McCardle’s son stared into the vast nothingness with eyes that would never close. A puddle surrounded him. In the debris, the stitching on his legs had loosened to expose the ends of whitewashed bone that glistened in the moon now beginning to peek through the passing clouds. I hugged my torso. My sopping clothes chilled me to the core. A single trickle of blood dribbled from the corner of Old Man McCardle’s mouth. Red blossomed through the front of his flannel shirt. I stepped over his legs when I heard Owen’s voice calling.
I’d been so lost in the small blown-up world between the generators that I had forgotten all about Owen and Meg. It felt like I’d spent hours in a cage match, and yet it couldn’t have been more than minutes. I glanced back at Adam, who was still hunched over, catatonic. Reluctantly, I left the circle. I followed the sound of Owen’s voice and followed the light of the lantern. The sobbing had stopped, and I now heard faint whispers through the noise of the rustling branches.
I found Meg with her arm wrapped over Owen’s shoulder. She’d taken off her shoe and held her foot a few inches above the ground.
“Easy does it,” Owen said as he guided her closer. The lantern glinted off his glasses. His forehead wrinkled when he looked up. His face broke into a broad smile at the sight of me. “Tor,” he said. “You’re okay. What happened?” He caught my wrist and pulled me into a tight hug, which ended up being crowded with the three of us, and it was like we were long-lost friends reuniting. “Janitor McCardle was the Hunter?” he said.
I nodded. “I guess he really was as crazy as people said he was. How bad is it?” I gestured to Meg’s foot.
She winced. “He says it will heal and that I was lucky it only got my foot.”
“The puncture wounds are deep,” Owen said grimly. “And there are probably a few small fractures. She should keep it still and elevated as much as possible. See a doctor … if she can.”
As though drawn by a magnet, we gathered back at Adam. Meg whimpered at the two remaining bodies.
“I was going to kill him.” Adam was still hunched over. He let his hands fall from his face. “I already killed two people, and I was going to kill him, too. With my bare hands.” He turned his hands over, examining them front and back. “I remember now.”
A cold sweat spread to the backs of my knees. The three of us standing shared glances between us. “What did you see, Adam? What do you remember?” I asked.
“Everything.”
I bent down. A tuft of his dark hair fell over the bridge of his nose. I brushed it away.
“I’m John Wheeler,” he said, staring at his boots. Blood seeped through his pant leg where the trap had caught him, but he didn’t seem to feel the same pain that Meg did. “But I’m Adam, too.” He looked at me imploringly. The naive boy I’d created was fading and being replaced by something wiser and less familiar. “I saw it,” Adam said. “I know why the house was burning. I—I killed someone. I punched him. I didn’t mean to kill him, but, I punched him again and … I don’t think I was sad. I was standing over his body.” He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched his chin to his chest before continuing. “Then there was gasoline. I … poured it in the house and then I lit the match.” He sucked in a deep breath like coming up for water. “And you were there.” He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at Meg like this was the part he couldn’t quite place. “You were screaming for me. You told me to go. So I went.”
Owen and I both looked to Meg. Her eyes watered, and I didn’t know if it was from pain or the memory. Who knew, maybe the memory was pain. “Here’s what you have to understand,” she began, taking a deep breath. “Hugo is a piss-poor excuse for a town.” I started to open my mouth. “Wait. I know you think because you’re not exactly from New York City that you’ve got the whole small-town bull nailed down, but this place deserves its dot on the map. Where we come from, people sit around waiting to die. And when they’re bored, they sit around thinking of ways to speed that process up. John was going somewhere. He was an athlete. He was dynamite on the football field. Probably would have gotten a scholarship.” Her smile was soft in the trickles of moonlight. “But John’s biggest problem was me. Like I said, he’s been in love with me since we were kids. He’d have walked through fire for me if I asked him.”
I set my jaw. “And did you?”
“I didn’t have to. I got involved with this guy, see.”
“I thought you said you two were madly in love,” I said.