Page 62 of Antihero
The stone is a small mountain on the doctor’s torso, his chest. A foot peaks out from the side at an odd angle. Goodry wheezes underneath, mouth moving wordlessly.
Under a single stone, his mangled hand clutches the needle.
***
Needler
James runs. He’s gone in an instant, the gun with him.
Paige is beside me, her expression unreadable as she gazes down on Goodry. What must she be feeling right now? I’ve been in shock like that before, in the moments and hours after my world as I knew it changed.
Goodry is trying to speak to us. To ask for help, probably. My head throbs, blood drying against my brow. I already feel the fogginess of concussion, as though the unconsciousness that came when my head struck a brick is clinging to me still.
Goodry’s body twitches, but his eyes… they’re still alert. Still him. Every despicable part. I brace a hand over the bullet grazeon the side of my thigh. Most of the pain is coming from the impact of the fall into this basement. I landed on my hip, but the graze smarts, too. “He’ll live yet. Once someone comes for him.”
Paige tilts her head. She kneels, moving the rubble, prying the needle from Goodry’s broken fingers. His eyes roll to follow her.
I grasp her arm, and she turns to me. It’s deep, hidden, but there’s warmth in her gaze still. She’s still there. Still her.
“Don’t try to stop me,” she says evenly.
I let her go. “You need to hide.”
“You can’t be found with me. They’ll take you.”
She doesn’t know they’re here for me, too. Goodry’s call, the one he was making when I rammed into his office, I now realise, combined with the reports of Needler, and this place really will be swarming soon.
Her gaze confirms the fears I’ve had all along. She truly thought this would be it for her. The end. That I wouldn’t come to change things.
Her eyes flick to Charlotte. “Don’t let her die alone.”
With everything she’s just found out, I don’t know what she might be thinking, or planning after this. A flash of lightning turns her eyes to storm clouds.
Then Paige kneels beside the doctor, his eyeballs swivelling to her in fear, then following that fine tip of the needle as she places it, positioning right over the tear duct of his left eye. He tries to move, tries to fight. His noises turn pleading. He’s so afraid to lose his own mind, to lose anything. Horrible coward.
I turn away, going to Charlotte, where she’s dragged herself to prop her back against an old, tattered and burned couch. Paige positions a brick above the needle’s blunt end.
I hear the tap, almost delicate, then another.
When I kneel beside Charlotte, she’s staring up at the sky, looking more peaceful than I’ve ever seen her. The rain has picked back up again. Thunder rolls, lighting the sky. No morehelicopters in the air, the storm has turned too violent. “I need to get you out of here…” I begin.
“No,” she smiles faintly, hand bracing on my wrist, glassy eyes finding mine. “I need to stay here. With them.” The ghosts. She presses her scarf into my hand, glancing at my leg. I tie it around my thigh.
“I wanted to save you…” I say, grimacing as I tug the knot tight.
She squeezes my bloody hand with what strength she has left. “I didn’t want to be saved.”
“What did you want?”
“Peace,” Charlotte breathes, a last, wet inhale. Her eyes lock on mine, and her words are for me as she murmurs, “We all deserve peace.”
A flat jingle. Her keys, fallen to the cracked cement by her hip.
I close Charlotte’s eyes, and when I stand, Paige is gone.
I walk over and look down at Goodry. His left eye is just blood, the remaining one gazing up. Totally blank, but alive. He too, looks peaceful.
I leave him staring unflinchingly into the rain.
