Rust: One

by Christopher Ruz

  The man made a glottal sound like he'd been punched in the stomach and fell apart in two neat halves.

  Finally, Fitch screamed.

  The woman pressed against the wall, frozen in place, the lighter held out before her like a ward. The flame shone on one bloodstained claw scraping a path through the pebbles, opening wide like a beartrap.

  The woman's jaw jutted. She raised her other hand, the sliver of bone extruding from her sleeve like a blade. "Come on," she whispered. "Try me."

  Fitch didn't wait around. He ran for the mouth of the cave, and behind him the woman shrieked, "It won't do you any good! We've already got her! You're out of time, honey! Out of-"

  He tumbled out the mouth of the cave and into the pelting rain. The pickup was waiting, and this time the tires gripped. He slammed into reverse and bounced up the incline, back on to the highway.

  Nothing followed him. The beach was silent and bare.

  We've already got her.

  The Archer woman. They knew.

  He threw the pickup into gear and, jaw clenched so tight it ached, set course for Rosewater Avenue.

  * * *

  The house was gone. Peter was gone. She was gloriously, effortlessly free.

  Kimberly had the map spread out on the dash as she drove, tracing the fine capillary network of roads that led to the narrow pass over the Keppler peak. It'd been ten years since she'd done high school orienteering, but she still knew how to gauge distances based on topographical curves and the setting of the sun. According to the map, the West Channel tunnel ran in a straight line beneath the ridge, and even if it looped around inside like some sort of Moebius knot she was pretty sure there'd be an end on the far side.

  The mountain humped twice. Between those humps was a walking trail marked with little yellow dashes that carried through the pass and down the far side. Past there...

  She didn't know what lay beyond the mountains. The map didn't extend that far. But she had water and more than enough food. She'd walked twenty mile days before. She'd do it again.

  You were a teenager, she thought. That was before you got old and lazy. Before the caesarean.

  Her hand crept down to her stomach and traced the line of scar tissue. It was so easy to forget the ache, to let it become a part of everyday life. Not a wound or an invasion but simply a part of her, something to bear.

  A scar for a baby she'd never carried.

  No point thinking about it. She'd be home soon, with Aaron and her friends and a good psychiatrist. There'd be doctors to make sense of the scar and every cop in DC to figure out how she'd been taken. Easy times ahead, as soon as she got out of town.

  The road turned from macadam to hard packed dirt, and then to loose rock that spat beneath the tires as she wound ever upward towards the peak, finally stopping altogether in a small clearing bordered by a battered wooden fence. A gate in the fence led to a thin path that wended through the trees, up the slope, towards the peak.

  She checked the map again. This was the Mount Keppler lookout. The path was marked. Up and over in a couple hours, no sweat. All she needed to do was stay ahead of the police. Peter would be calling Goodwell already. The whole of Rustwood PD on her ass... or would he? She'd come back twice before. Maybe he thought he had her under his thumb. A puppy who'd always return to her kennel when she grew bored of roaming.

  This time, it'd be different. They'd have to drag her back in cuffs.

  The wind whooped, driving the rain sideways as she dashed out into the cover of the trees. The tall pines were a shield against the wet, and she took the time to turn up her collar and pull a beanie down snug over her scalp before moving up the trail.

  For a while she forgot all about the mud and the wind, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. The little clearing quickly vanished behind her as she followed the slope, the town of Rustwood folding away behind the trees. The scent of pine needles was delicious, almost intoxicating. It brought back better days. Her father's hand enveloping hers. Jonah straining against his leash, driving his little wet nose into every patch of dirt and shit they passed, leaves sticking in his tangled fur...

  She stopped, spun. Was that a footfall behind her, thudding between the trees? She squinted into the shadows. Nothing moved. The trees were still.

  With her pack pulled tight and the rain a soft patter on her cheeks, Kimberly pushed on.

  Chapter 11

  Fitch parked a few streets back from the Archer's house. His hands were still trembling as he killed the engine, and he had to stroke the thing in his pocket for a good five minutes before his heart stopped hammering against his ribs. His mouth tasted of gunpowder and there was muck dried on his jacket; some of it was mud, and some of it he couldn't identify. Maybe blood. Maybe worse.

  He took a long, shuddering breath, and tried to make sense of the situation. No proof. No pipe bombs. He still had the pipes, screw lids and blasting caps but no more black powder. No way to fight.

  So much for being the town hero. A break in, a custodian left dead, a bare escape from... something, and all he had to show for it was a pair of skinned knees. He felt like a grade-A fuckup.

  He'd taken the long way, winding through the back streets. He'd passed police cars headed for Rustwood High. Fat chance it'd make the news, though. Another poor old man chewed up by the machinery of the town.

  He stumbled out into the rain. As soon as his feet touched the pavement his left knee buckled, and he fell against the car door, swearing under his breath until the pain passed. He rolled up his left pants leg and winced as the denim tugged at his skin, glued there by blood. A bad gash just below the kneecap, the blood already drying. He must've bashed it against the wall of the cave without realising. Not so deep that he couldn't just stick a bandaid over it, but it'd keep him from running for the next few weeks.

  He'd be lucky if Mrs Archer even wanted to talk to him, looking like this. Filthy, burned up, smelling like shit and blood. When he glanced in the pickup's side mirror he saw a wild man, hair tangled, sand in every fold of his jacket.

  "You've become a parody, old son," he whispered. First thing he'd do when he got home was take a bath. Maybe even throw some bubbles in. Break out the clippers and give himself a haircut. Even a number one all over was better than this hermit's tangle. Pretend he hadn't seen what he'd seen in that cave. The crablike claw. The elephantine bulk of it. Pretend to be a real human again, a normal person living in a normal town, even if it was only for five minutes.

  No. If he took his mind off the task for one day, even one hour, the doubts would creep in. The town would get into his head and make him forget. That was the only way to stay sane - to hammer on the walls so long and loud that the echoes never went away. Comfort was surrender. Surrender was death.

  The beach was real. The men he'd left dying in the caves were real, and so was whatever was chewing their corpses that night.

  It wasn't paralysis. The beast could be fuel, if he allowed it. And right now, Kimberly could be in trouble. He needed that fuel.

  He pushed on to the Archer's.

  Rosewater Avenue was a sloping street and number 118 was at the base of that slope, nestled between identical white-washed suburban bungalows. Fitch was still at the peak of Rosewater Hill, looking down at the Archer's house, when the police car pulled up outside.

  He ducked left into the bushes lining the street, and watched through the gaps as a man in a dark suit marched up to the door of 118. Fitch didn't recognise the man, not from so far away, but he wasn't in uniform. Might've been one of the beast's servants, but he wasn't wearing those bug-eye sunglasses either, and he doubted any of the four had made it out of the cave. Not riddled with shrapnel. Not with that thing so hungry.

  The policeman went inside. Fitch waited in the bushes, glancing back towards his pickup and then down the hill again, waiting for the man to leave. He didn't. There were lights on in 118, shapes moving behind the curtains, but no way to tell whose silhouettes they were.

&nbs
p; He had to know.

  Step by slow step, Fitch crept down the hill, keeping to the shadows of the ornamental oaks planted along the street. When he reached 118 he slipped around the side, easing over the back gate, following the sound of voices until he reached the kitchen window. There, he crouched low and pressed against the wall beneath the window, trying to make out words through the patter of rain on his coat.

  "Let me read the Volkswagen's license plate back to you. L-3-2..."

  "You've checked it twice! Find her!"

  Two men, one calm and one near hysterical. The policeman and the husband, Fitch figured.

  "I can't find her without the right information, sir."

  "I already gave the police all the details-"

  "No harm in making sure. Now, let's work through some possibilities. You called the hospital?"

  "She's not there. Well, if she is, she didn't check in. Doctor Keller hasn't seen her."

  "And you don't know where she likes to go?"

  "I don't know! She just vanishes sometimes."

  "How often?"

  "Twice now. She just takes the car, no explanation, poof. But this time it felt different. She said goodbye, like... Like it was final."

  "You think she might harm herself?"

  "I wouldn't have called otherwise."

  "Okay." Footsteps. The policeman pacing, Fitch assumed. "Has she been spending time with anyone suspicious? Made any new friends?"

  A pause. Then, "There's this guy."

  Fitch froze. It felt like a giant hand had reached into his gut and squeezed tight.

  "They talked outside about a week ago, right after she got out of hospital. Well, I heard whispering, but when I looked out the window he was already walking away. And the day after that I saw someone across the road watching the house."

  "Did you speak to-"

  "Nope."

  "A friend, you think?"

  "Fuck, I don't know. Maybe she's having an affair."

  "A day after leaving hospital?" More footsteps as the policeman paced through the kitchen. "More likely that she made a friend while she was there... although Doctor Keller told me she didn't leave her room."

  The policeman knew her? A personal friend? That made things difficult. Fitch knew when to cut and run, and this was one of those times. He edged away from the window, keeping low, rain pattering on the back of his head.

  Then: "I saw his car."

  "What?"

  "I just remembered. I know just about every car on the block, and I keep seeing this blue pickup. Really beat up, I think the driver's door is busted in. It went past the house three times that night she ran away. Never saw it before she went to hospital."

  "What about the plates?"

  "I-"

  Fitch ran. He didn't care what noise he made or whether the neighbours saw him. His heart was in his mouth as he sprinted back up the hill and dove into his pickup. The thing in his pocket was screeching, its little pseudopods flexing against the fabric of his jacket, throbbing like a second heartbeat.

  He hit the gas and tore down Rosewater, leaving 118 far behind. Only when the suburbs were a memory in the rear view mirror did he let the thing crawl over the knuckles of his left hand, teasing at his sixth finger.

  "Where is she?" he whispered. "You know where she is? Help me out. Show me. Show me!"

  The tug was there, the force in the centre of his chest dragging him... where? Towards the mountains? Was she trying the tunnels again, or...

  "Oh God," Fitch whispered, and slammed the pedal to the floor.

  * * *

  It'd been a long time since Kimberly had walked alone, had been given time to just look and breathe. So many weeks since she'd been able to relax, without the scrape of a chair or the low creak of the staircase making her tremble. No other voices but her own. When she whispered into the trees, nothing came back.

  The path had levelled out shortly after leaving the car behind, the slope so gentle that Kimberly hardly felt as if she were hiking. The peak was still a long way off but she could make out the trail ahead as it switched back across the mountainside, and she guessed it'd only be an hour before she hit the summit. The rain had eased and she could almost see the sun between patches of cloud, like the weather was improving the closer she got to the border of Rustwood.

  For the first time since her arrival, everything was looking up.

  The trees thinned as she ascended, the hard soil turning to loose shale. Kimberly figured it was well past lunch, and ate an apple as she walked, tucking the core back into her pack. No sense leaving a trail for Goodwell to follow. That was, if he was already tracking her.

  She hoped his business at Rustwood High was taking all damned day.

  As Kimberly rounded a tight curve in the trail she found herself looking down the slope, through the thinning pines, to a clearing maybe fifty yards below. In the clearing was what looked like a tremendous water tank, a cylinder of steel squatting in the trees, rusted and pitted by the rain. Three small figures moved at the base - children or teenagers, she thought, hoods pulled up over their heads to hide their faces. They were spraying something in tall yellow letters.

  She squinted. THE TRUE QUEEN LIVES.

  She remembered the graffiti outside the tunnels. No grand conspiracy, then. No hidden meanings. Just kids being kids and writing bullshit on things that didn't belong to them.

  "Dickheads," she whispered. One of the kids turned as if he'd heard her, although that was impossible from such a distance. His bright orange jacket was stitched with black lettering that read FUCK CHINKS. She couldn't make out his face in the shadow of his hood, but she was somehow sure he was staring right into her eyes.

  Kimberly shivered and walked on.

  The path grew thin, and then wide, and then thin again. It turned from shale to dirt and then to loose stone as it sloped upward through the trees, winding back and forth between spiny bushes and tangled bolus roots. It seemed she'd only been climbing a quarter of an hour but when she looked back Kimberly realised she was already halfway to the peak, the Volkswagen a tiny splash of red between the pines, the highway and the lights of Rustwood as thin and inconsequential as ink scribbles. The rain was a bare patter on her cheeks and the sun was just dipping towards afternoon. She had hours still to make it over the rise and hours to descend the far side to the tunnel and the highway. After that she'd flag down a car and do what Goodwell seemed incapable of doing - getting herself home.

  She sipped her water, chewed a chocolate bar, and walked on.

  An hour later she was nearing the top. The path had grown more abstract, less a trail than a section of hillside where plants didn't dare to grow. Rocks skidded out beneath her boots when she lost concentration, spilling her on her ass. She had a bruise rising above her left hip, and the ache in her stomach was growing more intense. It was a hard, throbbing pain, grinding about her insides.

  She grit her teeth and walked on.

  Even in the rain it was hot work, hiking up the mountain. She had to pause every few hundred yards to catch her breath and wipe the sweat from her eyes. Her feet ached, swollen inside her boots. One bottle of water was already gone and another halfway down, and she still felt thirsty.

  She was beginning to wonder whether the hike over the range was a terrible mistake when something make her stop.

  Sweat pricked at the nape of her neck. She turned; the path behind her was clear. Nothing moved on the hillside apart from the slow bending of pines in time with the wind. All was still.

  She pressed on, but it was with careful steps, setting each foot down slowly, waiting to hear the crunch of gravel behind her. It didn't come.

  The slope shallowed out, and Kimberly found herself traversing the mountain face, the path taking her half a mile sideways for every ten yards she gained on the peak.

  It wasn't the cracking of a branch that brought her to a stop, or the swish of needles being pushed aside. It was the echo of breath, a rasping exhalation like the scrape of flint.


  Kimberly stopped dead. Her hands shook but she clenched them into tight, bloodless fists until she was sure they could do what she needed them to do. A branch lay across the path, two or three foot long, thick enough to shatter bone, and she snatched it up before pressing against the closest tree. With her eyes narrowed to slits and her heart pounding in her ears, she surveyed the trail.

  It took a moment to make out the shadowed form clambering up the slope, clawing through the trees. He was a filthy silhouette, fingers blade-thin, but she couldn't make out his face through the veil of pine needles. For a moment she almost dropped the branch, thinking he had to be lost, some poor soul who'd gotten turned around in the woods. She had no idea what state she was in - maybe there were cougars prowling the mountainside, or wolves, or goddamn bears. If he needed help...

  Then she remembered the footsteps she'd heard just after leaving the car, and she knew she'd been tailed for at least an hour. She raised the branch like a club. "I see you, asshole." Belatedly, she wished she'd brought a knife. There were so many in the kitchen, and she'd left them all behind. She'd just have to beat the bastard's brains in. "Why don't you come out and-"

  The man crawled the last few feet up the slope on to the path. The branch wavered in Kimberly's hands. "I know you." Not a friend from New York, or one of the police officers who'd taken her statement. An orderly? No, one of the nurses in St Jeremiah's. He'd brought her dinner and checked her IV drip on the first night, when she'd been fighting the sedatives. "What the fuck do you want with me?"

  The man staggered. He was gaunt, pale skinned, eyes dark and bagged, and there was something unusual in the way he walked. Like he was being jerked along on strings. Something bulged in his throat, a throbbing tumour the size of an orange.

  He reached for her with white claw-fingers. "Why did you run?" he said.

  Kimberly raised the branch, squeezing the wood so tight her fingers ached. "I didn't run anywhere."