Newt understood on some level how lucky they were that he was on a relatively straight road, because he was barely holding onto his wits. He forced himself to ease up on the accelerator, felt the force of the engines lessen as the tunnel of vision zooming past his senses slowed, slowed. He looked in the rear view mirror on some instinct, but he couldn’t see anything.
“Newt, you can stop!”
Keisha was screaming in his ear, even though it sounded like a whisper.
Newt lifted his foot and pressed down on the brake. The car slammed to a stop, vaulting his body into the steering wheel. Amidst the pulse of his entire body, thumping like a giant heart, he put the car into park. Since the Swipe inflicted by WICKED, he had, of course, never driven. But somehow he had known enough from his prior life, watching his parents drive, memories leaking like water from old pipes, to get them away from the horde of Cranks.
The night settled around them like an ocean of black air, as if they’d sunk to the bottom of an alien sea. As if the sun had been hurled to the other side of the planet. Newt had no memory of sunset, of fading light. And now all was dark and quiet.
“Thattaboy,” Keisha said, patting him on the shoulder. The storm inside Newt continued to recede; he could hear her, actually hear her words clearly. Keisha reached up and turned on the little interior truck light, a beacon against the darkness. “I don’t know how you just pulled that off back there, but my guess is it’s because you’ve lost your damn mind. Thank goodness.”
He looked at her, in disbelief she could say something so cruel. But her face lit up with a smile, a beaming smile, like something from the days before the apocalypse, surely.
“I’m proud of you,” she said. “I’m really proud of you.”
Newt gave his best attempt at his own smile. Then he closed his eyes and took several deep breaths without saying anything. His nerves calmed, the noise faded, his heart slowed. When he opened his eyes again, no mist obscured his vision. He felt as if someone had lifted a curtain, freeing his mind to see and think freely. And the clearest thought he’d ever had flowed into his mind like clean water from a mountain stream.
He sighed, wondering why his decisions always had to break his heart.
“You have to get out,” he said quietly.
“What?” Keisha asked.
“You have to get out of the truck. I need to leave you behind.”
Please don’t argue , he thought. Please, please, please. Just understand. Surely you can see what I see . All of these thoughts went through his mind like a prayer.
“What on Earth are you talking about?” She sounded more hurt than angry.
Newt was ashamed again, this time from the relief that flooded his body after the most recent surge of the Flare’s assaulting madness. He turned to face Keisha.
“You can’t mess with these people,” he said, trying to sort his mind with reason. “Sometimes I think they’ve given up on finding a cure, and now they’re just operating on… I don’t know, something like spite. Trying to prove they ever had a reason to exist.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Jackie, who Newt had only heard say one word so far— Mommy —squeezed her mother’s neck, Dante willing to share for the moment. Keisha hardly seemed to notice, as if her kids were simply appendages of her own body. “I can’t tell anymore if you’re crazy Newt or regular Newt.”
“I’m mostly regular, right now,” he said unable to conjure up another smile. “But listen. They’ll be coming after us, and there’re only two ways they can catch you—find this truck, or track me down. I think we know by now that tracking me down is a bloody cakewalk for them. And they obviously know where their own vehicles are. So…”
He couldn’t come out and say it. Surely that had been explanation enough.
Keisha’s eyes welled up with tears. “Newt, I’m not having this conversation. We’ve been to Hell and back together in a very short time and I’m not gonna walk away from you.”
Newt tried to squeeze the pain away, hating that she was making this harder than it already was. “Come on, Keisha. Getting you to Jackie was what kept me going. I want my life to end knowing I helped do something good. Maybe you guys can find another car or find a home to settle in. The Flare doesn’t seem to be affecting you like it does me. Who knows what’ll happen. Maybe you guys will live happily ever after!”
Keisha reached out and twisted his ear. Hard.
He yelped and felt a rush of anger. It took all of his will to tamp it back down.
“I really do have to treat you like a child, don’t I?” she said. “Now stop insulting my intelligence. We’re all gonna end in misery so we might as well end in misery together. Do you want me to drive?”
“Drive where?” Newt snapped at her. “Where would we go, Keisha? They’re gonna track me down and if you’re with me then we’ll all be wishing for a nice miserable plummet into the Flare. Something terrible is gonna happen, and we both know it. Will you please just take your damn kids and your comatose brother and get out? Let me fend for myself and die without feeling guilty that I brought you with me?”
He was shouting, and he hated himself for it. But they needed to go. They needed to get out of there and let him have this one gift. To know that he was a small part in bringing a family back together before the rage and madness ended what had once been a kid named Newt.
“Please!” he yelled. “Please just get out of the bloody truck!”
“Newt,” she whispered, and he saw the fight drain out of her face. She knew. She knew, with a mother’s instinct, that he was right. And she gave him another gift—letting him go, something Tommy couldn’t do. He could see how much it hurt her, how much it ripped her apart. He had found a second mother, an aunt, a sister…
“Sonya,” he said, the word coming out of nowhere. “You remind me of my sister, Sonya. I’m starting to remember her. And she was just like my mom, so I guess you remind me of both. Maybe you’re the reason they came back to me.” He didn’t know why he was saying all this, but it filled him with something very close to joy. “Nothing will make me happier than knowing you guys have a chance to survive out there, together. It’ll make up for not knowing what happened to my own family, or if they ever made it. So please go. And do everything in your power to save Dante and Jackie. That’s the only thing in the world I want right now. But you have to hurry. I know they’re coming. I know it.”
Every single part of Newt wanted to break into tears, wanted to bawl his eyes out and sink his face into Keisha’s neck, right along with the two kids. But he held it back, just like he’d held back on the ravings of the Flare moments earlier. It wouldn’t be long, now, before he’d never be able to do that again. But this would be his last heroic effort. To do what needed to be done for Keisha.
She had no qualms letting the tears flow, and she seemed to struggle for words, her mouth opening and closing several times without speaking.
“It’s okay,” Newt said. “I know exactly what you’re thinking and feeling. You don’t have to say anything. All that matters is them.” He nodded at the kids. “Jackie and Dante. That’s all. And I hope your brother will come around, too.” The man stared out the window, crying but quiet, oblivious. Shell-shocked , Newt thought. He wondered if the people from WICKED had done something to mess him up so horribly.
Keisha was nodding, wiping her eyes. The inside of the truck was as silent as a windless plain, and the darkness outside pressed in like something solid and heavy. As if they’d been buried alive, the tiny truck-light like a candle, their last connection to the world above.
“Okay, Newt,” Keisha finally said, a strength in her words that made him feel a little better. “I’m gonna let you go. I’m gonna take care of these kids, and help my brother get his wits about him. We’re gonna let you go.”
“Thank you,” Newt replied, feeling stupid but thankful the fight was over.
“But I gotta say one last thing.”
Newt nodded, glad for the sheer wisdom and confidence in her eyes. He could leave with that look of hers burned in his mind for the rest of his short life and be happy thinking back on it.
“And here it is,” she continued. “Besides my own children, you’ve done more to lift me up in this world than any other person. I know it was only a few days, but you’ve…” She took a moment, swallowed. “You’ve branded me, Newt. You’ve branded me, and I’ll bear your mark forever. God willing, I’ll survive this virus and add to what your life meant for this universe of ours. I love you, Newt, and my children will grow up loving you.”
He tried to respond, couldn’t. But the reluctant tears finally leaked from his eyes. He hoped they said what he didn’t know how to put into words.
Keisha took his hand over the seat, kissed it warmly, holding her lips there for several seconds.
“Goodbye, Newt.”
It was the only way to end it. She gathered up her children, gently gave a nudge to her brother, and the four of them exited the truck through the door on that side. When it thumped closed, Newt turned back toward the front, put the truck into gear, and drove into the impenetrable darkness.
