It was Dex’s voice. It cut my screams off at the source and I whipped around.
He was standing a few yards behind me. His shirt was torn and wet in places and he stood at such an angle that it was almost impossible to be upright. Half his face was covered with blood that pooled out of a dark wound at his widow’s peak. His eyes regarded me like I was a stranger, someone he wasn’t sure if he could trust. Maybe I looked like a ghost myself.
“Hi,” I said softly. I tried not to smile. My arms and legs started tingling from final y feeling the cold. “You’re alive.”
He nodded, wincing. “Are you OK? Are you hurt?”
“I’m OK, considering I’m also very not OK.”
He nodded, then gasped for breath and started to lean a bit to the side.
I scampered over and got him under his arm just before he keeled over.
“I’m fine,” he said, grinding his jaw. Once a liar, always a liar.
“No, you’re not; your head...” I tried to touch the wound but he yanked his head out of the way. That brought another grimace to his face and he fought through the pain, a pain that tensed al of his muscles into hard lines.
“It’s fine, I’m fine.”
“Where’s Ada?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.
“She’s fine. She’s at the car.”
He let out a deep breath and attempted to take a step. I went with him.
“What happened? Were you stung?”
He nodded, careful y this time. “More than once. But I had two Epi-Pens in the glove box. Your sister found some pretty creative places to stab me.”
“We’ve got to take you to a hospital,” I insisted as I helped him navigate over a fal en log.
“I’m fine.”
“Dex, you’re not,” I said, and stopped, pressing my hand back into his chest.
He looked down at me and smiled painful y. “Kiddo, we’re not going anywhere except straight to Roman’s.”
“But your head, and the stings, your al ergy wil -”
“Wil be taken care of when I get a chance to take care of it. My wounds aren’t vital. Yours are.”
“But the car. We’ve got to cal for help. Get a tow truck or Triple A or something.”
“The car is fine. She’s a trooper. She’l take us where we need to go. She may not look pretty anymore, but none of us do. I even started her engine before I set out to find you, thinking you might hear it. She purrs like a cat. A retarded cat, but a cat.”
I stil didn’t like it. He grew silent as we hobbled together through the forest.
I had to ask, “Where did I go?”
“Huh?”
“Just now. After the accident.”
“I don’t know.” His voice became yielding, pliable. “I came to with my head indented on the steering wheel. The wasps were gone. Ada was shaking me awake. She had her seatbelt on, thank fuck, so she was fine. Maybe some whiplash. And you were gone. I don’t even know how you got out of your seatbelt. You’ve not only turned into the Hulk, but Houdini as wel . ”
I was so ashamed and so furious with myself for leaving the accident. And causing the accident, when it came right down to it. They were my wasps, weren’t they?
“You should have left me here,” I growled.
He stopped. I could see a single beam of light in the distance, probably the car. It made the sticky blood on his face shine like a frozen pond.
“Perry,” he said. His voice came out thick and raspy.
“You have to accept that this isn’t your fault. You didn’t ask for this.”
“How do you know?” I cried out. He was sparking some nerves just beneath my shel . “How do you know what I asked for?! Do you know what it’s been like to be me for the past few months? Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through!? Do you?!”
The non-bloodied skin on his face went an extra shade of white to match the moon. His eyebrows lowered, eyes dropped briefly to the ground. Then he brought them to meet mine and they softened like liquid honey.
“I don’t think I’l ever be able to tel you how sorry I am. It doesn’t mean I won’t try, because you, Perry, you deserve a lifetime of servitude. Eons of groveling. Even then, I don’t think I can show enough, do enough to let you see. And that’s OK. You have every right to hate me for this lifetime and many others. You have every right to never see me again. To spit on my grave. But tonight, now, I’m not going to give up on you. I’m going to fix you or,” his voice fel with weight, “die trying.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I opened my mouth and closed it again, letting the gravity of his words sink in. I couldn’t forgive him. I couldn’t let him die on account of me, either. He needed to go to the hospital. I needed to go to a hospital. But we both carried on in our stubborn little ways, protesting together but apart.
Dex let out a puff of breath and pointed at the light in the distance.
“Just one headlight left. Let’s hope we make it til dawn before seeing any cops. I don’t think they’d believe our story for a second. Especial y since your jol y old father probably has a wanted poster of me down at the station already.”
A minute later we arrived at the car. Ada looked fine except for a bruise on her elbow. She wrapped her arms around me in a lavish, squeezing hug, thinking she might never see me again. I foolishly told her it would be the last time we’d be apart.
Then she started wrapping me up in duct tape. Even in the middle of a car accident, I was stil public enemy number one.
We got in the car and after I was careful y belted in, Dex managed to reverse it up the embankment. Luckily, it wasn’t as steep as it looked when we went bounding down it. The Highlander shuddered and smoked a bit but she worked and we were soon roaring down the highway again.
The night sky was clear as we left the mountains and entered the softly rol ing hil s, and far off in the distance you could see the sky easing black to blue. The horizon looked fresh and clean and the dying stars twinkled brightest before they faded. Dawn was coming.
Time was ticking.
It was near eight in the morning, when the landscape was sunny, dusty and squint-worthy bright, that I felt a cloak of blackness settle over me like opaque net. It had been waiting to drop al night. I had been waiting to receive it. A net of indescribable evil.
A voice spoke out deep inside my head. That voice from the bowels of creation, one that encapsulated al pain and suffering the world has ever known - and relished it.
Give up, it said. To resist is to bring pain. Pain to your loved ones. Pain to yourself. Give up and you’ll be spared. You’ll be free.
Try me, I thought.
I raised my chin and looked at Dex and Ada, who were lost in their own thoughts, watching the flat farmlands rol past.
“Guys,” I said, my voice shaking out of my chest. “I don’t have much time left.”
Dex stepped harder on the gas. I didn’t know if it would be enough.
~~~