Mega Worm Apocalypse

FIFTEEN

It wasn't so much the quiet that had Justin's nerves on edge. It wasn't the knowledge - the CERTAINTY - that any moment godzilla-sized man eating worm things would pop out of the ground beneath him.

It was the loneliness.

Making his way through the forest, he was, for the first time in a long time, completely and utterly alone.

He glanced back over his left shoulder, to where Nat and Andres were walking together through the pines, arms linked, both constantly holding onto the other, constantly needing to feel that the other was safe. They were a team.

Like Justin and Kayla used to be.

He glanced over his other shoulder, to where Kayla picked her way through the brush. She caught him, her eyes wide, apologetic. He walked on. He didn't want her apology. Not now. Now that she'd gotten him into this.

I'm leading us closer to them, she'd said. Just like that. As if it was no big deal. She wanted to walk them into the jaws of the same monsters that killed Maddie.

Maddie.

Justin blinked back the tears that burned his eyes. They'd been friends since kindergarten. She'd been his first kiss. His first...everything. And she listened to him. Always. Even when he didn't want her to, she'd be there, beside him, to listen to whatever was wrong. And now she was gone. Dead. Because of the worms.

And Kayla wanted to walk right back into them. Like she had nothing to lose.

And that, he realized, was the thing that made the loneliness so vast - a gaping empty space, an endless, icy void inside his heart, where she'd left him to drift, alone.

Do you still love me? He never thought he'd ever have to ask that question. Not to Kayla. Not after everything they'd been through. And standing with her, there on the beach, he knew he just had to do it. Because she'd been so cold, so irritable, so distant. It had been going on for so long, he just needed to hear her say it. Make her say it. Say that of course she loved him, yell at him for asking such a stupid question.

But she didn't. I don't know. He hadn't expected her to say that.

The pain he'd felt - a crushing, implosion in his heart, the whole of his love for her caving in on itself, tightening up and trying not to shatter into nothing. He still felt it.

But now, she'd brought them to the woods. To where the worms would find them. And the pain he felt -- it was exacerbated by anger now.

She could stop loving him. There was nothing he could do about that. He would still love her. Till he was dead and stripped down to nothing but bone, he would love her. That was his curse.

But willingly putting herself in front of the Whole - when she knew they would kill her. He couldn't forgive her for that.

After everything they'd done to stay alive. After everything he'd done. Everything Maddie had done....
Kayla just...didn't care anymore?

It was enough to make him scream. He wanted to double over and cry out to the treetops until his throat was raw. But he didn't. He just kept walking. Headed to wherever they were going. The boy? The worms? Maybe both?

I never told you to come, she'd said. And now he had to wonder - why did he?

The curse. The curse of loving her. He had to come. There was nothing else for him to do but follow her - to the ends of the earth or the jaws of a mega worm.

He'd follow her anywhere.

"Kayla!" cried Nat.

Justin turned and there she was, on the ground, in the dirt - Nat and Andre dropping at her side.