She’s-coming-I-know-it-Jesus, Tregan thinks. Damon-where are you?
Nathan and I don’t have to rely on her mind to know she’s pacing the lounge room of the weatherboard house. We can see her from the shadows of the Maritime Museum next door because she’s got the curtains open and a lantern blazing. What I really wish I could see is the Fu Hao. So I could know that it’s made it. That this has been worth it, no matter what happens in the next few minutes.
Then, like storm waves hitting the shore, my mind’s buffeted by something rolling in from the ocean.
Jesus-what’s-that? Tregan thinks as the same force sweeps through her mind.
On the couch, Evan looks up at her like he’s been stung, eyebrows knotted fiercely and eyes burning black.
‘What is it?’ Nathan whispers to me.
‘I don’t know,’ is all I can say.
It’s like pressure’s building. As though the very atmosphere is becoming deep and brooding. Outside us. Inside us. Unknowable but powerful. Louder and stronger as it gets closer. It feels like I’m about to be . . . judged. Like this—force—has the power to strike me down, smite me for my sins past, present and future. There’s no time to repent, much less rationalise it, not with choppers coming up the hill behind us. I force myself to concentrate, centre myself and cut through this wall of mental noise like I did during the Snap.
‘I’m going to take out those two,’ I whisper, nodding at the guards out by the fence. They’re looking around, guns pointing every which way, as though searching for the source of the bewildering atmospheric vibration. ‘Then I’m going in to get Evan.’
Nathan nods. ‘What do you want me to do?’
Live: that’s what I want him to do. Jack doesn’t even know he’s here. With this much confusion he could escape. Maybe even make it to that jet ski.
‘Go,’ I say. ‘Get away.’
‘Not a chance,’ he says.
I smile even as my heart breaks. Staying with me’s a death sentence. We both know it.
‘We’ve done all right,’ he says. ‘Haven’t we?’
I don’t know if he means just now or surviving since the Snap. But before I can say ‘Yes’ to both a stronger pulse ripples our souls. It’s like a shockwave. An elevation. Terrible and wonderful. My mind fills with flashes. Depths. Darkness. Decades. For a moment I don’t feel like it’s coming to judge me anymore. I feel like I’m one with the force. All knowing. All seeing.
‘This thing,’ I say, terrified, awed. ‘Is it—?’
‘God?’ Nathan gasps. ‘I don’t know.’
Maybe it’s Death. We huddle closer together.
Nathan turns to me. I lean into him. Our lips brush. He pulls back. Tears on his cheeks. I wipe my eyes. I think this is it. But I’m not going to say goodbye.
‘When this is over,’ he says, ‘I hope we live on somehow.’
I kiss him. ‘Me too. Stay here and cover me?’
I break free of our embrace and scurry along the side of the Maritime Museum. The mental storm around me seems to intensify. I imagine myself strapped to a ship’s mast in a typhoon. Focus. Whatever this thing is, I can use it. Inside the house Tregan’s terrified, not least because Evan is shaking his head furiously and saying ‘No!’ over and over like a crazy person.
In the darkness, the guards are still distracted. I aim my AK-47 at the first one and put three rounds into his head. His partner spins in my direction and I stitch bullets up her flak jacket and into her face before she can get off a shot. Her body’s still falling when I burst from the shadows, firing into the side door of the weatherboard house. I kick it open and dive into a laundry space. Eject my empty clip and slam a new one home.
My assault has snapped Tregan out of her immersion in the mental noise. Jesus-she’s-inside-Are-they-dead?-They’re-dead-Please-don’t-hurt-me.
‘I’ve got a gun,’ Tregan shouts.
I stalk out of the hallway with my AK-47 and aim it at her.
‘I’ll shoot you,’ she says, thinking Oh-Jesus-Oh-Jesus as she sees I’m not scared in the slightest by the .38 she’s pointing at me with shaking hands. ‘I swear I will.’
As much as I’ve hated Tregan, I’m not here for vengeance. And she’s no threat to me: her hands are trembling so violently I doubt she could hit me even if the .38 wasn’t loaded with blanks.
I-will-shoot-you-For-Gary-For-Jack-You-you-I-will-shoot.
I look at my little brother. Evan sits on a couch, legs crossed, elbows on his knees, hands steepled under his chin as he grins at me like a gargoyle.
‘I’ll kill you,’ Tregan yells.
I-can-do-this-I’ll-shoot—
‘You can’t kill me.’ I say it to Evan. To Jack. His own voodoo mantra. I’m wrong about that, of course, but I hope my confidence in this moment will give the letter in my pocket all the supernatural hoodoo it needs. ‘You won’t kill me, Jack.’
Jack?-She’s-crazy-Insane-Her-brother-I-should-kill-her-Do-what-Damon-can’t—
My smile reminds Tregan I can hear her. She thinks she’s been living in mental solitude all these months. Has no idea Damon’s been mind-raping her the entire time. That every moment they spent together in bed she was spread out for all the Jacks.
‘I feel sorry for you,’ I say.
‘For me?’ she spits.
‘Sooner or later, you’ll see—and when you do you’ll wish you’d never been born.’
What’s-she-talking-about-Why’s-she-like-This-isn’t-how-I . . .
I let myself momentarily get lost in the mental hurricane surging towards us all. I stare at Evan. I know it’s enveloping Jack, too. Revise your stand, improvise a plan, pulverise the Man: the best line from Agile, Mobile, Hostile.
‘Feel that?’ I say with a gloating grin. ‘We’re more powerful than you.’
I can’t believe how calm and controlled I sound. Uncertainty flickers in Evan’s eyes. He has no idea what the cerebral storm around us is and it scares him to think that I do. I hope this moment haunts Jack for the rest of his days. That he reads my letter and fears what I became after death. That he lives in terror of me striking him down from beyond the grave.
Steady-just-do-it-Shoot-but-No-it’s-cold-blood-Last-chance.
‘Last chance,’ Tregan says, finally keeping the .38 level and aimed at me. ‘Put. The gun. Down.’
‘Do what she says,’ Damon says as he steps from the shadows with an AR-15 aimed at my face.