Jack fought down his revulsion. He wanted to ask Max why his life was so much more important than the victims he took to the cave. Why other men’s daughters were less valuable than his own. But he left the questions unspoken. He didn’t have time to preach or judge. He just wanted answers. “You said Huckley has greater psychic powers. Like what?”
“He claims to talk directly to the Source all the time, which, for him, is just like talking to God. The only reason I can imagine that he risked what he did to get Sarah was if he thought the Source itself made him to do it. True or not, if Huckley believes it, then things don’t look good for Sarah. I’m sorry, Jack. I really am. But Sarah is going to die. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Jack walked over to the fireplace and stared at the ashes and bits of burnt wood piled up under the metal grate. He wished there was a fire going. Everything felt suddenly cold and dark. “I don’t understand Max. How do you all get away with this? How do you live this long and no one notices?”
“That part is easier than you think. At first we thought we would have to move every couple of decades, make pilgrimages back to the Source. But it’s never been a problem.”
“Don’t people notice? Don’t they ask questions?”
“People see what they want to see. They believe what they want to believe. If their eyes show them something impossible, their brains step in and make the adjustment for them. We all get comments about how little we age, how good we look, but it never goes beyond that. If it does, then we take care of it.”
“You kill them,” Lonetree said. “And you have the perfect set-up. Janney runs protection. Butcher listens at his bar for people to talk about their suspicions after they have a few drinks.”
Max nodded, “The Boss set that up. His smartest move was having Scott Moran get credentialed as a psychiatrist.”
“Jesus, Moran’s one of you? I told him everything.”
“That’s the way it’s supposed to work. People bring in a sixty year old photograph of one of us and Scott convinces them they are delusional and paranoid. Medicates them into submission.” He nodded toward Jack. “Almost worked on you.”
“But the women. The girls,” Jack said, his voice cracking as he pictured Sarah in his mind. “How do you…I mean, how could you—”
Murder innocent people?” Max said. “Be responsible for so many deaths and stay sane?”
Jack turned back to look at the ashes in the fireplace. “Yeah. How do you do that?”
“You might as well ask a crack head on the street why he killed someone for a pair of Nikes. Why? Because he could sell them on the street for fifteen bucks and get one more hit. I can’t explain it anymore that any addict can explain why he drinks, snorts, shoots up, or whatever. I need it. And when the need comes, I’ll do anything to get it.”
“But you killed children. I’ve seen how much you love your own kids and I don’t get it. Or was that a lie too? Was all that crying on my shoulder about Jesse’s heart disease just an act like everything else?”
“I did it for her too,” Max tried to shout. It came out as bubbling slur, saliva dripping from the corners of his mouth. “Don’t you understand? The Boss said he would break the rules and let me bring Jesse to the cave if I helped them take care of you. If I helped them get Sarah.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know anything about this.”
Max blinked hard, then arched his eye brows and blinked again as if something had floated into his eye. “But I couldn’t do it, Jack. I…I couldn’t d-do that. Not e-e-ven for Jesse. Besides, I…I found ana…anoth’…other way. I used…used my gift.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed as he watched Max struggle through his words. He was disorientated. The corners of his mouth drooped down and his chin trembled. With a cry, Max’s hands flew to his eyes and rubbed them as if someone had just thrown a handful of salt in them.
“Are you all right?” Jack asked.
Max stuck his thumbs in the corner of his eyes and pressed in hard.
“Jesus, you’re bleeding. Your eyes are bleeding,” Jack cried out as tiny trickles of blood ran down Max’s cheek. When Max pulled his hands away, Jack saw that the whites of his eyes were dark red, as if every blood vessel in them had simultaneously exploded. “What the hell…”
“Get…a mirror…please,” Max mumbled, pointing to the fireplace.
Lonetree grabbed a round mirror off the fireplace mantle and walked it over to him. Max took it and held it up to his face with shaking hands. He turned his head side to side to view his face from different angles. His face was changing so fast that between oscillations new blotches and marks appeared. The skin around his eyes was now gouged with deep lines. His nose swelled. Then whole sections of it melted away, as if it were being devoured by a runaway cancer. With each turn of his head, handfuls of hair fell onto his shoulders leaving the pale white flesh of his scalp exposed.
“So fast. I didn’t expect it to ‘appen tho fast,” Max groaned, raising a liver spotted hand to his mouth. He parted his lips and felt his teeth. They sank into soft, rotten gums. He closed his mouth in horror and covered it with his hand. He moaned in pain. Forcing himself to confront the damage, he raised the mirror and opened his mouth again. A flow of blood poured over his bottom lip and drained down the front of his shirt. Rotten teeth mixed with the gore of black gums and the lining from inside his mouth slid down his chin.
“What’s happening to you?” Jack whispered.
“I saved ‘er,” he struggled to say. Another bloody tooth tumbled down his chin. “Is my gif’ from tha Source. I th’aved Jesse.”
Jack shook his head that he didn’t understand. It was Lonetree who guessed it. “He said they all changed from Taking. His mutation, his gift, must have been the ability to transfer his life energy to someone else. Looks like it was a one time deal. I think we’re seeing time catch up with your friend here.”
A gurgling sound rose from the back of Max’s throat. His legs started to thrash in wild spasms. Jack watched his friend deteriorate before him. His skin drew in on itself, like shrink wrap on wet plastic. His bones stuck out, in some places breaking through the now brittle skin. Max was turning into a corpse right in front of them.
“I don’t get it.” Lonetree said. “He’s had to have killed hundreds of people over the years. Why would he give up now to save one little girl?”
Jack didn’t have the same question in his mind. He knew. He knew because he also was a father and understood the bond. Understood a father’s willingness to sacrifice himself so that his daughter could live. Max wasn’t just saving a little girl, he was saving his little girl. Jack knew he would trade his own life in a second if he could get Sarah back safely. He leaned in so that Max could hear him. “That’s it, isn’t it? You did this for Jesse?”
Max nodded but his eyes were unfocused. His head dipped as if he were drifting off to sleep.
“Listen. I need your help. Please, for the love of God, tell me who the Boss is. Tell me where they’ve taken Sarah.” Max was drifting away so Jack reached out to shake him awake. But when he grabbed his arm, his fingers sank into rotten flesh until he clutched bone. He pulled back his hand in disgust, bile rising in the back of his throat.
On a violent exhalation of breath that sent blood and spittle flying through the air, Max tried to form a word.
“Come on. Say it. COME ON.”
Jack pleaded as he watched Max’s eyes turn into pale blue clouds as clusters of cataracts grew like crystals.
“How do I stop them?” Jack shouted. “How do I stop them from killing my daughter?”
It was too late. Max was dead.