Darby didn’t want to. Even over this distance, I saw her grip tighten around her mother, but her body betrayed her—her arms broke free, her legs shuffled toward him.
David took her hand. “You’re not going to say hello?”
“She doesn’t speak,” Cammie said. “Please don’t hurt her. Please, David…”
David cocked his head. “She doesn’t speak at all?”
“No.”
“Has she ever?”
“No.”
He thought about this for a moment. “What is her ability?”
“If she has one, I’ve never seen it.”
David leaned down and smiled at the little girl. “Do you have any special abilities, sweetie? I bet you do.”
Darby shied away from him, her eyes fixed on his scar.
David reached to his face and stroked the ruined flesh. “This is nothing to fear. It’s beautiful. I’m the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen.”
“Whatever you’re going to do to us,” Cammie said, “please don’t make her watch.”
David turned back to her. “Me? I’m not going to do anything to you. What would be the point of that? Remember what we talked about? Your promise to me? It’s time.”
Stella twisted from my arm and started toward the door.
“I’m so sorry, Jack. My dearest Pip,” she paused there long enough to say. Then she disappeared around the corner, and I was alone.
I went after her.
I knew I shouldn’t. I should have let her go as I should have let her go so many other times during my life, but I couldn’t. I left the Ruger on the floor in that little room and followed her down the hallway and out the wide open door into the sea of people in white.
They parted as she approached, those candles still in their hands. Heads and faces hidden beneath white cowls. Stella and I stepped around the bodies of the dead, so many, haphazardly strewn around the concrete. The dark blood of all those dead in stark contradiction to the white of those who still lived.
“There you are!” David said as we approached. “I was beginning to think you didn’t love me anymore.”
Stella moved slowly, and when she was about ten feet away from David and the others, she nearly collapsed again. She clutched at her stomach, and all around us, shrill static burst from the radios.
I ran to her, tried to help her, but she shrugged me off. “Don’t touch me, not now.”
David didn’t make a move toward her. He knew better than to put himself within her reach.
Stella stood, ignored the weak, shakiness of her knees, and smoothed her dress.
Over the years, weeds had worked their way through the cement, sprouting up between the cracks and crevices. All those where Stella had landed were now black, shriveled, and dead. A small circle of death around her.
On the ground at David’s feet, a kneeling Latrese Oliver watched. The others, too. Oliver looked so old. She aged a hundred years since we were children. The death from her arm had crept up the side of her face and into her white hair, leaving bald blotches behind. The eye on that side was cloudy with cataracts. The left side of her mouth frozen, as if she suffered a stroke. Even through all this, she smiled up at Stella. Her good hand reached out. “I love you, Stella. I forgive you for what you did to me. I know it wasn’t your fault. Put an end to this little shit.”
David laughed. “Stella can’t hurt me. Right, Stella? You won’t hurt me.”
“I would never hurt you, David Pickford.”
She said this with the same robotic flatness Dewey Hobson had spoken.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
