The Straw Men

by Marshall, Michael

  He heard another sound then, from behind. He didn't look up immediately. Ginny was enough. He was already trying to work out whether he had to shoot her, to put her out of her misery—or out of his misery, perhaps—or whether she would survive the journey back to civilization, and what would be left to save if she did. He didn't think he could face another such decision.

  He took too long working it out. It wasn't another child behind him. It was Harold Davids, and he shot Bobby in the back of the head.

  Ginny Wilkins's legs were still moving, still slowly thrashing and turning a thousand miles from her home and those who missed her, for several minutes after Robert Nygard was dead.

  •••

  Zandt was now oblivious to the rain, and had run through the last house without looking in any of the rooms. He was now just following the trail of bones, and he hadn't said anything to me for five minutes.

  I hurried after him. The trail was no longer playing with us, proudly showing us what we were amidst, but merely leading us up the centre of the path. A small square, marked out in metacarpals, a patella in its centre. A long snakelike line of vertebrae, laid out at two-foot intervals, in the right order, for all I knew. The Upright Man must have set most of the trail well in advance, only adding the first pile of ribs at the last minute, when he knew we were here to be led. The rest of it had taken time, had been done with care. The killer hadn't gotten us out of Davids's house for our sakes, but for his: he'd already prepared a meeting, and he didn't want his work going to waste. He had, in one way or another, been directing our behaviour for far longer than that.

  Finally a pair of clavicles, arranged in an inverted V, with the second femur used to turn it into an arrow. An arrow that pointed up the last fork of the path, to a house thirty yards away.

  I caught up with Zandt and grabbed him by the shoulder.

  'We're not going in there,' I said.

  He ignored me, shrugging off my hand and striding up the path to the steps that led up to the house's terrace.

  I grabbed his arm. 'He's going to be waiting for us, John—you know that. He's already killed the girl and he's going to kill us, and then he'll go find the others and kill them too. I know you cared about this girl but I'm not going to let you

  Zandt swung round and smacked me in the face.

  I fell heavily backward onto the wet path, more shocked than hurt, and began to wonder if I was missing something. Zandt hadn't even seemed to see me, hadn't looked as if he had any idea who I was.

  I slipped and struggled to my feet, and ran after him.

  Zandt walked heavily up the steps. Unlike the other houses, this had a door right in the centre of the front elevation. The steps of the terrace led straight to it, as if pouring him down a long, dark funnel. His jaw seemed to want to retreat back into his neck, as if it was only the spasming of his face and skin that was keeping it in place.

  There was something lying at the top of the steps.

  This time I didn't try to grab hold of him, but walked beside, accompanying him. I was only a step away when Zandt reached the final piece of the trail.

  A girl's sweater, now sodden with rain. But neatly folded, and with a name stitched into the front. The sweater was a peach colour. The name was Karen Zandt.

  Chapter 35

  Something told Nina not to say anything. Not to make a sound when she heard the door to the lobby softly open. Her chest hurt, and the pain was spreading through her body, grinding and clawing through her stomach, down her right arm to where she held the gun. She didn't want to think about what it would have been like had the bullet hit her lower down.

  The door swished shut. A couple of footsteps and still nobody said her name. She knew then that Bobby was dead. She couldn't see that part of the room without shoving herself up and turning her head, a movement that would have been both painful and fatally revealing. She tried to sink into the big soft chair. The footsteps continued, along with another sound. A rolling sound. Then something was put on the floor. It was quiet for a moment.

  'I know you're here,' somebody said.

  Nina's stomach lurched, and she almost said something. Almost confessed. Almost admitted that yes, here she was, as for a while she had been made to do as a child. But that was a long time ago, and now her lips clamped shut and she gripped the gun as tightly as she could. Her hand felt like it wasn't working as well as it should.

  'They wouldn't have left Bobby here,' the voice said, 'unless there was someone to look after.'

  Footsteps. Exploratory. He didn't know where she was. But she'd be in here, and he'd do what he had been told. He usually had. Though on the outside he looked strong, capable, a leader, in reality he had always followed. He had been guilty and trapped for so long, little else seemed to make sense. Hopkins's father had done that to him. Taken a quiet, reasonable life and turned it into a mess. You couldn't help liking Don, in the old days. You were pulled in the slipstream. You met at his house, drank his beer, wound up with his ideas in your head. Wound up with a life you didn't recognize, and too old to do much about it. Wound up hating the follower in yourself, and knowing who to blame.

  'Maybe you're already dead,' he said, 'but I don't think so. Anyway, I have to make sure.'

  Nina tried to slip lower, but it hurt. And any move big enough to make a difference would make a noise on the leather.

  'Bobby's dead,' the man said. His voice was old, but confident. It left no room for doubt. 'And soon the others will be. We could leave you. But loose ends will be securely tied, and that is my job.'

  The footsteps were now replaced by a sliding sound, as the man carefully progressed a few inches at a time, masking the direction of his approach. Nina was so frightened she started to cry, an involuntary response from deep inside and long ago, a response she wasn't even aware of.

  She slowly pushed her left arm behind her, bracing it against the side of the seat. She pulled her feet inward, a millimetre at a time. Her hand was shaking, and the nerves within her arm felt as if they were on fire.' An auspicious night to die,' the man said quietly. His voice was a little closer now. 'This is not the end. Not at all. This is a new beginning. A clean new world that starts with a bang.' He laughed briefly. 'Actually, that's pretty good.'

  The sliding sound stopped.

  Nina pushed with everything she had. Her body slumped forward out of the chair. She was awkward, locked up, and toppled forward, crashing down onto the glass table in front of her. She knew she'd screwed it up, but she now could see the shadow over to her right.

  Davids nodded. 'Ah. There you are.'

  She hauled her hand up and pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times.

  There was only one shot in return, and it didn't hit her.

  She waited a moment that lasted for ever, waited for the second shot. It didn't come. She pulled a knee forward, pushed herself up, turned.

  On the floor six feet away was a body. Now that she was moving, the prospect of further movement seemed almost credible, albeit bathed in a stunning white light of pain.

  She planted her feet and tottered forward.

  An old man with grey hair lay on the floor, he wasn't yet dead. She stood over him, bent at the waist. Harold Davids looked back up at her.

  'You make no difference,' he said, and then was silent.

  Nina wasn't listening. She was looking at something that lay near the reception desk. Couldn't quite make out what it was, so took a few steps forward.

  It was a small drum. It had cable on it. Cable that had been linked to a set of connectors built into the reception desk, and that then went out the door.

  The start of a new world.

  She leaned on the desk and looked over, but there was no sign of anything that would act as a trigger. It had to be triggered from somewhere else.

  She made it as far as the parking lot before one of her legs gave out, dropping her hard onto the asphalt.

  The new pain, along with the splattering of frigid rain bouncing back up int
o her face, was enough to cut through her confusion. She started to crawl toward the car.

  •••

  I pulled Zandt back from going in the front door of the house. He was almost impossible to influence by now, but I knew we shouldn't go in the front way. I'd already stopped him from going back to pick up some of the bones, had to pull the man's head into mine and shout Sarah Becker's name, to remind him there might still be someone to find alive. It didn't really matter whether she was dead, not by this stage. She was just someone we had to find. I'd changed my mind by now. We were going into the house. Whatever happened. If the man was there, so much the better, but we had to walk the path to the end.

  I pushed Zandt round the side of the house, where we found another door. It was locked. I wished Bobby was with us. He would have been able to open it quietly. I couldn't, so I warned Zandt with a hand sign and then just kicked it open.

  We ran in. Nobody was there to meet us. We swarmed left up a half-staircase toward the front of the house, to where someone would have been waiting for us behind the main door. There was no one in the room, just a big old chair with its back to the door, and a fancy bureau in a strange mottled wood. We ran, covering each other, through a layout that was now familiar. Hesitated in the back reception. It was dark and quiet and cold. But not utterly silent.

  From above we heard a sound. A thumping sound, muffled and distant.

  We headed back around, through the kitchen, toward the central staircase. Upstairs there were four bedrooms, rugs on the floor. Nothing there. Bathrooms. Nothing. Study. Nothing. But still this sound from somewhere.

  Back into the first bedroom. The sound was louder here. But now it seemed like it was coming from downstairs. Back into the second bedroom: the sound was quieter in here, but still sounded like it was coming from downstairs. I spun on the spot, gun waving, knowing that any moment someone was due to appear out of the shadows, that no one would have left a trap like this and not want to be there for the springing of it.

  Zandt ran back into the first bedroom, dropped to his knees on the floor. 'It's coming from under here.'

  'We're on the second floor,' I hissed, but then I heard the sound again and knew he was right.

  We pulled the rug aside. Floorboards. A small hatch built into them. Zandt bloodied his fingers levering it up.

  Underneath, the face of a girl. Pale, gaunt. Her forehead was livid purple from banging it up against the floor above her, for God knows how long. She was alive.

  Sarah blinked. Deep in her mind it felt as if someone had lifted her head, raised it just enough that water was no longer going in her nose. Her mouth moved.

  Zandt put his hand down and stroked her face. He said her name again and she nodded, barely able to move her head. Her eyes were red and swollen. Zandt bent close. She tried to speak again, and I could just hear a croaking whisper.

  'What's she saying?'

  'Watch out for knocking wood.' Zandt bent forward and pressed his forehead against hers, as if he was trying to pour warmth into it. The girl started to cry.

  I jammed my hands under the lip of the boards at her neck and pulled. At first they didn't move. 'He's nailed them down,' I said. 'Jesus wept. Help me, Zandt.'

  They came up, but slowly and one by one. The girl tried to push, to help, but she was far too weak and if she'd been able to do anything from her position she would have done it long ago.

  When the last two splintered off, Zandt reached down, slipped his hands under her back, and lifted her up. He hauled her over his shoulder, and that's when she saw my face and started screaming.

  •••

  Nina had to stand up. She knew she had to stand. She couldn't reach the handle from down here, let alone open it, never mind climb in. She had already noticed, from her very low vantage point, that the cable Davids had been rolling now stretched right the way across the parking lot and into the other building. The building where Bobby presumably lay. And she knew it would go out into the rest of the compound, that this was the final defence and perhaps more than that.

  She rested her head on the asphalt again. Her right arm, the arm that had stood her in such good stead all these years, that had done all the things she had asked of it, was now on strike. It was a part of someone else, someone who wasn't on her side and was not listening to what she said. It alternated between feeling like a washing glove full of Jell-o and a claw made of charcoal. This was probably not a good sign.

  Nina swallowed twice, raised her head. The ground underneath the car looked dry, drier at any rate than everywhere else. It was possible she could just crawl under there and rest for a while. That's a good idea, her body said, that's a very, very good idea. Even her right arm seemed to come to life at the prospect.

  So she rolled onto her right elbow and lunged up with her left hand. The flash of pain spiked her mind clear for a second, and then suddenly she was on her feet. She fumbled at the door with her left hand, couldn't work it, tried with her right—and was amazed that it did what she wanted. The door opened.

  She fell forward, tried to pull herself into the driver's seat. Couldn't do it. Pushed herself back onto her feet, grabbed the wheel and stepped up. This time when she fell at least it was on the seat.

  She dragged herself more or less upright, pulled the door shut. Scrabbled for the keys.

  They weren't there.

  •••

  'John, listen to me,' I said. 'She's sick. She doesn't know what she's saying.'

  Zandt backed down the stairs away from me, his gun steady in front. Sarah was sheltered behind him, her arms looped tightly around his waist, both for protection and to hold herself up. She stumbled, nearly fell. Zandt had to turn to catch her, putting an arm around her shoulders and clamping her body to his. She had stopped screaming now, but only because her voice had dried to a rasp. The noise was still there inside her own head.

  I walked slowly down the steps toward them. My hands were held up, and I was talking in a low, calm voice.

  'I did not abduct her,' I said. 'I was not in Santa Monica at the time. I was in Santa Barbara. I can prove it. I have hotel receipts.'

  'It's a half-hour drive.'

  'I know, John. I know that. So if I was lying, why would I tell the truth about that part? I could have told you I was in fucking Florida. John, what the hell is going on in your head? You think I'd come up here with you, you think I'd be tracking down these people, if I was one of them?'

  Zandt reached the bottom of the stairs. Still supporting Sarah, who was still trying to hide behind him, he backed across the wide corridor and toward the front reception room. This time they were going out the front door.

  'There's no telling what people will do,' Zandt said. 'Including me. Make a move and I'll blow your head off.'

  'It's not me.'

  'She says it is. She says you were there in Santa Monica.'

  I stopped walking. 'Okay,' I said. 'Okay. Here's what we'll do. I'll stay here. You leave. You get her out, and then you come back for me, and we'll talk.'

  'I'll come back for you,' Zandt said. 'But we won't talk.'

  •••

  Sarah felt herself falling, but the good man held her up again. Nokkon Wud was receding now. He was staying at the foot of the staircase. He was tricking them, she knew. He was making them think they could get away, and then he'd come for them. He didn't have to walk. He could leap up through the roof and into the sky. He could fly over people's houses, he could dive in and kill them from above. He wasn't normal. He wasn't like anyone else.

  She tried to say this to the good man, but it was too hard. She tried to tell him to shoot Nokkon now, but she couldn't and he didn't. He just kept carrying her, into the room at the front of the house. Sarah didn't have any choice about where she went. Her legs weren't working. She just had to go where she was taken.

  •••

  Nina believed he wasn't going to be there. All the time she stumbled across the lot, as she pushed open the door to the lobby, as sh
e navigated through the marooned hulks of oversized armchairs and settees, Nina had half-believed that Davids would have disappeared, that all she would find was an empty space on the floor. It didn't make any difference. She could not start the car without the keys. Either Bobby had taken them or Davids had. She didn't know where Bobby was. She had to find Davids, and she had to start from where he'd fallen.

  And that's where he was. Hardly believing it, Nina reached down to go through his pockets. It would be easier to kneel, but she feared that if she did that she'd never get up again. She'd been able to get across the lot and back into the building, but she didn't know how much she had left. She slipped her hand into his jacket.

  His hand lashed out and grabbed hers. His mouth opened.

  'Mary,' he said.

  She stared, terrified, at his face. He pulled her and she fell.

  Her knee crashed straight into his face. The neck twisted with a crunch, but she was barely aware of this as her own head smacked into the floor.

  She scrabbled at the slippery floor, got no purchase, then realized nothing was pulling at her. She twisted round. Put her hand back in his jacket. He didn't move.