Red Hands: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  The woman whirled her hand in the air and turned her back on Rue. On that signal, the entire response team began to behave as if Rue had turned invisible. The confidence in that disregard broke through the numbness and shock and made Rue afraid all over again. She wasn’t a concern—less trouble than a mosquito—which meant these people had a lot of power or had much larger worries, or both. Probably both.

  “Attention, all civilians!” the woman shouted. “I’m sorry for your loss and your pain, but please stand away from the deceased. I repeat, you must step back from the bodies. I know you don’t want to be parted from your loved ones, but each of them must be temporarily quarantined. This will be a brief quarantine, and I promise they will be returned to you as quickly as we’re able to process and release them.”

  Rue kept recording, but hardly anyone moved. Some of them understood immediately, horror dawning on their faces as they recalled the way the driver had touched these people, only to have them collapse in painful seizures and die. Others were too numb to put it together.

  A police lieutenant jogged over to the woman and quietly demanded to know what she was up to, who she was. Basically the same questions Rue had been asking. The woman flashed some kind of ID, and Rue watched the cop blink in surprise and nod, backing away, hands raised as if in apology for interrupting. So whoever the fuck she is, she does have some authority behind her.

  A Blackcoat called to her. “Vargas.” So now the woman had a name, which helped give Rue someone to hate. Vargas had a head of tight curls, dyed red, and Rue might’ve found her attractive under other circumstances. But not today.

  Ignored, Rue glanced around at the people who had died after being touched by the BMW driver, or by Maeve Sinclair, who’d run off in the chaos. She refused to look at the bodies of Ellen and Logan Sinclair, but she did glance back at Ted. Stubborn as he was, and despite his own fifty-three years, Ted had managed to get to one knee and was trying to rise, one arm across his ribs, his face etched with pain. There were scrapes and bloody bruises on his arms and right cheek, but still he struggled to stand. Rose pulled away from Priya, reached for her father, and the two of them held one another, both shaking. Over Rose’s shoulder, Rue could see Ted’s eyes, which were flat and dull. Empty.

  Bereft. That was the word. Of course he was bereft. Ted had slid into shock. Maeve had run off, vanished up into the woods of Mount Champney, the tallest peak along the Mekwi Range. Rue Crooker and Ted Sinclair had met years earlier but had become best friends their sophomore year in high school, thanks to a Siouxsie and the Banshees concert and their shared crush on a freckle-faced freshman girl neither of them would ever get to kiss. Now they were both divorced from their respective wives. Rue felt like her divorce had left her happier, but the same couldn’t be said for Ted.

  Ted broke away from Rose and started limping toward the bodies of his wife and son.

  “Sir!” a Blackcoat shouted. “I’m going to have to ask you to back away.”

  Confused faces stared at the soldier, then at Vargas. Rue had thought her a civilian, but that seemed unlikely now if she were the one giving the orders. Whoever these people were, however, they weren’t completely wrong. The locals were grieving and horrified. Her friends and neighbors would need answers that Rue knew weren’t forthcoming. She saw a bearded man stand, both of his huge fists clenched, sweat stains on his Red Sox Nation T-shirt. He started toward the soldier.

  “Wait!” Rue said, lowering her phone. She let the hand holding it dangle at her side, but didn’t stop the recording. Even if the only video was of the pavement, at least it would pick up the audio. “Please … listen. They’re right. You saw how these people died. This is some kind of contagion. Back away from the dead and don’t touch them until medical personnel have cleared them. Everyone, please just stand back, but don’t go anywhere. All of you will have to be checked out, too.”

  Ted stared at Rue. She had seen him so drunk he couldn’t raise his head, and so high he couldn’t remember his own birthday, but she’d never seem him like this. He looked utterly lost.

  “They died in, like, two seconds,” the huge-fisted man growled. “If I got infected by that, I’d already be lyin’ in the goddamn road.”

  He had a point, but they couldn’t take any chances. Not with something so deadly. Rue began to reply, to plead with them to follow instructions, when she felt a cool shadow blot out the Fourth of July sun. She turned to see a towering black-armored soldier behind her, with Vargas standing beside him.

  “Clear the area,” Vargas said, copper eyes glinting.

  Rue glared. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “I don’t recall asking—”

  “These people don’t know you. They need to be comforted, and they need medical attention. They need to be quarantined. We need to be sure they—”

  “I don’t know who you think ‘we’ might be,” Vargas said, giving her the disdainful once-over that Rue’s hair and tattoos prompted all too frequently. “But ‘we’ isn’t you. We’ll be quarantining the remains. Everyone else can go home and wait for the bodies to be released.”

  Something snapped in Rue. The caul of shock that had hung over her tore away, her thoughts clearing. “You want them to go home? They were just exposed to what looks to me like the deadliest germ in the world, and I’ve seen some deadly fucking germs. Nothing kills on contact like that. Nothing. You want to send these people home, you’re either monumentally stupid or you already know they’re not infected. I’m going to guess the latter, since you people buzzed in here about a minute and a half after the dead guy in the Beemer. I get the idea you know exactly who this is and what just happened here.”

  Rue pointed to Ted. “My friend just lost half his family and got hit by a goddamned car. Maybe you want to explain to him why that happened? Oh, and also … who the fuck are you?”

  Vargas stepped in so close that Rue could smell her tropical-scented body wash. The woman had gone unsettlingly still.

  “You seem to know what you’re talking about,” Vargas said, studying her more critically than before. “You don’t look like a scientist.”

  Rue couldn’t decide whether to laugh or knock her on her ass. Instead, her spine stiffened. “Dr. Rue Crooker. I’m a biologist at Boston University, and you’re pushing folks around in my hometown when they’ve just seen people die in front of them. So maybe dial it back, Vargas.”

  The smaller woman blinked, perhaps startled that Rue knew her name. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had.

  “I think we’ll have to quarantine you, too, Dr. Crooker,” Vargas said, gesturing to two of the Blackcoats.

  Rue had never put her phone away, never stopped the recording. Now she picked it up and held it between herself and Vargas, making sure the other woman knew she was on camera.

  “I don’t think we’ll be doing that today.”

  Which was when Ted took a few shuffling steps toward Vargas. With every second that passed, the bruising and swelling of his injuries seemed worse. “Take a look around,” he said. “You think we’re going to let Dr. Crooker go anywhere with you?”

  Behind him, his daughter Rose broke a little further, her face contorted with loneliness and shock. “Dad?”

  “No,” he said. “You girls stay back.”

  Rue glanced across the street, between buildings, at the woods and the mountains beyond. Maeve had taken off in that direction. Finding her was going to be vital, but first this situation had to be contained.

  The bearded man in the Red Sox Nation T-shirt stepped up beside Ted. “You see how many cameras are on you?”

  Vargas blinked and for the first time seemed to notice there were at least half a dozen people with their phones out, recording what had been unfolding. Most seemed to be bystanders who had stayed behind to help the injured but were unencumbered now that more EMTs and police had shown up. One was a middle-aged woman who stood protectively over a dead man. Tears streamed down her face, but the look of determination in her eyes
was unmistakable.

  “People aren’t stupid,” Ted said, wiping at his eyes. “This might be a small town, but it’s a Fourth of July parade in America, and you come in here in your black helicopters and talking contagion. There’s going to be half a dozen news trucks here in half an hour or less. Now tell us what just happened, goddamn it. We deserve an answer.”

  Vargas glanced from Ted to Rue and then turned toward the police lieutenant who’d backed down from her before. The man had been clearing the intersection, shouting for people to remove the floats that were blocking more emergency vehicles from arriving. Now he turned, said something to a pair of EMTs who were hustling a gurney toward their ambulance, bearing a man who’d been struck by the BMW and badly injured.

  “Lieutenant,” Vargas called.

  But as the policeman started toward her, another voice interrupted them, and the lieutenant almost collapsed with relief. Chief Kaminski had arrived.

  “Ma’am, I’m Len Kaminski, chief of police. Obviously, we’ve got a lot on our hands here,” the chief said, waving at his officers to go back to what they’d been doing. “I’m told you wanted us to stay out of your business.”

  “That’s changed,” Vargas said. “Place all these people under arrest for interfering with a federal investigation.”

  Voices erupted all around her, but to Rue, all that noise suddenly seemed little more than a distant buzz. Tiny details resolved into sharp contrast. The last two letters on Kaminski’s badge had been worn away, as if the chief had scraped up against something. He had a little scar under his left eye and a few wiry white hairs in his otherwise dark eyebrows. His nostrils flared in disgust as he glanced around at the people with their phones out, and for half a moment, his gray eyes rested on Rue. Then he looked at Vargas.

  “Lady, this is New Hampshire. Live Free or Die is our state motto. You come in here in the midst of the ugliest, most heartbreaking thing that’s ever happened in this town, no identification, and tell me to arrest people who just suffered loss and horror like this? You’re either that arrogant or that stupid, and I don’t really care which. Any idiot can see this is some kind of government bullshit gone haywire. You want to cover up the mess you made, you’ll have to do it with your own people, and face the media shitstorm that comes your way. I guess what I’m saying is, go fuck yourself.”

  People in the crowd—Rue guessed people who hadn’t just watched their friends or spouses die—clapped and cheered. More phones had come out during this mini-speech, while Vargas’s fury visibly simmered.

  “This whole town is about to be quarantined,” Vargas sneered as if the words were punishment.

  “You were ready to send everyone home a minute ago,” Rue replied. “You know that whatever this is, none of us has it.”

  Vargas responded with the most venomous smile Rue had ever seen. “Can’t be too careful, Dr. Crooker. If you want to make sure none of you get infected, I suggest you stop making my job more difficult.”

  Rue flinched, wondering if she’d heard right. Not the words—those were clear enough—but the tone. Then she noticed the way the Blackcoats had shifted, several of them moving into position near Vargas, as if guarding her. Chief Kaminski noticed, too, and cast a nervous glance toward Rue, as if warning her to heed Vargas’s words. Their eyes met, Rue saw the policeman’s fear, and that was when she knew she’d heard Vargas’s threat exactly as it had been intended.

  She thought about Ted Sinclair’s daughter, off in the woods, terrified and alone and maybe worse, and knew she ought to say something. Whatever this threat was, the dead people in the street were testament enough to how dangerous it could be. But someone would tell Vargas soon enough, or there’d be cell phone footage of what happened when Maeve hit the driver with that baseball bat, and then these helicopters and the soldiers in their gleaming body armor would be all over the mountainside hunting for her.

  Rue thought it would be a good idea if somebody else found her first.

  3

  For the longest time, there were zero thoughts in Maeve’s head. Pain drove her, grief pumping her blood and keeping her legs moving. Eyes wide, searching the shadows between trees as if the forest might reveal itself to be part of a dream, she ran along familiar trails. Her feet remembered them, knew how to navigate the rocks and roots that jutted from the ground. She diverted onto a narrow side trail she knew most hikers avoided because of its steep incline and inhospitable terrain. Her escape turned from a run to a climb, knees rising, hands grasping edges of rock, head ducking beneath branches, until at last she hauled herself up onto a smooth ridge where the trail became a bit easier.

  Only then did she pause, heart thundering, salt from her tears drying on her lips. An ocean of pain had dragged her under and threatened to drown her, but now she washed up onto this mountain ledge for just a moment. Long enough to begin to catch her breath. Long enough for conscious thought to return and reality to set in.

  Mom’s dead.

  Logan … Logan’s dead.

  Her body seemed to fold in on itself, shoulders caving inward as if she were some sort of bird, eager to wrap herself in protective wings. She hugged herself, taking deep rasping breaths. She studied her trembling fingers, expecting to find them dappled with blood. But they were just her fingers, just her hands.

  Over the sound of her heartbeat, she could hear the wind picking up, rustling the branches of trees all around her. Shafts of sunlight streamed through the lattice of those interlocking branches. God, it was beautiful.

  So beautiful it hurt.

  Emotion surged inside her, so powerful that she couldn’t hold it in. Maeve threw her head back and screamed at the sky, the trees, the mountain, and her own goddamned hands, these things that no longer felt a part of her. While the echo of her scream danced up and down the climbing trail, she thought of Medusa, the gorgon of Greek myth, whose hair was a nest of deadly serpents and whose gaze could turn human beings to stone.

  “Logan,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  She remembered the way he had always picked the worst possible times to smile at her, when she was in a rage or brokenhearted or wallowing in a moment of self-doubt. The times when she didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want anyone to try to make her feel better. Logan would never try to comfort her with words or to cheer her up when she had been working hard at radiating disdain and dismay. But in her lowest moments, he’d always had that smile that said he understood. That he was there for her if she needed him.

  Maeve covered her mouth with both hands to keep from screaming out her grief again.

  While they’d been growing up, the Sinclair kids had heard one constant refrain from their dad. One day, he’d told them, their parents would be gone and the only people they’d really be able to count on would be one another. Friends and colleagues and mates would come and go, he had assured them, but they needed to nurture their familial bond. Maeve had loved Logan, but for several years she had been promising herself that she’d make a greater effort to know and understand him. To be a better sister.

  Instead …

  I killed him. Grief thrust its fist inside her chest, clutched at her heart, and squeezed. Her breath hitched, and she hugged herself even tighter, her face contorting. She whispered his name so quietly that even her own ears could not hear, and then she mouthed other words, just her lips moving, unable to give voice to them.

  Mom. What did I do? God, what did I do?

  Her legs gave out. Somehow she found herself sitting between two slanted rocks, hip aching from an impact she hadn’t felt, elbow raw from a scrape her mind hadn’t noticed. Desperately alone, primal, lost in a way she had never conceived, she unleashed the scream she’d been trying to hold back, this one longer and louder, tearing her throat ragged.

  As it echoed and she listened to her heart continue to beat—against all odds, because she should be dead now, shouldn’t she?—a sudden, sober voice surfaced inside her mind. What if they hear you?

  “Logan,”
she whispered, thinking for a moment—for a single, lunatic, superstitious second—that this must be the ghost of her brother haunting her, helping her, staying with her the way their father had always urged.

  But it wasn’t Logan. Just her own voice, a calm sliver of her subconscious, smashing through the grief and the images that had burned into her mind—that single balloon, the BMW, that one sneaker, the blood—oh God, the blood—the car hitting her dad, him smashing into the windshield. The driver, reaching for the next person and the next. The baseball bat. Mom and Logan hugging her. Coughing. Falling. Black tears in their eyes.

  “Hush,” she said to that stern voice in her head.

  Just me, she thought.

  But as she rose to her feet, steadied herself, and began climbing the trail again, she couldn’t shake the doubt that had taken root, because that voice didn’t sound like her. It didn’t feel as if it had come from her.

  Maeve laughed softly, and the laugh became a sob, because she realized she might be going just a little bit crazy. Really, who could blame me?

  Still, that stern voice had gotten its way. Grief still enveloped her—she was drowning in it, floating in it, but she had to swim if she wanted to live. Maybe she didn’t deserve to live, not after what she’d done. Would Dad and Rose hate her now? Would they want her to live or want her to die?

  She could still feel the tingle in her fingertips of the touch that had killed two of the people she loved the most in the world, could still smell the sickness that erupted out of them. She’d poisoned them, destroyed them, and after seeing what happened to the BMW driver, she knew the same thing might happen to anyone she touched.

  But she wanted to live.

  So she picked up her pace and watched her footing, and her mind skipped forward to the next step and the next, and what she would need to do to hide and survive on the mountain. And she would need to hide, because they’d come after her—of that much, she was certain. That black helicopter had shown up so fast, it had to have been chasing the man in the BMW. Which meant that the moment they put all the pieces together, they’d be after her, too. They were going to kill her, or at least capture her, punish her. All the choices she had been on the verge of making in her life had just been obliterated. Her future had been rewritten. From now on, all she could do was think one step ahead, one hour ahead.