The Broken Healer

Chapter 29: To Grandma's House We Go

Newt chased after Keisha, calling for her to stop. She came to a stop in front of a home that looked in much better shape than its neighbors. There were even lights shining from within, the cough of a generator disrupting the still air of the coming night.

Newt reached Keisha and, gasping for breath, had to put Dante down for a second.

"What did you see on the phone?" he managed to ask.

She looked at him. 'It just said, WICKED is here."

"WICKED?"

It was so unexpected and his chest hurt so much from sprinting that he felt nothing when he heard the word. "What the hell? Why would they be here?"

"We’re about to find out." She picked up Dante and moved toward the front door, which was wide open.

Newt grabbed her arm. "What? No. We… Let’s just think for a second."

"They have my daughter, Newt. And my brother. There’s nothing to think about. If they had Evelyn, you wouldn't hesitate! Where is she by the way? You left her and chased after me?"

"You left your shucken kid behind Keisha!" Newt growled at her.

She glared down at his fingers, gripped tightly around her wrist. He let go; his hand flopped to the side as if it had lost its bones.

"What’s there to lose? Though, maybe you should leave, though. Seriously. You kinda have a past with them...and Evelyn needs you."

Newt shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. "I was just a control subject. They shouldn’t care about me anymore. I'm buggen' dying. Why would it matter? Why are they here?"

Keisha sighed. "That’s a lot of questions. I’m going in."

"So am I." When she made to push back, he stopped her. "I’ve got nothing to lose, either. The only good thing in my shucked miserable life is probably already dead. Because I chased after you, because you left your shucken kid! So. I'm coming in to finish what I bloody started because my Evey can't."

"Hard to argue with that one."

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Evelyn watched in her hazy clouded vision as Keisha, the person she came to view as a sister sprint away down the dark shadows. Just as she turned her spinning and pounding head, she heard Newt yell for her and he took off.

She froze in fear and shock. She watched as Newt, his arms full with Dante, sprinted after her, yelling for her.

"He left." She whispered.

His tall frame was swallowed up by the shadows, she heard one last faint yell from Newt for Keisha to stop but then it was quiet.

"He left." She whispered again. "He left me. Again."

A roar of white noise filled her ears, kept to the beat of her thumping heart; her pulse took on a life of its own, thumping almost unnaturally in her temples, in her neck, in her wrists, in her chest. She could hear it. She swore she could hear it.

The world tilted right before Evelyn's s eyes, but it was only focused on where Newt's body was swallowed by the night. Her last grip on reality just left her behind like the burden she was.

Then her vision clouded, a white fog pouring into her eyes, and the storm of noise returned. The buzzing. The roar. The thump, thump, thump of her impossible pulse. She screamed, although it seemed to be within a long tunnel, forever echoing.