Why did she have to go all the way to the Eastern Lands to kill this woman? She could just go to her children now—they were only a half a mile away at this very moment—and reveal to them, in some way, the story of how she’d been resurrected, how the universe had spared her for a purpose. And the plot of their prehistoric ancestor to murder them.
Gretel, of all people, would believe her, considering her expertise with Orphism and the potion. And then she could protect them both. Right here in the familiarity of their home. Yes, let Tanja come. Let her come with whomever she wished. She would kill them all. Kill them the same way she killed Marlene.
But Anika’s feet were leading her away from home, her instincts were taking her away from the cannery and Rifle Field and the lake that led back to the Morgan property. And she immediately felt the reason why.
The hunger.
It was building again, and putting her children and Mrs. Klahr in the path of her rapacity was not something she was willing to risk. Not anymore.
Anika walked at a steady pace along the gravel shoulder of the Interways, passing the second of two mile markers before hearing the sound of the first car, approaching from behind. She quickly veered diagonally from the shoulder to the tree line that ran parallel with the road, and then stood eagerly between two trees, licking her lips as she watched the late model sedan whiz by her without slowing.
Anika continued her path down the Interways, now hugging the edge of the forest as she walked. Hours passed and the sun rose high, sticking at its apex before beginning its descent.
The subtle pangs that had bubbled in Anika’s stomach at the start of her journey were now a raging fire, and when she saw mile marker 193 rising from the grass at the border of the road—the twenty-fourth marker she’d reached that day—she sat under the overgrown branches of a giant maple tree. Three or four more cars revved by, and with each one that passed, Anika felt desire and regret.
She lay back now, her head resting on a pile of dead twigs, and re-imagined the scene in the warehouse only a half day earlier. How she wished she were back there now, knife in hand, and could make the choice she’d set out to make initially, to press the blade to her neck and pull it quickly and tightly along the length of her throat.
Another car approached and Anika sat up weakly, resting on her elbows as she listened, gauging the vehicle’s distance, calculating the effort it would take for her to reach the road and flag it down. Her strength was all but diminished now, and the thought of sleep was rapidly overpowering her need to eat.
At least for the night. Tomorrow when she woke, she would be famished.
Anika decided she needed a more secure location to camp for the night, preferably one that provided some semblance of shelter, so she forced herself to her feet and then walked several paces into the darkness of the woods. The setting sun was still tossing a few strands of light through the leaves, but they would soon be disappearing. That was fine, she thought; for tonight, she would sleep under the stars in a thick part of the forest and then re-assess her plan come morning.
Anika continued walking further into the interior of the woods until she was far enough away that she could no longer hear the passing tire noise from the Interways. She saw a thick maple tree to her right and headed towards it, but as she took her first step in the tree’s direction, she nearly toppled to the ground, tripped up by a thick piece of wood that had been buried deep into the earth.
Curious, Anika knelt down and studied the object, realizing instantly it was a property stake. She stood again and looked straight ahead, and then scanned her surroundings, swivelling her head slowly from left to right. She narrowed her eyes now, channeling the last of the light, and just caught the wink of a reflection in her periphery. She craned her neck forward toward the flicker, adjusting the height of her eye line slightly, and through a narrow gap that ran the length of the branches in front of her, she could just make out the corner L shape of wood and glass. It was a window, and Anika knew instantly that even in the full light of day, in her previous life, she would have never detected it.
Anika moved to her left now and then took a few more steps forward, pushing away a branch here and there, ducking through the foliage until she reached the perimeter of a yard where a small wooden cabin stood alone in a carved out area of the forest. A single box truck with the words Pavel’s Seafood sat parked in the driveway.
Anika almost doubted her eyes at first, as if the home before her was some sort of mirage, a trick of her mind like those seen by men dying of thirst in the desert. But as she inched closer to the cabin, she could smell the aroma coming from the wood-burning stove, and feel at her feet the manicured yard of gravel and wooden planter rails that ran the length of the flower gardens surrounding the property. It was a beautiful property, really, quaint and secluded but meticulous in design and maintenance.
Anika stood at the rear of the house, now about twenty paces away, and looked upon a small staircase that led to a back door. Based on what Anika could see through a window just above and to the right of the door—and what she could see was quite a bit more than the previous Anika would have seen—the door opened into the home’s kitchen. The smell of herring was strong in Anika’s nostrils, and some type of shellfish—mussels, perhaps—had just been put to a boil.
It wasn’t the powerful aromas of the fish that struck Anika, however; she delicately waded through those odors until she found the aroma inside she desired most. He was middle-aged, fifty perhaps, and lived in the home alone.
Anika stood inhaling the air, her mouth open and eyes closed as she teetered in place, barely conscious now. Her trance was in part to do with the thought of sating her hunger, but it was mostly to do with exhaustion. Despite her remarkable discovery of the cabin, and the momentary shot of adrenaline provided by the possibilities inside, sleep was becoming unavoidable.
She walked around the side of the house, allowing a generous berth, keeping her head tilted as she passed trying to maintain the smell in her orbit. She arrived at the front of the property where a wide porch ran along the length of the facade, and she stood directly in front of the structure, staring at the face of the home like the predator she’d become. The craving was growing stronger by the moment, and she thought of her near-death moment in the warehouse once again.
“Let sleep win,” she pleaded aloud.
Anika closed her eyes and then opened them slowly before striding purposefully toward the porch. She reached the bottom of the first step, prepared to climb them and enter the home, when she noticed a substantial hole in the latticework next to her leg on the right. She knelt down and looked through the cavity into a dark crawlspace that looked to be rather vast, and appeared to have been filled up over the years with yard and garden supplies. The hole was the perfect size for a person to fit through.
This was a sign, she thought. Sleep is my choice for tonight.
Anika climbed through the opening and pushed her way to the back until she reached the foundation of the home, eventually wedging herself between a wheelbarrow and some type of primitive electrical blower. They certainly weren’t the accommodations of a luxury inn, but the arrangement did give her shelter and a modest layer of warmth. And, perhaps more importantly, she would be perfectly stationed for the hunt when morning arrived.
But for the night, the hunger subsided and was replaced by the warmth of sleep, and before Anika drifted into unconsciousness, she had one last thought of reassurance: she had made the right choice. Even if only for another night, the man inside was still alive.
ANIKA SLEPT WELL AMONGST the mass of equipment and tools, and only began to stir when the property owner opened his front door to begin his daily routine. Anika’s eyes opened with a flash but were met with only darkness, indicating the sun was still a few hours from rising. As was the case for most workers in the Back Country, the days of men who delivered seafood apparently started very early.
Anika listened intensely as the man walked across the por
tion of the porch directly above her head before descending the steps to his truck. The vehicle came to life with a modest bit of effort, and the man returned to his home to finish up his other morning duties while the motor warmed.
At the sound of the closing door, Anika squeezed from between the wheelbarrow and blower, disturbing a pair of mice that had been using her body for warmth during the night. She moved forward, low and stalking, and then situated herself in a kneeling position at the opening, her face pressed against a splintered section of lattice. When he returned, Anika thought, the second he reached the bottom step and took his first stride toward the truck, she would attack.
The creak of the front door loaded the muscles in Anika’s knees and shoulders. She felt like a rubber band being stretched to capacity, and she had to concentrate to keep her breathing quiet and under control. Next came the dull click of the man’s soles above Anika’s head, and she slipped her right foot out from beneath the deck as quietly as a cat. She was in a sprinter’s position now, fingertips to the ground. Her eyes were wide and, despite the dull ache of shame and self-loathing in the pit of her stomach, a smile had found its way upon her face.
She took one last deep breath when she saw the hem of the man’s pants, his shoe hitting the pathway at the base of the porch. She shifted her weight forward, the last crucial motion of preparation before she would erupt towards his throat.
And then she heard the siren of a passing System vehicle in the distance.
A siren. The System.
Anika was rendered motionless by the sound, stunned in place, as if she’d been blasted with a magic spell that had frozen her in a particular moment of time and action. Her paralysis lasted for only a moment though, and she quickly ducked back beneath the porch and out of sight of the man whose life, she knew, had been spared by only a fraction of a second.
From her bunkered position of the crawlspace, Anika watched the seafood truck and the man—whose name was Pavel, presumably—drive off into the dark morning.
For several minutes after the truck was out of sight, Anika remained still, staring at the empty place where the truck sat only moments earlier. It was nothing short of a miracle, she considered, and she knew that on some level it was Orphism that was responsible for the intervention of the siren. And Orphism that had intervened, in the form of an internal voice, just moments before she took her own life.
She began to laugh, and seconds later the laughter was accompanied by tears of glee, glee that she had shown restraint and let the man live.
The voice at the warehouse had told Anika the hunger would diminish over time, but barely any had passed, and the truth was, the reason she had let the delivery man escape was not due to a lack of want—the instinct to devour him was just as overpowering as it had been with the hunters—it was the siren that brought her back from the brink.
But why? Why had she been so distracted by the noise?
The System didn’t often make its way to the interior of the Back Country, but they were in charge of the entirety of the Interways, and thus a System siren wasn’t all that unusual in this part of the Southlands. But something about the noise had struck Anika as relevant, and it had become part of the decision matrix which allowed an innocent man to live.
And then it came to her, as if the answer had fallen like a feather from above, drifting gradually downward until it lodged itself into Anika’s brain.
Her need to feed on human organs would continue, at least for a while longer until either the cravings subsided or she followed through with her suicide. But the victims didn’t have to be innocent. And they didn’t have to be random. To a certain extent, she could control whom she fed on, whom she targeted. That was what the siren had meant to her.
Anika stepped out to the walkway and quickly ascended the porch stairs. She walked to the door and, not surprisingly, it was unlocked. In the shroud of the forest without a neighbor in sight, burglary was probably as unlikely at Pavel’s home as a plague of locusts.
Inside, the home was small but clean, austere, making what could easily have been a home of clutter feel open and pleasant. Anika surveyed the exposed floor plan and saw what she was looking for on a small table in the dining area at the back of the house.
A telephone.
She walked with purpose towards the phone and rested her hand on the receiver, running through the script in her head before she placed the call.
She dialed 0-0-1 and a voice came on the line immediately, sans a ring on Anika’s end.
“System Dispatch,” the voice said. “Please state your name and emergency location.”
Anika had never called the System before and wasn’t quite sure what questions to prepare for. For a number of years, there wasn’t even a phone at the Morgan home, and in those times, before her father had become ill and Heinrich had been injured, the thought of interacting with any type of law enforcement, let alone The System, was almost ludicrous.
How so much had changed.
“Name?” Anika stalled, as if mishearing the question, which was actually a difficult one when a name had to be invented.
“Please state your name and emergency location.” There was no impatience in the voice, just a businesslike tone attempting to elicit the necessary information.
“Tanja. Tanja Aulwurm.” The name came out instinctively. “And I doubt, really, that it qualifies as an emergency, but I was driving home and I saw a stray dog on the shoulder. Right at mile marker 193. It was quite large, the dog, and it was just sitting there. I don’t know for certain, but it seemed to be in pain. I slowed...to see if I could help it perhaps, but then I considered it may be dangerous. In any case, I wasn’t sure what to do so I called it in.”
Anika knew the story had to be benign enough so as not to bring out more than one patrol car, but serious enough that The System would involve itself at all. A stray dog on the Interways: no. A stray dog that was large and injured, perhaps dangerous: maybe.
“Thank you, Ms. Aulwurm. I’m sending a car to mile marker 193 now.”
Anika shivered at being referred to as Ms. Aulwurm, knowing that it was indeed who she actually was, no matter that the name had been diluted and nearly lost over the centuries.
The dispatcher hung up the phone with nary a pleasantry, and Anika knew she had little time to waste. If a car was in the immediate area of mile marker 193, it would pass by and see there was no dog and just keep driving.
Anika placed the phone back in the cradle, perused the floor for any dirt she may have tracked in, and then, deciding the scene was clean, rushed out the door and back through the woods to the Interways.
It wasn’t perfect, her plan. And it wasn’t humane. But Anika thought she had found a temporary solution to her problem of food.
Chapter 6
DESPITE HER HAGGARD face and crooked back, the old woman shuffled through the busy street quickly, dodging oncoming pedestrians with the acumen of a cockroach. She kept her eyes forward, focused, and tried to take the shallowest of breaths to keep the aromas from penetrating too deeply. So many aromas.
These shopping excursions were a stressful necessity of the woman’s existence, and with each step outside of her sphere of comfort, she silently cursed the men and women around her.
But every purchase was purposeful, every ingredient critical, so she needed to focus on each errand with the same care she put into the potion, the potion which now sat incomplete on the table in her kitchen.
She reached the downtown market and pushed through the center of a dense crowd that stretched from one end of the street to the other, the attention of the shoppers divided equally amongst a bevy of vendors. There were hundreds of people on the street today, and though it was true this part of the Eastern Lands seemed always to be busy, the woman wondered if there was something unique happening, a festival that was getting underway, or a notable wedding for which preparations were being made.
But none of that was really unique, she thought; these people were alway
s celebrating something. Why, she could never quite understand—in her eyes, there was nothing but misery in every direction of this place.
But it was that very abundance and destitution that had kept her here for so many decades. It was quite easy to thrive in a place with such a combination. There were always so many candidates from which to choose. So many who had lost all connections to hope and society. And when she selected them for her own sustenance, they were almost never missed. And if they were, they were quickly forgotten. For all the bodies that dwelled in this ancient place of color and music, of history and food and literature and art, there were few resources appropriated for practical things. The difficulties that accompanied such muddy subjects like murder and kidnapping were simply beyond the management of any authority.
She exited the mobs of the central market and reached the layer of outer vendors. Here the sea of people ended abruptly and transformed neatly into a nearly deserted street. These outer vendors croaked sheepish pitch phrases at the few passersby, their voices barely audible, seeming almost embarrassed by their products. The woman thought of these sellers as the “market dregs;” an almost underground group made up of those who were unable to secure a permit for the market square, either because they couldn’t afford one or because their merchandise was too fringe for the big stage. Technically, these sellers weren’t to be peddling their wares on the streets at all—anywhere in or outside the market square—but enforcement of these rules were, again, beyond the abilities of the local governments.
The woman stopped at the perimeter of the dregs and scanned the caravan of wagons slowly, starting with the one just beside her to the left and working her vision clockwise until she spotted the appropriate flag, paying particular note to the symbol upon it. The wagon was parked middle right of the circle, just past center, and the flag rising from the front of it was threadbare, the pole upon which it sat seemingly overwhelmed by the meager cloth it held. It had been almost a year since she’d been back to this particular seller, but the woman was certain he was the one she sought.
Anika Rising (Gretel Book 4) Page 7
