by Dan Wells
Or was the traitor someone else?
I stopped running, leaning on a fence to catch my breath. I was blocks away from the scene of the attack, and once again the world was quiet—I couldn’t even hear screaming in the distance. Was Rack killing more people? The neighbors, or the EMTs who showed up to help? It seemed like the kind of thing he would do, but not tonight. He was on a vendetta and he wouldn’t stop until our team was dead—all of us. He hadn’t chased me, and I wondered if maybe he was saving me for last; the ones in danger now would be Nathan and Dr. Trujillo.
And Brooke.
I started running again, pulling my phone from my pocket. Was Brooke more Withered than human? I didn’t know, and as I ran I realized I didn’t care. She was my friend—maybe not a good friend, but I wasn’t exactly a role model either. Maybe my only friend left in the world. I didn’t know if Rack was planning to kill her or recruit her or something even worse, but either way I had to save her. I dialed Trujillo’s number.
Ring.
Snow was starting to fall, and my breath came in ragged gasps, visible like smoke in the streetlights.
Ring.
“John?” It was Nathan’s voice.
“Nathan,” I said, clenching my teeth and trying to breathe. “Where’s Trujillo?”
“I can’t find him; I didn’t even know his phone was here until it started ringing. What’s going on?”
“Were you monitoring the radio?” I asked.
“It was a closed channel,” he said. “It didn’t reach this far. Did something go wrong? You sound terrible.”
“I’m running,” I said, and paused again to catch my breath. “It was a trap, and everyone’s dead. I’m the only one left—”
“Dead?”
“Rack killed them all,” I said. “Not just us but the police. Ostler, Potash, Diana, Detective Scott—”
“That—” he stuttered. “That’s impossible. How did you get away?”
“I think he’s leaving me for last, which means he’s coming for you.”
“Dammit, John—”
“Listen, Nathan, you have to find Trujillo and get Brooke and get away from there. Check her out, break her out, do whatever you have to do. I’ll call you when I get closer.”
“You brought this on us,” he said angrily. “This is your fault, everything you’ve—”
“You can yell at me when Brooke’s safe,” I said. “Are you already moving? I don’t know how much time you have.”
“Somebody had to be on the inside,” said Nathan. “If this was a trap, someone tipped him off.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said.
“It was Elijah,” said Nathan, “which makes you just as guilty—you’re the one who brought him into the team.”
“It wasn’t Elijah,” I said fiercely. “He was … he was helping us. He didn’t leave until we’d already lost—the same as I did, he just ran away first.”
“If he was trustworthy he would have stayed to help you,” said Nathan.
“Why?” I asked. “So we could lock him up again? So we could run him over with another truck? He gave us everything he had, and we tried our plan and failed. He’s probably running right now, and we need to do the same. Get Brooke—”
“If it wasn’t Elijah then it was obviously Brooke,” said Nathan. “We know she was communicating with Rack, she must have warned him we were coming.”
“We didn’t plan this attack until after the letters were cut off,” I said. “Brooke didn’t even know about it at all—Trujillo wouldn’t let us tell her, just in case—”
“Do you think it was Trujillo?” asked Nathan.
I stopped, shaking my head. “I don’t…” I tried to control my breathing. “Why would he betray us?”
“He knew everything we were doing,” said Nathan, “and he had the time and the means to tip Rack off. Dammit, John, he had hours alone with Brooke, for weeks on end, to be seduced by whatever promises the Withered were making.”
“Seduced?”
“Trujillo practically lived over there, and you honestly think he didn’t know about the letters she was sending? I’m the one who found them, not him—if I hadn’t been there to force the search, we might never have found out about them. And now we’ve been betrayed and he’s disappeared, and there’s no way that’s a coincidence.”
“Trujillo wouldn’t just turn like that,” I said, though I knew as I said it that I couldn’t be sure. “He worked as a profiler for years—he put dozens of serial killers in jail.”
“Because he trained himself to think like them,” Nathan countered. “Obviously some of it rubbed off, and now a few talks with Nobody, maybe a talk or two with Rack directly, was all he needed to tip over the edge.”
I stopped on a corner, looking at the street signs: Leonard and Morgan. Whiteflower was still miles away. “I’m going to try to grab a bus, but I’m still at least a half an hour out. If Trujillo is the traitor and you’re not dead, he’ll be going after Brooke next.”
“He won’t kill her, he’ll just take her to join them.”
“You think that’s better?” I asked. I turned and started jogging toward the nearest major street. I was covered with Diana’s blood; I’d have to find some way to clean up, or at least hide it. “Do you still have a gun?”
“Are you kidding? With all the crap we’ve been through I don’t let that thing out of my reach even to shower.”
“Get Brooke and get out. Take her somewhere we’ve never been before—a Denny’s or something, something that’s open all night—and make sure you walk. Your car is traceable, especially to someone with Trujillo’s police contacts. Call me when you have her, and I’ll call you when I’m close. And Nathan?”
“Yeah?”
“Brooke is literally, without exaggeration, the only thing I have left in my life. If you let anything happen to her, you’ll wish Rack had gotten to you before I do.”
* * *
I met up with Nathan and Brooke in an old movie theater, where they huddled in the back row while a late night horror movie flickered on the screen. There were only a handful of other people in the theater, most of them either high or making out in the corners. I sat down next to Brooke; she was dressed in her plain cotton pajamas, with big rubber boots and Trujillo’s long trench coat over them. Trujillo was a wide man, and it dwarfed her like a circus tent.
Brooke grabbed my hand. “I missed you.” She stopped, frowning, and held my hand up to the faint light from the screen. “Your hands are sticky, here between the fingers.” She peered closely. “You have blood on you.”
I nodded. “I don’t know if the guy at the ticket counter noticed, or if the police even have time to respond if he calls it in. Either way, we shouldn’t hang around here much longer.”
“Where are we going?” asked Nathan.
“Did you find Trujillo?” I asked.
“I don’t like him,” said Brooke.
Nathan shook his head. “No sign of him at Whiteflower or the office.” He held up a cell phone. “I’ve got his phone.”
“Too bad,” I said, “I wouldn’t mind calling him if he ever came back to get it.”
“You want to talk to him?”
“You don’t?” I asked. “The least he could do is tell us why he turned.”
Nathan swore. “I don’t even care anymore. What’s our plan to get out of town?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “We can’t trust any of our own homes, any of our own cars; we can’t go anywhere Rack might be expecting us to go. Even the bus station out of town is too risky.”
“That leaves stealing a car,” said Nathan, “do you even know how to do that?”
“I do,” said Brooke.
“If we steal a car then Rack and the police will be looking for us,” I said. “We need to go to the one place no one’s going to expect us.”
Nathan frowned. “Back to the crime scene?”
“To the mortuary,” I said. “Elijah’s car is stil
l there from the night he was captured, so he’ll go straight—”
“Absolutely not,” said Nathan.
“He’s not a traitor,” I insisted, “but Rack knows we think he is, and that makes him the only person we can trust right now. His entire cover in Fort Bruce is blown, so he’s probably just as desperate to leave town as we are. If we get to him soon, we can leave with him.”
“Are we talking about Meshara?” asked Brooke. “He’s so sad.”
“I don’t like it,” said Nathan. “He’s a Withered—Brooke is half Withered, for crying out loud.”
“Keep your voice down,” I urged.
“Trusting the Withered is what got us into this mess in the first place,” Nathan hissed.
“Do you have any better ideas?”
“Call the FBI and wait for backup?”
“If you want to,” I said. “But let’s at least wait outside of town somewhere.”
He growled, but finally nodded. “Let’s get out of here, then. I hate this movie.”
The bus service in Fort Bruce cut off at ten, with a late service on a few lines that ran until two in the morning. It was nearly midnight. We walked a few blocks to the nearest late-line station, keeping our heads down, listening to the whispers of drunks and hookers and other late-night denizens as we passed them:
“Did you hear what happened in The Corners?”
“Dozens are dead.”
“I heard it was hundreds.”
“It’s like the end of the world.”
Brooke walked close to me, shivering, and after a moment of hesitation, I put my arm around her.
“I love you, John,” she said.
“I’m only doing this to keep you warm.”
“That’s why I love you.”
I thought about Boy Dog, back in my apartment. If we left without him he’d starve, or at least dehydrate, alone in there maybe for days. I had rules to keep me from hurting an animal, even by neglect …
Who was I kidding? I’d broken all my rules. I couldn’t trust them, I couldn’t fall back on them, I couldn’t even blame them anymore. What did I have, if I didn’t have those? No family, no home, no life. A mad girl in my arms, and a dead one in my dreams. I didn’t even have myself.
I wasn’t even sure who I was.
I used to know. I used to be the weird kid, the one who sat in the corners, who didn’t talk to anyone, who hung around with the other weird kid because he never expected me to say anything back. I kept my rules and I kept to myself, and then the Clayton Killer came to town and everything changed. I had to hurt one person to save a bunch of others, but it didn’t stop at one. Now Marci was dead, and my mom, and so many more. Could I justify it with math? How many people haven’t died because I killed the Withered that would have killed them? How many people have died because I kicked the hornet’s nest and woke the hounds of hell? If I stop will it get better? If I kill them all, will it stop?
“Where do you want to go?” whispered Brooke.
“We’re going to Elijah’s mortuary.”
“I mean after,” she said. “When we’re free.”
“Free from trouble?” I asked. “I don’t think we can go far enough for that.”
“There’s the bus,” said Nathan. “Run.” We sprinted the last block and made it to the bus just in time, climbing on breathlessly as it pulled out from the stop. Nathan paid, and we sat on an empty bench. He flopped down across from us and pulled out his phone.
“Ordering a pizza?” I asked.
“An air strike,” said Nathan. “I want Langley to wipe this hellhole off the map.”
I glanced at the driver, but he seemed to be ignoring us. I pulled out my own phone and connected to the e-mail server.
You shouldn’t have run, said the message from Rack. We have things to discuss. I disconnected without sending a response.
Was I really ready to just walk away from this? To let a monster that dangerous keep killing? I didn’t know how to stop him—except I did. Elijah was still our greatest weapon, and now we were going to find him. Yes, he might help us get out of town, but there were other ways. Was I going to him because I wanted to escape, or because some part of me still wanted to fight? Was I lying to Brooke and Nathan about leaving? Was I lying to myself? Brooke asked me where I wanted to go, and I didn’t know. I wanted everything to end.
I wanted to end it.
We rode for fifteen minutes, and then walked for seven more through back streets to the mortuary. The light was on in the garage, and we reached the big bay doors just as one of them started to open. I pulled Brooke to the side, and Nathan ducked behind me, and when the door was fully raised we peeked around the corner. The garage held four vehicles: two of them were hearses, behind the second bay door that was still closed; the third was Elijah’s car, and the fourth was a heavy pickup truck, with a snowplow on the front and some kind of plastic tank in the trunk. The garage had its own private gas pump, and Elijah was using it to fill up his car.
Nathan had his gun out, but I frowned and waved him back, mouthing “put that away.” We didn’t want to scare our only ally.
Elijah must have heard us, because he looked up, his eyes wide with fear, and then swallowed nervously when he recognized my face. His body shook with a tremor of agitation and he went back to his work.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you,” he said.
“Hello, Meshara,” said Brooke softly. “It’s been a long time.”
He looked at her more closely. “You’re Brooke?”
“Sometimes.”
“You’re leaving town,” I told him. “We want to come with you.”
“So he can find us all at once?” Elijah shook his head. “No, thank you.”
“Just far enough that we can lie low,” I said, walking in. Brooke and Nathan followed. “Just the next town over, that’s all we ask.” I was about to tell him that we trusted him, that I wasn’t like the others in the police station who’d been to afraid even to talk to him, but Elijah’s next words shocked me.
“I don’t trust you,” he said.
“You don’t trust us?” asked Nathan.
“Why should I?” asked Elijah, looking up again from his work. “You hit me with a truck.”
“I’m sorry,” said Brooke.
“Look,” I said, but Elijah shook his head and stormed toward me; Nathan cringed and stepped back a few steps.
“No,” said Elijah, “you look. I left the Withered years ago—millennia ago. I don’t like them, I don’t like their methods, I don’t like the way they think they can do anything they want to anybody just because they’re stronger. They used to be gods and they think they still are. Humans are their playthings. And then when I finally got back in the fight and I picked a side because you—you, of all people—convinced me that it was worth it, it turns out you think exactly the same way. We’re your playthings, and you can play god with our lives. I thought you were different.”
“I told you we were right,” I said. “I never told you we were different.”
“Maybe you should have,” said Elijah. He glared at me a moment longer, and the age behind his eyes seemed suddenly overwhelming, ten thousand years of weariness. I didn’t have an answer, and he turned back to his work. “I’m leaving,” he said again. “You can find your own way out.”
He pulled the gas-pump nozzle out of the car and turned to put it back on its hook, when suddenly a loud crack split the air and Elijah dropped to the floor. I stumbled back, my ears ringing from the sound, and looked at Nathan. He didn’t even have his gun out—his empty hands were clamped tightly over his ears, his face locked in a grimace. Brooke looked like she was screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything. I looked back at Elijah, struggling to get up, but he was hit by two more shots. I could barely even think from the shock—could barely process what was happening—but Brooke grabbed my arm and pulled me past Elijah to the end of the car, yanking me down into cover. I peeked around the edge of the hood in time to see a dark
shape hurtling in through the garage door, a man streaked with dirt and blood. Elijah groaned, regenerating too slowly; the intruder raised his arm and a long, sharp machete flashed brightly in the light. He swung once and took off Elijah’s head.
It was Potash.
I staggered to my feet. “You killed him!”
“That was the point,” growled Potash.
“He was on our side!” I shouted. “He wasn’t even that—he was on a better side. We’re the ones who betrayed him!”
“He was a Withered,” said Potash. “We’ve danced around too long, trying to understand them, to ally with them, and what has it gotten us? The whole team’s dead, and I’m done dancing. It’s time we kill who needs to be killed, and finish this once and for all.”
“He didn’t need to be killed,” I said, dropping to my knees beside the body. Elijah was good—he was better than we were. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
Elijah’s body collapsed, turning to ash and grease before my eyes. Soulstuff, he called it. Too corrupt to do anything but rot. In seconds his body was a bubbling pool of gritty black tar.
I felt the knife in my pocket.
“You were right,” I said, climbing slowly to my feet. I looked at Potash, covered with cuts and scrapes, his chest heaving from exertion, his ruptured cannula held to his nose with one hand. He had killed one of the only good people I knew. I said it again. “You were right.” I pulled out my knife. “It’s time to kill whoever needs to be killed.”
18
“Everybody calm down,” said Nathan.
Potash looked at me, leaning slightly back, as if reconsidering me. “What do you think you’re going to do?”
I looked at him closely, my hand tight around the knife. “Why are you doing this, Potash?”
“I think I just explained myself pretty well.”
