Head Rush (35 page)

Dad’s handing a gun to Simon, whipping out a machine gun.

“Try not to kill them, Dad!” I say. “They’re sleepwalking!” Even the cops are usually under orders not to shoot to kill the cannibals unless necessary.

With the mobs at the locked door, there’s no way to get out, and Packard will never get in now. “I have to get to Packard.”

“Stay here,” Simon says. “I’ll find him. I’ll bust him in.”

Dad and Simon jump into the sea of mayhem. Dad’s slamming his arms at the sleepwalkers, keeping them back, fighting a dozen at once; he’s a human battering ram with his impenetrable exoskeleton. Increasingly, you can tell the cannibals by their bloody faces.

A camera flash—some reporters have climbed to the rafters.

No way would Otto have planned this. This is Otto’s plan gone wrong, I think. He was probably supposed to do something heroic. Save people from getting hurt. Something heroic against the Felix Five, who are all trying to eat the guests.

More shots. Screams.

Shelby takes my arm; “You have to stay safe.”

“Too late now.”

She looks alarmed. “You are hit?”

“No, but I fought him, didn’t you see?” I pull her toward the fighting. “I have to get to Packard.”

“Stay. He could be anywhere now. He knows you are here.”

I know she’s right, but I have to do something. Fighting rages in the pews. Do one of the cannibals come up here and kill me? Is that how I die? Ally’s run off, trying to get out the side door.

I get a glimpse of Otto, lying on his back, hovering his hand in the air. He seems to be waving away the pastor. The pastor retreats.

The doctor comes over to us. “We called for transport, but—” he pauses. “I don’t know what the status is between you, but best say your good-byes in the next few minutes.”

Gunshots in the pews—I’m shocked to see Ez, pumping a man full of bullets.

“Is Stuart,” Shelby announces in a loud whisper. “Must be Stuart.”

I look back over at Otto, lying there with just a doctor and a couple of government people, none of them friends. My heart lurches for him, for how frightened he must be, and in a daze, I pull away from Shelby, and I go to him. His companions eye me warily as I kneel down, take his bloody hand. Blood soaks the beige carpet around his head. The ground running red.

“Oh, Otto,” I say.

He pulls his hand from mine. “Go away. Leave!”

“Okay,” I say. “Okay.” I stand, unsure what to do. I’m frightened too.

“Wait, Justine! Come back,” Otto says. His eyes are glassy. He doesn’t seem to see anything.

“I’m here.” I kneel, take up his hand again, but he jerks it away.

“Just tell me—how bad is it?” Even now he needs me to tell him.

“It’s bad.” I won’t lie to him now.

“It’s coming true,” he mumbles. “The prophecy.”

A high-pitched crash. The stained-glass windows have been broken. A rush of light and cold air fills the church. “I know,” I say. “Yes.”

“Leave me.” But then he grabs my hand. “No, wait.” He seems angry—angry at me, angry at needing me. His breathing is shallow, and he’s white as a ghost, covered in sweat. “It would’ve been so good. What you ruined. I don’t care what she foretold—I had to try…”

As he trails off, I realize something—he could have changed his plan, changed everything. Would that have averted fate? Surely it would have averted this fate, but he went forward, just like me.

“You had to go for it,” I say. “We both had to go for it.” I touch his forehead with just the pad of my pointer finger, make a soothing line.

His breathing sounds wheezy. Vaguely, I realize the screaming has stopped. There’s a deeper
crash
and
crack
, like breaking wood. Shouting.

“All ruined,” he says. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“I know.” I make another soothing finger line. “You’ve always had a vision for something more. Better. It’s something I always loved about you.”

“I’m sorry, Justine—” Those familiar, brown eyes don’t quite fix on mine anymore. He looks toward my voice.

“You went forward. You had to. It couldn’t have been any other way…” I’m speaking to myself as much as him. I cling to his hand, sucked into our familiar and unholy fear-alliance.

The strength with which he grips back surprises me. “I’m scared.”

“I know.” I swallow against my tears. “So am I.”

More commotion. Otto’s grip is going slack. His hand slides from mine. “Otto?”

Arms around me. Packard! Bloody, but alive. I turn, throw my arms around him. “Packard!”

Packard’s breath gusts out with relief. “Thank God you didn’t fight him. Ally told me
Shelby
fought him. You’re going to be okay, Justine! I could’ve never lived with it, you dying. This is the right way, Justine.”

“No, wait—it’s not.”

“Don’t argue,” he says imperiously, gazing at me fiercely. “I love you more than my life.”

“But—”

“There’s no time!” He drops to his knees, takes Otto’s hand. “Henji!” He pats Otto’s cheek. “Henji!”

He thinks I didn’t fight Otto, which means, according to the prophecy, Packard will die instead of me.

Otto groans.

“It’s okay, old friend,” Packard says.

“Go away,” Otto wheezes.

“After all these years, you think I can’t see you? I know you’re more than this.”

“Go,” Otto says.

“Henji, you have to release the innocent people you still have sealed.” He leans in to speak over some new screaming. Shelby’s crouched at my other side. Packard goes on. “It’s not in you to damn them to that.”

Otto says. “You don’t know…”

“I know you.”

Otto’s eyes flutter closed.

Sirens sound. There are crashes. Another gunshot

Packard looks at me, desperation in his eyes. He’s envisioning our friends in the fun house for eternity. Packard thinks he’s the one prophesied to die any minute, and his concern is for our friends.

“I still feel them, Sterling,” Otto says. “After all these years. I always have.”

Packard’s face is ashen. “The
Goyces
.”

Otto nods.

“Forgive me, old friend,” Packard says. “You were a good boy. A loving boy. I tricked you into sealing those men in the walls. You didn’t know what you were doing—”

“Stop,” Otto says weakly. “
I knew.
I knew I was killing them, but I pretended I didn’t, because I hated it. I fought you because I hated it.”

“What?” Packard’s voice sounds hoarse. I don’t see Packard’s face, but he draws closer in to Otto, like a thirsty man, yearning for water, and this tells me everything. It’s huge, this gift that Otto has just given him, this knowledge that killing so many men and ruining Otto isn’t all on Packard.

“You knew you were killing them?” he whispers.

More sirens. Wailing and lights. Packard turns to me. An ocean of secret meaning flows between us, and I love him so much, I can barely think straight. “You’re not going to die,” I say.

He looks at me blankly. He doesn’t get it—he’s too consumed with this news, that the weight he’s carried for so long was a false weight.

Just then, Fawna appears, making her way up the steps like a postapocalyptic bride, all bright scraps and wild, blonde hair.

“I let it be on you,” Otto says. “I wanted it to be yours. Forgive me.”

“Of course I forgive you,” Packard says. “Of course.”

“Stop it.” Fawna pushes to Otto’s other side. “Both of you are ridiculous.”

“Fawna?” Otto whispers hoarsely. He can't see her.

“Yes, Henji.” Fawna scoots in to cradle Otto’s head in her lap. “Oh, Henji, if you hadn’t put them in the walls, dozens more children would have died or been taken. Packard, if you hadn’t gotten the idea for it, the same. Dozens more. Horribly dead. You argue about who forgives who. The tears of our friends would have filled seven oceans.”

There’s shooting outside. Medical teams and cops have arrived, but somebody keeps them from us.

Fawna murmurs to Otto how he protected her as best he could, and how he and Packard gave the other children hope.

“Fawna, where were you?” Otto asks. “Are you truly all right? I searched. For years.”

Fawna strokes Otto’s hair. She’s his only real family, I think. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “I’m safe now, Henji. Everything is as it should be.”

Otto sighs. “Packard—I dissolved the fields. Your people are free.”

“Thank you,” Packard says. “I knew you would.”

Otto squeezes his eyes shut.

He lived to keep Midcity safe, I think. Even killing Avery was a twisted version of that.

Fawna takes Otto’s hand and closes something into it. “See what I brought you. The coon hand.”

Otto puts the bright, beribboned thing to his cheek. Fawna’s whispering to him, telling him he’s safe, something about the brightness of his spirit—solemn words, oddly holy.

I pull Packard away—to give them privacy. Us, too. “I have to tell you—”

“You have nothing to tell me.”

I look into his eyes, and I find I’m not afraid. I pull him closer. “Listen—”

Another gunshot, like a whomp of lightning in my arm, my chest, throwing me off balance.

“Justine!” Packard clutches me by the arms. “Justine!”

A red stain spreads over my white bodice. “What the hell?” I feel confused. I didn’t think I was shot, but dimly I realize I must have been. It seems like magic, the way the blood spreads, so red on the white fabric.

He calls out, “We need help here!”

“I fought him,” I say.

“No,
Shelby
fought him!”

“I fought him before she did. And I would again.”

His expression changes—
cold fire
is all I can think.

I put my face to his shoulder. I just want him to hold me. I want to stay like this.

“No!” Packard whispers into my hair, arms tight around me.

“It’s
okay
.”

“No!” His fingers are like pincers on my arm. I feel woozy.

There’s activity around me—I try to keep track of it, but I can’t. I’m on the floor, unsure how I got there. When I open my eyes, I see faces I don’t recognize, but Packard has my hand, I know that.

My eyes feel heavy, and I close them, just for a moment. I hear voices I recognize—Dad. Shelby. People are upset. Arguing. A stab in my arm. Packard is squeezing my hand so hard I think it might break.

Chapter Twenty

I wake up to the muffled sound of voices. Lights so bright, they hurt my eyes, even though they’re closed. A voice. “She’s coming to.”

Packard?

Another voice says
no
. Arguing. I don’t understand what they’re arguing about. Where am I? Is this a dream? The thinking makes me feel like I need to rest. I should rest. Then I realize I am resting.

The next thing I remember, I feel something cool and wet on my face, my lips, the softest, coolest sensation in the world. Have I died? I open my eyes. The moon is bright in the window.

“Hey.” A whisper. “Hey.” Packard. He laughs. “Hey!”

I think I smile. I feel a smile inside me, anyway. “Hey.” I can barely eke out the word.

“You’re okay.” He lowers his voice. “Look, you were shot, but you’ll be okay. Got it? You’ll be okay.” It’s like a command. As though I won’t be okay if he doesn’t command it. Imperious, bossy Packard that I love.

I swallow through my sandpapery throat. Everything is floaty. “An elephant might be sitting on my chest,” I croak.

Suddenly he’s gone.

The next time I wake—an hour later? A day?—Shelby is there. “Hey you,” I whisper.

“Hey
you
.”

“It didn’t come true?” I ask.

“What?”

“Fawna’s thing.”

She smiles. “Does this look like hell to you?”

“It
is
a hospital.”

She snorts.

Two nurses kick her out. They change the bandage on my chest. I learn I was shot by a stray bullet, in the arm and chest both. A large artery was hit, and I lost a lot of blood. I’m hooked to IVs.

I quiz them on my condition, becoming more alert as they work. Soon I’m utilizing my medical knowledge to have a very high-level conversation with them, using words like
suture
instead of
stitches
, and I find out a lot of scary information about my injury. I almost died, but they assure me I’ll be okay.

“And there’s no reason to worry about vein star,” one of them says, apropos of nothing.

So it
is
on my chart! The information that I’m paranoid of vein-star syndrome. I’m about to protest, but then I think, let it be there. Let it be there with the flu shot and broken arms and blood tests and all the rest. That chart is about the past, not the future.

Still, why am I not dead? Why would fate spare me?

They want to know if I want visitors, and I do. There’s a commotion at the door. One of the nurses is trying to enforce a rule about two at a time, but Packard’s having none of it. The next thing I know, everyone’s crowding in: Shelby, Carter, Vesuvius, Simon, Helmut.

Dad wears a surgical mask. I don’t blame him; hospitals are the most bacteria-laden environments on the planet.

Packard’s hair is mussed, and he looks tired. Happy. “We’re going to break you out of here,” he says.

I spy Fawna, in her usual outrageous outfit.

“Fawna! I thought I would…you know…” I don’t want to say it aloud.

“Die?” Simon snorts. “It didn’t come true, Justine, isn’t that a shocker?”

Fawna flings a hand at him, like he’s an insignificant bug. “It has nothing to do with true or not true.” She draws nearer to me, pretty lips parted. “The one for whom the fate was cast was not you.”

“Huh?” I ask.

“Fate was made to be fucked with,” Simon says. “I think that’s what Hello Kitty Visigoth here means.”

Fawna crosses her arms, pointedly ignoring Simon. “You yourself changed, Justine. When the one who is to have the destiny changes in a profound way, the psychophysics of that person’s fate is forever changed. You transformed so much, so
essentially
, that the fate no longer applied. You are no longer that one.”

“Plain as day to
me
she’s different,” Dad says. “This prophecy, now—I certainly would’ve liked to have been informed about this prophecy.”