Emily did not let go for what seemed like hours but could only have been mere minutes. She had to be absolutely sure.
When she finally lifted the pillow from the still form, Ben was dead.
Dear God, what had she done?
Survived. She had survived.
That was what it had come down to, pure and simple. She had done what she needed to ensure both her own and Rhiannon’s survival.
Having answered her own question, Emily repositioned the body on its side so the black tattoo of veins covering his cheek and chest would be hidden from sight. His hands were clenched into claws against the material of the pillow, and she had to prize them loose, straightening the fingers as best she could before she moved his arms to his sides and finally placed the pillow she had used to smother him beneath his head.
By the time she had finished, he was just a boy in the bed. A boy who had died in his sleep. Peacefully. Painlessly. That was what Rhiannon would see at least. The burden of his true death would be Emily’s alone to bear.
She pulled the comforter up to Ben’s chin and stepped away, taking a deep breath as she fought back first the urge to vomit and then the desire to scream. Instead, she made her way back to her chair and pulled the blanket around her.
The pain would return tomorrow, when she had to explain to Rhiannon that her brother had died peacefully in his sleep sometime during the night.
Emily’s pain would not be so simple to explain away and would stay with her for the rest of her life.
Morning crept silently into the room through the dirt-speckled windows of the hotel.
Emily had sat for the remaining hours between darkness and light and waited, her head a jumble of thoughts and dark emotion. Second-guessing her actions was not in her nature, but she had wondered over and over whether there was something else that she could have done, some other way for her to have saved Ben, cured him, fixed him. Every thread of thought led back to the same conclusion: no. There was nothing she could have done. The choice had been clear: wait and put both Rhiannon and herself in mortal jeopardy, or do what she had done.
But her actions hung around her heart like a millstone, and at this point, with Ben’s body cold and still, not six feet away from her, she did not think that weight could ever be lifted.
Rhiannon had barely moved during Emily’s vigil over her, and, other than the occasional moan or murmured dream word, she slept silently through the night.
Emily had never watched someone wake before. It was oddly fascinating, the way the body started to shift and move as their consciousness began to swim toward the surface of reality. Rhiannon had started to move beneath the comforter, her legs pushing the cover off her torso as she shifted position. One hand was wedged between her cheek and the pillow; the other was cocked over her head, toward the bed’s headboard.
Rhiannon’s eyelids began to flutter and her hand slipped from beneath her cheek and reached to meet the other above her head in an almost feline stretch. As a yawn signaled the young girl was close to waking, Emily laid her head against her arm on the tabletop, closed her eyes, and pretended that she was sleep.
“Emily!”
At the sound of Rhiannon’s shrill cry, Emily slipped into the role she knew she would have to play from this point on.
Her eyes sprung open. “What is it?” she said, with as much surprise in her voice as she could muster. Rhiannon was standing at the head of Ben’s bed, she had pulled back the comforter and exposed his upper torso, pale in the morning light.
“Ben’s not moving,” she said, her voice filled with panic. “I don’t think”—her voice cracked midsentence, and tears flooded her cheeks as she choked out the last few words—“he’s breathing.”
Emily leaped from her seat and was at Rhiannon’s side in two quick steps. She placed the back of her hand against the boy’s head, then tried to lift one thin arm in a show of measuring his pulse, but rigor mortis had set in and the boy’s arm was rigid and unmoving. Emily could see the deep-purple discoloration of lividity along his arm, where it touched the bed. She had expected that, but what she hadn’t expected was that the change she had seen last night had continued to progress even after the boy’s death. Although undoubtedly slowed, the network of black veins had grown in the hours since she had ended Ben’s life, creeping inexorably across the boy’s face and chest.
Emily took both of Rhiannon’s hands in hers, forcing herself to look the girl in the eyes. “Sweetheart, I am so very sorry but—”
“No!” Rhiannon yelled, trying to pull her hands away and push past Emily to get to her brother’s corpse. Emily blocked her with her own body and gripped her hands even tighter, determined not to let her see the full extent of the destruction the alien invader consuming Ben’s body had wrought.
“He’s gone, baby. Ben’s gone.”
“No! No! No!” She repeated the single word over and over, as if it were some kind of magic incantation that by sheer force of will would bring her brother miraculously back to life.
Emily pulled the weeping girl to her, pressing her to her chest, enveloping her with her arms, as she struggled to break free. Finally, Rhiannon collapsed into Emily’s embrace, her tears soaking into Emily’s shirt, damp and cold against her chest.
“Shhhhh!” Emily cooed, her cheek resting against the top of Rhiannon’s head as she gently stroked the girl’s hair.
Emily didn’t think she had ever experienced such manifest anguish; it was as though the child’s very soul had fractured and now spilled from every cell in her young body. It was heartrending and terrifying in its raw despair.
As Rhiannon’s tears turned to a choked sobbing, Emily held her tightly to her and allowed the child’s pain to pierce her.
They buried Ben in a rose bed near the entrance to the hotel.
Emily searched for a shovel but couldn’t find one, so she broke the wooden back support from a chair she found in the foyer and dug the shallow grave using that instead. By the time she had finished, her hands were blistered and cut and a light drizzle had begun to fall, dampening her already sweat-soaked body.
Emily carried Ben from the room, still wrapped in the comforter that would become his burial shroud. She placed him in the grave she had dug just as puddles of rainwater began to collect in the bottom of the hole. The exposed earth around the opening was quickly turning to mud underfoot.
Rhiannon stood at the edge of the grave and helped Emily push the dirt over the body of her brother, until, finally, all that remained was a mound of wet earth to mark his final resting place. They picked the few remaining blossoms from the rosebushes and laid them on the grave beneath a cross that Emily had fashioned from the wooden legs of the same chair she had used to dig the grave.
Emily could not tell if Rhiannon cried. Her face remained emotionless as the drizzle rained down over them, covering any evidence of tears she might have shed. As the shower turned heavier, a crack of distant lightning was followed seconds later by the low rumble of thunder.
Emily placed her arm around Rhiannon’s shoulder. “Time to go,” she said as gently as she could and led her slowly back to the hotel room to change out of their sodden clothes, a disquieting thought playing over and over in her mind.
Although she could not be sure, as she had laid the boy’s stiff body into the cold wet earth, Emily thought she had felt something move within the comforter.
She parked them for the night at a highway gas station somewhere just north of Flint. Rhiannon had remained curled up on the backseat for most of the drive after they’d left the motel, silent and morose. She refused to eat, and Emily had to gently chide her into at least taking a few occasional sips of water. She was asleep in the back of the Durango now, Thor watching over her while Emily left the SUV and walked out of earshot.