by Stone, Kyla
“What did you say? You ready to talk now?”
She rasped an unintelligible response.
He squatted in front of her, still holding her hand. “Tell me. That’s all you have to do. This will all be over soon. You tell me and it all ends. The pain goes away. I go away. I walk out that door and you never have to see me again.”
Of course, he was planning on walking out the door, but not before he’d finished what he’d started. It would be intensely pleasurable to snap her bony neck, to watch the light fade from those defiant eyes.
To know that he was the one with absolute power, absolute control, absolute authority. He ruled death itself.
The old woman whispered her answer.
Still smiling, he leaned in close.
She raised her chin and spat in his face. Globules of bloody spittle splattered his cheeks, nose, and eyes.
Pike flinched and reared back, nearly falling.
He wiped the disgusting slobber from his face with the back of his arm. Anger flared through him. It took every ounce of his self-control not to seize his knife and end her right then and there.
That wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
“I’ll never tell you a thing!” she shouted.
He tightened his grip on her hand, feeling her fragile bones creaking and grinding beneath the pressure of his thumb. Anticipation quickened his heartbeat.
“Everyone does, in the end,” Pike said. “Everyone.”
39
Liam
Day Seven
Liam pushed across the snow in his snowshoes, Hannah right behind him, the dog ambling through the trees beside them. The day was windless, snowflakes falling fast and silent, muting all sound.
The snowshoes spread out their weight and kept them from slogging through deep snow with every step. They’d both used snowshoes before, though Hannah’s were too big for her, and she struggled to find a smooth, steady rhythm. Her condition made it even harder.
Before they’d left, CiCi had given them two pairs of snowshoes—hers and her late husband’s. “I’m not goin’ on any arduous treks with this old body,” she’d said with a dismissive wave. “Not these days. Ricardo would be pleased knowin’ his things were put to good use.”
She had also insisted they spend the night, since dusk was already falling by the time they’d eaten and warmed up. Hannah needed a warm, safe place to sleep, so despite Liam’s misgivings, they’d stayed.
They’d showered, scrubbed their itchy scalps and grimy bodies, and washed their clothing. CiCi had cooked them a delicious meal of the last of her pot roast, mashed potatoes, and green beans.
As enjoyable as it was, he hadn’t allowed himself to relax. Not for one second.
He blinked the exhaustion from his eyes. The sharp sting of the cold kept him alert. He hadn’t slept last night, not really.
In the military, he’d learned to extend his ability to stay awake by going into a sort of meditative state. A “cat nap” of sorts, where he slipped into a very light sleep, shutting down anything extraneous beyond awareness. The caffeine pills he’d popped didn’t hurt, either.
Liam had guarded the house until dawn, watching for the psychopath.
He wouldn’t get the better of them again. Liam wouldn’t allow it.
Ghost had taken it upon himself to patrol the house, too. He moved constantly from the kitchen to the dining room to the living room and back again, sniffing at the doors and windows and throwing Liam occasional disdainful looks, like he didn’t trust Liam to get the job done.
After an uneventful night, they’d eaten a hearty breakfast and left CiCi’s that morning. The woman had insisted on packing their backpacks with another fresh loaf of bread, two boxes of Ritz crackers, two cans of tuna fish, and a small jar of peanut butter. Their canteens and water bottles were filled with fresh water.
“It’s no feast, but it’ll get you to the next town,” she’d said, shooing them away when they tried to thank her.
When they’d left, they used large pine boughs to brush across their tracks for the first several hundred yards into the woods, and then changed direction to throw off their pursuer.
The thick fat flakes tumbling from the sky would cover their tracks soon. Hopefully, it would be enough.
Liam held the Glock in both hands, constantly scanning the trees around them and behind them, checking their six and searching for shadows or movement that didn’t belong.
He saw nothing but snow and trees and more snow, heard nothing but their own ragged breaths, their snowshoes swishing, the occasional puff of clumps of snow falling from branches or a squirrel scurrying through the underbrush.
Despite their exertion, Hannah’s teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. She looked miserable but did her best to keep up with him. She never once complained.
She just kept going, jaw clenched, a line between her brows, her eyes almost glassy with the intensity of her focus.
She wouldn’t tell him she needed to stop. He’d have to do the stopping for them, or she’d collapse on the trail.
He felt a pang of pity for her—and a growing, if grudging, respect.
“Here,” Liam said, pointing several yards off the trail. The trail was straight in both directions, so he had a clear line of sight. A large, flat boulder about five feet in diameter lay to their right. “Time for lunch.”
She nodded gratefully and sank onto the rock. She hunched forward, her hands cupped in front of her face, and breathed on her chilled fingers. Her face was ghost-pale and windblown, her eyes and nose reddened.
A fire would warm her up, but it would take too long and was too risky. They needed to get more distance between them and the psycho.
He’d decided they should stop in the tiny village of Branch to shore up their supplies, find shelter for the night, and look for transportation. As much as she might argue otherwise, Hannah couldn’t hike for miles day after day. Not in her condition.
By his calculations, they were less than five miles from Branch, which wasn’t far from the trail still heading south. They had four hours until dusk. Once they reached the town, they could find an abandoned house, barn, or maybe even a hotel still open if they were really lucky.
Liam had the cash if they needed it.
They ate the tuna fish and Ritz crackers from CiCi. Ghost drank his fill from the water Hannah poured into her camping pan.
The dog trotted in circles around them, his plumed tail waving like a flag as he kicked up snow with his paws and let out self-satisfied woofs. At least someone was enjoying the snow.
Hannah shoved an entire cracker into her mouth and chewed hungrily. Big wet snowflakes settled on her hood, her shoulders, her eyelashes. “What do you think this town will be like?”
“No idea,” Liam mumbled.
“What were the other places like? On your way here?”
“Bad and getting worse.”
“What about Chicago?”
Liam stiffened. He saw the planes overhead again, heard the explosive crash. The terror, the running, the blood. Jessa’s desperate, beseeching eyes, gazing up at him. Please, Liam. Please.
He blinked the terrible images out of his head. “Chicago was Hell.”
She didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Just chewed and swallowed and drank more water. She wiped her runny nose. “I miss people.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t?”
“It’s better to be alone.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Alone is terrible. Alone is the worst feeling in the world.”
Shame pierced him to his core. He chose to be alone. Because his past hounded him relentlessly. Because he was a man haunted.
The things he’d lived through in Afghanistan and Iraq, in war-torn countries all over the world…they stalked his dreams, tormented him. He’d seen the worst humanity could do to each other. And it had scarred him.
To him, solitude was a comfort.
And a cop-out, Jessa whispered in his ear
. He saw Jessa’s face in his mind’s eye, the disappointment in her eyes.
Hannah hadn’t been given a choice. It had been taken from her.
He watched the snowflakes drifting in swirling, lacy curtains all around them. Snowflakes landed and quickly melted on his cheeks, his nose. Cold and feather-soft.
“People do awful things to each other,” he muttered guiltily. “People are dangerous. Especially now.”
A shadow passed across her face. An intense pain behind her eyes. Terrible things had happened to her. She knew the things humans did to each other—she didn’t need him to tell her that. “Not everyone.”
He was surprised she had any faith in humanity left. He didn’t. “We’ve just been plunged into chaos, with finite and fast-dwindling resources. Put food, shelter, and survival on the line, and people will stab you for a loaf of bread.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said softly—so softly, he almost didn’t hear her. She finished eating, slowly wrapped up the crackers, and stuffed them back in her pack. “I—I can’t believe that.”
She gazed up at him then, snowflakes clinging to the damp strands of hair poking out from beneath her hat and furred hood. Her eyes were as green as the fir and spruce trees surrounding them.
They pinned him, steady and unblinking. Disquieting. “Some people are bad. There is evil in the world. I know that. But there are also good people. People like CiCi.”
People like Lincoln and Jessa. The two people he’d loved most in the world. He looked away. “They’re anomalies.”
An ache swelled in his chest, acute loneliness and regret threatening to consume him. Conflicting emotions running too close to the surface. It hurt too much.
He pushed it out and focused on what he needed to do next instead. He unslung his pack, rested it on the rock, and pulled out the map and compass with his left hand, his Glock still in his right. “We need to go.”
Without a word, Hannah stood and shouldered her own pack. They adjusted their scarves over their faces and set off.
Two damaged people just trying to survive this damn cold.
Hours passed as they struggled on in silence. The snow crunched beneath his snowshoes like glass, fell in thickening sheets. His chest burned as the frozen air was dragged deep inside his lungs. Dusk was fast descending.
The snow hadn’t let up all day and didn’t look like it would soon. Two-and-a-half feet of snow would deepen to three feet or more before morning.
The woods thinned out. Occasional houses peeked through the trees. They came across a few campsites and paved roads. A farm or two.
They were closing in on civilization. He could feel it, cold dread building inside him, as steady and relentless as the falling snow.
Liam stopped. “I estimate we have an hour to go to reach Branch. It’s almost dark. I have a headlamp and you’ve got a flashlight. We can make camp, or we can keep going.”
It was the first time he’d given her an option. Maybe he was getting soft, but he didn’t want her to push herself further than she was capable of.
She blew out a crystalized cloud, her bad hand pressed against her lower back, a pained expression on her face. “We keep going.”
“You sure?”
She nodded, resolute. “Yes.”
Trepidation roiled through him. A town meant people. And people were a threat. Whatever lay behind them, he feared what lay ahead would be worse.
40
Pike
Day Seven
Gavin Pike hunched his shoulders and ducked his head through the driving snow. The wind blew harsh and cold, but most of his face was covered and goggles protected his eyes.
He’d stolen the old woman’s purple snowmobile from her garage. The 1999 Polaris Trail Touring took a few tries to get started, but once it did, it ran like a well-oiled machine.
He drove south on North Hamilton Road, eating up the miles, only swerving occasionally to avoid a stalled car or truck mounded with snow. It was a rural road in the best of times. Now, it was absolutely empty.
He was done with the forest. Done with struggling through deep snowdrifts to track his prey on foot. He’d leveled up with the Polaris. He had to take a longer route, but it didn’t matter.
The old woman had lasted far longer than he’d expected. Longer than anyone he’d previously dealt with.
No doubt she believed she was acting courageously, heroically. But heroics meant nothing. She’d broken in the end.
That was the beauty of it. The exquisite, scintillating perfection of humanity: they were all so frail, so weak. Nothing but a bag of meat and bone and flesh, just like any other creature.
It didn’t matter if you were special forces or a CIA spy or a terrorist. Apply enough pressure in the right place, and snap!
The distal, middle, and proximal bones of the phalanges. The five flimsy metacarpals. The scaphoid and trapezoid capitate of the carpels. The ulna. The radius. They all broke.
Everyone broke. Getting them to that point—watching the hope drain out of them, the despair take hold, the terrible realization in their eyes—you held absolute power, you were absolute death, and they were utterly helpless before your wrath.
He smiled beneath his balaclava, his lips chapped and cracking from the cold, but he barely felt it. Barely felt the snow or the wind or the darkness closing in, the shadows lengthening.
He knew where they were going. He would get there first.
He’d have plenty of time to set up an ambush.
Let the games begin.
41
Hannah
Day Seven
“There it is,” Hannah said.
Liam snapped off his headlamp. Hannah turned off her flashlight and stuck it in her pocket. Cold nipped at her exposed skin as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
She could just make out the dim shapes of trees and bushes all around them. They’d exited the forest on a hill, the small village of Branch, Michigan spread out before them.
The place was blink-and-you’d-miss-it small—a main street lined with a handful of hunched one and two-story buildings and a few clustered neighborhoods, everything smothered in white.
Smoke rose from the chimneys of several dozen houses. Dozens more had candles or battery-operated lanterns glowing from their windows. She saw a few bonfires burning in backyards, dark shadows huddled close to the fire for warmth.
More than half the homes were dark and silent. Either their owners were away on holiday, or the owners had left in search of a hotel or family and friends to stay with.
Or maybe the owners were still inside the dark cold houses, families hunched beneath every blanket and sheet and towel in the house, children and parents dressed in as many layers of clothing as they could wear, shivering and desperate.
Hannah shivered herself, her teeth chattering. She felt her body heat leaching out of her, degree by painful degree. Her legs were sore. Her whole body felt like she’d just run a marathon through the Arctic Tundra.
CiCi had given her a pair of thermal underwear and fleece-lined pants still held up by the makeshift paracord as it was more comfortable against her belly than a belt. A fleece undershirt and hat with built-in earmuffs.
Her clothes were better fitting and warmer now, but it was still freezing out.
What she wouldn’t give for a warm bed, a soft mattress, a pile of thick, cozy blankets. What she wouldn’t give to be back in CiCi’s warm, cozy lamp-it kitchen.
Right now, just getting out of the snow and wind would be enough.
She started forward, but Liam put his hand out, halting her. “Wait. We have to be careful.”
Hannah wrapped her arms around her chest and hugged herself. She wished Ghost was here, but thirty minutes ago, he’d flushed a hare from some bushes, given chase, and disappeared.
She always felt better with him near her, steadier, more centered. Safer.
“We should avoid main street,” Liam said. “Look for an empty house off by itself. And be discreet.
It’s best if no one knows we’re here.”
She nodded without speaking.
“If we get separated, meet back at that hill. See those three spruce trees at the crown, with the tree stump right in the center? Hide in there, and I’ll find you. That’s our rally point.”
She didn’t want to think about being separated and completely on her own again. For all the suspicion and distrust she’d felt toward him, he’d done nothing to harm her.
She was alive because of him. She’d come to rely on his quiet, steady presence.
“Follow me. Stay right behind me. Do whatever I say. If I say run, you turn and run. Don’t stop. Don’t look back.”
She nodded soberly. Liam started forward and she followed closely behind.
They crept down the snowy hill, trying not to slip or make a sound to betray their presence. Hannah almost stumbled over her own snowshoes twice, but Liam caught her arm.
They skirted the first street. Then the next.
A row of small houses with narrow backyards separated them from the mom and pop businesses on main street: a small general store, gas station, bank, a Dollar General, a couple of restaurants.
They crept through one back yard, then another. They avoided the houses with lights or smoke. Most of the homes were quiet and dark.
It was eerily silent. The snow absorbed all sound. It felt like creeping through a frozen ghost town.
Hannah’s heartrate quickened. Blood roared in her ears.
She stared hard at each house as they passed. The blank black windows stared back at them like eyes. She imagined people inside, watching them.
Liam stopped abruptly. She nearly ran into him.
He twisted around, seized her forearm, and pulled her against the side of a brick house. He pressed his back against the wall next to her. He gripped his pistol in both hands.
