The robed creature had closing the distance, clawing for her. Kimberly got to her feet, ignoring the stabbing pain in her back, and sprinted along the edge of the nave. Her sights were fixed on Fitch. One of the figures had fallen, stretched across her path, rotten hands opening and closing, opening and closing, flames licking between its fingers. She skirted around it as best she could, trying not to glance down, to avoid seeing what it truly was. Those fingers all coiled like they had too many bones, the wrist twig-thin, and where the hood had burned away from its face...
"Hurry up, lady!"
She scrambled the last few yards and fetched up against the double doors, beside Fitch. He was down on one knee, his three remaining molotovs set upright before him. He'd abandoned the lighter - no need, Kimberly figured, with the nave already gorged on smoke and flame.
"You should've gone through," Fitch growled. "Brought you all this way just for you to fuck it up? Jesus, Mary and Joseph." He grinned, but it was a wild, terrified smile, and not one that gave Kimberly any confidence. "Nice knowing you, lady."
"We can get out," she panted. "We have to."
"Door's stuck. Figure it hasn't opened in a while." He jabbed one thumb at the beam that sealed the huge wooden double-doors - a slab of wood ten feet long and as thick around as Kimberly's waist, hewn roughly from the trunk of a tree as grey as ash. Thin suckers and wilted leaves still clung to the trunk, as if whoever cut the tree hadn't even waited five minutes to prune the twigs before jamming it into place.
Whoever locked the chapel, they'd been desperate.
Five of the robed figures advanced cautiously across the hall. They were all that were left after the fire - twice as many bodies were scattered across the floor of the nave or draped across the backs of pews, robes burned away, bodies left as ruins of charcoal and curled meat. But there was something else in those masses of flesh too, something that shimmered, something that reminded her of times spent with her father in the garage, the hood of their old Camaro propped up, dim light shining on spark plugs and pitted valves.
Five figures. Three molotovs, each brimming with carcinogenic napalm. She grabbed the nearest bottle by the neck, ignoring the slick feeling of petrol and benzene on her bare palm. What was cancer compared to being torn apart? "Think we can kill them?"
"I think this is Rustwood's Alamo," Fitch replied.
"Shit. I never even got to visit Texas."
Fitch grunted as he hurled a molotov overarm. It hit the nearest figure dead-centre, exploding against its chest, and for a moment the stranger strode forward without pause, as if broken glass and petrol were no worse than rainwater.
Then came a single tongue of flame across the figure's robes, and it ignited in a flash so bright and sudden that Kimberly recoiled, smacking her head against the doors.
The figure didn't fall. It staggered on with slow, scraping steps, guttering like a dying torch. Flames crept inside its hood and coiled inside hollow eye sockets.
Even as Kimberly cocked back her arm to throw her molotov, the creature smiled with needle-teeth.
* * *
"Almost there." Chan tilted her head back, let the rain wash over her cheeks and squirted it between her teeth. "What a night, huh?"
Detective Goodwell didn't reply. They'd reached the old stone bridge crossing the Pentacost River, where Goodwell had snatched up Martin and Taram the week before. To the south were the bright lights of Rustwood, the acid-yellow glare of distant streetlights. Another three miles and they'd be home and dry.
But Chan was set on the convent. She'd been arrowing in on that distant blur of light for the past hour and nothing would turn her away. Lambs to the slaughter, Goodwell thought, caressing the butt of his pistol. If he was going to do it anywhere, it had to be here.
"Shame forensics didn't pick anything out of the mud." Chan ducked beneath the hollow of the bridge, taking a moment to shelter from the rain. The ground was scattered with empty cans of spray paint, rattling away beneath Chan's feet and into the river. She focused her flashlight - the beam weak, batteries gasping - on the graffiti scrawled across the stones. "Look at this shit."
The words made Goodwell's skin itch. THE TRUE QUEEN LIVES, four foot tall, written in tall yellow letters. It hadn't been there when Goodwell had grabbed the two boys, and while he wasn't an expert in tagging or throw-ups or whatever the kids wanted to call their chicken-scrawls, he could recognise handwriting easily enough. "Mean anything to you?"
"I don't know. Maybe they're making a comeback. Good luck to them. I mean, I liked The Game, but Hot Space was shit." She snapped her flashlight off and waved across the river, at the convent. "How far, do you think? Half a mile?"
"Thereabouts." Goodwell drew his pistol and cupped it against his stomach. Second time in one day that he'd pointed it at Chan's back, and it felt just as awful as it had when he'd sighted on the base of her neck back at the old Hill farm. But that'd been self-protection. He'd been set on saving his own head from the block. This, on the other hand, would be a mercy killing. This wouldn't keep him up at night.
At least, that was what he told himself.
Chan didn't hear the snap of the safety. She was staring at the distant convent, one hand over her eyes to shield herself from the rain as she stepped from beneath the safety of the bridge. "See that? That's gotta be a fire."
"Don't see anything," Goodwell lied. The light in the windows of the convent was leaping, not just soft candlelight but something ferocious, white and hot and hungry. "We really, really have to go back to town."
"Definitely out of control," Chan whispered. "Bet they don't have a phone in there, either."
He raised the pistol. One shot. She'd drop into the river and drift away. Problem solved, one soul saved. Not just a mercy. One of his better deeds. If there was a God, he'd pat Goodwell on the back.
"We have to get trucks out there." Chan turned and froze. Her pupils shrank as she fixed on the bore of Goodwell's pistol. "What are you doing?"
Goodwell's finger tightened on the trigger. "I'm sorry."
"Goodwell, what the fuck are you doing."
"I'm sorry," he said again. Chan's right hand had dropped to her hip, her own pistol. "You're a good detective. Too good."
"You're not making any sense. Jesus, put the gun down. Whatever's eating you-"
"That's the thing, isn't it? Nothing's eating me. I'm the only one here who isn't getting chewed up. Now, stand still." The lump in his throat felt like a golf-ball. The pistol wobbled in his grip. "I'm really, really sorry."
He'd shot the three boys without hesitation. His trigger-pull had been smooth and unconcerned. But here, with Chan frozen before him, the moonlight catching the steam rising off her shoulder in a silky halo, his finger was caught. Count to three, he told himself. This is bigger than her, bigger than you. Don't think. You have a job and that job is Rustwood. Put her down clean and get on with your work.
It was only a moment of hesitation, but it was enough.
Chan drew, cocked and fired so fast that Goodwell didn't even see her hands moving. The crash of gunfire echoed beneath the bridge and Goodwell reeled back as the air fluttered beside his cheek. The bullet-whirr was a bee passing at supersonic speeds.
Detective Karen Chan ran.
She was around the far side of the underpass and up on to the bridge within moments. Goodwell staggered after her, one hand pressed to his cheek. Even though he couldn't feel blood, even though he was sure the bullet had missed by as much as a foot, his whole face was tingling like he'd been cut. "Chan! Stop!"
She didn't stop, unsurprisingly. By the time Goodwell had crossed the bridge she'd thrown herself into the tall grass that bordered the moors. One more silhouette amongst hundreds as she wove through the bushes and dead grey trees. Moving fast for a lady who lived on chocolate and chicken wings, Goodwell noted ruefully. He'd underestimated her.
Half a mile ahead was the Pentacost Convent. The flames in the windows - no doubt now, it had to be fire, leaping high a
nd hot behind those rotten boards - were only growing stronger. Even from such a distance he could smell the smoke, the thick, coiling stink in the back of his throat.
He knew that smell. He'd gotten enough of it to last a lifetime over the past years, boiling his own blood in a wooden bowl in his basement. That disgusting barbecue tang.
Far across the moors, someone was burning.
Chapter 22
The stone wall was hot against Kimberly's back, burning her through her thin shirt. The nave was choked with greasy smoke and the figures staggering back and forth through the fire were only silhouettes, black against the leaping light. She groped for another molotov and her hand closed on empty air. "That's it?"
"Gotta get out." Fitch beat at the door, groping at the heavy wooden bar, but it was too long, too thick, little more than a tree-trunk cut down to size and jammed in place. Kimberly joined him, straining against the beam. It was slippery with sap, sweating in the heat. "Come on!"
"I'm trying!" She dared a glance over her shoulder. The figures were getting closer. Some had fallen, dragging themselves along the cold stone floor with fingers as thin and sharp as bone, wrapped in flame like heavy blankets. She could almost make out their features, the faces behind the fire, and what she saw in those blank sockets made her want to scream.
"Move!" Fitch swore, slamming against the doors. "Move, you fucker!" He dropped to one knee, getting beneath the beam and driving upwards with his shoulder. "Come on!"
The beam shifted. It was only half an inch, maybe less, but that little jerk felt like a mile to Kimberly. She dropped low as well, smoke coiling above her head, and got her weight beneath the beam. "On three!"
They shoved. The beam groaned. In the centre of the nave, one of the figures tangled around the edge of a pew and stumbled to its knees. It wailed in a voice like a violin bow being drawn across catgut.
"One, two, three!" The beam inched higher. "One, two, three!" It was getting hard to see, hard to think. Smoke scratched at her throat. The world seemed far away, the flagstones beneath her knees soft like plush cushions, the beam only a gentle, hot pressure against her neck. She could smell meat cooking, and found herself salivating. Was that the stink of her own skin?
Fitch was having the same problems. "One, two," he counted, and his legs gave way. "Shit, shit-"
"Get up!" She scrambled across the floor, the stones hot against her palms. "Push!"
"I shouldn't have come." Fitch was crying, his eyes red-rimmed, tears pouring down his cheeks, although whether that was from despair or the smoke Kimberly couldn't tell. "Shouldn't have listened to him."
Kimberly recoiled. "Who-"
A screech snapped her around. The figures had pushed through the wall of flame, crawled over the last of the pews. They clawed at the air, hands curling into hungry fists. They had so many fingers, not five or six or even seven but whole quivering, spasming blade-thin bunches snapping at her face.
"Do it!" she screamed, and Fitch responded like she'd jabbed him with a pin. Together they slammed upward against the beam, and it lifted another inch, creaking in its sockets. "Again! Again!"
The beam slipped, tilted, and Kimberly barely had time to throw herself aside as it fell out of the iron sockets. The beam crashed against the flagstones, spraying hot sap, and Kimberly hissed as it seared her bare cheeks. She threw herself against the doors and they creaked open a hands-breadth, enough so that she could see the moors beyond the convent. Cold, black sky blurred behind sheeting rain. The air tasted of earth, not smoke. She gulped it down, desperate for every mouthful of clean air.
Fitch was jammed behind her, trying to shove the doors open. Soft earth had built up against the doors, and every inch they gained tore deep trenches through the soil. Kimberly tried to slip between the doors but could only get her arm through. Rain tickled her palm. Heat on one side, the flames high enough to barbecue her in her clothes, and less than three feet away, the blessed open plains. "Come on!"
"I'm tryi-"
Fitch was choked off. Kimberly didn't want to look back, but she couldn't help it. With one arm still thrust through the gap between the doors, she turned.
A many-fingered hand settled on her shoulder. A face wreathed in flame leaned down as if to kiss her, a face wrought from bone and steel, ribbed along cheekbone and eye socket with piping like the slats of a dead rat's spine, teeth thin as needles, and behind the eyes, writhing wetly inside that hollow skull...
Kimberly screamed.
Chapter 23
Goodwell lost track of Chan in the scrub after less than five hundred yards. For a while he had her trail, a blundering path marked by tall grass snapped flat and muddy footprints left in the rain-soaked earth, but then the path led to a rocky hillock and the trail vanished entirely. From time to time he thought he saw the grasses rustle ahead, a thin tree bending as if someone were resting against it, catching their breath. But even in those bare moments when the clouds parted long enough for moonlight to brush across the plains, he couldn't pick Chan from the shadows.
No question where she was headed, though. The convent squatted on the horizon, only a quarter mile away now, firelight blazing from the windows. Goodwell could've sworn those windows had been boarded over less than five minutes before, but now light guttered from those slim stone arches, bright as dawn.
Even with the rain misting on his cheeks and the skyline choked with cloud, he could see the thick smoke pouring from the convent, great sickly plumes belching from every crack.
He swore and pushed on, glad for the pistol bumping his hip. Maybe Chan would see the fires and turn the other way. Maybe she'd stumble all the way back to town, screaming of attempted murder. Maybe they'd put Goodwell in cuffs. All of it was preferable to the poor woman kicking in the front doors of the convent. Whatever lived there, Goodwell got the impression it didn't like to be disturbed.
Luck wasn't on his side. As he slipped down the far side of a muddy rise, a black shape rose from the grass and sprinted towards the distant convent. Chan, scrabbling for purchase among the weeds.
Goodwell kept low, running hunched like he was ducking away from incoming fire. If she saw him coming she'd shoot again, and he'd seen her marksmanship results. She wouldn't miss twice. He had the advantage - Chan was wheezing, the sound carrying across the moors, while he moved almost silently. Toe to heel, gently, gently. Close the distance.
Behind him, carrying clear across the swaying grass, came an excited gurgle. It put Goodwell in mind of a baby clutching for its favourite toy.
He didn't look back. He already knew what he'd see. Three pairs of shining, silvered eyes.
Mud sucked at his shoes as he ran across the fields. Only a couple hundred yards to the convent now, flames boiling thick from the windows, the shriek and hiss of exploding stones echoing over the plain. Where was Chan? Christ, almost to the front doors, her hands thrown up over her face to shield her from the heat.
No time for subtlety, not any more. He sprinted across the bog, jacket flying out behind him. One shoe got stuck in the muck and he yanked his foot free, leaving it behind. The peat soaked through his thin socks, freezing his toes. He ignored the pain. "Chan! Don't!"
Chan spun, pistol in hand. "Get the fuck away from me!"
"Don't go in there!" Goodwell broke from the tall grass. The heat rising from the convent was blistering, sucking all the moisture from his lips. He turned away from that blinding light, taking in the surrounding fields. To their right was a tall hill studded with gravestones, jagged like fingernails chewed to the quick. Beyond that, the Pentacost river from which the convent took its name, winding lazily around the northern edge of Rustwood, all the way to the ocean.
For a moment he contemplated running for the river, throwing himself into the rush. Anywhere was better than here. But leaving without Chan... "Don't go in there! They'll kill you!"
"You're crazy!" Chan backed up, glancing over her shoulder as she approached the front doors of the convent. "I'll shoot, I swear-"
"I'm trying to help you!" The front doors were open a crack, just wide enough for Goodwell to make out the hungry orange glow inside. And... was that a hand, waving from the gap? "You don't know what they are."
"You're crazy," Chan said again, her voice almost swallowed by the crackle of flames. "Come any closer and I'll put you down."
"Chan-"
She ran for the front doors, her back to Goodwell, and in that moment he knew he could've drawn and put two through her centre of mass without blinking. His hands were steady. No hesitation, no guilt.
But he didn't. There was something about that hand thrust through the space between the tall wooden double doors, something about the wails rising from inside the convent. Some of them sounded not-quite-human, and the others...
He recognised that cry. Mrs Kimberly Archer.
Goodwell ran harder than he could ever remember running and grabbed the great iron ring that served as the convent's door handle. Chan had the other, and even through her hand dropped to her pistol she didn't draw, didn't put a bullet through Goodwell's gut like she could've.
"Shoot me later," Goodwell grunted. "There are people inside."
"Go fuck yourself." Chan hauled back, and Goodwell did the same beside her. The double-doors were stuck fast in the mud and the loop of iron seared his palms. He smelled his own skin cooking. The heat coming from the gap between the doors stole his breath. He turned his head, sucked down air, and pulled.
The doors creaked. Goodwell bit back a scream as flame licked around the edge of the door and seared his wrist. The doors themselves were smoking, edges blackened, sap pouring from great rents in the wood. In less than a minute they'd erupt in flame.
No way anyone was still alive in there. They'd be barbecued. Roasted red, skin split, curled in on themselves. Maybe it would be a mercy to close the doors and let them cook. Whatever had happened to Mrs Archer in there, if that place was enough to scare his employer, the first and true Queen of Rustwood...
Rust: Two Page 18
