Damage & Decay

Chapter 39

Part Four: Family Business

"Fear is only as deep as the mind allows."

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Eren open his eyes and realized that he'd been asleep . . . and that he was alone. The ranger station was in absolute darkness. Eren tensed, reaching for his sword, but his fingers fount nothing. He remembered then that he'd left the bokken in the bathroom.

"Nix . . . ?" he whispered.

Nothing.

Very slowly he shifted onto his knees and then climbed to his feet, staying low, listening for some sound. His shirt collar was still damp from her tears, so he knew he couldn't have been asleep for long. Half an hour maybe?

He went outside. Nix was at the corner of the rail, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her hair blowing in the breeze. There was a sliver of the moon and a splash of stars, and the light outlined her face and glistened on the tears that ran like mercury down her cheeks. He stood next to her, leaning his arms on the rail and looking out at the vastness of the sky. The starlight glimmered on the canopy of leaves, and the ocean of trees seemed to stretch away forever.

"Have you heard anything?" he whispered as they sat down on the edge of the catwalk, their feet hanging over into the lake of darkness.

"No."

"Good. I think we're safe," he said, then added lamely, "Up here, I mean."

She nodded. A mockingbird sang its schizophrenic melodies from a nearby tree.

Eren said, "When there's light we'll have to try and find out way back to town."

Nix just shook her head, and the denial had so many possible meanings that Eren left his questions unasked.

"Marco," she said. "Is he . . . ?"

"No, he's okay. Or will be. They hit him pretty hard in the head, but they say he's going to make it."

Eren saw Nix steeling herself for the next question, and he was pretty sure he knew what it was going to be.

"My mom," she began, and he quietly curled his fingers around the lip of the catwalk's metal floor. "They said that she was . . . They said that she'd . . ." Nix stopped and shook her head, trying it another way. "They wanted to leave a present for Armin. That's what they called it. A 'present.'"

"It wasn't like that," Eren said. "We got there pretty quick. Your mom was still . . . your mom. Armin held her all the way up to the last, and she held onto him. It was . . . I don't know. I've never seen anything like it. But then she was . . . gone. It didn't look like she was in pain when it happened. She just went to sleep."

"Sleep," Nix said in a soft echo. "And . . . after? Did she . . . I mean, did they let her . . . God, Eren, don't make me say  it!"

"No," he soothed. "No. She never returned. There wasn't time. Armin did what was necessary."

"Armin?"

"Yes. With a sliver. He did it fast and quick. She never knew. And he held her afterward."

Nix made no comment, but he could feel  her pain. She sat and stared into the darkness of her own thoughts as the wheel of the night turned above them.

"Why did they come after you, Nix?"

She turned to him in the dark. "It was because o that card. The Zombie Card with the girl on it."

"I don't get it."

"Zak Matthias got one too. I ran into him yesterday. He was on his way home from the store with his Zombie Cards, and I asked to see them. He was kind of weird about it, but he showed them to me. When I saw the card for the Lost Girl, I told him that I'd seen that picture before. He seemed really interested and asked where, and I told him that my mom was friends with Mr. Pixis, the erosion artist. He came over to the house with Armin a few times, and they talked about the Lost Girl."