by Chuck Wendig
She's dead.
Unless–
What is it that Beck teachers? Sensei Beck. Ninja Warrior Beck.
He teaches girls how to fight back.
To fight dirty.
Repeat after me: Eyes nose throat groin knees and feet–
Miriam rolls over. One hard kick with her boot lands square against his knee. The pain is evident on his face – eyes wide, epic jaw in a rigor-mortis flinch.
He growls, hauls her back to her feet–
"Eyes," she says, and then spits in his eye.
"Nose." She slams her head against it, feels it give way. He grabs her by the chin but she's wet from the rain and squirms out of his grip.
"Throat." Again she forms her hand into a sharp point and jabs hard against his throat. His breath is a keening wheeze.
"My favorite," she says. "Groin."
Knee up into his junk drawer. A gleeful strike.
He gasps and she shoves him backward.
He staggers. Tries to get his bearing. Bangs his butt against the wall. Rebounds and comes at Miriam–
–time collapses into staccato moments, a ragged drum beat–
–the door opens, Louis hauling Edwin inside–
–she reaches under the sidebar, finds the prize–
–Louis calls, "Miriam!"–
–the gun is small but heavy in her hand–
–bang–
–a red rose blooms on Beck's chest–
–Edwin screams for his brother–
–the swallow on Beck's chest bleeds out, shot through the eye–
–and he falls, face forward, onto the foyer floor.
Smoke drifts lazily from the barrel.
Edwin crawls over to his brother. Sobbing into the man's hair. Holding him. Hugging him. Miriam storms over.
She levels the gun at Edwin. "Give me your hand."
"Go to hell, wretch," the headmaster gasps.
She clocks him across the top of the head with the gun. "Fuck it," she mutters, and she grabs his face with her hand–
She sees.
Sees the tableau of his death play out in front of her.
That sonofabitch.
"It figures," she says.
"Leave him," Louis says. "Let's call the police."
"The police?" She laughs, but it's a mirthless, acid bark. "Do you know how he dies? He dies at a fucking ski chalet. I don't know where. Colorado. The Swiss Alps. It doesn't matter. He dies an old man by a crackling fire as two grandchildren play at his feet. This evil prick, who helped his monster mother and fiend-fuck father hunt and torture and kill young women, gets away with it. And keeps on killing, for all I know."
Louis eases closer. He's holding up those enormous hands of his in a gesture of peace and calm. It isn't working.
"Miriam, he's defenseless."
"Tell that to the dead girls. You didn't see their tongues. Jars upon jars of them. Five dozen dead girls."
Edwin swallows a hard knot, wrings his hands together. "I'll do better. I'll be better. Your friend is right. Let me live. Please – "His lips connect by a slick string of saliva. His nose runs. His eyes glisten.
The gun wavers in her hand.
Louis says, "This isn't justice. This is revenge. This is murder."
"It… is what it is."
"Miriam, this isn't you–"
"You have no idea who I am."
She pulls the trigger. She shoots Edwin through the heart. Just like his brother. He collapses atop Beck.
Blood pools beneath them.
Louis says nothing – but a terrible sound comes from him, a great heaving gasp like he can't believe it.
Miriam feels the pulse-beat drumming at her neck.
"I'm going to get Wren. And then I'm going to kill Eleanor Caldecott."
She doesn't wait for him. She doesn't stop to soothe him. There's no time.
Miriam marches forward through the house. Winding her way back to the greenhouse, where the rain once again pummels the Plexiglas, where the cabinet of tongues and the plants fed by dead girls await.
Wren is gone.
FIFTY-NINE
The Abyss Between Them
Outside, Miriam stands in the driveway.
Watching the taillights of the black Mercedes as it barrels down the drive toward the front gate.
Through the back windshield Miriam sees a shock of white hair. Eleanor's driving.
No sign of Wren, but smart money says the old woman has her.
"She took her," Miriam says to Louis as he steps out into the rain. "She still has Wren."
"Is it over?" he asks. He wants it to be. She can hear that in his voice.
Things have changed.
No time to worry about that now.
"No!" she says. "No. I still have to finish this."
"What else is there to do? Just stop. Take a breath and stop. Let someone else handle this part." He's pleading with her. Like he's trying to talk her off the ledge, away from the edge. "We don't even know where they're going."
"No. I know where they're going."
And she does.
Eleanor's taking Wren to finish what she started.
The river is rising, Miriam.
They're going back to the school.
SIXTY
River's Edge
The Caldecotts have other cars in the garage. At first she can't find keys, any keys, and the whole house is there – a giant manor where keys could literally be anywhere, and with each moment gone is another chance for Wren to get dead. But then Louis calls out that he finds a set of keys – kitchen, junk drawer, of all places, fucking rich people – and they find the keys start a silver BMW sedan.
The drive is long, or so it feels. Rain pounding on the windshield. Louis does the driving; Miriam doesn't even have a license. He guns it. Shaky hands, but steady foot.
They get to the school. Homer's smart enough not to ask any questions. By now he doesn't want to know any more than he does, so he just lets the gate swing wide.
As they pull the car forward, Miriam sees Eleanor Caldecott.
She sits by the river's edge, Wren lying still beside her.
The Susquehanna is a tumbling channel of muddy water already spilling over the banks on the other side. The river has almost crested the top. It won't be long now. The rain is merciless and without measure.
Miriam tells Louis to stay by the car.
He doesn't argue this time.
She crosses the lawn, the earth squishing beneath her feet. Gun in hand. Pointed at Eleanor. Just in case.
Wren isn't moving.
Oh, god.
"Eleanor," Miriam calls out over the guttural river rush.
The woman looks nothing like her graceful self. She is now a sodden old woman, her silver hair draped over a thin skull. Her once-elegant clothing lays plastered against her narrow frame and long lean bones.
"Miss Black," Eleanor answers. Not bothering to look.
"Wren," Miriam calls out. "Wren. It's me. It's Miriam."
But the girl is just a lump. Lying there on her side.
"You think you're different," Eleanor says, her voice quiet enough that the words are almost lost. "You think you're not the same because you have righteousness on your side. But one day they'll come for you, Miriam Black, and then you'll see. You'll see what it's like to be persecuted for your unswerving faith in who you are and what you do. Then you'll understand."
"Eleanor shrugs."
"She's not dead. She's drugged."
Miriam casts a look toward the school. She sees one last cop car in the parking lot – lights off, nobody else to be seen.
"You're here to kill Wren. And maybe Tavena White."
"You know about Tavena."
"I saw. Yes."
"I didn't get to her. The girls are locked away in the dormitory. Her actions will poison the world, I'm afraid. You know what she does one day? She steals from a preacher, and when he catches her, she kills him. With a letter opener. She stabs
him thirty times. A community leader, dead by her hand."
"And what does Lauren Martin do?"
Eleanor turns then to face Miriam.
Her face is a mask of satisfied peace.
She smiles softly. "She does nothing. Because she dies."
Dies? Not dead yet?
"Wait!" Miriam cries out. But it's too late–
The woman grabs Wren, and together they tumble into the rising river.
SIXTY-ONE
Rising
The waters are dark and cold and as soon as Miriam leaps into their glacial embrace they grab her with terrible hands and drag her forward and pull her down.
She can see nothing. Hear nothing. Feel nothing.
Blood-colored mud. Bruise-colored water.
It's then she knows what a terrible error she made. The waters are moving too fast. She tries to swim but it's like falling through space – it seems to make no difference at all. Finding Wren and Eleanor is an impossible task.
This is where you die, she thinks. Here it is. Your final destination.
You deserve it. Don't you?
You're no different than Eleanor Caldecott. She's right.
You murdered her son.
In the coldest of blood. There he sat, weeping over the body of his brother – dead thanks to you – and you shot him. No due process. No jury. Just you and a gun and the rage inside you that told you such a monster should not be allowed to live.
Is that who you are now?
The battlefield crow? The chooser-of-the-slain?
How are you different?
Answer that and you may live.
An echoing sound, a voice distorted.
It's a baby crying.
And then a body swims up next to her. A corpse, its dead cheeks fattened by river water. A woman, stringy seaweed hair floating behind her. Louis' wife. In her arms she cradles a dead baby, a bloated floodchoked cherub.
My baby, Miriam thinks.
A twinge in her womb. Like an old woman's tweezer fingers pinching closed her ovaries, pinchitypinch. A quick twist and they're shut forever. No baby for you, Miss Black.
The urge strikes her – just open your mouth. Breathe in. Take a big gulp. Snort the waters of the mud-gush Susquehanna until it clogs your throat and your lungs. Then you can rest. No need to answer such hard questions.
Louis' dead wife is gone.
So too is the baby. Her own nameless baby.
Another face floats up.
The face of Eleanor Caldecott. Eyes wide. Mouth open.
Is she real?
Real or no, she's certainly dead.
Miriam reaches for her. Feels the clammy flesh. Pulls herself along the body as the river carries them both. And finds that her bony wrist dead-ends in an arthritic claw grabbing hold of yet another bony wrist.
For a moment the waters clear and Miriam can see Wren – still caught in Eleanor's undying grasp.
Miriam tries to pry the dead fingers from the girl's wrist, but she can't get a grip. And then the bodies are pulled away as a branch comes out of nowhere and separates them. Miriam swims back toward the distant pale shape, reaching, reaching, no longer certain she can hold her breath, lungs straining and burning, her whole chest and throat and face on fire.
But it doesn't matter. She just has to push a little longer.
Just to get Wren out of the water.
If nothing else, to save the girl and lose herself.
It's in that breathless misery that the answer to the question blooms bold and furious in her mind's eye. It's all she needs.
She kicks her legs and swoops her hands and swims forward, once more anchoring herself to the old woman's carcass. She gets underneath Wren and, carrying all the girl's body, wrenches her frame and kicks at the corpse so that the two are suddenly disconnected.
She has Wren.
But to what end?
How to escape the river's embrace?
The answer: a shape like a shark swims up from underneath, carrying with it a cluster of filthy, greasy bubbles.
Miriam feels arms enclose around her. The world goes upside-down. River water rushing. In her nose, her eyes. Stinging. Swallowing gulpfuls.
And then a sudden surge forward–
Miriam sees Eleanor Caldecott's corpse one more time.
But this time, it's staring at her and smiling.
The corpse raises one bony finger to its lips, as though to say, Shhh.
The corpse is gone.
They break surface.
Miriam's up on the bank. Pulling Wren up, too. Miriam's coughing and choking as she rolls the girl over. Two fingers under her neck – there lurks a pulse. Faint like the feeling of an eyeball rolling beneath the lid, but it's there.
And then Miriam looks around.
"Where's Louis?" she asks. But the girl's unconscious.
A shape like a shark.
Arms enclose.
Oh, no.
Oh, to all the gods and fates, no, not like this.
Caldecott's voice echoes – watery and distant as if from the deep. You are just one more piece of her wreckage. Because of her, a piece of you will one day go missing.
Louis.
Then – downstream – a splash.
A shape, gray through the rain. Grabbing fistfuls of mud and grass. It's him. It's Louis. She runs to him. Pulls him up. Falls atop him and clings to him like she's still in the river and needs him to save her from drowning.
PART FIVE
The Road Ahead
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked upstarting
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted – nevermore!
The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe
SIXTY-TWO
Red Wren
With money that's not hers, Miriam buys a burner phone – a prepaid cellular phone fresh from WalMart – and uses it to dial the hospital.
They put her through to Wren's room.
"Hey, psycho," Wren says. She's sounding pretty good.
"Still charming as ever," Miriam says.
"Sorry." She sounds like she means it.
"No, it's cool. I like that about you. You remind me of me."
A pause. Just Wren's uncertain breathing. Finally, she says, "They said I was a bad girl. That's why they wanted to kill me."
"They did. They thought you were going to turn out to be a real bad apple and so they figured on killing the tree before it could drop the fruit. Ugh. Metaphors. You know what, fuck metaphors. They thought one day you were going to grow up and be a bad person and hurt other people."
"Will I?"
I don't know, Miriam thinks.
But that's not how she answers.
"You won't if you don't want to. Fate isn't written," she says. It's not a lie, not precisely. "This life leaves room for choice, but only if you want it real bad."
