The Nightworld - Jack Blaine [40]
“Oh, Nick. I’m sorry.” She whispers the words. Her hands are warm when she sits down next to me and takes my hand. I can’t hold back the tears; they flow down my cheeks. I don’t feel ashamed, though. Lara doesn’t make me feel that way.
We sit quietly. When my throat loosens up, I scrub my cheeks with my fists and try to laugh.
“You don’t have to talk about it. I know it’s hard.” Lara studies her hands holding mine. “I still can’t believe Brian’s gone, either. I haven’t been back downstairs since it happened.” She looks really tired. “You need some rest. Mind if I keep Tank out there with me for now?”
“Tank! Oh, man, I bet he has to pee.” I start to get up.
“It’s okay. We showed him how to go on the balcony while you guys were gone. He’s been really good.” She laughs a little. “I mean, at first he wasn’t crazy about it—I think he wanted some grass.”
And there we are again, in the thick of the pain. There is no grass anymore. Unless things are different somewhere in the world, all the grass is in its final death throes, wilting in the dark.
“I’ll let you get some rest.” Lara gets up to leave.
“Lara.” She turns at the door and looks at me expectantly. “Who’s Meagan?”
She looks so sad. “Meagan was—is—Zeke’s little sister. They took her while he and Kath were saving me. He thought she was hidden. He didn’t know there were more than four of the Crescents in the garage, but there were. And while he was saving me, they grabbed Meagan and left.”
“Crescents?” The white sliver of a moon on the back of the boy’s jacket flashes in my mind. As does the one on the jacket of the man who murdered the little boy in the station wagon.
“We just call them the crazies most of the time. They all wear black jackets with a crescent on the back. I don’t know much about them—the news reports stopped yesterday and they were just beginning to mention them. They believe that the moon caused the darkness. They claim they want blood sacrifices for the moon, but I think they’re really just a bunch of assholes using the whole thing as an excuse. They would kill people and steal things regardless.”
Sounds right to me. I think of the book in my pack—Lord of the Flies. I finished it the night before I left Charlie’s, but I took it with me anyway, because I kept thinking about it. It’s like that. Assholes will be assholes. But what nags at me is the fact that even the boys who were good, even the boys who tried to make things right on that island, even they ended up being cowards.
“Get some rest, Nick.” Lara watches me for a minute from the door. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
“Me too, Lara.” I’m not sure how to say how I feel about her. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
She smiles and pulls the door almost closed behind her.
I try to sleep, but I’m too tense. I keep thinking about the dark and the dying grass. I drag my backpack over and dig around in it until I find the box containing the device. I never did figure out how to get it open. After a few minutes of trying different combinations on the latches with no luck, I try to think like my dad would. He was always saying that the simplest solutions are the best. I try the latches in order, one, two, three. Nothing. Then I try them in order but only once for the first, twice for the second, and three times for the third latch.
It pops open. I almost drop it, but I manage to keep a grip.
Inside is a black object, roughly spherical in shape. It’s cool to the touch, and it feels a lot heavier than its size would indicate, like a golf ball is—they’re small, but they have some weight to them. There are seams in the surface—places where it looks like the thing might open up into something else, but I can’t make any of them budge. There are three round silver balls inset halfway into its surface. When I press on one of them it gives, like a button of some sort. I turn the thing in my hands, examining it from all angles.