Red Hands: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  Her hands reach toward the rider as he approaches. The buzz of his engine continues, as if originating within the confines of her skull, yet the vision before her shimmers like heat above a roadway and shifts, and she is elsewhere. The tall grass is gone, the mountain and the storm vanish. At her feet lies the twisted corpse of a man whose face is covered with a mask, whose exposed skin is dotted with pustules and bleeding from pores. Though it may only be a part of his costume, by his clothing she believes him some sort of nobility, perhaps even monarchy.

  Screams fill the room. The shrieking sweeps over her like the weight of the air just before a storm thunders in. She looks up and sees them coming for her, terrifying phantasms, beaked monstrosities, cloaked shadows, and it’s a moment or two before she recognizes these as merely costumes, like the one worn by the dead prince arrayed on the black marble floor. This is no tomb, as she’d thought a moment ago, but some kind of masquerade ball. It’s a party.

  The walls are black. The drapes tied back from the windows are the finest, most elegant black velvet. Only the windows vary in hue. Each glass pane is stained a bloody scarlet, lit from without by tripod candelabras whose flames cast a garish, flickering red light within.

  The costumed celebrants rush toward her, their hands outstretched as if to punish her for some crime. She feels a smile stretch her lips, feels her face crack at the corners of her mouth as she reaches out her own hands to greet them. For the first time, she notices those hands, wrapped in rough, yellowed cloth, stained with blood and black effluent. She notices the fingers, bone-thin or perhaps merely bone. Skeletal.

  The masquerade envelops her, tears at the fabric that shrouds her body.

  As they claw her apart, they begin to cough. To choke. Purple bruises turn to erupting blisters on their skin. Black blood weeps from eyes and ears, and they begin to drop, one by one.

  We all fall down, she thinks …

  The buzz in her skull made her blink. She reeled and fell to her knees, the sickness overwhelming her at last. Maeve stared down at her hands. For a moment she saw the mummified skeletal fingers, but her vision cleared with another blink and they were only her hands after all. Maeve Sinclair, flesh and blood.

  There were three spots on the back of her hand. Small blisters, sores that had appeared within the past hour. Maeve coughed, unable to rise from her knees, and she spat a wad of black phlegm from her throat.

  She looked up and found herself in that clearing again. The tall grass, the muddy trails, the rain soaking her clothing. To her left stood the forest ranger station, to her right the dirt bike bore down on her. The rider squinted against the rain, teeth bared. His dark hair plastered his scalp, made him look almost like a corpse himself.

  Maeve thought this must be real. She felt the rain, heard the dirt bike’s growl.

  She licked her lips, the hunger so bad she would have screamed if the pain in her throat would have let her. Maeve opened her arms as if to embrace the rider. The dirt bike roared toward her, and the rider reached inside his jacket, drawing out a handgun. One hand guiding the bike, he began to take aim, the engine snarling as it began to slow.

  Something flashed in her peripheral vision. Brown against the gray light.

  The young ranger hurtled through the rain, planted himself in the dirt bike’s path. The rider swerved, one-handed. The front tire went sideways in the mud, the dirt bike slewed, and the rider flew into the air to hit the ground perhaps twenty feet from Maeve. He tucked his body in, protecting his head and his gun hand, skidded in the mud, and started to rise almost immediately. Mud smeared half his face, and his right eye seemed to open behind a wet, dark mask. He looked at her as he reached up to scrape that mud away. His gun dangled in his right hand, also smeared with mud.

  Maeve shuddered with anticipation as she staggered toward him, arms outstretched. As he wiped the mud off, the young ranger slammed into him.

  The two men went down together. The impact rolled them off the path and into the grass. The wind picked up, the rain slashed down at an angle. The thick humidity of the earlier storm had abated, and Maeve felt a chill now, as if the hot July summer had fled the mountain and surrendered entirely to this storm. She watched the rider and the ranger struggle, saw arms flail and punches land, and then the crack of a gunshot filled the air, momentarily blotting out the shush of the rain and wind.

  The older ranger shouted as he came down out of the little cottage they used for their station. He clutched a radio in his right hand, barking into it, reporting on events as they unfolded. With his left hand, he wielded an aluminum baseball bat that certainly wasn’t standard issue for the job.

  Grunting with effort, the dirt bike rider tossed aside the young ranger’s body. In that green uniform, the deep red flowing from his gunshot wound soaked in just a little darker than the rain, but Maeve could smell the copper tang of blood in the air.

  The rider began to turn, gun still in his fist.

  Maeve knelt beside him, gripped his arm before he could take aim. Her other hand cupped around the back of his neck, and she bent quickly to give him a soft peck on the forehead. She tasted the rain and his sweat. He struggled to turn the gun toward her, but a savage cough seized him. He wheezed, trying to catch his breath, and she slipped the gun from his hand and let it hang from her fingers as she rose and started along the path to the east.

  A tremor swept through her, part pleasure and part pain. A sound escaped her throat, and she noticed immediately that the rawness, the ragged feeling of broken glass, had vanished. She felt as if she could scream now, as if she might sing. Warmth suffused her. The cold and pain, the sickness, had been leeched from inside her and into the man whose life she had just taken.

  She dropped the gun into the tall grass and kept going, feeling strong. Alive.

  “Stop!” the older ranger shouted from behind her. “Come back here, lady. You can’t just walk away from … Jesus Christ, what did you do to Frankie?”

  Maeve hesitated. Rotated her head to look at him. He reminded her of Jeff Bridges, the actor who always looked like he’d just woken from a bender. As strong and healthy as she felt, her fingers still twitched. A little knot of hunger growled in her chest. A longing that had quickly grown familiar to her, as much a part of her as the beat of her own heart.

  “Run,” she whispered, halfheartedly. Then she shouted it. “Run!”

  She forced herself to turn away and take her own advice. Tall grass whipped at her. The soft, rain-soaked ground squelched underfoot as she ran for the trees.

  The old ranger barked after her, screaming commands as if he thought she might actually obey them. A little voice deep in her brain told her she ought to do exactly that. She recognized it as the voice of the original Maeve, the one who had ceased to exist this morning. The other voice, the louder one, the darker one, demanded that she turn around, go back, and get the old ranger and eat his life. Consume him. Infect him.

  But Maeve strode on. She forced herself to quicken her pace, running from the old ranger as much as she ran from the voices in her head.

  Up ahead, the woods were dark. The trunks of trees looked almost like a shadow army, waiting in the rain.

  Two of those dark forms shifted, and Maeve assumed she must be hallucinating again, until the first one stepped out of the trees and she saw the black, glistening armor, and knew that her troubles were not over. The soldiers had come for her.

  Relief swept through her, despite the roar of that new voice. The one that yearned for life, lusted for death.

  The two black-clad soldiers aimed their guns at her and began to shout her name, ordering her to raise her hands above her head. There was nowhere for Maeve to run.

  A smile curved her lips, but it was not her own smile. That grin belonged to something else.

  16

  When Walker heard the whine of the dirt bike coming to him through the trees, he hesitated. The sound might mean anything, but in a summer rainstorm, with the town under quarantine, he figured it ha
d to be someone hunting Maeve Sinclair. He crashed through the trees in the direction of the engine’s growl. Thirty feet ahead, he saw gray light through the branches and realized he’d come to a clearing.

  The engine noise changed to a high whine, became muffled, and then coughed out. Walker frowned as he realized there were voices coming from the clearing. He picked up his pace, ignoring the snapping branches and the clomp of his boots. Being overheard was a calculated risk. He drew his gun, fingers tightening on the grip as he scanned the woods.

  The gunshot seemed so loud that the sound of rain vanished for several seconds. Walker didn’t slow down, but his steps were more careful as he rushed to the edge of the clearing. He sought cover behind a massive oak. A gust of wind shook raindrops from seemingly every leaf overhead. He wiped at his eyes and stared at the scene playing out in the clearing.

  The ranger station. An older, bearded man in uniform came out the door with a radio in one hand and a gleaming silver baseball bat in the other. In the clearing, two men seemed to grapple while a woman strode purposefully toward them.

  No, Walker thought. They’re done grappling.

  One of the men was dead, the source of the gunshot, no doubt. The details resolved themselves in his head. The dead man wore a ranger’s uniform, which made the other man the dirt bike rider. A killer, searching for Maeve.

  As for the woman, he’d seen a photograph of Maeve, but soaked with rain and at a distance of fifty yards or more, she could have been anyone. Then he watched as she reached for the fallen rider’s arm, turned away his gun hand, and kissed his forehead.

  Seized by a coughing spasm, the rider began to die. Walker had witnessed the phenomenon on video, but it seemed different in person. Lonelier, both for the dying and the killer.

  Maeve started to cut across the clearing. The old ranger came running after her.

  Walker stepped out of the trees. He was off to her right, barely in her peripheral vision, and he thought he could catch up with her pretty damn fast with the noise of the rain covering his pursuit. The old ranger spotted him, turned toward him, pointed his baseball bat at Walker like Babe Ruth calling his home run. Then the old ranger tipped to one side, reeling as if drunk—or shot. He tried to stand up straight, but a second bullet blew half his skull across the tall grass.

  Walker dove into the grass as something buzzed past his head. Might have been a horsefly, but he had a feeling this insect had been hotter and shinier. He pushed left through the grass and lifted his head enough to see Maeve. The two Blackcoats were right in her path, and instead of running or trying to hide in the grass, she had begun to jog toward them, hands in front of her as if one of the Blackcoats might be her long-lost lover.

  For a heartbeat, Walker focused on those hands.

  Bullets strafed the grass around him, and he understood only one move lay available to him. Taking a breath, he bent low and hustled through the grass. They would see him coming, or at least see the grass bending, so he darted back and forth, managing a jerking serpentine pattern. They didn’t want to kill Maeve—he told himself that and hoped it was true—but they also weren’t going to be thrilled with the idea of being touched by her.

  Taser, he figured. They would tase her or shoot her with some kind of tranquilizer dart. Or they would just murder her out of terror.

  Walker stood up, took aim, and put two bullets in the chest of a Blackcoat. The shots knocked the guy off his feet, but he wore body armor, so the odds were good he would be back in action momentarily.

  Rushing through the grass, he put Maeve between himself and the other Blackcoat. This was the gamble, but it wasn’t much of a risk. If this guy didn’t have orders to take Maeve alive, Walker wouldn’t reach her in time, anyway.

  He ran. Full tilt. Grass whipped at him. He heard the standing Blackcoat shouting to the one he had shot, telling him to get up. Panicked.

  Walker liked that panic. It bought him priceless seconds. Invaluable territory. Slightly bent to compensate for Maeve’s height, he closed the distance. Fifty feet away from her. Forty. Thirty. At twenty feet behind her, Walker dodged to his left, every inch of his chest awaiting the bullet his body knew was inevitable. But he spotted the Taser in the Blackcoat’s hand just as the fucker pulled the trigger on it. The prongs struck Maeve in the abdomen. In the rain, sparks and smoke spurted up from the contact points, but instead of stopping her, the shock seemed to speed her forward. Maeve threw her head back in pain or joy or some combination of the two, and she lunged for the Blackcoat with the Taser.

  He’d expected the Taser to do its job. Now he started shouting for his partner. “Franco! Shoot her! Jesus, Franco, shoot—”

  To his credit, Franco tried. Pressing one hand against his chest, where Walker’s bullets would have hurt like a bastard, body armor or no, Franco got onto one knee and leveled his gun. This time, Walker shot him in the face.

  He winced as the bullet whipped Franco back, lowered his gaze as the man crumpled to the ground. For all the training he’d had, all the danger he’d thrown himself into over the years, he had intentionally taken human life only a handful of times, and they still haunted him. He wished the other Blackcoat had not said Franco’s name. He would rather not have known. Walker thought about Charlie, back at home, and wondered how it would make him feel to know his father had just killed a man.

  “Maeve!” he called. “Maeve Sinclair, stop. Back away from him!”

  She ignored him, if she’d heard him at all. She reached for the Blackcoat. He grabbed her wrists, tried to push her away, but she tore one hand free and grabbed at his face. Her fingers splayed across his forehead, palm covered his eyes and nose. The Blackcoat backpedaled, shoving her away at the same time to put as much distance as possible between them.

  The guy stood there, hands out in front of him, staring at them. He’d discarded the useless Taser but still had his weapon. His eyes were wide as if he were waiting, like he might simply explode.

  He shuddered. His free hand came up to cover his mouth, and he might have coughed behind that hand. When he lowered it, blood smeared his lips and blotches began to form on his face. Walker thought he might be crying.

  The man seemed to remember his weapon then. He lifted it, took aim not at Maeve—who had just killed him—but past her, at Walker. In his last seconds, he meant to vent his rage and take someone with him.

  Walker dove to the right, dropped into the tall grass, and landed ribs-first on a rock the size of a football. The rock smashed into his side and drove the air out of him. Pain slammed through him as he rolled over, clutching his side and wheezing. Gun in hand, he rose to one knee and forced himself up.

  Mind fuzzed by the pain, trying to clear his head, he took aim at the place the Blackcoat had been, only to watch the man collapse and die before a bullet could be fired.

  Maeve remained on her feet. She moved through the windswept grass and the pouring rain, hands still outstretched.

  Only this time, those hands reached out for Walker.

  * * *

  Leon Lewis returned to consciousness with a sudden flutter of his eyelids and a painful throb in his skull. Fucker hit me harder than I thought. He sucked in a gasp so deep it made him wonder if he’d stopped breathing for a moment, but he was pretty sure Walker hadn’t hit him hard enough for that.

  “Asshole,” he grumbled, pushing himself up.

  He looked around to get his bearings. The day had turned darker, or maybe that was just the combination of the storm and the trees. Walker had knocked him out, but he must have rolled a bit when he’d fallen, because now he found himself backed up to a massive pine, like he was the ugliest present under the tree on Christmas morning. The rain dripped off the pine needles, but the tree shielded him from the worst of it.

  Cheng hadn’t been so lucky.

  He swore again, rising as he stepped out into the rain. Leon searched himself for his phone, his comm unit, his gun, and couldn’t find any of them. Walker had paused long enough to toss them into
the woods, apparently. Of course he had.

  “Asshole,” he said again.

  He tried to shake off the shroud that unconsciousness had left in his mind. Had the bastard given him a concussion? Leon thought maybe he had. But a concussion wasn’t going to kill him. Cheng’s bullet wound, on the other hand, might well be the end of her.

  She lay on her side in the rain. Her gear was black, of course, so it was hard to tell how much blood she might have lost, but Leon could see the wound in her shoulder—practically the armpit. One of the vulnerable places in White Oak’s body armor design. He knelt by her and checked the pulse in her neck. It was weak, but there, which meant the bullet hadn’t struck the axillary artery, or she’d have bled out completely by now. Her chest rose and fell, so she was still breathing, but that didn’t tell him how long she might stay that way.

  “Viv,” he said, giving her a shake.

  Nothing.

  Leon shook her again. “Vivian,” he said. “Cheng, you still with me?”

  Her eyelids twitched and opened blearily but then closed again, which made up Leon’s mind. No way was Cheng walking off this mountain, and he couldn’t carry her all the way. He started searching her body and wasn’t at all surprised to find no phone and no gun. She didn’t like to wear the earpiece comm, however, and Walker wouldn’t have known that. Leon undid the Kevlar vest on her body armor and patted several inside pockets until he felt the small bump.

  Relieved, he slipped it out and lodged it into his own ear, then tapped the button. “Oak Tree, this is unit thirteen. Anyone copy?” Static exploded in his ear, and then he heard a burst of cross talk. “Oak Tree, this is thirteen. Do you copy?”

  “Go ahead, thirteen.”

  Leon exhaled. “Cheng’s down. We need dust-off. Can you track and retrieve?”

  Several seconds ticked by as the woman running logistics on this operation tried to track their location using the comm unit. Leon wondered if he’d lost the connection.