But as she approached she realised there was no overturned car, no terrible crash. The flames rose from a circle of steel drums, spilling greasy black smoke that coiled above the bridge like a stormcloud. The people walking before the flames were hunched, ragged, eyes half-lidded. Kimberly saw bare legs black with engine oil. Men grinning with toothless mouths. Something turned on a spit above the drum-fire, some hunk of animal dripping fat into the coals, shielded from the rain by a sheet of corrugated tin.
They looked up as she came to a stop, yellowed eyes wide. Kimberly's mouth was dry, her tongue a dead weight against her lips. The men came closer. They shuffled, clutching their stomachs, and for a moment she thought those poor men. Homeless living on the outskirts, begging for change from cars passing over the bridge.
Then she blinked and saw what was turning over the fires. It'd only been a silhouette against the flame but now the shape was clear. The square jut of a kneecap. A bare foot, five toes blackened by fire, the skin peeling back from the sole.
An adult's leg, sheared off just below the hip.
The closest of the men staggered towards the car, one hand scratching at his beard, the other reaching, grasping. "You have to help me," he said. His palm left a greasy print on the windshield, quickly washed away by the rain. "It's so damn cold. You have to get us out, please-"
Behind him, by the oil drums, a figure inched out from behind the fire. A woman, pregnant, naked, her belly huge and glistening in the light of the flames. She carried her swollen stomach with both hands. Her mouth was full of filed teeth.
Terror took control of Kimberly's hands. She slammed the car into reverse and the hobo's palms squeaked against the windows. They were running after her now, stumbling over their own feet, the pregnant woman screaming, "Get her, get the car!" The engine whined in protest and the nearest hobo was closing the gap, pawing at the front headlights, his ragged nails scraping over the hood. "Stop!" His fingers slapped the side mirror but the Volkswagen surged and he tumbled on to the road, face down. "Please-"
The pedal was pressed to the floor. Her knuckles were white on the wheel. The flames shrank into the distance and the screams fell away. Kimberly yanked the wheel, spinning the car around. The air filled with the stink of smoking rubber as the car skidded on wet asphalt and rocked to a stop, now pointed back the way she'd come. With the fire a smudge in the rear mirror, she hit the gas.
The Volkswagen coughed, lurched, and stalled.
Her palms were sweaty on the gear stick. "Oh fuck," she whispered. "Start, please start." She glanced in the rear view mirror. The men were closing the gap, stumbling over each other in their eagerness. They were silhouettes before the fire, casting spidery shadows.
"Go!" She cranked the key and pumped the gas. The car jumped and spluttered but the engine didn't catch. She hammered the wheel, twisting the key until she thought it'd bend in the ignition. "Fuck you, fuck-"
The first of the homeless men had his hands on the trunk when the engine finally caught. The Volkswagen leaped forward, tires wailing against the macadam, and Kimberly slammed the car into gear as the men missed their grip and fell to their hands and knees. The engine whined as the Volkswagen struggled to gain speed.
Their screams carried through the mist. "Get back here!" the man called. "Help us, goddammit!"
Kimberly didn't lift her foot from the pedal. She watched as the men receded in the rear view mirror, and it seemed that they shrank all too fast, as if their section of the bridge was being drawn away by a terrible gravity, the firelight shrinking to a tiny point within seconds, the silhouettes of the men and the pregnant woman compressed to black dots.
She heard the man cry, "Please!" but his voice was cut off as if a door had slammed between them. Then the mainland rushed up impossibly quickly, the mist receding and light blooming before her, and she sobbed with relief as she burst out into the soft glow of dusk.
She dared another glance in the mirror. It'd only been a few seconds since she'd swung the car around and left the men and their steel-drum fire behind, but there was no sign of them behind her. The bridge squatted silently, extending straight for half a mile over the waters before it vanished into ocean fog. No fires, no hobos, no severed legs turning on spits.
She didn't wait to double-check. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and kept the pedal down as she swept along the highway. A sign by the side of the road read WELCOME TO RUSTWOOD; scrawled in yellow over the printed letters was thick lettered graffiti reading THE TRUE QUEEN LIVES.
Every letter was a nail in her chest.
Chapter 8
The blood in the bowl sizzled and blackened before Detective Jonathan Goodwell's eyes. He wrapped gauze around his arm, wincing at the antiseptic sting. His basement was quiet aside from the hiss as the offering ignited. The air was filled with the barbecue tang of cooking blood.
He closed his eyes and waited.
Finally, the voice came. "Is she safe?"
"Same as last time we spoke. She's at home now with her husband. He'll watch out for her."
"Is she... curious?"
Goodwell was glad that whoever or whatever squatted on the far side of their blood-borne telephone line couldn't see how he rolled his eyes. "Very curious. What do you want me to do, keep her under house arrest?"
"She can't explore."
"I can't stop her."
"Find a way! If she searches..."
"I understand." There were things in Rustwood that even Goodwell wasn't privy to, and he was glad of it. Just as it was easier to not ask what parts of the cow went into your burger, it was best not to know what it took to keep the gears of the town turning. And besides, it wasn't Rustwood's engineers that worried him so much as the things they kept locked away. All it would take was the wrong woman in the wrong place to upset the balance and bring the whole structure of the town tumbling down around their heads. "What do you suggest?"
"She wishes to escape." The voice was glass sliding on glass. He could hear the grumble of an old smoker in that voice, and a child of five in pigtails, and a woman pleading in the dark. "I fear she will-"
"Go places she shouldn't?"
"You must protect her."
"I'll do my best." Goodwell rubbed his eyes. He hadn't slept more than a few hours the previous night. Maybe something he'd eaten, or maybe guilt chewing at his insides. "You want me to sit outside her house? I can't just leave my job. They're writing her name everywhere now, and the goddamn fires-"
"Protect her!" The voice swelled until it rattled Goodwell's teeth in the sockets. The candles alongside the bowl swooped horizontal and guttered. "Protect her or I take you into the mines!"
Goodwell's gut clenched. "You can't mean that."
"Protect-" The voice faded, yanked away into the dark. Not for the first time, Goodwell closed his eyes and imagined himself in a train carriage, his head out the window, listening to someone shouting at him from the platform as the engine pulled away. The scattering of voices lost to distance and time.
He blinked. The basement was dark and the voice was gone.
He cleaned the altar and vacuumed the dust bunnies before creeping upstairs. It was late evening and Hannah had retired early. Her sullen silence was code for I have a headache. She'd had a lot of headaches recently. He couldn't remember the last time they'd had a proper conversation. He was out of the house more often than he was in, and every time he stumbled home late and found her cleaning or reading or sitting silently in the garden the further away she seemed to be.
He undressed and inched into bed beside her, careful not to let the springs squeak, and pulled the sheet up over his nakedness. Hannah didn't stir. Her face was buried in the pillow and he couldn't hear her breathing. He touched her bare shoulder. She was sweating, her skin slick beneath his fingers. "Hannah?"
She grunted tonelessly.
"Nothing." Goodwell sank back down and buried his face in his pillow. "Nothing, honey. Sleep."
But he lay there a long time,
fists clenched by his sides, before sleep finally arrived.
* * *
When Kimberly pulled into the driveway of one-one-eight Rosewater and saw the bay windows lit up from within by the warm orange glow of good old electrical bulbs, she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. There was something so damn ordinary about the scene that it felt almost absurd. She'd spent a quarter of a tank of gas driving across a never-ending bridge, nearly crushed a homeless man beneath the wheels of a stolen car, and now she'd returned to her jailer like an obedient puppy... and it was all so damn homely.
The curtains twitched aside. Peter stared through the gap. The curtains fell.
It was a long time before Kimberly was able to release her hands from the wheel. Easing out into the rain felt like admitting defeat, but she kept her shoulders back and jaw clenched tight as she crossed the garden. The door was unlocked and Peter was waiting just beyond the threshold, arms crossed, scowling. "Took your sweet time."
"Got lost," she whispered.
"Give me the keys."
She tried to duck past but Peter moved to block the hallway. "You can't just run off," he said. "One day Curtis is gonna start talking and he won't know the word Momma because you're out doing... whatever the hell it is you do. Two nights, now!"
"I don't have to tell you anything."
"No," Peter said. "You don't." His Adam's apple bobbed as he stepped back, hands knotted before him, letting her pass. "I can't do this forever, Kim. I..." He peered over her shoulder. "There's someone out there."
Kimberly turned, peering out into the darkness beyond the garden. The bungalows along Rosewater Avenue were identical Barbie doll houses in neat rows, bordered by well-trimmed hedges, their doors locked, rain tinkling off terracotta roof-tiles, moonlight shining on their immaculate lawns.
She couldn't see anyone out there, but even so, her scalp tingled. She closed the door and turned both locks.
Peter was still staring. She sighed. "I don't know what you want from me."
"The truth?"
"I told you already."
"Your amnesia bullshit? I don't get it. How can you pretend like..." Peter dragged his fingers through his hair. He looked terribly old, far older than he had the day he'd visited her in hospital. Then he sighed and said, "I have some wine."
"Say what?"
"Look, I know you don't want to talk. Just sit with me and drink it and let me pretend this marriage isn't screwed beyond repair. Can we do that?" His eyes were wide, pleading. "Just one glass."
Kimberly's hands clenched into fists in her pockets. She wanted to say no, to take the car again and run, but there was something about Peter that made her feel... God, was it guilt? Did she actually feel bad for him?
Well, it'd shut him up for an hour. And it might help her forget what she'd seen on the bridge. That limb turning slowly in the smoke...
"One glass," she said. "No talking."
A smile twitched at the corners of Peter's mouth. "Good enough."
* * *
Bo wanted to blink but for some reason his eyelids wouldn't respond. They were taut, peeled back, no matter how badly his eyes itched. Instead, he tilted his head and let the rain wash them clean.
The light of the house across the street was soothing, although he didn't know why. It was a house he'd never seen before, a two story bungalow with a cute white mailbox and pink curtains already drawn to ward off the night. He couldn't quite remember how he'd come to it. There was a gap in his memory, a gaping blackness that began with the drumming in the pipes, the clattering that never ceased. He remembered trudging downstairs to stop the noise. Something warm between his teeth. Then a blink, and he'd found himself on this moonlit strip of street, this house, this cold, this rain.
He'd been drawn across the city. It was something like a scent and something like instinct, leading him over the hills and through the darkened alleys to Rustwood Heights. He didn't know why, but if he had to put a name to it he'd call it fate.
He coughed. His throat was raw. Something pressed there, a hard spiny pressure that choked his breath. Jacinta would know what it was, he thought. Jacinta would have something in her handbag.
He wondered if this was Jacinta's house. Maybe that was why he'd come. He'd glimpsed her address on some insurance form. Maybe she'd slipped him a note. Asked him to visit. He remembered Jacinta at the hospital, standing behind the reception desk. Her mouth opening and closing. No words, though. He couldn't remember a single word.
He remembered her opening her mouth. Had they kissed?
No. He'd never forget that. But a car was pulling up now, a Volkswagen washed clean by the rain. He slipped back into the shadow of an elm as the car turned into the drive and a woman stepped out. She wore bluejeans and a heavy black jacket, and his heart tripped a beat as she walked up the drive and let herself in.
That was Jacinta, he was sure. No way to mistake the way she walked. He'd watched her too many times.
And yet, something whispered no. A memory crawling up from somewhere suppressed. Jacinta lying face down, Jacinta screaming, the crack of her jaw-
He shook his head. Bad dreams. Nothing but bad dreams. Just like the woman with the umbrella. Lingering nightmares. He wasn't a kid any more. They meant nothing.
The front door closed and Bo watched in silhouette as the woman - yes, it had to be Jacinta - paced behind the curtains. She shucked off her jacket and settled into the sofa. There was something in her hand. A wineglass.
A second silhouette crossed from left to right. A man, tall, broad shouldered. He cupped Jacinta's cheek.
The tightness in his chest was back, a pressure like something was jammed into the space between his lungs. She'd never mentioned a boyfriend. She never wore a ring. She'd always said...
Bo licked his lips and felt skin flake away beneath his tongue. It was getting harder to bend his fingers now. Whatever flu he'd caught was hitting him hard. But a flu he could deal with. A betrayal was worse. She...
The silhouettes rose and left the living room. Bo's jaw clenched. The rain was a drumbeat on the back of his skull.
He waited.
Chapter 9
The drill press whine was achingly loud and dawn sunlight was breaking through the windows at his back but Fitch only had one pipe bomb left to make. The process was simple but exacting, and he'd spent just as much time lining up the drill bit as he had breaking into Rustwood High.
He'd arrived just past three a.m. with his bag of pipes and caps slung over his back and circled the building in the dark, searching for an unlocked door or an open window. But everything on the ground floor was sealed tight, the doors locked with heavy bolts. In the end he'd gone around the back of the school, away from the main road, scaled a trellis up to the second floor and busted in the window of a geography classroom
No security guards had come running at the sound of broken glass, and he'd had all the time in the world to creep through the shadowed halls and locate the woodshop. Nice place - rows of drill presses and belt sanders, a high powered lathe and even welding equipment in the far corner. Better than anything he'd had in high school. The air smelled sweetly of sawdust, and the echo of his footsteps was strangely comforting. It made him feel alone, and these days alone was good.
He'd even stolen a pair of safety glasses - no point in preparing for war and blinding himself before he'd even reached the battleground. Caution is a virtue, that's what his father always said. Fools rush in. Or was that his uncle's motto? Did it even matter?
Now, after three long hours, he was done. He lifted the drill and held the screwcap up to the light. Perfect. Now he had to pack the pipes with explosives and scrap, screw the lid on the end and insert the pencil-thin blasting cap through the hole. With his lighter in his pocket he'd be a force of nature. Like Rommel flattening a path through the Belgian forests, leaving a trail of flames behind him.
And then, at the far end of the woodshop, a door creaked open.
Fitch dropped low, his heart hamm
ering in his chest, the screwlid clenched tight in his fist. He thrust his left hand into the hip pocket of his coat. "Is it them?" he asked the chittering thing. "Who-"
"Hello?"
The voice was hesitant, coughing. Old. Fitch peered over the drill-press. A man waited in the shadows at the far end of the woodshop, stooped, leaning on the doorframe. He wore a woollen top the colour of old cream and faded slacks. No sunglasses. The custodian, then.
Fitch slipped down again, hoping that he'd kept out of sight. There was no way to pretend the drill press hadn't been grinding away only moments before - hell, the bit was probably still hot to the touch - but if he moved quietly he might be able to split without giving the poor guy a heart attack. He gathered up the pack of pipes and caps as silently as he could, but despite his best efforts steel clinked against steel as he pulled it on to his back.
The custodian shuffled into the woodshop, letting the door click closed behind him. "Hello? If you're a student then you'd better clear out, and if you're not a student then the police have already arrived. I see you back there! I see you!"
Fitch swore under his breath. This was bad. Not as bad as if the beast had turned up at his door, but police and pipe bombs didn't mix. He really didn't want to know what'd happen when the cell door closed...
He glanced over his shoulder. The woodshop's emergency exit was locked but he figured he could bust through. No idea where it'd pop him out, but it was better than leaving in cuffs. He crept back, crablike, keeping out of sight. The pack jangled on his shoulders, the hard ends of the pipes digging into his ribs. The custodian wasn't waiting around, though. He inched further into the woodshop, a broom in his right hand like a club. "Better come out!" he called. "This is only gonna get worse! You know what sort of damage you could do, messing around in here on your own? Is that you, Bob Polcat? I know your mother! You get out of-"
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