Red Hands: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  “Maybe not,” Kaminski said. “But it’s not just that. One of the things I came to tell you—”

  The house phone began to ring. Half a second later, Rue felt her cell phone start to buzz in her back pocket.

  “No need to answer,” Kaminski went on. “It’s an automated call from the town, letting residents know that the feds have put us under quarantine. Even the state police and EMTs who’ve come in to help are stuck here until the quarantine is lifted.”

  Ted deflated, staring at his boots.

  Rue doubted quarantine was necessary. The way Vargas and the other Garland Mountain Labs employees had behaved this morning, it was clear they were worried only about the driver of the car, the people he had touched, the people Maeve had touched, and Maeve herself. There didn’t seem to be any implication the contagion could be airborne. Regardless of Garland Mountain’s confidence, however, Rue approved of the quarantine. Whatever their lab had brewed up, Rue wanted to make absolutely certain nobody in Jericho Falls was unknowingly carrying that infection.

  It relieved her to know that the government had stepped in, but she thought about Garland Mountain Labs and that Vargas woman, the Blackcoats and their helicopters, and she wondered just what the government’s role might be. The Pentagon had employed private military contractors in the past, a euphemism for mercenaries, and utilized them in foreign lands. The soldiers working for Garland might not be American military, but they were certainly authorized by the federal government.

  “Len … Chief … what the hell were they doing at that lab?” she asked.

  Kaminski glanced at Rue and scratched the back of his neck. “Normally, we’d have heard from the CDC, but the quarantine order came from Homeland Security. Make of that what you will. I don’t have a clue what the Garland Mountain folks were up to, but if it led to this…”

  Ted took a step closer to him, sighing with discomfort at the pain in his ribs. “Maybe I’m not thinking straight. Inside it feels like a part of me is screaming all the time, even right now, while I’m talking to you.”

  Rue felt her heart break a little for this man who had always been so good to her.

  “That’s understandable. What you’re going through—”

  Ted put his good hand on Kaminski’s arm. “Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t think Maeve’s in danger. Those helicopters and the soldiers they carried, they’d have killed the driver of that car if they’d reached him before he drove into the parade. I think they’d have killed Maeve if they’d gotten there in time and if there weren’t so many people with cameras.”

  “You can’t know that,” Kaminski said.

  “You’re right. I can’t. But you didn’t do what I asked. So look me in the eye and tell me you don’t think my daughter’s in danger. Tell me you don’t think they’ll kill her. And if you really don’t think that, then tell me you don’t think they’ll drag her back to Garland Mountain and put her in a cell and study her like she’s one of their specimens, because whatever this sickness is, I’ve never heard of anything this good at killing people. It’s in my daughter, Chief, and you know damn well they’re going to want it more than they’ve ever wanted anything.”

  Chief Kaminski stared at him, breath coming in long sips of air, a terrible understanding darkening his eyes. He lowered his head. “Holy shit.”

  “He’s right,” Rue said. “It’s one thing if your people or the state police find her first, Len, but if those other bastards get her—”

  “We can’t let that happen,” Ted interrupted.

  Kaminski paled. “You were about to go into the woods when I got here. Where were you headed?”

  Rue wondered if Ted might hesitate, worried about trusting the chief, but maybe he had already realized what had only just occurred to her. They had nobody else to trust.

  “My ex-father-in-law, Maeve’s granddad, had an old cabin up there. She and Rose loved it when they were little, but their grandfather passed ten years back. If she’s looking for a place to hide, that’s the only one I can think of.”

  “Worth a look,” Kaminski said. “Glad you got your boots on. Let’s go.”

  Some of the color returned to Ted’s face, along with a grim determination. He had a purpose. If he was out trying to help Maeve, maybe he wouldn’t have to think about the fact that his son and his ex-wife had died in front of him. Died at the hands of his eldest daughter.

  “Go,” Rue said. “I already said I’d stay with Rose and Priya, and I’ll get on my phone and start learning everything I can about Garland Mountain Labs.”

  Ted shot her a grateful look. She knew it masked his pain, hid away the internal screaming to which he’d just confessed. She also knew that he would need another slug of Jameson before he left, but there was strength in him, nevertheless.

  He was going to need it.

  * * *

  Rose Sinclair lay on the grass in the shade of the tree that had watched over the family all her life, until today. As a girl, she’d held a strange fantasy in her heart, this idea that somehow the old oak tree with its sprawling branches wanted to shield and protect her, and not only her but Maeve and Logan, and Mom and Dad, too. It had a little magic in it, that tree, at least for her.

  Today the magic had died.

  She lay with her head on Priya’s lap, a warm breeze rustling the leaves overhead, and tried to find solace in the way Priya’s fingers stroked her face and pushed through her hair. There were raised voices in the house, and from somewhere not far away she could hear the heavy chop of a helicopter. Sirens wailed. A dog began to bark and then to whine, maybe a block away, and she wondered what had frightened it so. But not for long.

  Her head hurt, a pressure that gripped her temples. Her eyes burned with dryness, now that she’d cried herself out. Down at the base of her brain, in that lizard part, she felt the urge to move, to get up and do something, to avenge what had happened to her mother and Logan, and to Maeve, wherever she had run. But she couldn’t get her muscles to obey her commands when her mind’s eye kept replaying the parade over and over, kept showing her the mental clip of the sick man staggering out of his car, those people dying, Maeve swinging the baseball bat … and what happened after.

  Priya bent down and kissed her forehead, still stroking her hair. “I’m so sorry.”

  The husk of a thing that had been Rose felt a flicker of life inside. It seemed scary to think about, the idea that she would have to live in the world again. Like this, in the shade of the oak tree, the solidity of Priya there to hold her, she could push it away, build herself a little bubble in time where she didn’t have to live in a world in which her mother and brother had died in front her, their bodies spirited away by some government agency.

  In her mind, she could see her sister running between buildings, rushing into the woods, up to the mountain. Her face crumpled, and her chest ached.

  “Maeve,” she said, shuddering as if with a chill or a fever instead of an anguish she’d never known. God, she wished her sister were there.

  Priya said nothing. Only kissed her temple again. Stroked her cheek. Turned her face upward and kissed her lightly on the lips. A hot tear landed on Rose’s face, and her vision cleared enough for her to see that Priya had also resumed crying. Rose suspected they were both entirely sick of their tears, their grief, sick of themselves.

  “I love you,” Priya whispered.

  Rose twined her fingers with Priya’s. “Just seeing all of that … seeing those people die—”

  Rose saw the hollowness in her eyes and knew they were both in shock. Priya might not have lost family, but she’d borne witness to something that would leave them both with trauma that would last forever. At twenty-one years old, forever might be a very long time.

  The front door opened. Rose wiped at her tears and sat up. Side by side, backs against the huge oak, the two girls watched Rose’s dad and Chief Kaminski come down the steps and cross the lawn toward them. Rose expected her father to look as broken and disorie
nted as he had earlier, but the man who came out of the house carried himself quite differently from the man who had entered it. He still limped and winced in pain. His eyes remained oddly dark and the circles beneath them had deepened, but the straightness of his spine and the set to his jaw showed the anger that had taken root in him, and she could see he had purpose now. That was good. He so often looked for something to blur his pain or his sadness. Anger might burn that right out of him.

  Later, she thought. Later on, when Maeve is safe … or when it’s over and she’s really gone, then he’ll break. But not yet.

  The thought cut her deeply. She’d seen him drunk so many times, seen how lost he’d become when painkillers had become his life. Rose held Priya’s hand a little tighter.

  “Dad?”

  He went down on one knee in front of her, grinning to hide the pain in his ribs. “Chief Kaminski and I are taking a run up to the cabin. If anyone’s going to find her there, I want to make sure it’s us.”

  Rose started to get up.

  “No,” her father said, one hand on her wrist. “Stay here. Auntie Rue is in the house. You and Priya just sit tight, talk to Rue if you need anything, and the chief and I will be back soon, hopefully with your sister.”

  Rose’s heart fluttered in her chest. Her dad was the only family she had at the moment, and she knew he needed her even more than she needed him. She wanted to latch on to him and not let go, but she nodded. “Okay. We’ll stay. But bring a jacket, Dad. Bring a pair of work gloves or something. Do not let her touch you, no matter what happens.”

  Pain flared in his eyes as he understood, but he rose to his feet. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.” He told Chief Kaminski to hold on a minute and lumbered back inside, coming out with a light zippered sweatshirt and a pair of leather gloves.

  “Take care of her for me,” Ted said to Priya.

  “I will,” she said as the two girls rose.

  Rose’s dad hugged them both, gingerly. Priya’s family still liked to pretend their daughter didn’t love a girl, but all the Sinclairs had welcomed her into their lives as if they’d been waiting for her, holding space open for her since the day she was born. Rose doubted she and Priya would stay together forever, or even through college—so few high school couples managed it—but secretly, she could see herself married to this girl someday.

  “I love you,” Ted Sinclair said, to both of them.

  Rose grabbed him by the shoulders, made sure he met her eyes. “Do not let her touch you. Don’t do that to me.”

  “I won’t,” he promised.

  Then he turned and climbed slowly into Chief Kaminski’s car. The engine coughed to life, the tires kicked up gravel, and half a minute later all was quiet again in the shade of that oak tree. In that quiet, it occurred to Rose that she had been selfish. Priya had called her parents to tell them what had happened so they knew she hadn’t been injured, but with all the sirens and helicopters, with the news, with people dead, they would be frantic about their daughter’s safety. They would want her home. She might be twenty-one, but she was still their girl.

  “Pri,” Rose began.

  The rumble of another engine interrupted them. For a moment, Rose thought her father and the chief had changed their minds, but then she spotted Bill McHugh’s ugly old Chevy Corsica. Red and faded and dented without being repaired, the thing seemed both ancient and ageless, but it ran perfectly. He might not have taken care of the outside, but he looked after the engine.

  He skidded into his driveway and jolted to a stop. McHugh popped open his door and climbed out of the car. The way he looked over at them, forehead crinkling, eyes so sad, it was as if Bill McHugh had lost family this morning. He strode across his yard and into the Sinclairs’, looking like he wanted to scoop them up into his arms. Rose and Priya stood up and walked over to meet him halfway.

  “Aw, Rosie, kid … I’m so sorry about your mom and Logan.” Mr. McHugh shook his head, his hands weaving slowly in the air as if in search of his next words.

  “Thanks. Thank you.” She didn’t know what else to say.

  He’d been their neighbor all her life. His daughter Cara had babysat each of the Sinclair kids at some point in their lives, before drugs had nearly killed her and a Colorado rehab center had saved her. She’d never come home from the Rockies. Rose hoped the dark vein of addiction running through the country hadn’t reached her there, but she knew it might, if Cara McHugh didn’t have the strength to fight it off. Most people seemed to think beautiful little hamlets like Jericho Falls were too remote, too idyllic, for the epidemic to take root. But people like Cara McHugh and Rose’s own father were living proof, and Chief Kaminski could have shown those doubters plenty of corpses if living proof wasn’t evidence enough.

  Rose stared at Bill McHugh, somehow even hollower than before.

  “Can you believe this?” the man demanded. “After what happened this morning, you’d think they’d need all the help they could get, but I went and volunteered to help them troopers search for Maeve, and now they’re telling me I can’t go.”

  Priya stiffened. “What?”

  “On top of that, state police say the town’s quarantined and nobody’s allowed to leave.”

  Rose frowned. Why hadn’t her father told her that? “That’s kind of you just the same, Mr. McHugh. Thank you.”

  Red-faced, McHugh glanced at the house. He grew a bit sheepish, as if realizing that raising his voice to a grieving, frightened young woman might not be the best way to show his support for the family.

  “I’m sorry, Rosie. Please let me know if you need anything, all right? I’ll be just next door.”

  She nodded to him. Priya took her hand, and they walked back to the shade tree as Mr. McHugh returned to his own property. They kept mum until they heard his front door bang shut.

  Rose tugged her phone from her pocket. She had texted Maeve a dozen times with no response. She figured her sister had tossed her phone to avoid the SIM card being tracked. Their dad seemed to think Maeve would go to Granddad’s old cabin, but Rose doubted that. Smart as Maeve was, she would know that would be the first place he would suggest the police look for her. She felt like screaming. She knew why Maeve had to run, why she felt she needed to hide, and she loved her sister, but at the same time she found herself hating her instead.

  Rose stood, brushing at the seat of her cutoffs. “I’ve got to go, Pri. I’ve been all over the mountain with her. If anyone’s going to find her, it’ll be me.”

  Priya glanced up at the house. “I don’t think that’s the best idea.”

  Rue had not come out to check on them, but Rose knew she would. The woman had always been such a good friend to her father—to both of her parents—even now, on the family’s most hideous day.

  Rose took Priya’s hand. “We have to go now. It’ll take a little while to really lock down the town. Mr. McHugh leaves his car keys in the console between the seats. He never minded when Maeve had to borrow his car. I don’t think he’ll be angry with me, especially today. I’m gonna take his car and drive out to the end of Goodman Hill Road, hike in from there, and find Maeve.”

  “Babe,” Priya said, a familiar caution in her voice. “People are dead.”

  Rose winced. “Yeah. My mother’s dead. Logan’s dead. I don’t want Maeve to be dead, too. You honestly think anyone’s going to have a better chance of finding her than I am?”

  Priya gave a tiny shrug, shaking her head. “My parents … they’re going to be furious if I go with you.”

  Rose lifted her hand, kissed her fingers, and nodded. “I know. But I’ve gotta go. I’ll drop you off on the way.”

  “No, you won’t. I’m not letting you go without me.” Priya gestured toward the house. “But what about Rue?”

  The sound of Mr. McHugh’s rumbling Chevy engine hadn’t brought Rue to the door. Rose reckoned she was on the phone or half-asleep, not responding to that loud growl. Taking Priya’s hand, she walked over to the car and opened the doo
r.

  “Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

  6

  For the first half hour, Maeve had done nothing but climb. After the parade, and the BMW, and the man behind the wheel, she had run away to the mountain. The woods had swallowed her up, as she had known they would. There were many trails on Mount Champney that were well groomed, perfect for hikers most of the year and cross-country skiers in the winter, but there were also dozens of less traveled paths. She’d crashed through the trees at the edge of town, headed uphill, and intentionally gone into the deeper woods, avoiding paths entirely.

  Nearly an hour after entering the woods, the silent screaming inside her skull had quieted enough for her to begin to string thoughts together. Mom and Logan were dead. People would be after her. She needed time to think, but she couldn’t let anyone near her until she had gotten her thoughts in order. She would need a plan—a destination.

  Now she had one, at least temporarily.

  Maeve knew several ways to reach her granddad’s old cabin, including a dirt road that wound up through the woods, but that would leave her too exposed. Very few people still used the dirt road, but hikers sometimes parked on the shoulder to access the mountain trails. After getting turned around several times, she located the Jericho snowshoe trail, where her granddad had brought her and Logan and Rose as kids. Rose had been little, then, and when she was old enough to really take advantage of the cabin, Granddad had been too old. And then he’d died.

  Shafts of sunlight shone through the trees, illuminating patches of the narrow trail. Covered with snow, it made a decent path, but in summertime it was too narrow and overgrown, and rocks and thick roots jutted from the ground. Maeve stumbled several times as she jogged up the trail but managed to keep her feet moving under her. The rich pine and maple scents of the forest filled her lungs, as if the mountain had taken her into its embrace. Mostly in shadows, accompanied by the sounds of her own exertion, she allowed herself the luxury of feeling safe.