It's all over me.

Her blood. Belle's blood, it's everywhere, and it's all my fault. I hold up my hands; they're covered in it. I can't breathe. I stumble to my feet, gasping for air. I feel like I'm drowning in the stuff.

Somewhere in the distance, Xeno is saying something.

Gus is barking.

I need this blood off me. It's all I can think about, all my mind can process at the moment.

I stumble out of the RV. The hail has receded to a hard, pelting rain. My legs are wobbly. I trip on the last step and fall to my knees in a puddle.

Hailstones surround me on the ground, all different shapes and sizes. They look like little heads, gazing upon me with judgment.

I scoop up water from wherever I can find it and cover myself, washing off as much as I can, smearing mud all over in the process.

I hear Gus hop down behind me and the RV door swings shut. He sits and tilts his head, as if trying to communicate, but I look away.

"Jack!" Xeno yells, but I shake my head and continue to ignore him.

Breathing is a chore. Every breath is a conscious decision and a struggle.

I cover my face in the mud. Scrub my cheeks, my hair. My arms and especially my hands. I scrape and claw away at every part of them. My fingernails are the worst.

“You can’t … you …” says Xeno. “It wasn’t your fault.”

A kind of emotional vertigo hits me and I feel dizzy. I lean forward and press my forehead into the slushy desert ground. I grip the mud in my hands, over and over, despite Xeno’s protests. I pound the ground, splashing water into the air.

I pull myself up into a sitting position and focus on my ragged breathing. In out … in out. I’d rather endure a thousand hours of inhumane torture under Dugway again instead of this, I decide.

“Jack, listen, buddy …”

Why? When life was suddenly taking a turn for the better? Why?

As if in response, a bolt of lightning flashes across the sky, followed swiftly by a clap of thunder so close I can feel it in my chest.

I look up and stare into the darkening gray sky, the rain coming down like needles.

God. Why?

Gus sniffs at me and then lays his head on my lap.

I look down at him, careful not to touch him. We’re all alone, I realize, for miles. There’s nobody else around. Hundreds of empty vehicles and tents surround us. That stage looms in the distance over there like a ghostly shell.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Eventually, Xeno stops trying to get my attention and just leaves me be. At least for a few minutes.

“Come on, boy,” I say, after a good long moment. “Let’s get out of here.”

I get up and start walking towards my truck, still parked on the periphery of the event perimeter. Then I’m running towards it, Gus on my heels.

—•—•—•—

“Where are you going?” demands Xeno for the umpteenth time.

“South,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Jack. I get you’re distressed. I’m sorry about what happened. It was a … look, just ease off the gas a little, okay? It’s pouring rain. This is crazy!”

I press on the gas pedal. Sixty … sixty-five miles per hour. An involuntary childish response, I know, but I’m not in the mood to be cooperative or reasonable at the moment. In fact, I’m feeling just a tad suicidal if I’m being honest.

The rain picks up. The divided highway before me is vast and open. My headlights illuminate the road for miles ahead, which appears to be nothing but a straight line of asphalt unscathed by the massive earthquake.

Pure, smooth highway. It feels very inviting.

“Slow down!” says Xeno. “You can go and risk your life all you want after you send me back to my star. Remember, I’m—”

“Maybe you should be quiet,” I say, still through clenched teeth.

Sixty-five … seventy miles per hour.

“Jack, I know this is hard, but let’s talk this through. You’re scaring me.”

I clench my fist.

A moment later, Xeno pricks the skin of my palm with a tooth to get me to open up. I growl and shake my hand out. He does that sometimes when I try to shut him up.

“Look, you’re going drive right past them,” says Xeno. “Either that or crash right into them.”

I shake my head. “Who? What are you talking about?”

“Remember how I said the last marble was mobile, right? I could sense it moving around. Remember that? Well, it’s headed directly for us, right now, coming up from the south on this very same highway. What do you think of that? Weird, right? Fate even. I think someone has the crystal container and is—”

“Those headlights?” I say, squinting, as a tiny soft glow appears along the horizon. The rain turns them into a pin prick of a blur. “Is that them?”

“Has to be,” says Xeno.

"Good," I say. "The sooner we build this machine, the sooner I can get rid of you."

"There's no need to be rude."

"Well, you don't have to be so... you."

"Hey, I'm essentially a part of you—your personality, at least. If you want me gone, what does that say about how you feel about yourself?"

I gasp.

"Yeah, exactly, think about that before making rude comments to an—"

"No, no, no," I interrupt. “Not here, not now.”

"What? What's happening? What—oh," says Xeno, realizing I wasn’t talking about him. "That's not good."

The feeling hits me like a roundhouse kick to the throat. It’s a deep feeling, something extremely uncomfortable I haven’t felt in a good long while.

Without thinking, I slam on the brakes and discover firsthand what hydroplaning is. I feel and see my trailer fishtail to my left in the rearview mirror. Then my back tires follow suit, and I’m skidding down close to seventy, my truck slowly rotating as I slide.

There’s maybe a handful of seconds before the inevitable happens, which is a lot of things all at once.

And the only thing that comes to mind is … Gus.

He’s strapped into the passenger seat like a good boy, panting ever so patiently, unaware of what’s about to happen. I reach over and squeeze the dog’s neck with my right hand.

The instant he vanishes, Belle’s legs reappear in a tangled mess. One of them flops onto the dashboard, and paints the interior of the windshield red. I scramble to shove a foot out of my face as I hear and feel an all-encompassing fwoomp, and I’m suddenly weightless and sideways.

The world inside the cab of the truck seems to come to a standstill. I float in a twisted sea of gore and limbs, and then …