She could get all the answers she needed by way of Cigar. Except that Cigar was coherent for only snatches of time before he spiraled down into lunatic rantings and shrieks.
“No,” Astrid said. “Not taking the risk. No. Let’s get going.”
Like she knew which way to go. She’d been following Cigar, who had been following—or so he said—Little Pete.
Panic. It tickled her, teased her. There was something smothering about the darkness. Like it was thick and hard to breathe.
The darkness was so absolute. She could walk in circles and never know it. She could walk into a zeke field and not know it until the worms were inside her.
“Just turn the damned lights on, Petey!” she yelled.
Her words seemed to barely penetrate the blackness.
“Just fix it! You’re the one who did this. Fix it!”
Silence.
Cigar started in again, moaning and giggling, talking about Red Vines and how good candy tasted.
She had a vision of herself back at the lake, lying in the bunk with Sam. She had loved touching his muscles. What an embarrassing, juvenile thing. Like the girls she despised, always mooning over some rock star, some movie star, some guy with hard abs and yet, and yet, hadn’t that been her all along?
She recalled with intimate detail having her hand on his biceps when he flexed to pick her up and the way the muscle had just doubled in size and become hard as if it were carved out of oak. He’d lifted her up like she weighed nothing. And set her down again, so gently, with her hands sliding to his chest to balance and…
And now, she was here. With a ghost and a lunatic. In the dark.
Why?
Risk your sanity and maybe know something. But maybe not. Maybe just be destroyed. And what would she know then, if Petey scrambled her mind?
Scrambled brain, full of things she needed to know, but wouldn’t really know if her brain was twisted in the learning.
“Fix it! Fix it!” she screamed at the dark.
“My leg, it’s not my leg; it’s a stick, a stick with nails poking through,” Cigar moaned.
A dark, terrible urge to turn the shotgun around and end Cigar’s misery had Astrid breathing hard and clenching her jaw. No. No, she’d already played Abraham to Petey’s Isaac, not that ever again. She would not allow herself to take an innocent life, not ever again.
Innocent, a derisive voice in her head taunted. Innocent? Astrid Ellison, prosecutor and jury and executioner.
There’s nothing innocent about Petey, the voice teased. He built this. All of it. He made this universe. He’s the creator and it is all his fault.
“Let’s go,” Astrid said. “Give me your hand, Cigar.” She shouldered the shotgun. She felt around in the dark until she found Cigar, and then fumbled some more before she had his hand. “Get up.”
He got up.
“Which way?” Cigar asked.
Astrid laughed. “I have a joke for you, Cigar. Reason and madness go for a walk in a dark room, looking for an exit.”
Cigar laughed like it had been funny.
“You even know what the punch line is, you poor crazy boy?”
“No,” Cigar admitted.
“Me neither. How about we just walk until we can’t walk anymore?”
OUTSIDE