Dark Matter (33 page)

And so I tell her what I proposed to the chat room last night and watch the expression on her face move through flashes of anger, horror, shock, and fear.

She says finally, “You want to raffle me off? Like a fucking fruit basket?”

“Daniela—”

“I don't need you doing something heroic.”

“No matter what happens, you're going to have me back.”

“But some other version of you. That's what you're saying, right? And what if he's like this asshole who ruined our lives? What if he isn't good like you?”

I look away from her, out across the lake, and blink through the tears.

She asks, “Why would you sacrifice yourself so someone else can be with me?”

“We all have to sacrifice ourselves, Daniela. That's the only way it works out for you and Charlie. Please. Just let me make your lives in Chicago safe again.”

When we walk back inside, Charlie is at the stovetop flipping pancakes.

“Smells great,” I say.

He asks, “Will you make your fruit thing?”

“Sure.”

It takes me a moment to locate the cutting board and a knife.

I stand next to my son, peeling the apples and dicing them and adding the pieces to a saucepan filled with simmering maple syrup.

Through the windows, the sun climbs higher and the forest fills with light.

We eat together and talk comfortably, and there are moments where it feels almost normal, where the fact that this is likely the last breakfast I'll ever share with them isn't at the forefront of my mind.

In the early afternoon, we head to town on foot, walking down the middle of the faded country road, the pavement dry in the sun, snow-packed in the shadows.

We buy clothes at a thrift shop and then go to a matinee in a little downtown cinema showing a movie that came out six months ago.

It's a stupid romantic comedy.

It's just what we need.

We stay through the credits, until the lights come up, and as we step out of the theater, the sky is already growing dark.

At the edge of town, we take a shot with the only restaurant that's open—the Ice River Roadhouse.

We sit at the bar.

Daniela orders a glass of pinot noir. I order a beer for me, a Coke for Charlie.

The place is crowded, the only thing going on on a weeknight in Ice River, Wisconsin.

We order food.

I drink a second beer, and then a third.

Before long, Daniela and I are buzzed and the noise of the roadhouse growing.

She puts her hand on my leg.

Her eyes are glassy from the wine, and it feels so good to be close to her again. I'm trying not to think about how every little thing that happens is my last experience of it, but the knowledge weighs so heavy.

The roadhouse keeps filling up.

It's wonderfully noisy.

A band begins to set up on a small stage in the back.

I'm drunk.

Not belligerent or sloppy.

Just perfectly lit up.

If I think about anything other than the moment, I tear up, so I don't think about anything other than the moment.

The band is a country-and-western four-piece, and soon Daniela and I are slow-dancing in a mass of people on a tiny dance floor.

Her body is pressed against mine, my hand cupping the small of her back, and between the steel guitar and the way she's looking at me, I want nothing more than to take her back to our creaky bed with the loose headboard and knock all the picture frames off the walls.

Daniela and I are laughing, and I'm not even sure why.

Charlie says, “You guys are wasted.”

It might be an overstatement, but not by much.

I say, “There was steam to blow off.”

He says to Daniela, “Hasn't felt like this in the last month, has it?”

She looks at me.

“No, it hasn't.”

We stagger up the highway in the dark, no headlights behind us or ahead.

The woods utterly silent.

Not even a breath of wind.

As still as a painting.

I lock the door to our room.

Daniela helps me lift the mattress off the bed.

We set it on the floorboards and kill the lights and take off all our clothes.

It's chilly in the room, even with the space heater running.

We climb naked and shivering under the blankets.

Her skin is smooth and cool against mine, her mouth soft and warm.

I kiss her.

She says that she needs me inside of her so much it hurts.

Being with Daniela isn't like being home.

It defines home.

I remember thinking that the first time I made love to her fifteen years ago. Thinking that I'd found something I didn't even know I'd been searching for.

It holds even more true tonight as the hardwood floor groans softly beneath us and the moonlight steals between the break in the curtains just enough to light her face as her mouth opens and her head tilts back and she whispers, so urgently, my name.

We're sweaty, our hearts racing in the silence.

Daniela runs her fingers through my hair, and she's staring at me in the dark the way I love.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Charlie was right.”

“About?”

“What he said on the walk home. It
hasn't
been like this since Jason2 came here. You aren't replaceable. Not even by you. I keep thinking about how we met. At that point in our lives, we could've crashed into anyone. But
you
showed up at that backyard party and saved me from that asshole. I know part of our story is the electricity of our connection, but the other part is equally miraculous. It's the simple fact that you walked into my life at the exact moment you did. You instead of someone else. In some ways, isn't that even more incredible than the connection itself? That we found each other at all?”

“It's remarkable.”

“What I realized is that the same thing happened yesterday. Of all the versions of Jason, it was you who pulled that crazy stunt at the diner, which landed you in jail, which brought us safely together.”

“So you're saying it's fate.”

She smiles. “I think I'm saying we found each other, for a second time.”

We make love again and fall asleep.

In the dead of night, she wakes me, whispers in my ear, “I don't want you to leave.”

I turn over onto my side and face her.

Her eyes are wide open in the dark.

My head hurts.

My mouth is dry.

I'm caught in that disorienting transition between inebriation and hangover, when the pleasure slowly morphs into pain.

“What if we just kept driving?” she says.

“To where?”

“I don't know.”

“What are we supposed to tell Charlie? He has friends. Maybe a girlfriend. We just tell him to forget all that? He's finally happy at school.”

“I know,” she says, “and I hate it, but yes, that's what we tell him.”

“Where we live, our friends, our jobs—those things define us.”

“They're not
all
that defines us. As long as I'm with you, I know exactly who I am.”

“Daniela, I want nothing more than to be with you, but if I don't do this thing tomorrow, you and Charlie will never be safe. And no matter what happens, you will still have me.”

“I don't want some other version of you. I want you.”

I wake in the dark to my pulse pounding in my head and my mouth bone-dry.

Pulling on my jeans and shirt, I stagger down the hall.

With no fire tonight, the sole source of illumination on the entire ground level is a timid nightlight plugged into an outlet above the kitchen counter.

I take a glass from the cabinet and fill it at the tap.

Drink it down.

Fill it again.

The central heating cuts off.

I stand at the sink, sipping the cold well water.

The cabin so quiet I can hear the floor popping as the wood fibers expand and contract in distant corners of the house.

Through the window over the kitchen sink, I stare into the woods.

I love that Daniela wants me, but I don't know where we go from here. I don't know how to keep them safe.

My head is spinning.

A little ways beyond the Jeep, something catches my attention.

A shadow moving across the snow.

Adrenaline surges.

I set the glass down, head to the front door, and step into my boots.

On the porch, I button my shirt and walk into the trodden snow between the steps and the car.

Then out past the Jeep.

There.

I see what caught my eye from the kitchen.

As I approach, it's still moving.

Larger than I first thought.

The size of a man.

No.

Jesus.

It is a man.

The path along which he's dragged himself is plain to see by the streaks of blood that look black in the starlight.

He's groaning as he crawls in the direction of the front porch. He's never going to make it.

I reach him, kneel beside him.

It's me, right down to the coat and the Velocity Laboratories backpack and the ring of thread.

He's holding his stomach with one hand, which is covered in steaming blood, and he looks up at me with the most desperate eyes I've ever seen.

I ask, “Who did this to you?”

“One of us.”

“How'd you find me here?”

He coughs up a mist of blood. “Help me.”

“How many of us are here?”

“I think I'm dying.”

I look around. It only takes me a second to lock on the pair of blood-tinged footprints moving away from this Jason toward the Jeep, and then on around the side of the cabin.

The dying Jason is saying my name.

Our name.

Begging for my help.

And I want to help him, but all I can think is—they found us.

Somehow, they found us.

He says, “Don't let them hurt her.”

I look back at the car.

I didn't notice at first, but now I see that all the tires have been slashed.

Somewhere in the near distance, I hear footsteps in the snow.

I scan the woods for movement, but the starlight doesn't penetrate the denser forest farther out from the cabin.

He says, “I'm not ready for this.”

I look down into his eyes as my own panic builds. “If this is the end, be brave.”

A gunshot shreds the silence.

It came from behind the cabin, near the lake.

I race back through the snow, past the Jeep, sprinting toward the front porch, trying to process what's happening.

From inside the cabin, Daniela calls my name.

I climb the steps.

Crash through the front door.

Daniela is coming down the hallway, wrapped in a blanket and backlit by the light spilling out of the master bedroom.

My son approaches from the kitchen.

I lock the front door behind me as Daniela and Charlie converge in the foyer.

She asks, “Was that a gunshot?”

“Yeah.”

“What's happening?”

“They found us.”

“Who?”

“I did.”

“How is that possible?”

“We have to leave right now. Both of you head to our bedroom, get dressed, start getting our things together. I'm going to make sure the back door is locked, then I'll join you.”

They head down the hallway.

The front door is secure.

The only other way into the house is through the French doors that lead from the screened-in porch into the living room.

I move through the kitchen.

Daniela and Charlie will be looking to me to tell them what's next.

And I have no idea.

We can't take the car.

We'll have to leave on foot.

As I reach the living room, my thoughts come in a raging stream of consciousness.

What do we need to bring with us?

Phones.

Money.

Where's our money?

In an envelope in the bottom dresser drawer of our bedroom.

What else do we need?

What can we not forget?

How many versions of me tracked us here?

Am I going to die tonight?

By my own hand?

I feel my way through the darkness, past the sleeper sofa, to the French doors. As I reach down to test the handles, I realize—it shouldn't be this cold in here.

Unless these doors were recently opened.

As in a few seconds ago.

They're locked now, and I don't remember locking them.

Through the glass panes, I can see something on the patio, but it's too dark to make out any detail. I think it's moving.

I need to get back to my family.

As I turn away from the French doors, a shadow rises from behind the sofa.

My heart stops.

A lamp blinks on.

I see myself standing ten feet away, one hand on the light switch, the other pointing a gun at me.

He's wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts.

His hands are covered in blood.

Coming around the sofa with the gun aimed at my face, he says quietly, “Take your clothes off.”

The slash across his face identifies him.

I glance behind me through the French doors.

The lamplight illuminates just enough of the patio for me to see a pile of clothes—Timberlands and a peacoat—and another Jason lying on his side, his head in a pool of blood, throat laid open.

He says, “I won't tell you again.”

I start undoing the buttons of my shirt.

“We know each other,” I say.

“Obviously.”

“No, that cut on your face. We had beers together two nights ago.”

I watch that piece of information land, but it doesn't derail him like I'd hoped.

He says, “That doesn't change what has to happen. This is the end, brother. You'd do the same and you know it.”