Two vans came squealing down the road, red lights flashing in the darkness, and they stopped beside Clayton’s overturned car.
“We’re here!” Kevin shouted when three men and one woman jumped out of the vans. He threw his hand in the air to wave them over and two men ran through the tall grass towards him.
One man knelt down beside Perry while the other looked over at him. “Are you Kevin?”
He nodded.
“You said there were four of you.”
He didn’t remember saying that on the call, but now that Perry was in safe hands, he stood up and ran with the other man to the spot where he’d left Clayton.
Clayton was still singing incoherently as the paramedic knelt down beside him to check him. “You’re gonna be okay, Clay.”
Kevin looked to the other side of the road where he saw a flashlight flicking across the ground as one of them searched for Shandré. He felt someone tugging his arm and that was the last thing he remembered before he was blinded by a penlight.
“What’s your name?” a woman asked.
Kevin looked at the unfamiliar face with confusion. His forearm was already wrapped in a white bandage and there more people on the scene—cops and more medics. He was sitting at the back of another ambulance van, but didn’t know how he gotthere, couldn’t account for a single moment since he’d last seen Clayton. His perception of time was still distorted because he didn’t know if it’d been ten minutes or an hour.
“It’s Kevin,” he responded wearily. “Kevin Shepard.”
She continued asking him basic questions to determine if he had a concussion. Words left his mouth as an automatic response, but he put no thought into what he was saying. He was tired and his throat was dry—the aftermath of shock and trauma. Behind her, he saw them load Clayton into one of the vans. Two cops appeared out of nowhere and also started firing questions at him. They kept asking him what they’d hit, what could have made the car flip like that.“I don’t know”was apparently not an adequate response, because they kept asking the same thing in different ways.
“Was it a rock?” one of the cops asked. “A pothole? Maybe some kind of animal?”
Kevin gritted his teeth. He was too drained to shout, but he was becoming more frustrated. “For the hundredth time…I. Don’t. Know. It could’ve been anything…It was dark. I-I don’t remember. I didn’t see—”
He stopped talking when he spotted the other medic, his heart instantly sinking into his stomach. Perry was on gurney, but there was a black body bag around him and a man was zipping it up. That couldn’t be right. He was talking right before they arrived.
Kevin immediately stood up and a firm hand tried to push him back down.
“Sir, you shouldn’t be—”
He didn’t know which one of them it was, but he shoved the hand away and headed towards the gurney, ignoring the protests behind him. His steps quickened without him even realizing it.
“Hey, wait.” It was a frantic whisper, but he managed to find his voice through the anxiety gushing through him. “Wait!” Hegrabbed the man’s hand to stop him. “Wait…What…what are you doing?”
Pitiful eyes were cast upon him. The man pulled his hand out of Kevin’s and zipped up the bag. “He’s gone.”
“No. No…He’s not gone.”
“He’s gone,” the paramedic’s tone was filled with compassion, but still firm enough to sound certain.
“He’s not! He was just talking to me.”
The paramedic slowly unzipped the top half of the bag and the stillness of his best friend was haunting. “We tried to resuscitate him,” he said softly. “But…he didn’t make it.”
“No!” Waves of anguish and despair were crashing over him and he was drowning in it. His voice was trembling, shaking so much it didn’t sound like his own. “You can do…CPR or something…they do that…I’ve seen them do that…youcan do that. He was talking…I was just with him. We’re gonna go to Florida…Please…do something…anything.”
His eyes caught sight of another gurney carrying a black body bag, but his brain wasn’t processing anything at that moment.
“Kevin…” The man placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “We tried everything. There’s nothing more we can do.”
Those words broke him, utterly destroyed everything inside him. There was no panic, no helplessness. There was no fear, no desperation. There was nothing…nothing but emptiness. He gasped for air, trying to fill his body with something that felt normal, but all he felt was that emptiness. The tears were ceaseless now, running down his cheeks and dripping onto Perry’s bloodied face.
He waited for a reaction. A person usually flinches when water hits their face, but Perry remained unmoving. Drop after drop and he didn’t move. Kevin’s hand went to Perry’s chest, his fingers curling over the dog-tag chain. Saint Christopher. Theguider of the travelers. He was supposed to protect them and now Perry was lying dead in front of him.
Kevin didn’t know how long he stood there. Fifteen years’ worth of memories flashed through his mind. Spying from the treehouse and walking to the Barber Shop. Playing with Batman figurines and torturing his sister. The casual arm around his shoulder and the attempted kisses whenever he was drunk. Vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. From kindergarten to college—it was all gone now.
