by Rob Cornell
“If you was just trash diving, why do you have a gun?”
Jessie shrugged, keeping it casual even with a gun barrel against the nape of her neck. “I found it. Guess someone threw it away.”
Another jab from the gun. “Bullshit.”
“Believe what you want.”
She observed what she could without moving her head. There was Hilton’s desk cluttered with office supplies, as if Staples had pooped on his ink blotter. Three staplers, a plastic bulk container of paperclips, a stack of five reams of copy paper, legal pads fanned out like a poker hand, pens scattered like kindling, and more pens still sealed in boxes.
Not anything of use, unless she wanted to write up a memo asking the gunman to pretty please let her go. The desk had every office supply imaginable, but nothing like a letter opener.
And what would you do with that? If you went to grab for it, your brains would join the scattered supplies on the desk.
But that was just it. Would this guy, a seemingly average worker bee at a landfill, really shoot her? If these people really weren’t with the Agency—not knowingly anyway—did they really have the stones to put someone down?
Then there was the opposite argument. If they didn’t know who she was, they would have no reason to worry about keeping her alive.
“You know,” she said aloud, “my life sucks sometimes.”
“I feel sorry for you.”
She didn’t have super strength. No fangs. No bullet immunity or mojo to conjure up a light show. But she still knew the moves her dad had taught her.
Time to gamble and hope the gunman didn’t have the blood of a killer.
First, an easy donkey kick, perfect for an assailant coming in from behind.
Jessie’s heel hit the jackpot—nothing but nuts.
The gunman chuffed. The gun came away from Jessie.
She spun around to find him doubled over. She didn’t stop there, though. She threw a roundhouse kick at his gun hand, knocking the weapon halfway across the room.
The gunman howled and drew his kicked hand against his belly. He cradled it with his opposite hand.
But while he stayed on his feet, he stayed a threat.
Jessie snapped her right foot forward as if going for a field goal. She caught him square in the middle of his face. His nose crunched against her boot-tip.
He flailed his arms while staggering backward.
For a second it looked like he might keep his feet. Then he dropped to the floor and curled into a ball, hands over his face, blood dribbling between his fingers.
“Jesus Christ.”
Jessie whirled to face Hilton. He popped to his feet and raised his hands over his head like she still had her gun on him. The red circles on his cheeks bloomed, nearly covering his whole face. “I got no issues with you.”
Maybe not, but the growling ScarJo lookalike did.
Jessie sensed the movement behind her and dropped to a squat.
The sound of the shot buzzed against the drywall. The legal pads on Hilton’s desk exploded. Shreds of yellow paper fluttered upward in a plume like chicken feathers.
Hilton cried out and scampered backward until he hit the wall. The impact shook the clock loose. It skated down the wall and hit Hilton on the back of the head. He pitched forward, covering his head with his hands as if the whole building was about to crumble down on top of him.
Jessie twisted around, still crouching, and charged at Daisy like a linebacker. She kept low, under Daisy’s aim.
Daisy squeezed off another shot.
Jessie’s ears rang, but the gunfire didn’t startle her like it might anyone who hadn’t spent her formative years in and out of countless gun battles. She drove forward and struck Daisy in the waist with her shoulder.
If it had been one of the men, Jessie probably wouldn’t have moved them far. Daisy was light, built a lot like Jessie herself. Jessie knocked the bitch right on her ass and landed on top of her, pinning her down.
The gun—my gun, damn it—flew from Daisy’s hands when she hit the floor. And the gun demonstrated exactly why Dad insisted guns never be dropped.
When it landed it discharged.
The next thing Jessie noticed was a chunk of Daisy’s face missing, eyeball hanging loose from a broken socket. A spray of blood dotted Jessie’s face. She felt every warm pinprick on her skin.
“Oh, Christ, no.”
Jessie scampered off of Daisy. Her insides felt twisted, as if every artery was tied around her organs and squeezing so that nothing worked.
The gasp behind her made her spin around.
Hilton stood a few feet away, one hand on the back of his head, the other outstretched as if reaching for the dead woman on the floor.
Tears pooled in Jessie’s eyes. “I…I didn’t mean…”
Hilton’s gaze snapped to Jessie’s gun on the floor. He no longer looked afraid of it.
“Don’t,” Jessie said.
He made the move anyway.
Jessie swept her leg against Hilton’s and took him down.
He flopped to the floor face-first. His head bounced on the thin, why bother carpet with a soft tock. His eyes rolled back. He went limp.
This was not how this was supposed to go down. These people had no idea who they were working for. They weren’t soldiers or military bureaucrats. Just folks making a living by shoveling the Agency’s shit.
The gunfire could have drawn attention.
When she glanced out the window, sure enough, the guard from the tollbooth was huffing it toward the building.
As much as she hated what happened here, it had provided her with a distraction.
She retrieved her weapon and hurried down the hallway to the back room, praying she would find another exit there.
The room at the hall’s end was split in two by more chain-link fence. Whoever sold the stuff had made a killing off this place. The fencing cordoned off a storage area full of boxes and a shelf of cleaning supplies, coffee cans, and the sorts of things that would supply the break room half where Jessie stood—Styrofoam cups, a box of salt, paper plates, and napkins.
Such ordinary stuff.
Stuff that Daisy wouldn’t need anymore.
Underneath an EXIT sign with every light out except the X, Jessie found a metal door with a bar handle. She tucked her gun in her waistband and shoved through the door into the stifling humidity. The smell of garbage hit her hard. She had lost her desensitization to it while inside the building.
She gagged as she ran around the building, but didn’t puke, which was a bonus. Sprinting toward freedom while ralphing would have sucked.
By the time Jessie had rounded the building, the guy from the tollbooth had already entered through the front.
She kept running. Straight out through the gate.
Straight into the middle of nowhere, shaggy brown grassland stretching in every direction, encircled by thick woods about thirty acres out. A rough dirt ribbon ran from the landfill entrance off to the tree line, probably connecting to a county road beyond the woods. But who knew how far?
Besides, if she stuck to the road, it would take minutes before she was spotted and picked up for killing Daisy.
You didn’t kill her.
It was my gun.
It was an accident.
Jessie squeezed her eyes shut and drove away her internal argument. No time for guilt.
She turned north. The sun roasted her left shoulder and neck. An hour or two past noon. Another eight hours of sunlight, max.
Jessie hiked up her backpack and jogged north, keeping the sun to her left as a guide.
Get ready for a nature walk, folks.
Chapter Twenty-Six
THEY SET OFF FROM THE dilapidated house in a caravan made up of two vans, a pickup truck, and an old Mercedes spewing diesel fumes out its tailpipe.
Elka sat in the third row seat of the van that brought up the tail of the caravan. The Mercedes drove in front of them and the stench seeped into the van, tu
rning Elka’s stomach. These mortals had no respect for their world.
One of these days, the displaced supernaturals on this plane would inherit the mortal world to save it from self-destruction. Elka couldn’t imagine them allowing themselves to follow the mortals into extinction.
In the bench seat in front of Elka sat a girl barely into her teens. She wore far too much makeup and dressed like Madonna from the 80s, hair teased and stiff with hairspray, sweater with the neck cut large enough to hang off one shoulder. She even wore lace fingerless gloves and gold hoop earrings almost large enough to work as dog collars.
Earl drove. He had the radio tuned to an oldies station. The singer whined in a grating falsetto that didn’t sound musical at all. Elka would rather listen to a horn shaving, the worst kind of sound to her people.
But her father had suffered that sound daily in order to earn the family the privileged life that kept them from wallowing in memories of what their home world used to be like, before the Great Hunt.
Of course, Earl hadn’t shared where he was taking her. But he assured her they were moving to better living conditions.
Elka looked over her shoulder at the city’s distant skyline. They had officially made their way into the suburbs. She’d never spent time getting to know what lay beyond the city, so she hadn’t a clue where she was. She noticed an overabundance of strip malls and clusters of homes with nearly identical design.
It reminded her of the video footage UniLover had pointed her to. But those houses, brick-faced single-story ranch-style houses, looked older than these gargantuan structures that took up so much space, they left no room for backyards.
Elka shuddered at the idea of living in either kind of home. She either belonged in the chaos of city life, or the luxury of a sprawling mansion.
These houses reeked of mediocrity.
When Elka turned back from looking at the fading city, she found the girl—Earl had called her Kit when he had introduced them—staring at her over her seatback.
“What’s up?” Kit asked.
Elka shrugged. “I’m asking myself the same question.”
Kit smiled, at the same time chomping a wad of gum that made her breath smell like fake watermelon. “Uncle Eee, he likes to pretend he’s mysterious. Doesn’t get that mysterious don’t mean not telling anyone nothing.”
Earl cleared his throat. “I can hear just fine, though.”
Kit rolled her eyes and cracked her gum.
Elka smiled with her mouth closed to hide her disgust.
The van hit a pothole. The vehicle’s whole frame shook. It sounded and felt like a giant hand had punched the undercarriage.
“Sorry,” Earl said.
Kit snickered. “I cannot wait until I can drive. I just hope I live through Uncle Eee’s driving long enough to see the day.”
It occurred to Elka that the girl spoke differently with her than she did with Earl. With Earl, she put on an overexaggerated accent Elka thought came from down south, only she didn’t know which part. Maybe Kit didn’t have as much air in her head as Elka first thought. She seemed to know how to play to her audience.
“I can’t help it if they don’t take care of their roads in these parts.”
Kit dismissed him with another eye roll. “So what’s your story?”
“I don’t have a story. I’m just along for the ride.”
Kit tapped the seatback with her fingertips in time to the irritating music. She eyed Elka for nearly half a minute. Elka wondered if Kit had fallen into a trance. But something about the stare drew out a feeling in Elka she didn’t recognize. She found herself liking Kit. Really liking her. She imagined the two of them walking through a forest of lilith trees, their pink leaves fluttering down around them. She imagined shifting, showing her true self to Kit, wanting so badly to share that part of herself.
Then she blinked and the feeling and the images disappeared.
“I’d like to be friends,” Kit said. “I don’t have any friends. Closest I have is a pervert who wants to get into my pants.”
A red heat encircled Elka’s neck. For some reason she thought of Kenny. “Who?”
Kit shook her head. “You’ll figure it out once you get to know Uncle Eee’s group of misfits. From the looks of you now, I’m afraid you might try to throttle him if I told you.”
“It’s one of Earl’s crew?” The heat crept up to Elka’s cheeks. Another fucking prick like Kenny. Only worse. A predator of children. And Earl kept him around his niece?
Kit reached out and brushed Elka’s cheek with the back of her knuckles. “Relax. I can handle him. And Uncle Eee would have already killed him if he didn’t need him.”
That gave Elka all the clues she needed to guess who the deviant was. The one they called Whisper. He seemed the most intelligent of the lot. He was the one who made up the cocktail in the syringe that had knocked her out, and the one that had woke her up. He also spent a lot of time on a computer or tinkering with odd bits of electronics.
The brains of the operation. But those brains came with a sick price.
Somehow Kit’s touch calmed Elka, though. Her cheek tingled.
What was with her?
Kit waggled her eyebrows. Her blue eye shadow looked all the more ridiculous. Still, Elka could see the beauty beneath. She wanted to wash Kit’s face. See that beauty clean.
“So, what do you say?” Kit asked.
Elka shook herself. Why the sudden obsession with this girl?
A suspicion came to mind.
Was the girl a sensitive?
Earl seemed to have a touch. Maybe it ran in the family. Elka had to wonder if Kit’s energy came from the same source as Earl’s. And did this young girl, still too awkward to know what her outward appearance communicated, know her touch was fueled by the blood, flesh, and bones of her uncle’s friends?
She seemed too smart not to know that.
Then Elka had a second thought.
Maybe Kit wasn’t entirely mortal.
Kit cupped a hand over her mouth and made a static sound. “Earth to Elka. Come in, Elka.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve a lot on my mind.”
“I’ll bet.” She leaned over the seatback and whispered, “So are we friends or what?”
“Sure,” Elka said without hesitation, though she wasn’t sure she meant it. How could a twenty-two-year-old unicorn be friends with a thirteen-year-old niece of a mortal zealot?
Kit smiled, obviously convinced of Elka’s sincerity. “Stick with me,” she said, still whispering. “I’m the only one around here that really knows what she’s doing.”
Before Elka could ask what Kit meant, the van came to a halt. She had completely lost track of their surroundings.
They were parked in the lot of a standard strip mall. The other vehicles in the caravan had lined up side-by-side, all facing the building.
The asphalt was riddled with cracks, and weeds filled nearly every one of them. Everything from fast food wrappers and old newspapers to plastic bags and shards of broken bottles littered the curb running the length of the strip of stores.
Only there weren’t any stores.
Each storefront stood empty except for the FOR LEASE signs posted in them. Some of the stores looked as trash strewn as the curb outside. A star pattern was smashed into one of the windows as if someone had tried to break it.
The whole setting looked pathetic and sad. Suburban blight at its finest.
Earl clunked the transmission into park and cut the engine. “Time to get out, girls.”
Elka and Kit both looked out the van’s windshield. Kit scrunched up her face. Elka imagined her own expression looked the same.
“This here is our improved living quarters?” Kit asked with a level of sarcasm only a teen could reach.
“Hush, now. You’ll see soon enough.”
“In case uh you ain’t looked, I don’t see nuthin’ to see.”
Elka smirked. The girl had laid on the weird accent real thick.
“What’d I say about you talking like that?”
Kit laughed. “Lead the way, dear Uncle. Let us see what wonders you have in store for us.”
Earl left the van without another word.
Kit turned back to Elka. “He’s so easy to rattle.” She held out her hand. “Come on, new friend. Let’s see what craziness my uncle is up to this time.”
Elka took Kit’s hand. Her skin felt so soft. Small sparks ran up from Elka’s fingertips to her elbow.
Their eyes met.
“What are you?” Elka asked with breathy awe.
“Easy now,” Kit said. She grinned. “Friends don’t share all their secrets up front.”
True enough. After all, no one in this crew, including Earl, seemed to know what Elka really was. Earl took it on faith from his dreams that he needed her as much as she needed him.
She remembered when everything had seemed so straightforward.
Between Earl’s dream-directed mission for someone he called master to Kit and her strange influence, Elka was left stuck with the same question.
What, in the name of the Great Beyond, have I gotten myself into?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE LAST TIME JESSIE SAW so many trees, she had lived in a secluded cabin in Illinois with Craig and Mom. But she never had any reason to go into those woods. Mosquitoes and no-see-ums swarming in her face. Underbrush tugging at her ankles. That mossy smell that sometimes seemed nice, but could turn into a rotten gagger of a stink.
All things she hated about the woods surrounded her.
Nope. Jessie was not one with nature.
For the millionth time, she tripped on a rock hidden by the blanket of green covering the forest floor. Some of it probably poison ivy. She’d walk out of here—if she ever walked out of here—covered with itchy bumps that would make the twenty or so mosquito bites she already suffered feel like a mere nuisance.
She jerked forward, waving her arms to keep her balance, but the undergrowth grabbed her and momentum did the rest.
