Chapter 29.
“No—no—no!”
Jack looks over to where the doctor is still crouched over the body of Luca Tommasi.
He sees immediately that the wail they’ve all just heard has come from the boy, Rupert. His small frame is bent over in the sand, knees buckled. He waves his hands, frantically, trying to make the reality of the moment go away.
The sound that comes out of the boy is raw. Not words. Something older than words.
Jack’s own chest goes hollow.
Luca Tommasi, a good man, a steady man, the kind you want beside you when something goes wrong, lies on a stretcher like he’s already been packed away.
Because of a game.
Because of a voice.
As shocked as Jack is by the news Jimmy has just delivered, as much as he’s just felt all the air go out of him, both he and Jimmy run for the boy, who is sobbing hysterically. Elena trails behind them.
Everything Jimmy and Jack have just experienced in the water, the narrow escape they’ve made from the sharks—now felt like it happened to someone else, somewhere else.
Jack knows they can’t do anything for him now, or the grief that has fallen over the beach. Heavy. Total.
“Hey,” Jack says, and his voice comes out softer than he expects. He gets a hand under Rupert’s arm. Jimmy does the same on the other side.
Rupert can’t breathe right. He’s gulping air like he’s drowning on land.
“I—” he tries. “I never—” His throat clamps. Tears flood. “I never knew anybody who died.”
Jack feels that sentence hit him in a place he tries not to have.
Rupert convulses into tears all over again.
They guide Rupert away from the stretcher, closer to the water where the wind is harsh and clean and doesn’t smell like blood. Jack is on one side of him, Jimmy is on the other. Elena follows, and when Rupert’s hand flails, she catches it and holds on tight.
Rupert stares out at the ocean, blinking hard, believing the world will blur back into something safe if he does it enough.
“How . . . how could this happen?” he whispers.
Then, smaller: “Why him?”
Jimmy’s jaw tightens. He’s trying to keep it together for Rupert. Jack can see it now—the same thing he saw out in the water. Not fearlessness. Control. Jimmy fails anyway.
“It shouldn’t have,” he says. “It shouldn’t have been possible.” He swallows. “He came here because he wanted to matter. Because he thought he could help. That’s what kills me.” Silence. “Jack probably saw this happen way too much in war.”
Rupert shakes his head hard. “But this isn’t a war!” He sobs. “Good people aren’t supposed to die!”
Jack looks at the boy. Fourteen. Brilliant. Still new to the idea that the world doesn’t care how good you are.
“No one was supposed to die,” Jimmy says.
“In war,” Jack says quietly, “you learn the worst lesson early. Sometimes the good ones go first.” He pauses, chooses the honest version. “And sometimes it isn’t because they made a mistake. It’s because somebody else did.”
Rupert doesn’t answer, just turns and lets Elena put her arms around him. They just stay where they are, all of them feeling as gutted as this fourteen-year-old boy who just encountered death for the first time.
Rupert turns to him. “Who?”
Jack glances toward the trees, toward the unseen cameras, toward the helicopter that arrived too fast.
“I don’t know yet,” he says. “But I know this: Somebody wanted us to see it.”
They sit there with the water slapping the shore.
No one knowing or able to find the right words.
Probably because there aren’t any here at the end of the world.