“Thank God you’re okay—” He has the flare gun in his hand. “I’ve been up there for ages. I’ve been looking—” He seems to need to catch his breath; his breathing as rapid as her own. “I searched the whole building twice. Finally thought I’d light a few flares, just in case you were outside.”
Maeve stares at him—only a flare gun, only Sim upstairs. She’s trying not to cry.
He pauses where he is, halfway down the steps. A little uncertain now.
“Maeve. You okay? Do you hear me?”
His face looks battered; he comes down into the dim lamplight and she can see the dark shadow of a bruise around one eye, a fresh lesion at his eyebrow. He reaches for her, hand over hand, pulls her in toward him. Maeve works to hold herself up: she feels like she might collapse.
“I was outside,” she says. Her voice sounds thin, even to herself. Sadie lying in the cache, the splay of her black hair, the black trim of her hood against the snow, the elk’s dark fur.
Only Sim. Only a flare.
He strokes her face, temple to jaw, as if he’s making sure she’s real.
“Jesus, Maeve. I’m so glad you’re safe.” He glances around at the furniture stacked up against both doors. “You must have been scared,” he says. “Come here, come here.”
He’s wearing his coat, but it’s unzipped, and her brow rubs up against his collarbone where his sweater is fraying. Her face pressed into him. The hood of the coat damp at the trim, but not wet. Not snowy.
She steps away to get some air. Recalibrate.
“What were you doing outside?”
“I found—” she starts, but then stops again. Her breath catches.
“Maeve, what’s going on?” He comes in toward her again, leaning to set the flare gun down softly on a coffee table, the only untouched piece of furniture in the room.
“Karo’s dead,” Maeve says finally. She can’t bring herself to describe what she found in the woods.
He blinks, and there’s a pause before he answers.
“Is she?”
Maeve’s shoulders stiffen against her back. She can feel the throb at her temple where she slipped and struck her head. Her body is tight with fear, hours of it now, but she can’t seem to let it go. There’s still a little space between them, but if he reached his hand out, he could touch her. She’s sorry now that she pulled away.
“She hung herself,” she says finally.
He just nods. Then:
“She didn’t seem the type.”
“No,” Maeve says. “She didn’t.”
But Maeve had been gone for so long. The guilt of that thought: Karo lost hope.
She can see that his hand is shaking too as he reaches out to her.
“When I got back here, I found the door wedged open. I figured you two went out together and left it like that for safety.”
“She stayed behind,” Maeve says. “She wasn’t well. She was sick.”
She’s got both hands sunk into her coat pockets for warmth, one fist still curled tight around the handle of the hatchet inside. She has to work to let it go, the hand cramped around it.
He leans in.
“If Karolina—” He stops, taking stock, and tries again: “What can I do? Do you want to show me?”
Maeve lets her eyes move around the room. The doors, front and back, sealed off with heavy furniture. She has to keep reminding herself to breathe, to let her body relax. Not Dan who was upstairs, but Sim. Sim who raided the tools.
She shakes her head. She doesn’t want to go back to the freezer, not for anything. An ugly death. But strangely in keeping with Karo’s character too—she did everything on her own terms. And wasting away, trapped in her own body, would not be her terms.
“How did you get back here?” she says.
Sim looks at her. He lowers his head a little, trying to maintain eye contact, keep her conscious, connected. She must look like she’s in shock.
“I should never have gone. I knew it was a bad idea. Come here—” He reaches for her again, trying to draw her toward the stone hearth, but she can’t seem to make her feet move and he stops. Neither of them says anything. Then: “It’s not good news, Maeve.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s nothing down there. In the village. They evacuated; the place is empty. There’s no one there.”
“And?”
“And what?”
Maeve finally manages to step in closer.
“And—what happened?” Her eyes are burning and her head hurts so much where she banged it; her temple with a stabbing pain, sharp as a needle. “I found Sadie. I found her out in the woods.” The words burst out of her.
“Sadie?” He steps back, confused.
“What happened to her out there? What happened to Justin? And Dan? Why are you back here on your own?”
“I came back for you, Maeve. I was scared that—” He swallows his words and starts over. “What do you mean, you found Sadie? Where did you see her?”
“You were supposed to send a rescue crew. All of you. Why didn’t you go on? Wasn’t that the plan? Find help?”
He tries to take her face in his hands. She knows she must look wild. She feels hysterical.
“Maeve. What do you mean, you found Sadie?”
Maeve pulls away. “She’s dead. She’s dead, Sim. She’s dead like Anna and now Karo—”
Sim drops his hands, helpless. His eyes changing somehow. He rocks a little on his feet, anxious, then walks away, circling back toward the fire.
“We get down there and there’s nothing. Nobody.” His voice is starting to crack now. “I didn’t want to tell you this, Maeve.” He sits down at the edge of the hearth, his head hanging low, his body rocking back and forth. It takes a moment but he finally manages to meet her eye. “The whole thing was a mistake,” he says. “You were right. If there had been people in that village, they would have sent someone for us.”
Maeve feels her heart speed up, feels a flip in the base of her throat. She doesn’t want to be right about this. It was their best real hope.
“But it’s still the plan we agreed on,” she says again. “The plan was you find someone.”
“Yeah, well, you had a plan too, Maeve—” His voice thinning out, tired. “You were supposed to stay the fuck inside where it’s safe.” He pokes some tinder into the fire, jamming it until there’s a spark, before turning back to face her again. “I just risked my life to climb back up here and make sure you’re okay, and I get here and you’re nowhere to be found. Where were you? Out in the woods? Fucking brilliant. That’s not what you were supposed to do either. Is it.”
Maeve backs up a step. The change of tone is confusing. And if the village was evacuated, they should all have come back together. Shouldn’t they?
“Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just—” Sim stands up but, watching her reaction, doesn’t move closer. Instead, he folds his hands together. “I was so worried about you, Maeve. So fucking scared. I get back here and the place is just . . . empty.”
“It’s okay,” she says, and he steps up to meet her.
“But where’s everyone else, then?” she says. It’s the second time she’s asked the question. He looks over his shoulder, and she wonders if he has the same fear, that someone has followed him, someone is lurking outside. When he turns back, he looks her right in the eye.
“Where did you find Sadie,” he says quietly.
“The bear . . . ” Maeve falters, unsure how to describe it.
Sim shakes his head. “No. There’s more than a bear to be worried about here. Dan—”
“Fuck Dan.” She’s whispering now, fierce. She feels somehow more anxious, watching him look over his shoulder, and has to fight against it. “Fuck Dan—where’s Justin? Where’s Justin, Sim?” The scarf in her pocket.
Sim backs up a little. His voice pleading: “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Justin’s dead, Maeve.” There’s a beat. He drops his head into his hand and rubs the bruise at his
temple. When he looks up, he has to take a breath and start over. “Justin and, yeah, Sadie too. They’re both dead. Dan—he lost it out there.”
Maeve feels her stomach lurch, as though she might vomit again. Instead, she finds herself staggering toward him.
“What do you mean?” She doesn’t know if she wants to cry or punch him.
He takes a shaky breath.
“Just listen.” He’s speaking low and even, working to steady his voice. “There was a fight.” He holds a hand up to his own battered face. “Christ, look at me. The whole thing was a mess, okay? Starting right away, from the word go.” He takes another breath and exhales. “We’re barely past the gates, and Justin opens up the pack. Half of what’s in there comes flying out in the wind. We lost it all, half of everything. Shit blew away. Flares, everything, gone. Sank into the snow.” Sim shakes his head. “I thought Dan was going to kill him right then. You know what he’s like. I had to pull him off Justin.”
Maeve thinks of the scarf, how it was whipping along in the wind. Justin’s missing tooth, his split lip still fresh.
“But you said you got down there—”
“I just put myself between them the whole way. Stay on track, right? Follow the plan. Hours of it. I did my best, Maeve—I swear. We finally get down there in the dark, it’s fucking cold, and the village is empty. We got nothing—no signal. No flares. Nothing. Two in the morning. Goddamn snow blowing everywhere.” He presses his lips together and rocks in place, trying to find the words. “And Dan cannot get over how fucked we are, how we are fucked specifically because Justin lost half our shit.” Sim’s voice comes up stronger now, but his eyes look hurt. No—terrified, Maeve thinks. He looks scared, like he’s reliving it, the same way she can’t un-see Sadie’s body in the snow. “So he’s railing, and he’s railing,” he says. “And suddenly Justin just goes at him. We can’t even see anything, it’s just dark and wind and snow, and I’m trying to grab Dan to hold him back. And Sadie, Jesus—” His voice cracks and he has to look away from her to keep on. “I can hear Sadie running around, screaming for them to stop—and then suddenly Dan’s waving his gun.” He drops his head. “He didn’t mean to shoot Sadie too. That was an accident. I’m—I don’t know. I’m almost positive of it.”
Maeve feels her jaw tense. It’s not far off the narrative she told herself out in the woods, the tarp cracking in the wind above her. The cold and the dark and the stress of it all too much. Justin pushing, and Dan pushing back.
“Then he takes off, boom,” Sim says. “I tried to follow, to track him, but the snow was too much. I lost the trail. I got worried he’d come back here, and you girls here alone.” He pauses a moment, looking at her. Searching. “Did you see—” It’s like he’s trying to figure out what to say or how to say it. “Did you see anything strange when you were out there?”
He steps in to touch her and she can feel the tremble in his fingers and it reminds her of Karo. Anything strange? Her own hands start to shake. The scarf in her pocket, the deer that spooked and scattered at the forest’s edge. The elk’s body in the cache, and Sadie lying dead beside it. The constant sense of something, something out there, trying to get in.
And Sim turning up here alone, his face bruised and bloody.
Anna and, now, Karo dead in the deep freeze. If Dan snapped out in the storm, could he also have locked Anna out?
He seemed half crazed when he found her: manic, going at her body with his violent, failed CPR.
Unless that was just part of the show.
“I saw the video,” she says. Her voice is dull. “Sadie’s video. I saw what she was filming for you.”
Sim backs up—just a half step, not even that. Surprised. Serious.
“I’m sorry,” he says. The apology trips out of his mouth easily, as though he’s embarrassed, caught stealing something he can afford. “That was her idea. Her thing. I shouldn’t have played along.”
Maeve’s brow furrows. She remembers Karo’s description: Sadie’s a pleaser.
“Did you pay her?” she says. “I mean, what was it even for?”
He has a way of holding her in his sight, those hurt eyes again. She can’t bring herself to look away.
“I said I’m sorry. I’m sorry you saw that. I can understand why you’d be upset—”
It’s not an answer, not really, but Maeve nods.
“Maeve?”
But she still doesn’t respond, and he takes on a more serious look.
“What I asked her to shoot was Anna and Dan. I promise. Anna was always trying to sneak in and see what I was working on, and I knew she was rotoscoping some sexy wolfman scene. So I wanted to scoop her, take some footage of her and Dan and run it under my own installation, on the floor, a thing you walk on. My project is—” He’s reluctant to talk about it, as though it could still be important. “It’s about bodies too.” He gives a final nod. “Sadie made some bad decisions of her own. That’s not on me.”
But Maeve is thinking of the wink. He had to have known.
“It just—it makes everything weird, Sim. I don’t know—” She falters a little, rocking back on a heel. “I don’t know how to feel with you, I guess—”
“Maeve.” He’s looking her steady in the eye. A sharp intake of breath. “I came back for you,” he says again. “I know you’re scared, but I need you to stay focused. Dan—”
He seems to lose his words. Before she can react, he’s already crossing over to where she is. His hands on her face. “There’s no one in the village. You understand? No one else is coming. I couldn’t leave you here alone. I just couldn’t.” Maeve feels her body tense, the surprise of it, so fast—but he pulls back just enough and lets his hands slide from her face to her shoulders. Gives her a little bit of space. “We’re safe here. Bar the doors, keep a lookout. If Dan is still out there, he won’t survive another night. Not even with his experience,” he says. “We can wait it out. Just us, alone. Me and you.”
Dan, the first day she was here, watching her in the woods at night, silently. Tracking her. And the way he’d been with Anna—barely looking at her in public, a weird, controlling vibe. But almost eager to fight with Justin, aggressive more than once. In both cases, it seemed to work—Anna and Justin trying harder to win him over, not less.
He likes to feel in control, Sadie told her. He likes to make others feel dependent. Top gun.
The elk this morning, and the deer, spooked, chased off by something outside: is it possible he came back, has been stalking around the center the whole day?
Watching her from the woods as she stared down at Sadie in the bear’s cache, as she tripped and stumbled through the deep snow, terrified and flailing, banging at the center’s back door for Karo.
For Karo, who was already dead.
Inside her, a kind of stitch, a needle pulling tight.
What does she really think happened here—in her heart of hearts, in her gut? Maeve thinks back to what Karo told her the night before: In dreams, you always know what to do.
But she didn’t. In her dreams that night, she’d been lost, turned around in a storm, or watching, powerless, as something unknown fought its way in. She shuts her eyes, trying to refocus. Breathes in, opens them again.
“What about Karo?”
She means what should they do about Karo’s body. They’ll need to go back into the freezer, take her down, cover her with another white sheet, lay her out on a shelf of her own. But Sim braces, defensive.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
This comes out clipped, almost angry, as though she asked the question to provoke him. Maeve feels a renewed strangeness, something cold, something pricking at her temples.
His hands drop away from her body and he rolls back his shoulders; there’s a change in his face, his way of looking at her. Like some kind of electricity, some charge has run through it.
“Maeve, things are bad right now. In a week, two weeks, you’ll be home with your kids and you’ll see how craz
y this was. I didn’t hurt anyone. Why would I hurt Karo? Or Anna? I care about you. That’s why I’m here. Okay?”
Her head throbs. Behind him, she can see the furniture still shoved tight against the back door. It’s cold in the room. Maeve wants to pull her hood up, pull her coat tighter. She’s working to go back in time, to replay everything she has said to him since he came down the stairs. She goes over and over the conversation in her mind: Why would I hurt Karo? Or Anna? I care about you—
She is sure, quite sure, that she didn’t accuse him of hurting Anna, of locking Anna out. Maeve has hardly mentioned Anna at all.
Sim lifts a hand to her chin, tips it up so that she’ll look at him. She’s expecting anger, but he looks only confused and scared. The same as Maeve, just the same.
There is no road. There is no rescue. There is no one else here.
“Okay?” he says again.
But she takes too long to answer. When he leans in to kiss her, she can’t even move. She just lets him.
The new heat lasts for an hour or so, and then the fire dwindles and the room begins to grow cold again.
“There’s not much left,” Maeve says. She’s standing at the back door where they had stacked wood for the duration, but the pile is now almost totally gone. No one expected to be here for so long. Waiting.
Sim loads up an armful of what’s left, more sticks than logs, and points out at the dark.
“Over there,” he says. He means Dan’s woodpile against the side of the building, now frosted over if not buried in snow. He builds up the fire one last time. They’ve moved all the furniture back into place now, more or less. As though nothing ever happened.
There’s a wide snow shovel by each door, meant for clearing the walkways rather than true digging. Maeve watches as Sim zips up his coat, reaches into the pockets for his thick black gloves.
“Just stay inside, stay warm,” he says, but Maeve feels too strange propping the door with the little wedge Karo left and instead she holds the door herself, keeping her back against it while Sim tries to use the plastic shovel as a tool. It takes a long time; the new storm has laid down a layer of ice over the top of any snow and he’s forced to chisel at it, the ice slick and smooth, before he can even begin to burrow after new wood.
The Retreat Page 23