Red Hands: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  Isenberg climbed out, slammed her door. “Let’s go.”

  Rue fell into step beside her, and they walked together toward the gleaming façade of Garland Mountain Labs.

  “Not a word about what curiosity did to the cat?” Rue asked.

  Dr. Isenberg kept walking. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  The exchange was lighthearted. Meant to be funny.

  Neither of them laughed.

  23

  The gun felt heavy in Walker’s hand. He did not want to kill Maeve—had come up here to do the exact opposite—but if she went for Rose or for Priya, he would pull the trigger on her.

  Maeve’s wrists remained bound behind her, and her back was against the cave wall, but still Rose kept a safe distance between them.

  “Look me in the eye and tell me you’re still in control,” Rose said.

  Maeve closed her eyes. “I’m still here,” she said. Sweat glistened on her face. The sores on her skin had deepened. The circles under her eyes were so dark they looked like bad mascara the morning after a party gone wrong.

  Rose hugged herself as if she were trying to fight the urge to embrace her sister. “That’s not the same thing.”

  “No,” Maeve agreed. “It’s not. But it’s the best I can do without lying to you. All I can say is that if we’re going, we should go as soon as we can, and once we’re outside, you should all keep your distance.”

  Walker liked the sound of that. If the hunger inside Maeve wanted to take them, if the disease wanted to infect them, this was not the advice it would give.

  “Good enough for me,” he said.

  Priya shuffled forward. Her face looked thinner and older. Pain and blood loss were wearing her down. “We can’t expect her to swim with her hands tied.”

  Walker thought about the thing inside Maeve—the inhuman agility and strength she’d revealed. Maybe it would keep her alive, even with her hands tied, but Priya was right. He couldn’t take that chance.

  “She’ll never get up the rocks out there, either,” Rose pointed out.

  Walker hadn’t let his thoughts get that far, but she was correct.

  “Fair enough,” he said, studying Maeve, thinking about how to free her without touching her hands. “I’ve got a little knife in my pack. But you’ll have to stay absolutely still. I can’t risk—”

  Her eyes were dark, her expression humorless. “I’ve got it,” she said. “I just didn’t want to give you a reason to shoot me.”

  With a grunt and a twist of her shoulders, she snapped the bonds from her wrists. They all stared for a few seconds, letting the knowledge sink in—she could have done that whenever she liked. Unnerving as it was, Walker took it as a good sign. If Maeve didn’t have at least some control, she would never have stayed bound.

  “You first,” he said. “Now let’s move it.”

  He motioned with the gun. When Maeve started forward, hunched to avoid bumping her head on the ceiling of the cave, he waited until they had ten feet of separation before following. Priya and Rose moved as if to go ahead of him, but Walker ushered them back. He had the gun, and he intended to put himself between the civilians and the malignant thing inside Maeve. She still had some control, but it seethed in her. He could almost feel it radiating from within her.

  Gun in hand, he duckwalked through the cave. Up ahead, Maeve stepped out into the gorge and began to climb the massive rock that hid the cave entrance. His earwig squawked, a little burst of static. He winced and reached up to tap the earbud. It had been useless while they were in the cave, no signal at all. There seemed little point in using it now. Updates from Alena’s office or from Rue Crooker wouldn’t do much to protect them from the Blackcoats. In a minute or two, he’d be neck deep in the Moonglow River, and whatever information they might have for him would have to wait. If all went well, they would be in the clear by daybreak. If not, chatting again with Alena Boudreau’s personal assistant wouldn’t be the thing that kept them alive.

  “It’s gotten cold,” Priya said quietly, not far behind him.

  “The mountains at night,” Rose replied as if that explained it all.

  Walker hadn’t noticed the chill, but now he felt it. His clothes had dried in the hours since they’d entered the cave, but they clung to him, damp and clammy, and as the night wind slithered down the tunnel, it felt far too cold to be July. New England could always bring the unexpected.

  Stepping out of the cave, Walker felt grateful to stand upright. He aimed his weapon at the top of the rock that blocked the entrance just in case the thing inside Maeve lay in wait for them, but there was no sign of her, which troubled him nearly as much. The cool air washed around him, and for the first time he realized just how much it had gotten under his skin, being trapped in the cave with Maeve and her passenger. Her infection.

  “Quickly now,” he whispered over his shoulder as Priya emerged from the cave. “Watch your step, but don’t slow down. We have no idea what’s waiting for us.”

  He clambered up the rock, peering down at the edge of the river. The burble of its passing seemed louder in the dark. The sky had mostly cleared, but the crescent moon cast only a ghostly gleam on the terrain around him, not nearly the brightness it would have when full.

  Still, it was enough.

  “Maeve,” he whispered, pulse quickening. Worried.

  To his left, back the way they had come before nightfall, he heard her voice rasp, “Here.” Relieved, he skidded down the massive stone and started up the next one, even as Rose helped Priya to climb up to the perch he had just abandoned. Priya grunted in pain, huffing with effort, but Rose would have to help her. Walker’s responsibility was Maeve.

  He dropped down from the next rock. Maeve watched him but made no move to approach. The two of them stood like gunfighters ready to duel. Only Walker had a gun, but Maeve had become her own weapon.

  “All quiet?” Rose whispered as she dropped down from the rocks to stand beside Walker.

  He nodded. Rose tracked the tension between him and Maeve but turned to help Priya slide down to the rocky terrain alongside the river.

  “Go,” Walker said, gesturing for Maeve to get into the river ahead of the rest of them. They’d discussed it in the cave. Stay in the river unless you have no other choice, he had told them. Wait until you reach the bridge in Jericho Falls to get out. Don’t drown. Whatever you do, don’t let Maeve touch you.

  Rose pushed past Walker. He held his breath, not liking how close she was to her sister.

  “Be safe,” Rose told her. “I can’t lose anyone else.”

  Maeve nodded.

  “Wait. Please, hang on a second,” Priya said, even paler in the glow of the moon. “I don’t hear anything. I don’t see anyone. This is crazy dangerous. Can’t we just walk—”

  Walker heard a single, distant pop, and the night broke open.

  The brightest flare he’d ever seen soared up into the darkness over the gorge and burst into silent brilliance. The others squinted against the searing glare, but Walker knew what was coming next.

  “Into the water!” he shouted, grabbing Rose and propelling her toward the river.

  Gunfire erupted all around them. Bullets struck the rocks on the bank barely inches in front of Rose, and Walker realized his error. He lunged after her, grabbed the back of her shirt, and dragged her down, using his body to shield her. He couldn’t save them all, but she had been closest to him.

  Bullets smashed into stone. Shards flew. Some plinked into the water. Maeve kept walking toward the river as if she wanted to be hit.

  “Go to Priya,” Walker told Rose. “The two of you get back to the cave entrance.”

  “We’ll be trapped,” she said, eyes wild with terror.

  Walker pulled Rose to her feet, ducked low, and got her moving back toward Priya. He didn’t have to shout at them to go. They were already moving, scrambling over the first of the two massive stone slabs, exposed in the flickering, dying light of the flare.

  Someon
e shot a second flare, erasing his hope that they might escape notice.

  Walker took aim, scanned the ridge, tried to use the new brightness to his advantage. He saw one of the snipers and opened fire, but at this distance it was nearly hopeless, and he had no idea how many of them there were, or who they were.

  Blackcoats. Had to be.

  Mercenaries. Trained for this.

  But none of them had been shot. Not one bullet had connected.

  They’re not aiming, he thought. Trying to take us alive.

  Alive was good. Alive got him home to Charlie. Alive meant the Sinclair sisters didn’t have to die.

  In the new brightness, he saw Blackcoats rappelling down the walls of the gorge. Up on the rim, others were hustling along, trying to reach a place to descend. He put it all together, realized this was the way he would have done it himself. The gunfire and screaming at dusk, when they’d come down Walter’s Descent and Maeve had murdered Agatha, had told the Blackcoats where to search for them. The Blackcoats had come, searched the gorge, and then stationed themselves along the rough mile or so of the area where they thought the gunfire had originated, knowing that Walker couldn’t risk waiting until morning. That he would have to make a break for it.

  He’d had no choice. And General Wagner had known it.

  But they wanted Maeve alive, maybe the rest of them, too. Maybe those were the general’s orders.

  All of this went through his mind in seconds.

  Then a bullet struck Maeve in the chest, and all of Walker’s calculus changed.

  She started to scream, and the voice that tore from her throat sounded like nothing human.

  * * *

  When the flare went up, everything changed. Leon had followed the Germans eastward. They’d moved swiftly, with a grace and quiet he forced himself to match. Several times he had to pause, catching his breath as he listened for noises that would let him pick up their trail again. He feared he would lose them eventually, and then he would have abandoned his wounded partner for no reason and lost himself on the mountain for good measure.

  Then the flare.

  The Germans froze when they heard that first pop, craning their necks to look up at the forest canopy. Tired and focused on stealth and speed, Leon barely heard the pop, but the Germans stopped so abruptly that he took two more steps before he could halt himself. They seemed like the loudest steps he’d ever taken, but even if the Germans heard him, divine intervention arrived in the form of the flare, which burst across the sky like the fireworks that had been going off around the country all week.

  Gunshots echoed across the mountain. Burst after burst. Pop after pop.

  “Damn it!” the German woman shouted, in English, with no foreign accent. “They couldn’t have waited another ten minutes?”

  She barked orders in German, pointing through the trees. The two men with her unslung the rifles from their backs and bolted through the woods toward the place where the flare had originated. The woman raced after them, tugging a phone from her pocket.

  “This is Virgo-One,” she said, once more in English, breathing hard as she dodged between trees and leaped rocks and bushes. “We’re out of time. The word is given.”

  Leon followed. She and the other Germans had given up any attempt at stealth now, but as loud as the gunfire might be, whipcracks echoing through the woods, he did not want to risk giving himself away. He moved as fast as he could, caught his foot on a fallen branch but recovered his momentum, and held tight to his gun while he ran.

  The men were German. She had talked to them in German, given them their orders in that language, but the woman didn’t sound German at all. So who the hell is she? He caught a glimpse of silver hair sticking out from beneath her black watch cap, and now that she was running all out, he noticed for the first time the effort she put into movement, as if it were a burden. How old was she, this woman who’d brought killers onto the mountain to hunt Maeve Sinclair?

  Leon hurt all over. His whole body ached, his legs felt like deadweight, and his heart raced along alarmingly fast. It had been the longest day of his life, and now it had gotten a hell of a lot longer and a hell of a lot more dangerous.

  But maybe all of this—the flare, the gunfire—meant it was nearly over. Maybe there would be answers coming soon. The thought sent an anxious tremor through him. While he’d been tracking the supposed Germans, his focus had been simple. He’d thought he’d understood the situation and how he had interpreted the mandate of his mission. Now he wondered if he had understood anything at all.

  He brushed past a massive pine tree, put one boot on a fallen oak and sprang over it, surprised to find himself on a rough trail. Not well traveled, by any means, but more of a path than he’d been on for the past half hour. Moving in the dark, with just wan moonlight, it had been slow going. Running after the Germans had been a gamble. Here, though, he could see the winding trail where other boots had trod in the past, enough to indicate the smoothest passage.

  Gunshots continued, another flare burst in the sky ahead. The echoes were strange, though, an odd acoustic muffling that the trees could not explain.

  He heard the crack of a rifle up ahead, much closer. Then another shot, and a third.

  Leon slowed, chest burning with exertion. He got control of his breathing and slipped back into the trees, wishing he could stay on the trail but knowing it would be unwise. Those rifle cracks were so close they could only have been from the Germans. The mountain crawled with his own people from White Oak Security, and Leon figured some of those shots being fired came from his comrades’ weapons. But White Oak personnel weren’t the only people up here searching.

  He caught his breath, slinking through the trees until he could see a vast, open space ahead where the forest came to an end. The meager moonlight showed the edges of a broad chasm, and he remembered the gorge that had been on the mission map. This had to be it. Now the strange echoes made sense. Someone had found Maeve Sinclair, and they were fighting over the right to claim her—or her corpse.

  Leon slunk through the last line of trees. He spotted the two German snipers ahead of him, for that was surely what they were. They had taken a position on the ridge, side by side, and were aiming along the gorge. One of them pulled the trigger. The rifle shot made Leon flinch, but he peered to his right along the gorge, and now he saw what they were shooting at. Black-clad soldiers came from the woods to the south, joining others who were stationed there. They were shooting into the gorge; Leon figured they were keeping their targets pinned down there. He saw two dark figures go over the side on ropes, rappelling over the edge.

  They had to be his Blackcoats. White Oak Security.

  The Germans were shooting at them.

  Somehow, through some miracle of luck and fumbling accident, Leon found himself in precisely the right place at precisely the right time. Maybe he wouldn’t be the one who found Maeve Sinclair, but he could still save the lives of some of his buddies. Hell, it might be Luther Baskin down there or Angela Todd. Johnny Kennedy, the funniest asshole on White Oak’s roster, the big Alabama bastard they called Prez.

  As Leon raised his weapon and took aim, he let out a long breath and smiled to himself as he thought about saving Prez Kennedy’s life and all the tequila those assholes would buy him when they learned what he’d done.

  He felt a breath on his cheek, warm in the cool night air.

  Then the cold kiss of the gun barrel against his temple.

  Leon saw her then in his peripheral vision. Silver hair, black watch cap, wrinkles around her eyes. Much older than he’d realized. God, she had to be sixty at the very least.

  “My name’s Alena,” she said. “What’s yours?”

  * * *

  The Red Death’s influence came in waves. The tiny bit of Maeve that could still pursue rational thought had developed theories about that, ideas involving proximity to the living and duration since the last time she’d passed the infection to another. None of that mattered now.

>   Her head throbbed, spiking with pain that she knew could be alleviated if only she would stop fighting, give the Red Death what it wanted. Yes. Not the hunger or Red Hands or whatever other label she might have given it—this wasn’t just a presence, it was a consciousness. A living malignance, a disease that could override an infected host and spread the contagion within it, with purpose. Woven into the host body—into her body—so that the only cure for her own suffering was to communicate it to others. The pressure valve on her sickness was to share it. To spread the Red Death … in order for her to live.

  The air in the gorge grew hot. The brightness of the flares turned the stone walls into red glass, or perhaps she existed now in two places—the solid world around her and the blur of memory and hunger that existed inside the Red Death. She saw through its ancient eyes just as it saw through her own. Gunfire echoed all through the gorge. Voices shouted to her to get down, to hide. The bullet wound in her left side pulsed, little dribbles of blood spilling out, the stain on her dirty tank top spreading.

  Another bullet tagged her shoulder, and she jerked slightly.

  She was no longer alone. The figure she had seen lurking nearby her, the one she had seen in her visions, the voice in her head, the insidious presence that made her skin crawl, made her feel as if she were coated with a thick film of gutter swill … it wasn’t gone. Not vanished. The Red Death was just Maeve now, and Maeve had become it.

  Bullets struck the rocks nearby. Some plinked into the water. Others smashed stone, sent chips flying.

  Maeve turned to see that Walker had taken cover. She saw him reloading his gun. Behind a large stone slab, back toward the cave entrance, Rose poked her head out, screaming for Maeve to wake up.

  “Snap out of it, for fuck’s sake!” Rose screamed, her face contorted in fury. She looked like Mom when teenage Rose hadn’t cleaned her room for a month. The thought made Maeve smile and then laugh, and she knew her mind had broken.