A Stranger in Town

by Kelley Armstrong

  Dalton hesitates a split second, and then darts to the other side of the hatch. No one fires from the forest. Outside, Anders is almost to us, still using his military voice as he talks to the hidden hostiles. That voice is rock-steady, just short of a bark.

  He’s almost to us when the arrow comes. He must hear a thwang that we miss. He moves fast but the young man still lets out a hiss of pain, and we open fire. We shoot into the trees, above anyone’s head, the sudden gunfire intended as both warning and cover as Anders drags the boy the last few feet, and then Maryanne and Émilie haul them both in.

  Once they’re inside, we stop shooting, and the forest goes silent. While Petra and Dalton stand guard, I crawl over to the boy.

  Blood soaks his shirt. A hole shows the arrow’s path through his side.

  “They aimed at him,” Anders growls as he rips off the boy’s bloodied and dirt-crusted shirt. “They damn well aimed at him. Their own goddamned guy.”

  I get the young man lying down. Maryanne is there, crouched at his side, gripping his hand.

  “You’re okay,” Maryanne says. “You’re okay.”

  She smiles down at him, and it’s a big smile, one that shows her teeth—her filed teeth—and that is intentional. When she says “You’re okay” again, his eyes fill with tears.

  “Yeah, he’s fine,” Anders says. “Looks like they just nicked him.”

  That isn’t what Maryanne means. Not the injury but his ordeal.

  You’re safe. You’ll be fine.

  “If I hadn’t seen it coming, though?” Anders shakes his head. “It was a chest shot. Motherfuckers. They were taking out their own guy.”

  I could say that I’m not surprised. At the time, I’d been too worried about Anders to see the danger the boy faced, but now I realize that they absolutely would have taken him out. Maryanne had warned us that the shaman wouldn’t hesitate to use him.

  Did they shoot him so they could get to Anders? Or to show us the futility of taking hostages? Or because the boy had been too “weak” to avoid capture?

  From what Maryanne said of the shaman, I’m betting on the last two. Even with that insight, though, Anders couldn’t have foreseen this. He comes from the military, where taking out your own man is unthinkable.

  “You’re okay,” I tell the young man, and he seems to see me for the first time.

  “Careful,” he whispers, his voice rough with disuse. “Please, please be careful. She’s…”

  He swallows and doesn’t finish, and he doesn’t need to. The “bad guys” in this scenario may be a distant Danish corporation and its agents, but the real danger lies in its victims.

  We want to help the hostiles—or at least those who’ll accept help—but that doesn’t matter. There’s no opposing team to fight, so the hostiles will fight us. We still don’t want to attack if there’s a choice, especially when they may have Felicity and Edwin. I ask Anders, but he hasn’t seen them. He did see Victor and thinks he’s dead.

  As Dalton and Petra and Émilie guard the exits, I talk with Anders, and the boy contributes where he can. Bennett. That’s his name. First or last, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter yet.

  Anders spotted one hostile—that’s how he saw the movement that preceded the arrow fire. He’d also spotted another before he’d grabbed Bennett. Dalton and Petra check Anders’s directions and find both hostiles still in place.

  According to Bennett, there are five people left of the shaman’s group. Two of them are watching “the old man and the girl.” Felicity and Edwin are alive. Relief surges … until I realize this only adds to our need to resolve this peacefully. Otherwise, the hostiles may kill them for revenge.

  Worse, the shaman’s group has apparently joined forces with the other group, the shaman having rallied them to the fight. Only a few members of that group are here. A total of five in the woods then, including the wounded shaman. Three are armed with bows.

  Dalton listens to the assessment and then opens his mouth, but Petra beats him to it.

  “Eric?” she says. “I’m going to suggest you let me and Will go after the ones we have eyes on. That’s two of the three archers.”

  He hesitates, but only to check with Anders.

  “Makes sense,” Anders says. “If Petra and I can subdue them quietly, that leaves one bow, one guy armed with a knife, and the wounded leader.”

  They head to the back hatch. Dalton shouts out the hatch, “We want to talk to the woman in charge!”

  Silence.

  “We know it’s a woman. Your shaman or whatever. Your leader.”

  Silence.

  “Fucking hell. Seriously? We know your numbers. We might be holed up like cornered foxes, but that only means we’ve got eyes and guns on the exits, and we’re feeling a little trigger-happy. There are seven fucking people crammed in this tin can. Five guns. One really big dog. You honestly want to test your odds?”

  Still no answer. He shifts his gaze, making sure Anders and Petra are gone before he continues his bluster.

  “So what the fuck are we doing here?” he shouts. “You sit in the forest? We sit in this plane? Wait for dark? That’s a helluva long time, and I can guarantee you, the dark will be our friend, not yours. We’ll shine flashlights out this hatch and see you coming.”

  Nothing.

  Before he can react, I lean into the open hatch.

  “I would like to speak to the woman I shot!” I shout. “I know you’re capable of talking.”

  I pull back fast, even as Dalton growls.

  It takes a moment. Then the shaman calls back, “I will talk to you. Not him. You. But you need to come out.”

  Dalton’s laugh echoes through the clearing. “Fuck no.”

  “You can be silent,” the shaman calls. “You call us savages, but you can barely speak a sentence without that word. You are ignorant and uneducated.”

  I glance over at Maryanne, who is staring at the side of the plane as if she can see through the metal. Her brows are knitted, as if she’s not quite sure what she’s hearing. When I catch her eye, I lift my brows and mouth, Is that not her?

  “No, it is,” she whispers. “I’ve just never heard…” She swallows. “She always spoke better than the rest, but not like that. Not so fluently.”

  I think Maryanne’s hunch was right—the shaman regulated her own intake of the narcotics. She kept her mind clear and her wits sharp. Dalton hides his intelligence behind his rough language. She hid hers behind fractured speech.

  “If I come out, so do you,” I say. “If your people shoot at me, you’ll be dead before you can get back into the forest.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do your people?”

  “They will not fire unless I tell them to,” she says.

  “Will you come out and speak to me?”

  “If there isn’t a gun pointed at me.”

  “Well, since I can’t tell whether there’s an arrow pointed at me, that’s a problem.”

  “Lower your weapon,” she says. “That will be enough.”

  “Agreed.”

  We proceed with care. She steps to a point where Dalton can spot her through the trees, and then I ease into the hatch opening.

  My gaze goes first to Victor. He lies slumped on the ground, his eyes shut. Dead? I can’t say for certain, but I think so, and if not, there’s nothing I can do. Nothing I particularly want to do either as the image of that dead settler family surfaces.

  The shaman and I proceed step by careful step until we stand in the clearing less than three feet apart. This is the first time I’ve seen her in the full light of day. She’s older than I thought, definitely in her sixties. Her shoulder has been patched up more expertly than I would have expected, given the substandard medical care I saw on Maryanne.

  It’s one thing to lack the skills to do better; it’s another to have those skills and withhold them, and my dislike for this woman solidifies into something dangerously close to hate. I rein it in. I can’t afford that. I’m h
ere to get my people to safety, and protect Edwin and Felicity, and help those hostiles who will accept it.

  “You shot me,” the shaman says without preamble.

  “You tried to attack us.”

  “I tried to attack the man who murdered one of my people. You also killed my husband and two more of my people a year ago.”

  “Again, in self-defense. They took us captive, and they planned to kill us for our clothing and supplies.”

  Anger surges through my voice. I want to say more. I want to say that this is what they do at her behest. They will kill us for trespassing on their territory. They will kill us for our goods. They will take us captive and brainwash us like they did to Maryanne. I don’t know what Bennett’s story is, but my gut says he wasn’t with them by choice. They had lost men. They needed more, and so they took one. Because this woman told them to.

  If I start down that road, I will not come back. So I say, as evenly as I can, “We are not your enemy.”

  She snorts.

  “Your group attacked three people in the forest last week,” I say. “They were with him.” I nod back at Victor. “You attacked because they were hunting you. Because you had reason to believe you were in danger. Yes?”

  No answer.

  “Did you not attack them?” I press. “Are you not responsible?”

  Still nothing, which tells me I’m correct. She just doesn’t deign to answer.

  “You did. Presuming it was self-defense, that’s between you and them. It has nothing to do with my people in that plane or the settlers you’ve kidnapped.”

  Her face remains implacable, and my frustration rises.

  “What do you want?” I say.

  “To be left alone.”

  I gesture toward Victor again. “Considering you just killed the last of the four who came after you, it seems you’ve got your wish.”

  “More will come.”

  “Not if I can stop it, which I think I can. However, if you kill us, more will definitely come, because the only people who give a shit about you are here.”

  Her lip curls. “You’ll protect us, will you?”

  “Yes, Heidi,” says a voice behind us. “They’ll protect you.”

  At the name, the woman’s head jerks up, her lip curling even more as her gaze lands on Émilie, sliding from the plane as Dalton grabs for her. Émilie brushes him off and steps forward.

  “Hello, Heidi,” Émilie says. “I always wondered where you ended up.”

  The woman—Heidi—lets out a sound close to a growl.

  “She’s…” I glance at Émilie. “She’s one of the researchers, isn’t she? One of the original Danish employees.”

  “Not Danish. Canadian. Heidi worked for us—worked with me—until she quit about a year before the Danish firm sent two researchers up here. Apparently, she got a better offer. Funny that she wouldn’t just say so. Our firms were working together. Or so I thought. She obviously knew better.”

  “So you came to Rockton,” I say to Heidi. “You and your new colleague joined the Second Settlement and quietly developed the stronger version of Hendricks’s teas. Then you took settlers into the wilderness to create your own cult.”

  Her entire face contorts in a sneer. I knew it would. That’s the point. Make up something so insulting that she’ll rise to the bait.

  “Cult? We were professionals. We were conducting research. Then the firm decided they were done with us. Time to come home, they said. Home? Yes, in a casket.”

  Heidi turns to Émilie. “They did headhunt me away from you, but I thought I was just changing jobs. A new challenge. A new chance to make a name for myself. Then Georg told me the truth. If we failed, we lost our value as assets and became liabilities. They’d kill us. Kill us.” Her voice rises.

  “And you believed him?” I say.

  “No, I did not. I agreed, however, to run. To be careful. Our employers came after us. Tried to kill us. There was no doubt, then.”

  “Georg was the other researcher,” I say. “Your partner. The man who died last year.”

  A bitter laugh. “No, that was not Georg. We parted ways long ago. We divided our people.”

  “He leads the other group.”

  “Did. He died years ago. He was a fool. I should have known that. Only a fool would have taken that job knowing how it could end. A greedy fool.”

  “When your research failed, you became a threat to—”

  “We did not fail. We did as they asked. We created what they asked, and I perfected its use. You’ve seen my people. Soldiers who follow my orders without question. I gave that company what it wanted, and then I was stuck living with these … these creatures.”

  It takes everything in me not to grab my gun and pistol-whip her. She created these “creatures,” and then she kept creating them long after the study ended. Kept them as her own private cult.

  She might hate that word, but it’s true. She created a cult of half zombies who did her bidding, and at any time she could have stopped providing the narcotics and freed their minds. But she didn’t. She may not have been drinking as much as the others, but she’d become an addict in her own way. Addicted to the power of controlling lives.

  “It’s all over now,” Émilie says. “I had nothing to do with what happened to you, and now that I know the truth, I can help you out of this. I’ll protect you. I’ll take you home.”

  “Home?” Heidi’s voice rises with that fresh edge of hysteria, and as I look into her eyes, a shiver runs through me.

  Here is the full answer for what I’m seeing. Yes, Heidi had been trapped in the wilderness, unable to go home. Yes, the power she discovered was addictive. But that doesn’t explain all of this. Madness does, and that is what I see in her eyes. Madness.

  For years, the sheriffs of Rockton presumed the hostiles were simply people who’d reverted to a more primitive form. I’d dismissed that, but it is part of the answer. Heidi is not sane. She likely hasn’t met the legal definition of that word in a very long time.

  She lost something out here. Lost or surrendered it. Dr. Moreau on her island, creating creatures to serve her, descending into madness.

  “You think I can go home?” she says. “After all this? Pick up where I left off? My friends and family have long forgotten me. And look at me. Look. There is no going home.”

  “Yes, there is. I can—”

  Heidi lunges at Émilie, and I pull my gun, but Heidi’s rush is only a feint, cut short before Émilie can even stagger back. Heidi looks at my gun and instead of snarling at me to put it away, she smiles.

  She smiles.

  That wasn’t a feint. She wanted me to pull my gun. She wanted her people to see that and think she is under attack.

  Dalton scrambles from the plane, shouting, “Get the hell over here, Casey!”

  But nothing moves in the forest, and barely a heartbeat passes before Anders shouts, “Clear!”

  “All of them?” I yell back.

  “The three archers are in cuffs. There was another woman with a knife. She bolted.”

  Heidi snarls, spinning on the forest. “Liar!”

  “It’s over, Heidi,” Émilie says.

  Heidi wheels on her, but Émilie raises Petra’s little gun and says, “No.”

  “Fine,” Heidi spits. “Let me go. I’ll—”

  “It is over.” Émilie enunciates each word. “You are going home, whether you want to or not. Your people are going home, whether they want to or not.”

  “They’ll want to,” Maryanne says as she comes around the back of the plane. “Most will. Once their minds are clear. Even if they joined by choice, no one stayed by choice.”

  “You!” Heidi lunges at Maryanne, but I grab her as Dalton comes over to tie her hands.

  Heidi pulls harder than I expect, and she breaks free, getting two steps before Maryanne yells, “No!,” and I think she means Heidi. But then I see Maryanne running for the plane. The boy, Bennett, is out of the plane and aiming a gun at Heidi. M
aryanne is running right into the line of fire.

  “Maryanne!” I shout as I lunge her way.

  But Bennett doesn’t shoot. He just stands, frozen. Then Maryanne is there, taking the gun from him, and he lets her, his eyes glistening with tears as he rocks in place.

  “She’s—she’s—” he says.

  “She’s nothing,” Maryanne says to him as we cuff Heidi. “Not anymore.”

  He nods and falls against her shoulder as her arms go around him.

  THIRTY-SIX

  We don’t linger after that. Victor is definitely dead, and he’s taken any further answers with him. We need to find Edwin and Felicity. We know at least one hostile fled, possibly to warn those holding them captive. Following Bennett’s directions, Dalton and I take off with Storm and leave the handcuffed hostiles with Petra and Anders.

  It turns out there’s no need for concern. Yes, the remaining hostile did run to the others, but only to warn them to flee. The three of them melted into the forest, leaving Felicity and Edwin, who are half out of their bindings by the time we arrive. They’re unharmed. They were only pawns, grabbed by a madwoman because she’d been sane enough to know that if they’d been coming from Rockton, they could be valuable hostages.

  As we’re escorting Edwin and Felicity, we meet two of Edwin’s men searching. We leave Edwin and Felicity with them after securing a promise that they’ll send Sebastian home tomorrow.

  Once they’re on their way, we take a moment to breathe, just breathe. And then we head back to help Anders get the hostiles to Rockton.

  * * *

  Four captive hostiles. I don’t include Bennett in that. He’s been a prisoner for two months, and we won’t treat him as one now. On the way to Rockton, we get his story. He’s from a community nearly two days’ walk from here. A couple of months ago, he’d been captured while hunting away from home. His family and community will certainly have been searching for him, but he hadn’t told anyone where he was going—he’d left after a fight with his parents, needing time alone. He’s eighteen, and the authorities may have written him off as a runaway. In northern communities, particularly Indigenous ones, that’s often as far as an official “investigation” goes.