VI Epilogue
Jalon Pierce ran.
He ran through his neighborhood, training to get faster and stronger. He would join the military in a couple of years and wanted to be ready to make it through the rigors of boot camp. He didn’t want to wash out and fail or anything.
The run went well. He ran through the neighborhood, watching people walk their dogs or do the lawn or play ball outside with their kids or wander along on scooters or bicycles.
He didn’t understand how it felt to be normal anymore - to not have lives to worry about.
He wondered what it was like to not wonder constantly if he would get attacked.
Every day he trained or researched how to fight better and get more ready to face countless enemies in real-life fighting. He just had to win his fights. He expected to die in a violent situation, but he knew that he would save lives in doing so. That was the goal - to die saving people.
Jalon wanted neither a long life nor a happy one. He just wanted to impress himself that he had saved lives and improved reality a bit. That would make him happy with his existence.
He smiled and sat down after his run to have lunch with Beatrice, a lunch between friends. She smiled as he sat down.
“Hey,” Beatrice said.
“How are you? It’s been a bit.”
“I know,” Beatrice said. “I’m killer-free for now. Stalker free for now. Waiting for the next man to try to ruin my life. I’m ready. Ready to end him or arrest him nicely if he hasn’t gone too far. I’ll play it by ear.”
“Good,” Jalon said. “I’m training for boot camp.”
“Not college and become an officer?” Beatrice asked.
“No,” Jalon said. “I don’t want to be an officer. I want to be a grunt.”
“Good,” Beatrice said. “That sounds like a good and noble life, an interesting existence. It sounds like something that will be very fulfilling and will give you plenty of chances for adventure.”
“Ai’s father is pissed at existence,” Jalon said.
“He’s suing everybody. He’s trying to get a lot of people fired for failing to protect us teenagers.
Apparently, a lot of adults didn’t fully understand that a group of killers was stalking the streets, killing people.
Otherwise, hundreds of agents and cops would have flooded the streets looking for the group of killers.
” “Huh,” Beatrice said. “I suppose. We killed several of the scariest serial killers in the history of our existence. I’m proud of us.
I’m proud of Mitchell. I’m proud of Ai for killing someone even though she failed to survive - she did kill one of them. ”
“She was the best of us,” Jalon said.
“And Ghostkin?” Beatrice asked. “What about my boyfriend?”
“What about Walter?” Jalon asked. “What about your dad?”
“Let’s not talk about my dad,” Beatrice said. “We lost a lot of wonderful people to these guys. It was bloody.”
“What are you going to do with yourself, Beatrice?” Jalon asked.
“College, then I don’t know,” Beatrice said. “I will figure it out. I might take some of the notes from my dead ex-boyfriend and program InfoXTL.”
“Cool,” Jalon said. “Do it.”
“Cool,” Beatrice said. “I’m sorry, Jalon. Are you going to continue to try to lead the teen geeks?”
“I am, as always, our fearless leader.”
Beatrice was not happy - she would never be happy - but she was feeling like something had changed. They had survived an impossible series of problems somehow, and she had been in the hospital for a long time and had gotten away with her body and mind intact. She had survived.
She was a final girl. She knew that none of the popular and pretty girls around her had survived. The only other girl who survived was the leading actress at the school, Madelyne. She didn’t think that anyone would understand how difficult it was to survive a series of these encounters.
Her life would always be a horror story. She would always be looking around for the next monster, the next villain, the next disaster. Something would always go bad. Something always went bad in her existence.
Madelyne, Mitchell, and Westfield sat at the poker table. Macmillan walked into the room.
“I survived by leaving until it was over,” Macmillan said. “InfoXTL and I processed all the information that we could to help everyone. It was us who told Madelyne how she was being watched and how to set up a trap for Waylon.” “Thank you,” Mitchell said. “You are fantastic, Macmillan.”
“You are welcome, of course,” Macmillan said.
Macmillan was at a site where no one but him knew where he was, and he used a secure VPN to prevent anyone from finding him. He then managed the manhunt for the slasher killers with InfoXTL, watching everything and commenting secretly on people’s phones.
“Sit with us,” Westfield said.
Macmillan sat down.
“We are playing something fun,” Madelyne said.
“Yes,” Westfield said.
“The greatest game in all of existence,” Madelyne said.
“Chess?” Macmillan asked.
“Bridge,” Madelyne said.
“Ah, a classic,” Macmillan said. “Let’s play.”
“Cool,” Madelyne said. “I’ll deal everyone thirteen cards.”
Madelyne looked for the briefest of instants at Melody, who wore a sports bra and smoked a joint in a comfortable chair in the other corner of the room.
She would never go away, not with the current level of technology and medicine. The doctors didn’t know how to get rid of the voices or the hallucinations. They couldn’t do it yet.
She still knew how to ignore her and prevent her from causing trouble in her life. She ignored Melody and didn’t let her interrupt people when they were talking to her.
“What’s the future like, Mitchell?” Madelyne asked.
“I stole enough of the Takeda money,” Mitchell said.
“I actually feel bad because Ai died. But her dad makes billions off of other people’s hard work, so I feel less bad about that.
So I’m going to Gurnee, Illinois. Rich person there.
Something’s happening there. Some businessman involved with football or some such nonsense. ”
“Football? Fantastic,” Westfield said. “I have an apartment where I can watch football in the fall and take college classes. And I’m a waiter.
It’s one of those restaurants that charges just enough for the tips to be good, a bar/restaurant hybrid type place where I work the non-bar area. The food area.”
“And the burgers are delicious,” Madelyne said.
“Madelyne?” Macmillan asked. “Any goals in life?” “I just want to go to Hollywood and get an education,” she said.
“I want to go to USC and study and learn, become an educated person who can get a real job when I fail to make it as an actress and a singer. Then I will try for a limited amount of time - after which I will get a real job helping people.”
“Great,” Westfield said. “That’s smart.”
“People died,” Madelyne said. “A bunch of them. A lesbian couple, my boyfriend. A queen bee. We should not forget them. I will write them a note a week, every week, about how our lives are going and how we remember them, for as long as I can.”
Madelyne dealt them the next hand.
Thanks for reading my novel!