CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
AUGUST 29: AFTER THE FIRST STORM
The water made it all the way up to the top stair of the porch. I watched it rise through my bedroom window. People always said that this area was prone to flooding, but with these water levels, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was practically the whole state, considering this town’s elevation. I never used to believe them. I never thought something like this would happen to us.
When the water receded, it took my parents with it. I’d have to assume that it did. Either that, or the water turned them into nothing right in front of my eyes and I didn’t notice it. I’m not sure which option is worse. Then came the cold, winter-like weather. It’s been freezing for a week now, frost covering every surface that isn’t burned already. I’m sure that it would be snowing if there were any water left in the sky.
When I look out my bedroom window today, all I can see is yellow grass and a mound of dirt underneath the tree house. Everything I see is dead. All of it. Maybe this is my punishment. Maybe staying alive is my punishment because I don’t know where to go from here. Maybe my death will be ten thousand times more painful than theirs and I’ll suck it up because I deserve it. I deserve it all.
I won’t get any sleep tonight; I know that much. The gunfire has started in the streets. The last of us killing any other survivors for food, water, whatever they can get their hands on. Mom was wrong when she said that this sort of thing doesn’t happen in New Jersey. Maybe this is just how we are. Doomed to destroy each other.
Everyone’s probably scared and willing to do what it takes to keep themselves safe. I wonder how many people will be left by the time they stop shooting. I’m not sure if there will be anyone at all. And what about me?
I’m not sure if I deserve to live.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I don’t move at all until the first brick comes crashing through the front windows. It’s like all my joints have been glued together, locking each kneecap and elbow into place so that I’m forced to stay statue still. It’s a feeling I’ve felt before, a year ago, staring through a window not entirely unlike this one. It’s a feeling that I was hoping I would never have to feel again.
, our alien overlords remind me, which roughly translates to You’re fucked.
In response I say: Will you please just shut up? Now is absolutely not the time.
My eyes flick toward the discarded hammer on the ground. I might feel stronger if I was holding it in my hand, feeling its weight and knowing that I would have something to defend myself with if it really did come down to it. Because in the darkest crevasses of my mind, in the gaps between the individual neurons that are currently firing a mile a minute, is the reminder that there is only one way that this ends. And as I stare at the four people creeping toward me down the road, I’m not sure that I totally like my odds.
I’m no killer; that much is clear. I will never be the hot, zombie-killing, hammer-swinging badass I wish I could pretend to be. I will never be the type of person that strikes first and thinks later. So I leave the hammer alone.
I watch the group’s approach, inching closer and closer until I can make out every detail of their faces. Why is Eva here? Did she come willingly? Was this all her idea?
I can’t quite decipher what lurks behind her eyes, but the feelings I had days ago, watching an old friend approach my front door, are gone. If Eva hadn’t left months ago, none of this would be happening. We’d be here together, with no one on their way to destroy everything I care about. And I would have never let myself care about Maeve in the first place. There would have been no void in my life available to fill.
I can’t help but jump when there’s a thud on the door, a boot colliding with the wooden frame. The door bends, curving like a crescent moon, but it doesn’t give. The portion I nailed shut does its job, keeping me safe enough for just a minute longer. Benji curses aloud, muttering something to the rest of the group that I can’t hear over the howling wind. I’m just glad that my haphazard construction held.
Benji stalks back into the road and grabs another faded brick, testing its weight in his long fingers. He doesn’t hesitate like I would, my mind racing through the plethora of ways that everything could go wrong. He squints and pulls back his arm, not even realizing that I am watching him from inside.
Benji hurls the brick through the window, the sound of splintering wood and shattering glass radiating through my bones. He’s managed to hit the cross section of the wooden beams framing the windowpanes, completely destroying the top half of the window. Below the gaping hole, the remaining panes cling to their wooden frame, half-ready to go crashing toward the floor.
I gasp, backing up until my spine presses up against the Business section bookshelf. I look behind me, seeing rows of shelves and no exit. I’m trapped, left with nowhere to run. Breaching my door is an inevitability, and I spent so much time barricading myself inside that I didn’t allow for an escape route. Another brick lands with a thud next to my feet, vibrating the wooden floorboards and sending a jolt through my nervous system. The impact is hard enough to leave a large, scraping dent in the hardwood floor, like claws across a chest. I wonder whether I should pick it up and throw it back at Benji. I’m not sure what good that would do.
But it’s enough to force my body back into a semifunctioning state. If I have nowhere to run, that means that I have to hide. I have no other choice. And so, I beeline toward the kids’ section, the pastel carpet practically glowing in the dim light like a beacon. I don’t stop moving as voices echo from outside. I don’t think about what they’re saying to each other. I don’t have time. I don’t stop moving until I turn the corner into the depths of the Children’s room and am safely out of view of the front door, suddenly eye level with a copy of The Bad Beginning. Sounds about right.
I peer through the crack between two sets of bookcases, pressing my chest against the shelving until my lungs are almost too compressed to breathe. I can feel my heartbeat in my teeth, each pulse radiating through my jaw. In a perfect universe (read: absolutely not this universe), I would have had oodles of time to come up with a concrete plan with no flaws whatsoever. I would have boarded up the windows. I would have booby-trapped the place, Kevin McCallister–style. I would have had time to think about the decisions I was making, and how to prepare myself for not only The Storm but also The Scary People Headed My Way. But now, I’m doing both on the fly. What in god’s name have I gotten myself into?
Becca, with deep circles under her eyes, takes the next swing at the window with her sleeved elbow, sending the glass crashing down toward the ground. As she admires her handiwork, I realize the flaw in my super-awesome barricade plan. I didn’t build it high enough. A barricade does absolutely nothing if they can just climb over.
As she reaches a hand through the window, I search the shelves in front of me for something to use for protection. Sure, it might have been better to be hiding next to the Classics section, where books balloon past the five-hundred-page mark more often than not, but beggars can’t be choosers. My eyes rest on a “pet rock” kit, still priced at $12.99, box unopened. Even though it doesn’t quite pack the punch of Anna Karenina, it’ll work. It has to.
As quietly as I can, I open the flaps of the rock’s cardboard carrier and feel its heft. It can’t weigh more than two or three pounds, but I’m hoping it’ll hurt like it weighs ten when it comes time to throw it.
I can hear Eva’s voice echoing through the open space, the flimsy shelving doing very little to dampen the sound. I can’t make out each distinct syllable, but I know the sound well enough, know the way her voice sags when she’s upset, to know that she isn’t saying anything good. Someone else coughs, probably choking on the dust they’ve created with their destruction. Either on that or the sawdust that I never quite got around to cleaning up. Glass crunches underneath someone’s boots. I close my eyes and listen. One pair of shoes thudding to the ground. Then another. Then another. Then another.
They’re inside now, all four of them. It’s too dangerous to peer through the crack in the shelves, because with four sets of eyes, one of them is bound to see me or spot a shift in the shadows as I move back and forth. I don’t like those odds. So I just press my body into the white wood shelving and wait. Wait until I have no choice but to spring into action. Wait for a miracle.
As if sensing my thoughts, the floorboards creak, and Eva’s voice once again floats through the air.
“Liz?” She says my name like it’s a question. Like I might not even be here at all. But we know each other too well, right? We both know that I’m the one who stays behind.
“Maeve?” Benji echoes. “Liz?”
I don’t answer. I don’t waste my breath, no matter how much I might want to. I just bite down on my bottom lip until I think that I might bleed. Any sound that I make can be used against me. Anything I do can be used to pinpoint my location. And sure, they’ll find me eventually, but I’ll take every spare second that I can get.
Eva continues anyway, as if she never expected a response from me in the first place. “Liz,” she repeats. “We’re not here to hurt you.”
I remember what I saw in the woods. I remember the feeling of Benji’s knife against my throat. I remember the way that Becca looked at me so intensely that I thought I’d burst into flames. I remember what Maeve did to protect me. She wouldn’t have done that if she hadn’t had to. She wouldn’t have attacked Becca if she hadn’t known that they were willing and capable of doing the same thing to me. Just like they are now.
“This can all end peacefully,” Eva continues. “They’ll forgive you guys for hurting Becca if you’re willing to negotiate.”
She’s saying what her friends want to hear, not what she believes. Because Eva was the one who showed up here in a half-assed attempt to get me to leave. To persuade Maeve to drag me to safety. She knew it wouldn’t bode well for me if I stayed. And this whole thing wouldn’t have started with a brick through the window if any of them had any sort of intention of peace. Even if it would be easier to believe Eva and reveal myself, I know that I can’t.
Eva’s different than she used to be; Maeve was right. She’s not the person who used to make book puns on slow workdays, or who used to slingshot rubber bands at me when I was working at the register. She’s grown harder because being soft is no longer an option. She’s almost unrecognizable, donning this new, stronger version of herself. I should have tried harder to stop her from leaving. I should have stopped her from changing at all.
I try to track the distance between my body and their voices. Maybe fifteen feet? I let out a shuddered breath as I press the back of my head against the shelf behind me. I try to remember what it felt like to be here a year and a half ago, when things were happy, and bright, and normal. If you had told me a year and a half ago that Eva would be leading a violent and likely murderous charge through the bookstore in an attempt to take control from me before an impending apocalyptic storm…I would have thought that sounded awesome, in theory. But I would have also called you crazy.
I hear them pause by the back door.
A familiar voice, Becca’s, speaks to Eva. “Where does that go?” she asks.
“Upstairs.”
“Upstairs?”
“Yeah,” Eva says. “There’s an apartment up there. I think it’s where the two of them have been living.”
“Would she be up there?” Becca replies. “You know her better than we do.”
Eva pauses. “No,” she finally decides after a few beats. “She wouldn’t. She’s somewhere down here, I’m sure. Both of them.”
“Whatever you say,” Becca grumbles, and the sound of footsteps returns, slow and methodical.
I’m screwed. They’re headed this way. It’s only a matter of time.
I wrap my fingers around the rock and bring my arm back, ready to throw, before pausing and looking at the freestanding picture-book shelf that forms part of the doorway into the Children’s room. Eva and her friends wait on the other side. It’s about three feet wide, extending almost fully to the ceiling, and double-sided. On the other side, it’s filled with young adult graphic novels and nonfiction, with a “beach reads” display still out from last summer. It created a bit of privacy for the kids in the Children’s room, which juts off from the main room like an L. It hides me from view now, too, as I tuck myself around the corner and out of sight.
I used to remove this shelf for author visits and events in order to “open up the space.” Sure, it used to annoy me because it was heavy and nearly impossible to move, but now it’s an opportunity.
I set down my rock and move forward, carefully placing the sole of my sneaker on the carpet so that it doesn’t make a sound. I don’t hesitate. I don’t have the time. I just push with all my might, as my biceps twinges and my palm burns. I push until the shelf gives way and begins to topple.
It doesn’t fall quickly. Instead, it wavers back and forth, making me wonder whether it’s even going to fall. But then it does. And it is beautiful. I can hear a low, rough voice curse loudly as a scuffle ensues. Rubber squeaking against the floor as all four intruders attempt to escape impending, bookshelf-shaped doom.
I grab the stone once again and quickly speed back around the corner and deeper into the Children’s room, avoiding being seen by Eva as she stumbles into the wide opening I’ve created, the bookcase narrowly missing her right leg. I hear a howl of pain, which tells me that someone else wasn’t as lucky. If I can hold them off for long enough, maybe they’ll decide that this isn’t worth it and they’ll leave. Maybe, if I keep them here for long enough, Benji and Eva will remember why this place matters, and the person I used to be. Maybe they’ll realize that I’m not their enemy.
I grip the stone, knowing that this time I’ll have to use it. I’ve bought only a few seconds as Tristan struggles to wrench his foot free, and out of the corner of my eye I can see Becca turn erratically, searching for a clue to my location. Her lips are twisted into a grimace as she stares, ready to leap into action.
I see a hand enter my frame of vision and Becca takes it, squeezing Tristan’s fingers as his knuckles turn white. As he leans closer, his face comes into view and my stomach flips. His eyes are filled with anger as he tries to stand. It’s clear that he will not hesitate this time. He will not spare me like he did last time, not with his own survival on the line. All four of them are here, ready to finish what was started merely a week ago.
Becca leans over, wrapping her hands around the shelf and pulling upward as her friend begins to inch free. In this context, they look almost like they’re siblings. Either that or they’re dating. It’s always hard to tell which. The pair turn to look at each other, and I watch as Tristan’s Adam’s apple rises and falls. He glances down at his foot and winces.
“Is it broken?” I hear Benji ask, his voice wavering.
“What do you think?” Tristan gruffly responds. I watch as Becca covers her face with her hands.
“Stay here,” Becca mutters before turning to Eva. “Let’s keep moving.”
She doesn’t wait for Eva to respond; she just turns the corner and enters the kids’ room before I’m ready. Before I have the chance to move or retreat farther away from the main room. Before I have the chance to do anything at all. There’s no warning. So I throw the rock in a last-ditch effort to stop Becca’s approach.
As it makes contact with her forehead, her eyes flick up, registering my presence. She doesn’t wince. She doesn’t say a word. I start working on the Middle Readers’ shelf. Sure, we’ve never moved it before, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t move.
I hear the wood groan as the shelf sways, my arm straining as the bookcase slowly leans away from the wall. This one doesn’t move quickly. It doesn’t catch anyone by surprise, and it doesn’t have to. It just adds another barrier between me and Becca, broken shelving and ripped pages scattered on the ground.
She pauses for a second before resuming her pursuit, and my eyes scan her body, resting on the handle of a knife tucked into her boots. Blood seeps from a small cut on her forehead, the skin bruising already. She doesn’t reach for the knife, not yet. She doesn’t have to. As her eyebrows raise, a small smile on her face, I know that she realizes she has the upper hand. I can feel the presence of the wall behind me, even though I haven’t reached it yet. I don’t have to look to know it’s there. I’ve run out of space, and I’ve run out of options, but how many options did I really have in the first place? I was never really meant to win, just to keep living for a few more minutes. Becca knows that too.
She begins to clamber over the pile of splintered wood and chapter books, the destruction covering most of the floor. It’s more of a ragged scramble than anything else, her face contorted with effort. As she steps on a copy of Under the Egg, her foot slips into the pile and wedges itself beneath a fallen shelf.
I make the split-second decision to run. I’m not sure where I’m going, but staying put is not an option.
My legs churn, and I’m almost past Becca by the time she realizes what I’m doing. She reaches out an arm, her left boot still pinned, as I rush past. I sidestep, my body moving before my brain can even process it, my shoulder throbbing as it collides with a graphic-novel display. I ignore the feeling and struggle to turn, moving past Benji, who is stooped down, trying to stop the bleeding on Tristan’s leg. He scrambles to his feet as I speed past.
I continue moving, heading toward the door and my flimsy barricade with no idea what I’ll do when I reach it. Outside isn’t an option. To get outside I’d have to climb over my barricade, wasting precious time that I don’t have. If I do, Benji catches up, and it’s game over. Like the energy that courses through my veins, this is not sustainable. None of this is.
Once I make it to the other side of the counter, I pause, my breath shallow as I look at the ragged group, still lingering at the back of the store. Becca has wrenched herself free, and she stands beside Eva, finally holding her knife in her hand. Her jaw is rigid, her stance tense. Becca’s eyes burn, staring through me rather than at me. I am not a person to her; I am an obstacle in her path. Slowly, Benji rises, too, helping Tristan up from his place on the floor. Even though Tristan continues to bleed, he doesn’t seem to notice as he slowly shifts his weight and reaches for the axe that is tied to his waistband.
Only Eva hesitates, no weapon in her hand, her blue eyes searching for something in mine. I’m not sure what she wants me to do.
It’s Tristan who advances first, his motions staggered and uneven, leaving a trail of blood behind him. His face is pale, a sheen of sweat across his forehead, but his gait shows no sign of fatigue.
He pauses, turning around to look at Benji, who has reached the sealed apartment door.
“Benji,” Tristan says, gesturing haphazardly as he sucks in a breath. “Search for the other one. Make sure she isn’t hiding out somewhere.”
Benji nods and skitters away, disappearing up the stairs and into the apartment above. Without him, the air is a little staler. Without him, I can feel ten tons of pressure rest upon my chest. Eva watches him go, biting down on her bottom lip as she fumbles for something in her back pocket.
I know that she knows Maeve isn’t here. We both know Maeve, and we both know me. Under any other circumstances, it would be me hiding upstairs in the apartment, holding my breath and letting my organs burn inside me, while Maeve was brave downstairs. Eva knows that it would never be the other way around. But she says nothing.
Tristan doesn’t hesitate. He strides toward me, as quickly as his leg will allow. There is nowhere for me to go.
As the distance closes, Becca just two feet behind him, I reach for the hammer on the floor. But before my fingers can make contact, a primal grunt erupts from Tristan’s lips as he swings his axe, the blade mere centimeters from my head. I have to admit that I’m glad he missed. I’ve begun to get rather attached to my head. Instead, his axe collides with the previously repaired hole in the wall, breaking the patch in two and sending splintered wood scattering in all directions.
I scramble to recover, reaching back down to grip the handle of the hammer, my knuckles bleaching white, almost falling as my foot collides with my makeshift barricade. This is where I die. I look behind me at the rows of paperbacks. Edgar Allan Poe. Seems fitting.
“Eva, you don’t want to do this, right?” I say, peering past Tristan, unsure why I’m even wasting my breath. “You know this is wrong. Please tell me that you know that this isn’t right.” I search her face for something. What, I don’t know, but anything to make me believe that she isn’t okay with this.
Eva opens her mouth to speak, but she’s quieted by Tristan, an arm’s length away from me. “That’s not what this is about. Either you die, or we die, and I don’t like your odds.”
“I can take one of you out with me,” I challenge, raising the hammer clenched in my fist. “I can do it.” The words sound fake and hollow, but I try to pretend otherwise.
“I’m not sure that you’ll last that long.”
And with that, he moves forward and in one swift motion presses the blade of his axe against my throat, the back of my head slamming against a wooden chair, still stacked against the front door. He presses harder than Benji did that day in the woods. I can feel the axe slice through the layers of my skin, the warm blood slithering down my neck. I don’t dare to move. I don’t dare to speak. I don’t dare to swallow down the copper taste in my mouth. One false move and the axe cuts through. One false move and I’m gone.
The gravity of the situation catches up to me now. After years of reading books about death and war and swords and pain, I’m finally experiencing all of it. And I’m afraid. I’m not cut out for the types of stories I like to devour.
I’m too scared to act when it really matters. Too scared to move as Thea banged on the back door. Too spineless to say anything as Eva walked out of this building and didn’t turn back. Too chicken to tell Maeve how I felt, to do whatever it took to get her to stay. And now, the one time I’ve tried to fight, it crumbled so quickly.
The prospect of death is more terrifying than anything I’ve ever encountered. The idea of things being over. Fade to black and then nothing after. I won’t remember the feeling of Maeve, of being held by her. I won’t remember her sad birthday candle or slightly grating jokes. I won’t remember any of this at all. I will simply be gone, nothing left but dead cells and dead flesh. And one day, those things will be gone too. And Eva will be gone, and Maeve, and Benji, and Peacoat Man, and there will be no one left to remember me at all.
It’s a beautiful tragedy to think that this is my fate. The only way to make the pain and heartbreak and grief stop is for everything else to stop with it. Maybe this was always inevitable. Maybe it was always meant to end like this.
“You don’t have to do this,” Eva murmurs. “Just say you’ll give up the store. Right, Liz?”
Tristan pauses, relieving a fraction of the pressure he’s putting on his axe as he looks over to Eva. I don’t even have the opportunity to decide if I’d want to surrender.
“That’s not how this works,” he replies. “There are rules.”
Eva shakes her head, her voice slightly broken. “She didn’t do anything! Liz is innocent. Maeve attacked Becca, but she was just there.”
“Maeve isn’t here,” Tristan replies. “We get the retribution offered to us.”
Eva’s eyes widen as she turns to me. “In what world does that seem right?”
“This world!” Tristan fires back.
“Are you with us or not?” Becca interjects, sounding irritated. “Because it’s starting to sound like you’re not. She tried to kill me!”
But Tristan shakes his head. “You should do it,” he says, glancing at Eva.
“What? No! I’m not doing that, Tristan.”
Becca moves forward, pressing her much larger blade into Eva’s hand. Her fingers hang limply around the weapon’s hilt. “C’mon, Eva, get it done. We don’t have all day.”
I can feel warm tears slipping down my cheeks and dripping off my chin. Eva closes her eyes.
“Don’t be a pussy,” Tristan snarls. “You got us here—now finish it.”
I watch as Becca shoves Eva forward, forcing her knife into the proper position against my throat as Tristan retreats. She doesn’t grip it the way she should. She barely touches it at all, and the look in her eyes says she’s terrified. But only one of us will end up dead at the end of this. I’m the only one who has a right to be terrified.
I clench my jaw. It’s almost ironic that this is how it ends. It’s almost Shakespearean. My freshman-year English teacher could probably find discussion material for a whole class in this moment. But the irony doesn’t matter.
“Hurry up, Eva,” Becca murmurs.
“Give me a second!” Eva snaps, her voice fraying at the edges as she holds Becca’s knife to my throat, not pressing it any harder. “Don’t make me do this.”
I look away as Eva’s hands begin to shake, staring out the obscured front windows. I will not look into her eyes.
Outside, there is only gray, enveloping the world and the places I once knew. A shadow lurks in the square like a ghost. Maybe my ghost. I’m sure it’s not totally implausible to start seeing things in the seconds before you die, right? Either way, now seems like the perfect time to go insane.
I watch as the shadow moves closer and closer until it pauses at the front door. Maybe it’s death? Or the Grim Reaper or something like that, my mind playing tricks on me. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve hallucinated in the past few weeks.
The shadow hesitates, but then it climbs through the hole in the window, hiking boots scrambling down the bookshelves before they land with a thud on the hardwood floor.
This isn’t the Grim Reaper. My brain isn’t that creative nor is it daring enough to make such a bold deviation from the original source material. And as the non–Grim Reaper pulls off her hood and unsheathes her knife from her hip, I smile and let her name escape from my lips.
“Maeve.”
She came back.
She came back for me.
I can feel my pulse quicken as my mind realizes what this means. That I am enough. That I am enough for her.
Eva pulls the knife away from my neck as soon as her name is out of my mouth and turns, eyes wide. As soon as the blade is gone, I can breathe again. I let the cool air flood into my lungs as I stumble forward, farther into the store. No one stops me. I’m heaving in gulps of air like I’ve never breathed before, because I thought that I never would again.
“What, am I late to the party?” Maeve says as she adjusts her grip on her knife.
Tristan curses, looking from Maeve to me, back to Maeve. Then he turns his attention to Eva, striding forward and snatching the knife from her hands. She seems more than happy to let go.
“You should have just killed her and gotten it over with,” he mutters. “Now we have two of them to deal with.”
But Maeve isn’t waiting for them to finish their conversation. Instead, she vaults over the front counter, her left thigh scraping across the shellacked wood. We don’t have time for a happy reunion. We both know that, no matter how much I might want to hold her tight and never let go.
Tristan moves to the front of the group, ready to take command. But this time, Maeve moves forward to meet him. Checkmate.
Maeve takes the first shot, pouncing forward toward Tristan with her blade gripped tight in her hand. It’s a smaller weapon than Tristan’s, but she wields it with much more agility than he does his weapons. Tristan howls as Maeve’s knife slashes across his torso, too slow to even notice what she was doing.
Becca takes the sound as a sign to spring into action and lunge at me. She swings a smaller blade now, what looks like a kitchen knife, in a manner that can be described only as helicopter-style. Sure, I have no reflexes, and I’m definitely not trained in any type of combat, but neither is Becca. All I have to do is outlast her, until Maeve is free enough to help. All I have to do is evade her knife.
“Eva, move your ass!” Tristan bellows, passing Eva the knife he took from her. With a grunt, she attacks, her blade slicing across Maeve’s biceps, maroon trickling out in thin streaks. Maeve grits her teeth, her eyes narrowing, but she doesn’t make a sound.
Becca decides to change her tactic, pulling her knife back as we slowly circle one another. Her eyes flick away from my face, down to my torso, and she moves forward, lips pursed and pulled taut. She’s got too much energy fueled into this one movement. There’s no time to backpedal anymore, and I sidestep, sending her flying past me as her blade barely scrapes my stomach. It doesn’t hurt enough for me to care.
Suddenly, the back door shoots open, flung open so quickly that it thuds against the wall. I turn to watch Benji stroll into the room and out of the stairwell, looking far too calm, cool, and collected for the present circumstances.
“I couldn’t find her,” Benji says, his voice smooth. “Maeve, I mean.”
Tristan growls and gestures to Maeve, who laughs in return. “No shit, Sherlock.”
Benji scrambles for his own makeshift blade, his hand sloppily grasping the handle. It’s nothing special, just a piece of sharpened metal wrapped in the type of tape you’d use on a hockey stick. It looks foolishly small in his hands, but he holds it tight, assuming an offensive position across from Becca. I’m starting to feel left out. Don’t bring a hammer to a knife fight, or whatever.
“Back down, Benji,” I murmur as the pair begins to circle, mimicking the dialogue I’ve read in countless cheesy adventure books. I feel like I’m going to vomit. “I know you too well for this.”
Benji shakes his head, an uncomfortable smile worming its way onto his face. “You don’t know anything about me, Liz.”
“I know you well enough to know that you don’t want to do this. You’re not that sort of person.”
I keep talking because as long as I’m talking I can’t be afraid. Okay, well, I’m still afraid, but I’m not about to pee my pants. That’s an improvement.
“Shut up,” Benji replies.
“Do you think Thea would want you to do this?”
“Don’t talk about Thea.”
Thunder punctuates Benji’s growl, and in the silence that follows, I can hear the raindrops that begin to fall, hissing as they collide with the ground outside. I turn and watch as the grass outside shrivels and dies in mere seconds, my bones suddenly made from lead.
It’s here.