The Divide: Origins (26 page)

When she landed on the other side, she
looked around to see that no one was there. She was sure that guards would be
walking around the city, but the place pretty much looked like a ghost town at
the moment. Rebecca had no idea where Max would be, and Raines had changed so
much. She barely recognized it. Just when she started to feel overwhelmed, she
saw a guard making his rounds on the other side of the town square. He might
know where Max was being kept. She pulled her knife and made her way to the
square while making sure to stay out of sight. As he was coming up the other
side of the street, she hid around the corner and waited. In that moment, she
found herself smiling. Rebecca had never been the type to enjoy murder, but
these people were responsible for hurting the man she loved. After she got
everything she could from him, she was going to enjoy seeing the life drain
from his eyes. As the guard walked passed her, she stepped behind him and put
the knife to his throat.

“Drop your gun, or we can see how long it
takes you to bleed out,” Rebecca said.

He did what she said, and then she
continued.

“I’m looking for Max Green. Your people
took him from Norak. Tell me where he is, and I’ll just knock you out. If you
don’t, I won’t hesitate to kill you and find a guard who will tell me what I
need to hear.”

“As far as I know, he’s still at the
doctor’s office. You probably won’t like what you . . .” he managed to say
before Rebecca slit his throat.

She looked down at him and took some
pleasure in his suffering. He was probably one of the men who attacked their
town. This was his fault, and a quick death was too good for him. Still, it was
nice to be able to give him that death.

After the man died, Rebecca grabbed his
gun and headed for the old doctor’s office. There was a light on upstairs. The
doc was still in. Lucky for him, she thought sarcastically and walked to the
door. It was locked, but Max had taught her a thing or two about picking locks
over the last two years. She took out her old lock picking set, and within a
couple of minutes, she had the door open. She walked quietly upstairs. What she
found at the top was surprising, however. There was only a doctor asleep on the
couch by an empty bed where she had to assume Max used to be. Did that mean Max
was dead?

“Do
not
move!” Rebecca exclaimed as she raised her gun.

“Hold on. I didn’t want to do it. He made
me,” the doctor said.

“What exactly did he make you do? Is Max
still alive?”

“When Max first got here, Troy had some
fun with him. He cut his ear off and gouged one of his eyes out. It was
terrible. I was outside the room as he did it. You should know that all I ever
heard from that point was Max saying that it was worth it to protect the people
he loved. I don’t know what that meant, but he cared deeply for you, Zoe, and
Liam. I also heard a lot of praying.

After Troy was done with him, he gave me
some orders. I was supposed to get the body parts together to send back to
Norak. There was a catch, though. I had to keep him alive. We’ve collected
blood for the last year, so if I cut off one piece of him at a time, it wasn’t
impossible to do. I started with something simple. I cut off one of his
fingers. I had never done anything like that to someone, and I couldn’t bring
myself to do more. I got the bleeding under control and waited until morning.
The whole time, I was trying to build up the courage to do what I had to. I
just couldn’t, though, so I came up with a different plan. I was going to
inject Max with something that would kill him. At that point, I could take the
body parts humanely. When Mr. Leland came knocking, I could just tell him that
he gave out during the amputations. He would be angry, but things would work
out, or so I thought. I gave Max too much time. He wanted to leave the people
he loved with some last thoughts from him. I wrote letters to each of you as he
told me exactly what to say. After we were done, I got the medicine ready. Just
as I slipped the needle into his arm, Leland walked in. He was angry when he
figured out what I was trying to do. They took him to a place just outside of
town where some of the gatherers stay when they can’t make it back in time.
Troy said he was going to see to it that Max got exactly what he deserved
there. I’m sorry, Rebecca. I didn’t have a choice. This one was all Troy. He
told me he would kill my family if I didn’t help him. I’m still afraid that he
might when he comes back.”

“You’re a coward. You’re blaming all of
this on Troy. You could’ve said no. So what if you and your family would’ve
died? Is there no humanity left in you?”

“We don’t live in that kind of world
anymore, Rebecca. You’ve got to look out for your own above all else. You know
that.”

“You’re right. We don’t. You’re going to
do two things for me. First, you’re going to tell me where to find Troy Leland.
He’s going to die tonight. Secondly, you’re going to give me the letters Max
wrote.”

“You can’t get
out.
. .”

“I’m not interested in what I can’t do.
You need to tell me what I can do right now.”

“There are some houses about five miles
east of the city that have fireplaces and wood stocked. Some of the scavengers
use them when they have to stay overnight. You can go there and try to take
revenge on him. I’m sure Max is dead by now, though, so you might want to
forget about it and lay low here until I can figure out a way to smuggle you
out of the city. I honestly don’t know how you’ll get out of here, though. If I
did, my family wouldn’t still be here.”

“There’s still something I don’t get. Why
did he take Max out of the city to kill him?”

“He caught wind of the attack Norak is
planning. We’ve had spies watching your city, and it was evident that
retaliation was coming soon. He didn’t want there to be any chance of you
taking Max back before he could have his fun with him. Plus, I think Troy’s a
coward. I would never say that to his face, but he would’ve left before the
fighting started, even if he didn’t have Max.”

 
“I’m going to need those letters now.
I’ll save Max, but just in case you’re right and he’s gone, I want to know what
his last words were,” Rebecca said.

He grabbed them out of a drawer next to
the bed and handed them to Rebecca. She was tempted to read them right there,
but Max might not have much time. She had to get out of Raines as soon as
possible. First, she needed to take care of one important thing, though. This
doctor had hurt the man she loved, and even if he tried to give Max relief by
delivering a mercy killing for him, this guy was still her enemy. He was one of
them, and as soon as she left, he would probably tell a superior what happened
in hopes that his loyalty would keep his family safe when Leland got back. Then
they would be on her trail, and there would be no chance of saving Max.

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca said.

“For what?”

“Your family’s loss,” she said and lunged
at him.

Her knife buried into his chest, and she
twisted it ever so slightly. As the life drained from his eyes, Rebecca felt
herself changing. The people of this world had become savage after they lost
the ones they loved. She didn’t have that problem at the time of the disaster,
but now she knew how they felt. They had created a monster, and she was going
to make sure that every last person responsible for hurting Max felt all the pain
inside her.

Chapter 26

Bury The Sun

Rebecca walked downstairs and made her
way to the door. She glanced outside and found that the street was clear. Then
she headed for the east gate. As she got closer, she saw that two men were
guarding it. One of them was simply standing in front of the gate, but the
other was pacing around the building a little away from it. He probably called
himself patrolling, but the truth was that he was just trying to keep warm.
Rebecca snuck up behind him and buried her knife into his back. After a few
seconds, he died, and she started making a plan for killing the second guard.
Getting him would be trickier. She couldn’t sneak up on him, and shooting him
would make too much noise. Maybe I can bluff my way through the door. What else
do I have to lose, she wondered.

Rebecca pulled her gun and walked out
into the open toward him. The guard grabbed his weapon when he saw her, but he
didn’t fire. He knew that if he did, she wouldn’t hesitate to squeeze off a
shot either. When she got within a few feet of him, he spoke.

“That’s far enough. If you take one more
step, you’ll die,” he said.

“Do you think I care? I only came here to
get the man I love. What I found was that your people had taken him to another
location to continue to rip him apart piece by piece. He’s probably dead, you
know. I would love nothing more than for you to pull that trigger, so I could
see him again. We could die here in the streets together. I would get to see
Max, and at least one person who was responsible for what happened to him would
be dead. Go ahead. Shoot me.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe. If I am, your people drove me to
it.”

“I’m just a guard. I didn’t even go with
them to Norak. I heard about what happened, but that’s all.”

“Then there might be hope for you yet.
Throw your gun down, and let me leave. If you do that, I won’t hurt you.”

“Yeah, right. If I drop my gun, the first
thing you’ll do is
kill
me.”

“If I wanted to do that, I would’ve
already done it. Like I said, I don’t care what happens to me anymore. What’s
it going to be? Are you going to open the gate and see your family again, or do
we have to die in these streets?”

The man threw his gun down and opened the
gate. Rebecca walked out and then turned around. While the guard was closing
it, she grabbed him and plunged the knife into his stomach.

“Why?” he asked as she pulled it out, and
he hit the ground.

“Because it doesn’t matter if you were
there or not. You knew what Raines was doing, and you’re still here. A sin by
omission is still a sin. That wound will only take two or three minutes to kill
you. I hit some vital organs. You’ll bleed out quickly. It’s better than you
deserve.”

The man started to howl in pain. Rebecca
took her gun back out and pointed it at him to keep him quiet. He stayed as
silent as he could until he passed out from the pain. Rebecca knew he wouldn’t
ever wake up again, so she started moving in the direction of where the houses
supposedly were. It felt like she walked forever in the freezing cold. It was
odd, but she wasn’t concerned for herself. Rebecca kept thinking about how Max
was. He was probably dead. She knew that, but when she closed her eyes, she
could still see the amazing life she had planned for them. That couldn’t be all
in her head. It had to be a reality.

When she finally found the houses and
went inside one of them, Rebecca discovered something heartbreaking. Blood
covered the floor of the kitchen. She found a man lying in a pool of blood a
few feet away from the entrance. At first, she felt encouraged. This man wasn’t
Max. What if he had escaped? Her mind ran wild with fantasies where Max would
be coming back to her. When she stepped into the living room, her world was
shattered, however. A man lay dead in the floor. He had been beaten beyond
recognition, but his hair was the same color as Max’s. His height and build
looked to be the same, too. Finally, she checked for the most obvious signs
that this was Max. He was missing an ear, an eye, and a finger. Max had fought
back, but it wasn’t enough. The love of her life was dead.

Rebecca
collapsed to the floor and sobbed. For over a half hour, that’s all she could
do as she stared at the only man she had ever truly loved. Finally, she crawled
over to him and held Max’s head in her arms. He was gone. She had been too
late, and now there was nothing that could be done. Rebecca didn’t know what to
do. He looked cold. She knew she was only staring at an empty vessel, but even
so, she had to keep him warm. Rebecca started a fire. Then she got some
blankets from a closet and covered him up. Afterward, she sat by him and read
his last words.

“Rebecca, I’m so sorry. I know they’re
sending you parts of me, and that must be terrible. It would drive me crazy to
know that there was someone hurting you and I couldn’t do anything about it. I
should have found a way to protect everyone and stay alive, too. I couldn’t,
though, and now I’m having the man
who’s
about to kill
me write this for you.

How things have ended isn’t important.
There’s something I want you to understand about our time together. It saved
me. Before I knew you, I was married to a woman with a lot of problems. She was
crazy. It wasn’t her fault, but I think it drove me nuts, too. When I killed
her, I didn’t even remember it for years. I thought that I had killed her and
my own daughter. In my eyes, I was the scum of the earth. There was no
redemption. A monster like me didn’t deserve love, and I certainly wasn’t
capable of loving anyone else. That’s what I thought back then. I was too
far gone
, and there was no going back to the person I used
to be. Then I met you. It wasn’t love at first sight. I didn’t even know you,
and I thought I was going to have to kill you. I viewed you as a threat, but
something held me back. I didn’t want to hurt you or any woman ever again. Zoe
helped me see what was right. Everything that I did in my past was wrong, but I
had valid reasons for doing them. I was messed up, and after the disaster, I
started healing. It’s probably odd because everyone’s lives stopped after that
comet hit, but mine didn’t really start up again until that moment. I was
sitting in a prison surrounded by thoughts of the worst thing that I had ever
done. That was going to be my world until the day I died. You gave me love and
a family. You showed me that I could be the man I used to be. Rebecca, you
brought me back, and that’s a rare thing. Over the last two and a half years,
we’ve seen people go through and do some horrible things, and they were changed
forever. The old them was replaced by someone cold and loveless. That’s who I
was, and by some miracle, you saw something good in me. I can never thank you
enough for that. I love you. It probably seemed like I was saving you guys on
our trip to Texas, but you were really the ones who saved me. I got to feel loved,
give it in return, and even realized that my actions could be forgiven thanks
to three special people. None of them were more special than you. You are my
heart, and if I’m dead now, then you’re all that’s left of me. Make sure you
love and guide Zoe and Liam in the way they should go. It’s going to be hard
for them to live in this world their whole lives. It’ll be hard on you, too,
but we both know you’re so much stronger than you look. Sometimes I think
you’re the strongest of all of us. Zoe was affected by all of this. She lost
her innocence. Liam wanted to die after his family was slaughtered, and then
there was me. I was almost completely gone before we met. You, on the other
hand, stayed composed through all of this. I had so much on me all the time,
but you were the glue that held me together through it all. I’ll miss you. I
know we’ll see each other again some day.

There’s one more note for you, but I
don’t want you to read it now. I’m sure you’ll mourn, and you might even lose a
part of yourself for a while, but when you start to feel like the old Rebecca
again, I want you to read my last message to you. I hope that won’t take very
long. It would be a shame if the woman I love weren’t herself for too long. I
love you from here to eternity. Goodbye, my great love.”

“Damn it, Max! I came to get you! Why
couldn’t you have just held out for a little longer?” Rebecca yelled and threw
the notes down.

When she looked over at Max, she knew why
he had to let go. He had been beaten so badly. There was no telling how much
pain he was in before he tried to escape. Rebecca cried as she thought about
what Max’s final hours were probably like.

After she collected herself, Rebecca
walked into the kitchen and found some whiskey in a cabinet. Apparently, the
scavengers of Raines didn’t bring
everything
back with them. It seemed like a good night for alcohol, so she took it back to
the couch and drank as she read his other letters. He had left one for Zoe and
Liam each. Zoe’s was very emotional to her.

“Zoe, I’m sorry I couldn’t see you grow
up and marry Liam. I want you to know something, though. I’m proud of you.
You’ve grown so much since we met. You had lost so much back then, and I was
worried the world was going to permanently change you. It didn’t, though. You
learned to be strong, but at the same time, you regained that innocence that
was once gone. You learned to trust and love again. You meant the world to me.
Wherever I am now, know that you still do. When I found you, I was on the edge
of being a man I didn’t want to be. I didn’t join in with the killing of your
friend’s family, but I didn’t stop it either. The only possible redemption I
had left was in you. I saved you, and I’m so glad I did. You gave me my soul
back on that day. I gained a daughter, too. I know I could never replace your
dad, but you were definitely everything I had always dreamed of in a little
girl. Zoe, you were a second chance for me. Along with the others, we made a
family that against all odds, worked so well. Thank you for that. I love you.
Please, be happy, and take care of Rebecca for me. She’s strong, but we loved
each other so much. She’ll have a hard time. Be the rock for her that she was
for me when I needed it most. Don’t forget to take time for yourself, too. The
worst thing you could do is let my death lead you down a dark path. There is so
much light in you that I think I caught a little of it for myself. Don’t ever
let it go out. Goodbye, my daughter. I love you.”

Rebecca knew that she shouldn’t be
reading his private words to the others, but she had to. These were Max’s last
words. She wanted to know everything that had been on his mind as he took his
last breaths. The final letter was to Liam.

“Liam, I wish I could be there for you. I
feel like there was still so much I wanted to teach you. Who am I kidding,
though? You’re a man now. You’ve become self-reliant, and you’re exactly the
person Zoe needs. When we first met, I thought you were broken in an
irreversible way. I’m sorry for that. I was once like you. I sat in a prison
cell and contemplated if death would be easier than my reality. It took me
years to get back to being who I was. It only took you a few days. You even
saved me back at that house on the way to Texas. I’m so proud of you. I’ve
never had a son before, but I think of you as one.

There’s something I have to ask you for.
I’m not going to be there to give Zoe advice or comfort her in times of crisis.
You’ve always been the one who makes her smile, and I’ve been the person she
comes to for life lessons. I don’t expect you to know any more than she does,
but here’s what I want. You need to walk through life with her and experience
all the good and bad together. Learn how to live the most important parts of
life together, and don’t forget to make time to just laugh, love, and be the
amazing people you are. I love you. Goodbye for now.”

Rebecca folded the three letters and
turned her attention toward the last one. Max had said not to read it until she
was over his death, but when was that ever going to be? Was it even possible
for her to resume her normal life after he was gone? What was even normal for
her? Before they met, she dedicated all of her time to work. He was the first
person she actually took the time to love. Max hadn’t known it, but he was a
light that pulled her out of a very dark place. Nothing could ever be all right
now that she was back in that place.

“Rebecca, I know you’re reading this
before you’ve gotten completely over everything. It’s okay. It’s just who you
are. I probably wouldn’t be able to wait on reading a letter from you either.
Listen closely because this is the most important thing I’ll ever tell you. You
can get over everything that has happened to you. Everyone we loved died during
the disaster, and we still made it out alive and formed new and even better
relationships with each other. There’s always hope, and even if it hurts now,
you’ll find someone you love just as much as me one day. That’s what I want for
you. There’s this glimmer in your eyes at all times, and it gave me hope when
we were together. Don’t let it slip away. Zoe and Liam are going to need all
the good parts of you. I need you to be happy, too. I won’t be able to rest
easy until I know you are.

What I’m going to say next sounds crazy,
but I need you to at least consider it. Forgive Troy Leland and the people of
Raines. Everything is settled now that I’m dead. He won’t bother you anymore.
Peace is worth swallowing your pride. I know you probably want to kill him. I
would, too, but it would be wrong. When hate creeps into our hearts, it can
consume us. We’ll find that we’re totally different people one day because we
allowed ourselves to give into the idea of revenge. I know. I’ve felt it, too.
I don’t want you to lose yourself, though. Move on with your life. Never forget
me and the love we shared, but let go of the hurt
.