Gray was frozen where he stood. He could feel deep down how this was going to play out, but he couldn’t seem to force his body to react. The whole scene played out in front of him like a movie.
“Peckham,” Richard said without taking his eyes from Susan.
The soldier just stared blankly at him.
“Peckham!”
The chief of security raised the shotgun and seated the butt against his shoulder, pointing it at Susan, the tip of the barrel only inches from her left temple.
“You’re going to stop screaming right now,” Richard said, regaining control over his rage, though with his wild eyes and the blood running from those cuts he looked insane. “You don’t want to orphan our little Jake, do you? Don’t want him to hear the walls being painted with mommy’s brains.”
Dear God, the boy was still in the room!
Silence filled the hall, smothering. Gray couldn’t even breathe.
“Please,” Susan whispered. “I’ll do anything you want.”
Richard smiled, the rivulets of crimson racing around the corners of his mouth to drip from his chin. “Good girl.”
Garrett looked to Richard, who nodded back at him. Slowly, he released Susan’s arms and took a step back. She stood there, chin to her chest, shoulders heaving with the onset of hyperventilation.
“Please…just let me go back in to be with him.”
“Of course,” Richard said, stepping to the side, his smile never faltering.
Susan walked sluggishly as though in a trance, refusing to look at any of them. When she reached for the doorknob, Gray sensed her moment of hesitation, but he couldn’t respond quickly enough. She grabbed Richard by the arm and pulled him in front of her, closing her hands around his neck from behind and curling her fingers over his trachea so hard that the nails drew crescents of blood. Richard opened his mouth like a fish, choking as he gasped for air.
Peckham took one strong stride forward and pressed the barrel to the center of her forehead.
“Back off!” she screamed. “Don’t come any—!”
Boom!
Gray jumped, unable to close his eyes fast enough to keep from seeing everything above the bridge of Susan’s nose liquefied and pounded into the wall with a fiery spray of steel. Smoke lingered around what remained of her head, mixing with the chalk released from the holes in the drywall behind.
“Christ!” Richard bellowed, clapping his hands to his ears. His entire face and shirt were awash with blood and gray matter. “You could have blown my head off!”
Susan’s fingers fell away from his red neck as her body slid down the wall into a sloppy heap on the floor, leaving a smeared trail of blood.
Gray’s whole body trembled. He couldn’t believe they’d just killed her. He turned and looked at the doorway leading to the stairwell, his gaze lingering long and hard on the doorknob, but he just couldn’t do it. The urge to save his own skin was overwhelming and he knew what fate would befall him if they found out he’d witnessed Susan’s execution, but he couldn’t leave that little kid at their mercy.
“She was going to tear out your windpipe!” Peckham shouted. “What was I supposed to do, let her?”
Gray looked back around the corner. All three had gathered around the woman’s corpse and were leaning over her as though waiting for something to happen.
It was now or never.
Gray dashed across the hallway and through the door to Richard’s room, straight through the patio door and onto the balcony. A painted cinderblock wall separated the balcony from the one beside, the rest enclosed by a white railing. There was no time to think. He hopped right up on the rail and stepped around the wall onto the adjacent railing, dropping down onto the cement without looking first. The wind screamed its displeasure, battering him with snowflakes, but he already had the sliding glass door open and lunged into the room.
Pinpricks of light shined through the pellet holes in the front wall beside the door, allowing the scent of gunpowder to creep through. He scoured the room for any sign of the boy. The covers had been tossed from the bed, revealing nothing but a plain white sheet atop the barren mattress. There was no one in the chair beside it, the wind billowing the curtains inward to prove that Jake wasn’t hiding back there either. Gray raced through the room, past a round table with another pair of chairs and a miniature refrigerator. Clothes and empty plates littered the dresser beside the useless television. Veering to his right when he reached the front door, he carefully slid open the closet door. Nothing. Heading into the bathroom, he threw open the shower stall door. Empty. Where the hell was he?
“Get her out of the hallway!” Richard shouted from the other side of the wall, his voice obscenely loud to compensate for the ringing in his ears.
“What are we supposed to tell everyone else?”
“Tell them she tried to kill me!”
Gray ducked back into the main room, his head on a swivel. He could still hear the men bickering on the other side of the door behind him, but he couldn’t make out their words. He couldn’t afford to waste another second. If they found him in there…
The bed.
He ran toward it and dropped to his stomach, lifting the blankets to find himself staring directly into the boy’s frightened eyes.
“Come on!” he whispered, dragging Jake out by his wrist. The child’s face shimmered with tears, but he managed to hold his hand over his mouth to keep from sobbing aloud.
Gray pulled him to his feet and led him out onto the balcony, lifting him by the waist until Jake was able to balance his feet on the icy railing. With a groan, Gray heaved Jake around the wall and onto the adjacent balcony, listening for the thump of the boy dropping to the concrete pad. He followed without hesitation to find Jake waiting for him. Scooping the child into his arms, he ran for the door, but stopped when he heard voices.
Gray peered down the hallway. Had any of them turned around, they would have been looking directly at him, exposed in the middle of the open doorway.
He stared in horror at where Susan’s body lay and the three men arguing over it. If he and Jake made a break for it now, they’d be seen the moment they crossed the threshold.
“The others won’t believe I was in any kind of physical danger from a woman,” Richard said. “And if they do, I can’t see how that could possibly be good for my image.”
“I only did what I thought you wanted me to do,” Peckham said.
“What do you propose we do about it?” Garrett asked.
Richard locked eyes with Garrett and nodded pointedly.
“I clearly remember walking down the hallway to find our new Chief of Security trying to calm a hysterical woman. I mean, we’re all under an inordinate amount of stress, after all.
“But he failed to recognize exactly how far gone she really was, approached her without the necessary caution, and allowed her to relieve him of his weapon.”
“That’s not at all what happened,” Peckham interrupted.
“Which she used to shoot him in the head at point-blank range,” Richard said. “Garrett, you were then forced to subdue her and the gun accidentally discharged in the ensuing scuffle.”
“Wait a second,” Peckham said. “Let’s talk about this. There are better ways—”
Garrett moved with such speed that Peckham never saw it coming. The gun was in his hands one moment, then in Garrett’s the next.
Boom!
Peckham’s head snapped backward as the spatter of blood climbed the wall. His body crumpled into a heap on the floor.
“Get someone up here to clean up this mess,” Richard said.
He strode down the corridor with Garrett right behind him.
As soon as they disappeared around the bend, Gray sprinted toward the door to the stairwell, throwing it wide and thundering down. He passed several faceless people, shadows against the darkness ascending to investigate the sound of gunfire from above. They just watched him fly past, holding Jake as tightly as he could to his chest so he could bound do
wn the steps two at a time. They blew through the door and dashed across the lobby toward the front entrance. Wide-eyed faces passed to either side, unable to hide their dawning fear.
“Go!” he shouted as soon as he shouldered through the glass door, but Carrie was waiting in the passenger seat. Exhaust plumed from the tailpipe and the headlights highlighted twin circles of light on the wall. A crowd had gathered around the truck, all eyes raised to the top floor where a silhouette appeared in the shattered pane. Leaping over a steaming wash of red melting into the snow, he rounded the front of the semi just as Carrie leaned across the driver’s seat and opened his door.
“Gray!” she screamed. “What’s happening?”
Out of breath, he could only shove Jake at her and climb up into the bucket seat. Before he even closed the door, he popped the clutch and the semi was rolling in reverse. They needed more speed! Pounding his foot on the gas pedal, the trailer rocketed backwards. He looked back over his shoulder to navigate, trying to steer that enormous trailer through the center of the gate.
Boom!
The windshield shattered, glass shrapnel slicing his right cheek and ear, tearing through his hair and cracking the glass behind him.
The truck slammed into the gate, tearing the lock with a metallic scream and wrenching the gate from its hinges to slam to the street beneath their tires. He cranked the wheel and the trailer jacked to the right, the cab swinging around until it faced down the road to the south. Stomping the clutch and slamming the gear into first, the tires spun before finally catching and sending them rocketing forward, snowflakes blowing straight through over the hood and smacking him in the face.
Jake was crying beside him from beneath the dashboard where Carrie had shoved him.
Merging into the right lane, he exited onto the ramp that would lead them onto the interstate.
“Are you okay?” he asked, too nervous to steal his eyes from the road for even a second for fear of launching them off of the highway.
Jake sobbed even louder in response.
“Carrie?”
As soon as the truck straightened out on the interstate, he looked to his right. Carrie was leaning against the side window, blood pouring from beneath her hairline.
“Talk to me, Carrie!”
He slowed the truck to reach for her, the change in speed causing her to slump forward, leaving a wet mess of blood on the window.
“No!” he screamed, grabbing her by the shoulder and pulling her toward him.
The entire right half of her face was torn to ribbons. Fractured bone stood out of the pulpy swelling of red flesh, soggy crimson bangs flopping down in front of her face.
“God…no! Please…not my wife…”
IV
Mormon Tears
THEY WERE DYING AND THERE WASN’T A THING SHE COULD DO ABOUT IT.
Evelyn steadied herself on her rocky perch and jabbed the ice with the stick, breaking it into pieces small enough to slide atop the thicker ice surrounding the section she was trying to keep clear above the kelp. There was only a thin line of saltwater against the shore, the rest now hiding beneath a crust of ice close to half an inch thick and buried under the rapidly accumulating snow. It covered the lake as far as she could see into the storm.
“Don’t die on me,” she said, staring at the brown leaves wilting down to the roots like rotting lettuce.
So much for her thoughts of sustaining them all on kelp. They were already nearly through the remainder of the stock of food and were down to a single gallon of water.
Like the kelp and the dream that those plants embodied, they were going to die.
She thought of the mural in the cave, but chased away the budding sense of hope before it could be crushed.
“Wishful thinking,” she said, rising carefully and hopping back down to the beach, now invisible under several feet of snow. Granted, her specialty was oceanography, but she’d passed enough biology and ecology classes to know the kind of storm they were up against. The accepted theory of the extinction of the dinosaurs held that after the impact with the great asteroid, the resultant cloud of dust it had thrown into the atmosphere had shielded the planet from the sun’s rays, ushering in the ice age. She imagined that this was no different. The nuclear and atomic detonations had done just that, sending tons of debris into the air on massive mushroom clouds to be trapped in the sky. Worse still were the clouds of radiation and God only knew what else that roiled above them. It would eventually clear, she knew, but how long would it take? Weeks? Months? Or, heaven forbid, years?
She wished she could go back in time and beat some sense into the politicians and religious zealots who had damned them to this fate. Surely there wasn’t a bible or Koran that stated that their god would only be appeased when the entirety of creation was decimated. What kind of god would hate his own children so much as to demand they destroy themselves? Hers was a God that smiled down upon them in the majestic colors of the sunset and showed His face in the miraculous first breaths following childbirth. Maybe it was a fool’s dream, like following a rainbow to the end in hopes of finding a pot of gold. Perhaps it was simply time to allow that idealistic image to fade. If this is what God wanted: pain, suffering…death…then she wanted absolutely nothing to do with Him.
Tugging the ancient blanket tightly around her shoulders, she tucked her chin to her chest and walked into the stiff wind, which pelted her with snowflakes the size of dimes and ripped her frozen breath back over her shoulder. She stopped when she saw movement in front of her.
One of those enormous white birds of prey stood in front of her, head cocked to the side, eyes locked on hers.
“What do you want from me?”
The feathers on its crown rose to erection and its throat swelled like a goiter. It gagged several times, its head rising and falling repeatedly before it spewed a mess of what looked and smelled an awful lot like fish guts onto the snow. Its wings spread wide and with a single leap it was airborne, swallowed by the blizzard.
“Ugh,” she gasped, looking at the foul-smelling sludge melting into the snow.
A glint of something shiny caught her eye. With the toe of her shoe she shoved aside a pink coil of half-digested intestines to find a gold coin…just like those that might fill a pot at the end of the rainbow.
All she could manage to do was stare at it. What a humbling experience. It was as though God had heard her thoughts and doubts and had seen fit to send a message just for her. A message of hope.
Maybe whoever had drawn the mural in the cavern had more faith in her than she did. There had to be a way to save the kelp, she just hadn’t thought of it yet.
“You’re just in time,” Lindsay said, appearing in front of her. “Oh. Gosh. Are you all right?”
Evelyn looked up at her, noting Lindsay’s pursed lips and the way she was just staring down at the pile of bird vomit.
“That isn’t mine,” Evelyn said with a chuckle, having to take a second look at the ground. The coin was no longer there.
“Good, because I didn’t even want to speculate as to what all of that crap is.” Lindsay kicked snow over the festering puke. “Now hurry up so you can see the test.”
“What test?”
“Would you just come on already?”
Lindsay bounded ahead, leading Evelyn back toward the camp, weaving through the slalom of sharpened poles lining the beach. They were everywhere, from the face of the mountain halfway to the shoreline. The others were gathered ahead, spear-tips standing above their heads. They looked as one to the top of the mountain.
“Is everyone here?” Adam shouted down to them. He was barely a spectre all the way up there through the storm.
“Yeah,” Lindsay shouted. “Finally…”
“Just do it!” Mare shouted.
“On three,” Adam said. “One… Two…”
A body appeared from the snow, plummeting down toward them. Evelyn screamed as it landed on one of the spikes, which gored it straight through. She ran t
oward it, falling to her knees and grabbing—
A handful of straw?
The others let out a riotous cheer.
“Did it work?” Adam called down.
“Perfectly!” Lindsay shouted. She rested a hand on Evelyn’s back. “You didn’t think that was Adam…did you?”
Evelyn held up a shirtsleeve stuffed with musty old grasses they must have pulled out of one of the disintegrating walls of the pueblo. A belt had been tightened around the bottom of the shirt to affix it to a similarly stuffed pair of pants.
The spear had passed so cleanly through the scarecrow that the shirt hardly even appeared ripped.
“You did, didn’t you?” Lindsay said, unable to hide the lilt of amusement in her voice. “He is pretty cute, isn’t he?”
Evelyn looked up at her, angered by the comment, but for the life of her she couldn’t understand why. Was it actually possible that she was developing feelings for a man she didn’t even know?
Lindsay picked up on the cue and tried to have a little fun with her.
“You know, I was thinking of maybe seeing if he was available.” Evelyn shot her the look she had expected. “I mean, if you aren’t interested, of course.”
“I’m not,” Evelyn said far too quickly.
“Oh. I see. Then you wouldn’t mind if I—”
“Not at all,” Evelyn interrupted.
Lindsay smirked. “I guess if you’re sure…”
“Hey!” Norman shouted from above where he and Adam were preparing to descend the far slope of the mountain again, fortunately minus the unwieldy weight of the stuffed clothes. He was jumping up and down and waving his arms. “Over here!”
“What is it?” April called.
Adam ran back to the edge of the cliff where they could see him. “There’s a car coming!”
“A car?” Lindsay said, forgetting all about tormenting Evelyn for the moment.
Ray ran ahead of them all, scrabbling up the mound of sand blocking the road and down the opposite side. The others followed, though at a greater distance. It had been a while since anyone else had arrived at the camp, so none had realized just how rapidly they had become wary of outsiders. All of the preparations for the coming battle had altered their mindset from one of a gathering of people to an increasing level of suspicion.
Blizzard of Souls Page 13