The silence of the woods was a living, breathing thing.
It was a cold, damp, heavy silence, broken only by the drip-drip-drip of moisture falling from the high, skeletal branches of the oaks. The air smelled of wet earth, of decay, of a winter that was just around the corner.
And it was broken by the sound of two people trying, and failing, to breathe.
Bruce was on his back, his spine against the rough, mossy bark of a massive tree, his knees drawn up to his chest. He was shaking. Not a small, fine tremor, but a deep, racking, full-body shudder, as if he were dying of hypothermia. He was staring at his left hand.
It was just a hand.
It was pale, streaked with dirt, with a small, crescent-shaped scar on the thumb from a fishing accident when he was nine. It was his hand.
But it was not.
He had seen it. He had felt it. The smoke. The smell... the sharp, ozone-and-burnt-hair smell that was still on his skin, even now. He had seen the wave of black distortion. He had heard the CRACK of the air breaking.
He had felt the cold, joyful, perfect silence of the monster inside him as it unleashed.
He was a bomb. He was a weapon. He was... a thing.
"Bruce."
Ruth's voice was a tiny, broken thing, a whisper that tried to be a command and failed.
He flinched, his head snapping toward her. It was a guilty, animal movement, and he hated himself for it.
She was ten feet away, braced against her own tree, as if she were afraid to get any closer. And she was. He could see it. Her face was a pale, tear-streaked, waxen mask, her eyes—her bright, warm, familiar eyes—were wide and dark, and they were looking at him not with the frustration he knew, or the affection he loved, but with a raw, primal, terror.
She was afraid of him.
That, more than the bodies, more than the power, that was the thing that broke him.
"Ruth..." he whispered. His voice was a dry, ragged croak. "I... I..."
"What," she said. It wasn't a question. It was a flat, dead, terrified statement. "What... was that?"
"I... I don't know," he sobbed, and the sound was ugly, a tearless, hitched gasp. "He pushed you. I just... I just wanted him to... to stop."
"Stop?" she cried, her voice suddenly rising, hysterical. "He didn't stop, Bruce! He flew! They all flew! You... you... you hit them! From five feet away! You didn't touch Miller, but he... he just... he flew!"
She was on her feet now, pacing in the small, root-choked clearing, her arms wrapped around herself, her hands opening and closing. She was vibrating with shock.
"He... he shoved me, Bruce. He shoved me. And you... you blew them up! You threw four guys. Twenty feet. Into a car!" Her voice cracked, a high-pitched, hysterical shriek. "Like... like... like you were a bomb! A... a... a person-bomb!"
"I didn't... I didn't mean to!" he yelled back, his own panic rising. He scrambled to his feet, his hands held up, palms out. Please, please don't be afraid of me. "It just... it happened! The... the amulet... it got hot! And... and..."
"The amulet?" she shrieked, stopping. She stared at him, her eyes narrowing through the panic. "The amulet? Your... your necklace did that?"
"I don't know! I don't know!" He clawed at his shirt, his fingers fumbling with the collar. He yanked it out. The small, dark, gnarled piece of wood. It was cool to the touch. It was just a piece of wood. "It... it was hot. It was... burning me. And then... and then... that."
Ruth stared at the amulet. She stared at his face. She stared at his normal, shaking hands.
"Oh my God," she whispered, her anger and panic giving way to a new, colder, dawning horror. "They're... they're not moving. Bruce..." Her face crumpled. "We... we ran. We just... we ran. What if... what if they're dead? Did you... did you kill them?"
The question hung in the cold, damp, dead air between them.
Did I kill them?
The thought hit Bruce with the force of a physical blow. The sound... the wet, heavy crunch... the sound of Dickson's body buckling the car door...
He bent over, his hands on his knees, and was violently, dryly sick. Nothing came up but a thin, bitter bile that burned his throat.
"I... I..." he gasped, spitting on the leaves. "I... I have to go back."
"What? No!" Ruth lunged forward, finally close, finally touching him, grabbing his arm. Her grip was like a steel trap. "Are you insane? We heard... we heard someone shout! They... they've called 911. The police are coming! You can't... you can't be there!"
"But what if they're..."
"I don't know!" she sobbed, shaking him, her face inches from his. "I don't know! But we... we can't! Bruce, look at me!"
He finally, agonizingly, met her eyes.
"You can't go back there," she whispered, her voice a desperate, urgent plea. "You... you can't tell them. What... what would you say? 'I'm sorry, officer, I... I... I blasted them'?"
He just stared at her, his mind a total, hollow void. The hum was gone. The cold, clear law was gone. There was just... Bruce. A seventeen-year-old kid in the woods, his girlfriend's terrified face filling his vision. And he was... a killer?
In the far, far distance, so faint it was almost just a vibration, came a new sound.
Wooo-eeee... wooo-eeee...
A siren.
Ruth's entire body went rigid. "Oh, God. Oh, God. They're coming. The ambulance. The police."
She looked at him. He looked at her.
And in that one, terrible second, their childhood ended. They were no longer two kids on a picnic. They were not "Ruth and Bruce."
They were a witness.
And... a weapon.
"Home," she said, her voice a flat, dead, terrified command. "We have to go home. To Anah. Right... right now."