What really got to him was the silence. In the dead of summer, even in the deep, early dawn, there should have been sound. Frogs croaking in the freshwater marshlands. Insects buzzing incessantly. Birds twittering high up in the trees. Fish splashing in the gently ebbing tide along the dock. People….

In all Matthias Lassiter’s days of life, Crystal Cove had never been silent, instead always bustling with life, with the business of people renting boats for coastal exploration and fishing or booking guided activities led by any one of the extremely knowledgeable Lassiter family. But this morning: nothing but heavy, deafening, oppressive silence. It was as though after everything that had happened throughout the night, the world was now afraid to breathe, afraid to live in the wake of so much despair, destruction, and death. But instead of respectful, the silence was eerie and violent, a great ugly beast that took Matty’s already battered and bleeding heart in its gaping maw and rent it even further.

Matty raised a shaky hand to his face and was surprised to find that he was still crying, silent tears rolling down his soaked cheeks. He’d thought he was all out of tears. He’d thought he was all out of feelings in general. After all that had happened, all that had been done to them, what he’d done…how could there be anything left in him?

Matty looked helplessly around himself again from where he sat slumped on his knees in the mud and ash, looking at the charred remains of his life and the lingering smoke wafting through the air. There weren’t even the sirens of a firetruck to lance through the silence, not given who owned the town, not when faced with open threats of exactly what would happen to the emergency responders and their loved ones if they came.

Matty moved mechanically and slowly rose to his feet, numb and exhausted legs barely able to hold him upright. Somewhere deep in his heart, he knew what needed doing, even as his brain could no longer process anything. Face blank and throat so dry and tight it throbbed, he gathered the bodies one by one and brought them into the garden behind what remained of the main house. With each step the smell of death clung to him, greedily saturating his clothes and hair, pressing up into his nose and pouring itself in his mouth and down his throat so that it was all he could taste and know.

His father was difficult to carry, viscera dangling loosely from a large hole through his torso caused by a shotgun slug. His mother was whole but for the deep and gaping holes where her eyes had once been and the tongue that had been ripped from her mouth. Daniel, his brother-in-law, was unrecognizable in the blackened remains of his burned body, recognizable only because Matty had watched him burn, left frozen and incapable from the horror that’d seized his very soul.

By far most difficult, though, was his little sister. Matty dropped heavily to his knees beside her, and finally, the world was no longer silent. The air shuddered and throbbed around Matty as he choked on his anguish. His head pounded as his eyes ran dry, his body too dehydrated to produce more tears, but still the dry sobs wracked his body, heart, and soul, grief far from done with him yet. With trembling hands, he took hold of Amelia’s arm—her once beautifully tanned skin now waxy and gray, her youthful warmth now gone with shocking and unnatural cold in its wake—and he made himself look upon her face. Once radiant with joyful anticipation, it was now forever frozen in terror and anguish. She could almost be asleep were it not for the harsh, indelible tension he could still see etched in the lines of her face and mouth.

He rested a trembling hand on Amelia’s belly, once enormous with new life that now would never see day, not now that the belly sank concave, a macabre cavern of viscera and blood stomped into submission by countless strikes of merciless boots. Matty curled in over his sister’s body, bent under the weight of unbearable agony.

“Amelia,” he croaked brokenly into the void where only he could hear. “Amelia, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he whimpered. “For this and…and for….” He choked. “…I know you’re disappointed with me,” he whispered tightly. Not angry. His sister never got angry with him, never got angry with anyone, not even…Tristan. No, she was only ever sometimes disappointed in their choices, which just hurt even more. Especially now upon her untimely death and the utter destruction of her hopes and future.

“I’ll fix it,” Matty mumbled, twining his fingers into the sleeve of her jacket, pleading with his touch and words and soul. “I swear to you, I will. I’ll find him, and I-I’ll fix w-what I d-did.” He choked on a sob. “I’m sorry. Please, Amelia,” he moaned. “I-I’m sorry.” He clung to her and begged and begged over and over as if his feeble words could ever be enough for what had happened, what he’d done, continuing his litany until his throat croaked and cracked and finally gave out.

Exhausted, Matty carefully slid his arms beneath Amelia and lifted her, staggering hard beneath the burden. He carried her over to be with the rest of their family, trying desperately with each step to not think about his little niece and how excited he had been to see her, to hold her, to spoil her, to love her. Trying not to think about how much he already had loved her even though she’d yet to take her first breath. Matty laid his little sister carefully alongside her husband, taking great care to bring their hands together as best he could.

Then he stood and looked around helplessly, wiping at his tear- and sweat-streaked face with the back of his hand like a child. He felt like he should do more. Wished that he could. At least bury them or…speak over them but…. He sighed, completely drained. He had no time or words left. Eventually, once they knew it was safe, once they knew there could no longer be any survivors, someone would come out, and they would do what he couldn’t and lay his family to their final rest.

With a respectful nod of his head, Matty swallowed thickly and locked down his heart, pushing every sharp, shattered edge aside and behind firm walls where they hopefully couldn’t hurt him anymore. Eyes deadened, he turned away from his loved ones for the last time and headed to the large dock in front of the home that he’d grown up in. He knelt at the end and reached down to the water, scooping it up in handfuls and scrubbing the blood and ash and death from his hands and arms, also bringing the salty water higher up to his face and neck, cleansing himself as best he could.

An abundance of recent storms had thrown off the tides and currents, and as he slumped there at the edge of the gently swaying dock, his arms submerged into the sea past his elbows, he could feel a powerful undertow pulling at him. Come with me, it seemed to say. Let go and give in. What purpose is there in your pathetic existence? Matty clenched his eyes shut against the call, against his painful yearning to comply. Rallying everything within him, he suddenly jerked away, losing his balance and landing splayed out on his back on the dock. He stared up at the brightening sky and felt the dawning sun bringing the heavy humidity of the day to the air. He had to go before…before they came back to finish the job.

Rising to his feet, Matty paused and stared at the ocean one last time. So powerfully, he wanted to heed its call, but he had one more thing he had to do first. He had to fix things. He had to make wrong right. He had to find Tristan. He had to take back what he’d said. He had to fix what he’d done.