Red Hands: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  Or an engine. It had to be an engine.

  Sleep now, darling.

  Only when she heard the words did Maeve realize she did not float there alone. She tried to move, sit up, tilt her head to seek out the shape that lurked just at the edge of her vision, but she found herself paralyzed. Now that her companion had spoken, she felt it there in the fog beside her, crawling toward her. It crept below her, behind her, slipped up and whispered in her ear.

  You’ve been so very ill. Rest now. The time of pain and hunger has passed.

  Something sharp touched her scalp, a finger, joined by others. As it caressed her, ran its fingers through her hair, Maeve tried to scream. Her lips would not move. The terror trapped itself inside her, a tumor no surgery could remove, and it grew with every heartbeat, building pressure that had no release.

  Her eyes widened. God, she wanted to cry, but like her scream, the tears would not come. The red fog began to darken, to blacken.

  “—touch her. Those wounds are weeping. Put your hands up, and don’t go near her.”

  A voice. Not the one that whispered to her, not the one that enveloped her in sorrow. A different voice, this one angry.

  “None of us are that stupid,” yet another voice replied. “Look at her. Jesus, her throat is so bloated. You ever see anything like this?”

  “You’ll all be quarantined,” the first voice said. And then, as if to a third someone, beyond her hearing, he said, “Get him out of here. Get them all out. Nobody without a hazmat suit comes within fifty yards of her. Tell Vargas not to approach. She can supervise from up on the ridge.”

  Maeve had been cold until now. She hadn’t realized just how cold until her bones began to grow warm, heating her from within. Floating in that fog, she began to feel the weight of her body for the first time. Pain cramped her chest and clawed at her throat, and she wanted to talk, to cry out to the whisperer that he had promised she would feel no more pain.

  Go away, he told her. You’re a fool to fight this. You can’t trap me here. I’m hungry, my darling, and I will grow with that hunger. Infection has taken you. There’s no room left in this flesh for you.

  The fingers caressing her face pushed through her skin, began to tug at her face as if the whisperer meant to strip her down to muscle and gristle and hide beneath the mask of her life. But the tugging ceased and the intrusion worsened. She felt the whisperer sliding into her, lifting her face, pushing in beside her as if he had raised the edge of her comforter and slipped beside her in bed in the middle of the night.

  Then she knew him. Saw him, and saw herself. One of them dead and the other hideously alive. This was no withering, gnawing hunger. What inhabited her now breathed malice, flexed predatory sinew. Sickness fled her. The pain, the heat, the desire … once upon a time, human beings had carried in their souls an intimate knowledge of evil. Most of the world had breathed it in so often, seen it in the eyes of others enough times, that they could no longer recognize it for what it was. How it felt.

  Only a flicker of self remained inside her, a thing that recognized itself as Maeve Sinclair. Recoiling from the filth that polluted her, she regretted not surrendering to death. The whisperer had warned her, tried to send her away, and she had fought him.

  Rose.

  Out there somewhere, her sister had been infected. As the hunger, the Red Death, had clawed its way into Rose, Maeve had twisted her thoughts around the presence within her and held on with everything she had, all the things that made her Maeve. Dying, the infection had passed from her to Rose, but Maeve had grasped hold and refused to relinquish it.

  Now they were here—Maeve and the hunger. The whisperer. Lost in red limbo. And she understood what a terrible mistake it had been.

  As the last spark of herself, the last shard of Maeve Sinclair, winked out, she felt the comfort of a sheet being drawn over her corpse.

  They would come back for her body, the hunger knew.

  The hunger, after all, was all that remained inside the corpse of Maeve Sinclair. It stirred, and deepened … and it waited.

  * * *

  Walker bumped around in the back of a Jeep, head muzzy with exhaustion. His eyes burned. He ought to have felt relieved it was over. He sure as hell ought to have felt safer in the back of the Jeep than he had with a bunch of Blackcoats shooting at him, but this didn’t feel like safety, and he could not allow himself to think it was over.

  So much for mission accomplished, he thought.

  Maeve Sinclair lay dead back in the gorge, a bunch of researchers and DHS agents overseeing the quarantining and transfer of her corpse.

  Alena Boudreau sat next to Walker, the two of them knocking shoulders as the Jeep rattled along a trail that would lead them off the mountain. They were about six miles from Garland Mountain Labs. In the Jeep, on the trails, then the road, it might take them fifteen minutes to reach the facility. Walker wondered if he could manage to avoid smashing Alena in the skull for that long. Sure, she was a seventysomething-year-old woman, but she’d also sent him on this assignment with only a fraction of the information she ought to have given him. If he had known what she was up to behind the scenes, that the cavalry would be coming, Walker would have done things differently. Maeve might still be alive.

  In the front passenger seat, Priya nursed her wounded shoulder, which had already received some first aid from a medic. Walker didn’t think it was physical pain that made Priya turn her face from the driver and swipe at her eyes. The driver pretended not to notice her tears. In the backseat, Walker and Alena said nothing. No words that might embarrass Priya, nor any words of comfort.

  What could they say?

  Priya loved Rose. Walker had seen the love between them, the desperation, the fear for one another. Either one of those young women would do anything, sacrifice any part of themselves—even all of themselves—for the other. But Priya sat silently crying in the front seat of the Jeep, and Rose rode in the vehicle ahead of them—a boxy yellow hazmat ambulance that hadn’t been made for this terrain. It bumped along, just ahead of the Jeep, a lonely, terrified, grieving young woman in the back.

  Walker could not have stopped Rose from touching Maeve. If he’d spotted her moving toward her sister earlier than he had, what could he have done? Shoot her to save her?

  Even so, it haunted him.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Alena said.

  Walker turned to stare at her, the seat crinkling beneath him. In his mind, the picture of Maeve Sinclair falling, the bullets punching through her, would not be erased.

  “You used me,” he said quietly, glancing at Priya, hoping the rumble of the Jeep would blot out much of what he said. “Wagner put me on the sidelines. You made your move, brought in your people. You needed someone capable of finding the woman, someone who could lock her down, keep the situation from getting worse without letting her fall into Wagner’s hands. His project blew up in his face, and you saw your chance.”

  “General Wagner has been running black box operations even his superiors didn’t know about,” Alena said. “When subordinates expressed safety concerns, they suffered retribution. Wagner ordered Red Hands tested on CIA prisoners in an off-book facility in Romania. Oscar Hecht was the perfect partner for him. There isn’t a line Wagner won’t cross, and Hecht felt the same way. These are men who don’t play by anyone’s rules. Hecht is dead, and thanks to him and Wagner, so are a lot of other people. So tell me, Benjamin, what have I done that has so upset you? I offered you a job, and you accepted.”

  He could see the vein in her temple pulse while she spoke. Her passion and dedication in her work were the stuff of legend, but he’d never heard she was ruthless.

  Walker shook his head. “Alena—”

  “Director Boudreau, if you still work for me.”

  He locked eyes with her. “Alena,” he repeated. “The people we work for do a lot of unpleasant things. Ugly things. Most of the time, there’s a reason for that ugliness, a higher purpose, and I believe in that higher p
urpose. But you left me in the dark and used me—”

  “I didn’t know who I could trust.”

  “—and as a result, people are dead who might otherwise be alive.”

  He stopped himself from mentioning Rose Sinclair. Priya had to be listening to all of this now, even in her shock and sadness. Rose might not have become the carrier of Red Hands if Alena had been open with Walker about what was really going on, and he didn’t want to hurt her further with an if. That word could be the most painful in the English language. Life and death were full of ifs, and they never saved anyone an ounce of anguish.

  “We’ll talk more when this is over,” Walker said, nodding toward the back of Priya’s head so Alena would understand his reticence.

  She raised an eyebrow. “It’s already over, Walker. It’s under control.”

  Walker went silent. The Jeep bumped through several potholes and ruts, and then pulled out onto the road. Just a few minutes and they would be at Garland Mountain. He looked through the windshield at the yellow hazmat ambulance ahead of them, and he thought of Rose.

  It’s under control, Alena had said.

  Walker wished he could believe that.

  * * *

  Driving up to the rear gate of the Garland Mountain Labs complex, they passed two Humvees heading in the opposite direction—Blackcoats withdrawing. Dismissed. Walker glanced at the driver of the second Humvee as they went by, saw the angry line of his lips pressed together, and felt as if this whole thing might really be over.

  The guards at the rear gate took one look at Alena’s ID and waved them through. The Homeland Security agent behind the wheel of the Jeep didn’t bother with a parking space; he drove right up to the paved walkway by the heavily fortified rear doors and killed the engine. Alena thanked him and climbed out. Walker went around to help Priya. She gave him a dark look, as if she blamed him for her injuries, maybe for all the day’s horrors, but she accepted his aid in climbing from the Jeep and leaned on him for support as she started up the walkway.

  “It’s an exodus,” she said, nodding toward the many people and cars in the parking lot.

  Lab coats, T-shirts, suit jackets—something like twenty people were loading plastic containers and metallic cases into their cars, presumably files and research, and were leaving Garland Mountain like rats leaving a sinking ship.

  Walker helped Priya shuffle a bit faster along the walkway, trying to catch up with Alena. “You’re letting all these people leave? You don’t know what research they’re taking with them.”

  Alena reached the door, showed her ID, and the guard inside buzzed them through. She yanked the door open and held it for them. Her blue eyes sharpened.

  “They’re not our concern. Better they be out of the way, somewhere safe.”

  Priya hesitated to enter the building. She held back, taking long breaths, and Walker worried that blood loss had finally caught up with her and she might collapse. The aboveground levels of the Garland Mountain complex were sprawling, and he knew they must have some kind of medical facility inside.

  “You okay?” he asked. “Do you need me to—”

  Priya turned to glare at Alena, who still held the door open for them. “I want to see Rose.”

  “She’s already here,” Alena replied. “They’re getting her settled in a containment room. You’ll be able to see her very soon.”

  “I don’t trust you,” Priya said.

  Alena smiled thinly. “Fair enough. Trust is currency. We shouldn’t give it to people who haven’t earned it. Give me a chance to try.”

  After another moment’s hesitation, Priya nodded, and Walker escorted her through the door and past the guards, who buzzed them through an inner door and into an industrial-looking lobby area, much more utilitarian than the gleaming reception area at the main entrance. Across the lobby, a pair of techs in hazmat suits were spraying some kind of orange-tinged foam onto the walls and floor of an open elevator, making it clear which direction they had taken Rose. Nobody else wore hazmat suits, and nobody stepped forward to try to disinfect Walker, Priya, or Alena, so the Garland Mountain team still felt the sickness couldn’t be transmitted except by Rose’s touch. But Rose had touched the walls, railings, or doors inside the elevator, so they weren’t taking any chances.

  “This way,” one of the guards said, gesturing to the left, where a set of steel doors buzzed to let them in. The guard pulled the door open and held it as they went through.

  Perhaps in a kind of protective gesture, Walker went ahead of them, so whatever waited on the other side, he would encounter it first. Priya had taken a bullet many hours before and still managed to shuffle along behind him. She needed further care before she collapsed completely, but he knew Rose would be her first priority. Alena came last, but Walker knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Three figures approached them along the corridor, one of them a ginger-haired Homeland Security agent with her hand resting on the butt of her gun. She stalked slightly behind the other two, walking as if she had found herself in a combat zone. But the two men who preceded her were the ones who caught Walker’s full attention. One of them was the arrogant lab coat he’d thought of as Rasputin when they’d met almost twelve hours before. The man’s name tag floated in Walker’s memory—Justin W. Jones.

  The other guy shouted Priya’s name and rushed along the corridor toward her.

  Ted Sinclair.

  Walker stepped aside to let Ted get to Priya. Bleary-eyed, disheveled, Ted paused with his hands outstretched. He’d been about to pull Priya into a hug, but now he saw the bloody field dressing on her shoulder and the blood soaking through her T-shirt, and his face crumbled.

  “Oh, Pri,” Ted said.

  “It’s okay,” she said, sliding her right arm around him and leaning her head against his chest. “Just be gentle.”

  Alena, Walker, Dr. Jones, and the ginger DHS agent stood awkwardly in the corridor as the two of them wept together. Priya had been tough, holding her grief and fear inside, but now she let her tears flow. Walker had been nurturing a lot of ugly thoughts about Ted Sinclair over the course of the day, but as he watched the tenderness and love with which Ted comforted Priya, he softened. Ted might be a drunk and an addict—hell, Walker could smell the whiskey sweating out of his pores—but he was a good enough father that his daughter’s girlfriend put her faith in him, leaned on him like this.

  Walker decided he wasn’t in any position to judge another father.

  “They’re taking care of Rose,” Ted said, holding Priya at arm’s length. She might have been a grown woman, almost done with college, but he wiped her tears away as if she were his child. “I know she’s infected. Dr. Jones explained what’s happening. They’re searching for a cure, and in the meantime, they think they might be able to make the infection … stop, or…”

  Ted looked at Justin W. Jones, searching for the right words.

  “Dr. Isenberg might be able to force the infection into dormancy. Suspend the symptoms,” Jones said, glancing at Walker and Alena. “It’s a long shot, but if it works … well, it won’t keep Rose from being contagious. She’d have to remain quarantined. But it would prevent her from getting any sicker in the meantime, giving us more time.”

  Alena pushed past Walker, staring at Jones. “This is something you were developing after Oscar Hecht was infected?”

  Jones thought the question over. “Not exactly. But they were able to use Hecht’s notes to build on.”

  “Let me guess. You had Hecht researching how to control the infection,” Walker said, glaring. “Turn it on and turn it off, so it would be a more effective murder weapon.”

  Priya shot him an admonishing glance. “It doesn’t matter. The only thing we care about is whether or not it will help Rose.”

  “And Maeve,” Ted added. He glanced at Walker. “They brought Rose in, but Dr. Jones said they had to be more careful with Maeve. That she’s on the way.”

  Walker flinched, his stomach twisting into a knot. H
e glanced at Priya, saw the sorrow and pity contort her features, watched Ted Sinclair as he read the look that passed between them.

  “What?” Ted said, shaking his head. “No. Dr. Jones said—”

  Alena stared at the lab director with a sneer of disgust. “Dr. Jones is a fucking coward.”

  Walker put a hand on Ted’s arm. “I’m sorry, Ted. I said I’d get her off the mountain—”

  Ted pulled away from Walker, lips pressed tightly, trembling. He started to speak and then only shook his head again. In less than twenty-four hours, he’d lost a son and a daughter and their mother, the woman with whom he’d shared a life and three children. The only one left was Rose.

  This time, Priya was the one to comfort him.

  A long minute passed in the silence of grief. Finally, Alena went over and put a hand on Ted’s arm. “Mr. Sinclair, why don’t Dr. Jones and I take you to see Rose now? We can’t be in the room with her at the moment, but we can speak to her through glass.”

  Ted stood a bit straighter and nodded. Alena gestured to Dr. Jones, and the four of them started down the corridor, back the way Jones and Ted had come, apparently to find an elevator that wasn’t in the midst of being sterilized. Walker watched Priya, thinking she might turn and give a wave of farewell, but she had more important things on her mind.

  “Dr. Walker, yes?” the ginger DHS agent said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m supposed to take you down to sublevel two. Apparently, they’re waiting for you.”

  Walker cast a final glance at Ted Sinclair. Whiskey or no whiskey, it said something about the man that he hadn’t drunk or drugged himself into a coma after the day he’d had. Walker silently wished him well, then turned to the DHS agent.