Page 75 of Property of Quake

Her words make no sense with what we already know, and I’m desperate to understand.

“Carrie, what do you think you were saving her from? Me, Quake, what?”

Frantically, she shakes her head, and the hand holding the gun swings wildly. “No. No, dammit. I was rescuing her from the system.”

“You are the fucking system,” Quake snarls.

“I was fixing the system, one kid at a time,” she snaps back. “I know what it does to kids, to families, what it did to me! It breaks them, chews them up and spits them out. But I was fixing it.”

“And Keith and Tom,” I say. “What were they doing?”

Her face pales. “They told me they were sending the kids to good homes. They made sure they had parents who loved them.”

“No, they sold them, raped them, and fuck knows what else,” Quake counters. “You were just a pawn, a store where they could shop.”

For the first time, Carrie's certainty begins to crack.

"They’re gone now,” she says. “So I can do things right. I’m going to do things right with Melissa.”

I can’t tell if she’s delusional or playing the long game. Either way, this ends now.

“You aren’t coming within a hundred feet of her,” I snarl, marching forward, danger be damned. “If you do, I will end you, do you hear me?”

“But I’m going to fix it, I promise,” she cries, lifting her gun and pointing it at my face. “You’re in the way, Sister. So, I’m sorry, but I can’t have that.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, fully convinced she’s going to kill me, but when a gun fires, I feel no pain.

Carrie, however, screams as her gun falls to the floor. I glance over my shoulder at Quake, and he shrugs.

“What? I said I wouldn’t kill her, and I didn’t.”

“He didn’t,” Melissa says, trying to help.

“You shot me!” Carrie screams, clutching her arm.

“See, alive,” Quake says.

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” I mutter.

“Maybe, but not tonight, right?”

“Go call the police like you promised,” I order.

Before he does, he pulls a length of rope from his pocket and ties it around Carrie’s wrists. Melissa watches with fascination, and I resign myself to the fact that I can’t always get what I want.

But I got what I need.

Quake and I lead Melissa outside after calling the police, and we wait on the rickety porch. The others join us, each of them taking turns hugging the child.

“You should’ve seen her,” Zombie tells Romeo. “She walked straight toward the barrel of Carrie’s gun. If Lucy had done that, I’d spank the shit out of her, but Quake just stood there.”

“I didn’t just stand there,” Quake protests.

“Whitney had it handled,” Melissa says quietly. “Quake knew that.”

Everyone laughs, and the events of the night start to feel a little less terrible.

Twenty minutes later, the police arrive. They take statements, try to sort out the order of events. I don’t know anything about police investigations, my only other interaction with the law being when Ryan died, but things wrap up quicker than I anticipate, and we all are released from the scene.