by Ilsa J. Bick
“Can’t argue that,” Weller said. “You have an idea where?”
“Yes.” Jed’s cabin, a stone’s throw from Michipicoten Island, was a place Tom always imagined taking Alex. Thirty kids made that a nonstarter. Forget an island’s limited resources; simply getting them all there would be a feat. He liked the idea of a large island, though. “We go west or north, and stay far away from Rule.”
“Not much north, except the Waucamaw,” Weller said, still staring straight ahead.
“There’s Oren and an Amish settlement west of that. They’re farmers, right? Arable land is exactly what we need.”
“Finding seed will be tough,” Weller said. “Trying to grow enough to feed all those kids, figuring out how to preserve it for winter—”
“Will be hard,” Tom said. “I understand that. But we have to do it sometime, and that might as well be now. The growing season up here is short. The longer we wait, the more difficult this will become, and before we know it, it’ll be winter again. For all we know, there’s still livestock to be found, and horses. We have to get to those animals before they die, too, or get so wild we’ll never chase them down.”
Weller’s hand snuck to his mouth, a gesture Tom always associated with a man mentally rehearsing what to say next. “Maybe,” Weller said. “But Amish … if there are any left alive, they tend to keep to themselves. Don’t want outsiders—” Frowning, the old man abruptly straightened in his saddle and craned. “Tom … you get a good look at that horse? Up there by the church?”
Tom switched his gaze from Weller to the near bend in the road and the church, on its bald knob, just now coming into view. They were still a quarter mile away, but from this approach he could see a wedge of snow to the rear beneath which must lie a parking lot. In front, the snow was broken from horses, skis, and boots. The bike rack, where he’d seen the horses, was to the right of stone steps, and only just visible.
As was the single horse, on its side, in a bowl of shadow. Even then, it was on the tip of his tongue to observe that horses could lie so still it was easy to think they were dead.
But then, Tom saw the blood.
91
“So what’d you think?” Already a total spaz, Jasper was practically vibrating. Jiggling free an aluminum bowl from clamps suspended above a bucket of sand, he put the bowl to his eye. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Mmm.” Luke spared a glance at the blue button of Jasper’s eye peering through the bottom. Never having seen thermite in action, he was startled at how high that shower of sparks leapt, a good five feet. The pillar of fire was even higher and so bright he’d shielded his eyes.
But where was Tom? Earlier, there’d been no mistaking Tom’s dark look, or his anger. What surprised Luke was when, instead of staying and stopping this craziness, Tom wheeled away, really fast, then streaked off on his horse in the general direction of the church, with Weller a few minutes behind. Now, an hour later, still no Tom, no Weller.
Not good.
“Yeah, it was all right,” he said to Jasper, who was dancing from foot to foot like he had to pee. “But unless you can slow it way down”—he wanted to add, without blowing your head off, but thought that would be lost on a nut like Jasper—“what do we need it for?”
“This is already fifteen seconds slower than the last batch.” Jasper sounded offended. “I ground the aluminum coarser and that slows the reaction. But I saw a TV show where this arsonist used stuff from fire extinguishers to slow down the reaction, and so I was thinking, you know, why not? Tom kind of said something about that, and I know he was working on it, only he did it in secret and he won’t show me what he did. But I think he figured out how to use … uhm …” Jasper screwed his lips to a rosebud in thought. “Ammonium phosphate. I think.”
“Great,” Luke said, with no enthusiasm at all. He pulled the bucket of sand from the concrete cistern cap. In the center was a large, gray, cow patty-like splotch of molten iron and aluminum slag still shimmering with heat. “Gas us all with ammonia. That’ll be just swell.”
“No, just phosphoric acid when the phosphorus combines with water. It won’t kill you, not right away. Anyway, it could work,” Jasper said. “It did on the show.”
What had his parents let this kid watch? “This is reality, Jasper,” Luke said, and turned to trudge toward the equipment shed. The going was much easier these days, what with the snowpack diminished, no more than six inches now, and a good foot less than it had been when they blew the mine. Now that they were into the middle of March, the first hints of spring sometimes came in sudden whiffs of sun-warmed air. The roofs of the buildings were showing. Breaking the ice over the horse troughs took only a hard kick.
After the demonstration, Mellie had stayed to enthuse before shooing the other kids back to their various chores: taking care of the horses, gathering wood for fires, slopping MREs into a pot for a communal supper. He looked for her now, sweeping his gaze left from the equipment shed, which sat at the base of the north slope and was the furthest of the outbuildings, to the cow barn where Mellie and Weller had set up their command post. They stockpiled their weapons there, too, Mellie or Weller doling out rifles from a locker to those kids on lookout or guard duty. Beyond the red rectangle of the barn was a hog shed where half the kids bunked. A little further on was a horse barn with a staved-in roof, though half the space was still serviceable. He could see people moving around, the fire flaring up in the center of the cow corral as kids fed it. A handful of yapping dogs raced and rolled on a near fan of land rising east to a knoll and then to pasture. As far as he could tell, Mellie wasn’t down with the kids.
Probably at the house. Up to me to talk to her, I guess. After Tom, he was the oldest. Just work up the nerve, that was all. Tell Mellie what a crummy idea this all was and how they ought to be thinking about spring coming, finding a home. What was the worst she could say?
At the shed, he set the bucket of sand down next to the roller door, then ducked in via the side door, with Jasper on his heels. Emptied of farm equipment, the shed instead was divided into workstations, long planks supported by sawhorses. Tom’s area was completely clear, all his equipment squirreled away somewhere only he knew. Jasper’s work area was littered with rolls of magnesium ribbon, bottles of aluminum powder, sulfur, potassium nitrate, glycerin, a large plastic tub of plaster of Paris. Nearby, another of Jasper’s buddies was experimenting with chunks of Styrofoam, gasoline, various soaps, sugar, and lighter fluid, trying to figure a way to make a suitably sticky version of napalm. Still another team was scoring old soda bottles with glass cutters for Molotov cocktails. The air smelled of chemical welds, gasoline, and old eggs.
What are we doing? They were developing weapons just to do it, Mellie setting them to various tasks like a guidance counselor slotting them into career paths. In a couple months, it would be spring. Would they still be living out of tents? Broken-down barns? How long did disasters go on?
“We need to find a home,” he said.
“Huh?” Jasper glanced up from his perusal of a slender red fire extinguisher. “What?”
“Nothing.” Tasting home hurt his mouth. His vision wavered, and he stood up suddenly, barking a knee against a sawhorse.
“You okay?” Jasper asked.
“Yeah.” Knee throbbing, he gimped to the door. “Don’t crack any of those fire extinguishers until I get back, okay?”
“I wouldn’t,” Jasper said, with the injured dignity of a kid eyeing a cookie jar. “What about potassium chloride? You know, Super-K extinguishers?”
“Wouldn’t the chloride turn into chlorine gas? Won’t that kill you pretty fast?”
He watched Jasper think about it. “Oh. Maybe.” Jasper made a face. “Shoot.”
“Yeah,” Luke said, turning to go. “Reality blows.”
He took his time slogging to the farmhouse, rehearsing what to say. Giving out grief had been his older sister’s specialty. By the time his parents got around to him, either she’d worn them out, or
they didn’t much care. His mom once said that getting all worked up about kids was like worrying about dropped pacifiers: the first kid, you sterilized that sucker; the second kid, you wiped the Binky on your jeans. And by the third, you let the dog lick it.
That brought a grin. His mom always cracked him up. He should tell Cindi. She’d appreciate it. One thing Cindi was good at was telling stories, most of them about her mom. He liked listening, too, because she made it sound like a once-upon-a-time.
That’s what we should be doing. We should be swapping stories and toasting marshmallows. Like home. The thought pushed a lump into his throat. At the farmhouse steps, he tipped a look back. Three of the dogs were still roughhousing, although a fourth was pointed east, nosing the knoll, and yark-yark-yarking. Now that he was up higher, Luke could easily eyeball the fields beyond the horse barn and the lookouts, black specks on a distant knoll.
We need a home. He studied their tent city and the kids at their chores, the orange candle of that bonfire. A place to call our own.
* * *
The farmhouse, a two-story with dormers, was quiet. The kitchen was empty, although a mug with the black and red tag of a teabag draped over the lip sat on the table, and a chair was pushed back. The air smelled of warm oranges. Maybe Mellie was sleeping? Uncertain now, he stood a moment, eyes on the ceiling, listening for footsteps. Nothing moved overhead. He knew that Weller slept on the ground level, but he had no idea if Mellie used the other back bedrooms.
He opened his mouth to call, then hesitated. Listened. The dog’s yark-yark-yark was muffled, though he thought there might be two barking now. This seriously creepy vibe suddenly tickled his neck, like the day he snuck into his parents’ bedroom and started opening drawers to discover, well … things. Like, my dad reads these? They do things like that? He kept expecting his dad to pop out of a closet. For weeks, whenever his dad put an arm around his mom, Luke broke into a sweat.
This was like that. He was someplace he didn’t belong, about to see something he had no business seeing, not if he knew what was good—
From down the hall came a muted mechanical click. And then two more.
He went rigid. After a moment, the sounds came again: click. Pause. Click-click-click. Pause. Click-click-click.
Luke’s heart skipped. He might not know the meaning, but he understood what this was.
Code.
92
When he spotted the blood, Tom made them peel off the road, get under cover, and wait. This went against every impulse that screamed he needed to get to Cindi and Chad, right now. But it was the same as it had been in Jed’s shed when the bounty hunters came: panic, and everyone died. So, instead, he and Weller crept in gradually, ducking behind and under what scant cover they had.
The church’s front doors were ajar, an open invitation they took, Weller sweeping low as he angled high because everyone forgot to look up. The church’s interior was deeply shadowed, with dark corners from which anything might spring. Tom’s eyes scoured the stone floor and along the pews for trip wires, a curl of det cord. But there was nothing.
The tower had seven landings accessible by wrought iron ladders fixed to limestone walls. Weller covered as he led the way, scrutinizing each rung and rail for wires, pressure switches. More nothing, and no one blasted down from above. A defunct carillon console was still just as thick with dust and cobwebs as it had been when Tom climbed down two weeks ago.
Which left only the trap at the top of the seventh ladder. Tom stood there a good minute, listening for the tread of a boot, a squeal of wood. He felt cold air seeping from the open belfry, and thin slivers of daylight glimmered through gaps in the wood. But there were no dead spaces, nothing blacked out. He used the tip of his Uzi to ease open the trap. Nothing went ka-boom, and there was no muzzle flash.
The first thing he saw in the belfry was that the stool, on which he’d perched for hours, lay on its side. Beside it, on the floor, was the rumpled mound of a sleeping bag. A book splayed, facedown, next to the stool and Cindi’s binos, a pair of Nikon 8×42s that she liked for when the light started to go. Wrappers were scattered over the floor. A small litter of crumpled lunch bags and balled waxed paper half-covered Cindi’s Nikons. A water bottle and thermos were overturned. The air smelled of cold chicken broth and wet noodles.
From the looks of it, the kids put up a fight. Yet as they headed down from the belfry and out of the church, Tom worried the tableau. Something was off, but damned if he knew precisely what.
“I don’t know about this.” Weller crouched over the mutilated body of Chad’s dog. The animal had been decapitated, its severed head lying at the bottom of the steps like a discarded basketball. “That’s a clean cut, and I’ll bet it was the first one, too. Look at the blood spray. But”—he reached to turn the dog over—“if you look at these cuts here …”
“Don’t!” Tom snatched Weller’s wrist. “It could be booby-trapped; they plant bombs in dead dogs.”
“Ease down, Tom. We’re not in Afghanistan.” Weller gave his hand a pointed glance. “Mind?”
“No. Just … be careful.” Exhaling, Tom forced his hand to relax. He did not like this at all. The back of his neck was jumping. Being out in the open, on this bald knob, made him nervous. He and Weller were static targets, just begging to be picked off. “First time for everything.”
“No arguments from me there.” Weller rolled the dog’s stiffening body, then grunted. “Look at the blood.”
The vermillion pool was small, a few tablespoons. “Not enough.” Tom turned back and eyed the spray-painted stone of the church’s front. “So those had to come first, when the heart was still pumping. You’re saying they cut the head off first and then mutilated the body after the dog was dead?”
“Be my guess.” Weller held a hand over a slop of the dog’s colon. “Cold. Blood’s real thick. Whatever happened here happened a while back. Hours, probably. Same thing with Chad’s horse.” Like the dog, the mare’s belly was ripped. Pulverized organs splattered the snow. The stink was terrible, a rancid, fecal odor that made a pulse of bile boil to the back of Tom’s throat. The horse’s skull had been hacked straight down through the poll, leaving an ax-shaped divot that neatly split the skull in two. “Hatchet or a big machete for the killing blow, and then they could take their time tearing up the animal once it was down. But Tom …” Weller aimed a forefinger at the stump of the dog’s neck. “That is a clean cut.”
Tom stared at Weller for a full ten seconds before he got it. “The dog was standing still. It recognized whoever did this.”
“Or responded to commands, yeah. Or it could’ve been helped along.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look at the head. What’s missing, something Chad’s dog always wore?”
Tom’s gaze raked over the dog’s glazed eyes, the sagging half-shuttered lids, that lolling blue tongue. “The muzzle. Chad always muzzled his dog when he went on lookout.”
“Right. I think someone removed the muzzle and fed the dog something. Put it to sleep and then you can chop off the head pretty easy. So, one thing’s for sure, it couldn’t have been a Chucky. That dog would never stand still or let it get close, and they only killed the one horse. Why do that unless you need the other? Chuckies don’t ride.”
“Unless, now, some do or can.” Tom thought about that. “You know what else is wrong? There’s nothing covert about this. It’s like they’re trying to spook or impress us. This all feels”—he waved a hand—“arranged.” That jogged something else loose. “You remember upstairs? It looks like there was a struggle, right? But what wasn’t there, Weller?”
“I don’t follow.”
“No brass. No smell of gunpowder.”
“Maybe Chad never got off a shot.”
“Come on, the place was a mess. Cindi dropped her book, the binos, kicked over her stool and the thermos, but Chad never fired a shot?” There was still something else wrong with that scene, too, a nag in his mind lik
e a loose tooth begging to be nudged from its socket.
“You’re saying it’s the same as the dog? That they knew him?”
“Or had no reason to be scared until too late, yeah. But how many people, who could do something like this, do the kids know? There are only three: you, me—and Mellie.”
“I hear you, but …” Weller shook his head. “I don’t see it. Besides, she’s been at camp all day. Couldn’t have been Mellie, and I know it wasn’t me.”
Had he seen Weller earlier in the day? “She could’ve arranged for it to happen.”
“What? She’d never do that. What are you saying?”
“You heard me,” Tom said. “I think there’s another player.”
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“Another player?” Weller echoed.
Tom nodded. “Has to be, unless it really was Mellie. But I’m thinking that it’s someone she knows and who could convince the kids he wasn’t a threat.”
“I …” Weller’s gaze danced to the snow as he drew a careful hand over his mouth. “I’m not seeing it, Tom. Why would she do that?”
Tom’s stomach went leaden. He knew Weller’s mannerisms and tells, and now he had to be careful. More compact, the arc of swing required to bring his Uzi to bear was much shorter than for Weller’s rifle. This was a contest he could win. But they weren’t there yet, and he had no wish to nudge them any closer to the brink. If this old man wanted Tom dead, he’d already had plenty of opportunities. “I guess that’s what I’m asking you,” he said.
For a long, tense moment, Weller only looked at him. He must’ve read something in Tom’s face he didn’t like, because the old man suddenly raised both hands in surrender. No way Weller would win in a draw down now. “Take it easy, Tom.”
“Two kids are missing, this horse and the dog are hamburger, and I should take it easy?” When Weller said nothing, he said, “Do you know what’s going on?”
