Destruction

The trip down the mountains was faster than the trip up, if only because they were walking downhill. They slept together in the tent again, and by lunch the next day the slope was evening out and a car was waiting for them at the start of a long dirt road.

“Sweet concrete roadways! How I missed you. What would I ever do without big empty parking lots and butt-ugly overpasses.” said Max as they all piled in. “I wish I could make a subway or something, but I can’t figure out how.” continue Max, from a different body. “Arcadia Bay only had cars and roads, so cars and roads are all you get!” Max drove, Chloe rode shotgun, and all the other Maxes sat in the back. It was pretty squished, and they were all giggling. Chloe wished she’d sat in the back too.

The landscape whizzed by. At first it was just scraps of old Arcadia Bay—an old house, an overturned big rig, half a strip mall. Chloe was almost certain she saw a copy of her cabin with some gas pumps in front of it, but they were driving too fast for her to take a closer look.

As the approached the city, more control and intent became evident in their surroundings. Houses actually sat next to each other, the driveways connected to the streets, all the buildings were standing upright. It started to look more and more like Arcadia Bay, and Chloe started to notice more and more Maxes around. Sitting on porches, photographing tree stumps, laying down together on the grass. All of them waved to Chloe as she passed by, and she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to wave back.

The city grew thicker, and Chloe started recognizing neighbourhoods. They were all arranged wrong, relative to each other, and she felt like she’d seen at least one neighbourhood repeated more than once. But the resemblance faded as they went deeper into the city. Buildings rose tall and fat, as if they had been stretched to accommodate more floors and windows. Arcadia Bay had only had a couple apartment buildings—low-rise ones, at that—but here there were dozens, stretching far up into the sky. The road rose up off the ground and branched off, weaving in between the buildings like a downtown highway, and through the gaps in the tangle of overpasses Chloe could make out dense throngs of Maxes below them. When they waved to her, it was like a crowd at a football stadium, perfectly coordinated, swaying back and forth in rapture.

“It’s pretty great, isn’t it?” said Max. “I’ve been adding a lot of density to the city centre. We’ve got a population of almost a million now, assuming you count all the Maxes separately, heh. I’m hoping I can find a way to increase the distance the Maxes can go from the city without having their minds slip out of the collective—I’d really like to explore the world.”

“Max… why are there so many of you?” asked Chloe. She’d been watching in silence, unsure of how to process what had become of her friend. “Are you making more?”

“Yeah! It’s like…” Max frowned. "It’s like the more Maxes there are, the more my mind expands. I’m in so many places at once, Chloe, it’s hard to even describe. I don’t have much to do here, but I do want to see how far I can go. Can I reach some sort of enlightenment? Or do I just become more, forever?

“But hey,” said Max, realizing that Chloe was uncomfortable, “It’s not such a crazy weird thing. I’m still me. I’m just more me. And the more Maxes there are, the stronger my time powers get. I still can’t bridge the gap between this world and the original, but I feel like I’m getting close. We don’t have to be stuck here forever, Chloe, we can go home.”

“How would you go home, like this? Would most of the Maxes stay her?” asked Chloe.

“Oh, I’ll find a way,” replied Max. “Maybe I’ll just take the original me.”

“Is she you, or is she just, you know, one of you?”

“She’s still up by the lighthouse, where the storm first struck. I didn’t think she was any different from the other Maxes, but when I tried moving her somewhere else, the range of my collective mind went way down. I don’t know if she’s me, exactly, but she’s clearly special somehow.”

The highway ran directly into a multistorey parking garage attached to an elevated walkway which led to a ridiculously overwrought McMansion. The four Maxes got out of the car, two of them clasped Chloe’s hands, and the group headed toward the house.

“You can leave your stuff in the car, I’ve already got clothes for you in the house.” said Max. “Sorry it’s so ugly, by the way. It’s the Prescott estate. The roof slants at about a billion different angles and it has no fewer than five turrets, but you deserve a palace, and this is the closest I’ve got.”

They walked inside into a broad atrium lined with windows and vases of flowers, and Chloe was greeted by two dozen Maxes in French maid outfits. They all curtsied, and Chloe felt herself prickle into a deep blush.

“What’d you expect, a shack?” said Max as one of the maids, with a playful smirk. “Shall we prepare you a bath, Miss Price?”

“That would—yeah, I’d—it would be nice,” Chloe managed.

The Maxes who had escorted her from the forest turned to go, but one put her hand on Chloe’s shoulder and leaned up to her ear.

“Look, I don’t know if I ever apologized for chasing after you the way I did when the storm first hit,” she said in a quiet voice. “I was kind of losing it. I know I really damaged our relationship, and I’m so glad you’re back.” She stepped back, and smiled again. “I just, you know. Wanted to clear the air about that. Welcome home.” And then she was gone, out the door, and one of the maid Maxes was tugging on Chloe’s sleeve saying that the bath was ready, and asking if she wanted to bathe herself or whether she’d like some help.

That night, Chloe slept on the largest bed she’d ever seen, with eight or nine Maxes for company. Or she would have, if she’d been able to sleep. While the other Maxes snoozed, sore and tired out, one stayed awake with her.

“So. Maid outfits?”

“I thought they’d be fun!” said Max. “And you certainly didn’t object.”

“Well, they were fun. So, that’s a point for you.”

“I’ve got lots of stuff planned. With a lot of Maxes around, we can get up to some pretty creative stuff. Um, speaking of creative, how do you feel about… umm… mmgs…”

“What did you say Max?”

“…mmgms…” she repeated, murmuring just as quietly as before.

“Tell me!”

“Maggots!”

“Maggots what?”

“How do you feel about them?”

Chloe gave Max a probing look. “Pretty negatively, I guess. They’re gross?”

“You know what, let’s table that for now.”

Max rolled over and pressed her back into Chloe’s chest, and Chloe wrapped her arms around her. She breathed in the smell of her hair, and they stayed like that for some time.

“Max,” she said eventually. “Where’s my mom?”

She felt Max tense up in her arms.

“Tell me.”

Max sighed. “I don’t really know how to tell you this, Chloe. I knew it would come up eventually, but even now I don’t know what to say.” She drew a deep breath. “Do you remember what it was like after the storm?”

Chaos. Maxes, everywhere, trying to establish order. Trying to reconstruct life how it used to be, in a place that seemed to no longer Earth. People resisted her.

“I couldn’t take it. I just… I needed to make things how they had been before. I was the only one with the power to do it, but they didn’t trust me. Everyone started trying to run away.”

Hiding in a bush, watching a wave of Maxes descend on fleeing citizens. Crawling miles through the grass so that they wouldn’t see her. Climbing into the mountains with a blanket and a dozen bags of beef jerky.

“When I stopped them from running, they fought. And the harder I pushed, the harder they pushed back. I don’t know what they believed, exactly, but they thought they were in hell. I boxed them all up in Blackwell, and I thought I could keep them in there until I sorted it all out. But David Madsen had managed to get away. He built a bomb, and he burned the whole place to the ground. Said I was Lucifer, or something, and that he had to save everyone. I guess you know the rest.”

Chloe lay shocked on the bed, still pressed against Max. She drew in a long, shaky breath. “Who survived?”

“Nobody. There’s nobody in Arcadia Bay but me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, tears welling up at the corners. “I want to see it.”

“What?”

“Blackwell. I have to see it, right now.”

“Can’t it wait until morning?” Max yawned, and rubbed up against Chloe, but she pushed her away.

“No, I… no, I want to do it now. I need to see it for myself. Why wait, anyway? It’s just you and me, and you don’t really sleep, do you.”

“No, but—”

“Where is it?”

“Can’t we—”

“Why are you trying to avoid this? I need to go see Blackwell, and I want to go right now.”

“Uh, we should really wait—”

“No, stop doing this—whatever this is!” shouted Chloe, pushing herself to her feet. Her eyes stung. “I’m going! Tell me where it is!”

Max flinched, meekly pointing out the window, and Chloe followed with her eyes. There, barely visible through the downtown tangle of highways and streets, was the roof of Blackwell Academy.

“Wait, don’t—”

Chloe ran out of the room, down the stairs, and out the front door of the mansion. She ran across the walkway to the parking lot, yanked the car door open, and slid inside. All the Maxes from inside the house were running after her, but she turned the key in the ignition and peeled out, speeding away without them. Serves them right, for keeping this from her.

The streets would have been impossible to navigate, so Chloe was glad there was elevated highway running directly from here to Blackwell Academy. Maybe that’s why the roads were such a mess: Any two locations were directly connected by a single street. What the fuck, Max. How bored do you have to be to develop an urbanism this ridiculous?

She sped away down the road, only to hammer on the brakes and skid to a stop. A phalanx of Maxes stood in the middle of the road.

“Chloe, wait! There’s something you need to know!” screamed the foremost Max. “You can’t go any further!”

Chloe stuck her head out the window and screamed, “FUCKING TELL ME THEN!”

“Come back to the house, we can talk about it there!”

“No! Tell me now, or get out of my way!”

“Chloe, be reasonable—”

She pressed down the accelerator and ploughed directly into the crowd of Maxes. They dove out of the way, screaming, landing on the streets below. They weren’t individuals anyway. Max would be fine.

For all its overwhelming ugliness, having an overpass leading directly to Blackwell proved convenient, and Chloe arrived within seconds. She eased to a stop in front of the building, and put the car in park. The building was ruined. Credit to her step-douche, he sure could make a bomb. The right side of the building was burnt completely to the ground. The fire had been stopped before the left side could be damaged very much, but apparently destroying half the building had been enough to get the job done.

Fuck. He’d really done it. Chloe hadn’t really believed it up until now. Not that Max’s weird behaviour had helped. What was so important, anyway, that she had gone to such great lengths to—oh my God she was still doing it.

Five Maxes ran out the door of Blackwell, waving their hands. “Chloe! Wait! Come with me, I’ll—” but they were interrupted by another voice from inside the building. Someone was screaming, and it wasn’t Max.

Chloe shoved open the car door and broke into a sprint. The Maxes tried to get in her way, but she rammed past them and burst into the building. Victoria Chase was clinging to a door in the hallway, her arms looped through the metal pull bar, as three Maxes tried to yank her off of it.

“Victoria!” said Chloe, and everybody froze.

The Maxes looked at Chloe, then at each other, horror-stricken. Chloe looked at Victoria. And Victoria Chase looked back at Chloe with an expression of absolute shock.

“Chloe?”

“Victoria! Hi!” Chloe wiped the tears from her eyes and strolled right up to Victoria, offering her a hand. She took it, tentatively, and Chloe lifted her to her feet.

“It’s so great to see you! Come on, I want to show you the whole city.”

She tugged Victoria toward the door, and the Maxes followed, confused, their grip on Victoria going slack. They walked together through the door and down the steps.

Victoria was a mess. Her hair, which had been so neatly groomed even in the forest, now stuck up at strange angles, and she had a black eye on the right-hand side.

“I don’t know how you’ve been doing,” said Chloe, “but let me tell you, I’ve been doing great! Being back in Arcadia Bay has really got me invigorated! I’ve even been thinking of doing something with maggots.”

At this, all the Maxes’ eyebrows shot up, and Chloe heard the ones standing nearest to her gasp softly.

“Here, get in the car Victoria, let’s go find some maggots or something, so we can, I dunno, rub them on our bodies? Something like that?” said Chloe, stuffing the other girl into the back seat.

“Hey, hold on, don’t just leave with—” said Max, but Chloe had already thrown herself in the front and turned the ignition. All the Maxes ran towards her, but she slammed her foot down and sped away.

“What the fuck happened, Victoria?” asked Chloe as she screeched down side streets, turning left and right and dodging the occasional Max which tried to throw itself in front of the car. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been worse,” said Victoria as she climbed forward between the seats and strapped herself into the passenger seat. “That was some nice ad-libbing. What was the bit about the maggots?”

“Beats me. Something Max said earlier. Speaking of which, seriously, what the fuck happened?”

“After I—” Victoria shifted in her seat and cleared her throat, “—after the night after I went back home, a bunch of Maxes jumped out of the woods and grabbed me. They mostly hadn’t bothered me before, but something changed when they found you. I think they thought I was a threat somehow.”

Chloe frowned. “Apparently David Madsen killed everyone else in Arcadia Bay. Maybe she thought you would kill me for some reason.”

“Could be. She seemed more jealous than anything else.”

“What was going on when I found you?”

“Well, Max stuck me in a room in Blackwell until she could ‘find somewhere more permanent.’ I was there for about a day. Then suddenly Max ran in panicking, trying to get me to leave, and so I refused, because fuck her. And then you came.”

Chloe chucked. “Heh, yeah, I guess I did kinda surprise her by visiting Blackwell. Well, serves her right.”

A handful of Maxes were standing on the road, forming a blockade, and Chloe accelerated to ram them at top speed, sending them flying over the hood and putting a sizeable dent in the bumper. She’d been driving unpredictably, and the Maxes were having a hard time assembling any meaningful roadblocks.

“I guess we have to talk to her” said Chloe. Victoria frowned. “I mean, I don’t see any way for us to clear this up otherwise.”

“I could run. All your stuff’s in the back. You could give it to me and I’d make a break for it.”

“Yeah, but she’d hound you forever. There are still Maxes on the other side of the mountains, right? How far can you really get?”

Victoria sighed, and nodded.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure we can work this out.” Chloe hummed thoughtfully. “Oh yeah, hey, Victoria. Want a cigarette?”

“I feel like shit, Chloe. Yeah. Fuck me up.”

Chloe pulled out a pair of cigarettes, and lit them with one hand while steering with the other. She hung a sharp U-turn and sped up a ramp onto an overpass which stretched all the way to the edge of the city. There were other cars following her, but she had a head start.

Unfortunately, that didn’t do her much good. The other end of the overpass was blocked off; a bunch of cars were parked against each other, making it impossible to leave. A big crowd of Maxes stood all around the blockade, and a Max stood on top of the car in front holding a megaphone.

“Chloe!” she said. “Stop!”

Chloe stopped the car, not that she had any other options. The cars that were following her pulled right up behind her.

“I’m sorry Chloe, but we have to take Victoria!” continued Max. “There’s no other way!” Maxes surrounded the car and started yanking on the handles. Chloe heard a window smash.

“Well fuck that,” said Chloe, and hit the accelerator. The blockade was close, but she still managed to get up some speed before ramming into it. There was a crash, and a loud slam as the airbags went off, and Victoria moaned as the airbag crushed her black eye. They were briefly dazed, but Chloe shook it off. She reached into the back seat and grabbed her gun; then she grabbed Victoria and dragged her over the cup holders and out the driver’s side door.

They vaulted over the edge of the overpass and broke into a run. Maxes were everywhere, turning to follow them, but next to the overpass, across the street, was a parking lot surrounded by a long chain link fence. Chloe ran over and leapt up, sinking her fingers into the little chain loops, and clambered up to the top. She reached down and helped Victoria up after her, and they dropped down on the other side. The Maxes, skinny and weak as they were, had trouble climbing over it after them, and this bought them a bit of a head start.

“Where are we going?” asked Victoria as they ran, weaving between the rows of parked cars.

“I don’t know. I wish she’d stop attacking us for five fucking minutes.”

“Can we threaten her somehow? Is there something we could take hostage?”

Chloe’s eyes lit up. “We could take ourselves hostage! Like in The Hunger Games! Victoria do you have any poisonous berries—do you want to be Peeta or Katnis—I wanna be Katniss I—”

“Chloe, shut up. We’re not doing The Hunger Games. Think of something else”

“Aw dang. Ummmm. What about the lighthouse?” said Chloe. “The original Max is there, and she’s special somehow. We can go there.”

The gate was on the other side of the parking lot, and the two of them slipped through and ran down the street towards the edge of town. A couple Maxes jumped out from around a corner and tried to tackle Victoria—she stepped back smoothly and elbowed the closets Max in the face. Chloe punched the remaining Max in the gut. The Maxes fell to the floor, groaning in pain, and Chloe and Victoria continued down the street. Beyond that, they didn’t really run into much resistance. It seemed that all the Maxes in the area had congregated at the road block. Chloe snickered to herself. Max was a slow runner, but she had the advantage of being everywhere, and then she’d gone and thrown it away.

They reached the edge of the city, and from there they ran past a few hills and across a highway—a real highway, not some fucked-up overpass—until they reached a dirt road, which they followed all the way up to the lighthouse.

When they arrived, it was dawn. Grey morning fog hung over the bay, and Chloe had a sudden flash of optimism. She loved dawn.

She got out of the car and stood there, next to Victoria. Before them rose the lighthouse. How strange it was to be here again, at last. At the foot of it stood Max. Just one.

“Why did you come here?” she asked.

“We want to talk,” replied Chloe.

“You could have talked to any of me.”

“Really? Cuz the other yous have been throwing themselves in front of the car for the past ten minutes. I don’t think you want to talk, I think you just want to separate me from Victoria. But this copy of you has no choice.” Chloe unslung her gun from her shoulder and pointed it at Max.

She was indistinguishable from the other Maxes. Same hair, same eyes. She had a camera, which not all of the Maxes had. That was probably the original. Her dad’s camera. What a thing to think of at a time like this.

“Let Victoria go,” continued Chloe. “She’s not going to try to kill me or anything. Why would she? Just leave her alone.”

“Maybe she isn’t doing it today.” said Max. “And maybe not tomorrow, or this year, or next year! But we’re here forever, Chloe! FOREVER! We’ve been here for a very long time and that’s fucking nothing compared to how long it’s gonna be. Eventually, she’ll get lonely. And she’ll come looking for you. And if she can’t have you, she’ll take you from me anyway!” Her eyes were wide and her lips hung open, baring her teeth. "It tears at you, Chloe! Being here so long! It fucks you up! I lost it, the others lost it. David Madsen lost it.

“We’re all going to fall apart, and I don’t trust anybody but myself. I already fell apart and I put myself back together again, I’ll be okay. But I can’t be alone! I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. And neither can she! And neither can you! All I need is you, and there are enough of me to keep you happy forever! But she can only get in the way, she can only ruin it! I don’t want to hurt her, but I have to put her somewhere she can’t hurt us either!”

Max was panting. While she had been talking, the other Maxes had arrived. None of them tried to intervene, but Chloe and Victoria were surrounded.

“So this is it, then? I can’t talk you out of this?”

“It’s for the best, Chloe. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, Max,” She took aim.

“Chloe, what are you—”

There was a gunshot, and then they all started screaming. There were hundreds of Maxes, all around, screaming their lungs out. Chloe gritted her teeth clamped her hand over her ears. It lasted about five seconds—then everything fell silent.

Max must have been holding this… world, whatever it was, together somehow, because everything started to flake apart after that. Chloe noticed a softness around the edges of the trees as they walked back down the dirt road. A sort of haze in the air, like everything was evaporating. She glanced over her shoulder and noticed that the tip of the lighthouse was gone. Just vanished. She didn’t know how long it would take, but she knew this was the beginning of the end for this place.

Arcadia Bay was eerie. Corpses were strewn everywhere, like puppets with their strings cut. They went back to the roadblock, to grab a fresh car and the rest of Chloe’s stuff, but they didn’t head further into the city. Instead, they stuck to the outskirts, only stopping at an outlet store to grab a few new sets of clothes.

“Is it weird that this place is stocked?” asked Victoria when they walked into the store. “Did she keep it stocked, or has it just stayed like this?”

“No idea,” said Chloe, “but I’m not complaining.”

They split up, and browsed the shelves alone. Chloe wandered into the jacket section. She felt cold.

“Hey, Price,” came a voice from behind her. “Does this look good on me?”

Chloe turned around and saw Victoria wearing a tight pink t-shirt with the words “NEW YORK CITY $LUT CLUB” spelled out down the front, in sequins. Her face was filthy, she was bleeding along her hairline, and one of her eyes was swelled shut. Victoria was trying to smile.

Tears burned in Chloe’s eyes, and she started laughing. Victoria laughed too, and they laughed until their lungs hurt and they were gasping for air. They stumbled towards each other and embraced, and then they grabbed each other and broke into sobs. They kissed, and they cried, and they fell to the carpeted floor and unwound into coils of exhaustion and relief.

Chloe woke up mid-afternoon, clutching Victoria—still wearing the t-shirt—in her arms. They gathered up their new clothes and found some food at a nearby grocery store, then they got into the car and drove away. Chloe cast one last glance toward the coast, and noticed that the lighthouse was entirely gone now. Well then.

They abandoned the car at the foot of the mountain pass, and though it was a long, cold hike, they were content. From high in the mountains, Chloe’s river was barely visible, winding in the distance like a fine blue thread.

The bicycles were in the shed where Chloe remembered leaving them. It was hard to keep a conversation going with the wind rushing in their ears, but every time Chloe looked to her side, she saw Victoria, and that was enough. When they slept, they rolled themselves into a burrito of blankets under the night sky and hoped it wouldn’t rain.

The trip back through the forest felt nostalgic. They ran around through the trees and shot deer and elk, and though it took weeks and they almost got lost, Chloe loved every second of it. She wasn’t happy about what had happened, exactly. But she felt like an incredible weight had been taken off her shoulders. It wasn’t an inherently joyful time, but it was the first time in many years that Chloe felt free to feel joy, and she indulged as often as possible.

They stopped at Victoria’s cabin to place to pack up her supplies. It was squat, made of logs—a fine enough place to live, but Victoria was eager for a change of scenery, and Chloe was hungry to see her own cabin again. They stocked their little boat full of dried elk and fruits and set out down the river. After several hours, Chloe stopped, docking the skiff in the rushes along the side of the river. When Victoria asked why, Chloe said she told her she was resting, and Victoria laughed. Had she forgotten there were two people in the boat? They could switch. Chloe almost cried all over again.

Eventually, they reached the cabin. It was just as Chloe had left it. The garden wasn’t overgrown at all—the carrots were coming in beautifully, and there were radishes and asparagus now too. The chickens had run wild, but they remembered Chloe, and rounding them up again was as simple as throwing some seeds on the ground and waiting. In the distance, a range of purple mountains hugged the horizon, and if you looked closely it almost seemed as if the tips of the peaks were fading.

The next morning, before dawn, Chloe woke Victoria and took her out in the skiff. They rowed half and hour upstream. It was grey and quiet and the stars were just fading from the sky. Victoria baited her hook, just how Chloe had shown her, and she cast the line out into the river. Chloe rested her head on Victoria’s shoulder. They waited.