Halcyon

by Rio Youers

  * * *

  Brooke and Jordan were on the sofa, wrapped in bathrobes, hot drinks in hand. They hadn’t seen Edith, either.

  “She’s probably with her sister,” Brooke said. “I bet they took a walk in the woods. It’s cold but beautiful.”

  “Yeah,” Alyssa said, nodding. “I’ll check the rec hall and canteen. If she’s not there, maybe I’ll—”

  She stopped, ear cocked, brow furrowed.

  “What is it?” Jordan asked.

  “Did you hear that?”

  Brooke and Jordan shook their heads.

  Alyssa said, “Sounded like screaming.”

  * * *

  Nolan pulled the trigger again and hit Ainsley in the left shoulder. It slowed but didn’t stop him. He stumbled toward Nolan and brought the knife down in a wild loop. Nolan managed a clumsy half step, avoiding serious—perhaps fatal—damage. The knife tore through his jacket, across his triceps and shoulder blade. Nolan shrieked, grabbed Ainsley by the throat, threw him against the wall.

  “Dirty little bastard,” he growled.

  Ainsley raised the knife for another strike but his arm froze when Nolan jammed the pistol up under his jaw.

  “What the fuck, Nolan?”

  Nolan squeezed the trigger.

  Click.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  The knife came down. A silver flash. It ran through Nolan’s forearm, out the other side. Ainsley pulled it free—giving it a little twist on the way—to attack again but Nolan wheeled away from him. He thumbed the mag release at the top of the Glock’s grip. The empty slid out and clattered on the floor.

  Ainsley came after him, hesitating only to look at the corpse on the living room floor. “Oh Jesus, Frank,” he panted. “Jesus fucking Christ.” The knife trembled in his hand. He lunged, but then slipped in Franklin’s blood and fell on his ass. This gave Nolan the time he needed. He pulled the loaded spare from his pocket and rammed it into the pistol’s grip.

  * * *

  “Stay here,” Alyssa said, speaking to both but looking at Jordan.

  She opened the door and stepped outside.

  * * *

  The knife wounds hindered Nolan’s grip and it took three attempts to rack the slide. Ainsley was back on his feet by this time, and had finally decided that bringing a knife to a gun fight was not such a great idea. He scrambled for the door, managing one galumphing stride outside before Nolan put a bullet in his back.

  “Fuck you,” Nolan hissed. “Fucking crazy twink fuck.”

  Ainsley toppled down the front steps and landed on his knees. Blood poured from the holes in his shoulder and back. “Help me,” he screamed. “Somebody please.” He started to crawl, raking his way through the snow. “Somebody…”

  Nolan staggered onto the porch, doing his own share of bleeding. He took the steps slowly and limped after Ainsley.

  “Help me.”

  The snow was heavy enough that Ainsley was just a vague shape but the blood he left behind was very bright. Nolan followed it. The gun trembled in his hand, but all he had to do was aim and pull the trigger. Easy enough. Of course, he had to do it six more times—at least—to get everybody on the island, but he’d faced bigger challenges in his life.

  “Sure have,” he mumbled. “Everything, right?”

  He caught up to Ainsley, who’d pretty much stopped crawling by that point.

  “Help me,” he whimpered.

  Nolan aimed. Pulled the trigger.

  The back corner of Ainsley’s skull disappeared and blood sprayed the snow. Ainsley dropped. Steam rose from his shirtless torso.

  Yes, Mother Moon whispered. Everything.

  Nolan touched his mouth where she’d licked him, then sighed and turned toward the other cabins. He took half a step and then stopped.

  Alyssa Prince stood fewer than fifteen feet away, looking at him with shocked, frightened eyes. Her legs wobbled and he thought for one second she might faint.

  “Hello, Alyssa,” Nolan said, and aimed again.

  40

  Valerie rose to her feet. She didn’t feel the snow that soaked her clothes and blew into her face. The cold didn’t matter. A white archway had bloomed from between the girl’s hands and announced itself in the clearing, as tall as the pines. Beyond: only light. Valerie couldn’t see, but she imagined it stretching far and wide, all the way to Glam Moon.

  Compare it to an Einstein-Rosen bridge, Pace spoke up in her mind. In essence, a wormhole, but with an exotic matter added, making it stable … traversable.

  The son of a bitch was right—he knew what he was looking for. Kudos to him for that. He never found it, though.

  Fuck you, tiger.

  She found it. She alone.

  Fuck all you animals.

  Valerie took a teetering step toward the opening. It warmed her skin. It filled her eyes.

  * * *

  Alyssa had never had a gun pointed at her before, but she’d imagined it happening many times. More particularly, she’d relived it from her husband’s point of view, those final few seconds before a Baltimore cop fired six rounds into him. What would she do differently? What should he, Jackie, have done to change the outcome? I wouldn’t have reached for my wallet, even if they asked me to. I would have put my hands even higher in the sky. She’d run through dozens of scenarios, and always arrived at the same conclusion: it didn’t matter what Jackie did or didn’t do; the cop was going to shoot him anyway. Which always led to her final, desperate reaction: I would have run.

  She watched Nolan shoot Ainsley, frozen to the spot, a thousand questions scattering through her shocked mind. When he said, “Hello, Alyssa,” and aimed the gun at her, she thought of Jackie and all the things he might have done differently, and bypassed them all to settle on the one action that could have saved him.

  She ran.

  Nolan fired. Alyssa recognized the muffled clap of a silencer, although to her ears it sounded very loud and way too close. He didn’t hit her, though. The snow provided good cover. Also, she’d noticed blood dripping from Nolan’s right sleeve. His arm wavered when he pointed the gun at her and it took him a moment to steady it. She’d also noticed the deranged look in Nolan’s eyes. He wasn’t going to stop with her and Ainsley. He meant to kill everyone on the island.

  Alyssa ran toward Brooke and Jordan’s cabin. Her focus was not refuge, but rescue. She leaped the steps and barged through the front door, slammed it behind her. No key in the lock, of course. Islanders never locked their doors.

  “Don’t ask questions,” Alyssa said to Brooke and Jordan. “Just trust me.”

  “What is—”

  “Trust me. And help me with this thing.” She gestured at the sofa they were sitting on. Brooke and Jordan sprang up and helped Alyssa push it against the door.

  “It won’t hold him,” Alyssa said, running her hands through her hair. “Not for long, anyway. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Jordan’s eyes were huge. “What’s going on?”

  A thud as Nolan slammed into the door. He growled, thumped on it with either his shoulder or fist. The door bounced in the frame, butting against the sofa, which scraped a little way across the floor.

  Follow me, Alyssa mouthed, gesturing with both hands. She tossed Brooke and Jordan their wet boots and stepped through to the bedroom. “We have to run,” she whispered, crossing to the window. “Find somewhere to hide, until we can think what to do.”

  “Who is that?” Brooke asked, gesturing toward the living room.

  “Nolan,” Alyssa replied. “He … I don’t know. He has a gun. We have to get out of here.”

  Another thud as Nolan bounced his weight against the front door. Alyssa slid the window open. “Out you go, hon. Keep quiet.” She lifted Jordan and passed her through the window. Brooke was next. Alyssa hopped out and closed the window behind her.

  “Go,” she said. “Use the cabins to break his sightline. Head toward the woods.”

  They set out, moving quickly. Alyss
a noticed they were leaving tracks in the snow, but they wouldn’t in the woods—that’s where they’d lose him, and Alyssa knew a few hiding spots. She looked behind her, saw nothing, but thought she heard the thud of Nolan striking the blocked cabin door again.

  They weaved between one of the empty cabins and around back of the woodshed. Alyssa focused on Brooke and Jordan’s bathrobes flowing out behind them, but then got an idea and stopped. Brooke stopped, too, looking anxiously over her shoulder.

  “Keep going,” Alyssa whispered. “I’ll catch up.”

  She went back to the woodshed and grabbed the axe.

  * * *

  Nolan hit the door three more times, his shoulder throbbing, blood dripping onto his boots. Then realization struck, crisp as a slap. He stopped, listened, heard nothing from inside the cabin but the crackling fire.

  “Fuck.”

  He staggered down the steps and went around back, and sure enough, beneath the bedroom window: fresh tracks in the snow. They led north.

  Everything, Nolan. Is that what—

  “Yes. It is. It fucking is. Just, please … shut the fuck up.”

  He followed the tracks, past darkened cabins where Jake Door, Wendy Noakes, and Joe the chef had lived. There were other islanders he hadn’t got to; Jon Levy and Warren Dines had cabins near the power plant, and Gilda Wynne was not far from Mother Moon, but Alyssa was his priority. She’d seen him. As soon as he’d stopped her, he would take care of the others.

  He grimaced, his left hand clamped over the knife wound in his right forearm. He passed the woodshed and saw the tracks veered in two directions, and it didn’t take long to put the pieces together. One of them—probably Alyssa—had grabbed an axe. But that was fine. No fucking problemo. Bringing an axe to a gun fight was not so different from bringing a knife, and the last person to try that was ass-up in the snow with a hole in the back of his head.

  * * *

  Most of the cabins were dark, unoccupied, but Gilda Wynne’s front window blazed with a cozy orange light. This made her a target, Alyssa realized. She had no idea how many islanders Nolan had already taken out (Edith, maybe—sweet little Ede, which explained why Alyssa couldn’t find her, and Shirley, too), but she couldn’t pass Gilda’s cabin without at least warning her.

  “Hold up,” she said to Brooke and Jordan, her brain sorting through too many thoughts and emotions. She shook her head and focused on just one. “No. Go ahead. Wait for me behind Mother Moon’s cabin. We’ll head into the woods from there.”

  “What are you doing?” Brooke asked. She held Jordan’s hand, who was crying. They were both so scared and confused.

  “I have to warn Gilda,” Alyssa said. “Go.”

  Brooke nodded. She and Jordan disappeared into the swirling snow. Alyssa looked back the way they’d come. All white. All silent. She took Gilda’s front steps in two strides and thumped on the door.

  “Gilda. Open up. It’s Alyssa.”

  She thumped again. Looked behind her. Still nothing.

  “Gilda.”

  The door creaked open and there was Gilda with her mousy hair bundled on top of her head and her inquisitive eyes shifting behind her glasses. She’d never been one of Alyssa’s favorite people (she once called Alyssa a darkie, thinking it was a perfectly acceptable term, and Alyssa assured her in no uncertain terms that it was not), but Alyssa would hate for anything to happen to her—and hate herself if she didn’t do everything in her power to prevent it.

  “Listen to me carefully,” she said, and maybe it was the urgency in her words, or the axe in her hands, but she had Gilda’s full attention. “You have to come with me right now.”

  “Why?” Gilda asked. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s Nolan. He has a gun. He’s … it’s bad, Gilda. Grab your jacket and boots as quickly as you can and come with me.”

  “But I—”

  “Please, Gilda.” Alyssa looked over her shoulder again. Still nothing … yet. “I know it’s cold, but it’ll be safer in the woods. More places to hide, and there’s strength in numbers. It’ll give us chance to come up with a strategy.”

  Gilda wavered, looking from Alyssa to the axe in her hands.

  “Listen, I can’t make you come,” Alyssa said. “That’s your call. But I suggest you find a very good hiding place.”

  “This is real,” Gilda said.

  “Very real.” Alyssa looked over her shoulder once again. “You’ve got five seconds.”

  “I’m coming.” Gilda grabbed her jacket from a hook by the door and stepped into her boots. “Oh, I just put hot milk on and—”

  She stopped, her eyes tracking past Alyssa, first narrowing, then widening. Alyssa swiveled and saw Nolan stumping toward them, raising the gun to eye-level.

  “Hello, ladies,” he cried.

  Alyssa felt the bullet before she realized Nolan had fired. It divided the five inches of air between her and Gilda and hit the cabin door with a nasty pop.

  “Come on,” she said.

  She grabbed Gilda’s hand and ran.

  * * *

  Shit had gone south. In a big fucking way. He couldn’t think about Martin. The storm was heavier than forecast (goddamn lake effect snow, always unpredictable). Only when it had passed, and when every islander lay dead around him, could he contemplate collecting Martin from the mainland—and only then if the Onondaga Mall bomber hadn’t been identified. The situation was not irretrievable, but he’d need for everything to run baby’s-ass smooth from this point on.

  “Corporal Nolan Thorne,” he groaned, wiping a bloody hand across his face, “dealing with shit. As fucking ever.”

  Nolan packed snow between his shirt and jacket sleeve to numb the pain and slow blood loss. He stepped into the woods, where fat flakes whipped between the trees but not as heavily. Visibility was improved. Good. But he’d lost the little lambs’ tracks. Bad. He paused for a moment and listened. The wind roused the branches but also carried the sound of his quarry clattering through the understory.

  “It’s an island,” Nolan said. “You can run, you can even fucking hide, but there’s no escape.”

  He moved on, his eyes scanning for movement while his ears tracked every telltale sound. The knife wound across the back of his left arm and shoulder throbbed deeply. He paused to rest—to let his heart rate settle—then trudged on.

  A crack here. A whisper there. He skulked toward the sounds, positive he was closing in. The woods darkened around him, but he didn’t know if it was because of the storm or because he was getting lightheaded. At one point he saw blood on the ground—realized it was his own, that he’d walked in a circle. “Whafuck?” he gasped. He’d been tracking the sounds, but maybe Alyssa and company were walking in circles, too. That might be their strategy—to keep circling, leading him along, until he collapsed from blood loss. Pretty smart, but what if he were to stop and hide? What if—

  Nolan froze, his thought process interrupted by a sound from the lake. A most beautiful sound. His mouth twitched into a cold smile.

  It was an engine. A boat’s engine, distorted by the wind but getting louder, approaching the island.

  His thoughts kicked back into gear with Mother Moon’s voice, not her pervading promise but something she’d said earlier: If he has any sense he’ll meet you at the boathouse. He might even make his own way over to get ahead of the storm.

  Martin.

  Nolan’s smile turned into a grin. One huge problem had sorted itself out. Maybe things were going to run baby’s-ass smooth, after all.

  He released the Glock’s mag, counted the rounds through the witness holes. Ten, with one in the chamber. More than enough. He slapped the mag back into place, nodded, scoped between the trees. Alyssa and the other little lambs were hiding somewhere, but that was fine. Let them hide. They weren’t going anywhere.

  It was time to welcome Martin back to Halcyon.

  * * *

  Sharky throttled down and brought the trawler into dock, easing in behind No
lan’s center console. Martin was already up, his lifejacket discarded, ready to spring ashore. The dock was empty, of course. It was strange not to see Jake Door in his usual position, but the storm had really picked up. Curiously, his fishing gear was still in place, draped in a blanket of snow.

  “This shit turned nasty in a hurry,” Sharky said, gesturing at the sky as he grabbed one of the mooring lines. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to tie up here and wait for it to blow over.”

  “I don’t see a problem with that,” Martin said, stepping onto the dock. “But you’d better not come ashore. This is a private island. The natives get kind of cranky when…”

  He’d been looking at Jake’s fishing gear as he spoke, then his gaze trailed out to the water where he saw something floating midway between the dock and the shore. He might have dismissed it as a log or similar debris, but Jake’s abandoned gear made him fear the worst. Jake could have slipped on the snow-covered boards, hit his head, toppled in.

  “Shit,” Martin said.

  “Everything all right?” Sharky asked.

  Jake had a landing net that extended maybe eight feet. It wasn’t long enough. “Do you have a pole or hook?” Martin asked Sharky. “Something quite long?”

  “Like a gaff?”

  “I guess. Or a net.”

  Sharky had joined him on the dock and peered out, eyes narrowed beneath the peak of his baseball cap. “Well, shit. That’s a body.”

  “A body? I’d hoped it was a log.”

  “Logs don’t bleed.”

  Martin looked harder. “Are you sure? I don’t see…”

  Sharky returned to his trawler and came back with a gaff that telescoped to twenty feet. With his arm length and the hook on the end, he was able to snag the thing in the water and drag it closer.

  “Oh shit, that’s Jake,” Martin said, turning away. He covered his mouth. Breath plumed between his fingers. “Jesus Christ. What the hell?”