Blinking, she stared at the muddy ground, at her fingers, nothing like the long, wicked claws she had just imagined.
“What the hell was that?”
Trembling, hands on her knees, she managed to rise to her feet. The wheezing remained in her chest, the pressure in her head. The voice lingered as well, the malignant presence that had been taking root in her thoughts, inside her skull. As she thought of it now, a soft sigh of amusement that slithered in her brain. A tumor, she thought. Could cancer grow that quickly, put pressure on some part of her brain that might make her have such hallucinations, might breed this fear and paranoia? Or could it just be fever, exhaustion, dehydration?
Snarling, she bashed her fists against her temples. Sick as she was, she knew she had to find something to eat and fresh water to drink.
Hungry?
Serpentine, the voice continued to snake through her thoughts. An image swam up into her mind of the guy on the dirt bike, impaled, bleeding, and on the edge of death. Again her hands clenched, itching. They yearned to return, to touch the dying man, but even if she would have done such a thing, it was too late. The rider had died.
Find another, Maeve.
Again she smashed her fists against her head. She didn’t want to kill anyone else. Even if that meant the sickness gnawing at her would kill her.
A buzz filled the air, low but growing louder. The other dirt bike, she thought at first, before tracking the sound as coming from overhead and to the north. Hopeful, she looked up to find the sky almost completely hidden by the canopy of trees. Rain dripped from branches and leaves and pine needles. In the open places, gray light and still more rain slipped through, but she couldn’t get a glimpse of the helicopter, even as the noise of its rotors droned nearer. Heart thumping, she hurried through the trees, searching for a clearing. She could turn herself in, get help. They might not be there to help her, she knew—after what she’d seen at the parade, after the infection had poisoned her, turned her into a carrier, a killer, a contagious thing—they might not want her alive. But that would be better than the urge inside her now, the desire to find someone to touch, some warm life to end.
“Please,” she managed as she came to a place where slightly more of the gray sky showed itself above her. She screamed, “Please!” Maeve waved her hands back and forth, spotted the helicopter against the storm clouds. Too high. Too far. She waved harder, screamed louder.
She watched the chopper glide away until the trees blocked her view again. Adrenaline had masked her pain and discomfort for a minute, but now the ache in her throat and the throbbing in her skull returned. Her bones hurt as if they had been driven into her flesh. Maeve exhaled, coughed, and tried to clear her thoughts.
Instinct had made her head for the gorge earlier. She’d gotten sidetracked, but now she glanced around in search of the right direction. Whoever might be on this mountain looking for her, she could never trust their motives. Only her dad and Rose.
Descending into the gorge could be treacherous if you didn’t know the right path to take, but there were caves in the gorge. It could take them days to find her, even if they knew where to look. Down there, she would either be trapping herself or saving herself.
She set off north through the trees.
Inside, the voice still lingered. She felt its awareness of her, like eyes watching her from the dark, only inside her thoughts instead of hiding in the trees. For the moment, however, the voice had gone quiet, and she had no visions of spindly fingers brushing death across the skin of the living, or of them falling to the ground, lesions bursting on their flesh.
The silence hung heavy in her thoughts, as if something held its breath, waiting.
15
Rose had never felt so exposed in her life. She and Priya walked hand in hand where the woods would allow it. The bitch with the gun followed right behind them, but they held hands as if this were an ordinary hike, the two of them exploring the wilderness. They had kayaked on the river but had never climbed any of the mountains together, never even gone fishing. Their dad had taken Rose and Maeve fishing many times, and she wondered why she had never taken Priya.
Agatha bumped her gun against the small of Rose’s back, and she let out a kind of peep, a sound she’d never made in her life. Her face flushed with shame. Had she ever hated anyone as much as she did this tiny woman with her big goddamned gun? She didn’t think so. Even the man who had driven his car through the crowd at the parade had been sick and fleeing something or someone. And she couldn’t hate Maeve, even though her heart wanted to. Maeve would be suffering even more than Rose. After what she’d done, Maeve would be in agony.
But this fucking bitch? Rose burned with hatred for her.
“Talk to me, Rose,” Agatha said. “Where are we headed?”
“Where you wanted to go. There are dozens of ways to get down into the gorge, but only a few of them are both quick and safe.”
Agatha said nothing, just kept them moving with the specter of that gun.
“Can I ask you a question?” Priya said quietly.
Agatha’s footfalls were quiet, but now they grew quieter, as if she had fallen back to make sure she could shoot them both. “Go on.”
“How much do you get paid to kill someone?”
Rose stiffened. Her mouth went dry, but she kept walking. She squeezed Priya’s hand in warning, but the question was already out.
Agatha laughed softly. “Well, Rose, looks like your girlfriend is more interesting than I thought. But what makes you think I kill people for money, honey? All sorts of people will want what Maeve has. Maybe I work for my government—”
“I don’t think so,” Priya interrupted. “You’re a private contractor. That’s why you’re here alone. I don’t know if someone paid you to be here or if you’re looking at it as, like, an investment or something. But you work alone. And I was just wondering what it cost to hire you to kill someone.”
Rose felt the chill of the rain that soaked her clothes, felt the way they clung to her, but now she felt the dampness of the air as well, and it seemed ready to suffocate her. This wasn’t Priya, so what did Priya have in mind?
Agatha fell back another step or two. She laughed softly, muttered some profanity under her breath. “Let me get this straight—I have a gun pointed at you. In this moment, you have zero idea whether I intend to let you live through the day, and you’re looking to hire me to murder someone else?”
Rose glanced over her shoulder. Agatha’s amusement seemed genuine.
“Not necessarily to hire you,” Priya replied, growing sheepish. “I’m just, y’know, looking for an estimate.”
That did it. Agatha burst out laughing, stopped in her tracks. She kept her gun aimed at them, but the barrel wavered.
Priya plowed into Rose, letting go of her hand and practically sweeping her off to the left. Rose stumbled, but Priya kept her from falling, kept her moving. Panic alarms shrieked inside her, and she expected bullets to punch through the vulnerable softness of her back. Expected them, but didn’t wait for them. Her body understood what it took her mind deadly seconds to process, that they were running, trying to escape, that they were about to die.
Gunshots popped and echoed through the forest. Rose felt the shots in her chest, each one slamming into her with sound alone, like standing too close when the fireworks went off. She heard shrapnel blown out of trees, heard bullets hit the dirt. It took only seconds.
As she lunged behind a huge oak, Rose realized Priya had let go of her hand.
She spun in time to see Priya cock her arm back like a pitcher on the mound and let fly with a jagged black rock the size of a baseball. Agatha leveled her pistol and fired. The bullet punched through Priya’s right shoulder, spun her around, droplets of blood spraying the leaves around her.
Too late.
The rock Priya had thrown struck the left side of Agatha’s face. Her head whipped to one side as she staggered backward, caught her boot on a root, tried to break her fall
with her gun hand, and cried out in pain as something gave way in hand, or wrist, or fingers.
“Fucking run!” Priya said, clutching at her bloody shoulder as she crashed toward Rose, smashing branches out of her way.
Rose was already running.
Though she tried to fight it, she succumbed to the temptation to look back. She saw Agatha on her knees, cradling her right hand against her body. Blood smeared on the woman’s cheek and stained the beautiful silver of her hair. The tiny killer looked fragile and pitiable, until the moment she turned her head and her gaze tracked them. Even from here, she looked disoriented, unfocused, but Rose felt seen.
Agatha might be down and bleeding, but still Rose felt hunted.
* * *
Maeve drifts in and out of the world. Outwardly, she struggles to draw breath, her throat so raw it seems lined with shards of glass, but another part of her feels exultant, ready to open her mouth and scream with pleasure. In that interior place, a shard of Maeve opens its eyes to find herself in a church of rough-hewn stone, torches blazing in sconces on the walls. She glides as if in the midst of a dance, inhaling the oily smoke from those torches and the sweat-stink of worshippers. Her hands dart out, caressing those who chant their prayers, and one by one she silences them.
Infects them.
Their lives are delicious.
Maeve follows a serpentine path among them, slithering contagion. She takes a withered old man by the hands and kisses him on the corner of his mouth, the adoring gesture of a favored granddaughter. She holds his wrinkled cheeks between her hands and watches the glint in his rheumy eyes go dark, watches the plague blossoms rise and burst on the sagging flesh of his throat and forehead, watches the bags beneath his eyes turn black and begin to blister with rot.
People scream in the church. Someone grabs a torch from the wall and brandishes it in her direction. She reaches out, and the haggard old woman thrusts the burning torch at her face. Maeve stops it with an open hand, grasps the oily flames, greasy smoke pluming up from her palm and fingers as they are engulfed in fire. The old woman shrieks at her, eyes wide with ferocity born of terror, yanks the torch from her grip, and thrusts it like a swordsman, right into Maeve’s face.
Her hair ignites.
As flames engulf her head, she grabs hold of the fierce old hag’s face, and the woman sags to her knees, topples to the stone floor, and cracks her skull open.…
* * *
In the real world, Maeve wept. Tears slid down her face.
Feverish, she staggered from tree to tree. The wind whipped against her, rain trickling down her back, mixed with sweat from her effort and her disease. Her left hand reached out again, searching for the next tree, but this time it found nothing to grasp. She lost her balance, stumbled forward.
Panic snapped her awake, reality burning almost as much as that dream-fire.
The gorge, she thought, and for an instant she imagined herself flying over the edge. Falling, falling, falling. She imagined impact.
But impact came too soon. Maeve sprawled on her side in the tall grass of a clearing. Rain pelted her, falling harder than ever. She had lost track of her direction, lost track of the gorge, yet it seemed of little importance now. Lying in the wet grass, she realized she must be closer to death than to salvation. Whatever she had hoped to do—hide, think, devise some escape or cure—the time for those hopes had passed.
I’m going to die.
The realization was not unpleasant. It settled into her, wrapped itself around her, and she embraced the idea. She’d killed the BMW driver, though she supposed she ought to be forgiven for that one. And her mother and Logan … the guilt clawed at her, but she knew no god would hold her responsible. But what about now? She felt the thing inside her, that hunger, the sickness, and the voice still whispered there. If she lived, she would surrender eventually, and someone would kill her.
This could only end one way.
Better to die now than to suffer or to kill again.
Maeve pushed herself up to a sitting position and drew her knees up toward her chest. She wrapped her arms behind her head, coughing, trying to get one unfettered breath of mountain air, the smell of rain. Maybe she should just wait there to die?
She smiled bitterly. It had been a foolish thought. Maybe? Where else could she go?
“Mama,” she rasped and began to cough.
A finger of jagged lightning stabbed the gray sky, silent, and habit made her count the seconds until thunder boomed, echoing off the mountain, the sound rolling into the distance. Four seconds. The storm had grown worse.
She glanced up to search the sky for more lightning. As she did, she caught sight of a squat building across the clearing, caught in the shadows cast by trees and storm. Warm yellow light glowed in the two small windows in front. Barely more than a cabin with a wide front porch, it had several picnic tables arrayed in front, and paths worn down to the dirt led from several directions right to the front steps.
Ranger station, she thought, just before she spotted the sign. Even in the storm, the yellow painted words were visible.
Maeve struggled to her feet. She pushed her hands through her soaking hair and squeezed some of the rain out, pushed the whole mess behind her head, away from her face. Somehow, though she felt like never moving again, she straightened up to her full height. She would turn herself over to them. Whoever might be chasing her, they would either kill her or cage her or study what had happened to her, maybe all three in some particular order, but it didn’t matter anymore. She just wanted this to end, and if the ending meant death, at least it would be faster than dying up here, sprawled on the ground in the rain.
She took one step toward the ranger station.
The front door opened.
The ranger didn’t step out, but he held the door with one hand and craned his neck, peering through the rain at her.
“Hey,” he called, “you okay? I spotted you from the window and I thought … You alone? Are you lost?”
Maeve gazed at the silhouetted figure in his pine-green uniform. She saw the other one behind him, a second ranger, an older man who grabbed him by the shoulder. The rain drowned out their conversation, but she watched the pantomime through the rain as the older man gestured toward her, face etched with concern, and the younger one, who had come to the door, looked hesitant.
The younger ranger took a step out onto the porch, the wind sweeping around him, plastering him with rain. “You the one they’re looking for?”
Even from forty feet away, even in the storm, she could see the change in him. A young guy like him, maybe Maeve’s age, did not take a job like this without thinking himself some kind of noble figure. When he had opened the door, he had looked the part, kind and caring. Now suspicion and fear clouded his features, and the fear reminded Maeve of this morning.
The look on her mother’s face as she’d died.
“No,” she whispered.
Maeve started to turn back the way she’d come, but her body seized as if she had been on a leash all along and now her owner had tugged it tight, calling her to heel. A cough erupted from her chest. Black spittle and bloody foam sprayed from her mouth, flecking the tall grass, and in the midst of wheezing, trying to catch her breath, a surge of black hostility flooded her mind. The anger burned her. Its venom tasted bitter in her mouth, and she sneered as she turned toward the ranger station.
The sneer vanished. Her face went slack, then pitiful and pleading, but none of those expressions belonged to her.
“Please,” she called. “Help me.”
No, she thought. But the voice that had come from her lips did not belong to Maeve, and for that moment—just those few seconds—she could not form her own words. The gift of speech had been stolen from her.
She wept, and the tears—at least—were her own.
The hunger came on her even more suddenly than the anger. It had been inside her all along, gnawing, yearning, but now it ripped into her with such power that she clutche
d at her gut and cried out.
“Son of a bitch,” the young ranger said, striding across the porch and starting down the steps.
“Frankie, wait,” the older one warned.
Frankie glanced over his shoulder. “Call it in, Abe. We can’t just leave her.”
In the doorway, his silhouette darker, taller, wider than Frankie’s, Abe just stood there and watched, worry carved into his features. Frankie strode toward Maeve, and though she did not lick her lips, the temptation existed. The satisfaction and anticipation of watching him approach made her flex her fingers.
No. I don’t want to, she thought.
The voice inside her disagreed. It wanted Frankie in a way that Maeve had never wanted anyone for anything, and that want radiated through her. She can see it in that moment, striding up to the porch and taking Frankie into her arms, caressing his exposed skin while black boils erupt and the cough chokes him, and she tastes his life on her tongue and in the folds of her brain, the tingle of it from toes to fingertips.
“You okay?” he asked again, approaching through the rain.
In her mind, she saw the sorrow and confusion in her mother’s dying eyes, and that seared into her brain, a clarifying image. Maeve snarled as she ripped herself out of its control and turned away. She started to walk, forcing herself, and wondered if she could manage to run.
Distracted by pain and mesmerized by hunger, she barely heard the engine over the rain. Only when the rangers both turned to the right, no longer focused on her, did Maeve notice the droning buzz that grew louder with each tick of her life’s clock.
The buzz belonged to the engine of a dirt bike.
She didn’t have to wonder if this might be the one she’d heard earlier, the twin of the bike ridden by the man who had impaled himself on a fallen tree. The rider saw her and changed course, rear tire slewing through mud. He bent his head low over the handlebars, rain sheeting across him, and he drove straight for her.
Red Hands: A Novel Page 15
