Author's Note: Wow. Thanks guys. So, I know you're wondering where the smut is now, right? It's almost done, I promise. It's just…really hard to do well. So I need a little more time to untangle the good from the bad. Keep an eye out around midweek, maybe sooner.
Remember-10 reviews, next Saturday, less than 10, a week from next Saturday.
Chapter 21
Salem Airport
Salem, OR
11:21 P.M.
October 21, 2005
The airport was a ghost town. Pieces of trash lay on the floor like debris in a war zone. The people getting off the plane seemed to scatter as soon as they stepped out of the terminal, disappearing into the air-conditioned false sterility of a place where so many stories collide every day. By the time Charlie reached the main concourse, the only people in sight were the security guards. Even they seemed uncharacteristically on edge, skulking around on the edges of the room, pressing themselves against the walls as if they might blend in if they only tried hard enough, and muttering urgently into portable radios in voices too soft for Charlie to hear.
True, it was the off season. True, not many people traveled this late on a Sunday night. But still. There was something not-quite-right about this silence and detachment. It felt isolated. Not the tired lull of a day well-spent, but the breath-holding limbo of action interrupted. The very furniture seemed to pulse with energy, mostly dark. Charlie walked as quickly as he could, half expecting to wake up dead at any moment.
As he passed the empty gate seating areas, his Sight began to kick in for the first time in years, showing him all the horrors of the day with the good sucked out. The images appear half-formed before his eyes, like negatives that are meant to be developed.
"Do you think we'll ever see Dad again?" A little girl, crying and cuddling a teddy bear with one eye missing and stuffing oozing out like blood from just under one pink felt-lined ear.
"He's in a better place." A man in a dark suit, speaking to a woman who obviously has nothing left. She clutches a shredded piece of tissue in one hand, twisting it around so tightly that it begins to go to pieces in her fingers. She looks down at it in horror, then, seeming to reach some kind of decisive turning-point, roles it viciously until there is nothing left of even this small comfort.
"I'm sorry sir, but it's the law. You are going to have to go back." A man and his three children, looking thin and lost and scared. Their deaths before them in the form of a little red stamp on a thin piece of official-looking paper. Somehow sensing what is going on, the children scream and run. The man looks like he wishes to do the same.
Shaking himself, Charlie looked at a clock on the gate wall and realized he'd been standing there for nearly twenty minutes. His bag had slipped from his shoulder and was lying unceremoniously on its side at his feet, looking like a defeated homeless body. He bent down to pick it up, shivering at the sudden sensation of something brushing a light hand across the unprotected back of his neck. Charlie jumped and turned, poised to hurl his bag at whoever it was, but the only sight that greeted him was the plastic smile of Ronald McDonald, sitting cross-legged on a bench nearby.
"Going fucking crazy," he muttered to himself, though he knew very well he was not. "Thinking kids' statues are attacking me." Then he realized that this would probably be preferable to the very real danger he was still running from, and the fact that he was wasting even more time standing here seemed to slam him over the head and jar him into action. Suddenly very angry, he turned and faced the statue head-on, glaring at it. Without thinking, he plopped his bag to the floor and kicked the statue. The plastic splintered with a sickening crunch, leaving a gaping whole just between the smiling red and yellow eyes. Charlie bent and picked up his bag and then, with a more purposeful air, continued on down the corridor.
The irony of the fact that he was finally traveling somewhere after so many years of captivity played across his mind despite the situation, and Charlie found his thoughts wandering again as he passed into the outer part of the concourse. Restaurants beckoned from all around, beautifully colored and glossed products designed to make bakery smells at the perfect time for attracting customers called to him from behind barred entrances. The gates looked like cages all of a sudden, and then like the Mental Hygiene Ward at Ravenscar. Oddly, they were the most comforting thing Charlie had seen at this strange airport. He had the sudden urge to crawl inside of one and lie down for a nap. Certainly nothing could get to him in there.
He was thinking of the others as he finally made his way past the baggage claim and toward the main doors. Maddie Neese had been the closest thing he'd ever had to a friend, particularly in the cold sterility of Ravenscar. They hadn't spoken since they'd been there, or not aloud at least. But she'd been there all the time, the steadying presence in the room next door, reassuring in the remnants of what was left of his Sight. Charlie thought of the man at the car dealership, lying broken and bleeding in the dusty lot and his stomach tightened. Ben Skinner, perfect blond hair and clear blue eyes gone, only a bloody mess remaining. Walter Bryce, left forever to wallow in his own immorality. Olivia Marquez, cursed beauty, her destiny decided by those who should have been there to protect her.
"Mr. Malone?"
The voice made Charlie jump. He'd barely been seeing what was actually in front of his eyes. The uniformed cop had stepped from out of nowhere, and for a moment Charlie's surprised mind wondered if this man had actually managed to master the art of merging with the walls.
"W—what." It wasn't a question.
"I understand you're a very popular man, Mr. Malone. Wanted by quite a few people now."
Charlie felt his gut tighten. He contemplated fighting, running, attempting to get to the others. But it seemed too hard already, too likely to fail. He hadn't managed to save any of the others.
"You're going to have to come with me now, Mr. Malone." The cop pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
Charlie looked at the ground and saw the broken eyes of his fallen comrades. His stomach turned over dangerously, and he realized that he couldn't face them anymore. His days of attempted redemption were over.
"All right." As he held out his hands, Charlie thought that perhaps a jail cell would be the most secure location of all. After all, any sentence would be better than what was awaiting him out here.
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