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by Matthew Costello

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  To Ann Costello, wife, collaborator—and my trusted friend who knows the real value of a good home

  contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Prologue: The Plan

  Paterville Family Camp, 10:17 p.m.

  Part I. The Road

  1. A Gate

  2. Gas

  3. Pulled Over

  4. The Trunk

  5. A Helping Hand

  6. Kate

  7. Staten Island

  8. The Turn Back

  9. A Second Decision

  10. Kate and Simon

  Part II. Welcome Home

  11. Fires

  12. Home at Last

  13. The Car

  14. Dark

  15. The Past

  16. Trapped

  17. Outside

  18. Surrounded

  19. A Home

  20. The Plan

  Part III. The Mountain Falls Inn

  21. Leaving Home

  22. The Talk

  23. To the Moutains

  24. The Interview

  25. The Rules

  26. Under the Inn

  27. September

  28. September Ends

  29. The Secret

  30. The Cliff

  31. Fear

  32. Seeing Them

  33. Surrounded

  34. Kick the Can

  Part IV. The Capture

  35. Whispers

  36. Out of the Castle

  37. The Caravan

  38. Night

  39. Escape

  40. The Farm

  41. The Prisoners

  42. The Trap

  43. Family

  44. Leaving

  45. The Car

  46. The Discovery

  47. Sister and Brother

  Epilogue: Family

  Also by Matthew Costello

  About the Author

  Copyright

  prologue: the plan

  Paterville Family Camp, 10:17 p.m.

  Christie walked beside Jack as their children—Kate, a girl just a few years from being a young woman, and Simon, a boy—walked ahead of them.

  He held her hand. And they each held guns.

  As did their daughter, who also held her brother’s hand without protest.

  Something almost unimaginable.

  And they walked quickly—making their way through the woods, avoiding the paths filled with other campers, some who would easily attack and try to kill them.

  Making their way to the lot where their car was parked while mayhem filled the camp.

  Mayhem created by Jack. He had turned off the power, shut down the electric fence so the Can Heads outside could enter at will.

  Into this camp.

  Where—they knew now—the people were as dangerous … as deadly as the Can Heads outside the fence.

  Jack leaned close as he spoke to her.

  Speaking so low, whispering into her ear as they walked.

  Telling her the plan.

  And all she could do was listen.

  * * *

  The too-dry pine needles and ancient skeletal leaves cracked under their feet as they moved quickly, still taking care not to make the kids run in the dark, worried that they would trip, slow them down, expose them.

  As Jack spoke, he kept looking over his shoulder.

  “I have the keys to the Blair’s car—”

  “They—”

  “Gone, Christie. Gone.”

  She didn’t ask any more.

  “Okay.”

  “They’ll be dealing with the fences being down, the Can Heads roaming around. Might keep them busy, but God—”

  His voice caught.

  She gave his hand a squeeze.

  “They can’t let us out. Not with what I know. What I saw.”

  He hadn’t actually described how he escaped the kitchen—the charnel house where they had kept him prisoner. And he hadn’t told her yet what he saw there.

  So she had to ask.

  Had to know the horror.

  “What, Jack? What did you see?”

  And though he had been keeping his voice low as they raced through the woods, he leaned even closer.

  “People who come here. Like us. The Blairs. Some don’t leave. Some—”

  Another halt.

  He picked his word carefully.

  “Some … they slaughter.”

  She nearly moaned at that. This place they had come to, a family camp. A massive trap.

  For people … to trap people.

  Was that the only way these people decided they could survive?

  Living off their fellow humans?

  “God, Jack.”

  “Now listen—”

  The car park—well away from the Grand Lodge—lay just ahead.

  Only minutes to explain.

  “They’ll be busy, but they won’t let us get out. The main gate—they’ll be waiting.”

  She shook her head, hearing where he was going with this.

  “No. We can’t—”

  “Listen!” He squeezed her hand. “I’ll drive our car out. I’ll go fast. I’ll shoot my way out if I have to. You wait.”

  “What?”

  “Five minutes. Enough time for me to get to the gate, then you drive up the service road. To the exit at the back. Just keep driving, don’t stop for anything.”

  “And we’ll meet—?”

  “Yes. Keep driving. I’ll stop at the first small town we get to. Not far from here. We can all meet there.”

  But she knew … knew … what he wasn’t saying.

  The word he didn’t utter.

  If.

  “Do you understand?”

  Then to ensure she knew what was at stake, why it had to be this way.

  “You have to do this—for Kate … Simon. Do you understand?”

  And she did.

  * * *

  Until they were at the car, their SUV, Jack’s guns on the seat, gunshots still filling the camp.

  She watched Jack place a blanket in the back over some bags, making it look like his family might be huddled in the back.

  “Okay—”

  Not wasting any time.

  He gave her a hug. A crushing hug. A deep kiss that ended too soon.

  Then to the backseat of the other car, the Blair’s Honda Accord.

  “Kids—hang in there. We’re almost out of this place.”

  He looked at Kate, his beautiful daughter who had shot one of the Can Heads only minutes before. Then at his son, his baby.

  Then: “I love you. Love you all.”

  He turned and got into the car.

  Last words to Christie.

  “Five minutes?”

  She nodded.

  Then, almost silently, back to him …

  “I love you, too.”

  * * *

  The wait eternal, sitting in the locked car. Checking her watch over and over, the time crawling.

  “Mom,” a voice in the back said.

  And Christie so obsessed with the timing, with what she had to do that she not only didn’t answer.

  She didn’t for a moment even know which kid it was.

  Until, one more glance at her watch—

  Five minutes.

  Like Jack said.

  He was racing out the main gate, drawing them away.

  That was the plan.

  Now she tur
ned the ignition.

  And though it started immediately, there was still that horrible moment of fear.

  What if it didn’t start?

  But it did.

  She put it into reverse.

  “Hold on,” she said. Then, using her kids’ names, “Simon, Kate … hold on.”

  The car curved backward, nearly smashing into one of the other parked cars.

  A quick flip into forward.

  And then—

  Then …

  The mad drive up, and out of the parking area, through the hell of a Paterville under attack, driving through that hell, over and into the bodies.

  The screaming from the backseat constant, like it was part of the sound of the engine.

  Not stopping. The moments insane as Christie floored the accelerator to drive through anyone or anything that might stop her.

  Telling herself as if it might make it fact:

  Nothing will stop me.

  * * *

  Until—

  Just as she burst through the gate to the road outside, the narrow country road that led away from Paterville, she heard … an explosion.

  Muffled.

  Like fireworks from a distant town.

  But big enough, clear enough so she knew it had been a large explosion.

  And she knew then.

  (Of course.)

  Jack.

  All his tinkering in the garage with their SUV.

  Making them safe.

  And if anything should happen. If ever they should be caught.

  They never spoke about it.

  But she had long ago guessed what he had done to the car.

  You didn’t live with a man, a cop, for ten years and not know things.

  And in the darkness, on that road, nearly losing control since she still kept the pedal down to the floor, she began to sob.

  Feeling.

  Knowing.

  That she’d never see her husband again.

  That with the sound of that explosion, the SUV blowing up, he had saved her.

  Saved the kids.

  And now, it was all up to her.

  After muffling her own crying, the kids sobbing quietly in the backseat, she let herself cry.

  For now.

  Soon enough she’d have to be strong …

  the road

  1

  A Gate

  Christie stopped. Her hands locked on the steering wheel, like they had been for the past few hours.

  Though she felt so achy, a fatigue deeper than anything she had even felt before, her eyes were open wide, her breathing fast.

  She kept staring at the gate ahead, linked to the twelve-foot fence that cut off the Northway from the rural mountainous Adirondacks it cut through.

  She thought: Where is he?

  The goddamn guard. To let us in, open the goddamn—

  “Mom.”

  Kate. Her voice quiet, hollow. Because she didn’t want to awaken her brother? Or because that was the only voice she had now, could possibly ever have after the night they had been through?

  After everything that happened.

  Christie struggled to push that thought away. With all its images of the events of the past day.

  What had happened. What had been lost. What was now changed for them forever.

  “Mom. What’s wrong?”

  Christie wanted to turn back to her, turn to her daughter and answer.

  But she didn’t trust herself to do that. Not to look into those eyes now. Not when eventually there’d be so many questions, and such terrible answers.

  Christie told herself … I can’t look at her right now.

  Can’t risk that I’ll start crying again.

  Not for the first time this night … she ordered herself to hold it together.

  As if by merely thinking the words would have some effect.

  “Kate, I don’t know. There should be someone here. To let us in.”

  Christie nodded as she said this. A perfectly sensible sentence. Said in a steady, rational voice. A reassuring voice, she hoped, even though something seemed wrong here.

  And if there was something she knew now … when something seemed wrong, it most certainly could be wrong in ways that defied human imagination.

  “Then…” Kate started, a hesitation, maybe thinking she shouldn’t ask any questions. Not now. Not yet.

  “Where’s the guard? Why is there no one here?” Kate’s voice had lost some of the sleepy hollowness, raising just a notch in volume, tone. Concern. After what they’d been through, Kate had every reason to be worried at every moment, at everything.

  After all …

  After all …

  It wasn’t too long ago that both kids had been screaming, that there was so much gunfire, and blood, when even Kate had to shoot a gun.

  Her sweet girl, her firstborn, forced to shoot, to actually kill one of them and then watch it fall dead at her feet.

  She can never be the same, Christie thought.

  “Maybe he’s asleep. Maybe—I dunno, Kate … maybe I should blow the horn.”

  “No,” Kate said. Then: “Don’t make noise. It’s still dark.”

  Christie nodded, suddenly aware of the stupidity of her idea and of the newfound wisdom of her daughter.

  A wisdom born of terror and loss.

  She looked in the rearview mirror. She couldn’t see Kate in it, but she did see the shadow of Simon’s face, no pools of reflected light coming from his eyes still—thankfully—shut tight.

  Then, with the car horn removed from the options, Kate said: “What are we going to do?”

  We.

  That’s it now, isn’t it? We. Because we’re in this together.

  “Maybe—just wait a bit.”

  But again, as the words escaped, Christie immediately knew that that was a bad idea. To sit here, like bait. Waiting until something noticed and came to investigate.

  No—sooner or later—she’d have to do something.

  Please, she begged something, somewhere.

  For what seemed like eternal moments, she sat there, hands feebly locked on the steering wheel, both she and Kate silent, with only the sound of the car’s motor, this car that wasn’t theirs, the hum unfamiliar.

  A car the belonged to a family now dead.

  Slaughtered.

  Another thought to be pushed away.

  And then—from within the white light of the booth of the gate, a head popped up, slowly, eyes easily as wide as Christie’s, the head rising like a human periscope.

  As if it might have to duck a bullet. Or a rock.

  Until the man inside was fully standing.

  The gatekeeper.

  The man who controlled the fence.

  Standing there, looking at Christie, the car.

  C’mon, she thought.

  Open the gate.

  For the moment, the man did nothing.

  * * *

  The man kept staring at Christie as if he could stare at her long enough and make her drive away.

  Christie looked down to the headlight controls, and gave it a pull, flashing the light. Then again and again, and now the man looked away. She watched him look around. The sky beginning to brighten to the east, still a deep purple darkness to the west.

  A thought came to Christie, one she wished she hadn’t had.

  Something happened. Something happened here; the man saw something and now—God—now he’s scared.

  And then:

  Maybe I should ram the gate. Just floor the goddamn accelerator and blow right through the gate.

  But was that even possible?

  Then finally the man turned to the door of the small booth beside the gate. He walked out, his head still looking around. Christie had the car heater on, but she could see from the condensation on the front and back windows that it was chilly out. Fall comes early to the mountains.

  The man’s expression didn’t change as he walked up to the car window. Christie hit a button and t
he driver’s side window slid all the way down. The cool air rushed into the car as if eager to escape the outside.

  It seemed as though the gatekeeper, wearing his Highway Authority shirt and faded jeans, was waiting for her to begin the conversation.

  “Can you … open the gate?”

  She resisted the temptation to say goddamned, or fucking, or some other word that would put emphasis on her desire to get the hell off this country road and onto the safe highway.

  Another thought … safe highway?

  Safer maybe. But safe?

  The man licked his lips. Another darting glance left and right.

  “I need to see your papers.” His voice cracked as though he hadn’t said any words for a long time. He cleared his throat, and squinted.

  Bundle of nerves.

  Christie opened her mouth.

  She hadn’t thought about the papers. They were in their car. With Jack. Forgotten.

  Jack, who always thinks of everything. Somehow, in his plan to get them out of Paterville Camp, he forgot.

  And he thinks of everything. How could—

  No.

  He thought of everything …

  When he was alive.

  The papers permitting them to use the highway, with their approval to travel the protected highway from their home in Staten Island to the mountain resort of Paterville, were—were—

  Gone.

  Destroyed.

  And Christie immediately felt a jab of fear.

  Not having those papers … it could be a bad thing.

  “I’m sorry. But we seem to have lost them. I can show—”

  The man had already started shaking his head. In a moment, she was sure, he would start back for the booth, and Christie would be stuck there, waiting.

  He allowed a few more words to escape his mouth.

  “You need to have the papers. Can’t let you on the highway without—”

  “Listen,” Christie said, cutting him off but also attempting to reach his wrist, for a pat, or perhaps to hold him there so he didn’t scurry back to the booth.

  “I told you—we did have them. You can check. You still have computers, don’t you? You can—”

  More head shakes. “They’ve been down. Hours. Something wrong. Downstate.”

  “Right. But if you could check, I mean—”

  Christie fumbled in her small blue rucksack that served as a purse for the paperwork for this trip, this supposed vacation.

  She dug out her crimson wallet, now filled with mostly useless cards from companies that didn’t exist or banks that had vanished.

  Gotta prune it, she told herself so many times but never did.