by Rachel Caine
They could not let him get away now. Not now.
Walt was gesturing to his men again, but this time, they hauled her and Patrick up to their feet, turned them around, and released the handcuffs. She automatically rubbed at the sore places the metal had left on her wrists, but she was thinking fast, and she knew Patrick was doing the same. She locked eyes with him as she turned, and before he could speak, she said, “You let him kill our payday? You asshole! I needed my share!”
He got it, instantly, and shoved her backward. “Stow it, bitch. You’ll get paid when I say you get paid.”
“I didn’t sign up for this cracker militia shit, and your friends just put a bullet in the skull of the man I found for you. You think that isn’t going to ruin my life just a little bit? You burned me, Vaughn. I’m not going to forget it.”
Patrick looked at her with the deadest eyes she’d ever seen in him, an absolute zero of emotion, and in one smooth motion reached sideways, took Walt’s gun, and aimed it at her heart.
“Fuck you,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
She felt it. Not an instant death, not quite; there was time for the shock to travel to her brain, for her heart to struggle to beat and fail and fibrillate, for shock and panic to set in. Her mouth worked, opening and closing for breath she couldn’t seem to pull into her lungs. The pain was sudden and shocking, but brief.
She saw red, and then she saw black, and then she was just . . . gone.
Chapter 17
She’d counted on Walt’s men to be economical, and she woke up right—they’d simply dumped her limp, dead body on top of Reynolds’ in the ditch at the edge of camp. In fact, she woke up with her head pillowed on his fat-soft stomach.
For a long moment she didn’t move or react. Patrick had gone for the shortest-term kill wound he could; nanites rushed to repair heart damage, and it was much less complex than a brain repair, like what Reynolds’ little beasts were dealing with right now. He’d fixed it so she’d wake first . . . and she had.
No way to tell how much time had passed, but it was quiet now, except for the rustle of wind in trees and the normal sounds of crickets and nocturnal creatures. Bryn carefully rolled herself off. The ditch was damp and muddy, but generally free of less pleasant things. At least it wasn’t a latrine. At moments like this, she’d learned to count her blessings.
She sat there, trying to breathe slowly and calmly. Her newly repaired heart kept pounding, pounding, pounding, and she was filled with a furious, trembling rage. So tired of this, she thought. I don’t want to keep dying. Nobody should have to do this.
But she’d managed to stay with Reynolds, she was unbound, and Patrick’s actions had ensured that Walt believed him completely. Nobody could say he was a federal agent, not after watching him shoot his own girlfriend.
He’d sold it even to her. The lightless look in his eyes haunted her. Was that who Patrick really was, down deep? Someone with no soul, no compass?
Isn’t that what you are? a piece of her whispered. Aren’t you just like Jane? Remember what you did back at the river. Remember how good it felt.
She didn’t want to remember. Because remembering left her feeling not nauseated, but . . . hungry. Especially with Reynolds’ still body lying next to her in the ditch.
Easy pickings. And something in her, something frighteningly cold and logical, was telling her that if she ate a couple of pieces, they’d heal, wouldn’t they? She needed the protein.
Besides, he deserved it.
She stomped that part of her down, bolted it under steel, but it took a lot of effort, and it left her shaking. She heard crunching footsteps nearby—patrols, walking the gravel. They’d have to be quiet. Very quiet.
The fence was reinforced cement, and as far as she could see, there was no way underneath it. . . . They were diligent about their security, which was too bad, really. She remembered the motion lights, too. No going out the front, for certain. Maybe they’d neglected to put the same system on the side of the compound, since it faced only the forest, but she had to assume that Walt’s paranoia would have won out, even if all the security ever revealed were startled deer and the occasional wandering bear.
There had to be another way out. Walt was one of those men who never had just one entrance and exit. He’d have something else, something concealed, probably under the camp, where he could evacuate his people in a crisis. At the very least, he’d have a defensible bunker. . . .
No. She thought it through, and the post-death fog finally lifted. The correct answer—the only answer—was to stay dead.
She eased herself down into position. There was light on the eastern horizon, so dawn wouldn’t be far away.
Just in case, though, she quietly leaned her weight on Reynolds’ unresisting throat, and smashed his hyoid bone. Something else for his nanites to work on, and something to keep him out. . . . Having him wake up hysterical wouldn’t do, not now.
Not yet.
The men arrived, grumbling, before dawn even blushed; there were four of them, and the first two climbed in, grabbed Bryn’s wrists and ankles, and slung her out to roll bonelessly across the gravel, where she was picked up by the other two. They didn’t make any comments. She was just a job to them, something to be finished before breakfast.
The other two grunted and struggled getting Reynolds out, but soon they were moving. Bryn kept limp, though it was an uncomfortable position for her head hanging backward. She hoped the dim light would disguise the beating pulse that was probably visible on the exposed skin.
Still, they had absolutely no reason to check her, or even look at her for long. She was dead. And they just wanted to be rid of her before she started to make a mess.
The men carrying her went in silence, and they moved with assurance. At least one of them was wearing night vision; had to be, from the general speed at which they went down the hill.
One of them stopped, putting a strain on her feet, and Bryn resisted the urge to react. “Wait,” he said. “Where are you going?”
“Gully,” the other one said. “Come on.”
“We’re supposed to bury them, Walt said.”
“Hard work to bury them. We toss ’em over, they get broken up in the fall. Come winter, nothing left but bones anyway. Nobody’s gonna find ’em down there except the bugs, and even if somebody does, there won’t be enough left to identify. Save us a couple of hours, too.”
“I don’t know. Seems—”
“Move it,” the first man said, and his voice had gone hard. “I ain’t tramping around here for my health, and I ain’t digging graves for these two assholes. You want to pray over ’em, pray over the gully that they get eaten quick.”
The second man shut up, and started following the first man’s lead. The gully. Bryn hoped it was a long way off, but she didn’t expect it would be. These didn’t seem like men who wanted to go to a whole lot of trouble for a body dump.
She was right. They slowed and stopped after about five minutes more, and she heard the men with Reynolds’ body pausing nearby.
“Jesus, this guy’s heavy,” one of them said, and groaned. “Ate his weight in cheeseburgers or something.”
“I could kill a cheeseburger right now. Maybe two.”
“Shut up and get him over the edge, and we can get chow,” snapped the man standing over Bryn. “Unless you’re so attached you want to take him back and play house.”
“Fuck you, you’re the one with the cute bald chick.”
“Cute and fucking dead.”
“Hot, though.”
“Shut up, you freak—”
And right then, Reynolds woke up, with a vengeance. And a shriek like a devil coming straight up out of hell with a pitchfork up his ass.
There was a chorus of alarm from the body disposal unit—hers and Reynolds alike. She heard his body fall with a thump to the ground, and she was dropped just a second later. She opened her eyes.
All four of the men had backed off and were staring with un
derstandable horror at the dead man flailing and screaming on the ground.
She rolled to her feet, stepped up behind one of them, and pulled his sidearm from the holster he wore in the small of his back. She pressed it to the base of his skull and said, “Boo.”
He yelped and flinched, but he didn’t try to move away. His buddies did, retreating another couple of steps in a triangle that put her and Reynolds’ still-twitching not-quite-corpse on the other three points. Sticking together for safety. One of them pulled his gun, but he couldn’t quite decide what to do with it, especially when Bryn put her arm around their comrade’s throat, yanked him off balance, and aimed over his shoulder at the ones still free. “Drop them,” she said. “Or I start making corpses. And I can promise you, that gully’s still a valid destination. Just not for me.”
“Kill this bitch!” said the one she had choked out. She grinned. It probably looked as savage as she felt.
“Yeah, please do,” she said. “In case you haven’t noticed, killing me doesn’t really help. Thanks for getting us outside the gates, boys.”
That spooked them enough that they pulled out their weapons and tossed them, which was exactly what she wanted. Reynolds had stopped screaming, but he lay on his side, sobbing. She knew how it felt. The headache alone would disable him for a while, much less the overwhelming shock of what had happened to him.
“Right,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
She didn’t know anything about these men, but they’d been party to two murders that she knew of, and found body disposal boring work. That didn’t mean they deserved to die, but she didn’t have much choice. Not if she wanted to preserve Patrick’s life.
She snapped the neck of the one she was holding. It wasn’t easy; he was a big man, but she had leverage and strength, and she felt it when the bone shifted and his spinal cord severed. Shots carried in these hills. She was going to have to do this quietly.
She expected it to be difficult. She wanted it to be. But the adrenaline that flooded her made it seem effortless as she shoved the dead man aside and leaped for the group. She hit hard, dead center, and they tumbled like bowling pins. She took hold of the center man as they rolled. He was pulling a knife, which she recognized with a pleased jolt; she needed it. So Bryn took it, by breaking his fingers, and then buried the knife twice in his chest, twisting to be sure he was down. Blood bathed her, but she was already moving on, licking the iron tang from her lips as she ducked a thrown fist, rushed in, and delivered four fast, accurate stabs, severing vital organs and arteries.
The third was running, and that triggered something awful and feral in her. She took him down ten feet away, and severed his spine with a single, sharp cut. Clean, this time. Simple.
She rose, breathing hard, fighting back the urge to rip into the corpses. She thought about cold water, icy rivers rushing over her and washing away the blood and fear and fury.
By the time she opened her eyes, Dr. Reynolds had stopped groaning, and had made it, swaying, to his knees. Behind him, the dawn was glowing gold and pink.
It was going to be a beautiful day.
He didn’t resist as she pulled him to his feet.
“Where are we going?” he asked dully. Still in shock. Good. That made him easier to handle. “What just happened?”
“I saved your ass,” she said. “Walk and shut up, Doctor.”
He did.
Chapter 18
The compound was just coming awake by the time they’d made it to the tree line near the fence; roosters were crowing, people were chattering, and Bryn heard the laughter of kids as they ran close to the ditch where she and Reynolds had spent the night dead.
She wondered if they were used to seeing bodies there. She hoped not. She hoped that was why their surly body-disposal team had been up so early, to avoid letting the kids see that ugly truth.
But she wasn’t really sure Walt would have even taken that into consideration. He was probably of the “they have to grow up sometime” school.
She had no way of knowing whether Patrick was okay inside those walls, or what his plan was to try to get out . . . at least, until the front gate opened, and a dusty, mud-stained black pickup rumbled out. Walt was in the driver’s seat, and next to him . . .
Next to him was Patrick.
Patrick seemed perfectly at ease. They were laughing together. Walt shook a cigarette out of a pack, and Patrick took it and lit up with casual competence. I didn’t know he smoked, she thought. Not that it mattered. Patrick didn’t smoke; the role he was playing did. Even the little motions—the way he sat, the tilt of his head—those were alien to her from the way Patrick normally moved. She’d never realized he was such an expert chameleon.
Funny how that seemed such a betrayal just now.
“Come on,” Bryn said, and grabbed hold of Reynolds’ arm. He was feeling better now, and from the look he shot her, he was starting to think about resisting. She twisted the arm up behind his back and stepped in close. “I’m not feeling like putting up with this, so let’s not dance, all right? Just move.”
“You won’t kill me. You need me.”
“That’s true,” she said. “But I have a really sharp knife, and I promise you, regenerating things that have been cut off is painful and slow. Think about all the things you could lose. I’ll be nice. I’ll just start with an ear.”
That got him moving, willingly. He kept up with her when she settled into a run, though he was out of shape—she wondered how that worked. Did the nanites see his extra pounds as being normal? That would suck. It meant no matter how much he dieted or exercised, he’d never permanently lose a pound. They’d just find a way to put it back on. Another way that medical miracles could screw someone, she thought, and almost laughed. Almost. Luckily, she didn’t really have the breath.
The vehicle trail was full of switchbacks, to avoid too steep a grade for safe braking, but Bryn plunged straight down the slope, with Reynolds running beside her. He wasn’t too sure-footed, but he grimly kept pace until she slowed about halfway down to check their progress. Good. They’d pulled ahead of the truck, and the farther they went, the easier the footing . . . but then, the vegetation was growing more dense as the elevation fell. More brambles, thicker trees. She cut right, trying to keep the switchback road in sight as they ran.
By the time they’d forced their way through the thickest mass at the very bottom of the slope, she was exhausted, and Reynolds was gasping for breath like a man about to expire of a heart attack. He wouldn’t, of course, but he definitely wasn’t looking too good. Was his skin just a little gray, beneath the brown? She thought it might be. And his eyes had dulled, too.
He’d been Revived, not upgraded, like her. The nanites were starting to lose their ability to heal him completely, and unlike her, his couldn’t be recharged through proteins. They were starting to break down into waste products in his blood.
He was in the early stages of decomp. She saw it in the clumsy way he folded up when they reached the edge of the road, clinging to a tree. There wasn’t much time to get what they needed out of him, not without another shot of Returné on hand.
She almost, almost felt sorry for him.
“Please,” he whimpered. “Please let me rest.”
“Soon,” she said. “Just stay put.”
He didn’t have the energy to bolt, even if he had the will, so it wasn’t much of a risk leaving him there. She readied the knife, and watched as the truck made the last set of turns on the access road and stopped.
This was the moment. She had no idea where Walt was heading. . . . If he was going toward civilization, he’d probably go left, and pass near her. If not, he’d go right, and she might miss her chance.
But she saw Patrick point, and the knot in her chest eased. They were turning toward her.
One . . . two . . . on three, she bolted from cover and jumped onto the running board of the truck. Walt reacted exactly the way most people would have, with an instinctive flinch away fro
m her, and so he didn’t see Patrick making a lightning-fast grab for the knife in Walt’s belt holster.
She didn’t have to make a move. Walt slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop, and Patrick jammed the knife into the flesh at the base of his throat—almost exactly the same spot Walt had selected when they were in opposite positions. It wasn’t, Bryn felt, an accident.
“Well, shit, Vaughn,” Walt said. “What kind of special-effects dickery is your dead girlfriend?”
“No CGIs were hurt,” Bryn said. She opened the door and stepped down from the running board as she did. Patrick unlocked Walt’s seat belt—she was mildly surprised a rebel like him was bothering to wear one—and Walt, upon some gentle knife-related urging, eased his way out of the cab. Bryn watched carefully, waiting for the tensing of muscles she knew would come; the second it did, she added her own knife, pressing in just over his kidneys. “This doesn’t have to go badly for you, Walt. Just relax.”
“What happened to my men?”
“Sorry.” She wasn’t. He turned his head just enough that she saw the hateful gleam in his eyes. “Didn’t have much of a choice. They weren’t going to just let us go.”
“You were dead. I know you were. . . .” Walt’s voice trailed off, because he’d caught sight of Reynolds clinging to the tree. His mouth opened, as if he intended to say something, but nothing came out.
“Yeah, we were,” Bryn said. “Call it a miracle.”
“Not from any god I’d worship.”
“I’d be surprised if you ever worshipped any god except your own ambition,” Patrick said. He was no longer being Vaughn, and the cigarette was gone, stamped out on the road. He looked taller now, and straighter. “Taking the truck, Walt. Do you want to live to make it back to your compound?”
“If you’re offering.”
“I am,” he said. “But you have to make me a promise.”
“Why the hell would I do that? Vaughn?”
