~ 37 ~

Famous Last Words

 Time: Who knows?

Place: Who cares?

 + Kevin +

The feeling of loss is the hardest thing to explain to people. Everyone thinks they know what it feels like to lose someone you love and don’t get me wrong, a lot of people actually do. But those people who have been lucky enough to never have to bury someone they called mother, father, sister, brother, or best friend, have no fucking idea how hard it is to function afterwards. They have never felt the numbness that comes along with grief. It starts in your fingertips and actually runs its way through your body. Up the arms and right into your heart where you literally feel it peel away layer after layer like a rind of an orange, until there’s nothing left to hold onto. Your heart becomes an open wound for all to see and it stays that way until it slowly decides to start mending itself.

I never thought I’d get over the loss of my father. Just thinking about him, I feel that little sting where the wound for him is still very much opened.

“Did he say anything to you before he died?”

I looked away from the ground that I had become accustomed to watching for the last few hours to the teary eyed look on my cousin’s face.

“Anything at all?”

Just seeing how distraught he looked made me want to take a gun, put it in my mouth and call it a day. This was my fault. Nick wouldn’t be dead if I had the guts to do what I needed to do.

I shook my head at Brian.

I couldn’t let him know the truth. It would be something I’d take with me to my own grave. The last words my little brother said before I had to close his eyes for him. I couldn’t bring myself to repeat them. It hurt too much.

Once again my eyes wandered to the ground. I felt Brian staring at me. I could tell he had something else to say or maybe he just needed consoling, but I was the wrong person for that job.

Eventually, he walked away. Not sure where. Probably back into the bedroom where AJ was. He hasn’t left Nick’s side since I put him in there.

I heard a chair squeak and felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Howie. I could tell by looking at his shoes which were now in my sightline.

“It’s not your fault, Kevin. I know you’re blaming yourself for this but it isn’t…”

“Don’t…”

I know he was only trying to help, but he knew it was my fault. He was there.

“If we knew he would do something like that…” he stopped. I could tell he was also feeling guilty and he should. It was just as much his fault as it was mine, although I should have been the one to kill him. “We never would have let him go.” He finished with his voice cracking as he cried next to me.

I put my head up and rested my elbows on the table, rubbing at my cheeks and trying to prevent my own tears from falling. How do you get over being responsible for a nineteen year old’s death? What am I going to tell his family? How do I even begin to explain this to anyone?

“This changes everything. Even if we get home, nothing will ever be the same.”

This time I had exchanged the scenery of the ground to the kitchen table where Alan had placed some sandwiches for us to eat. I’m not even sure when he did that. I guess I can recall him coming in and trying to make us feel better. Saying we should eat and keep our strength up before deciding it was best to just go downstairs with everyone else and leave us alone with our grief.

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that.” 

I nodded at Howie. He knew just as well as I did, there was not going to be a happy ending to this story.

“It’s probably for the best. He’s not suffering anymore and he’s in a much better place.”

That was one of the things that bugged me most when my father died. All the people that said “Well at least he isn’t suffering anymore and he’s in a better place.” I wonder if people realized how little that does to help. How do we know he’s in a better place? How can people be so sure of that, they say it as if they’d been there themselves and are counting down the days until they can go back? If it was such a ‘better’ place, then why aren’t we all just jumping off bridges and rushing to get there ourselves? No one wants to die, that’s why. Who the hell cares if it’s a ‘better’ place? And how do we know that once we’re dead we don’t suffer anymore? Howie should know better then to say that stuff and I want to yell at him, but I can’t. He’s just trying to make himself feel better. If it helps him to think that because we managed to get Nick killed he can be in a better place, so be it.

Two things are for sure.

One:  He can’t be in a much worse place than this and

Two: He did not want to die.

I heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs and a murmur of voices. Normally, a sense of fear would have come through and I would have given the sign to Howie that maybe we should hide, but not this time. Let them come. Let them find us and do whatever the hell they wanted. We deserved it.

A few seconds later, everyone else came into the kitchen and sat down around Howie and me. Their talk seemed a bit loud and jovial for my taste. How anyone could talk over a whisper right now seemed obscene to me, especially with a dead body in the next room.

“We have some good news.”

I looked up at Charlie who was all smiles. Again, how someone could smile at a time like this…

“Matt thinks he found a way to get you all home. I did the math and it seems like a real possibility.”

“Not all…” was my answer which caused the happy atmosphere of the kitchen to spring back to a dull throb of heartache.

There was a moment or two of silence before he continued, “We think we found a location that may be where you guys entered into our world, a rip in the universe, if you will. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but no crazier than the fact that you ended up here in the first place.”

I didn’t say anything and neither did Howie.

“We pinpointed a few locations on the map and concentrated around the plane crash site. The same spikes that were there were also found five other places…”

At this point, Matt had a map on the table. He was pointing at it and all the mathematical symbols that looked like a smart man’s graffiti.

“One is where you landed back in Pennsylvania. One is in Texas, but look…there’s one pretty close to us.” He pointed to a location in New York.

“Charlie is working on some equations to get the exact location, but we think it’s somewhere right in New York City.”

“So, what does that all mean?”

I was actually angry at Howie for asking that question and for being hopeful that maybe we could leave.

“It means that all we have to do is find the exact spot and then you all just walk right on through.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Charlie said as if he had done this a thousand times.

“If it was that easy to walk through a rip in a universe, don’t you think people would have accidentally been walking through it long before now? That maybe you would have heard news stories of people just magically disappearing into thin air?”

I know I was being a dick, but I didn’t care. I was sick and tired of all of this nonsense. False hope and expectations get you nowhere. Just a few weeks ago we were on top of the world, now it was crumbling all around us.

“I don’t have an explanation for that. It’s probably harder than we think to find the exact location.”

Charlie stood up and pat me on the back. I swear to God if one more person pats me on the back I’m going to fucking lose it! “I’m going to go work on this a little more, but this is good news, Kevin. I know it doesn’t feel like it now…”

“Thanks.” I cut him off, before he had a chance to tell me of better places and no more suffering.

He and Matt walked away and eventually Larry and Alan followed, leaving Howie and I sitting there at the table alone.

“It would be good to get out of here.” Howie said after a few more moments of silence, or maybe it was hours. It was hard to distinguish.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Kevin, if we can get out of here.”

“Then you can go, I’m staying.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

I didn’t expect him to understand. Nick didn’t die in his arms, he died in mine. I closed my eyes and went back to that moment. Seeing the knife going into him, feeling my feet accelerate to get there before my brain even processed what had happened. I grabbed him just before he fell, that’s how quick I was, but not quick enough to avoid it all.

He hadn’t processed what happened to him but he knew it was bad. The look of terror and pain in his eyes spoke loud and clear as he clutched at his wound.

I held him close to me, his head resting on my arm as my other hand fell on his, the one that was holding his wound. He was already pale and weak; before he was stabbed he was dying slowly. This just sped things up.

“Kevin…” He gurgled. He could barely talk at that point, already. Time was slipping away and the world was just a blur going in super slow motion as the others were running towards us.

“I’m here, Nick…you’re going to be okay…just hang on little man…”

“Kevin, I don’t want to die, please don’t let me die!”

He was crying and shaking now and grabbing on to me with his other arm as if I was the only thing preventing him from falling.

“I won’t let you die…just hang on buddy…”

I was panicking. We were running out of time. His breathing was labored.

“I don’t want to die…please….”

“You’re not going to die.” I was lying to him but I didn’t know what else to do.

He took one more deep breath and the look of panic that had been on his face, was replaced with a look of relief.

“I’m so scared…” He said and then looked at me with those eyes.

I shook him a couple of times and screamed his name, but he didn’t respond, only kept staring at me. Those eyes…

I closed them just as the guys reached us.

“It’s not ridiculous,” I finally answered Howie. “It’s the right thing to do. I’m staying here.”

“You can’t. Nick wouldn’t want you to.”

I’m not sure when Brian entered the room. Maybe he had been in there the whole time? It’s hard to say. But it was his voice this time and it was an angry one. “He wouldn’t want you to just give up and stay here to die.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he was my best friend!”

“Your best friend is dead because of me.”

“No he’s not! He’s dead because of this place! This place killed him, not you.”

“If I had killed the other Nick…”

“Then something else might have happened. Kevin we are in the middle of the apocalypse. If there is a way to get the hell out of this place, we are going. All of us are going. There is no way I am letting you stay here.”

“I don’t deserve to make it out of here after this.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself! We ALL lost Nick, not just you!”

Now I was mad. Full on, I’m going to kick your ass mad. This wasn’t about me being selfish. This was about me getting someone I loved killed! Why couldn’t he see that?

“Kevin, we need to get out of this place before more of us die.”

“He’s right son.”

I glanced over at Alan. Where did he come from?

“You lost a wonderful kid in Nick, but there are still three more people who need you. For their sake, you need to suck it up and be strong. Believe me; you don’t want to stay here. We’re just about done with our part of this story.”

“What do you mean by that?” AJ asked. I noticed that the bedroom door was closed now. Not sure when that happened. Everyone was back in the kitchen, even Charlie, Matt and Larry.

“The thing I’m working on for the government. Let’s just say it’s almost over and leave it at that.”

It’s funny because even though I’m not a rocket scientist, genius or even that smart really, I understood completely what he meant. Time was running out for this world and when it fell completely apart it was going to be at the hands of Charlie and Matt and probably a huge surprise to the Canadians who had hired him.

“The good news for you, I found the spot. It’s located by the Museum of Natural History. It’s a long shot I know, but at this point, it’s all we have.”

“Please Kevin…”

I looked into the begging eyes of my cousin and gained the strength I needed to see this thing through. Alan was right, Nick was dead. We couldn’t do anything about that anymore, but Howie, AJ and Brian were still very much alive and I had to save them. I had to make sure that they made it. I didn’t care if I did, I almost don’t want to, but for their sake we have to try.

“Okay, fine…”

I sighed and looked back at the closed bedroom door hoping that Nick was in a better place and not crying because he was all alone.