Silence.
The echo of the CRUNCH faded, leaving a new, terrible, high-pitched silence.
It was the silence of the thing in Bruce's head, but it was outside now. It was in the air.
The four boys, Dickson and his crew, did not groan. They did not move. They just... slid. They slid down the ruined side of the Camaro, leaving small, dark smears on the primer, and collapsed onto the asphalt in a tangled, boneless heap.
They were out. Unconscious. Or... or worse.
They were just... still. Like puppets whose strings had been cut.
The air crackled.
Ruth, her hands over her mouth, her entire body shaking so hard her teeth were chattering, couldn't breathe. The smell of ozone and... was that... burnt hair?... was so strong it made her eyes water.
She looked at the car. A pile of bodies. A shattered windshield. A car alarm, somewhere down the row, started to whoop-whoop-whoop, triggered by the concussion.
She looked at Bruce.
He was still standing in the same spot. He hadn't moved.
His left arm was still outstretched, his hand open, his palm facing the wreckage.
And his hand... his hand was smoking.
A faint, pale, grey wisp of smoke was rising from his palm, as if he'd just pressed it to a red-hot stove.
He was panting. Not from exertion. From shock. Deep, ragged, desperate gasps for air.
He slowly, slowly, lowered his arm. He looked at his hand. He turned it over. The palm was red, angry, but not burned.
He looked up. His eyes, which moments before had been a cold, black, terrifying void, were just... Bruce's eyes.
And they were wide. They were wild. They were filled with an innocent, profound, animal terror.
The cold, clear law was gone from his mind. The roar of the hum was gone. The amulet on his chest was just... a piece of wood. Cool to the touch. Spent.
His head was empty. For the first time in his entire, seventeen-year-long life, there was nothing in his head. No hum. No silence. No monster.
There was just... the whoop-whoop-whoop of the car alarm. The tinkle of a piece of glass falling from the Camaro's windshield.
And the sound of his own, ragged breathing.
He was empty. And he was more terrified than he had ever been.
"Bruce...?"
Ruth's voice. It was a whisper. A tiny, trembling, broken sound.
He flinched, as if she'd slapped him. He turned to her, his movements stiff, robotic.
She was still standing where she'd been, her hands at her mouth, her eyes as wide as dinner plates. She was looking from the smoking hand, to the pile of bodies, to his face.
Her brain was trying, and failing, to make the three things add up.
"Bruce..." she tried again, her voice cracking. "What... what did... what did you do?"
It was the question. The real question.
He opened his mouth. No sound came out.
He tried again. "I... I..." he stammered. He looked at his hand, still smoking. He looked at the bodies. "I... he... he pushed you. He..."
He couldn't form the sentence. He couldn't make the word "push" fit the image of what had just happened.
"They're... they're not moving," Ruth whispered, her voice watery. She was going into shock. "Oh God... Bruce, they're not moving. Did you... did you kill them?"
Kill them?
The thought hit Bruce like a physical blow. He looked at the pile of letterman jackets.
Oh God. Oh, God.
"Hey!"
A new voice. A shout. Distant. From the school building. "Hey! What was that? What was that noise?"
A teacher, working late. A janitor. Someone.
The shout broke Ruth's paralysis. Her shock, her fear... it was all still there, but a new, powerful, survival instinct just slammed into its place. She was no longer just a terrified girl. She was a witness. She was an accomplice.
"Bruce!" she yelled, her voice no longer a whisper, but a raw, frantic command. She lunged forward, not at him, but past him, grabbing his bag from the ground where he'd dropped it. She grabbed his arm—his right arm, his human arm—and she pulled.
"Bruce, run! We have to go! We have to go now!"
He was a dead weight, a statue of pure, catatonic shock. He was still staring at the bodies. "But... they're... I... I..."
"I DON'T KNOW!" she screamed, her voice breaking into a sob of pure panic. She pulled him, hard, yanking him off balance, forcing his feet to move. "But we can't be here when they find out! MOVE, BRUCE! RUN!"
And they ran.
He was still in a daze, his legs a clumsy, disconnected miracle. She was dragging him, her grip on his arm bruising, her feet flying over the asphalt. They ran, not toward the street, but away from the school, toward the alley that cut between the gym and the woods.
They didn't look back.
They ran, the whoop-whoop-whoop of the car alarm and the distant "Hey! Somebody call 911!" fading behind them. They scrambled down a gravel embankment, plunged into the cold, damp, familiar shadows of the woods, the ones that bordered Anah's property.
They didn't stop running until they were deep, deep in, hidden by a stand of ancient, moss-covered oaks.
They collapsed at the base of a tree, falling more than sitting. They were hidden. They were safe.
They were... alone.
The only sound was their own, ragged, panicked breathing, their breath pluming in the cold, grey air.
For a full minute, they just sat there, backs against the rough bark, the adrenaline draining away, leaving a sick, shaking, cold reality.
Finally, Ruth, her chest heaving, her face pale and streaked with tears she hadn't known she'd cried, turned to him.
He was sitting with his knees drawn up, his head in his hands, his whole body shaking.
"Bruce," she said. Her voice was not a scream now. It was a small, tight, terribly calm whisper. "Don't... don't 'check out.' Don't you dare. You look at me."
He slowly, agonizingly, lifted his head.
"You tell me what that was," she said, her voice trembling, but her gaze was a steel-trap. "You tell me, right now, what that was."
"I... I can't, Ruth. I..."
"DON'T!" she cried, her voice breaking. "Don't you dare say you don't know! I just saw you! I just saw you throw... you threw four guys! Twenty feet! Into a car! Like... like... like you were a bomb!"
Her face crumpled. "What... what are you, Bruce?"
The question hung in the cold, dead air between them. It was the question he had been running from his entire life. The question the hum had drowned out. The question the amulet had tried to... what? Control? Or focus?
He looked at his hands, his normal, human, shaking hands. He could still smell the ozone on his skin.
He looked up at her, at the one, single person on earth he had ever trusted.
And he gave her the only answer he had.
"I don't know," he whispered, and the words, the terrible, final, true words, broke him. "I don't know."