by Chad Huskins
One half of the Mondo Bitches, the tall, awkward and slightly horse-faced Laquanda Everest sat quietly with her back to Kaley. Powerless in this classroom without her other half, and without anybody else that really connected with her, Laquanda was as docile and peaceful as a Hindu calf. It struck Kaley how utterly impotent Laquanda became in this class, unable to even muster a single jape at her or her sister’s expense.
She needs Nancy. And Nancy needs her. They feed off one another. It would have been obvious to even the most casual observer, even without any charm or telepathy or empathic touch. They feed off one another…kind of like how Shannon and I do. It was a sudden and terrible realization that came out of nowhere. That she should share anything with the Mondo Bitches was…
We all lean on somebody, for good or for ill. It’s just our choice of who.
Kaley had leaned on her sister to gain enough power to shut out the Prisoner, to close the door between this world and the Deep. But after that night in Atlanta, after Shan had been damaged and their tele-empathic Connection had backfired, someone else had been there for her to lean on.
It wasn’t pleasant to think of Spencer as someone to lean on, but there it was. But what other conclusion is there for what I did? Why else would I lean on him?
Then, out of thin air came a voice. Not one of the fugue, not from anyone in the Deep, but from a more familiar place, saying, To survive, little girl. It was Spencer, and he was getting closer. She could see him, feel him on his approach. That slippery, slow-moving mind, with things moving in the shadows. When all else fails, you call on ol’ Spence.
I don’t need you, she flung back at him, taking her first tentative steps into the dock house, which appeared to be used primarily for storage.
No? Then why are you here?
Kaley had no answer for that. She looked around the little storehouse. It was maybe fifty yards long, maybe thirty wide. Blue plastic totes were sealed and wrapped tightly with metal strips that connected them to the wooden pallets beneath them. Two forklifts sat dormant.
Just as Kaley could feel the cold winds outside, she could also feel the coldness in here. She was aware of every mote of dust floating in the air, as each mote vibrated her web ever so slightly. There were scarcely any insects that she could detect, but there were larger animals flitting about in the rafters above. Birds, she thought. Trapped inside. She could sense their fear and unfamiliarity with their environment.
There were stairs leading up to metal scaffolding that encircled the room. A few office doors were up there, as well as down here. There were paths left in the spaces between each stack of totes, and though there was no snow in here, Kaley still saw a path. She couldn’t explain it, just…a clearing in the air, perhaps. And a pull. Up the stairs.
If I need you, you need me, she finally countered.
Spencer didn’t respond. He was coming, and he was armed, she knew that much. And…he had seen something. Spotted someone. Maybe the same guy Kaley had spied going for a smoke break. She couldn’t be clear on that because she was focused on the pull.
Stepping easily through the storehouse, tiptoeing as though it mattered, she passed through a few crates without even thinking about it.
“Kaley?” That was Ms. Hurgess.
“Yes ma’am?”
Ms. Hurgess had come right up behind her, watching her work over her shoulder. “I said, ‘That’s nice work.’ I said it a couple of times,” she chuckled. “Off in another world, sweetheart?” she said.
“Yes ma’am. Sorry.” When Ms. Hurgess walked away, Kaley caught Laquanda looking at her. It was only a brief stare, and the tall girl looked away quickly. Laquanda had chanced a sneer aimed in her direction, but without Nancy, she would neither do nor say anything more. She felt the girl’s sense of seething inadequacy, the burning need to bring others down to her level because it was easier than raising herself up to others’ standards.
“We might take her.” Kaley shuddered. The Others were moving again, on the other side of the walls, on the other side of the thin film separating realities. “Take the teaching woman. The last one we took tasted good, and it angered the girl. Perhaps it will weaken her resolve, cause her to open the door wider next time.”
“Yes!” cried one of the Others. “Yessssssss, we like this plan!”
Then came another voice, a more authoritative one. “No. We made a bargain. We wait to see how it plays.” There was no mistaking that voice.
The Prisoner.
Bargain? she thought. What bargain? A bargain with whom?
Inside the storehouse, Kaley moved towards the steps. There were fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling but none of them were on. The windows of the offices were all dark, too, save one that had a lamp someone had forgotten to switch off.
Kaley made it to the steps, and starting climbing…
…she put the Utrecht pencil to paper, and started shading her bowl to give it contours…
…was a little surprised when the steps supported her and she didn’t just pass through…
…used her thumb to smear some of the lead on her paper, even though Ms. Hurgess hated that, called it cheating when what Kaley ought to be doing was learning to use the pencil itself to shade properly…
…made it to the top of the stairs, sensing Spencer approaching…
…looked across at Lenny, who saw that she was using the thumb-smearing technique he’d shown her, and gave her an approving nod…
…walked towards the wooden door directly ahead of her, then turned to go towards the door to the left, which looked like it was made out of steel…
At CMS, Kaley carefully applied just the right amount of pressure with her thumb—to much, and it would smudge it so that one could easily see her fingerprint in the lead, too little, and it wouldn’t smear at all.
In the storehouse, she remained standing at the steel door. There were phantoms behind the door, much like the phantoms she’d felt in the basement on Avery Street. The ghost pains of others that had come before, others that had been raped and beaten and tortured for the demented pleasure of Dmitry, Olga, Mikhael, and whatever customers they sold the video footage to around the world.
Knowing what had happened last time, she wasn’t sure she wanted to step through that door.
At school, Kaley looked at the shading she’d done to her bowl. It was far better than what she’d done to the fruit in that bowl. In just a week’s time, she’d gotten better, thanks to Lenny’s tip, but now the shading looked incongruent. I really ought to re-shade the fruit using the smearing, so that it all matches up. Lenny had also taught her that if she just licked her finger, just a tad, that it could smear the lead in other interesting ways. Maybe I’ll play with that.
After much deliberation, Kaley finally smeared her lead and to hell with Ms. Hurgess and her disdain for such techniques.
Outside of the storehouse, she heard a gunshot. A very, very loud one.
“You’re getting better,” said Lenny.
Kaley looked up at him. “Really? You think so?”
“Yeah.” He smiled.
Kaley smiled back. “Thanks.” She stepped through the door.
“Surprise, fucker!” Spencer exclaimed, rounding the stack of crates and squeezing the trigger. The shotgun belched thunder. Even having prepared himself for the recoil, the Benelli still almost knocked him off his feet. The ice all along the planks gave weak footing, and he staggered back a step or two.
The Benelli, meant as a combat shotgun and used by SWAT teams the world over to blow open the hardest locks at close range, ripped through the red-parkaed man. It blew his stomach out both sides, twisting his upper body around in a macabre dance. He had such a look of surprise on his face as his body hit the icy ground and slid across the dock, his innards spilling out, that Spencer couldn’t help but laugh. He was bent over wheezing, putting the shotgun barrel on the frozen wooden planks and using it for a cane to steady himself. “God damn, son,” he laughed. “God damn! You shou
lda seen yer face!”
He laughed harder and louder. And why not? There didn’t appear to be anybody else out here. From the tremors and thoughts he’d felt Kaley feeding him, he didn’t think there were any other guards out here tonight. A single guard. A groundskeeper. But what were they keeping here? He had an idea about that.
Still chuckling, Spencer stood upright and searched the fellow’s corpse. The Benelli had nearly hewn the man in half. “Looks like a grenade went off in your stomach, comrade.” He had a Makarov pistol, a cell phone, a pair of condoms, and a billfold with ID, a few hundred rubles, a Visa and MasterCard, a flier with a naked woman on it and a phone number at the bottom, presumably a call girl. He also had the same red bear tattoo as all other vory.
Pitbull, he thought. The word came to him again, still rolling around in his mind.
Spencer was just tucking the Makarov behind his hip when he heard something. A low, sibilant sound. It was indescribable; a sound his ears were wholly unaccustomed to. His ears wanted to deny it, the same way antibodies wanted to deny admittance to a foreign pathogen. In short, it wasn’t from around here.
Cries from somewhere, a tremor. It wasn’t a tremor from Spencer, but from the world around him. There was great pressure on his ears, like when you drove into higher elevations and your ears popped, but this was about ten times worse. “Fuck me!” he said, cupping one of his ears.
Then, he heard something snap. The ice. The dock house ahead was sitting on the dock itself, which stretched out over the frozen waters a good fifty yards. The ice below made another loud crack, and that low, deep sibilant noise continued, ceasless and atonal. Ssssssssssssssssssss. One of the doors on the dock house swung slowly open and closed on rusty hinges, revealing the darkness within in small snatches.
Then, silence.
Nothing moved, nothing breathed. The pressure on his ears was alleviated. The door on the dock house stopped swinging. Even the wind stopped, though the snow kept on falling.
“Little girl?” he said out loud. No answer. He reached into his pocket and got another shell, loaded it, cocked the Benelli. “Kaley Dupré, do you hear me?”
Spencer…I’ve found them.
He didn’t like the sound of that. Since he could sometimes sense her heart, he didn’t like the feel of it, either. “What’re you talkin’ about? Found who?”
Come and see.
“Look, whatever you found, you need to return with me to the car, right now.”
Can’t.
“Whattaya mean you can’t?”
I can’t leave them like this.
“Let me ask you a question. Do you hear that?”
Hear what?
“Exactly. Silence. I don’t hear a goddam thing, and after the Prisoner an’ his people have been chatty all night, I don’t think that’s a good sign. The world was movin’ out here a minute ago, the ice cracked, the dock was vibratin’. Things are in motion, savvy?” Then, he had a peek into her mind. Perhaps she sent it to him on purpose, because it was easier than explaining. Women…naw, not women. A lot younger. He sighed, and knew what this meant. “It’s time to get the hell outta Dodge, little girl.”
I can’t just—
“Ya know what happened the last time you stuck around that much pain? Ya think they don’t know that?”
I won’t—
“Listen to me! You hang around in there much longer, you’re gonna open a hole bigger than the one in the ozone, the one Al Gore’s tryin’ to close! Only it won’t be UV rays an’ global warmin’ you gotta worry about! We gotta leave! Now!”
That’s easy for you to say! You don’t care about them! You don’t have a soul!
“Souls never got anybody anywhere.” Spencer was backing up towards the dock house. If she wouldn’t come out willingly, he’d have to go in after her. Almost at the door, he paused to take a look back, towards the Subaru, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, he saw a pair of headlights suddenly flick off. Was that someone else arriving, or just his imagination?
“I’m comin’ to get ya.”
Why? What do you care?
“I still need you!”
For what?
Spencer opened the door, stepped inside. A bargaining chip, he thought, but didn’t say. He also hoped that she was nowhere in his mind, as she often found it disgusting to go traipsing through his mental landscape. Their Connection could sometimes be just as strong as that between her and her sister. If Kaley decided to go in and see what he was thinking, she would see the deal he’d struck with the Prisoner.
And Kaley would also know what he was beginning to deduce. Spencer’s mind had started circling around a theory, and his theory was slowly solidifying into a conclusion. It makes a certain kind of sense. And I’m never wrong about people.
Just as he shut the door behind him, the wind suddenly picked up again. The winds started making snapping noises. The ground trembled for a moment, then there was total silence again.
Spencer knew he needn’t bother with searching the place for any others. If they were around, Kaley would have felt them, and he would’ve felt them through her. He was close enough that they had that Connection now. And it doesn’t hurt to make the most of it.
So, without having to delay, he set about searching a few of the offices for documents containing some kind of actionable information. He smashed open doors, tore open a few drawers, and selected a few promising scraps. Having smuggled a few cars in through ports before, he knew what to look for. The docks servicing a port like this ought to have plenty of itineraries and invoices on hand, and they did. His marginal grasp of the Russian language helped him figure out what was important and what he ought to disregard.
Spencer, Kaley was calling. They need help.
“I told you to get outta there,” he said, opening up a filing cabinet.
I notice you’re not leaving.
“I’ve got business here.”
So do I.
“Yeah, well, my business doesn’t open a goddam hole in the space-time continuum, bitch. Now move!” He found another cabinet that was padlocked, and rather than smash it open he took a step back, aimed at the padlock from the side, and let the Benelli take care of it. The lock blew off, and when he opened the cabinet, he found the papers he was searching for, albeit some of them shredded by a bit of shot that came through. “Zverev,” he whispered, smiling to himself. He found it: the name Vitaly Zverev written on numerous Customs documents and weigh station checks, copies of the originals, as well as a couple dozen invoices.
Spencer couldn’t take all of these folders, as large and cumbersome as they were, so he took some of the more promising documents, wadded them and stuffed them inside his jacket, and then used Zakhar’s cell phone to take quick pictures of some of the others. It still might not be enough, but it would be a start.
“Kaley girl?” he said. “You ready to g—” More tremors. Then, it passed. Like a mild earthquake, a 3.0 on the Richter, nothing more. “All right, that seals it. We’re leavin’ if I have to carry yer scrawny ass!”
You can’t carry me, she reminded him.
“If anybody can find a way to motivate an apparition,” he said, stepping out of the office, “it’s me.”
Upon stepping out of his car, Shcherbakov paused. At first, he wasn’t quite sure what was wrong. Then, he caught it. There’s no wind.
The pistol was in his hand. Zakhar Ogorodnikov’s Subaru Forester was about thirty yards ahead of him, lights switched off, motor not running. It looked like his taillights had been smashed, if the Wolf’s eyes weren’t deceiving him.
Pistol at low-ready, crouched and listening, Shcherbakov remained still. Sound carried far out here, especially without the interference of wind. The snow was still falling, though. In fact, it was falling quite strangely, at an angle, as if carried by a wind. But there is no wind. It took him a moment to realize it was all headed in the same direction, towards the docks.
Shaking it off as an odd weather phenomenon, the Wolf move
d slowly up behind the Subaru. The pistol was now raised, aimed at the back windshield. There appeared to be no movement coming from inside. Sensing a possible trap, Shcherbakov bent to one knee and remained there, listening and scanning the area around him. It was obvious that his target wasn’t easy to corner, and thought steps ahead. The quiet vehicle might mean nothing, but it might mean everything.
After a moment, he stood in a crouch and eased up behind the SUV. Peeking inside, he saw no one. The windows were too fogged. However, in the unnatural silence, he thought he heard a whimper. Keeping low, the Wolf touched the rear driver’s side door with his left hand, aimed his pistol with his right, counted to three, and flung open the door and stepped back.
A boy yelped, and nearly got himself shot as he leapt back across the floorboard. Shcherbakov trained his pistol on the boy, but his eyes went in every direction, still suspecting Pelletier might have left the child as a distraction.
The boy was a frail little thing, with a face drawn and etiolated, garbed in clothes that were far too big for him. Zakhar’s clothes, Shcherbakov reasoned. “Where is he?” he said. The boy needed no more threat than the gun. He raised a hand, pointed. Shcherbakov glanced over his shoulder. “Towards the dock?” The boy nodded. “Get out of the car.” The boy did as bidden, and in no time at all the Wolf had him bound in zip ties, then took him back to his Priora and shoved him, whimpering, into the trunk. Before he shut it, though, he said, “I know you have probably been through a lot tonight, but keep your silence and you may survive it. Do you understand?” He’d said it all in Russian, and got a blank stare, so repeated it in English. When the boy nodded, he said, “Good. I’ll be back.”
The trunk shut, Shcherbakov went back to the Subaru, did a brief check. A single pair of footprints led away away from the driver’s side. He checked the ignition switch—Took the car keys, so he’s still thinking. He reached into his jacket pocket and removed the silencer, twisted it on the tip of his Makarov, and fired two shots into the steering column around the ignition.
