She walked toward the man stationed behind the wagon, his body thin and frail, his age, the woman suspected, much older than most would have guessed. As she approached him, she could see the fear build on his face, and his deadened eyes suddenly sprang to life, his breathing intensifying. He looked behind him and off to his left, as if considering whether to flee, and then turned back and stood tall, studying the woman as she neared.
“Hello ma’am,” he said, his voice cracking in the middle of the second word.
“Are you not pleased by a customer? I would think you would do anything for a sale.” The woman looked around her in every direction, rotating her feet as she did until she had made a full revolution, a kind of derisive dance.
The man swallowed and stared at the woman unblinking. “I am pleased,” he stammered. “Of course. What...what would you like to see?”
The woman smiled, making sure to show the magnitude of her wide mouth and the range of teeth within it. “Do you not remember me?”
“It has been a long while. Over one year I think.”
“Which means you do remember me.”
The man nodded.
The woman let her smile deteriorate, falling quickly into a look of tension and impatience. “I will assume that since your symbol has not changed,” the woman pointed up toward the frayed green flag and the two large, forward-facing red fangs painted upon them. “That your products have not either. Am I to be correct in this assumption?”
The vendor took a cautious peek to his right, assessing the interest of his neighboring vendor whose station looked as if it hadn’t been visited in weeks. The neighbor was fast asleep on his stool, his head sideways, snoring softly on his hands that were folded neatly atop the wagon.
“It is not something I can bring with me here daily. You see how little business I draw. And this...item is rare.”
“The symbol on your flag would suggest this is just the thing you would maintain regularly.”
The man looked up at his flag, as if confirming the fangs were, indeed, still present there. “Yes, but the venom you seek is...” The vendor looked around again, this time doing a full-circle perusal of the area. “Not quite licit.”
The old woman chuckled at this notion, and then paused, assessing the earnestness of the vendor’s words. “Licit? Is that what worries you? That is a comedy. In the time it took me to walk here from my home, not a mile away, mind you, I witnessed no less than a dozen illegal acts, all of which, I assure you, were far more nefarious than selling the venom of a snake.”
“Yes, well...” the vendor seemed to be conceding the point, but still not willing to proceed with the transaction.
The woman stood confused for a moment, and then, as if she’d been slipped a note upon which the answer had been written, closed her eyes and smiled, this time with her lips tightly sealed. “So it is about money?” she asked. “Is that it? You need more than the last time?”
The vendor cocked an eyebrow up and twitched his neck. “Cobra venom is easy to find. The snakes are common and the price is negotiable. I have it with me every day. But the bungaru is quite a different creature altogether. It is a secretive snake, more difficult to find and more deadly to wrangle. And there is quite a delicate science to extracting its venom.”
“I detest negotiation,” the woman replied quickly, almost before the vendor had finished speaking. “Almost as much as I detest weakness and excuses. Tell me your new price, tell me when you will have the ingredient, and on that day I will return to complete the transaction.”
“It will be more than a week. I cannot say surely.”
“We will agree to two then. Two weeks. I would suggest you have it for me at this very moment two weeks from today.”
The vendor nodded, suspicion and regret heavy in his eyes.
“And for your efforts, I will double the amount paid to you last time.”
The vendor took a deep breath and his lips parted slightly, instinctually poised to counter the woman’s price. But he said nothing, knowing her offer was well beyond that to which he’d expected to agree.
“As I said, I detest negotiation.”
The vendor nodded again, tacitly agreeing to the finality of the transaction.
The woman loathed these outings generally, but she enjoyed the power she wielded during these dealings, and how easily she could render these fools speechless, controlling the scene entirely.
She stared for a beat longer into the man’s face and then turned, and as she began to walk away she heard him speak.
“It is not an ingredient,” he said.
The woman kept her back to the vendor for several seconds, and then turned slowly towards him. She lifted her head and pushed her face forward, displaying her mouth in an extreme gape, wide and wild so as to showcase her jagged teeth. She could feel them protruding from all angles, large and lethal (not unlike the fangs on the flag above her, she imagined), glistening in the midday sun.
The vendor turned away coughing, placing his hand in a canopy above his eyebrows, shielding his view of her. “It is poison,” he managed in a whisper. “It is just that you are my customer, so I have the responsibility to tell you that.”
“Poison is in the body of the beholder,” the woman said, turning away again, and as she began her walk from the outer vendors back toward the interior of the market place, she called out the reminder, “Two weeks.”
Chapter 7
ANIKA STOOD NERVOUSLY at the edge of the Interways, keeping her hand within touching distance of the black and white mile marker 193 sign. It was an unnecessary precaution, she knew, since she would hear the System cruiser coming from at least a hundred yards away. Besides, with her standing like a distressed vagabond on the shoulder, the officer would stop for certain. And if he decided to ignore her, to proceed by without stopping, perhaps in search of a stray dog that had been called in from a concerned motorist, she was prepared to wave him down like a lunatic, or even step into the middle of the road, if necessary.
She hadn’t had time to fully develop all of the tactics for what was to come, but she felt confident and justified in the overall strategy. She would need to sustain herself for the sake of her children, at least for as long as she could live with her monstrous acts, and to do so she would have to find victims upon which to feed.
Unfortunately for Anika, the people of the Back Country were, for the most part, a peaceful, law-abiding people who kept to themselves and their business. There was too much innocence here, she thought, too many lives that deserved the same dignity as she and her children.
But The System held no such honor.
For all of the corruption surrounding Officers Stenson and Dodd, and the cover ups of Marlene’s disappearance from the cannery on the days following Gretel’s presumed killing of the witch, there was never any retribution paid by the organization. Stenson and Dodd had been killed, that was true, but there were others in The System who knew of the poor procedures that had taken place and the lack of evidence at the crime scene. There was never an autopsy done on Marlene obviously, because her body had never been found. Yet that small detail had never appeared in any police report. At least none that she had ever heard about. There were prosecutions that should have been made at the highest levels of the institution, and yet, as far as she knew, not a single person had even been disciplined.
Anika’s thoughts of The System bounced wildly in her brain, and she realized she was jumping to some conclusions. Perhaps steps had been taken toward punishing certain administrators and she was unaware of them. But she didn’t think it so. Petr had followed the investigation closely for over a year, and he had done quite a bit of work on his own to find answers, mainly to do with the many questions that surrounded his father’s involvement in the systemic corruption. He had been stonewalled most of the way, but he learned enough to know that justice had not been done.
Besides, even if Anika was rationalizing her upcoming actions, an officer in The System would be a f
ar less innocent kill than virtually any citizen of the Back Country.
Anika checked the numbers on the sign again, making sure she had relayed the proper information to the dispatcher, and, as if her check had triggered the scene, she heard the unmistakable grumble of a System vehicle churning down the Interways towards her.
She froze for a moment, suddenly re-considering her plan, overcome now with fear at the future action to which she had committed.
She will hunt them until they are her trophies.
The words of the voice sobered Anika only slightly. She truly believed that what she had been told was true, that her children were in some type of future peril, and that she was to play a part in keeping them safe. And for that reason, she had to stay alive.
But was this the only way?
As the cruiser rumbled into view, Anika’s chest seized with hunger, and she closed her eyes at the enormity of the pressure. Her throat tightened at the thought of the food source so close, and of how she’d so deftly drawn it towards her like a master killer, as quick and strong as a cat yet with a mind that was percipient and nimble.
Anika gave a half wave toward the car as it slowed and then stopped only a foot away. She took a quick step backwards as the officer opened the cruiser door and hastily stepped to the gravelly shoulder, rising barely to the top of the cruiser’s roof as she stood.
A woman.
“Ma’am, are you hurt?”
The female officer looked barely old enough to drive, let alone wear a System badge. She was shorter than Gretel, and couldn’t have been more than three or four years older.
Her face was so smooth and pretty.
“Ma’am?” the office repeated. “I’m calling for an ambulance now.”
Her injuries, Anika had forgotten about them. Hansel’s blow to her head had been fatal—at least it would have been in most cases—and she had spent a considerable amount of time at the bottom of a lake where God only knew what had fed on the loose skin and muscle that had been exposed by the strike. Her eye had exploded as well, and despite the patch now covering it, it must have given a shocking first impression. And Anika, herself, had crafted a long, deep cut across the base of her neck. That injury had receded, but in the form of a rough scab that was in the process of scarring.
“I’m not hurt,” Anika said. “It’s...I’m okay. I was hurt, several weeks ago, but I’ve been for surgery since then. My bandages have gone bad and I’ve not replaced them. That’s why I look so frightening to you. I’m sorry. I didn’t expect to see anyone out here at this time.”
“What happened to you?” the officer asked, her voice low and shocked. She was staring at Anika the way a child would have, barely able to hide her amazement at the battered person in front of her.
“A boating accident,” Anika replied, suppressing a snicker at the abstract truth of the answer.
“Are you certain you don’t need medical attention?”
Anika couldn’t take this girl’s life. She was not The System officer Anika had pictured when she first heard the siren beneath Pavel’s porch. This officer looked like a teenager; she probably first knew about the story of Gretel and Anika and Marlene from the schoolyard, not from the files of her organization. “I’m fine. Really.”
The officer stood staring, not quite convinced.
“May I ask how long you’ve been with The System?”
The officer looked at Anika plainly now, without judgment of her appearance, and then gave a bemused look that quickly evolved into a pleasant smile. “Eleven months.”
Anika frowned and nodded, adding this number to her equation and realizing she could never carry out her plan. This woman was as innocent as any young girl in the Back Country, and she deserved to die at Anika’s hands no more than they did.
But restraint was still required; the wind had shifted slightly and the smells of the woman’s body were now wafting toward Anika. The officer had bathed this morning, and was soon to get her menses.
“I’m sorry, I must be getting home,” Anika said, willing herself to turn and begin walking in the direction opposite the cruiser.
“Please stop, ma’am. I need to ask you a few questions first.” The officer’s voice had a sternness now that Anika wouldn’t have believed she possessed.
Anika took a deep breath and turned back towards the officer.
The officer smiled. “If that’s okay?”
Anika returned a weak smile and gave a pleading look with her eyes. “I really must be going. I’ve...I’ve got dinner to plan. Husbands, you know?”
The officer gave the upward tick of a nod, a resin of suspicion now forming around her eyes. “Sure.”
Anika turned again to leave.
“Did you call in the sighting of a dog?” the officer asked, catching Anika in mid-stride.
Anika closed her eyes now, weighing her options, considering the consequences of simply running down the Interways or off into the forest. The woman would catch her in the cruiser of course, and the resulting physical confrontation would end either with Anika shot or feeding on the corpse of the officer. She could escape to the woods, but the attention she would garner by running seemed, in her mind, to negate the point of the effort.
But the longer she stayed talking with this woman, and the more the aroma from her body and the sight of her supple cheeks and arms and hands penetrated Anika’s senses, the more difficult it would be to pull back from her instincts.
“A dog?”
“Yes, ma’am. Someone called in the report of an injured dog at this mile marker.”
“I see. Well, I’m afraid that wasn’t me.”
“That’s interesting then. At this stretch of the Interways, which is nothing but a sea of trees and grass and pavement, a woman calls in the sighting of a dog, and when I arrive, there is no dog, but there is a woman.”
“That is interesting.”
Anika could see that the officer’s eyes were measuring her now, assessing the possibilities of the potential suspect in front of her, mentally running through the lessons of her training, trying to apply them now to the situation before her.
“What is your husband’s name, ma’am?” The geniality in the officer’s voice was now entirely gone.
“My husband?” Anika asked, realizing almost instantly the question was an attempt to trip her up on the lie she’d told earlier.
“Yes. You said you had to hurry home to cook for your husband. What is his name?”
Anika smiled, her eyebrows scrunched in confusion. “It’s Pavel.” Anika straightened her smile, now offering a look that said she was done with the conversation. “Good bye, officer. Good luck with finding the dog.”
Anika turned and took two steps down the shoulder of the Interways.
“Freeze.”
Anika took another step and then stopped, and a film of tears instantly formed over her eye.
“Turn around.”
Anika hesitated and then turned toward the officer, who now held a gun pointed straight at Anika and a radio up to her mouth, calling in for a support cruiser.
Anika wiped her eyes clear, feigning the tears were a result of her fear of imminent arrest. “What have I done, officer?” Anika pitched her voice up slightly, hoping to find the notes of mercy. “I’m taking a walk. That’s all I’ve done. I don’t know about a dog.”
“That may or may not be true. To be sure, however, I’ll just need to ask you a few more questions. In a more formal way.”
“Why?”
The officer gave Anika a disappointed look, as if she truly wished their brief relationship hadn’t ended up leading to this place of lies and distrust. “You said your husband’s name was Pavel. That is not a very common name. In fact, the only person I have ever known with the name ‘Pavel’ is Pavel Delov. And it so happens Mr. Delov’s house is just through these woods not a half mile. My family owns a restaurant on the outskirts of the Urbanlands. I worked there until I graduated from the institute. Mr. Delov has been deli
vering seafood to us my entire life. He’s become somewhat of a family friend. And he’s not married.”
Anika was speechless, both from the trap she’d created for herself and from the feelings of desire brought on by the sweat that had now built up over the entirety of the young officer’s body.
The officer put the radio back into the receiver and brought her other hand to the gun, wrapping her fingers tightly around the butt. “Please take a step toward me and get on the ground until you’re lying flat with both hands spread wide.”
Anika stayed motionless for a moment, her eyes narrowing slightly, saliva coating the insides of her mouth in a wave. She swallowed and blinked slowly, bringing her attention back to the details of the moment. “Is this necessary?” she asked, her voice chilly and strong.
“Had you told me the truth, it would not be. But now it is. And if Mr. Delov and his property are unharmed, and you’ve done nothing wrong, as you claim, then you will be on your way in a few minutes. But until I know that for sure, and until the support cruiser arrives, I’ll need to detain you. Now, again, take one step toward me, lie on the ground, and spread your hands wide.”
Anika took the step forward and got to her knees, suddenly recalling the night not so many years ago when she had found herself in a similar position, having escaped Marlene’s cabin to these very Interways, exhausted and terrified of what awaited her beyond. Officer Stenson had found her that night, pretending to rescue her before bringing her to the warehouse where her father regaled the story of Anika’s mother and his plans for Anika’s demise.
The System, she thought. She was once again at their mercy, though this time Anika had instigated the scene.
Anika lay prostrate now, the tears she’d held back now falling silently to the pavement.
“I’m sorry ma’am. I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just going to reach into your pockets and the waist of your pants. Do you have any weapons?”
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