Page 5 of Forever

The fallen tree had been an old one back when it had still been up on its root system—not old-growth old, but its thick trunk had suggested a good fifty years’ worth of four seasons, and the proliferation of branches at the top made it seem like it had been healthy for a good, long period. Something had happened that had cut its life short, however, and as he came around to where it had broken free of its base, he shook his head at the ragged scarring that was obvious even in the moonlight. There was rot in the core, some kind of black staining of the wood in an invading pattern, maybe a fungus? He wasn’t sure. He’d never been into nature much, except as it provided coverage in situations when either he needed to defend himself or because he hadn’t wanted to be seen.

Glancing over his shoulder, he remembered him and Lydia getting stalked through a forest just like this. They’d hidden up in a deer stand, and he’d known better than she had the whys of it all. Dropping down from their perch, he’d attacked the aggressor, taken control of the man, and then told her to head back out to the main road and get the sheriff—and after she’d left, when he was sure she wouldn’t see or hear anything, he’d put a gun with a suppressor on its muzzle to the head of the threat to her life. Pulling the trigger, he’d stripped the body of weapons and hidden it in a shallow cave. When he’d returned to where he’d killed the guy, he’d looked up to the heavy gray sky and asked for rain to give things a little wash just in case any small-town lawmen decided to go CSI on the scene.

But that wasn’t because he’d been worried about murder charges. Back then, Lydia hadn’t known what he was, and he’d wanted to keep it that way.

He hadn’t known what she was, either.

Returning to the present, it was a relief to pivot and plant his bony ass on the fallen tree. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a black pouch with a corroded zipper. Inside? Two things. Well, one object and a group of things.

The root cause of his own black fungus, as it were.

After he put his Jack and soda aside on the bark, he shook out a cigarette from the red-and-whitepack, the paper tube with its packing of tobacco and blunt, buff-colored terminal, at the very core of his health issues. Putting the business end of the coffin nail between his lips, he remembered the first time he had broken his post-diagnosis nicotine quit. It had been two weeks ago. He’d wandered out of that stone fortress of Phalen’s, a fresh cellophane pack in the pocket of his coat, his just-need-to-clear-his-head lie still floating in the air back at the big house, the anxious eyes of the woman he loved more than anything else boring into his back as he’d hobbled to the woods.

Like maybe she’d known what he intended on doing.

The fact that his hand didn’t shake as he brought the lit Bic to the tip seemed to suggest that some part of him had a suicidal impulse. And the inhale went okay, the familiar suck and swallow of smoke a reflex, the soothing sensation that came over him a Pavlovian response, his central nervous system already anticipating the effect of the nicotine even before the chemicals changed his internal—

The exhale did not go well. A coughing fit hit him like a linebacker, his diseased lungs flat-out rejecting the smoke. Choking, gagging, he knew enough to keep the liquor off to the side even though there was a temptation to try to ease things with a sip. The irritants of smoking and alcoholwere a one-two punch that was going to drop him, and as he finally caught his breath, he didn’t need the results of all that nuclear medicine testing from this morning to know what was going on.

The second treatment option of immunotherapy hadn’t worked any better than the chemo had, and now he had exhausted all conventional avenues.

Like a complete jackhole, he tried the inhale thing again, and on the exhale, he turned the cigarette around and stared at the lit tip—while he wondered why, if he was willing to smoke, he couldn’t get on board with the experimental drug C.P. had cooked up in her lab—

When he started coughing again, he tried to get control of the bronchial spasms. As they got worse and worse, to the point where he began to cough up blood, he tripod’d, tilting over his thighs, planting his palms on his knees, holding himself at an angle so his lungs had the best chance of expanding fully in his rib cage. He had to time the sucks of cold air with breaks in the hacking, his face flushing from the workout, a sweat breaking out under his jacket—

It should have passed by now.

Usually, it was over by—

In the back of his mind, a flare of panic went off. He was too far out for anyone in the house to hear him, and though there were security cameras out here in the acreage, there was no telling whetheranyone was monitoring them, with no imminent threat present.

With a fumbling hand, he went for his phone, and as he dropped it, his watery eyes refused to focus and he thought…

Maybe this was it. And how stupid. To come here away from everything and smoke in the cold and die.

Just as his sight started to go dark and his head spun, as his body began to list to one side, as he considered the horrible idea that he would be found out here in the woods, a frozen block of cancer, dead for a dumb reason—

He caught a full(ish) breath. And another. And a third.

As the coughing jag sputtered out into nothing more than sporadic huffing, he did not try it again with the cigarette. He just watched the thing burn, the stalk of ashes distorting on the end like the finger of a wicked witch. When the cinders fell off because of the wiggly rabbit ears of his fore- and middle fingers, he bent down and got his phone from the bed of leaves at his feet. Wiping the screen on his jeans, he stared at the dark face of the thing—and remembered a plan he’d had months ago.

It had been a good plan, a plan to help Lydia after he was gone, a way to connect her with her community. And he’d been really frickin’ urgentabout it all. Unfortunately, medical tests, medications, and side effects had wiped him out, and then bad news after bad news had eaten into not just his time but his energy, too. The slog through the various protocols had been a blur and also an eternity, the days and nights flying by at the same time he trudged through them, the end result being that spring, summer, and almost all of the fall had passed without him following through on what he’d intended on doing right after he’d been diagnosed.

And maybe there was another reason he hadn’t met up with that mysterious contact. In a quiet, secret place in his heart, one that he didn’t even let Lydia into, he had hoped that it would all work, that the drugs would do their thing and kill the cancer cells, and he’d be around to participate in her life.

And protect her if she needed it.

Nope.

After all the volunteered-for suffering of the remedies, on top of the not-volunteered-for shit of the disease, he was now here, a bump on a log, unable to smoke or drink, having wasted most of his good quality of life on all kinds of lottery tickets that had scratched off big fat nothings.

But he was alive for this moment and he was done fucking around.

Bringing the phone up, he steadied his elbow onhis knee, opened the device with facial recognition, and navigated to the note section with his palsied fingertip. The number he’d received from a clandestine contact back in April was right where he’d left it, the last entry he’d made, the only entry he’d made.

Initiating a call, he made a fist with his free hand and coughed into the thumb end. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. Four—

The recording of a deep female voice cut in:You’ve reached the voicemail of Alex Hess. Leave a message.

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