The Cormorant

by Chuck Wendig

THUMB OUT

  She walks and hitchhikes at the same time. Most cars pass. People know not to pick up hitchhikers anymore. Especially when they watch the news and hear about crazy motherfuckers who kill people and steal their boats and shoot up tiki bars.

  She wishes she had a cigarette.

  Then a car pulls up.

  Gray sedan.

  Back window busted out.

  “Shit,” she says.

  INTERLUDE

  NOW

  “And now we’re all caught up,” Grosky says.

  “To my credit, I didn’t run,” Miriam says. “So I consider these handcuffs a bit of an insult. Why handcuffs instead of the zips?”

  Vills grins. “Can’t saw through these.”

  “Ah.” She sniffs. “So why didn’t you pick me up? At the hospital, I mean. I was a flower fresh for the plucking. Why did you wait?”

  Grosky hmphs. “All this is a little… what’s the line from that movie? Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush? We didn’t want to make a splash. We knew we could find you again.”

  “Congrats. You did. So now what?”

  “I just gotta know. You’re saying what happened to Ashley Gaynes is… you’re telling us you…became the birds–”

  Miriam shrugs.

  “And they – you – ate him.”

  “Everything but the leg.”

  Her stomach lurches just thinking about it.

  A sea wind comes in through the broken shack windows.

  Vills says, “This is all wifty. She’s pulling your cock, Richie. Mine, too. Let’s get out of here. Leave her here. Call the police to come pick her up. Or just let her go. I don’t care, but I’m done.”

  “No,” Grosky says, “we ain’t done yet. We have yet to make our offer–”

  Just then, Vills’ phone vibrates and makes a chirp.

  She takes it, tilts it toward herself like a poker player looking at his cards. Then she turns the phone face-down again.

  Grosky gives her a look.

  “It’s nothing,” Vills says.

  “It’s something,” Miriam insists.

  “Who was it?” Grosky asks.

  “It’s nothing,” Vills says.

  “It’s Tap-Tap,” Miriam says.

  Vills’ eyes go wide.

  Grosky laughs. “The Haitian? What? You fuckin’ kiddin’ me?”

  “Forgot about him, did you? Your partner here is going to serve me up to him on a silver platter. Isn’t that right, Vills? She’s trying to hurry you out so Tap-Tap can roll in here and chop my legs off. Maybe my head. Because I owe him a body and I did not deliver. And she’s on his payroll. Watch. Necklace.” She tries to affect the Haitian sound: “Tap-Tap love dat gold.”

  Vills starts to protest but Miriam continues. “You guys leave and maybe she’ll sneak back in here and put a bullet in my head. Right, Vills? Hey, lemme ask – what time is it?”

  But neither of them budges. Neither of the agents speaks. Vills stares at Miriam. And Grosky stares at Vills.

  Then Miriam says, “Hey, Richie. Wanna know how you die?”

  That’s all it takes.

  Vills moves fast. She’s got the gun in her hand, leveled at Grosky’s completely surprised, bug-eyed face.

  But Miriam moves fast, too.

  She knees the table forward. Vills oofs like a pillow with the air punched out of it and suddenly she’s leaning forward–

  Just enough for Miriam to get the handcuffs and chain around Vills’ scrawny chicken-bone neck. Vills kicks and grunts. The gun goes up and fires two shots in the air, punching holes through the thatch and causing dust and sand to stream down right in her eye.

  The gun hand flails.

  Miriam ducks it.

  And she brings her whole weight down, hunkering like a gargoyle, shoulder next to the table, both wrists pulling, pulling, pulling.

  The gun goes off again, and Grosky staggers, a spray of blood kicked up from the meat of his shoulder.

  Vills makes a sound like grrk!

  And then her body stops moving.

  The gun thumps to the floor.

  Vills is just meat, now.

  Miriam reaches out with a boot and pulls the gun toward her. She snatches it up and points it at Grosky.

  “The cuffs. Undo them.”

  Grosky stands, shell-shocked.

  Miriam barks the order again. “Big boy! Cuffs! Undo them!”

  He looks at his own bloody shoulder and then hurries over and fumbles around before fishing out the keys and slapping them down.

  “She shot me,” Grosky says.

  “She was going to kill you.”

  “She was my partner.”

  “Life’s hard. Wear a dick protector.”

  “How’d you–”

  “How’d I know? Because I saw the way you died. Because that’s how the visions work.”

  “Oh. Ri… right. But how’d you know about… about Tap-Tap?”

  “It was a guess but a pretty educated one. The vision of your death started with a text message. But don’t forget, I saw how she dies, too. After killing you and presumably me, she ends up back at the car. Which is what, about a quarter-mile from here?”

  He nods.

  “Tap-Tap is there. With Goldie and Jay-Jay. He shoots her in the head as soon as she walks up. The other two distract her, pulling up in a white Caddy. He’s hiding behind the back end of the car. Big as he is, he can still hunker down pretty small.”

  “That… that means he’s there now.”

  “It does.”

  “Shit.”

  “Mm-hmm. You want your gun back?”

  He narrows his eyes. “Why would you give it to me?”

  “Because I just saved your life.”

  “I’m not really great with a gun.”

  She shrugs. “I think you’re gonna need it pretty soon.” She tosses him the gun and he almost drops it. “Hey, lemme ask – what was all this about, anyway? Kidnapping me. Taking me out to… where are we?”

  “On the… on the beach. A barrier island. Just outside Blowing Rocks. Near, ah, near Jupiter.”

  “And you wanted me why?”

  “I thought… I thought you’d be a helluva catch if what you can do is true. Way back when I started looking into the string of bodies behind you, I thought maybe you really were a serial killer. But we found your diary in the trash, and more and more I thought maybe this thing you do is real and… I figured your gift would be a real thing to behold. For the FBI. For the Secret Service, even – I mean, shit, imagine you touch the president of the United States and see if he’s gonna be assassinated? That’s a doozy.”

  “Well,” Miriam says, “a fun idea, but count me out. Because, Agent Grosky, I don’t work for anyone. Not anymore. Now give me my box. You wanna go kill Tap-Tap or see if you can get him arrested, go for it. Me, I’m walking the other way.”

  She grabs the metal box.

  And she leaves the agent standing there and bleeding.

  SEVENTY

  THE BOX

  She walks for a while.

  And behind her she hears the distant pop, pop, pop-pop-pop of gunfire. She doesn’t know what that means. She’s not sure she cares.

  Though, she admits, she might be fonder of Grosky than she thinks. Because suddenly there’s a little twinge of guilt if she saved his life only to have him lose it again to a brute like Tap-Tap.

  But then she remembers Goldie’s death and…

  Well. Who knows how that shakes out?

  She finds a place on the rocks.

  The tide comes in. The tide goes out.

  The sun starts its slide behind her.

  She takes the box and bashes it on the rocks until the lock pops. Like an otter cracking open a clamshell.

  A bag spills out from the box. Miriam grabs it, opens up, and sees that in the bag are photos and a little ratty book.

  Like a diary.

  She picks out the photos. A pale, redheaded woman holding a pregnant, fr
eckly belly. The same woman pinning clothes to a line. Sitting on a gravestone. On a porch swing. Standing again in a cemetery, this time among the graves. Miriam grunts. She’s not sure what this means.

  So she picks up the book.

  She picks a random page and reads.

  She flips back and forth between pages.

  “Holy shit,” she says. “Holy. Shit.”

  SEVENTY-ONE

  BRUJA

  It takes a while for Miriam to make it back to the Keys, to the concrete storefront with the shattered windows and the weeds grown up through the coarse sand. It’s late when she arrives.

  And Sugar is there.

  Sugar sits on a pile of cinderblocks around back. Sipping noisily from a Diet Coke bottle with a bent straw. She looks up to see Miriam there. Her look is one lacking surprise.

  “I’m addicted to these things,” Sugar says of the diet soda.

  Miriam hands her the box.

  This seems to surprise her.

  “I found the box,” Miriam says. “The one you told me I wasn’t looking for. You’re right. I wasn’t. You were.” Or maybe we both were.

  “What?”

  “It’s not for me. It’s for you.” Miriam, pushy as she is, reaches into Sugar’s lap and flips open the box. She fishes out one of the photos – the one of the pregnant woman cradling the belly. Then she turns the photo over. “Dulce como el azúcar. Written in a woman’s handwriting. Though this woman looks American, I guess she spoke Spanish OK. That’s you, right? Sugar.”

  “Wait. This is my…”

  “That’s your mother. And that–” Miriam taps the round, freckled belly. “–is you. There’re more photos in there. And a diary. Which was maybe for me as much as it is for you. Your mother had… powers, too. She was connected to the dead. Like me, but different. She could speak to them. The already-dead. Not quite like ghosts, maybe, but…” Here comes that word again: “Like a frequency. She could tap into it.”

  “But what we do is born of tragedy.”

  “Hers was, too. She lost a child when she was very young. An uncle impregnated her at the age of fourteen. Nobody would help the kid get an abortion, so she did it herself. With a hammer. And that messed her up pretty good down there and almost killed her. They told her she’d never have kids or it would kill her. What happened… it marked her. Like it marked me. Like it marked you.”

  Sugar stands and throws her arms around Miriam.

  It’s the first time they touch.

  The vision sweeps over Miriam – like with Eleanor Caldecott, there’s nothing there. But this one isn’t a poisonous tide or a vicious crackle of hissing static. It’s velvet smoke. And sad whispers. And the smell of burned caramel. Sugar pulls away, and Miriam is left feeling dizzy.

  “Thank you for this,” Sugar says. Tears in her eyes.

  “There’s something else. Your mother said she figured out a way to… undo her power. She doesn’t say what it is but she says where she learned it. A place called Collbran, Colorado. So, that’s where I’m headed.”

  SEVENTY-TWO

  NAILS IN THE COFFIN

  The next day, Miriam leaves two grand of the money on Gabby’s doorstep, next to a small bouquet of flowers. She doesn’t know what Gabby likes.

  She doesn’t even know Gabby, not really.

  But she leaves a note: “This should pay for your health insurance.”

  She thinks but does not write, I’m going to find a way over the next five years to give you a reason not to kill yourself. And I’m sorry.

  She knocks. And hides. And watches as Gabby comes out and takes the flowers and the bag. Her face is swaddled in gauze and tape. But even behind the bandages Miriam can see the shock in her eyes.

  Gabby looks around. She doesn’t seem to see Miriam.

  But she waves anyway.

  Miriam thinks: This will not be the last time we see each other. Saving Gabby’s life is going to be a whole other kind of challenge. She can’t kill anybody to stop this death, and yet stop it she must.

  A terrifying and yet enlivening thought.

  Next, Miriam picks a spot north of the Keys where she can walk, and sit on the rocks, and watch as the ocean swallows the sun.

  Then she takes her phone and she calls Louis.

  He does not answer, but she leaves him a message. “It’s me. I love you. I need you. And you’re going to help me get rid of my curse. Call me back. Did I mention I love you? I love you. I love, love, love you.”

  She hangs up.

  She sits. And smokes. And waits for him to call her back.

  And just as the sun dips below the horizon and is gone, he does.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: THE CORMORANT

  As always, I’m the guy who gets all the sweet, sweet credit for writing this book, but of course, that’s a ruse: lots of folks behind the curtain helped to make this story what it was.

  Thanks to folks like April Kirk, Daniel Perez, Valerie Valdes, Melissa Dominic and Daevone Molyneux for helping me navigate America’s Moist Hot Land-Wang (a.k.a. “Florida”). I think some of them also wrestled gators so I could make my escape?

  Thanks to my agent Stacia Decker and my wife, Michelle, for tearing this book a new one and helping me hammer it into shape.

  Thanks to Joey Hi-Fi for covers that sell the books way better than my own meager prose ever could.

  Thanks to the cool peeps at Word Bookstore in Brooklyn and at the supremely bad-ass Mysterious Galaxy in Redondo Beach.

  Thanks to the stompy circuit-blooded warlords of Angry Robot who gave Miriam a home for the last three books.

  Thanks to the Florida Keys Wild Bird Sanctuary, for doing the Bird God’s work by rehabilitating birds and for letting me get up close and personal with an actual cormorant.

  Coleman or Lupy, if you’re reading this: Eject or Die.

  And if I forgot you, then please fill your name and reason for deserving gratitude below:

  “Thanks to __________________________ for that time he / she ___________________________.”

  Miriam Black will be back in: Thunderbird.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer.

  He is a fellow of the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. His short film (written with co-author and director Lance Weiler) Pandemic showed at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011. That same year, Collapsus – a digital transmedia drama, also co-authored with Weiler – was nominated for an International Digital Emmy and a Games 4 Change award.

  He has contributed over two million words to the game industry, and was developer of the popular Hunter: The Vigil game line.

  He currently lives in Pennsyltucky with his beautiful wife Michelle, their taco terrier Tai-Shen, and his son

  (known as “B-Dub”).

  You can find him at his website, Terrible Minds, where he remains busy dispensing dubious writing wisdom. Said dubious wisdom is collected in ebook form, such as in the popular 500 Ways To Be A Better Writer.

  As well as the Miriam Black series, he is the author of the Mookie Pearl urban fantasy series for Angry Robot.

  terribleminds.com

  twitter.com/chuckwendig

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The Miriam Black Series

  Blackbirds

  Mockingbird

  The Blue Blazes

  Tomes of the Dead

  Double Dead

  Bad Blood

  Under the Empyrean Sky

  Dinocalypse Now

  Beyond Dinocalypse

  Unclean Spirits

  Irregular Creatures (short stories)

  Atlanta Burns

  Shotgun Gravy (novella)

  Bait Dog

  Non-Fiction

  250 Things You Should Know About Writing

  500 Ways to be a Better Writer

  500 More Ways to be a Better Writer

  Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey

  ANGRY ROBOT

  A member of the Osprey Group

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  54-56 High Pavement,

  Nottingham,

  NG1 1HW,

  UK

  Angry Robot/Osprey Publishing,

  PO Box 3985

  New York

  NY 10185-3985

  USA

  www.angryrobotbooks.com

  Future tense

  An Angry Robot paperback original 2014

  1

  Copyright © Chuck Wendig 2014

  Chuck Wendig asserts the moral right to be

  identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 0 85766 337 5

  Ebook ISBN: 978 0 85766 339 9

  Set in Meridien and Dirty Headline by Argh! Oxford

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

  otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by

  way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or

  otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in

  any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is

  published and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and

  incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or

  localities is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  PART ONE: FILTHADELPHIA

  INTERLUDE: NOW

  1. PUT A RING ON IT

  2. SCALPER

  3. INTO THE BLACK

  4. HER HAUNTED HEAD