Thunderbird

by Chuck Wendig

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  TO ALL THOSE WHO LOVED MIRIAM ENOUGH TO HELP RAISE HER FROM THE DEAD

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  PART ONE

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  NONA DECIMA MORTA

  ONE

  THE QUITTER

  Miriam runs.

  Her feet pound asphalt. Ahead, Old Highway 60 cuts a knife line through red rock and broken earth, the highway shot through with hairline fractures. Big clouds scattered across the sky like the stuffing from a gutted teddy bear. The side of the highway is lined with gnarly green scrub brush, plants like hands reaching for the road, hands looking to rend and tear. Beyond, it’s just the wide-open nowhere of Arizona: electric fences that don’t contain anything, craggy rocks and distant peaks like so many broken teeth.

  Run, she thinks. Sweat is coming off her hair, into her eyes. Fucking hair dye. Fucking spray gel hair bullshit. Fucking suntan lotion. She blinks back sweat carrying all those chemicals, sweat that burns her eyes. Don’t pay attention to that. Just run. Eyes forward. Clarity of thought and vision. Or something.

  Then her foot catches something— a rock, a lip of cratered asphalt, she doesn’t know, and it doesn’t matter, because suddenly she pitches forward. Hands out. Palms catching the macadam, bracing herself so her head doesn’t snap forward and crack in half like a tossed brick. A hard pain jars up her arms, through her elbows like a flicker of lightning. Her hands sting and throb.

  She gets up on her knees and then starts coughing.

  The coughing jag isn’t brief. She plants her hands on her knees and hacks hard, and between hacks she wheezes, and between wheezes she just hacks harder. It’s a dry cough of broken sticks and dead leaves until it’s not— then it’s wet, rheumy, and angry, like her lungs have gone liquid and have decided to disperse themselves up and out of her mouth.

  That mouth that wants a cigarette right now. Lips that would plant around the filter and suck smoke deep. Her whole body wants a cigarette, and the nic fit tears over her and through her like a plague of starving locusts. She shudders and bleats and laughs and cries and, once again, coughs.

  Her palms pulse with her hummingbird heartbeat. The skin abraded.

  Footsteps behind her.

  Heavy. Boots hitting hard.

  Sweat pours off her now— spattering on the road.

  “It’s hot,” she gasps. “It’s fucking hot. It’s Hell-hot. It’s wearing-the-Devil’s-humid-scrotum-as-a-hat hot.”

  “They say it’s a dry heat.”

  Louis clomps up alongside her like a Clydesdale.

  She looks up at him. The sun hangs behind him, so he’s just a shape, a shadow, a black monolith speaking to her. Oh, Louis, she thinks, and then he turns just so and her eyes adjust. And she can see the black electrical tape crisscrossing his eyes. She can see his pale face, his wormy lips, a tongue that traipses over broken teeth. And when he moves, she hears the rustle of feathers, the clacking of beaks.

  Not-Louis. The Trespasser. Her companion that only she can see— a hallucination, a ghost, a fellow traveler to wherever it is she’s going.

  “You know what else is a dry heat?” she asks. “Fire.”

  “It’s only April.”

  “It’s, like, almost ninety degrees. I should’ve come in December.”

  The Trespasser stands over her. Like an executioner ready to drop the head-chopper axe down on the kneeling sinner.

  “Why are we out here, Miriam?”

  She rocks back on her knees, cranes her head back, eyes closed. She paws at the water bottle hanging at her hip. With her teeth she uncaps it (and even there she thinks: my teeth want a cigarette too, want to bite into the nicotine like it’s a cancerous Slim Jim god I want it so bad I’d kick a baby seal just to get one taste), then drinks deeply, drinks sloppily. Water over her lips, down her chin.

  Up in the sky, vultures spin on an invisible axis.

  “We are not out here,” she says, wiping her wet mouth with the back of her hand. “I am out here alone. You are— well, we still don’t know what you are, do we? Let’s go with demon. Invisible, asshole demon. You’re not here. You’re here.” She taps her temple, then drinks more water.

  “If I’m up there, then I’m with you, and we are still we,” he says. A loose, muddy chuckle in the well of his chest. “Why are you jogging, Miriam?”

  “It’s not jogging. It’s jogging when rich, limp-noodle assholes do it. When I do it, it’s called running, motherfucker.” She sniffs. Coughs again. “I do it because I need to get better. Get stronger. Faster. All that.”

  “What are you running from?”

  You, she thinks. But instead she says, “It’s funny; anyone who sees me running asks me that. Hur hur, is something chasing you? Yeah. Death. Death is chasing me, and chasing everyone else, too. That’s what I’m running from. My own clock spinning down. The sweep of the Reaper’s scythe.”

  “Not like you to run from death.”

  “Things have changed.”

  Another damp, diseased chuckle. “Oh, we know. You’re trying to get away from us. From you. From the gift you have been given.”

  “It’s no gift,” she says, finally starting to stand. The sun is punishing. It feels like a fist trying to punch her back down to the ground. “But you know that. And you don’t care.” She thinks, but does not say: As soon as I find the woman I’m looking for, you’re outta here, pal. No more trespassing for you. Miriam has a name: Mary Stitch. AKA, Mary Scissors. A woman who can, if the story is true, help Miriam get shut of this so-called “gift.” She wants it gone. She needs it gone before it swallows her whole.

  “You’re not done yet,” the Trespasser says. As she stands, she sees Not-Louis’s eyes have become black, glossy circles— crow eyes, rimmed with puckered gray skin and the start of oily feathers that thread underneath the skin like stitches. “Not by a country mile, little girl.”

  She sucks in a bit of sweat from above her lip and spits back at him. The Trespasser doesn’t even flinch. Instead, he just points.

  Miriam follows the crooked finger.

  There, way down the highway, she sees the glint of light off a vehicle. Her vehicle— it’s where she parked it. A rust-red, rat-trap pickup truck. A literal rat trap, actually— when she bought it, rats had made a nest in the engine, chewed up the belts and wires pretty good.

  But then:

  Another car.

  This one, coming from the opposite direction. Hard to make out what it is— the sun catches on it like in a pool of liquid magma. Despite that, Miriam can see the back of the car fart out a noxious black cloud. She can hear the bang of the engine, and she can see something roll across the road— a hubcap?— that hits the tire of her Ford truck and drops. The car stops across from her truck.

  Then all is still.

  “What is that?” she
asks. “Who is that?”

  She turns to the Trespasser but he’s gone.

  And yet his voice reaches her:

  “Go and see.”

  Shit.

  TWO

  NOT DONE YET

  Miriam runs. Again. Because, apparently, she is a glutton for punishment. She tells herself that the quarter-mile or so between her and the two vehicles is psssh, pffft, no problem at all, but three steps in and her feet feel like they’re encased in cement and her calves feel like sausages about to split and spill their meat. Still, she runs. She tells herself it’s because she has to.

  Ahead, the truck and the car roam into clearer view. Past the flinty, flashing sun. There, on her side of the road, the pickup: Ford F-250 from 1980. Rust has taken over most of the cherry red paint. Across the highway: a Subaru station wagon. An Outback. Also old— maybe ten years, maybe more.

  She hears the engine tinking and clicking. A smell hits her— bitter, acrid, sweet. A charred fan belt, cooked antifreeze.

  A hundred yards away now. The driver-side door to the Subaru pops open. A black woman steps out. She’s rough and ready— a stone whetted to a sharpened edge like a caveman’s axe. A survivor. Like Miriam.

  As Miriam slows to a jog and then to a walk, the woman points.

  “Stay back!”

  The woman’s hand moves behind her, to the waistband of her jeans— she turns just so, and Miriam sees something back there. A gun. Tucked. The driver doesn’t pull it. Not yet.

  Miriam holds up her hands, slows her walk. “Hey. Yo. Relax. That’s my truck right there. No harm, no foul. Just gonna scooch on past, get in the truck, and go.” Fifty yards now separate them. Maybe less.

  The woman’s eyes flash from Miriam to the truck and back again.

  Inside the Subaru station wagon: movement.

  And that’s when Miriam gets it. Because she sees a small face, round and wide-eyed, peer over the dashboard. A boy. Young, maybe ten years old. Blue T-shirt with some red on it— the Superman logo, she realizes. Just the top of it. She’s a mother protecting her kid. Right?

  Miriam thinks to ask if everything’s okay but her gut clenches: Just let it go. Don’t get involved. This is a trap. The Trespasser put her here— she doesn’t even know if it works like that but she doesn’t care. She just wants out, away, hasty la visty, crazy lady. And maybe the crazy lady wants away from her, too— Miriam must look like hell. Sweaty pits, chapped lips, pink-and-black hair matted to her forehead. But then her dumb mouth starts forming words and those words escape like canaries from open cages and she says, “Do you need help?”

  “You got a cell phone?”

  “I . . . do. You want me to call somebody?”

  The woman leans forward like she’s about to pounce. “I want you to give it here. I want that phone.”

  Miriam arches an eyebrow. “Yeah, no.”

  “I want the phone and the keys to the truck.”

  “I will make a call for you and I will drive you somewhere.”

  “Oh, I know where you’ll drive me. You ain’t taking my boy back.” And then the gun comes out— a little thumb-dicked .38 revolver. Snubby, priggish nose pointed right at Miriam. The woman clicks back the hammer. “Keys. Phone. Throw them over.”

  “If I throw the phone, I’ll break it.”

  That seems to stun the woman, like she’s too panicked to think clearly and this tiny little hangnail has snagged the whole damn sweater, threatening to pull it all apart

  “Fine,” the woman barks, irritated. “Fine. Just . . . just come over, and you can hand them to me. No nonsense. Don’t mess with me or I’ll put this in you.” She thrusts the gun forward, as if to demonstrate. The woman doesn’t look like a killer, but she does look desperate— pushed to the edge. Miriam knows that people at the edge will do anything. Any dog trapped in any corner will bite.

  Miriam creeps forward. Her body throbs. Even in the heat, she represses a chill. No idea what’s happening here. What’s driven this woman to this? She tries not to care. But the carapace she’s carefully crafted is cracked— makes Miriam weak. Her hand ducks into her pocket, pulls out the little burner phone and the pickup’s key ring. She jingles them like she’s trying to distract a cat.

  Thirty yards.

  Twenty.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” the woman says, impatient.

  Miriam knows she’s not going to give over the keys or the phone.

  That’s all she knows, though. What happens next, she’s not sure.

  Ten yards now, and Miriam slows her walk, tries to buy herself some time. “You don’t have to do this. We can be pals.” You take my truck and my phone and I might have to feed you to the coyotes, lady. “I don’t know who you think I am or why I’d want to take your son—”

  The woman waves the gun. “You people need to leave us alone.”

  Five yards. She starts to hand over the keys and the phone—

  Two minutes ago, Miriam’s whole body ached, but now, every cell is awake and alive and without any pain at all, juicing on the natural narcotic of hard-charging adrenaline. With her free hand the woman reaches across—

  Miriam flings the keys. Not enough to hurt— or, at least, to do damage— but enough where a jingly-jangly projectile launched at the woman’s face will offer up the interference Miriam needs. Her gut check is right: this lady isn’t combat-ready. While desperate, she’s not trained to deal with distraction. The gun goes wide, the woman makes a sound—“Nuhhh!”— and Miriam grabs the gun wrist and slams it back—

  THREE

  SNIPE HUNT

  There the two of them stand. Wrestling back and forth with the revolver. The key ring hits the ground with a cymbal crash. The strange lady’s cell phone takes a tumble too— spinning corner to corner until it hits the asphalt, cracking the outer case. Gracie throws a punch, tries to piston it into the woman’s side, but the crazy white bitch bends her body— the fist misses, and the woman catches it, twists it, pins Gracie’s hand like she pins the other one. But Gracie isn’t done. She won’t be taken again. She won’t let her son be taken again. Everyone is an enemy and she has to get free so she drives a hard knee up into the lady’s middle. Her finger does this involuntary squeeze and— the gun in her hand bucks, firing up at the sky, up at the gods, bang—gunsmoke plume and brimstone stink. Inside the car, Isaiah is screaming, pounding on the dashboard, face a mess of tears—

  And then there’s another gunshot—

  The strange lady staggers to the side, blood suddenly soaking through her white V-neck T-shirt, competing with the sweat under each armpit— and then she coughs up blood and drops. Gracie screams, looks at the gun in her own hand, wondering how she did this, trying to figure out how her pointing the gun at the sky somehow fired a bullet that killed the woman wrestling with her—

  And then another gunshot rolls across the sky like thunder and Gracie’s head snaps to the side and all the thoughts she had and all the fears and all the love goes ejecting out her temple along with her blood and her brains and all the things that made her who she was.

  FOUR

  TAG, YOU’RE IT

  It all starts to play out just like the vision. So much so and in such proximity, time-wise, that it feels impossible to Miriam— less like one of her visions and more like a funky case of déjà vu, except this particularly funky case ends in her death and the death of the woman in front of her.

  That happens in about thirty seconds.

  Panic throttles her. Everything seems to slow. The woman—a woman Miriam now knows is named Gracie, thanks to the vision of death that comes any time Miriam touches her skin to the skin of another— throws the punch and Miriam, as if just playing back a recording of what was always going to happen, ducks it, catches the wrist, and slams it against the Subaru.

  Inside, the child starts to cry.

  She doesn’t know how to stop this.

  This thing of hers— this power, this unrequested burden—has
rules.

  One of them is: she can only stop death by causing death.

  Want to stop a murder? Then the killer must first be killed. The books have to be balanced. The ledger made square. And now an absurd and horrible thought runs through her like a rampant infection:

  Maybe I kill the woman first.

  Kill Gracie, interrupt the cycle, get out of the way.

  She thinks this even as she tries to pull away, tries to hit the ground, but Gracie’s knee does what it was predestined to do, and it drives up into Miriam’s middle— oof— and blasts the air out of her.

  Everything goes spinny, like she’s a little kid on an office chair whirling wildly about. The revolver starts to drift downward and she points it upward, and Gracie’s finger does that involuntary twitch and bang. Goes off. To the sky. To the clouds, the gods, the vultures—

  The vultures.

  Fear assails her. She doesn’t want to do this. The last time she did it, she entered the mind of a hungry seabird called the gannet— not just one bird but many, a ravenous flock of the scissor-beaked motherfuckers— and saved her mother’s life by tearing apart a man named Ashley, a man who hunted her and opposed her at every turn. She still has nightmares about it.

  But now she has no choice. Even as she tries to resist it, she knows that reflex, knows that all the cells inside her body are screaming to survive, a chorus of save us, save us, do what you must and then her eyes close and there’s this vacuum sound—shoop— and it’s like being on a super-fast elevator rocketing to the top of a skyscraper. And next thing she knows, she’s not Miriam anymore. She’s not even on the ground— she’s in the sky, turning on an invisible axis, soaring on vectors of heat pushed up from the Arizona desert.

  FIVE