Reckoning by Shana Figueroa (22)

Barely able to breathe, Val grabbed her mom’s arm. “We need to get out of here now.”

“What? Why?”

“We just need to go!”

Oh God, the children. Where were the children? Val raced toward Santa’s workshop, shoving her way through the thick crowd, ignoring people’s cries of surprise and angry glares. Frantically aware of every second that ticked by, she burst through the periphery of the endless line, where kids of all ages entertained themselves playing with toys and activity books or pawing at a row of touch screen video games. Spotting Simon coloring at a table in the corner, Val sprinted to him and scooped him up.

He yelped as crayons fell out of his hands. “Mommy, I’m not done yet!”

“Where’s Lydia?”

“Is there a problem?” Jamal asked from where he stood supervising a few feet away.

“Where is Lydia?”

“She was over by the video games a second ago. I just saw her—”

“Lydia!” Val screamed when she didn’t see her daughter near the touch screens. “Lydia! Goddammit, Jamal, find her now!”

Jamal gaped at Val for a second, panicked that he’d failed to do his one job but also confused as to why it was suddenly an emergency, until he pointed behind her. Val turned to see Dani round a corner, clutching Lydia in her arms as she hurried toward them.

“Get to the exit!” Val yelled at Jamal and Dani. “Run!”

Without knowing why, they did as they were told, crashing through the throng of holiday shoppers in a mad dash to reach the edge of the platform. Val tried not to look down so she wouldn’t see a little girl with a big red bow in her hair, a toddler in a tiny suit, a woman pushing a double stroller with twins inside. Jesus, all these families. She had to get them off the platform somehow. If she started screaming about its imminent collapse, people would either think she was crazy or a mad panic would ensue, or both.

She’d pull the fire alarm. That way, everyone could assume it was a false alarm while making an orderly exit off the platform and out of the building. It would work.

But her own children came first. I’m sorry, she thought as she forced her way past other people’s children. Tears stung her eyes. I’m sorry. I’ll save you, too. I promise.

Ahead of them, the exit sign beckoned like a life raft; below it, the fire alarm. Three more steps…two more steps…one more step—

When her hand touched the fire alarm, she heard a crash behind her so loud she thought the entire building had come down around them. She hit the ground, shielding Simon’s body with her own as the rumblings of disaster seemed to go on forever, a freight train of terrible noise that drowned out all rational thought. Finally it stopped, and then the screaming began.

“Simon,” Val said, lifting her head so she could see his face. He stared back at her with terrified eyes. “Are you all right?”

He gave her a succession of quick nods. “Mommy,” he whimpered.

She looked up, taking in the total chaos around her. “Lydia,” she called. To her left, she saw Jamal slowly sit up, his face pale and frozen in shock, eyes glassy. A cacophony of shrieks rose around them. “Lydia!”

Ten feet away, strands of dark hair made a trail that led under a body covered in dust and small pieces of debris, lying askew on the ground where the floor that connected the platform to the main building had bowed downward under the strain of the collapse.

“Mom?” Val choked the words out. “Lydia?”

The body stirred, batting away pieces of plaster, and Val recognized her mother lift her head. In a daze and sporting multiple cuts on her face, she coughed and pushed herself up. Lydia lay underneath her, unconscious.

“Lydia!” Confident her son was out of danger, Val scrambled to her daughter. She knelt next to Dani and caressed Lydia’s cheek with a shaking hand. “Oh, no. No no no.”

Dani grimaced and clutched her left arm. “Something hit us,” she said, her words strained by pain. “I blocked most of it, but…I think it might’ve got her a bit in the head.”

A sob borne of the most intense dread Val had ever experienced began to claw its way up her throat. “My baby…” She stroked Lydia’s unresponsive face. “My baby…”

Don’t panic. Do not panic. Her daughter was still breathing, still alive. It’ll be okay. Lydia will be fine. Simon said they’d be okay. In case she had a spine injury, though, Val shouldn’t move her—

The sob ripped its way out of Val’s throat. She slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the wails that followed, until her hysteria passed and she gained control of herself again. Her own cries were just one of many. Daring to glance down at the collapsed platform, she saw a sea of bodies, some moving, some not. From between the cracks in a pile of debris, Rudolph’s nose blinked. Somehow the tiny light hadn’t broken. It might’ve been the only thing that hadn’t.

Val paced the area around Lydia’s hospital bed while Max sat in a chair and held their daughter’s hand. Though she was still unconscious, the doctors assured them Lydia hadn’t suffered any skull fractures or cranial hemorrhaging, but they wouldn’t know for sure if she was really okay until she woke up. She’d been out for four hours so far, brought to the pediatric clinic at the Harborview Medical Center along with dozens of other children who’d been injured in the “accident.” The place was a freaking madhouse of panicked parents and family members. Max’s sister Josephine had been kind enough to take an uninjured Simon home with her. After being treated for shock, Jamal went home, too, probably to retool his résumé for a new job. Thanks to Dani’s heroics, Lydia had escaped relatively unscathed compared to most of the other kids—assuming she woke up.

Come on, Lydia. You’re my strong girl. Fight. You can do this. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up—

Someone knocked on the door. A moment a later, a tired-looking doctor walked in. He gave Val a weary smile. “Hi, Mrs. Carressa. I understand you wanted an update on your mother’s condition?”

“Yes—yes, please.”

“Her ulna was fractured in two places, and her ribs were badly bruised. She’s being fitted for a cast now. No life-threatening injuries, thankfully.” The doctor smiled again, and Val got the sense he was happy to give somebody good news that day.

“Thank you. When she’s ready to go, please let me know. I’m her ride home.”

The doctor nodded and left. A television on the wall showed the local news, dominated by the toy store tragedy. “At least twenty-nine people dead and sixty-four injured,” a somber reporter said. “Sources say the company that erected the platform is fully cooperating with police to understand how the structure could have collapsed, though authorities suspect a flaw in the platform’s design is responsible…”

“Bullshit,” Val said to the TV. She turned to Max. “It was her. I know it.”

Max met her gaze with exhausted eyes, his face pale and grim. For the moment, it seemed, he’d put aside his anger with her to focus on their children. “Why would she do this?”

“Because she’s a fucking psycho! I was in her apartment a couple days ago and found a journal of her crazy-ass ramblings. We’re talking Kevin Spacey in Seven-level nuts.”

His gaze wandered back to Lydia. “Why us?”

“Because she’s obsessed with us, and she thinks God and somebody named Mother are telling her to torture us. Because for some reason we attract evil people. Because the fucking universe hates us!” She resumed pacing, stomping in circles like a caged animal, hot anger scorching through her veins. “I’m going to kill that evil bitch. And if they’re real, I’m going to kill Father and Mother, and then Northwalk and Delilah while I’m at it. Every single one of them—”

“We should leave,” Max said. He looked at her again, a dull sheen over his eyes—worried and tired, but not angry.

Val scoffed. “You still don’t believe we’re her target?”

“I believe you. And we should leave.”

He couldn’t be serious. After everything that’d happened to them, he wanted to just leave, as if Eleanor wouldn’t keep hounding them for the rest of their lives?

“I am not running,” she said through gritted teeth. “If you want to, take the kids and go.”

Still gripping Lydia’s hand tight, he gazed at his daughter’s still face for a moment, then back at Val. “I can’t leave without you.”

She slammed her hands down on the foot of Lydia’s bed. “Why do you have to do this? It doesn’t matter what happens to me! Evil people are doing evil things, making the world a worse place, and somebody has to do something, Max! And why am I the only one who’s angry, huh?” He’d killed his own father in a fit of rage and almost beat her rapist to death, for Christ’s sake. He was capable of fury so intense it sucked the air out of the room. “Why aren’t you angry?”

He didn’t answer, just looked at her with weary, sad eyes.

“Daddy?”

In unison, Max and Val snapped their heads toward their daughter. Lydia blinked as if waking up from a deep sleep. Val ran to the bedside and knelt next to Max, putting her hand on top of her husband’s holding their tiny daughter’s hand.

“My baby girl,” she said with breathless relief. “How do you feel?”

“Okay,” she replied with childish uncertainty, not sure what the right answer was. “Where’s Santa?”

“He…um—”

“Does anything hurt?” Max asked. “Your arms? Your legs? Belly?”

Lydia shook her head. “Is Santa okay?”

Val laughed through her tears. “He’s fine. He flew back to the North Pole.”

“I didn’t get to tell him what I want for Christmas.”

“He’ll get the message, honey.” Letting out a long exhale, she lay her head on Max’s shoulder as the vise around her heart finally relented. Their children were okay—for now. We’ll be okay, Mommy, Simon had told her right before the collapse. He’d been right after all.

“Ah, excellent!” Val heard the pediatrician say as she walked in the door. The doctor stood at the foot of the bed and smiled at Lydia. “You had a long nap. How you feeling, kiddo?”

Lydia smiled back. “Good.”

“That makes me happy to hear. I’m going to check some things on you, okay?”

“Okay.”

Val and Max stood and backed away to give the doctor space to take Lydia’s vital signs. Things seemed under control at the hospital—for their daughter anyway. Other innocent children still struggled for their lives, thanks to Eleanor. How long until she struck again? Would she blow up the hospital? Their home? Each act of terror brought her closer to killing them. How long before she finally succeeded?

She wouldn’t—if Val got to her first.

Max threaded his fingers through hers as if he sensed her intentions. “Don’t go,” he said. Despite how she’d betrayed his trust, he still wanted to be with her—his love trumped his anger.

She squeezed his hand and looked into his beautiful eyes as they pleaded with her, warm hazel with starbursts of green at the centers. Simon had inherited those eyes. He’d gifted both children with his genius-level intelligence, though their abnormal abilities made them seem even smarter than they actually were. Max had passed on the best parts of himself to his children, and together they formed a family she would kill to protect.

“I need to go to Jo’s and check on Simon,” she said.

“Then you’ll come back?”

Val looked at him for a long moment, then said, “When we’re safe from Eleanor Fatou.”

Their entwined fingers slipped apart as she turned and walked away from him, out of the hospital, and out for blood.