Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) (28 page)

“You’re not going to die, Wes.”

“Aren’t I?”

I sighed and turned my attention to
Liesel. “How much further, Leese?”

“We’re ten minutes from Reno,” she said.
“We’re almost to the state line. How’s he doing?”

“He’s OK,” I said.

“How’s your leg, Cam?” Liesel asked.
“Does it still hurt?”

“It stings. But I’ll be all right.”

I saw Liesel eyeing me in the rearview
mirror. She didn’t seem to be holding herself together as well as before. She
looked panicked, like even she didn’t know what today’s outcome was going to
be.

“Cam, since Wesley’s house is closer than
yours, I say we stop at his place and swap cars. We have no idea if those cops
are
still hunting
us. We don’t have the time. We can’t
risk being pulled over again.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Good idea.”

Wesley coughed, then said, “Cam, how old do
you think I am?”

I just shook my head. “It’s hard to say.”

“Fifty? Sixty, maybe?”

“Something
like
that.”

“Why does this have to be happening so
much faster than when it happened to you last year?”

I hugged my friend, knowing that there
was a strong possibility he wouldn’t make it to tomorrow. “I don’t know.” I
took a deep breath. “Wes, right now, we need to focus on getting you better.
And I promise you… I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you get
through this. You understand me?”

“It’s OK if you can’t,” Wesley said. “I’m
just glad I got to see you one more time.”

I had to keep myself from crying as
Liesel pulled off the I-80 freeway and headed toward Wesley’s home up off
McCarron Blvd. It was almost eleven. Time was running out.

Wesley had to give Liesel proper
directions to the house. I hated admitting it, but I hadn’t been over to Wes’s
in years, probably not since junior year of high school. I remembered the house
well, though; it wasn’t as big as mine, but impressively large just the same,
sitting at the end of a small cul-de-sac. I remembered the paved trail that ran
alongside his house and behind his backyard, all the way down to the hidden
lake at the bottom of the hill. We camped out back there a lot as kids, and
part of me wished we could visit that serene location one last time.

Liesel pulled into the driveway, nearly
crashing into the garage door before slamming on her brakes.

“OK, Wes,” she said, jumping out.
“Where’s your car? We need to swap.”

“It’s in the garage,” Wes said. “You’re
gonna need to back out.”

“Oh, duh.” Liesel looked tenser than
ever. Throughout the terror of the last week and a half, she had for the most
part kept her cool. But now she looked like she was suffering a bout of
anxiety; all the fear she’d been bottling up inside had finally started
scratching her surface.

Don’t
freak out now, Leese,
I
thought.
Please. You’re the only one who
can get me through this.

Liesel parked next to the paved trail and
pulled Wesley out of the back seat. “Do you know where the car keys are?”

“They’re in the… they’re in the—”

Wesley released a loud shriek and fell
backward, slamming his head against the car door and hitting the ground on his
left side.

“Wes!” I shouted, stumbling out of the
car, my right leg still aching. “Wes, what is it?”

“The pain…” he said. “Oh God, it hurts…”

I stared at his face, and I watched with
horror as a group of lines literally morphed right onto his cheeks, and around
his frightened eyes. I watched
,
shocked, completely
bewildered, as Wesley literally grew a year older right in front of my face.

“Leese, what time is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Eleven,
maybe?”

“11:01,” Wesley said, looking at his
wristwatch. He breathed through his nose a few times, before sitting up. “It’s
OK. I’m OK now.”

I looked at Liesel with sadness and
despair.
In an hour, the pain’s not
gonna
strike once an hour. It’s
gonna
strike once a
minute
. The pain’s
never
gonna
let up. He’ll be in pain until he dies.

“Come on, let’s go inside,” Wesley said.
“I’ll get you guys the keys, and you can be on your way.”

“OK,” Liesel said, before giving me a
worried glance.

The three of us made our way over the
lawn and toward the front door.

“Is anybody home?” Liesel asked.

“No,” Wesley said with a frown.

“What about your parents?” I asked.

Wesley just shook his head. He didn’t
have to say anything more. If Wesley looked as old as he did now, there was no
saying what his parents would’ve looked like if they were still alive. We heard
a loud barking at the door, followed by a discernable meowing sound.

“The animals are still safe, that’s for
damn sure.” Wesley unlocked the front door and greeted his two dogs and two
cats,
who
all looked famished. “I’ll get you guys the
keys, then I really need to feed my pets.”

Liesel and I followed Wesley into his
kitchen. We stopped and waited as he headed toward the garage.

I took a few steps forward and looked at
his impressive back yard. While the grass had turned brown, the trees still
appeared marvelously green. I almost turned away, when I saw the two freshly
dug graves on the left side of the lawn.

Oh
my God, he buried his parents?

I started to think about where the bodies
of my parents were, and if there was anything I could do to give them a proper
burial, given that I might survive today’s events. It still didn’t ring true to
me that they were gone; I hoped that maybe they had faked their deaths and were
living it up somewhere outside of Reno, ready for me to save the world, excited
to come back when the timing was appropriate. It seemed a scary thought, living
in a world where my parents weren’t around. I was too young to lose them. I was
going to be lost without them.

Before I could think on this matter any
further, Wesley appeared again, the keys to his nifty Lexus GX in his hands,
another frown on his face, suggesting he didn’t want us to leave.

“Here,” he said, handing the keys to me.
Liesel snatched them away.

“OK,” Liesel said. “Cam, I’m gonna pull
the car out of the garage and move all our stuff over.” She turned to Wesley,
who looked more physically agile now that he had been at the stroke of eleven.
“While I’m doing that, Wes, can you tend to Cam’s leg? Just clean it up and put
a bandage on it?”

“Sure thing,” he said.

“All right.” Liesel kissed me on the
cheek, then started making her way to the garage.

“Here, follow me,” Wesley said, heading
down the staircase toward his bedroom and studio.

I made my way down the long, two-part
staircase, to find his bedroom to the left, his bathroom in the center, and his
small office space to the right, a little room he liked to call his studio. As
Wesley headed to his bathroom to grab bandages, I stepped inside the studio to
see his HD camera mounted on a tripod and aimed against a giant green screen
that lay against the back wall. I couldn’t believe I was thinking this, but I
missed seeing that camera.

“Here, follow me into the bedroom,” he
said.

The room was a mess, but thankfully his
bed was made, so I was able to sit down on the corner of it and let Wesley lean
down and clean the dried blood off my right leg. It seemed hypocritical for the
aging Wesley to take care of my mere little flesh wound, especially considering
that in two hours Wesley would likely be dead, and Liesel and I would still be
standing, still with our lives to lead in an uncertain future.

“OK,” he said, bringing the large bandage
to the wound. “Looks like the bullet just grazed you, thank God.” He wrapped
the bandage around the leg and secured it with a big piece of duct tape. He got
back on his feet and smiled. “Good as new.”

“Thanks, man,” I said, standing up,
limping forward, but not in as much pain as before.

“So you and Liesel are gonna go find
Hannah? Somehow reverse the spell?”

“That’s the plan,” I said. “Wes, I’m
gonna try to stop this… before you get any older… before you suffer any more
pain…”

He just nodded, turning away from me. “I
know you’ll do your best, Cam.”

“
Wes
.”
I pulled him close to me and gave him a big hug. I knew, after ten seconds had passed
by, that I never wanted to let him go. When I pulled away, he had big, fatty
tears in his eyes.

Then I placed the handgun in his right
pocket.

He looked down, confused. “What’s that?”

“Take it,” I said.

“No… no, you might need it. To kill
Hannah.”

“We have other weapons that will do the
job. You’re the one who needs this.”

“Me? Why?”

I told him what was going to happen when
the clock struck noon, about how the pain he’d been feeling lately would start
ravishing his body non-stop. I didn’t want him to suffer any longer than he
needed to.

“Wes, at noon, you’re going to start
feeling nothing but pain. If we haven’t beaten Hannah by then, I
want
you to do me a favor, OK?”

He didn’t say anything. He just stared at
me, a knowing look on his face.

“I want you to end your suffering, before
it gets unbearable, you understand me?”

He nodded. “OK, Cameron. I will.”

And then, unexpectedly, Wesley smiled. I
took a step back. “What is it?”

“You’re gonna make a great dad, you
know.”

“What? How did you—
”

“I could see Liesel holding her stomach
before. She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”

Now wasn’t the time to discuss this. I
needed to get upstairs. I needed to get to Liesel.

“Yes… yes, she is.”

Wesley nodded and sat in his office
chair. “I’m really sorry, Cam. I wish I could’ve told your story. This
definitely would’ve been the most important one. You as a father.”

I stared at him for a moment. An idea
came to me. And I knew I had to act on it.

“Wes, I might not survive this… what
happens here today… I might never…” I trailed off. I didn’t want to complete
the sentence. I didn’t want to even
think
it.

“I know,” Wesley said. “But you will. If
this were my movie… you’d be the hero. And heroes always make it to the end.”

I put my arm out and pulled Wesley back
up to his feet.

“Wesley…”

“Yeah?”

“Before I go, can I have you do something
for me?”

“Of course, Cam. Anything.”

I smiled, knowing Liesel would be upset
at my tardiness, but also knowing this was one last thing I had to have Wesley
do for me.

WESLEY

The young filmmaker waved as his beauty
of a Lexus disappeared over the hill, and he stepped inside his quiet home.

He finally made the food he had promised
his dogs and cats, giving them each enough wet and dry food to last a week,
maybe even two. He talked to his pets for a few minutes, before kissing them
all on the foreheads and making his way outside to the backyard.

Wesley had tried not to break down
emotionally these last few days, even when he saw his father succumb to the
quickest cancer on Earth early last week, or when he saw his mom fall from a
ladder and break her neck midway through Sunday. Even when a young and petite
but extravagantly strong black girl named Yolanda kidnapped him on Monday
night, as he continued to age not just a year every day, but a year every hour,
Wesley Craven tried to see the bright side of life.

He felt lucky he had found a passion that
had ruled his life from the moment he was pulled from his mother’s womb
nineteen years ago—watching movies and making movies. While he embraced
the dark side of life in all of his movies, he liked to look at the bright side
when he lived life outside of a multiplex, and away from his camera. He had
known from the beginning of this widespread epidemic that Cameron was a part of
it somehow, and he knew, deep down, even after the deaths of his own parents,
that Cameron was going to save the day, and make it so that he could continue
to live his life, and allow the world to start rebuilding itself again.

But as Wesley stepped out onto the brown
lawn, stopping in front of the graves he had dug for his parents—Andrew
and Kathy Craven—he was having a hard time thinking positive. This was
it. The time had come. His parents were gone, and now, in the next half-hour,
he was going to be gone, too. Cameron and Liesel had tried their best, but they
had failed. There was nothing they could do to save him in time.