Vultures

by Chuck Wendig

  Good. His wealth-fatted naiveté helps her here.

  He leads her through a door—of course it’s not just a door, no, but rather a sliding door that hangs on a track with a couple of old pulleys, and he eases it aside with a squeak and rattle. Beyond are a kitchen and a small dining nook: white cabinets meet butcherblock. He urges her into the dining nook, where she stands in front of a table artfully piled with books. The table looks like someone just cut it out of a massive tree—still has the bark on it. Past that is a massive square window overlooking the cobblestone driveway—past the Range Rover she sees the driveway forming a long, bumpy ribbon laid between more grapevines and framed by trees.

  “Wait here and I’ll get the phone. Do you need anything?”

  “Just the phone, please,” she says, again biting back bitter rage.

  “Of course.” He goes to the kitchen, and she hears him mutter, somewhat flustered: “It’s not—it’s not in the cradle, it’s a cordless and Esmerelda must not have put it back in its . . .” His voice dies off and he leaves the kitchen, heading off to god-knows-where in this massive house. Miriam’s chest tightens. She calls after him:

  “I can just use your cell—do you have a cell phone?”

  But he doesn’t answer. He’s off on his mission.

  Her gut turns sour. The longer he’s gone, the greater the chance she’ll be found. The killer will come. He’ll kill the man. He’ll kill her.

  He’ll kill her baby.

  She turns to the kitchen, thinking, I’ll grab a knife. Just in case.

  But no. That’ll scare her mooncalf savior off. He comes back with a phone and there she is with a big-ass knife? Wouldn’t play well, would it?

  So, back to the window she goes. Agitated. Pacing. She cracks her knuckles. Tries to ignore the pain sizzling there in her bicep. (And she wonders, idly, how long will it take to heal? It will heal, won’t it? That little gift from Harriet Adams and her raw, still-beating heart . . .)

  Then something catches her eye.

  Way down the driveway, movement.

  A car.

  A silver car.

  A silver Lexus.

  She needs that knife, and she needs it now.

  Miriam spins around and starts to make a beeline for the kitchen. There stands her savior, the good man with the open door, and she starts to say: “He’s coming, the killer is—” But then she sees he’s not holding a phone. Rather, he’s holding a gun. A small, boxy pistol.

  Leveled at her middle.

  “You fucker,” she says. He wasn’t being nice. It was a trap.

  “I told him,” the man says, softly. “I explained that we did not have to come for you, that eventually you would come to us.”

  “You’re with him. You’re with the Starfucker.”

  “Rather, he is with me.” He rolls his eyes, almost playfully, like he’s feigning embarrassment. “Where are my manners? Welcome, Miriam Black. Welcome to my home. I apologize for my rudeness. I won’t be getting you a phone, but I can offer you something to eat and drink.”

  “I don’t understand. . . .”

  “You will.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “There’s that fighting spirit.”

  Outside, an engine cuts off.

  “My friend is here,” the man says. “Would you like to meet him? I know he’d very much like to meet you. We’ve all wanted to meet you, Miriam Black. We have much to discuss.”

  PART SEVEN

  * * *

  THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH

  FORTY-FIVE

  THE GIFT

  THEN.

  They have a car now. Gabby and Miriam. It’s not an exciting car by any stretch: a late-nineties Mazda Miata, cherry red, with an engine that sounds like a lawnmower orgy under the hood. They were told, unabashedly, that you cannot live in Los Angeles without having a car. No, no, no, oh no. They could be expelled without a car. Sent to live in the wastelands of Barstow or the Salton Sea or, worst of all, Orange County. Miriam has tried walking places, and though it’s doable, people gave her looks like she was a serial killer on the prowl for fresh meat. You get a car, or you don’t belong. One of us, one of us, the car freaks chant.

  So, they expended the least amount of money and, honestly, got the least amount of car. This thing is like a sporty go-cart. Children could own and drive this car. But it’s fine. It’s clean. It smells like Pine-Sol, for some fucking reason. Probably to cover up the deeper, more secret scent: cigarette smoke. It’s still here, an olfactory memory. Miriam catches whiffs of the nicotine and tar from time to time, and it makes her teeth ache with pure, unmitigated want. People who lose limbs experience phantom itches. People who quit smoking experience phantom cigarettes—she smells that smell in the car, and she can feel the airy, crisp cancer stick betwixt her fingers.

  Now, though, she can’t smell the smell. They have the windows down. The wind slides through the car like a serpent. They’re in a parking lot, Gabby in the driver’s seat, Miriam in the passenger seat. The car too means they don’t necessarily use the services of one Mr. Steve Wiebe anymore—though with only one car between the two of them, they still call on him from time to time. And they hang out with him, too, a few times a week because . . . well, they don’t know many people here. Gabby has friends now from waitressing, but Miriam does not share those friends because, at least as Miriam tells it, Miriam does not like people. (In more honest moments, she knows she admits to herself that she’s really afraid of connecting with people—new people in particular. Because people are fragile. Relationships are doomed. People up and fucking die on you, or they betray you, or they just stop caring. In less-honest moments, Miriam tells herself it’s because she’s a rebel, Dottie. A loner. And that’s cool, isn’t it? Aren’t all the cool kids aloof and standoffish and smart-assed?)

  Presently, the car is off. They sit parked on a side street in Beverly Hills. Nearby sits a little boutique hotel, and she can see a pool through the bougainvillea, and she catches the movement of bikini girls and surf-short boys and waitresses serving fancy-ass small-batch locally sourced artisanal cocktails, because people around here can’t just drink a shot of tequila or put some tonic in some gin and call it a fucking day. No, here they drink, like, weird shit some fey mustachioed lad made up: It’s got three bitter liquors you’ve never heard of, plus barrel-aged suntan lotion, saffron, muddled sumac, roasted celery, and the fermented semen of a Tibetan yak who was manually masturbated as he died from a slow bleed with a sacred knife. The rim is crusted with dried, sugared salmon roe. I call it an Enlightened Gosling. That’ll be $54. Namaste.

  But they’re not here for that.

  They’re here for what’s across the street.

  The OB/GYN office.

  It’s her next visit with Dr. Dita Shahini.

  “We can go in,” Gabby says. “Sit down.”

  “I’d rather sit in the car. We’re a bit early.”

  “But they have magazines in there. Good ones, too. And they give out bottles of coconut water.”

  “Coconut water tastes like tree jizz.”

  Gabby gives her a look.

  “No, really,” Miriam says, protesting. “Coconut water tastes at least a little bit like jizz. It is redolent with jizz. Reminiscent of tropical spunk. And besides, the doctor’s waiting room always smells like . . . a doctor’s waiting room. I know, I know, it’s a rich person’s doctor, which is new for me? I expect I deserve a doctor operating out of an alley dumpster, à la Oscar the Grouch, but no matter how shiny and fancy her office is, with the waterfall and the coconut water and those fancy cookies she has sitting around—the place always smells like a doctor’s office. Antiseptic scent covered over with a Glade plug-in.” Miriam pauses. “What do you think they use to make Glade plug-ins? I bet it’s people. Soylent Glade.”

  “You’re doing that thing again.”

  “What thing?”

  “That thing where you talk a lot because you’re nervous.”

  “I’
m not nervous.”

  “You’re totally nervous.”

  “Okay, fine, I’m totally nervous.”

  Gabby reaches over, puts a stabilizing hand on her knee. “Is it the baby? Is that what’s worrying you?”

  “It’s everything. Everything is worrying me. I’ve got anxiety pouring out of my ears like panicked ants pouring out of a kicked over anthill. It’s the baby. It’s the Trespasser. It’s this . . . this Starfucker. I just . . .” She bites down willfully on the inside of her cheek, enough to draw blood. (It’ll heal soon enough, she knows.)

  “You’ll catch him.”

  “Two people are now dead. Two. And more will be on the way.” Two more months have passed since she began working with David Guerrero. Which means two more actors—young, handsome actors who are vehicles for good cheekbones more than any kind of thespian skill—have been killed. Faces sliced off. Guts spilled into their laps. Last month, the Starfucker murdered Roderick Goynes, both a model and a background player on a ton of shows and movies. Killed him in his own house. Pinned his face to the drywall with shards of broken mirror. And just last week, the Starfucker slayed Kago Demarco, an actor on some lawyer show on ABC—played some scheming paralegal. He was on his way to catch a flight to head home to South Africa for a week to be with his family after the loss of a parent, but instead of a rendezvous with his driver, he had a date with the Starfucker instead. He thought he was getting in a car to take him to the airport, but the only place he went to was Hell—slaughtered in that car, in a parking garage. Face stuck on the steering wheel, bowels bundled at his feet.

  That one, nobody could hide.

  Media caught wind of it.

  And now it was a proper story. Which put the pressure on. So far, she hasn’t delivered for Guerrero. Which means he hasn’t delivered anything to her—she doesn’t have the name of any medium, doesn’t have any idea how to move forward. He’s got her on a hook. And Miriam doesn’t like being on a hook. But what other choice does she have?

  “You’ll make it happen,” Gabby says. “I believe in you.”

  “What do you want from me, Gabs?”

  Gabby, taken aback, asks, “What?”

  “I mean—what are you doing with me, exactly? What’s your point? Your . . . goal, your plans, your dreams?”

  “God, more of this. Really? We’re doing this now?”

  “No, I’m not saying—”

  “You are saying it, and I hear you loud and clear. You think I’m just some sucker along for the ride, some bit player in your big life. I’m not you. I don’t have some insane gift or some crazy purpose. I’m like everybody else out there—I just want to live my life, pay my bills, have a bed under me every night. I want to eat tacos and ice cream and go to the beach. I want a life. I want a life with you. That’s it. Not everybody is the ringleader of the circus, Miriam. Some people are just happy to see the show.”

  “This show is a shitshow.”

  Gabby thunks her head against the steering wheel. “Ugh. Talking to you is literally the worst sometimes.”

  Miriam thinks but does not say, I think when Ashley Gaynes cut up your face, it broke you. It broke you like a mirror, and now all you see are shattered versions of me instead of yourself. It makes her feel equally loved and saddened and angry all at once. Like, here’s this woman who has given her so much but taken little for herself. All just to be a—how’d Gabby put it? A bit player in Miriam’s big life.

  Gabby goes on: “This is what normal life feels like, Miriam. Not solving murders, not talking to . . . fucking birds or mind-demons or whatever it is you’ve got going on. It’s not about death; it’s about life. Regular life. Not bloody, terrifying adventures, just regular adventures. Like sitting in a car, or having a baby, or snuggling under a blanket to watch goofy stuff on Netflix. I’m not weak just because I’m with you. I’m not weak just because I want . . . something normal for us.”

  “I didn’t say you were weak.”

  “But you thought it.”

  I did think it.

  “I also think if you want normal, you need to look elsewhere.”

  Gabby scowled. “But isn’t that the point of all this? To get clear of the Trespasser? To put aside the gift? To get normal?”

  “This isn’t how I thought this conversation would go.”

  Silence.

  Gabby pauses.

  She leans back.

  Blinks a few times.

  “Oh, my fucking god,” she says. “You’re breaking up with me.”

  “What? No.”

  “You are.”

  “I’m not, shut up. God. I’m fucking—” Miriam draws a deep breath, exhales it. “I bought you something.”

  Now, Gabby looks really confused. “You bought me something.”

  “Yes. Yeah. Yes.”

  “Why? And what is it? Is it something mean?”

  “No! It’s not mean. I just thought—Christmas came and went while we were in Florida and you got me something.” As if to demonstrate, she hooks her finger and pulls down the collar of her white T-shirt so that the owl necklace can be fully seen against the pale expanse of her chest. “And I thought of something I wanted to get you.”

  With that, she hauls her bookbag from between her legs, up onto her lap. She unzips it with a vvviiiip and roots around inside until she finds the thing, then pulls it out.

  It’s not wrapped. It’s just surrounded in the crinkly brown boulder of a cheap paper bag.

  “Is it heroin?” Gabby asks. “Did you buy me a brick of heroin?”

  “It’s not heroin, stop it. Just . . . just open it or whatever.”

  A dubious look plasters itself on Gabby’s face as she unwraps the bag.

  In a few moments, she is holding a snow globe.

  She holds it up. The sun shines through it, casting prismatic light on the rough, scrapwork scars of her beautiful face. Inside the snow globe: the Hollywood sign. She turns it upside down and fake snow glitters, swimming through the water. It makes no sound, but in Miriam’s mind, it does: a light, fairy-like piano tinkly-winkle.

  “It’s glass,” Miriam says. “Not some cheapy plastic one. I mean, it’s still cheapy, because it’s a snow globe. But at least you can use it to smash in somebody’s head if you have to.”

  “A multipurpose gift,” Gabby says, wryly.

  “See, there you go.”

  Gabby squints. “Why a snow globe?”

  “Do you hate it? You hate it.”

  “No. I love it.” Her face, scars and all, softens. Her eyes seem to glitter a little. She does love it. “I just want to know why.”

  Miriam thinks back to the cabin. Her and Louis. Snow falling. A slice of life captured in time, away from everything. Encased in a frozen bubble.

  “I just thought it was pretty” is all she says.

  “Thanks. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. I’m sorry I’m such a hot mess.”

  “Good news for you,” Gabby says, reaching over the middle console to kiss Miriam’s cheek. “I kinda like hot messes. Now, let’s get inside and get you in the stirrups.”

  “You just want some coconut water.”

  “I really do!”

  FORTY-SIX

  SEX PARTY

  “You’re having a little girl,” Dr. Shahini says. The obstetrician blinks. Her dark, fringed eyelashes are so big, so ostentatious, it looks as if they’re coyly waving at Miriam. Hello, hello. In contrast, Dr. Shahini’s voice is mostly steely and flat, like she’s reading numbers off a spreadsheet, except that she always injects a lift when she says the last word, as she does here with “Congratulations.”

  Miriam can’t tell if it’s sarcasm or delight. Or, somehow, both.

  On the screen of the ultrasound, the baby curls in on itself—herself. Little hands search strange fluid. A bundle of umbilicus strays from the child, wandering off into the dark of Miriam’s body, like a tether, keeping it bound—but also keeping it safe. But now Miriam wonders: will that cord one
day work its way around the child’s neck? Will it cut off her baby’s airway? Is that why it’s born only to die? Can she stop that? How? Saving a life means ending one, and whose can end to preserve the baby’s? Her own? Maybe. But would that even be possible now that she seems unable to suffer much harm for long? Harriet, when shot in the head, still began her crass reconstruction, emerging once more from the intimacy of near-death.

  And now Miriam thinks, The baby looks like a ghost. A pale specter, diaphanous like a bedsheet held up against a moonlit window. The ultrasound paints it in the strangled blue-corpse color.

  Miriam shudders.

  Gabby gives her hand a little squeeze. It helps.

  “A girl,” Gabby says. Her voice is hopeful and light. Maybe this really is something for her.

  “I don’t want a girl,” Miriam says, suddenly.

  Eyes turn to her.

  Even the baby’s eyes seem to flick toward the screen, as if it—she—knows. I’m watching you, Mama.

  “I don’t want a daughter. I’d rather have a son.”

  “I apologize,” Shahini says, the eerie flatness of her voice casting her sincerity in deep question. “But in this, you do not get to choose.”

  “I was told gender is a spectrum.”

  “Gender, yes. Gender is largely a social construct. Sex is not.”

  “But some people choose if they’re boys or girls, and—”

  “And your child can one day make that choice for herself. That is not your choice to make, and today is not that day. Today, I am telling you that you are having a daughter. What you do with that information is up to you.”