The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition

by Rich Horton (ed)

  Hands on knees, Pete says, “Foster goes where? Down the west side of the park, right?”

  Lucas nods. “A couple trails pop out.”

  “We’ll watch for him.” Then Pete coughs into a fist.

  “Oh, he’s gotten away,” says Sarah. Pink mittens on her head, she says, “There’s a million trails in there.”

  “Come on,” says Crouse, setting off down the road.

  Pete trots after him.

  Masters watches Sarah, glasses like volcanic glass, the mouth pressed down to a scared pink dot.

  Audrey stands aside, her bottom lip tucked into her mouth, little teeth chewing. She acts like a bystander unlucky enough to stumble across an ugly family brawl.

  “With me?” says Lucas.

  Then he runs, saying, “Somebody.”

  Small shoes dance across dry gravel.

  Lucas shortens his gait, giving her no choice but to fall in beside him.

  “What did you do?” Audrey says. “His knee’s bleeding.”

  The trail is wide and heavily used, slicing south through old timber before crossing one of the gullies that feed Ash Creek. “I spilled him,” Lucas says.

  “Spilled him.”

  “Stupid,” he says.

  The gully is wide, choked with muck and dead timber. The long bridge is made from pipe and oak planks. Lucas jumps on first, feet drumming. “I wanted to scare him. Get him to run somewhere else.”

  They come off the bridge and the world turns quiet. The trail splits, one branch heading west, but Lucas presses south.

  “We were talking,” says Audrey. “Up on the road, waiting, Masters made a joke. He said we should tackle Jaeger, and right away Sarah said that was good idea. But when Carl finally showed up, nobody moved.”

  Voices drift in from the west, from deep in the trees.

  “Should we have turned back there?” Audrey says.

  “The other trail just makes a little loop. Jaeger can take it to the road, or he comes back to us.”

  She pulls up beside him, and neither of them talks.

  Then he says, “Nothing’s going to happen to the guy.”

  “Promise?”

  He slows.

  She passes him and looks back. “What?”

  “We’re here. Stop,” he says.

  The trail jumps left where the woods end. In front of them is twenty feet of vertical earth falling into cold slow water. The secondary trail pops out on their right. “Hear anything?” says Lucas.

  “No.” She tilts her head. “Yes.”

  The gray T-shirt appears first, and then the pale face. Jaeger spots them. Three strides away, he stops. His right knee is trying to scab over. He breathes hard, big lungs working, his face holding a deep, thorough fatigue. But the voice is solid. Ignoring Lucas, he says, “Not you.”

  More sad than angry, Audrey says, “Just tell me, Carl.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Did you kill Wade?”

  Jaeger throws a look back up the smaller trail. Gatlin and Varner stand in the trees, both men heaving. And Jaeger turns again, looking only at Lucas. He doesn’t say a word, but an odd little smile builds. Then he runs again—a handful of lazy strides pushing him between Lucas and Audrey—and the big legs kick into high gear, frozen twists of mud scattering on the ground behind him.

  “You could have won.”

  It was Wade’s voice, and it wasn’t.

  “They just posted the results,” he said. “You should see the splits. At five miles, Harris had you by eleven seconds. If you’d kept close, you would have toasted him at the end. The kid thinks he has a kick, but he doesn’t.”

  Lucas was sitting in his kitchen, finishing a pot of coffee. Orcs and humans were fighting on the television, ugly evil pitted against the handsome good.

  “Are you listening, Lucas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You haven’t won a race since you were sixteen.”

  Lucas put down the mug. “How do you know? Did I tell you?”

  “I’ve been reading old sports stories,” Wade said. Except something about the voice was different. Changed. Not in the words or rhythm, but in the emotions. Wade was always intense, but usually in a tough-coach, in-control way. Usually. But this character was letting his anger creep into everything he was saying. “You had your chance, Lucas. With Jaeger out of commission and all.”

  “You know about the arrest?”

  “An article just got posted. There’s a nice picture of me from ten years ago. And a real shitty shot of Jaeger. I’m hoping Masters has the arrest on video. That’s something I’d like to see.”

  Lucas reached across the table, turning off the television.

  “Two witnesses put Jaeger running with me,” Wade said. “I just read all about it. We’re in the park that Monday, at the north end heading south, and both witnesses claim the mood was ugly.”

  “But you don’t remember.”

  “Wade uploaded his days at night,” Wade said. “That was his routine.”

  “I remember.”

  Silence.

  Lucas waited. Then he said, “You think Carl did it?”

  “Killed me?” An odd laugh came across. “I don’t know. I really don’t. But I’ll tell you how this feels. Suppose you’re at a theater watching some movie. It’s a murder mystery, and there’s this one character that you really, really care about. You want the best for him but you’ve got to pee, and that’s when this person you like is killed. You’re out of the room, and he gets his skull caved in. And now you feel angry and sad, but mostly you just feel cheated.”

  Lucas lifted the mug, looking at the stained bottom.

  “Maybe Carl did it, and maybe not,” Wade said. “But I missed that part. And now I’m sitting in the dark, waiting to see how things end up. Just so I can get on with my life.”

  Mountain bikes and hiking boots have carved a broad rut down the trail’s middle. Runners keep to the rut, single file, jumping the bank when the trail twists, slicing the turn. Lucas leads and Audrey is behind him, watching her next steps. With a tight voice, she says, “I can’t believe this.”

  “So quit,” Varner says.

  Jaeger is forty feet ahead. Where the trail pulls left, he cuts through the woods, adding a half-stride to his lead.

  Varner surges, passing Audrey and clipping Lucas’s heel with a foot.

  Lucas slows and turns north, wind gnawing at his sweaty face.

  The next bridge is a tall smear of red just visible through the trees. Jaeger is almost there, slowing his gait, getting ready to jump on the stairs.

  Varner surges again, lifting himself to a full sprint, just managing to pull around Lucas.

  Jaeger looks back, squinting, the wide mouth pulling air in long gulps. Then he turns and leaps, his right foot landing on a pink granite step. And he pauses, calculating distance and his own fatigue before jumping again, breaking into a smooth trot across the bridge.

  Varner staggers, stiff legs climbing after Jaeger.

  The others bunch up behind.

  Lucas gasps, scrubbing his blood before pushing back into the lead. Ash Creek is wide as a river, and the long wooden bridge shakes with the pounding. Jaeger is twenty feet ahead when he reaches the end, leaping over the steps, hitting the ground hard. His posture is surprised. He stands where he landed, glancing back at Lucas and almost talk ing. Almost. Then he starts running again, not quite trusting his right leg.

  Lucas dances down the steps and runs. The next stretch of trail is wide and straight—an old road through what used to be a farmer’s yard. Someone with affection for poplars planted them in rows, skinny white trunks looking sickly without the glittering leaves. Again, the wind pushes the runners. Again, everybody accelerates. The old yard ends with a massive oak and deep woods. For Wade, this was always a traditional turnaround point from the Y. By this route, they have covered a few steps more than seven miles.

  Jaeger disappears into the trees.

  Lucas slows and s
ays, “There’s another bridge.”

  Audrey pushes close. “What about it?”

  “It’s closed. Since last summer.”

  “We can still cross,” Gatlin says.

  “Yeah,” Lucas says. “But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  The bridge rises in the distance. It looks wrong. Four tall posts sag toward the middle. Last June, a flash flood roared down the tributary, cutting at the banks and undermining the foundation. Jaeger is driving hard, pushing away from them. Varner is scared that he might get away, and the adrenaline gives him just enough speed to catch Lucas and trip him by clipping his heel.

  Both men tumble. Lucas slaps the ground where an exposed root cuts through a butcher’s glove, ripping into his right palm.

  Audrey stops.

  Gatlin is past, gone.

  Varner groans and finds his feet, giving Lucas an embarrassed but thoroughly pissed look before wobbling away.

  “Are you okay?” says Audrey.

  Lucas stands, watching the blood soak the cheap white fabric. Wincing, he says, “Come on,” and breaks into a slow trot, eyes down.

  DANGER, CLOSED reads the sign nailed to crossed planks.

  Jaeger has crawled past the barricade. Steel cables serve as railings, and with arms spread wide, he slowly drops out of view.

  “We’re beaten,” says Audrey. “We’re done.”

  She sounds nothing but happy.

  Gatlin stands on the ramp. Then he lifts an arm and waves at someone on the far bank.

  Past the bridge is a trailhead and parking lot. If people ran the road down the west side of the park, following Foster, even a knuckle-walking pace would take them to this trailhead before any greyhound could sprint down these trails. Gatlin and Varner stand at the crossed boards, staring across the slough. The suspension bridge looks tired and old and treacherous, sagging in the middle as if holding an enormous weight. Jaeger stands at the bottom. He doesn’t move. With feet apart, Pete guards the opposite barricade. Masters and Crouse are behind him, and Sarah hovers to the side, nothing but smiles now.

  Pete says, “Look at you.” Then he punches the boards, saying, “Unless you sprout wings, we’ve caught your ass.”

  “See the news today?”

  Lucas was making a fresh pot. “Besides murder stories, you mean?”

  The dead man laughed and then fell silent. And out from the silence, he said, “There was a thunderstorm yesterday. In Greenland.”

  Lucas didn’t talk.

  “You know where Greenland is, don’t you?”

  “Well enough,” Lucas said.

  The next laugh was smaller, angrier. “It wasn’t a big storm, and it didn’t last. But if rain starts falling hard on those glaciers, it’s going to be a real mess.”

  “I thought we had a real mess.”

  “Even worse,” Wade said.

  Mr. Coffee set to work, happy to prove itself.

  “Our weather wouldn’t be this crazy,” Lucas said, “if the Chinese hadn’t burned all that coal.”

  “Which authority is talking? You?”

  “Masters, mostly.”

  “It wasn’t the Chinese, Lucas. It was everybody.”

  Lucas said nothing, waiting.

  “Smart people can be stupid,” Wade said.

  “I guess.”

  “And I know guys who can’t read a map, but they still see things that I’d never notice.”

  Lucas poured a fresh cup.

  “Did I tell you? Climate is the biggest reason I got made. And it wasn’t just the rising oceans and ten-year droughts and those heat waves that hammered the Persian Gulf. Climate does change. Always has, and life always adapts. Except the Earth today has two big things that didn’t exist during the Eocene.”

  Lucas said the new word. “Eocene.”

  “The Earth has its money and it has politics. And those very precious things are getting hit harder than anything else. The sultans can fly off to cool wet Switzerland, but the poor people have to die. The Saudi government has to collapse. But meanwhile, engineers get to sit inside their air-conditioned bunkers, using robots to run oil fields cooking at a hundred and fifty degrees. As if this was some other planet, and they were noble astronauts doing good work.”

  “I guess,” said Lucas.

  “Political stability and wealth,” the voice said. “People depend on those two things more than anything else. And the poverty and riots and little murders and big wars are just going to get worse. Hour by hour, year by year. That’s why I put my savings into this venture. Why Wade did. Sure, we were hoping for fifty years of tweaking, but at least we had enough time to pack up everything about me and put it here. My whole life, safe as safe can possibly be.”

  Lucas sipped and looked out the window. Or he didn’t look anywhere. He was thinking, and he had no idea what he was thinking until he spoke.

  “Nobody would do that,” he said.

  “Do what?” said Wade.

  “Take everything.” Lucas wiped the counter with a clean towel. “It’s like this. You’re putting your life into one big bag. But there’s always going to be choices. There’s always embarrassing ugly dangerous shit, and you’ll look at it and say, ‘Hell, that crap needs to be left behind.’ ”

  “Think so?”

  “I know it.” Lucas watched the coffee wobbling in the mug. “That’s probably another reason why Wade did what he did. Getting free of the past.”

  The line was silent.

  “And you, the poor backup . . . you can’t even know what’s missing.” Lucas was laughing but not laughing. “Right there, that says plenty.”

  SEVEN

  Jaeger stands at the bottom of the slow-swaying curve, turning slowly and staring up at the people on both ends of the bridge. His chest swells, drinking the cold air. The muscles in his bare legs look like old rope, bunched and frayed, and the right knee keeps bleeding, a red snake glistening down the long shin. With filthy butcher gloves, he holds onto the steel cables. Old wood feels his weight, groaning. He doesn’t seem to mind. If the bridge collapses, he falls ten feet into icy mud and nothing happens, nothing but pain and mess. Jaeger spent two months sitting in jail. He was too broke to make bail or find an adequate attorney. The city’s murder rate had exploded in the last few years. A hundred other cases needed to be chased. But a popular citizen had been brutally murdered, and that’s why the police and prosecutors threw everything at the suspect, trying to wring a confession from him. But there was no confession. And when key bits of physical evidence were finally attacked by the full powers of modern science, they were found wanting. Witnesses and odd circumstances don’t make a case, and the court had no choice but to order Jaeger released. And that’s why this bridge is no obstacle. None. Nothing will make the man meaner or any harder. That’s what he says with his body and his face and the hard sure grip of his hands. That’s what he says to Lucas, staring at him with those fierce green eyes.

  And then Jaeger blinks.

  He takes another breath and holds it. His head tips on that long neck. Maybe he feels cold. Anyone else would, dressed as he’s dressed and standing still. Then he exhales and makes a quarter turn, wrapping both hands around the same fat steel cable.

  Pete says, “Hey, prick. Tell the truth, and we’ll let you go.”

  Jaeger stares at the slough. With a plain voice, not loud but carrying, he says, “That’s what I am. A prick. And Wade was this righteous good guy, and everybody liked him, and dying made him perfect.”

  Nobody talks. Except for the wind in the trees and a slow trickle of water, there is nothing to hear.

  “No, I wasn’t with him when he died,” says Jaeger. “But I know how he died. Even after the rain, there were clues: A big chunk of skin was found south of here, down near the water. It came out of his shoulder, and it was the first wound. Somebody was swinging a piece of rebar with a lump of concrete on the end, and they clipped Wade from behind, on his left side, probably knocking him off his feet. Giving hi
s attacker the chance to grab his phone, leaving him bloody and cut off from the world, but mobile.

  “That’s when the chase began,” he says. “There was a blood trail. DNA sniffers and special cameras showed where he ran, where he was bleeding. Twice, Wade tried doubling back to the nearest trailhead, but his enemy clipped the shoulder again and then bashed in one of his hands. The experts could tell that from the clotting. They know how fast the blood flowed and where Wade collapsed. He was up on the abandoned rail line, probably trying to get back to town. That’s where his killer used the club to bust one of Wade’s knees, crippling him. Then his jaw was broken, maybe to keep him quiet. After that, his killer dragged him down into the brush and with a couple good swings broke his hip. Then for some reason, the beating took a break.”

  Jaeger pauses.

  Almost too soft to hear, Sarah says, “What are you telling us?”

  “I’m explaining why you’re idiots.” Jaeger looks at her and back at Lucas. “Fifteen, twenty minutes passed. The killer stood over Wade. Talking to him, I guess. Probably telling him just how much he was hated. Because that’s what this murder was. That was the point of it all. Somebody wanted to milk the fun out of hurting him. He wanted Wade helpless, wanted him to understand that he was crippled and ruined.”

  Sarah makes a soft, awful sound.

  Jaeger shakes his head. “Twenty minutes of talk, and then three or four minutes of good solid hammering. Wade died within sixty seconds, they figured. But he was a tough bastard and maybe not. Maybe he felt the one side of the face getting caved in and the ribs and arms busted and the neck shattered.”

  Lucas leans against the barricade.

  Jaeger pushes into the cable, long arms stretched wide and holding tight. The steady drumming of his strongest muscle causes the steel to shudder. Anyone touching the bridge can feel his heart beating hard and quick.

  “I didn’t hate the man,” says Jaeger. “You know me, Audrey. You too, Lucas. I’m wrapped up in myself, sure. But this feud ran in just one direction.” He laughs and grabs both cables again. “Yeah, we ran together that Monday. And we were talking. But after a mile or so, I turned and he went on. For me, Wade was nothing. He was just another body in the pack. I didn’t hate him. Not till I spent two months in jail, thinking about him and his good sweet friends. And you know what? I’ve got this feeling. This instinct. I didn’t have reason for killing, particularly like that. But I’m thinking that killing Wade Tanner is something one of you bastards would do. Easy.”