Chapter Eight – Wyatt
Once Chris was awake, Wyatt stopped visiting his brother in hospital.
At the time, it seemed perfectly rational. He was at school, Chris was sleeping, his parents were already there. He had to babysit Melinda. He had football practice. There was a big school project he had to finish. The excuses were numerous and easy to find. Then his dad had taken him gently aside and asked him what was wrong, and Wyatt had been forced to face up to the fact that he'd been avoiding his brother.
But really, what do you say to someone who's killed three people?
Because that was the crux of it really. As much as Wyatt wanted to reassure himself that Chris was okay, was going to come home soon, he'd never been great at hiding his emotions. The minute he stepped into that room, Chris would be able to tell that something was wrong and Wyatt didn't know if he could lie well enough to cover it. And that knowledge… it burned at the back of his mind, like a stain that refused to be removed. Chris had killed three people. No, not just three people – Chris had killed Warren, Austin and Jake. His friends. His teammates. Guys he'd grown up with and whose faces he now couldn't get out of his head.
Then there was the how. That power that had exploded out of Chris… Wyatt had never seen anything like it. He'd asked his parents but they'd been very close-mouthed, offering vague, generic answers that they didn't seem to realise he was far too old to be taken in by. The only point that they were vocal on was that until they knew what they were dealing with and where this deadly new power had come from, Chris wasn't to know the truth. They would support the police's theory of a chemical explosion. When Wyatt had questioned the decision, it had been his easy-going, open and honest down who had put his foot down, in a tone that had brooked no argument. It could just have been the stress of the situation, but Wyatt had never heard his dad sound like that before so he'd let it go.
Chris came home just over a week after waking up. Wyatt was waiting, holding the manor door open, as his brother climbed carefully out of the car. He looked thin, Wyatt thought guiltily. Thin and even paler than usual. That didn't stop a miniature whirlwind of brown hair from seizing him around the middle as soon as he'd straightened up. Melinda hung on tightly, ignoring their parents' attempts to draw her away and even though it clearly hurt, Chris started to smile. He flicked her on the nose, she screwed up her face and scowled, and with that, everything was back to normal between them.
Wyatt wished he could be so casual. "Hey man," he greeted his brother as Chris climbed the steps to the manor. "You look…"
"Like shit," Chris supplied dryly. "So I hear."
Wyatt smiled awkwardly. "I was going to say glad to be home."
Chris snorted. "You're a rubbish liar."
Yes, he was. God, how was he supposed to handle this?
"What, no hug?" Chris held his arms out.
A beat passed and then Wyatt stepped forward, opening his arms. Chris held up a hand.
"Jeez, Wy, I was joking. We're guys – guys don't hug."
His brother pushed past him, leaving Wyatt feeling foolish – nothing new there. In fact, Chris was acting exactly like his usual acidic self. There was nothing to show he'd spent the last two weeks in hospital, recovering from being stabbed by a schoolmate. It was unsettling.
Two hours later they were sitting in Wyatt's bedroom, games controllers in hand, Chris in the inflatable chair by the window and Wyatt perched awkwardly on the end of his bed. It had been Mom's idea and the expression on her face when she'd made the suggestion had forestalled any complaints. So here he was, doing some enforced sibling bonding with his brother while saving the world from a zombie invasion. A game full of bloody, mindless violence probably wasn't the best choice given the circumstances, and Mom definitely wouldn't approve, but Chris had been mulish and Wyatt was actually finding it kind of therapeutic.
Chris shifted, making the chair squeak. A zombie exploded on screen and Wyatt wondered what he was thinking about. Probably how much he didn't want to be here. Or maybe about the knife wound. Or Warren.
Warren. Wyatt's eyes had been opened in the most brutal way by Aunt Phoebe's premonition and he couldn't hide behind denial anymore. Warren had really done it. Taken a knife to school, set up an ambush and then beaten and stabbed Chris. Warren could have killed his brother and up until the other night, Wyatt had still been protesting his innocence. He really hadn't wanted to believe what everyone and everything had been screaming at him.
Why? He wasn't sure. Probably because of the intense, almost crippling guilt that hung over him like a fog cloud. That he should have known, that he should have seen it coming, that he should have stopped it. If Warren had been innocent, Wyatt would have been exonerated. But Warren wasn't innocent. He'd been found guilty and the sentence had already been passed.
Chris cleared his throat. Wyatt glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, but it was almost a full minute before his brother actually spoke.
"What do you know about what happened?"
Wyatt hesitated. He'd been expecting this ever since Mom had pressed Chris into his company, but still hadn't really worked out what he should say. Lie and Chris would know – he wasn't stupid. Tell the truth and his parents would kill him. So what did that leave? Half-truths, distractions and bland, generic answers that would hopefully satisfy his little brother.
"You mean… when you were hurt?" he hedged.
"You know when I mean."
"Yeah, okay, um… not much."
Another zombie died spectacularly, spewing blood across the screen.
"The police haven't told you anything?"
"As much as they've told you."
"Explosion then."
"Yep." He should have left it there, but felt compelled to ask, "What do you remember?"
"Not a lot." Chris twisted his controller sideways and executed a perfect headshot. Another member of the walking dead was down. "Bits and pieces."
Wyatt tensed. Chris was remembering. None of them had really banked on that, not this quickly anyway. Just how long until his brother remembered everything?
"Like what?" he asked casually.
Chris shrugged. "Did the cops interview you again?"
Wyatt didn't miss how he avoided the question. He was going to have to speak to his parents about this – the last thing they needed was Chris remembering everything on his own and then finding out they'd lied to him.
"Last week. Reid and I… there wasn't much we could say. We weren't there when it happened."
"Reid?"
"Reid Grant. He was there when we – found you."
Wyatt made his character duck behind a wooden crate. On the other side of the screen, Chris's guy darted past, whipped out a rocket launcher and took out a whole row of zombies.
Despite himself, Wyatt grinned. "Nice."
"Oh yeah."
"Been carrying that around for a while?"
" 'Bout ten levels. Never know when a small guided missile's gonna come in handy."
That was typical of Chris. Always plotting and planning and thinking things through. Wyatt was much more of a happy-go-lucky-tackle-the-moment-as-it-happens kind of guy. It meant they didn't particularly gel well as an undead-killing, gun-wielding team – or as brothers.
The fiery blast from the rocket launcher had left flames flickering around the remains of a pile of packing crates and the ground was all blackened. Little bits of ash floated in the air. Wyatt directed his character to collect an ammo pack off the floor and then kicked one of the remaining packing crates out of the way to reveal a lock-picking set. "Score." He scooped that up as well.
"The explosion must have been burned them up pretty bad."
Startled, Wyatt's fingers slipped off the controller, sending his camera view off at a crazy angle. Chris wasn't looking at the game anymore; he was looking straight at Wyatt.
"Why wasn't I hurt?"
"What do you mean?" Wyatt asked cautiously, pretty sure he already knew the answer.
He was right. "They died," Chris said with painful bluntness. "I didn't have a scratch on me. Why is that?"
Because it was you.
"I don't know," Wyatt said quickly. "Maybe you were just lucky."
"I was rightthere when Warren – I was right there."
God, how much did he know? Did he remember that he'd – no, there's no way they'd be sitting here having this conversation if he did.
"You and Reid… you saw the explosion?"
"Just the light from it. We were too far away anything else."
Chris was silent for a moment. "It doesn't make any sense."
"Chris… I don't know what to tell you."
"You must have seen something."
"The light –"
"You were over by the locker room, right? And I was by the science lab… must have been a pretty big explosion for it to reach you all the way over there. Blew out windows, the cops said. But nothing hit me. Nothing. How can you explain that?"
"Maybe you orbed –"
Chris was already shaking his head. "No, that's not right. I couldn't have because I saw Warren – I was so close. I should have been hurt, just like them. They should have been packing me away in one of those body bags –"
"Don't joke about something like that."
" – but instead I'm here, beating up zombies like life's just snapped right back to normal. I should be dead. Why aren't I dead?"
Wyatt hit "pause" with such ferocity that he almost dropped his controller. "Enough with the third degree. Why are you asking all these questions? I've told you – I didn't see anything. I don't know what happened!"
It was an overreaction. Wyatt knew it and judging by the expression on his brother's face, Chris did too. "I didn't think an explanation was too much to ask for," he said slowly, voice hardening. "You know, considering I was beaten and stabbed. By your friends."
If the ground had been dangerous before, it was now crumbling beneath his feet.
"I'm sorry for what Warren did to you," Wyatt said carefully.
Chris laughed. It wasn't a happy sound. "Everyone's sorry. D'you know Warren's parents came to the hospital? They were real sorry too. Of course, it wasn't Warren's fault…"
Wyatt hadn't known that – that the Trents had visited the hospital. His parents hadn't mentioned it so maybe they didn't know either.
"They said it must have been an accident. You know, Warren accidently stabbed a knife into my gut." Chris had taken the game off "pause" and was beginning to hammer at the buttons. "I must have accidently put my face in front of his fists as well."
"They're just upset. They lost a child, Chris."
"He was a bastard."
"Doesn't mean he deserved to die," Wyatt said sharply, giving up all pretence of playing the game.
"I call it karma."
Wyatt stared at him in disbelief. "That's a horrible thing to say."
"Yeah well maybe I'm not feeling very charitable, Wyatt." On screen, Chris's character was attacking erratically, the violence spinning out of control and his health bar rapidly depleting. "Maybe I'm more concerned about the fact that he could have killed me – shit!"
Chris's avatar had collapsed with a dying cry, and a ghostly "Game Over" appeared on the screen. In response his brother's controller went sailing across the room and smashed into the wall, where part of it snapped off in a shower of plastic. Chris swore again and followed it, collecting the two largest broken pieces and putting them next to the games console. Then he just stood there, back to Wyatt, shoulders rising and falling under the weight of his breaths. Chris, usually so loud and explosive, was still.
Several minutes passed. Wyatt's legs were cramping from sitting cross-legged and he stood up, stretching the kinks out. "You okay?"
Chris turned around. "Peachy-keen."
There was no trace of the emotion of moments before on his face, which held a carefully controlled blankness. Like he'd switched of his feelings with the flick of a switch. Wyatt almost regretted it. "You don't have to pretend you know. You're allowed to be freaked out. I sure as hell am."
"Oh yeah. Right. This is really hard for you."
"They were my friends, Chris."
"Great group you've got there, Wy. Real charmers."
"You want me to feel guilty? Fine, I feel guilty. But God, Chris, you should have told me what was going on."
"So you could charge in on your white steed and save the day? No thanks."
"Oh so getting beaten up and stabbed was better than asking for my help?" Wyatt demanded incredulously. When Chris didn't reply, he shook his head in disbelief. "Chris, you're my brother. My brother. Did you think I would have sided with Warren if I'd known? Did you think I wouldn't care or something?"
"I think it's my business."
"Maybe it was then, but now –"
"I don't want to talk about Warren Trent anymore. We done here?"
He stalked out of the room, leaving Wyatt to stare after him, trying to balance a complicated mixture of guilt and relief. There were sounds of a commotion out on the landing and then Melinda barged into his room.
"What happened?" she demanded, running up to Wyatt. "What did you do?"
"Nothing."
"Yes you did. He's upset. You upset him."
"We were just talking."
"I don't believe you."
The accusation stung and made his tone sharp. "Yeah? Well I don't care what you believe. You're just a kid – what do you know?"
"I'm not a kid!"
"So you're just acting like one then? Kicking and shouting and screaming and taking everything out on me? I didn't want this, Melinda. I didn't mean for any of it to happen and – and it isn't my fault!"
She flinched and he immediately felt guilty. He hadn't meant to say all that; it had just spilled out. A leftover from his confrontation with Chris that she hadn't deserved. Sometimes it was easy to forget that she was only 12.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"What's that?"
"I said I'm sorry. I shouldn't have blamed you." She folded her arms across her chest and kept her eyes on the ground. "Don't make me say it again."
"Heaven forbid." But he was smiling and after a moment, she gave a small smile back.
Melinda started circling his room, picking up various knickknacks and keepsakes and turning them over in her small hands.
"How are you feeling about all this?" Wyatt asked her after a moment.
She screwed up her face. "Dunno."
"C'mon, you can do better than that."
"Don't want to." She found a decorated glass that Wyatt had painted in third grade and held it up to the light. "You're not very good at art."
Wyatt ignored that comment. "Well I'm scared and confused and angry."
"Me too," she said quickly, putting the glass back down again.
"Yeah? Glad it's not just me."
Melinda worked her way around to the bay window and considered the inflatable chair. Obviously thinking better of it, she wandered across to his desk instead and picked up a framed photograph. It was of the three of them, taken years ago now. Melinda was about four, all cute rosy cheeks and hair in bunches. Chris, even at seven, looked dark and secretive, his hair falling into his eyes. Nine-year old Wyatt was laughing at the camera. It was a good photo.
"Chris is bad now, isn't he?"
Wyatt tried to follow her logic and failed. "Why would you say that?"
" 'Cos he hurt those boys."
"How did you…? You saw Aunt Phoebe's premonition," Wyatt realised with a groan as Melinda nodded. "I didn't realise you were there."
"No one did."
"Mel…"
She put the photograph face down on the table. "They're dead, aren't they? The boys."
There was no reason to lie. "Yes."
"And Chris – Chris did it."
He couldn't deny that either.
"So he's bad now, right? That's how it works. You do something that bad and… is he going to go live in the Underworld?"
"What? No, of course not! He's not evil, Mel. It was self-defence."
"But they died!"
Conscious of the open door behind them and his little sister's rising voice, Wyatt hurried to shut it.
"Okay," he began, taking Mel's hand and sitting them both down on the bed. "Okay. Do you remember when you hurt Tamora's knee?"
Melinda chewed on her lip. Tamora was one of their cousins – she and her twin Kat were Aunt Paige and Uncle Henry's oldest children.
"That was an accident."
"That's right. Tamora tripped over and you pushed her out of the way. If you hadn't she probably would have knocked you down the stairs. Now you didn't mean for her to hurt her knee on the table, did you?"
"No!"
"Exactly – it was an accident. You were just trying to protect yourself. Like Chris was."
"But – but it's not the same," Melinda protested.
"Why not?"
"I didn't hurt anyone! Not really…"
"No," Wyatt agreed. "But do you think Chris really meant to either? Remember, he was hurt and scared and he probably panicked. He's not bad, Mel. He's not evil. If anything, well, I don't think he meant to do it at all."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
Melinda thought about that for a second. "Okay, I believe you," she told him seriously. "I didn't want Chris to move to the Underworld anyway."
Wyatt almost laughed, which wouldn't have won him any favours, but the shear frankness of his little sister was refreshing. He'd missed her, he realised. Throughout all of this he hadn't had anyone to talk to. His parents had been too wrapped up in their own problems, leaving their children to their own devices. And now his best confident was a 12 year old girl. Life could be funny that way.
Something else struck him then. "Mel, you can't tell Chris about this, you know that right? He thinks it was an explosion and he needs to keep thinking that."
"Why?"
"… Mom and Dad don't want to worry him."
"So we lie."
"Well, uh, not exactly. We just… don't tell Chris."
"That's the same as lying," Melinda told him stubbornly. "And Mom and Dad said it's wrong to lie."
"Mel," Wyatt sighed. "It's to help Chris. A… white lie. You know what a white lie is?"
"Um… like when Aunt Paige cut her hair real short and Mom said it made her look like a lollypop, only she told Aunt Paige it looked great?"
God, how much did his little sister overhear while she was ghosting around the house? "Exactly. Think you can do that?"
"I guess." Melinda fidgeted, tracing the line of the pattern on his bedspread with one finger. "Wyatt?" she began pensively. "Do you think Mom and Dad are going to get –"
"Wyatt!"
Mom's voice. After a moment the door opened. "Dinner's almost ready. Will you come and set the table please? You too Melinda." Her eyes narrowed. "Where's your brother?"
Melinda jumped up. "I'll go get him."
She scampered off and as Wyatt trudged downstairs he found himself admiring his little sister's resilience. She'd seen everything he'd seen, knew everything he knew and had shrugged it off as if it were nothing. While here he was, crippled by indecision and doubt and most of all fear – fear of what would happen when Chris found out. Because he would find out – that was a given. Secrets had a way of thrusting themselves into the spotlight at the worse moments.
Footsteps sounded behind him and he looked back to see Melinda racing down the stairs, Chris in tow. Their eyes met and for a moment Wyatt thought his brother was going to speak, but then Chris just brushed past him instead.
