Chapter Forty – Carter

 

Lazarus flinched and glanced away at the sound of the screams outside. “Zoey?” he asked, fear and loss in his voice.

But I was already on him. Two long, rushing steps, and the barrel of his gun was in my hands, and I was twisting it away from my body, stepping in for the kill. We locked together like two alphas struggling for dominance, our voices devolving to nothing but grunts and gasps.

His other hand went down before I could catch it. Slipped inside his jacket.

Focused on the pistol, I wrenched the firearm around, pointing the barrel back to his chest. He tried to struggle, but I overbore him with sheer strength and size.

His hand came back out of his jacket, now holding a blade that flashed with a silvery cast, like mercury in solid form.

My teeth bared like a wild animal, I yanked down on his trigger finger. The gun boomed three times, each time lurching in our awkwardly combined grip, each time tracking closer and closer to his heart.

Heat enveloped my side. More heat. More, and more, until it was streaming down my leg.

One more shot from the pistol, and he was as silent as the dead. Beside us, metal clattered wetly, spraying blood across the tiled floor.

The heat in my side continued to spread, and it was like my strength was sapped from me. I dropped Lazarus’s lifeless body to the floor, stumbling two steps as I put my hand on my flank, felt the warmth.

I brought my red-painted hand up in front of my face and blinked slowly. Blood. My blood. God, I wanted to drop to my knees, to just fall to the ground and curl up. To wait for the end. The knife Lazarus had used was silvered. He’d gotten my kidneys, maybe my liver.

And my body wasn’t healing.

Faintly, as if they were a memory from childhood, I remembered the screams from outside. Then, another memory. Of Lucy being outside with Amber.

I headed for the door Lucy had just used, the one I’d just entered. I dragged my feet every step of the way, leaned against the filthy wall as a guide, and trudged down that decrepit walkway like it was a death march.

In the end, though, it was too much. I dropped to my knees as I rounded the turn from the hallway into the front entrance, the air cold on my sweating face. I fell forward, my arms splayed.

I rolled over onto my back, staring up at the blank, rotting ceiling.

Were they okay?

I blinked my eyes, felt my side again.

Would they both make it?

Was this how it was going to happen? Dead on the floor of some rusted-out factory? Or was I going to keep going?

“What’s it gonna be, Carter?” I asked myself, and the universe. “You gonna be an American, or an American’t?”

“Fuck,” I answered my own question as I went to sit up, the gorge already rising in my throat, the nausea almost overpowering. I got onto my hands and knees, struggled to my feet. I wobbled as I stood there, a cold sweat pouring down my body. “American,” I whispered to the universe as I began to move to the entrance.

“Carter?” Lucy called from outside, moments before she slammed open the front door. “Oh my God!” Moments later, she was beside me, over me, tears streaming down her face, dripping onto my cheeks, chin, and beard.

“Lucy?” I asked, reaching up, touching her face.

“No no no no no no,” she whispered, her voice a raspy mess.

“Amber?”

“She-she-she didn’t—”

“I want to see it,” I whispered, my voice as raspy and dry as old papyrus. “I want to see the phoenix. If it’s there?”

She sucked her lips into her mouth, nodded frantically. “Yeah, babe, it’s there. It came out after all.”

“Help me up,” I whispered, my voice barely louder than a spring breeze.

Somehow, she got me up. Just like she had in the parking lot before, when she’d saved me from Lazarus. Together, we stumbled out the front entrance, into the whirling and swirling snow. Into the piles of flakes on the ground, carpeting the whole world around us.

“Jesus,” I whispered as, even in my dazed, feverish state, I took in the majesty perched upon the back of the truck.

A giant bird of flames, twenty feet tall. Its fiery red and orange wings spread, the magenta plume on the back of its head like a bonfire as it raised its golden beak to the sky above, prepared its powerful legs with a squat to lunge into the air and take flight.

The phoenix. Once thought extinct, but now very much alive.

“I know,” Lucy whispered, hugging me more tightly, even as my lifeblood spilled from my dying body. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Doesn’t hold a candle to you,” I whispered, the strength continuing to flow out from my limbs like water through one’s fingers.

Just as the phoenix was ready to leap, it stopped, and its emerald eyes swiveled to focus on me. The phoenix turned to me, and…somehow…it spoke. Not what you would call speech, exactly, and not necessarily intelligent, either. But, still, it communicated to me, to both of us, images of flame and fire, of primordial elemental energy from time immemorial. Of how it had once been lost, but was now once again very much alive. Of how it knew of Amber’s sacrifice, and was thankful.

“I know what you did,” it seemed to say. “I know what you do. Thank you.”

My body took that as a cue that my work was over, and began to go limp. Despite what I knew about combat triage and field medicine, I clung to Lucy, desperate to stand and see this through to the end.

“Carter!” Lucy screamed, pulling me close. “Carter!”

“Just a little longer,” I gasped, my breath coming shorter than before, my whole side warm and wet.

The phoenix turned its great green orbs from us, tilted them back to the sky above. It crouched down, pausing for a moment before rocketing off into the heavens over Shamrock, the force of its legs blowing out the tires and destroying the big work pickup’s suspension. A long contrail of fire burned in its wake, lighting the snowy day up like the Fourth, forcing both me and Lucy to shield our eyes from the spectacle.

“Jesus,” Lucy whispered with clenched teeth, still struggling to hold me upright.

My knees finally lost the battle with gravity to stay upright, and my arm slipped from around Lucy’s shoulders as I dropped to the snow-covered ground.

“Carter!” Lucy screamed, panic in her voice as she descended after me, dropping to her knees in the already crimson snow by my side. “Talk to me, baby, please. Don’t you fucking leave me now, you son of a bitch. Not you, too!” She was right over me, her hair like a beautiful halo around her features. Just like an angel. She straightened up, pulled off her coat. “Not you, too,” she growled as she pulled off the sweater beneath it.

I blinked slowly as I looked up into those beautiful gray eyes of hers.

“Carter? Are you…?”

“Yeah,” I said, reaching up to touch her face, to run the backs of my fingertips down her tear-streaked cheek. “I’m here. I’m here, baby, and I’m not leaving.” Even as I said the words, though, the world began to fade in around the edges, and the cold began to creep in.

“Carter! Stay with me!” She packed the sweater against my side.

“I love you,” I whispered, just as, off in the distance, maybe on the other side of the world, the sound of a car engine came drifting towards me.

“Carter!” Lucy screamed into my face again, shaking me. “Don’t leave me, you son of a bitch! Not yet!”

Night seemed to descend as Ryder and Tabitha came rushing up into my field of vision. Looking back on it, it was just the blood loss, and my body finally giving up its will to stay awake because of my drop in blood pressure.

Lucy leaned in closer, yelled again, the sound choked by her sobs.

At first, I thought the temperature had shifted, and the snow clouds had begun to drop rain instead of flakes. But, as a spatter of it fell on my lips, I could taste the salt.

“Carter!”

“Tabitha, help me with this bag! We got you, man,” he said. “Don’t worry, bro, we got you.”

Darkness enveloped me.

But I didn’t care. I knew, even in that moment, that the only thing I was really going to miss was the feel of Lucy’s lips on mine.