“Death’s not a punishment,” she said. “So don’t seek it as one.”
You don’t argue what death is like with a dead woman.
Brynn pinned Sebastian, and Vulture, picking up on what was going on, ran inside and came back out with duct tape. We hog-tied the man, there in the street. Brynn searched him for weapons and found a stun grenade—it wasn’t magic he’d used to get away from us behind the graveyard, just a damn flashbang.
Thursday grabbed the rifle but left Mr. Dawson’s guns on his body. Brynn threw the man over her shoulder, crouching a little with the weight, and jogged east, toward the gift shop. That woman, she knew how to get things done.
Fuck just having a crush on Brynn. I really was in love.
* * *
Gertrude was shaking, holding herself up against the tyrannosaur.
I ran ahead to greet her. She opened her arms, and I let her fall against me. She held me tight.
“I saw the basement,” she said. “Oh god. I saw what he’s done.”
“We’re going to make him confess.”
“No one will believe you, about the magic. Not really. They stare at me because they think I came back from the dead but they don’t really believe it. I think they actually stare at me because they don’t approve of me leaving my husband after a near-death experience.”
“When they see the basement, though,” I said.
“He’ll go to prison, for a long, long time. And you kids will be off the hook.”
She sighed, then pulled a phone out of her purse and dialed a number. It rang for a long time, then someone picked up.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s Ms. Miller. Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. No, listen. You’ve got it backward. I wouldn’t have believed it either. The library people. Yeah. It was my husband all along.” A long pause. “Look. Just come to the shop and don’t threaten anyone until you’ve looked in the basement. Come see for yourself.”
Everyone else trudged inside. I wanted to go with them, because as terrible as I assumed it would be, I really wanted to know what was in that basement. Someone needed to stay with Gertrude, though, and for some unknowable reason she’d taken a liking to me.
So I was standing with her when the posse—what else could I call it?—rolled up. Two dozen men, all armed. No one leveled a weapon at me, but neither did anyone give me any impression that I was in any way free to go.
“Well,” one man said, stepping forward and lifting his baseball cap. He was the spitting image of that corpse we’d left in the street, and he had an assault rifle with a hunting scope. “My father’s dead, and the only reason I’m not shooting this stranger right here and now is because she’s a woman.”
“Fuck you; shoot me.”
I said it without thinking. There were at least three reasons why that was the wrong thing to say. But fuck. I hate that shit so much.
“What?”
“I didn’t kill your father. I saw Sebastian Miller do it.”
“Bullshit.”
“Come inside, Trent,” Gertrude said, shaking her head, tears in her eyes.
We went inside.
* * *
Whatever blood there had been at any point was washed off the furniture and the cement floor.
There were three large dog cages, reinforced with welded rebar. There was a shelf filled with glass jars of salts and herbs. The tranquilizer gun sat on a workbench, with darts and vials of toxin next to it. Most damning of all, a third of the floor had been ripped up to reveal three grave-length mounds of dirt in parallel lines. Next to them, two empty graves. Beside that, a pickax, shovel, and the hill of exhumed dirt and rubble.
A dentist’s chair stood in the center of the room. There were no restraints cobbled on, nothing like that. The chair alone was terrifying enough.
Thursday, Vulture, Brynn, and Heather stood over Sebastian, who was still gagged and bound with tape.
Trent Dawson took off his ball cap and held it over his chest.
“I would never, not in a million years . . .” he said, before trailing off. A few of the others came down with him, and one ran back upstairs immediately, presumably to tell everyone what was down there.
Trent strode over to Mr. Miller and ripped the tape off his mouth.
“Say something,” Trent said. There was gravel in his voice, barely concealing rage.
I stared at our captive, trying to guess what lies he would tell, and how we might have to counter them. Sebastian staggered up to his knees.
“No,” he said, simply.
“I said say something!” Trent roared.
“No.”
“You killed my father, you son of a bitch.”
“I would like to speak to a lawyer.”
“I ain’t the cops!”
“I would like to speak to a lawyer.”
Trent raised the barrel of his gun level with our prisoner’s face. No one moved to stop him, though Vulture got out of the way in case the bullet kept going.
“Ricochet,” one of the townspeople mentioned. That was, apparently, the only objection to putting Sebastian down right then and there.
“To hell with you, Sebastian Miller.” Trent spit. He said hell like he believed in the place, which is frankly a different kind of curse than when I use it. “Gertrude, in respect for you, for everything you’ve been through, I’m going to walk away. You come and find me, let me know whether you need me to call the cops or fill in one of those graves.”
They left us, simple as that, tromping heavily back up the stairs.
“Well?” I asked Gertrude.
“Gertie,” Miller said. “I did it for you, Gertie.”
“Gag him,” Gertrude said. Brynn obliged.
“Anyone know how this thing works?” Gertrude lifted up the dart gun.
Sebastian whimpered.
Vulture stepped over. “You have to know your target’s weight in order to use it safely,” he said. “It’s probably loaded for you or Isola, so probably not strong enough to guarantee it’ll knock him out. Two shots almost certainly would, but there’s a chance it’ll kill him.”
She turned, aimed, and fired. The dart went into his lower ribs. He looked up, more surprised than afraid.
“Lord forgive me,” she said. “But I cannot let this man walk upon your earth another day.” She fired again. The second dart pierced his belly. Either the toxins were fast, or he fainted.
“Hey,” Vulture said. “We’ve uh, we’ve got kind of a choice right now. We’ve got a guy who’s about to be dead soon anyway. In case we wanted to, you know.”
“It’s never too late to start over,” Brynn said, looking at Heather.
Heather shook her head. “I’ve been dead before. I’m not afraid to be dead again.”
“Fuck that,” I said. Heather turned to me, surprised. “It’s up to you. I get that. But really and truly, this man is about to die. Let him not have killed you too.”
“Um, the apocalypse,” Thursday said. “Remember how every resurrected person brings us one step closer to the apocalypse?”
“A million to one,” Vulture said. “A million to one odds in our favor, that we don’t destroy the gates between heaven and earth.”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I added.
“Okay,” Heather said. Hope broke across her face like dawn, brightening faster and faster.
“I can’t fucking believe . . .” Thursday said. “Gertrude. You’ve got to be against this, right?”
“I don’t want another living soul on this earth to have to go through what I went through,” Gertrude said, “knowing that an innocent person died so that you might live. But he’s dying anyway.”
“Apocalypse!” Thursday shouted.
“If Heather’s the second coming then she’s the second coming,” Gertrude said, “and that’s God’s will.”
“I can’t . . . I don’t . . .” Thursday took a deep breath, then calmed down. “Heather, you okay with this?”
“Okay,” she said. S
he had tears in her eyes and a smile quivered on her lips, coming in and out of existence.
“Then we better hurry,” I said. “Bullet hole in his leg and two doses of god-knows-what.”
Thursday threw Sebastian over his shoulders and walked sideways up the steps like he was moving an awkward piece of furniture. Trent and his friends stared at us as we trooped past them through the gift shop.
“Gertrude put two of those darts into him before having a change of heart,” I explained. “We’re getting him to the library, Vasilis knows a lot about this stuff. I have a feeling, though, that we’ll be right back here to bury him.” None of it was technically a lie, even.
Trent nodded.
On the way out the door, I swiped a Pendleton shot glass.
NINE
There aren’t so many glaciers in Glacier National Park anymore, but the vistas are still something special. Clouds sat heavy on the horizon, threatening rain, but the lake below us shone a heavenly blue and earlier that day I’d seen a mountain goat and its kid.
My left arm was in a sling. I’d ripped a stitch after all, and while Vulture had been happy enough to sew me back up, he insisted that I try harder not to mess up his handiwork this time.
Brynn lay on her stomach next to me, stick-and-poke tattooing my leg. The ouroboros. It’s never too late to start again.
The bookmobile was parked nearby. Vasilis and Heather had given it to us, and I have to admit it’s a step up from the Honda Civic, at least for traveling with five people.
The ritual had gone without a hitch, and Heather got to stay living again. Despite what Vasilis had figured, she decided to stick around Pendleton. She told us that new beginnings don’t have to involve new places or even new people. Which is obviously wrong—new places are the only thing worth living for. But I suppose not everyone is a traveler.
“Demon Crew,” Vulture said, sitting in the open door of the van.
“No,” Thursday said.
“Anarcho-Team.”
“No. You’re not even trying anymore.”
“The Children of the Road.”
“Now you’re just saying random things.”
Those two had been at it all afternoon. Brynn had mentioned us needing a crew name, and Vulture couldn’t seem to get the idea out of his head.
“The A-Team,” Vulture said.
“That’s taken,” Thursday said. “Twice over.”
“I changed my mind,” Brynn said. “I don’t think we need a name.”
“Is that actually true or do you just want me to stop brainstorming?” Vulture asked.
“I honestly don’t know the answer to that,” Brynn said, her voice low enough that only I could hear her.
“Cain’s Children,” Vulture said.
“No,” Thursday said. “Wait. I don’t know. That’s pretty metal.”
“No!” I shouted.
“Grumble, grumble, grumble,” Vulture said. Like, he actually said the word grumble three times.
“I thought you all were going down to the lake,” Brynn said. “To leave us alone?”
“We were,” Thursday said. “But then Vulture and I agreed it was more fun to argue where we had a peanut gallery.”
I looked around for something to throw and saw an empty soda can left by some other picnicker before us. It didn’t fly well, but it made my point. They left.
“Should we do this then,” I asked, “while they’re gone?”
“Totally.”
“You sure? You’re not worried they’ll come back and catch us at it?”
“Absolutely.”
I reached into the top pouch of my travel pack for the book I’d hidden there.
“A Lustful Bride for the Horseman Prince,” I read, “chapter one.”
Brynn smiled.
“‘I first came to these lands in search of fame and glory, because I believed those things mattered. Instead, I found her.’”
Brynn giggled as she stabbed my leg repeatedly with an inked needle, and I read to her.
I didn’t tell her anything about love, not yet. There would be time enough for that.
* * *
“Hey, guys, time to go, we gotta, so let’s go now.” Vulture was out of breath. I woke up, my head curled up in the nook of Brynn’s arm. The book lay across my hip, folded open on its spine. Which is a terrible thing to do to a library book.
“What?” I was groggy and mostly thinking about the book and whether or not Vulture had noticed it and read the title.
“Magic feds. Gotta go. Magic feds. More this time. Go go go.”
I staggered to my feet and Vulture handed me a pair of binoculars.
There on the road, a string of three identical black SUVs threw up dust.
“Those could be any three identical black SUVs with tinted windows,” I argued, but I handed Brynn the binoculars and grabbed my pack.
Thursday had the engine running by the time we climbed into the back of the bookmobile. Brynn slammed the door shut, and we were off.
No specific destination, not yet, but I had a feeling one would find us soon enough.
About the Author
MARGARET KILLJOY is an author and anarchist with a long history of itinerancy who currently calls Appalachia home. When she’s not writing, she can be found organizing to end hierarchy, crafting, or complaining about being old despite not being old at all. Her most recent book is the utopian A Country of Ghosts. She blogs at www.birdsbeforethestorm.net and says things @magpiekilljoy on twitter.
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Also by Margaret Killjoy
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
About the Author
Also by Margaret Killjoy
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE BARROW WILL SEND WHAT IT MAY
Copyright © 2018 by Margaret Killjoy
All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Mark Smith
Cover design by Jamie Stafford-Hill
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9737-9 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9738-6 (trade paperback)
First Edition: April 2018
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, ext. 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
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