In For the Kill

by Shannon McKenna

  Plant roots hung down. Tufts of grass and foliage furred the opening. A beam of light blazed in, like a bolt of heaven reaching down to her. She almost heard celestial music.

  The realization unfurled slowly, because her eyes were still blurred and blinded by tears and the sudden influx of sunlight. But as she blinked and rubbed the wavering haze away, it opened up inside her, like a sinkhole somewhere around her liver.

  First she saw the one right at her feet. Not believing it. Then she saw another. Then still another. And once she saw those, she saw them everywhere. They filled the entire chamber.

  A sea of human bones.

  CHAPTER 25

  It was a charnel house. Bones filled the room, but the highest heap of them was right under the opening itself.

  They had been dumped from the hole from above, allowed to fall any which way. It appeared that the earlier ones had been put into body bags, but the more recent ones not.

  They had gotten sloppy at the end.

  The exposed bodies were all desiccated skeletons. Many had been disassembled, perhaps by small animals. A faint smell of corruption hung about them, but they were shriveled and yellowed and dry.

  Many of them were very small.

  Sveti thudded painfully to her knees on the jagged rocks, next to one of the smaller ones. Its flattened skeleton was so tiny. It must have been so little, maybe two or three. The size Rachel had been when they were rescued. Scraps of fabric clung to the tiny leg bones. There was embroidery on the rotted cloth. Flowers, bleached and colorless.

  She hugged herself. The sound coming out of her throat felt too high for human ears to hear. The pressure would implode her throat.

  She vibrated with shaking sobs for these lost voyagers. This innocent baby. All the little girls and boys who would never be saved.

  And for her own wretched self.

  When the shaking had spent itself, she felt empty and exhausted. The angle of the sun blazing down into the hole had shifted. Its beam shone down, right onto the little skeleton. The grasses and flowers above had let some of their seeds drift down and take root, even in that deathly place. Grass sprouted, and twisting plants twined around the small rib cage. A few small white flowers bloomed here and there.

  That sent another wave of pain lancing straight through the hot, unstable jelly that used to be her heart.

  She pulled the toy bear out of her purse and tucked it tenderly between the rib cage and the arm bone of the tiny skeleton.

  “Thank you for helping me,” she whispered. “I’ll stop the people who hurt you. And I’ll pray for you. I’m not good at it, but I’ll try.”

  Her knees wobbled as she stood. The shifting light had now illuminated a plastic cord that dangled down from the hole, knotted at various intervals. She had not seen it, so shocked had she been at the bodies. She wondered if her mother had left it there. She could not imagine anyone else having a reason to climb down, or up. For the murderers, this hole had been a one-way street.

  Who knew if it was securely fastened at the top. Or if she could even make it up, exhausted as she was. But the alternative was crawling through that twisting cave again. She could not face the darkness a second time. Not after what she had just seen.

  The rope hung about five feet short of the cave’s floor. She picked her way, as carefully and respectfully as she could around the scattered arm and leg bones, rib cages, skulls, and reached to grab it. She leaped.

  The rope creaked as she swung, back and forth, over that surreal backdrop of bones. The rope did not break, but it took all the strength she had to climb it. She was lucky for Tam’s and Val’s insistence on upper-body strength. Fight biology, Tam said. Be stronger than ninety-five percent of the men you meet. If you can’t crack the top five percent, cleavage and eyelash flutter and surprise will take care of the rest.

  All those pull-ups and push-ups and back strengtheners were what saved her now. She worked her way up, huffing and groaning. The afternoon sun burned. She sweated, in her light jacket. The rope sawed against the dirt and rocks of the opening, sending earth and dangerously large rocks pattering onto her head and shoulders.

  Her hands burned, scraped raw against the harsh synthetic fibers of the rope, but she moved steadily upward. When she finally laid her elbow on the overhanging lip of turf, it collapsed beneath her weight, sending boulders and clods tumbling down onto the bones below.

  And again. And again. The hole was almost twice as big as it had been before she finally found ground solid and stony enough to bear her weight. She scrambled up on it and crouched there, shivering.

  The rope had been knotted around a downed metal pole for a huge chain-link fence, sunk into a now-exposed well of cement that lay on its side, dangerously close to the opening. The rope was frayed, brittle from sun and wind and rain, heat and cold, fewer than half of the fibers intact. It could have snapped under her weight. Or the massive lump of cement that had held the pole could have rolled down inside the hole and crushed her. But it hadn’t.

  The opening had once been covered by a large square chunk of metal and camouflaged by a pile of rocks, but time and weather had carved away at it and opened it to the sky again. A path alongside the inside of the chain-link fence led right to the hole.

  She staggered to her feet and stared down into the hole. It was a twelve-meter drop, minimum. Maybe more like fifteen. She could barely see the bones now. They were lost in shadow. The spotlight of the sun had vanished. Too low to clear the lip of the ledge.

  She felt the impulse to extend a formal gesture to these people whose deaths had been stripped of all ceremony. She bowed to the dark hole. “I’ll do my best for you,” she whispered. “I promise.”

  Her voice was thick and froggy, from the dirt and the damp, and weeping. She emerged from the rocky outcropping, looked around to orient herself. She was in a narrow canyon, barely 200 yards from the bottom of the garbage dump, downhill from the abandoned lab, a corner of which was visible up on the ridge. After that endless spirit journey through the underworld, she’d expected to be miles away, but she was only a few hundred yards from where she’d started.

  The gully full of garbage spilled down into the narrow canyon where she found herself, but the canyon itself and the rough road that snaked through it were blocked by heavy-duty industrial fencing still in intimidating good repair and covered on the top with loops of cruel-looking razor wire. There would be no climbing that. She’d slice herself to ribbons. The sides of the canyon were sheer, with jagged overhangs.

  She could hike down the canyon in the opposite direction, and try to clamber out and circle around somehow, but who knew how long such a detour would take? Alternatively, she could climb up that long, steep, slippery cascade of garbage in the gully.

  She opted for the garbage. After all, Mama had told her not to be afraid of garbage. It was a metaphor for her life. And after a cave full of decayed human bodies, what terrors could a garbage dump hold?

  But as with most things, it proved to be harder than she’d anticipated. She slipped and slid on rotten plastic bags, which broke open under her feet. Broken glass, test tubes, vials, and syringes burst out. She was climbing a mountain of biohazardous waste.

  About twenty feet up, she lost her footing by stepping on a plastic box lid that acted like a sled, and set her tumbling and rolling down the pile, sliding between yellowed and rotting mattresses. She bounced her hip agonizingly hard against something very solid and stationary, and came to rest in a tangle of rusted bed frames. Dazed and panting.

  When she looked up, she saw the bumper of a car, poking out of the wreckage. Dirty, but whole. Not rusted, or dinted or scarred.

  She pried some garbage away and saw a headlight. Not a broken one. She moved a sheet of corrugated plastic, a couple more bed frames, and peered into the cab of the vehicle. It was a smallish white panel van. The windshield was streaked with mud, but it was whole. It was dirty, but not ruined enough to warrant being buried under a pile of garbage.

>   She yanked a box away and uncovered a tire. The treads looked deep and sharp and new. In southern Italy, a car would only end up in a heap like this after it had been scavenged down to the bare frame.

  The words from Mama’s letter rang in her head. You’ll find your strongest weapon buried in all this garbage. It had never occurred to her that Mama might have meant it literally.

  On top were mattresses. Heavier things were piled to the sides. Sveti dragged away enough to expose the passenger’s side door, which was unlocked. Inside, the car smelled stale, but not rotten. It was a Mercedes panel van. The seal had kept humidity out. On the seat was a plastic sleeve with a sheaf of paper, a thumb drive. A handwritten note, in her mother’s graceful script. First in Italian, then English.

  Per favore, consegna questi documenti alla polizia. Questo veicolo contiene pericolose sostanze radioattive.

  Please deliver these documents to the police. This vehicle contains dangerous radioactive substances.

  Well, then. There was the punch line, but she was in no mood to appreciate the joke. Her nerves could not be jolted more than they had been already. What she’d found in the cave had broken her heart wide open. This part was nothing. Just some delicate, careful mopping up.

  She had to see if the stuff was still inside. She realized, as she kicked and flung garbage clear of the sliding door, that she had tears running down her face, into her nose. She had to wipe her face on her sleeve before she could see clearly enough to slide the door open.

  Inside was a large, opaque yellow plastic container, with the symbol for radioactivity stenciled on the top and sides. She stared at it, wondering with a small part of her mind just how shielded that container actually was. She should get away from it until she knew.

  She slid the door shut and started piling the shell of garbage back on top. Evil intentions, heaped on top of evil deeds. But it all stopped today. Those bastard fuckheads were going down.

  She pulled the sheaf of paper out of the cab. There were photos: of the lab, of the contents of the van, what was in the pit. There was a map, clearly marked. The pin drive must contain still more information.

  The van had no keys, or she might have driven it straight to a police station. She knew how to hotwire a car in theory, but she had no tools, and it was difficult, with a car full of modern electronics. Plus, there was the locked razor-wire fence. And to top it off, it might be radioactive. Miserable as she was, she had no desire to cosy up to strontium-90, and she probably wouldn’t be able to maneuver the van over those heaps of garbage anyway. It was not an off-road rig.

  She shoved the photos back into the plastic sleeve and the thumb drive into her pocket, and grimly set herself to burying the van in garbage once again, as completely as it had been hidden before. It would be a crass twist of fate to have the vehicle discovered, looted, or stolen by the subhuman creatures that had looted the abandoned lab. And an even more horrible joke if innocent local kids happened across it.

  That done, it was a long, hard, sliding scramble up the steep mountain of trash to the top of the gully. Then she faced the long hike back to the car. The sun was low, and she did not want to be on this road when night fell. She felt unpleasantly visible up here. She could be seen from far away, and there was no place to hide. No trees to speak of. No place to run on the tumbled rocks.

  Hours later, she got to the first chain-link fence. It was harder to climb it this time. Her legs felt hollow, floppy and rubbery. Her scraped, bloody hands burned against the sharp wires. Every downhill step toward the car seemed to rattle her loosened bones.

  Bones. So many. Burned into her mind’s eye. When she closed her eyes, she saw them, heaped and scattered, gray and tan and yellow.

  She was relieved to find the car where she’d left it, at the concrete barrier. She’d traveled so far today, it had been like going through a magic portal. A hundred years could have passed in the world outside. Her car might be a rusted fossil. The world changed beyond recognition.

  But it was just where she’d parked it, shiny and new. She tucked the papers under the seat and got under way.

  This was the part where Mama had come to grief, after all her effort and sacrifice, and the same fate could easily befall Sveti. She had to be sharp and canny and quick. Right now, she felt anything but.

  Of course, if she hadn’t misplaced her fucking phone, she could have called Tenente Morelli right now and told her everything. Morelli would not need the backstory explained. Sveti cringed at the thought of going into a small-town police station, trying to make something so horrific comprehensible to whoever spoke the best English. They might think she was crazy, or on drugs. She’d be exposed and alone for a long time before she could prove her claim was true.

  She wanted Sam so badly. Beneath the day’s turmoil ran the constant, sour current of missing Sam. Even a screaming fight with him would be welcome. The thought of fighting with Sam was oddly bracing. It focused her enough to make a plan of action.

  San Anselmo was a couple hours away, but it was bigger than the towns around here. She would go to that police station and search out a cop who spoke English. Beg for the use of a phone. Arrange for some heavily armed person to come to keep her company, as Sam and Tam and Val and Nick had insisted. She should have done that yesterday, but she’d been too busy sulking because that person could not be Sam. But she didn’t even have the energy to properly scold herself right now.

  First, she’d copy the papers, photos, and documents. When she got to the cops, she’d speak to Morelli, just to spread the joy. She’d call home, tell Nick, tell Tam and Val. She’d widen the net of people who knew until it was too big for anyone to contain. She’d have accomplished at least that much. Whether they killed her or not.

  Step Two, if she survived Step One, was to drive straight back to Sam’s hospital room and tell him the story. He would not be able to shut her up or throw her out, as injured as he was. She’d tell him she loved him and missed him so badly, she wanted to die. That she’d been a brainless asshole to flounce out the door by herself, that she wanted to burden him with the monumental pain in the ass that was Svetlana Ardova for the rest of his natural life. She’d collaborate. She’d be safe, sensible, as good as gold. Forever. Cross her heart.

  It would be too late, of course. He being the kind of man he was. When Sam’s mind was made up, he didn’t un-make it. He would tell her to fuck off. Then, of course, the world would end.

  Let it. The world had ended so many times today. What was one more time? She had nothing to lose. Not hope. Not pride.

  She circled around a long time in San Anselmo before finding an electronics shop. The gangly man with the large Adam’s apple behind the counter spoke a little English, but he stared with big, scared eyes for a while, his throat bobbing, before he dared to speak to her. He took pity on her when she begged him to copy the data from her mother’s pin drive onto the new one she bought from him, and plugged it into his machine. A few anxious moments passed before it consented to be read, but the data finally emerged. A hundred and twenty-three JPEGs. One Word document.

  She tucked the new drive into her pocket, asked directions to the police station, and proceeded to understand absolutely nothing of the directions he gave her. She thanked him anyway, having gleaned from his body language the general direction in which she should drive.

  She’d just look for signs for the Polizia. But as always, that was easier said than done. There was a huge festa in course, involving extensive illumination, a procession, marching bands, an open-air market, choking masses of people. Cars clogged all the streets that were not closed to traffic. She slowed to a crawl, twitching and cursing.

  She found what she hoped was a legal parking spot, and spotted a place that dealt in cell phones and services. She could no longer afford to be incommunicado, not with a secret like hers.

  She headed for it, footsteps quickening to a trot.

  “Svetlana! Is that you?”

  She shrieked and spun around.
Hazlett leaned out of the back of his limo. He stared at her, horrified. “For the love of God, what happened to you? Were you in an accident? Did someone attack you?”

  Oh, joy. Sveti looked down at herself, realizing just how filthy and disheveled she was. A day of hiking on broken rock, sliding on one’s belly through a slimy cave, crawling out of a mass grave, and scrambling through a garbage dump could do that to a woman.

  “No,” she said stupidly. “Hi, Michael. I’m, ah . . . fine. What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

  “Chance! We’ve been looking for you all day! That was a dirty trick, running off in the night! What on earth were you thinking? After what happened to you the other day?”

  His scolding tone slid over her, not penetrating. She stared at him. Pure chance? “Why are you here?” she repeated.

  He made an exasperated sound. “Who knows. Coincidence. Psychic magnetism. It’s destiny that I should be drawn to you!”

  Destiny, her ass. Her social functionality was at an all-time low. She could not chat with this guy right now. She had a list of crucial shit to do, and he was not on it. “Sorry, Michael. I have to go.” She turned in the opposite direction from the one that his limo was pointed and started walking.

  He got out and followed her. “Go where? Slow down, Svetlana!”

  “To the police,” she said.

  He loped stubbornly after. “Why, for God’s sake? To report a crime? Did someone hurt you? Rob you? Talk to me! Let me help!”

  “Thanks, but only the police can help right now.”

  He danced out in front of her. “Let me give you a ride to the police station,” he offered. “It will take you the better part of an hour to beat your way through this crowd, and I can get you there in twenty minutes. Frankly, you look like you could use the time off your feet.”

  Sveti looked around at the deepening night, the honking blare of traffic on the closest big avenue, the streets choked with people. She could wander until she collapsed. God, how she longed to get this done.