Red Hands: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  It scratched and gnawed inside her like a wild thing in a cage, desperate to be free to hunt and feed so it might grow stronger. So the ghost of death might walk the world again and spread its poison far and wide.

  It had flourished inside her, lived and breathed in her. It had killed in her, but it wouldn’t die with her.

  Her wounds pulsed with the heat of blood leaving her body. Her vision dimmed as if light and color were fading from the world, but she stared up at Rose, lips moving as she tried to form words of regret and of warning, all such sentiments far too late to help any of them.

  Too late, a voice echoed in her mind, and what remained of Maeve Sinclair could not tell if it was her own thought or that of the Red Death. Farewell.

  “Rose,” she tried to say aloud, and Rose looked at her.

  Death felt like mercy, so Maeve did not mind it overmuch, but the hunger began to slip out of her. The malevolent disease slithered from her flesh and into Rose, and Maeve fought that as hard as she was able.

  She blinked. Beyond her sister, she saw the withered crimson figure again, looming over Rose as if the two were allies now. Or as if it had claimed Rose as its own.

  Maeve closed her eyes. The Red Death told her goodbye yet again, in more insistent tones, and she felt it struggle to break free from the anchor it had planted inside her. The hunger had tethered itself to her, and now Maeve refused to release it.

  As she slid down into the dark and final comfort of death, Maeve still fought.

  Not my sister, she thought. Not Rose. You can’t have her.

  Then all went quiet inside her, and Maeve Sinclair was no more.

  * * *

  Alena Boudreau didn’t like to shout and she didn’t like to fight, but she had found herself more than willing to do both when necessary. She cherished science and the thrill of discovery, but both had proven to be rife with dangers and secrets, and the world teemed with assholes willing to commit atrocities to acquire such things. That dilemma led to violent conflict and deceit. Because she was director of the Global Science Research Coalition, no one would expect her to be in a position to give orders that required human beings to be shot.

  No one except those who understood the work they really did.

  The work that DARPA did. The work the Department of Defense did. Every minute of every day, all over the world, there were a thousand ways to ignite catastrophe, epidemic, mass extinction, or global destruction. Humanity had built itself a delicately balanced house of cards. It would take very little to bring it all down.

  If, from time to time, preventing such catastrophe meant resorting to violence, Alena Boudreau had learned to live with that.

  “Just stand there and nobody will shoot you,” she said, gesturing at Leon Lewis, unable to hide her irritation. He didn’t look convinced, and maybe the gun in her hand had something to do with that, but tough shit. She hadn’t come here to coddle mercenaries and worry about their feelings.

  Static crackled in her ear. She shook her head, tapped the earpiece. “Walker, you still there?”

  Most of what she heard over the connection had been gunfire, hard to distinguish from the sounds picked up by her other ear. Gunshots echoed up and down the gorge, from rim down to river. But they were quieting now.

  “I’m here,” Walker said. “I think Maeve Sinclair’s dead.”

  “Shit!” Alena snarled. Leon Lewis flinched, watching her gun hand as if she were some kind of explosive device that might detonate if she became too unstable. She figured that wasn’t far from the truth.

  “There’s more,” Walker said.

  He kept talking, but she snapped at him to hang on. “We’re pulling the plug up here. Stay alive another minute or two, would you?”

  Alena walked to the rim of the gorge. She had kept mostly to the tree line to avoid Blackcoat snipers. The two Germans she’d brought with her were former BND counterintelligence agents who had signed on to the SRC less than a week before. The moment she’d been named director, Alena had begun to reach out to colleagues and allies with whom she had worked over the years. If the SRC were to present to the world that they were a global coalition, they had to look the part. But not all her employees were going to be scientists.

  None of those new hires had been officially logged or even vetted by the DoD as of yet. Alena had been engaged in a chess match with General Wagner, and she had been careful not to reveal her strategy. When DARPA had begun moving pieces around the board, shifting Wagner’s responsibilities, creating Global SRC and naming Alena its director, she had suspected the general would try to hold on to his pet projects and wall them off, even from his superiors. There had been lies, obfuscation, his allies covering for him all through the shadowy corridors of government, but Alena had allies, too. And Walker … well, Ben Walker had been a stroke of luck. General Wagner had punished Walker not for breaking the rules but for taking away an opportunity to create yet another deadly bioweapon, when Garland Mountain had been developing one for him all along.

  General Wagner had sidelined Ben Walker. With the secrecy necessary to her task, Alena hadn’t been able to recruit many experienced field agents, but the general had left Walker on the bench, and she had been more than happy to put him back in the game.

  A buzz in her ear. She tapped the comm unit. “Tell me.”

  “The order’s been given, Director Boudreau. General Wagner will be informed shortly, but White Oak Security has been ordered to stand down.”

  “Thank you, Joel.”

  Alena did not smile as she signed off. There were too many dead for her to feel any sense of triumph. She went to Paul Dietrich, the senior of the two German agents she’d hired, and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Nearly done now, but don’t lower your guard,” she told him. “I don’t trust anyone tonight.”

  Dietrich nodded. The other German, Oskar Lubitsch, spoke little English, but he didn’t need a translation to understand. Alena raised the small pair of night-vision binoculars that hung from a strap around her neck. South along the ridge, she watched as the Blackcoats from White Oak Security lowered their weapons. They looked confused and a little bit lost, turning to their unit commanders.

  When the Homeland Security agents emerged from the woods behind them, Alena held her breath. She’d made sure the order had come from White Oak’s operations director before Homeland Security moved in because she thought that would avoid any further loss of life. The last thing she wanted was another hundred corpses on the mountain. Even so, she tensed as the DHS agents trained their weapons on the Blackcoats and forced them to disarm.

  She braced for more gunshots, but none came.

  Lowering the binoculars, she glanced over at Leon Lewis. “I haven’t forgotten you, Leon. Come take a look at this.”

  He moved tentatively, eyeing the Germans, watching her carefully. Wordlessly, he took the binoculars and looked south, just as Alena had. She knew what he would see.

  “Your operation’s over,” she told him. “Time to stand down.”

  Leon exhaled with obvious relief and passed the binoculars back to her. “Okay. So what now?”

  “Now you get to go home,” Alena replied. “Though if I were you, I’d think hard about my line of work. White Oak took on a client willing to send you to kill American citizens, including government employees. Maybe you’re okay with that sort of thing—”

  “I’m not,” Leon said quickly, brow knitted in thought.

  “You didn’t seem the type, to be honest,” she said. “The dust on this will settle, Leon. One way or another, it will be swept under the carpet, and some other atrocity will take its place. When things calm down, come and see me. I’m going to need people with at least a spark of conscience.”

  He looked at her a long moment, then nodded and turned away. Leon Lewis began walking along the rim of the gorge, off to join the rest of his unit, but Alena had a feeling he would not be with them for long.

  Alena tapped her comm again. “Walker, you
still there?” Static. She frowned. “Walker?”

  “—hurry.”

  She swore, lifting the binoculars and rushing to the edge of the gorge so fast that Dietrich grabbed the back of her jacket to keep her from stumbling over. The night vision blurred as she turned, trying to get it to focus, searching for Walker.

  “What is it?” she asked. “They should be surrendering.”

  “It’s not the fucking Blackcoats,” Walker said. “It’s Rose Sinclair.”

  * * *

  Walker felt like he’d be hearing the echoes of gunshots for the rest of his life. His eardrums throbbed in the aftermath. The Blackcoats moved in around Rose, barked at her to move away from her sister’s body. They didn’t seem to really understand what had happened, what it meant that Rose had been holding on to Maeve but hadn’t gotten sick yet herself. Maeve had died, just as Oscar Hecht had died.

  “Get away from her,” Walker ordered, advancing toward the Blackcoats, sweeping his weapon in an arc, trying to warn them off.

  There were over a dozen of them along the trail now, but most of those had come down the wall of the gorge some yards to the north. Of the ones still alive, there on the rocky bank of the Moonglow, only four were close enough to Rose that she might lunge for them, and Walker saw the murder in her eyes. They must have seen it, too, because although they had lowered their weapons moments ago, they raised them again.

  “We told you, girl,” one of the Blackcoats said, “get away from the body.”

  “Lower your weapons,” Walker snapped at them. “Back away!”

  The red glow of the flares had begun to fade and waver. Soon they would have only wan moonlight to see by. Walker took three careful steps on uneven ground, aimed his weapon at the Blackcoat who had spoken. The others turned their guns on him.

  Rose slid closer to them, taking advantage of the distraction. Her eyes had their own red glow, and he knew that glimmer had nothing to do with the flares. It broke Walker’s heart to see the predatory sneer that contorted her face. He thought of Ted Sinclair and all he’d lost, and in his heart, he cursed the man for not being up here on the mountain himself, injuries be damned.

  “Don’t do it, Rose,” he said.

  Guns shifted back toward her.

  Walker took another step, stared hard at the Blackcoats. “Listen to me. You guys are done. This is over, and you need to withdraw right now. Nothing else needs to happen here. My team is going to lock this down. Nobody else needs to be hurt.”

  Rose spun around and marched toward him, screaming out her pain and fury. Instinct made Walker pivot and aim the gun at her, center mass. He flushed, hating himself in that moment, but he didn’t turn his weapon away.

  “Stay there, Rose. You don’t need to hurt anyone else.”

  She spat on the rocks a few feet from him. Walker flinched, wondering if her body fluids were infectious.

  “You tried to help, but Maeve is dead, anyway,” she said, and he could almost hear her heart shattering as she spoke. “They murdered her. Truth is, they murdered her twice, and they took my mom and Logan.”

  She grinned. Something like tears dripped at the corners of her eyes, but these tears were dark streaks of red or black. Hard to tell in the flickering, hellish light of the dying flares.

  “You think I’m going to let them just surrender?”

  Rose lowered her head, then turned and stalked toward the nearest Blackcoat, the one with the big mouth. His eyes widened as she raised her hands, the reality finally hitting him. His gun twitched at his side. As he staggered backward, he brought the weapon up again.

  Walker couldn’t watch another member of the Sinclair family die.

  He took aim and shot the Blackcoat in the chest. The guy stumbled and fell, and the others reacted. One of them fired at Walker, barely missing.

  “Stop!” Walker shouted, tossing his gun to the ground. “He’s wearing body armor! I was getting his attention. Just walk away. Fucking run away before she kills you!”

  They must have seen the wisdom. As the other Blackcoats down in the gorge came toward them, those three began to retreat, shouting at their fallen comrade to follow. Bursts of static came from their comms, voices calling out names.

  The fallen Blackcoat scrambled to his feet. Shaking, he backed away, gun pointed at Rose just in case she lunged at him.

  Rose quickened her pace. Her muscles tensed. Walker saw the way she moved, the way she coiled, and knew he was too far away to stop her even if he dared to touch her.

  Then Priya was there.

  Eyes wide and pleading, cradling her left arm, she came around the side of the slab that had sheltered her from bullets and rushed at Rose and the Blackcoat, free hand up in front of her.

  “Rose, no! Let it be over.”

  Rose took a step toward her, left hand reaching for Priya’s throat. Priya recoiled in shock, and Rose faltered. Behind her, the last Blackcoat ran to join his comrades, boots pounding the path until he’d reached the safety of numbers. They all turned to watch, a Greek chorus of hired killers.

  Rose stared at her hands. Black tears slid down her face. “I’m sorry.”

  “Let them help you,” Priya told her. “Please.” Priya started toward her, gently, warily. “I need you.”

  Rose jerked backward, stared at Priya. She shook her head and hugged herself tightly, determined to keep her hands to herself. She turned and walked to where her sister lay dead. Rose fell to her knees, huddling down as if against a cold winter, though it remained midsummer.

  Then she looked up at Walker. “Whatever you think you can do, you’d better do it fast.”

  The last crimson flicker of the flare’s light burned out, leaving only the moon.

  But Rose’s eyes still glinted red.

  25

  One New Year’s Eve during his college days, Ted Sinclair spent the night in jail. He’d been drinking in a bar with friends, thanks to an amateurishly made fake ID and a doorman willing to look the other way in exchange for ten bucks and a promise not to cause any trouble. It wasn’t the fake ID or the underage drinking that had landed Ted in jail, however—the blame for that rested squarely on the shoulders of a girl named Kristina Lawson. Ted and Kristina and four other friends had been seated at a round table in view of the bar. An absurdly handsome guy with creamy brown skin and the kind of fashion sense that would forever be beyond Ted had been seated at the bar and sent Kristina two drinks in a row. She smiled shyly at him, wagged her fingers in thanks, and played hard to get … until the moment Chrystina Campbell got up from the table and sashayed over to the guy at the bar to suggest he buy a drink for a girl who’d appreciate it.

  What ensued would forever be called the Battle of the Christinas—it seeming fair not to use the correct spelling for either of them. They had been frenemies before the bar fight, but after fists had flown and fingernails had broken, the friend part could never be recovered. Ted had tried to intervene, been shoved into a pair of drunk bikers, and abruptly the scrap between the two young women turned into a full-on bar brawl.

  Bruised and aching, nose broken, at least one rib cracked, Ted had curled up against the back wall of the jail’s holding cell, grateful the blood clotting his nostrils prevented him from smelling the metal, lidless toilet that sat out in the open, never mind the dozen other men crowded into the cell. It came as no surprise that New Year’s Eve was a busy night for cops breaking up drunken brawls, never mind arresting drunk drivers and petty thieves.

  Tonight, he missed that piss-stained holding cell. At least back then he had known someone would come to get him, that he would be charged and released.

  More than thirty years since then. How the hell did all that time pass by so fast?

  Tonight, Ted found himself in a cell again, but this time nobody was coming to get him. He could always blame the booze, but the whiskey hadn’t drunk itself.

  Half-drunk, drowning in grief and worry, he’d climbed into his car and driven to Garland Mountain Labs with some barely
formed idea that they owed him answers and that he could force those answers out of them with the sheer power of his alcohol-fueled righteousness. He’d parked in the lot, stormed to the front door, and been greeted by a guy named Justin Jones, who was the facility manager or something like that.

  Ted wanted his daughters, and he’d been certain Garland Mountain not only knew where they were but could retrieve them. He also wanted the lab to admit responsibility for everything—for the horror at the parade, the deaths of his ex-wife and son, the hideous thing that had infected Maeve.

  He’d sobered up just a little—enough to know what an idiot he’d been.

  Security guards had grabbed him the moment Dr. Jones had allowed him to cross the threshold into the building. They’d halfway carried him to an elevator, descended a level or two, and muscled him into a chamber that looked as if it had been designed by Apple engineers. An iRoom. MacJail. The walls were off-white, softly illuminated by recessed bulbs. The furnishings were a pair of sleek white chairs and a dormitory-narrow bed with tightly fitted sheets and a square pillow.

  A narrow pocket door in the corner opened into a tiny bathroom. In the main cell—because it could only be a cell—white plastic cups were racked beside a white plastic sink, providing a water supply. Each wall had a section where the surface formed a pattern that approximated something that might be considered art, though of course there were no windows. The space might have been sterile, but it would not have been entirely unpleasant if not for the locked door and the fact he didn’t have the option to leave.

  For the moment, Ted was a prisoner. He didn’t know how long they would keep him here, but the presence of that bed didn’t bode well. It suggested that the people who had designed the security holding cell for Garland Mountain Labs had anticipated a time when seizing an intruder would not necessarily lead to calling the appropriate authorities. If they had called the police to report him, nobody would be expecting him to sleep there.