chapter 28; Olivia

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It was an hour before he came across anyone willing to part with their change for his bus ride home. Then another hour spent roaming the parts of town where the buses weren't running so late at night.

He felt a pain in his left foot the longer he walked, and Jaylin sat on the steps outside of an old saloon-style bar, rolling down the socks on his ankle. It didn't take exposing much skin before he saw the black roll in, eating at his veins and bubbling his flesh. It'd started again at his toes, and in the short time he'd been gone it'd worked its way up his ankle. He found it much too difficult to stand again, gripping the dirty metal railing of the steps and hauling himself up on one foot.

Each step felt like walking on nothing and as he took the next, his ankle rolled and he collapsed to his knees in the pavement.

A car coasted slowly on the street beside him—an old worn out Pontiac Firebird, the front light busted and the windshield cracked and splintered. The passenger window rolled down, and a washed out face peered from the darkness.

"Jaylin, get in." It took a moment to recognize her, but once Jaylin saw the glare of oncoming headlights shine on her face, he knew exactly his response.

"No." He shoved himself up to his feet, taking one more numb step forward.

"Jaylin please," Olivia pleaded, rolling the car up at a slow pace that matched his own. "I need your help. Please. I've been looking for you everywhere—everyone has."

"I don't have time for a quick fuck, Olivia." He gripped street signs for support as he walked on ahead. "I need to get home."

"I'll take you home. I'll drive you there. But I need to show you something first, Jaylin please."

He chewed the thought over. He still had two miles to walk on a busted ankle, and the feeling in his left foot had completely dissolved. He gritted his jaw and made way for the car. "Make it fast."

Olivia didn't drive him back to her apartment like he thought she would. She didn't try to con him into bed, didn't guilt him into staying in her frowzy, cramped little bedroom while Tyler could bust through the door at any given moment, liquor in his blood and a baseball bat at his hip. Instead, she drove him to Cedar Park and left the car parked beside a rose-bedded memorial statue.

He followed her along the path, through a split in the hedges and beyond the park's property. They walked for a while longer, into dense woods and mossy underfoot. Jaylin had started to slack behind, and only partly because he couldn't feel his own feet. Going anywhere with Olivia made him anxious, but deep into the forest? The last time he'd disappeared into a forest, he had blacked out for four solid days.

"It's in here," Olivia said, leaning between the towering trunks of two ponderosa pines—a white scarf blowing in the breeze on the lowest branch. "I tied that there so I could remember where he was."

"He?" Jaylin asked, following her into a gap between trunks. He could smell something awful—a fumy kind of gas that made him pinch his nostrils shut.

Olivia knelt on her knee-ripped jeans and shoved a pile of leaves aside, and at the sight of him, Jaylin buckled over forward and covered his mouth to keep from shouting.

Tyler's corpse laid beneath the scattered leaves, maggots gnawing away at what was left of him—a chunk taken from his face, and his eyeball hanging by the tendrils. It was all Jaylin saw before he spun around, looking anywhere else—anywhere but Tyler.

"Jaylin, I—"

"I need out," Jaylin gasped for breath, pawing his way blindly through the crowding pillars of trees. "I need—I can't breath," he gasped, working air through his body only when the smell of Tyler had gone.

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