Final Destination 3, page 26
part #1 of Final Destination Series
When he saw her slender figure behind the double glass doors, escorted by the younger blond cop, the powerful wave of relief that washed over him made him feel a little sick. He did not want to make a big deal out of it in case that cop was watching them, so he just waited silently for her, struggling to keep his face neutral.
She pushed the doors open and came over to where he stood. Her big liquid brown eyes were bloodshot and sleepless, rimmed with red, and dull with the horrors they had witnessed, yet there was still a kind of weird urgency in her petite frame, chin firm and defiant. She nodded a wordless greeting and together, they made their way towards the parking lot.
"I didn't say anything," Kevin told her, pitching his voice low even though there was no way that cop could hear them. "I think they were trying to scare us into saying something, but they had nothing on us, no cause to keep us here. How about you? What did you tell them?"
He could see a complex swirl of emotion rising in her eyes. She seemed exhausted, frustrated and scared, but still ready to fight.
"What did I tell them?" she asked. "Everything. What was I supposed to do, make up some lie and get us into even more trouble? I haven't done anything wrong, so I told the truth. I told them about the pictures in the camera, and Frank and Lewis, and Flight 180, and why we went to see Ian and Erin. Everything."
Kevin took her gently by the arm, hoping to calm her. "Did they believe you?" he asked.
Wendy snorted, shaking her head. "Yeah right," she said. "What do you think? Would you believe us?" She looked away. "No. The guy looked at me like I was totally whacked."
"Ten hours," Kevin said. "Ten fucking hours they kept us and the only conclusion they could come to is that you are whacked. McKinley's finest at work."
"Was it really that long?" Wendy asked. "For all we know, whoever was sitting behind Erin and Ian is already dead by now." She paused, searching Kevin's face. "That would mean we're next. Right now."
They had reached the slot where Wendy's truck was parked. She hit the keyless entry button on her key chain and put her hand on the door, but didn't open it.
"Ian almost died first," she said. "But we stopped it. We intervened, so it… it skipped Ian. That's gotta be the way we regain control. If someone intercedes, then the life that was supposed to be next is skipped."
Kevin frowned, tense and considering. "Okay, so…" he said. "From the way we sat in the roller coaster, I'd be first and then…" He paused, throat tight. "Then you."
Wendy nodded slowly, but still with that defiant set to her jaw.
"We can beat this," she said, voice strong and steady. "We're so close, we can't give up now."
Kevin smiled ruefully. "You're starting to sound like me," he said.
She looked up, locking his gaze for several seconds, then turning away, scanning the empty lot.
"So now what?" she asked.
"Now I gotta go to work," Kevin replied. "I'm working security at that Tri-Centennial celebration deal. If I don't show up I'll get canned."
Wendy's brows knitted, incredulous. "After what we've seen," she said, "you're worried about getting fired?"
"I get credit towards my sheriff training for this job," he said. "If I blow it off, it'll hurt my chances of getting into the academy." He looked back over his shoulder at the double glass doors of the police station, but it was impossible to see if the two cops were still there. "And after today, getting hauled in for questioning can't help."
"Sheriff training?" Wendy asked. "But what about UNLV? Shark jumping with Carol Alt in a bikini and your big career with the NFL?"
Kevin looked down and away. "There's really no point without Jay," he said softly. "And since all this madness started, I've been thinking very seriously about the future. See, I'm planning on having one. And not just a future, but one with you in it."
He reached out and took Wendy's hand. "I mean, not that you have to be with me, or whatever…" he said. "I mean… if you don't want to." He squeezed her fingers. "What I'm trying to say, Wendy, is that I want you to have a future too."
She looked up at him, tiny lines creasing between her dark eyebrows, but then a car horn sounded, nearly startling Kevin out of his skin. He turned and saw his father's battered work truck pulling up to the curb, his father's scowling face hovering above the rolled down window.
"Shit," Kevin said, dropping Wendy's hand. "My dad is here. I better go. I'm gonna have to listen to an endless lecture all the way home."
"Maybe…" Wendy reached out and touched Kevin's arm. "I mean… shouldn't we stick together?"
"It's only a couple of hours," Kevin said. "You go home and search those photos for clues and I'll ask everyone I can find at the fair if they can remember who else got off the ride with us."
Wendy nodded, but he could see in her tense posture that there was something more that she needed to say. He hesitated, waiting for her to speak.
"Is there something I need to know before I go?" he finally asked. "Maybe something about my photo?"
Wendy shook her head.
"Then what?" Kevin asked.
"It's just that…" She looked away. "I'll just be freaking out every second, worried and hoping that you're okay."
Kevin felt a smile slowly surface. "Why?" he asked. "We don't even like each other, remember?"
Wendy shrugged, a sheepish grin creeping across her lips, clearly chagrined to have her own thoughtless words thrown back at her. To his surprise, she pulled him into a tight embrace. He closed his eyes for a precious second, arms around her and wishing fiercely that they were somewhere else, anywhere else. Somewhere safe.
His father's horn sounded again and Kevin felt a cold spike of frustration. He turned back to his father holding up a single finger.
"I have my cell," Kevin said. "Anything happens, and I mean anything, you call me, okay?"
"Okay," Wendy said.
"Hell," Kevin said. "Even if nothing happens, call me anyway. Just call me and let me know you are okay."
"Yes, Daddy," she said, smirking.
"Please," Kevin groaned. "Do not call me that. That gets us into a whole weird area and it's making my pants fit funny."
Wendy laughed and gestured to his goofy, too tight Sultans sweats. "Your pants already fit funny," she said.
He grinned and shook his head. "Just call me, all right?" he asked.
"I said I would, didn't I?" she said, making shooing motions with both hands. "Go on."
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Wendy knew that she was dreaming, but she couldn't make herself wake up.
She had gotten back to her house and raced up to her room to her computer, but after about thirty minutes of staring at the pictures on the monitor, her eyes had gone woozy and unfocused. She had lowered her head onto her folded arms, just wanting to rest her eyes for a second or two. The next thing she knew she was caught up in a horrible nightmare.
It started off at Red River, and everything was on fire, cold, sinister, blue and white flames that burned endlessly without consuming. Instead of heat, the flames gave off intense cold that felt almost like burning. Wendy ran through the flaming midway, desperately searching for Jason, or was it Kevin? She kept thinking she saw people, but when she got closer, she discovered that they were just big, flat, paper cutouts, life-sized photos that scattered into snowy fragments when she touched them.
When she finally found Jason, she saw him standing with Kevin and Carrie by the deep fried Snickers sign. She screamed his name, but when he turned to the sound of her voice she saw with horror that his face was scribbled out with thick black streaks. The scribbles moved and writhed over his face, and in the air around his head like living things, some kind of poisonous snakes or eels. Carrie turned, and her face was scribbled out too. Only Kevin's face was normal, but the scribbles were twisting through the air from Jason and Carrie's heads, reaching towards Kevin. Didn't he see them? She had to warn Kevin, but he didn't seem to hear her voice. Then she heard a sound, a soft, metallic tinkling, and she turned and saw her sister Julie standing by a merry-go-round. The snarling carousel horses had manes and tails of flame, and their eyes rolled wildly in their heads. Julie was holding something out to her. Wendy ran to Julie, but she couldn't seem to get any closer. Behind Julie, the carousel started up with a blast of loud, discordant organ music that sounded like a record played just a little too slow.
The spinning horses behind Julie went faster and faster, and there was a sound like rapid hoof beats, or was it heartbeats? Julie held something out to her and Wendy desperately stretched out her hand to reach it. It was a photo, a photo of their grandmother –the same photo that Jason always used to turn to face the wall whenever he came over. As soon as Wendy's fingertips brushed against the edge of the old photograph, the entire scene began to twist and melt around her, spiraling away into blurred oblivion as that curious tinkling sound echoed through her head.
But what was that sound? That delicate tinkling silver sound? It seemed so familiar. The tattered fragments of her dream began to dissolve and she opened her eyes. She was sitting on her desk, head cradled in her arms. On the monitor in front of her was that frustratingly useless photograph of everyone on the roller coaster, the attendant's arm blocking the center of the shot. Wendy squinted at his plaid sleeve as if she could will it away just by staring hard enough, and her eye was drawn to the pale moving hand and wrist behind the attendant's arm, the hand that had to belong to whoever was in the seat in front of them on the ride. She could see a sweatshirt cuff, a slice of skinny wrist and the blurred, moving hand. Then she saw something else. There was a glint of metal between the cuff and the hand.
Wendy reached for the mouse and selected magnify from the menu, then clicked on that section of the image. A vertiginous zoom and the glint was a little clearer. A watch? She clicked again and the zoom focused in on just the wrist, the cuff and the hand. With the picture blown up so large it was difficult to make out detail. Everything looked pixelated and distorted. She peered more closely at the screen, her desperate eye hunting for familiar details. It wasn't a watch, it was a bracelet, a silver bracelet. Wendy felt a hollow sick elevator plunge inside her belly. It was Julie's bracelet, the good luck bracelet given to her by their grandmother. Julie. Julie snuck on the ride. Suddenly, with painful clarity, Wendy could see the two girls in hoodie sweatshirts, brand new hoodys they had bought only minutes before getting on the ride.
They didn't have their hoods up because they were worried about messing up their hair. They didn't want Wendy to recognize them. The one here on the right was Julie, but who was this other one? It must have been either Amber or Perry. Wendy reached for the bracelet on the desk where Julie had left it when she told Wendy she could take it with her to Yale. She wanted to hold it up to the screen and compare it to the photo, just to be sure, but it was gone. Frowning, she looked around the surface of her immaculately neat and organized desk. It was nowhere to be seen. She looked down on the floor, wondering if it had fallen. She found nothing.
Wendy heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway and a door opening, then slamming. What was that sound in her dream? That sound that seemed so important, a gentle silvery tinkle? The bracelet. Julie had taken the bracelet.
Wendy tore from her room and pounded down the stairs, flinging open the front door and shouting Julie's name. She arrived just in time to see Perry's battered, purple Saturn peeling out of the driveway, noisy raucous music blasting from the rolled down windows.
"Goddamn it," Wendy cursed, slamming her fist into the doorframe.
"Language," her mother warned from the kitchen in the most dippy, clueless tone. "I thought we agreed not to swear in this house, Wendy."
Wendy felt a nearly blinding wave of killing frustration, but she bit down on her lip and forced herself to breathe normally.
"Do you know where Julie went?" Wendy asked, fighting to keep the panic out of her voice.
"She went to that Tri-Centennial fair," Wendy's mom replied. "Your father and I are going to head over there for the fireworks show as soon as I've finished packing up this cheese and fruit I picked up at the farmer's market. I thought we'd have a little picnic. These blueberries are so nice. They're an antioxidant super food, you know. You are welcome to ride down with us, honey. I think it would be a good idea for you to get out and enjoy life. You've been so…"
Wendy left her mother chattering away and went to get her cell phone.
First she called Julie. It went directly to voicemail.
"Hi," Julie's perky message said. "You've reached Robo-Julie. Obviously you're not good enough to talk to the real Julie, so start sweet talking Robo-Julie after the beep and maybe if you're lucky, the real Julie might call you back."
"Julie," Wendy said and then paused. What the hell was she supposed to say? There was no way her sister was going to believe any of this. "Call me on my cell right away." She paused again, torn, then hit end.
She cursed softly to herself and then her gaze snagged on that zoomed in photo, that fragment of Julie's hand and wrist. Goddamn her, the little sneak. What the hell was she thinking? She knew she wasn't allowed on a ride like that. The posted sign right there in the line had said so. Even without the accident, the vision and all the madness, Julie could have died on that ride. Now she was caught up in all this, locked into this awful pattern of brutal bookkeeping.
Wendy couldn't help but feel doubly responsible. In a way she felt responsible for all the deaths, but with Julie, she knew she could have done more. She could have turned her around and marched her home, or called their mom to come and get her. She should never have been there in the first place.
All this guilt and rumination wasn't going to solve anything, so she speed dialed Kevin, pressing the little phone to her ear. He picked up before the first ring could finish.
"Wendy," Kevin said. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," Wendy replied. "Do you remember Julie being on Devil's Flight with us?"
"Your sister?" Kevin asked. "No. And anyway she's got that heart thing, right? They don't let people with heart conditions on that ride. Besides, if she had been, don't you think she would have said something by now?"
"She knew she wasn't supposed to be on that ride," Wendy wailed.
"Wait a minute," Kevin said. "What makes you think it was Julie?"
"The kids we couldn't see, the ones in between Ian and Erin, and you and me, one of them was wearing an art deco bracelet just like Julie's good luck bracelet, the one given to her by our grandmother."
"Shit," Kevin said. "That means she's next. Did you warn her?"
"She left for the Tri-Centennial fair before I could catch her," Wendy said. "Amber and Perry are with her. I'd be willing to bet that one of those two girls was the other mystery guest on Devil's Flight. We've gotta talk to them before…"
"OK," Kevin said. "I'm there now, I'll find them."
"I'm on my way," Wendy replied.
"Wait," Kevin said just as she was about to hang up.
"What?" she asked.
"Did you see anything in Julie's picture?" he asked. "Anything I can tell her to stay away from?"
Wendy moved to her desk and clicked away the enlarged photo, mousing around until she found the thumbnail of Julie giving the double bird to the camera. She clicked on it and it opened.
"She's got her tongue out and two middle fingers up," Wendy said, scrutinizing every detail. "She's standing in the center of the midway, game booths and things all around. Part of one of her friends is on the right side of the frame, moving and blurry. I think it might be Perry because there's some blonde hair at the top, but it might just be a yellow light reflection."
Wendy studied every inch of the frame, but it was busy with detail, lights, banners, balloons, neon and hanging streamers, and it was impossible to know what was relevant and what was not. Julie was wearing a pink vintage T-shirt with a silhouette of a rearing horse. Her blurry friend had a vintage tee as well, something with an American flag and what was probably a bald eagle, though the photo made it difficult to tell.
"I just don't know, Kevin," Wendy said. "It's so hard to tell until the situation is already happening, like with Ian and those tan banners. I'm gonna print this out and bring it. Maybe when I'm there, I'll see something…"
"One other thing," Kevin said.
"Yeah?" Wendy clicked print and fed a piece of high quality photo paper into the printer.
"After them…" he said. "We'll be next."
Wendy tried to swallow around the lump of ice that had formed inside her throat. "Yeah," she said softly. "Yeah, that's right."
"So," Kevin continued. "In case something happens to them before we meet up." He paused. Wendy could hear cheerful music and laughter in the background. She felt sick. "That time we talked about… you know, when to look at our own pictures?" He paused again. "It's now."
Wendy pulled up her own photo, the one that Kevin had taken of her and Jason. Jason had his arm around her. The background was a dark, out of focus blur.
"There's nothing," she said. "No clue at all. It's just me and Jay standing in front of a dark, blurry background. I'm not holding anything or near anything. It's just totally normal and ordinary. Jay's got his arm around me." She paused, feeling a cool eddy of sadness swirling through her belly. "Nothing. There's nothing."
"What about…?" Kevin asked, unable to finish the sentence.
Wendy closed the photo of her and Jason and searched out the thumbnail of Kevin. When she found it, she clicked on it to open it.
It was the close-up Wendy had snapped right after Kevin took the shot of those panties. His face was washed out and overexposed from the flash, mouth open, and blue eyes huge and terrified.
"Remember when I made the flash go off in your eyes?" Wendy asked. "Right after you took the shot of Stacy's panties?"
"Sure," Kevin said. "Is that my photo?"
"Yeah," Wendy said. "It's super close, over exposed and all out of focus. The bright flash lit up your face and you looked really scared. Almost like…"
