Chapter 30: Prayer

“Sarah?”

Sarah opened her eyes. The world appeared sideways. Brady’s motionless legs lay across her field of view, his blood-stained shoes floating in front of her eyes. Not a nightmare. She closed her eyes again. She wished for shoes.

“Sarah? Please. I need you to free me.” Janet’s voice sounded weak and frightened.

Sarah groaned without opening her eyes. “I can’t.”

“Sarah? I know it hurts. God, I know it hurts. You at least need to call for help. You need help. We need help.”

She lay immobile, gathering her strength.

“I want to die,” she murmured.

“I know,” Janet said. “I know. But you can survive if I did.”

“I can’t. I’ve done things.”

“Forget that. Get the phone. Call emergency. Please.”

Sarah didn’t answer her. She couldn’t make her lips or tongue work. Pain filled her consciousness.

Finally, she managed to push herself up to her hands and knees. She didn’t want to see Brady, but he lay there, silently accusing her.

“You can do it,” Janet. “You have to get the phone. Please.”

Somewhere beyond her perception, Sarah could hear a baby crying. But that couldn’t be. She must be hallucinating, or residual echoes of the gunshots.

One hand moved, then the other, then her trembling legs. Even her toenails hurt. The phone lay beside Brady where he’d dropped it when she shot him, its screen pulsing.

One hand. One leg. One hand. One leg.

Painfully slowly, Sarah crawled past Brady’s shoes and reached the device. The screen showed a timer, every second ticking away. It read seven hours forty-three minutes and a handful of seconds. Either Brady had pressed the red button before telling her to shoot Janet, or his death spasm had ground his thumb into the device. Fuck.

In less than eight short hours: Boom.

She tried not to think about the van to concentrate her meagre resources on the immediate task at hand. Her fingers trembled uncontrollably. She breathed in deeply and tried to fight the pressure behind her eyes, think clearly. Only three numbers, not perfect numbers or calculus, but three simple numbers. She thought about the willow, feeling safe under its branches. She thought about Patrick and her mother fighting, Patrick touching her breasts; she thought about Rebecca and Geeky Phil.

Nine.

One.

One.

“Emergency services.”

She gathered her strength.

“Is anyone there. Emergency services.”

“We need help. I’ve killed Brady,” she whispered.

The number floated out of her memory as if he’d spoken it only yesterday. She’d always been good with numbers, equations, problem solving; memorizing numbers came with the territory. She misdialed with trembling fingers three times before the numbers matched those drifting in her memory.

She could vaguely hear the line ringing insistently, but it was late and the number probably long disconnected.

His sleepy voice rose from the phone speaker as if he were sitting beside her in a crowded high school corridor. She would recognize the timbre of his voice anywhere, even after all the years.

“Hello? Whoever this is, do you know what time...”

She couldn’t immediately speak. Tears ran down her face and sobs wracked her chest. Blood stains, Brady’s, Jackson’s, Ivan’s smeared her arm and fingers, barely gripping the phone.

“Jean?”

It’s Sarah, now, but yes.

“Jean, if that’s you, how can I help?”

You can’t. Not yet.

She could hear sirens in the distance, approaching ever closer. The sharp smell of copper filled her nose.

She gathered her last remaining strength. Blackness threatened to overwhelm the sliver of consciousness she retained. Her hand shook so much, she dropped the phone, but she prayed that he could still hear her voice, barely above a whisper.

“I chose the right path, Phil. It wasn’t easy, but I did.” Her voice cracked at the end, but she didn’t care.

With the last of her will, she jabbed at the disconnect button and the line dropped. The countdown returned to the default phone screen where red numbers descended inexorably towards Armageddon. Precious minutes ticked away, even as she watched.

Her eyelids drooped and the blackness consumed her. Sarah collapsed close beside Brady, but not touching him.