Chronic fear

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

“How much does he know?” Alexis asked.

“Some,” Roland said.

“Do you guys trust him?”

Roland shrugged and Wendy looked off in the distance with the vacant expression she’d worn in the Monkey House when Sebastian Briggs had lulled her into surrender.

“Wallace Forsyth is dead,” Alexis said. “Seethe and Halcyon dies with him. Okay?”

“That’s bullshit, Lex,” Wendy said, suddenly present. “It lives inside us. There’s only one way out.”

“We’re not going out like Anita did.” Alexis nodded toward Scagnelli’s cooling corpse. “I’ll bet that scumbag did her in.”

Roland put his arm around Wendy, brushed a sweaty, stringy strand of hair behind her ear, and kissed the side of her filthy face. “We’re sticking together this time, honey,” he said. “All of us.”

He broke away and did an awkward, pained dance, breaking into a variation on the old television theme song, “Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees.”

That drew a smile from Wendy, and even Alexis felt a surge of hope. She squeezed Mark’s hand. He’d stabilized and his pulse was steady, if a bit sluggish.

“You hear that?” Roland yelled up to the trees and to God. “We’re getting the band back together, man.”

“Save your strength,” Alexis said. “You’ve got a human burrito to haul.”

“It lives inside us, but it ends with us,” Wendy said, covering Alexis’s and Mark’s hands with her own. “Deal?”

Roland came over and bent to put his own palm on the pledge pile. “Deal.”

“Deal,” Alexis lied.

They fell silent, lost in themselves, or as close to themselves as they were able.

Soon Gundersson returned and they began their trek across the ridge, each contemplating the full weight of suffering and wondering if they’d be strong enough for whatever the future held.

For whatever Seethe demanded of them.

And none of them-none-would be allowed to forget this time. Not the past, not the promise, not the monsters they all carried inside them.

Alexis would make sure of that.