Red Hands: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  Which was exactly why he needed to stay far away from pills.

  Alcohol, on the other hand, remained his very dear friend.

  He stood in his living room, a generous tumbler of Jameson whiskey in his hand, and decided this wasn’t the apocalypse quite yet, but it felt close. Death felt intimately near, tangible and possible. Ted had always loved apocalyptic movies, but now he decided he would hate those films for the rest of his life.

  Rue Crooker had let his daughter Rose wander off with Priya, and instead of raising alarms, instead of screaming to the world that the last healthy, living member of Ted Sinclair’s family had decided to go search an entire mountain range with her girlfriend, Rue had gone off to have a close-up look at Garland Mountain Labs. They’d been friends since childhood and he loved Rue, but he wanted to shake her. Had she really thought they would throw open their doors to her, let her see their research?

  Ted sipped his third whiskey, letting its burn rush through him. He stared at Rue and at Chief Kaminski and at the stranger who sat on the arm of the sofa. Ted had told them all to make themselves comfortable, but death had come to this house and there was only so comfortable a stranger should make himself here. Today.

  Whiskey blunted his apocalypse a little bit, but the end times had come to the Sinclair family. The rest of the world might be tuning in to CNN or Fox News or whatever, learning about the quarantine and Maeve Sinclair, the woman with the death touch. They might have watched the footage from the parade, entranced by tragedy, but they would all go on with their lives, and Ted had to stand in his living room with a stranger telling him what to do while his ex-wife and his son lay dead in some secret government lab and his eldest daughter ran away to the mountains to hide, while the youngest went in search of her.

  And this Walker son of a bitch wanted Ted to sit here and just wait.

  “I wish you could hear yourself, Mr. Walker,” Ted said. He knew he was glaring, knew his upper lip had curled with disdain, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Dr. Walker,” Rue corrected him.

  “Just Walker is fine,” the guy said.

  “I don’t give a fuck!” Ted snapped.

  They all stared at him—Rue, Kaminski, Walker—and Ted felt his chest rising and falling, felt the warm flush in his cheeks. He knew he must look like a drunk about to get into a bar brawl, and maybe he felt that way. Shit, no maybe about it.

  “You really think I’m going to stay here while my girls are up on that mountain?” Ted demanded, glancing incredulously from face to face. “I don’t even know you.”

  Kaminski had perched on the edge of the big old green-and-gray striped chair that remained the oldest piece of furniture in the house. He leaned forward, his face full of so much sympathy that Ted wanted to kick him.

  “Ted, you’ve got a concussion, broken ribs, and cartilage damage in one knee. You’re not going to be much use crawling around those mountains. Between my officers, state troopers, and security officers from the lab—” Chief Kaminski started.

  “Goddamned government thugs,” Ted snarled.

  “No argument,” Kaminski said. “That’s what they are. But they’re up there with good police officers searching for Maeve. I’m going to radio up that Rose and Priya are on the mountain as well, but you know their priority has to be Maeve.”

  “Because she’s dangerous,” Ted sneered.

  “You know she is,” Rue said. She stood up from the sofa and approached him, put her hands over his as if she wanted to try to help him clasp his glass of whiskey, to take it away. Like he needed help. And maybe he did, the way his hands had started to shake.

  “I guess I do,” Ted said, looking Rue in the eye. “I watched them die. Watched Logan and…” He shook his head, blew out a breath, refused to cry in front of a stranger. Not again, anyway. He shot a look at the presumptuous bastard sitting on the arm of his sofa. “Walker, you really think you can get her off the mountain safely? I can’t help feeling like no matter how good these cops are, the first one she comes near is going to shoot her to keep from dying the way my son and his mom did.”

  “If she comes off the mountain on her own, she’ll probably come home, which means you’ll see her first,” Walker said. “If she stays up there, then I do think it’s best for her safety and everyone else’s if I find her first.”

  “How do you plan to do that?”

  “It’s not my first mountain or my first time tracking someone,” Walker replied. “I’ve got some gear and some connections they don’t have.”

  Ted exhaled. “What do you need from me?”

  Walker gave a slow nod. It looked almost like a promise, but Ted couldn’t allow himself to trust anyone.

  “Any insight into her thought process would help,” Walker said. “The police are focusing on the area around the waterfall, banking on Maeve heading for somewhere she might regard as safe.”

  “There’s some logic in that,” Ted admitted, glancing at Kaminski. “But she lit out from her granddad’s cabin heading northeast, and I think she’ll stay that way, either go straight up the mountain or to the west. Might not be as safe or as familiar, but she’ll stay one step ahead as long as she can, and then she’ll go to ground, find a place to hide. I’ve taken my kids fishing up there a hundred times, and we used to hike all over when they were little ones. We…”

  A shudder went through him. Ted’s breath hitched and he held up a hand, knowing if he uttered another word he would erupt into a torrent of sobbing.

  Kaminski put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, Ted. I’m gonna take Dr. Walker up to the cabin, and he can start searching from there. The government goons want me to focus my people to the west, toward the falls, but that doesn’t mean Walker has to follow those orders. Maybe we’ll come across Rose and her girlfriend. If we do, I’ll bring them home. You just need to stay here, answer the phone if it rings, and hope she comes home on her own.”

  Ted felt his legs weaken. The idea of staying here made him want to scream—these were his daughters, his last family, flesh and blood—but so did the idea of him not being here when one or both of them made it home to an empty house. It tore him apart. He wanted to collapse, but he’d been raised with more spine and dignity than that.

  “You have anyone who can stay with you?” Kaminski asked. “Other family?”

  Ted felt the thin smile on his lips. Other than Rue, he’d never been much for small talk with neighbors or friends, even the ones he liked. Shortly before Walker and Rue arrived, Ted had thought about calling his sister Dianna, but Di lived in Texas and they hadn’t done more than exchange Christmas cards or share a cursory phone call in going on a decade.

  His brittle smile grew thinner still. “I’ll be all right.”

  Rue had hung back, standing in the archway that led into the living room. She matched his own brittle smile. “I’ll stick around, if you’ll have me, Ted. We’re quarantined, anyway, and I know you’re not going to eat a damn thing unless I force you to cook something for us both.”

  Ted stared. He wanted to be angry with her for letting Rose and Priya wander off, but he had known her so long and so well that her presence did ease his mind, at least a little. If not for Rue, he doubted he would ever have really understood what it felt like to have a real friend. It wasn’t watching a ball game or bullshitting or fulfilling some kind of silent obligation. Real friendship was about deciding someone else’s well-being was just as important to you as your own—or even more important. Someone who wasn’t your spouse or your child.

  “How do you feel about a quick egg fry?” he asked, draining the last of his whiskey.

  It was what they’d always made in high school, when they’d come home much too late from a party, usually a little drunk or a little high. He’d crack some eggs and throw whatever he could find into the frying pan with them. Grated cheese, leftover taco meat, shreds of deli ham, chopped vegetables, Tabasco sauce.

  “Sounds perfect,” Rue said.

  Whether T
ed liked it or not, Kaminski was right. With his broken ribs and battered head, he wasn’t likely to be able to hike all over the mountain without injuring himself further. He would be of no use to his daughters today, but Ted had gotten used to the feeling.

  He looked at Walker and Kaminski. “Go. Bring them back. Both of them.”

  There were other things he wanted to say, words he didn’t dare speak aloud. Words about making sure that whatever happened, Maeve did not lay a hand on Rose.

  Ted would never have admitted it out loud, but part of him considered Maeve already lost.

  God, forgive me, he thought, even though he had never been persuaded there was a God up there listening.

  Now, more than ever, he figured prayers fell on deaf ears. Or no ears at all.

  Which left Walker, a virtual stranger, who had confidence and determination but also a haunted look in his eyes, as if he had faced horror before and not emerged victorious.

  But Walker was all they had.

  Rue watched with condemnation in her eyes as Ted poured himself another drink.

  10

  Kaminski drove the route toward the cabin mostly in silence, for which Walker felt grateful. The rain came down hard, windshield wipers squealing out a rhythm as questions cluttered his mind. The federal government had to be involved or Garland Mountain Labs would not have been able to get the quarantine order. So who was pulling those strings? The Blackcoats were mercenary security forces, not U.S. military, but someone had to be signing their paychecks. There were too many unknowns.

  His pack sat on the floor of Kaminski’s car, nestled between Walker’s boots. Alena Boudreau had not sent him to New Hampshire empty-handed. The SRC might not have the flair of Q from the James Bond films, but DARPA existed specifically to develop science. Not all of it was about finding new and clever ways to kill someone. So he did have a thing or two in that backpack that might help him track Maeve, if he was lucky.

  Alena had also given him a small black box containing two comm units—a primary and a spare. They were tiny things, like AirPods, but they came in handy. Once he slipped one in his ear, he would be able to communicate with Alena directly. By now, the cell phone towers around Jericho Falls would be jammed, but the comm units didn’t rely on those towers.

  On the other hand, Alena was a long way from New Hampshire. It’d help if he had someone a little closer to handle some of the groundwork and keep him updated if he got into trouble. Walker glanced at Chief Kaminski and wondered if he could be trusted. More than that, he wondered if the chief would have time to help him, should the moment arrive when Walker needed that help.

  His pack also held other, more standard gear. Flashlight. Night-vision goggles. And a gun.

  Walker had a love-hate relationship with guns. He hated pulling the trigger, but he loved staying alive. Which brought him back to his frustration with the many unknowns he faced in his search for Maeve Sinclair. He didn’t like it. The assignment was to get Maeve Sinclair off the mountain alive, but to do that, he needed to do the same for himself.

  As Kaminski turned up a narrow road that snaked through the forest, Walker studied the houses they passed, wondering what the people inside were doing. The quarantine forced them to stay in Jericho Falls and established a curfew that confined them to their homes after dark, but it seemed most people were nervous enough to stay inside during the day as well. Walker reckoned they were going to get cabin fever pretty quickly.

  The rainstorm that had moved in over the past hour or two had turned the afternoon gray and gloomy, but there were at least four or five hours of daylight left. It was July, after all. Midsummer.

  “You can show me where to enter the trail her father talked about?” Walker asked.

  “The Jackrabbit Trail,” Chief Kaminski reminded him. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. We know she was at the cabin. From what Ted said—”

  “I don’t love the idea of relying on him,” Walker said. “The guy’s an alcoholic and an addict. Never mind that he got his bell rung this morning. He’s also drunk right now, while both his daughters are lost on a mountain.”

  He didn’t specifically say he thought Ted Sinclair was a bad father, but the chief didn’t have to be a genius to read between the lines. Not that you’re such a great dad yourself, Walker thought, remembering the look in Charlie’s eyes earlier in the day. And his words.

  That was for later, though.

  Walker felt a little sick at the thought. Charlie, it seemed, was always for later. He wondered if he had been too swift to judge Ted Sinclair or too slow to judge himself.

  “You said you didn’t want him with you because he’d slow you down,” Chief Kaminski said.

  “He would have,” Walker replied. “But with all respect for the man’s grief, I had to weigh how much help he might be against how much trouble. Better for everyone if he stays home. His ribs and his skull will thank me later.”

  Kaminski slammed on the brakes. “Son of a bitch.”

  They’d just come in sight of the late Granddad Sinclair’s cabin. Several police cars and a K-9 unit van sat out front, but Walker only spotted two cops. The pair of beer-bellied officers on the cusp of retirement had apparently been left behind to establish the cabin as base camp.

  But it wasn’t the presence of the two cops that had startled Chief Kaminski. Two Blackcoats stood in front of the cabin near the aging police officers. Several other Blackcoats were walking the perimeter of the property, likely marking out trails and searching for signs of Maeve’s presence.

  “Do these guys really think she’s coming back here?” Walker asked.

  “She abandoned her phone at the cabin,” Kaminski replied. “She’s never coming back to this place. But you know the way swaggering dicks like them think. They look at Maeve as a scared young woman. Most of them probably figure she hasn’t gone more than a hundred yards into the woods and any minute she’s going to come back looking for some big, strong man to save her.”

  Kaminski put his vehicle in park, killed the engine, and climbed out. One of the two cops hurried toward him, glancing at the Blackcoats with bristling resentment.

  “The good news,” Kaminski went on, “is that the longer they think of her as soft and weak, the longer Maeve will be able to stay lost. Hopefully, that’ll buy you the time you need to reach her first.”

  “Chief, I’m sorry,” said the officer who trotted up to the vehicle. The man huffed with exertion after jogging a dozen paces, so it was no wonder he hadn’t been assigned to a search party. “They showed up with federal ID. We had to let them look over the scene.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Foley,” Kaminski replied. “If they’d found anything useful, they wouldn’t still be looking. Keep an eye on them, make a record of anything they try to remove from the site. Otherwise, let them alone. I don’t want you getting into a pissing match with these guys, Foley. They’ll end up killing you and burying you in a shallow grave.”

  Foley’s eyes went wide, like he wasn’t sure whether or not his police chief had been joking. Walker wasn’t certain himself, but he said nothing until Foley had trotted away and Kaminski frowned thoughtfully.

  “So where’s this Jackrabbit Trail?” Walker asked.

  Kaminski kept his back to the cabin so neither his own people nor the Blackcoats would be able to hear him or see the small gesture he made, pointing in the general direction of the northeast tree line.

  “It’s narrow, mostly overgrown. Might be marked, but most likely it’s not. You can’t miss the tree by the entrance—split by lightning some years back, but both sides are still growing.”

  Walker nodded. “I’ll walk a little way before I head into the trees. Don’t want to draw attention. But there’s something you should know, Chief. You’ve got a lot on your hands, keeping the peace in town, keeping civilians off the mountain. You should be on the lookout for other people on the mountain, too—people who aren’t civilians.”

  Kaminski shot a sidelong glance at the Bl
ackcoats. “Tell me about it.”

  “I don’t mean them. There could be others looking for Maeve,” Walker said. “Dangerous people who want the ability to do what she can do. Warn your officers. It’s not just one lost woman they need to be worried about up here. There’s worse than that.”

  Kaminski massaged his left temple. “This gets better all the time. But thanks. I’ll pass it along.”

  Walker opened the back door of the chief’s car. Making sure the cops and Blackcoats couldn’t see what he was up to, he dug into his pack and tugged out the black box containing the two comm earpieces. There were a dozen names for the little devices—earbuds, pods, comms, lobes, and others—but Walker had always thought of them as earwigs, the first name he’d ever heard for them. Once upon a time it had been necessary to hide such devices, but they were so readily available to consumers now that being seen talking to oneself no longer came off as crazy.

  “Do something for me,” he said, holding out an earwig to Kaminski. “Bring this back to Rue Crooker. Ask her to turn it on and monitor. I may need someone in Jericho Falls who understands the science.”

  Kaminski took the earwig, studied it in his open palm, and slipped it into his pocket. “Anything else?”

  Walker put in his own earpiece, stuffed the box back into his pack, then took out his holstered weapon and clipped it to his belt. “Buy me whatever time you can.”

  He closed the car door. The sound made two Blackcoats look over at him, but he was with Chief Kaminski, so they kept searching the grounds of the cabin.

  “You want me to keep the state troopers and my own people searching around the falls, keep them away from this side of the mountain?” Kaminski furrowed his brow.

  “It’d help.”

  Kaminski glanced up toward the cabin. “I’ll do my best.”

  With that, Walker started along the dirt road, back the way they’d come. He’d gone about thirty yards when he found himself around a curve and out of view. Darting into the woods, he started backtracking to the Jackrabbit Trail.