by Chuck Wendig
“And the ones who couldn’t?”
“Whisked away to foster care.”
Her nostrils flare as the insomniac edge of sleeplessness threatens to drag her down. “And let me guess: Wren did not go to foster care.”
“She was assigned a family, and a bus picked her up. But when they stopped to get gas, she hotfooted it out the back.”
“And that’s the last we see of her.”
He nods. “Bingo.”
“And all we have now is this photo of her on the side of the road.”
“Also true.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
She leans back, grinding her teeth. “How do we find her?”
“Let’s talk it through.”
“I’d rather use magic.”
“Do you have that kind of magic?”
“No.”
“Then let’s talk it through. She’s a fifteen-year-old girl, Miriam. How’s a girl like that survive on the street?”
Miriam sighs. “Same way I did, probably. She’s picking from the dead.”
“Okay, good. Could she be using the vics’ credit cards?”
“I did sometimes. Small purchases, so as not to draw any attention.”
“All right. I’ll flag those. And she’s gotta be staying somewhere. Right?”
“Unless she dissipates into a vampiric mist every night, yeah. I stayed at dogfuck motels when I could afford it. Sometimes, I spent nights under overpasses or in abandoned cars—you’d be amazed at how many abandoned cars are out there. Sometimes, I’d sleep in the woods. And other times . . .” Her voice dies in her throat.
“Other times what?”
“I’d shack up with randos.”
“At that age?”
“I hit the road at sixteen but didn’t start fucking strangers until . . . maybe seventeen, eighteen years old. But yeah.”
“You think Wren is doing the same?”
“I have no idea what she’s doing. But if she’s somehow inadvertently or purposefully echoing what I did, then yeah.”
Grosky nods. “That’s another angle, then. Look, she’s on foot—”
“I hitchhiked my ass up and down the highway, too.”
“Even still, she doesn’t have a car of her own. She’s not going far. We’ll look for reports of her. We’ll ping the system, see if those cards are getting used. See if we can get a look at anybody she might be with or have been with.”
“Jesus.”
“We’re closing in.”
“If you say so.”
“Hey, I want to say thanks.”
She arches an eyebrow so high, she’s pretty sure it must be floating above her head. “Listen, I think it’s great you wanna live a life of gratitude, but I’m not sure I deserve any of it.”
“The other day with your Uncle Jack? You said something nice about me.”
She ennhs at him. “I said some things that were not explicitly cruel.”
“For you, that’s pretty nice.”
“Fair point.”
“So, thanks.”
“Don’t tell anybody, Grosky, but I think you’re all right.”
“Can you say that again? I’d like to broadcast it across Twitter.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Never mind. Get some sleep.”
She nods, tells him okay.
But she doesn’t really sleep. She just rolls and tumbles around her mother’s bed, sweating, freezing, feeling her heart beating in her neck, her wrists, her teeth, her toes. When sleep finds her in fits and starts, it drags her down into deep, dark water, where hands of wet weeds slide around her neck, and her mouth opens and water fills her throat as she gags on mud, blood and a dead girl’s hair.
TWENTY-ONE
ONE BLACK FEATHER
It’s nearly evening. She waits for him at a little coffee joint: not some fancy micro-roaster, not some hipster pour-over cafe, but a shack off the highway that’s just a counter and a brutish bulldog lady who pours you coffee, maybe serves you up a slice of pie from local Amish bakers. In this case, it’s Miriam with a cup of black coffee and the remnants of half a shoo-fly pie. Not half a slice. Half a pie.
The doorway out has a window, and a shape darkens it—a big shape, tall and broad and with the bulk of Frankenstein’s monster.
It feels like she’s falling through the floor. Everything rushes up around her even as it stays still. The blood in her ears is a river as Louis steps in.
He’s the same. And he’s different. Hair a little longer now. Stubble gone to a soft, short beard. Like he’s some kind of lumberjack. Her jaw tightens as saliva wets her mouth.
Only other person in the six-table joint is an old man whose entire body looks like a sand castle half-eroded by the sea. So, it doesn’t take Louis long to zero in on her and pull up a chair. She thinks to stand and hug him, but mostly, she’s paralyzed by her awkwardness. How do I react? Her first urge is to climb him like a ladder, drop him to the ground, and fuck him till he’s dry. Her second urge is to revisit the not-yet-happened image of him choking the life out of his bride. And then the next thought to go through her head is You can choke me any time you like, big fella, which squicks her out and turns her on in equal measure, thus proving what the doc said about her:
One. Broken. Cookie.
Though all this, all she does is sit and stare.
“Hey,” he says.
“Yo,” she says, puckering and popping her lips, puffing out her cheeks, sighing loudly. “Ah. Uh. How’s life?”
Louis frowns a little. “Complicated.”
“You and me both. I still miss the sexy pirate eyepatch—”
“I need to show you something.”
“Is it a growth? A skin tag or asymmetrical blotch? I’m not a doctor.”
He puts something on the table. It nearly steals her breath.
“That’s mine,” she says in a low growl.
Sitting there is a glass vial. In that glass vial is a long black vulture feather.
“You had it,” she says.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then where the fuck did you get it?” Anger, inexplicable and uncontrollable, winds through her like a spitting serpent.
He sighs. “I don’t . . . I don’t want you to judge her too harshly.”
Oh. Oh.
“Samantha took it,” Miriam says.
“Yeah. I found it in her drawer.”
“Why?”
“I was looking for her phone charger—”
“No, I mean, why does she have it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ask her?”
“Yeah. She got real . . . She got upset. Said I shouldn’t have been going through her things like that, even though she was the one asked me to find her phone charger. She stormed out. Went to stay with her mother. She won’t answer my calls, but she texted me a few times to tell me she’s okay, that she just needs time. I don’t know why she has this.” He takes the vial, rattles it. Inside, the nub end of the feather tinks against the glass.
She snatches it out of his hand. “She must’ve taken it from me. In Florida, when you guys came. That’s the only time she could’ve taken it. That means she was in my stuff, Louis. Why would she want to be in my stuff?”
On that, he’s quiet. At first, she thinks it’s because he doesn’t know.
But then she realizes: it’s because he does know. “Louis. Look at me. What aren’t you telling me?”
“She, ah. She talks about you. A lot.”
“Does she, now.”
“Lots of questions about you and me, our time together. She said it was just jealousy, and she wanted to understand our relationship, but I’m not so sure.”
Click, click, click, like pins and tumblers in a lock. None of this explains why Louis decides to kill his bride on the night of their wedding, but it sure feels like a few puzzle pieces have just dropped into place. Samantha isn’t some sweet angel composed of
pure niceness. Something’s going on there.
Something to do with Miriam.
Tell him, she thinks. Tell him about your vision.
And yet her mouth hangs open. Nothing comes out.
Worse, any thoughts she had of telling him anything evaporate the moment her phone rings. It startles her bad enough she almost knocks over her coffee.
It’s Grosky.
“Yeah?” she says.
“We got a lead. It’s Wren. I know where she is.”
INTERLUDE
UNCLE JACK
The bar’s got bottle caps on the wood, and a lacquer over top of them. Beer has sloshed out of the pint glass. Jack sits, eyeing up the Yuengling lager that has foamed up over the glass and down the back of his hand. He forms his lips into a vacuum O and sucks it up. The world shifts and dips. It’s his fourth—no, wait, shit, his fifth—beer. And he doesn’t mean for it to be his last.
The bartender is a scruffy sheep-faced dude, name of Rick. Rick’s no prick, that’s what everyone says. Rick’s no prick, he always serves me. Rick’s no prick, he always has a bowl of peanuts. Rick’s no prick, he let me talk his ear off and then he let me crash on the couch in the back. Sometimes, Rick will even sell you weed. Good weed, too, like, medical-grade stuff. Everyone likes Rick. Sucks now, though, because Rick only works three days a week, and the rest of the time it’s that fucking cooze-y bitch, Valerie. Dog-faced Valerie. She’s a bite in the pants, that one. No fun at all. Doesn’t like drunks. Doesn’t want to hear anybody’s problems. Won’t let anyone crash on the back couch. Staggs says she lets him fuck her in the ass on that couch sometimes for fifty bucks, but everyone knows Staggs lies about just about everything, and Staggs wouldn’t have fifty bucks on him, anyway. Valerie’s too cold for that kind of warm-up.
Needless to say, Jack’s glad that it’s Rick on duty tonight, because Valerie wouldn’t let him drown himself in beer like this. Jack plans on planting himself here all night long and taking the couch when it’s time to lock up.
Rick gives him a wink from behind the bar, says, “What’s up, Jack? You look like a hound dog haunted by the smell of his own ass.”
“My fucking niece,” Jack says, his voice mushy like mashed potatoes.
“That’s a new one. Didn’t know you had a niece.”
“Yeah. Miriam.” He says her name like a playground taunt. Mir-ee-yuuuum. Sticks out his tongue after. “Get this. She—” He burps into his hand. Vurp. Vomit burp. Beer fumes come through his nose too, and he has to shake it off before continuing. “So, her God-loving mother dies and leaves her everything. This ungrateful little shit girl that she is and boom, leaves it all to her. Including the house here, the house I’d been staying at! Staying in. Whatever. You believe that shit? That house. My house, basically. I had to move out my, my, my fuckin’ recliner and all my shit, move it into a storage unit.”
Sheep-faced Rick nods and whistles real low. “That’s no small misery.”
“Right. Right. Then I hire a lawyer and . . .” He thinks to not tell this part but the last four beers have done a pretty good job of washing away any sense of self-examination that Jack might have, so he lets the freak flag fly. “We go up there because the lawyer is confident that we can get the property back because, you know, I may not have a real good claim to it but Diamond said that with an estate anybody can contest anything and lotta times if you keep pushin’ they’ll throw you a bone just to shut you up. It’s, like, dealing with an estate is hard enough already because it’s this thing that happened because someone you loved died, so people’s defenses are down and it’s a good time to get what’s yours.”
Somewhere like a stray, wandering dog in the back of his mind is the thought that he must sound like a real asshole. But then he reminds himself, You deserve good things, Jack. This is about justice. He’s comforted by the thought of being righteous in this, so he keeps talking.
“But the lawyer, after we went and talked to her, he’s done. He’s off the case. Doesn’t want to talk to me, doesn’t want to see her again.”
Rick hmms and shakes his head like a good bartender. “Why is that?”
“You won’t believe it, but—” Urp. “I’monna tell you anyway. We go up there. I dress up a little. Diamond looks like a real—a real professional.” Except that word comes out fropessional, but fuck it, Rick knows what he means. “And then I swear to Christ, the girl she like, does this snapping her fingers or this countdown or something, and then an owl comes in through the window. Like, breaking the glass and shit! And she’s laughing like a devil and there’s this fat fuck there too, this FBI agent, and the owl is scratching at us and biting us and its fucking wings are flapping. She tells us, You go on, you get the hell out of here and you don’t come back or I’ll kill you with birds.”
Rick seems to have lost the thread now. He’s not doing that nice nod-and-smile commiseration. No, he’s got this look on his face like he’s watching something he can’t believe, like a pig fucking a goat or something.
But Jack doesn’t care, he just keeps on keeping on, sipping at his beer and using his bottom lip to grab the foam off his upper lip. “Here’s the real kicker, Rick. Miriam, you know, I didn’t know her that well when she was a little girl. But one time, I remember helping her shoot—helping her learn to shoot a goddamn BB gun, right? And she shot a robin. You know, the bird. Right through the head—” He turns his finger into a gun and drops the hammer, boom. “And I called her killer and thought it was funny, but she was real upset. Cried and cried and cried. I always remember that. That fucking bird.”
“Good story, Jack,” Rick says, and Jack can tell that Rick doesn’t believe him. Fuck you, Rick. Rick the prick.
He sits there, staring into his beer.
Then a hand falls onto his shoulder. A small hand. And with it comes a woman’s voice in his ear:
“Did you say your niece is named Miriam?”
TWENTY-TWO
WHO’S ON FIRST
Night. With it, the last few crickets of the year and a late start to October’s chill—a crispness to the air like cold silverware.
“What are we doing here?” Louis asks. The two of them are parked in his pickup outside a campground. A yellow sign nearby says KOA.
“Looking for somebody.”
“Who?”
Miriam hesitates. Part of her wants to keep him in the dark and send him on his way. But the other part likes that he’s here. The grim, mad nostalgia of just like old times surges inside her like a vomit burp. “Remember Wren?”
That name lands like a slap to his face. Louis seems literally taken aback. “Of course. I think about her sometimes.”
“I didn’t think about her enough, as it turns out,” Miriam says. She’s still not sure how much to tell him, but then it occurs to her that keeping secrets is not her strong suit. Like a bulimic, she purges, tells him the whole thing. How someone who looks like Miriam has been killing. How she’s been working with an FBI agent—sorry, ex-agent of the Bureau—to find out that the person has been Wren all along. She tells him about the victims. About what they found in Mark Daley’s little box. About Tuggins.
All the while, he listens intently, as is his way. He’s taking it all in and she watches the wave of it rise up and crash down on his shores. When she’s done, he slumps back against the seat, almost like he’s exhausted. Eroded.
“And you think she’s here,” Louis says.
“There was a credit card hit. Not from Daley or Tuggins but from one of the earlier victims—Harley June Jacobs.” Which makes sense, when she thinks about it. It’s a woman’s card, and Wren is a girl, so people might be less inclined to ask questions. If the card said Mark Daley on it, that might raise flags. “Someone’s been using that card to pay for one-night stays at KOA campgrounds around the state.” She wrinkles her nose. “What’s KOA stand for? Isn’t that, like, killed on arrival or something?”
“DOA is dead on arrival. KIA is killed in action.”
“I t
hought Kia was a car company.”
“It is.”
“So, what’s KOA?”
“Kampgrounds of America.”
“Campgrounds starts with C.”
He looks frustrated. “Miriam, I don’t know, and this isn’t important. What’s the plan? Why aren’t the cops here?”
“Grosky said on the phone he can buy us some time. The site she procured is in the back—site 454. He said it’s a tent site, no hookup for water or power.”
Louis nods, leaning forward in his seat. “I used to camp. Some spots are reserved for people with campers; others are cabins. Then there are those for tents, but you get a water hookup so you can wash your hands or whatever, and electricity so you can run a hot plate or a lantern or so on, so forth. The real cheap spots are the ones boondockers use—it’s a space set up just for a tent. It’s a square of dirt and grass, pretty much, for those who want to rough it.”
“She’s out there.”
“She might be dangerous.”
“She almost certainly is dangerous. But we have to help her.”
“Maybe we let the cops take this one.”
“No. No. You and me? We made this girl who she is.”
He laughs, but it isn’t a happy sound. “No, the Caldecotts made her who she is, Miriam, not us.”
“We saved her from them. We changed her story. That’s on us.”
Louis sighs. He rubs his hands across his cheeks—the rasp of calluses against his stubble gets her hot, and that’s dumb, but she can’t help it.
Finally, he says, “You’re right. We owe her that. We ran away from her when she needed someone. Like a superhero who kills the villain but doesn’t do anything about the wreckage of the city he left behind.”
She pops the door and as she gets out feels compelled to remind him: “Yeah, but just remember, we’re not superheroes.”
“On that point, I suppose you’re right,” he says, stepping outside.
“I figure we barely even qualify as heroes.”
“Just a couple of jerks?”
“Just a couple of jerks.”
He meets her around the front of the truck. Above, the moon is pregnant with light and shining bold through the intertwined fingers of red and yellow leaves. “We go in, find Wren. Then what do we do?”
