Destruction

“Yeah, she always did have a shitty attitude,” said Max, as Chloe packed up the tent. “Don’t worry, she’ll come around eventually.” Chloe wasn’t so sure.

“We should get going,” continued Max. “There’s more of us at the edge of the forest—we’ve got food, we’ve got transportation. We even found a working hot tub! Betcha haven’t seen one of those in a while.” Chloe hoisted one of the backpacks, and Max gave her a playful peck on the cheek before shouldering the other.

The atmosphere was light—Max was much chattier than Victoria had been—but Chloe wasn’t really in the mood for conversation. “We’re only a couple days out from the edge of the forest,” commented Max, after they’d been walking for a few hours. “I bet you’re excited to get off your feet for a while.” Chloe realized that she hadn’t really wanted the trip through the forest to end until now.

“Yeah,” she said, “it’ll be pretty nice to rest for a while.”

When the stars came out, Max asked to sleep in the tent with Chloe, and she acquiesced. “Goodnight,” said Max, before giving Chloe a soft kiss goodnight and passing out. It took Chloe a while to fall asleep herself, and she did not feel rested when she woke.

True to her word, the next day found them walking through thinner woods, and before sunset they had emerged from the trees to discover a whole party of Max Caulfields.

“Hey look who I found!” shouted Max as soon as they were in eyesight. The Maxes from the camp ran up to them and surged around them, excitedly shouting her name. There were at least a dozen of them.

“Chloe! Chloe oh my gosh, it’s been ages! Where did you go? How have you been? Are you okay?”

The Max who had come with her shushed all of them, promising to answer their questions later. “She’s been through a lot, alright? Give her some time.” She guided Chloe through the row of tents to a cleared picnic area. “Hey Five, can you make Chloe some food?” she asked one of the nearby Maxes.

“Sure thing, boss!” came the reply, and the other Max sauntered off to find refreshments.

“Five?” asked Chloe, settling down in a folding chair.

“Sure! On this side of the mountains, it can get confusing which one of us is which, so we pick numbers to use as names. I’m Three! It all goes more smoothly in Arcadia Bay, of course—otherwise we’d probably have chosen real names by now.”

“Is there an original?”

“Sure, she’s back in Arcadia Bay. We’re all equally Max, though, so don’t feel like you’re missing out on anything. Even if some Maxes are more equal than others, haha.”

Chloe was about to ask what she meant by that when Max Five returned with a bowl of roasted sausage and potato. Chloe smelled rosemary and olive oil, and she was suddenly hungrier than she could ever remember being before.

“Whoa, you’re welcome!” said Five as Chloe snatched the dish out of her hands and began digging in. “Wow, you must be hungry. Do you want a drink? We’ve still got some beer.”

Chloe grunted in the affirmative through a mouthful of potato, and soon she was washing down her sausages with beer. The Maxes figured they might as well eat too, and soon they were all chowing down merrily around the empty firepit.

When they all finished, one of the Maxes (Four, if Chloe remembered right) gathered their plates and cutlery and washed everything in a pair of plastic basins. Chloe offered to help, but the Maxes refused outright—she was a guest, after all—and so she stayed with the others until the sun had set and Three had built a roaring fire.

“So, um. How’s Arcadia Bay?” asked Chloe. She’d avoided the question this long, but she needed to ask.

“Oh, it’s pretty good! It took ages to rebuild, but you know,” replied one of the Maxes (Chloe absolutely could not tell which). “Many hands make light work, as they say. Maybe too many cooks spoil the soup, but hey!—” she spread her hands wide, “—we have lotsa hands, but we’re only one cook, am I right?” The other Maxes laughed obligingly, and Chloe tried not to roll her eyes.

“What about the people though? How’s my mom?” asked Chloe.

“She’s doing great too,” replied Max, a bit quickly. “I’m sure she’s dying to see you.”

“Hey, but enough about us!” said another Max. “Where have you been? What have you been up to, all this time? We went looking in the forest, but we only found Victoria.”

“Oh, well. I walked out into the prairies. Lots of animals out there you can hunt.” Chloe felt a sudden urge not to mention the river or the cabin—they had sheltered her, and they deserved to keep their privacy.

“Yeah that prairie is massive; it could go on forever. We tried to search it but we gave up pretty quick. The forest is dense, but it’s not nearly so big.” Max turned to face the mountains. “It should be easy going from here on out, though. We have real roads, this close to the mountains. No cars, sadly, but we get the next best thing!” She pulled a bicycle helmet out from behind her chair and grinned in her dorky little way. “You never appreciate bikes until you have to walk a few hundred miles.”

The Maxes were pretty eager to talk to Chloe, but she wasn’t in the mood, so they chatted amiably between themselves, talking about how nice it was to spend some time out in nature, about how they were nevertheless excited to get back to civilization, and about the various discomforts of camping. Looking out at the forest from this side, the rolling hills of trees seemed to rise right up and evaporate into the milky way, which emerged from the horizon like a pillar of light. The Maxes kept commenting on it, and Chloe wondered when she had gotten used to the night sky. They kept commenting on a lot of fairly mundane things, actually—Chloe suspected they’d had a lot to drink. Maybe it was just the firelight, but they looked awfully flushed, and they were all getting pretty handsy with each other. Was that weird? If Chloe met another version of herself, she felt like she would be standoffish—Who does she think she is, being me? I should wipe that smug look off my face, etc. But the Maxes seemed very comfortable together, sitting in each others’ laps, holding hands, idly running their fingers through one another’s hair. There were a lot more Maxes than tents, so it seemed like they must be doubling or tripling up to sleep.

Sure enough, once the fire had died down, Maxes started splitting off in small groups to wash up and go off to bed. “Hey Chloe,” said a Max who was washing her face in the kettle perched by the fire pit, “we set up an extra tent just for you, but you can spend the night in one of our tents, if you want.” She smiled timidly, and Chloe almost said yes, but she hesitated.

“You know what?” said Max, sheepishly. “I bet you’re tired and you wanna get to sleep. But if you change your mind, just let us know!” Then she scurried off to a tent with two other Maxes, who grabbed her hands and pulled her inside.

Soon it was just Chloe by the embers of the fire. The last Max had offered to stomp them out, but Chloe volunteered to do it herself before she went to bed. Max turned to go, and hesitated, before pressing her lips to Chloe’s and then running off to her tent. Chloe stayed up late that night, mind wandering, until the fire was all ashes and she had to find the way to her tent in the dark.

The next morning, Chloe woke up to the smell of bacon. God, had she ever missed normal food. Most of the Maxes would be staying here at the forest outpost—apparently there was more work to do out here—but four of them were going to come over the mountains with her. “Do you have, like… numbers?” Chloe asked when the four Maxes with bicycle helmets walked up to her. “Sure,” said one of them—“one, two, three, four,” and she pointed to each of them in turn, marking herself as Three.

“So you’re the one who found me in the woods then,” said Chloe. “Rad.”

“Oh no, that’s me, sorry.” said Two.

“But yesterday you said you were Three.”

“Yeah but Three just gave us new numbers. It’s not really consistent. I’m not Three, and I’m not Two. I’m Max Caulfield! I just happen to be the second Max in this group.” She handed a spare helmet to Chloe, who rolled her eyes but took it. “Still! It’s so cool that I get to keep going with you all the way to Arcadia Bay. I’ve missed you.” She smiled, and Chloe smiled back.

There was a lot of fanfare around their departure—all the Maxes wanted to hug Chloe goodbye. Chloe tried to be equally enthusiastic for all of them, but by hug number ten, she’d been ready to leave for six hugs already. Biking wasn’t as meditative as rowing, in Chloe’s opinion, but it was so much faster. She hadn’t moved so fast in ages. The terrain was pretty even, but once in a while they’d run into a hill, and though getting up the hill was always a bit of a struggle, the rush on the way down made Chloe feel alive.

According to the Max with the map, they travelled further on the first day than Chloe had during her entire trip through the forest. She was never walking anywhere again. But by late afternoon the Maxes were about ready to collapse, and Chloe took pity on them. She set up the little gas stove prepared them eggs and toast while they all flopped to the ground and whined about not being able to feel their legs. God, it was almost like none of the Maxes had spent the past several weeks exclusively hiking and rowing from dawn to dusk. She made a mental note to bully them more for being skinny and out-of-shape, and chuckled to herself.

They made a fire again that night. “I love campfires,” said a Max (Chloe couldn’t tell them apart; the numbers were useless). “Or maybe I just love the company. Is it different, when you’re on your own?”

“Honestly, I didn’t make a lot of fires. I always went to bed around sunset, and I got up really early. It’s fucking nuts, how fast I went back to being a night owl when I met up with… other people again.”

“How did you cook food, then?”

“I had a little wood stove. Took me ages to figure out how to use it, but once I got the hang of it, it was pretty convenient.”

“Oh you had a house!” Max grinned. “Oh that’s so cute, like a little cottage on the prairie? I wish you’d taken a camera or something, I’d love to have seen it.”

“Maybe I could take you some time. You know. Go back to my roots, haha.”

“Your roots are in Arcadia Bay, Chloe Price,” she said, rolling her eyes with a smirk. “Keep your eye on the prize.”

They were all lying next to each other in a big field by the roadside. One of the Maxes rolled over and rested her head on Chloe’s lap, and Chloe idly stroked her hair.

“I guess you’re all excited to be headed home, then?” Chloe asked.

“Yeah, you know how it is,” said another Max. “You feel more grounded when you’re at home. I can’t imagine living out here as long as you did, Chloe. So far away! I can only stay at the forest outpost for a week, tops, before I start feeling itchy all over.”

“Are you sure that’s not lice?” Chloe joked, and Max got all flustered.

“Hey! No, for real!” The other Maxes laughed at her good-naturedly. “I’ll be glad to be home again.”

“I do know what she means,” piped up another Max. “It just feels… off, out here.” Chloe nodded as if she understood.

That night, they offered Chloe her own tent, but this time she refused. It had been really nice to sleep next to someone when she’d been in the forest with—well, yeah, like she’d done in the forest. The Maxes had nice big tents, and all five of them could fit into one if they squeezed together. The Max on her left rolled over and threw an arm across her, and Chloe did the same for the one on her right. Everyone had worn pyjamas, but based on the sneaky looks the Maxes were giving each other, Chloe guessed that they’d pull it all off if she said the word. A shiver ran up her spine.

She slept soundly, and woke up in a pile of Maxes feeling more rested than she’d ever been in her life. The others all groaned when they woke up, complaining about sore legs and bemoaning the inevitable tragedy of having to stand up. Chloe suspected this was some kind of ploy, and she was proven right when one of the Maxes suggested they spend a while longer in the tent, and another shyly complained that she was too hot in her shirt and… would anyone mind if she took it off…? Chloe didn’t object.

They got up and ate an hour later, cheeky grins all around, and took off an hour after that. They made good time, and before the end of the day they had already reached the foothills of the mountains.

“Do these have a name, anyway?” asked Chloe, gesturing to the snow-capped peaks visible high above.

“Nah,” said a Max trying and failing to re-fold a map. “I mean, we didn’t name them, and they weren’t here before.” She spun the map 180 degrees in her hands, frustrated, and tossed it to another Max who immediately started to fold it wrong herself. “The pass we want isn’t too high up, but it is going to take a couple days of hiking to get there.” Going back to travelling on foot felt like such a step backward after covering so much ground by bike, but the foothills were already too steep for the bikes, and it’d only get worse from there. They left the bicycles in a shed by the side of the road, and by dusk they had made their way to the base of the mountain proper.

The weather got colder as they climbed—fortunately the Maxes had brought jackets. As they got higher, the ground got frosty, then snowy, and the wind became bitingly cold. It reminded Chloe uncomfortably of the first time she’d come through these mountains, hungry and alone, with a backpack full of convenience-store beef jerky and only a blanket to keep warm. She tried to keep her mind off it, but the Maxes got tired easily, and conversations lapsed into silence. Inevitably, Chloe ended up stuck in her own head, remembering how she’d huddle up at night against the wind, hoping she would make it until morning, trying not to listen to the voices echoing through the mountain pass. Chloe. Chloe where are you. Chloe. Chloe, stop running away from us. At night, before she got into the tent with the others, she had to take a few deep breaths to remind herself that those days were over and she wasn’t running anymore.

The pass they planned on taking crossed through the saddle between two adjacent peaks. The ground was all ice and packed snow, but the Maxes had brought boots in Chloe’s size. Her old boots, she realized. Chloe excused herself to change into them.

“Oh, so you’re too modest to change into boots in front of us now, Chloe?” teased Max. “Take it off, girl. Wooo!”

“I’m also going to go pee, you perverts,” said Chloe, smiling.

“Hey, nothing we haven’t seen before,” said Max, with a giggle. “Don’t get lost!” she shouted after her as Chloe walked away.

There was a little side path a couple minutes back, in the icy cleft between two huge slabs of rock, and Chloe walked off in that direction. The mountains were actually pretty nice, once you got over your memories of—nope, nope, just gonna think about the mountains. They had this pristine-ness to them. Yes. Austere? Victoria would have called it “sublime,” maybe. She heard a shout behind her—probably one of the Maxes had pissed off the others. It happened from time to time. She found a nice-looking nook to pop a squat in; she rounded the corner and gasped.

At the end of the hallway was David Madsen. He was about a foot off the ground, just hanging there, frozen, suspended in a wall of ice. He looked like he was in a daze, and his body had swollen in strange ways. His mouth was hanging open.

“We hadn’t meant for you to find this,” said a voice from behind her. “We weren’t sure how you’d react. He was a douche, of course—we wouldn’t have done this otherwise—but he was your step-douche, and Joyce liked him. Sorry.”

Chloe’s eyes were locked onto David’s. They were unfocused, staring forward; his arms hung loose at his sides. “What happened to him,” she asked, desperate to know but afraid to find out.

“We, uh. Well, we were wondering what to do with Mark Jefferson. We were pretty angry, you know, about all the people he—well, you know, and we got the idea to freeze him up on the mountain like this. He’s further down the pass. When David did something we couldn’t forgive, well, we did the same.”

Chloe shuddered. “How did you do it?”

“The way we did that was, uh,” Max swallowed and stared at her feet. “We brought him up here, locked him in a box, and filled it with water. After a few days, he froze, and we propped him up somewhere and left him.”

“Jesus Christ, Max. Holy shit. Max, I. What—?”

“We were, ah… not in a good place. At the start of all of this. There was a lot we needed to get used to about, you know, living like this. We’re better now, we’ve been better for a long time. But what’s done is done. I’m sorry.”

Chloe said nothing.

“You must need a minute, we… I’ll wait outside the…” Max backed away from her towards the other end of the path. “You know, take as long as you need. It’s okay. We could probably use a rest too. Just—fuck, why am I still talking!” She disappeared around the corner. Chloe hadn’t taken her eyes off David.

He’d hit her. More than once. Did he deserve this? Maybe. Probably not. She didn’t think she would have ever done it, but she’d done some impulsive things in the past. She’d gotten people hurt before. The more power you have at your hands, the more dangerous your impulses can be, and Max was… well. Chloe supposed she understood.

She didn’t want to be here anymore. She walked out of the little tomb, and found all the Maxes standing in a circle around the entrance.

“Come on. Let’s go.” They followed, saying nothing.

The silence lasted through the rest of the morning. Nobody would meet her eyes. When it was time for lunch, nobody else would speak up, and so Chloe had to be the one to suggest they take a break. They sat down on the ice, and Chloe sat next to one of the Maxes. She looked up, and Chloe took her hand.

“It’s alright. I get it. I’m not happy, but I get it, and I’m not mad.”

Relief flooded Max’s face. “Thanks, Chloe,” she said. The atmosphere grew lighter, and by that evening, everything was back to normal. The next morning, reached the summit.

It wasn’t a proper summit, of course. They were walking along a mountain pass, and there were cliff faces on either side of them. But this was the highest point on their journey, and before them stretched out the majesty of Arcadia Bay—or what it had become. At the outskirts, it resembled its old self. A strip mall, a parking lot, some old tourist trap or other. But as it approached the coast, the ground became warped and wrinkled. Apartment buildings jutted out of the ground like crooked teeth, sunken at angles, and concrete overpasses wound between them like twigs in some giant nest. At the coast, Chloe could faintly see a lighthouse winking against the sea. It looked like a giant concrete bird’s next.

Chloe was speechless.

“It’s pretty different, huh,” said Max. “I’m not really an architect. There are a lot of Maxes—more every day—and we all need to live by the bay. We can’t even be away from it very long.”

“'Cuz that’s where it started, right?” asked Chloe.

“Yeah. Well—because that’s where the storm happened.”

“How did you even build this?”

“When the storm hit, all the—no, I can’t start there.” Max cleared her throat. “When I went back in time, I wasn’t really ‘going back in time.’ I thought I was, but that’s not quite accurate. Every time I rewound, I created a new Max who had made different choices, and lived a different life. And that creates baggage. Every Max came with a new, slightly-altered version of Arcadia Bay, taking up space beneath the fabric of the world. A thousand Blackwells, a thousand Two Whales, a thousand versions of every street. All that stuff, all that matter—when the storm came, it burst through the walls of our reality and flooded the world with crap. Like Play-Doh being forced through a Plah-Doh spaghetti machine, if that makes sense. Raw matter.”

She spread her arms wide. "But it was my Play-Doh, and I used it to make this. I turned it into mountains, and roads, and forests, and prairies. The further I got from Arcadia Bay, the less control I had—I think if you go far enough, you’ll find a dusty wasteland that just goes on forever. I created a whole new reality, cut off from the rest of the world and from the flow of time. It saved Arcadia Bay, at least. And it saved you.

"This close to the source of the storm—to the lighthouse—I feel more aligned. There are a lot of Maxes, but so long as we stay in Arcadia Bay, we’re all one person. I can control them, the same way I could control the versions of me that I sent to different timelines. But the further they go from the storm, the less they’re all me, and the more they become a collection of individuals. That’s why they have to number themselves on the other side of the mountains.

“But hey!” Max grinned, and elbowed Chloe. “The fun’s just starting! Let’s get going, I’m excited to show you around.”