I was as good as alone.
“I need to help him,” I yelled over the storm.
He shook his head and looked up into the heavens. “Come on. They’re not going anywhere.”
“Tor!” Meg screamed.
McCardle pointed the gun at me. I weighed my options. I wanted to run to Adam, but the gun was a convincing reason to stay.
“We need to go in there.” I pointed to the center of the generators. “Is my leg going to be snapped in two if I walk any farther?”
McCardle grunted no. We passed beneath the shadows of the three great columns. I stared up at the giant orbs. Their motors hummed with life. A low charge hung in the air. Think, Tor.
My steps were heavy. I marched to the center of the ring of generators. McCardle’s mouth hung open as he took them each in. In the middle, I stopped and stared up, turning in a slow circle. The lightning was gathering closer and stronger.
“Stop stalling,” he said.
I dropped my chin. “Right, sorry.” But stalling was my only plan. “I, uh, have to prepare the body. It’s … complicated.” I let go of the rope and went around to the back wheels where my borrowed tools were. “I … may need your help. We’ll see.”
I felt his eyes on me as I carefully sifted through the equipment he’d brought. Instead of a scalpel, there was a small Swiss Army knife blade and a rusty razor. I pressed my thumb to the knife’s point, testing it. I wasn’t sure what good it would be against a gun. Besides, McCardle seemed to know his way around a blade just fine.
I glanced over my shoulder. McCardle had yet to so much as look away as far as I could tell. I found a screwdriver, a hammer, a few copper wires. I stared at the tools. I had no plan of actually resurrecting the corpse, but I still felt shorthanded.
“Victoria…” I stopped at the moan coming from Adam. “Victoria…”
McCardle waved the gun at me again, and I lowered my head.
My hand trembled. I balanced the Swiss Army knife between two fingers and stared down at the body. Its shriveled lips hardly looked human. Rain dripped from the tip of my nose. I bent over and gingerly pressed the blade at the point between the boy’s collarbones. He sank a few centimeters in the viscous liquid before finding the bottom. I pressed harder. The skin opened up. The insides were yellow like a dissected frog. Not a hint of blood on the knife’s blade.
I lifted the back of my hand to my mouth and stifled a gag. I cut along the ridge of his sternum, all the way to the bone underneath. Foam squelched from the open wound. Another flash of lightning lit up the clearing. When it did, I nearly screamed. I had seen Owen unmistakably making his way through the woods toward Adam and Meg. The lightning abated, and his figure was blotted out. I looked to McCardle. He was still watching me closely. He hadn’t seemed to notice anything amiss.
Owen. Owen was here. I had almost forgotten that I told him my plan was to go to the generators. I wanted to cry with joy and with fear. My mind raced. Somehow my entire life seemed to have converged on this moment. The loose threads of a plan began to dangle in front of me, waiting to be knitted together. Keep the old man distracted. I could do that.
“Is this what your son would have wanted?” I asked the first question that fell on my tongue. Over my top lip, beads of sweat mixed with the rain.
McCardle’s features were twisted, and, in the rearranged pieces, I could see underneath where the guilt and the years had worn at him like termites on damp wood. “He shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days, the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. So sayeth the Lord.” He was eaten alive by the death of his son, and what was left over was a haunted shell of a man whose blood had been transformed to poison.