The bed had moved several feet away from the wall before the frame had broken, dumping the box springs and mattress on the floor. Driven beyond what little sanity had been left to her by the death of the Mother, she had managed to free her arms, which she had promptly begun to eat. Deep bloody depressions ran up and down her arms to the shoulders, and her face and neck were covered in gore. A single bullet hole in her temple attested to the mercy killing that ended her frenzied feeding.
“Fuck!” Chuck ran back out into the hallway and threw up noisily against the wall. Anne and I stepped out after him, turning out the lights as we did so. I didn’t think, before I entered that room, that I could feel any more rage and hatred towards Piotr, but it turned out that I was wrong. It was easy.
We looked into the rest of the rooms upstairs and found them perfectly normal, which seemed wrong. Greg and Mazie had packed before they left, leaving half-empty drawers open in dressers, and closet doors wide open. Chuck followed suit by stuffing his few possessions into a faded blue hard-sided suitcase. Nobody would ever live here again. Even if we won, I think too much had happened here for Greg to want to come back.
“We need to search the downstairs before we leave. Mazie would have left a note or something for me. I know she would,” said Chuck.
Anne put her hand on his shoulder. “Of course.”
Downstairs in the kitchen, we found our note. It was written in orange marker in foot-high letters on the wall. “GONE TO NAIL BARREL TO MEET SURVIVORS.”
I looked at Chuck. “Nail Barrel?”
“Hardware store in town. It’s a big brick place with a patio kind of thing on the roof. They hold parties and church socials up there sometimes in the summer. Good place to hold off a crazy mob.”
“Abe,” said Anne. “I don’t think I can do another rooftop siege.”
I opened my mouth to reply when something with a lot of legs dropped off of the ceiling onto the table in front of us. Anne let out a high pitched yelp and brought up her shotgun in a blur. I slapped the barrel towards the ceiling as she pulled the trigger, showering all of us with flecks of drywall and paint.
“Stop! He’s one of the good guys.”
Right next to the salt shaker, tapping his front legs on the table in the rapid staccato beat which meant that he had information to impart, was Mr. Careful.
49
Chuck stepped back a pace, gun half-leveled. “What the fuck is that?”
“It’s a wooden spider, what’s it look like?”
“Dude, that’s not helping!”
“Henry made him during the war to scout for us.” I bent down close to the table. “Hey, Mr. C. What do you have for me?” I unscrewed the lid of the salt shaker and poured the contents onto the tabletop, then smoothed the little mound into a flat patch of white granules.
Instantly the matchstick spider scurried onto the salt, leaving a trail of tiny dots behind him. It then extended one pointed foot and drew a wide, curved V in the salt, followed by a straight line connecting the top points of the V, and then two small circles inside the figure, side by side near the top. Then it stepped back and raised that leg straight out from its body, pointing northeast.
I let out a big sigh of relief.
Anne flicked the safety on her shotgun and rested it on her shoulder. “What?”
“Mr. C just told me he knows where Henry is. Which I have to say is a great load off of my mind. Especially since I’ll lay good odds that Piotr will be right there with him.”
“Of course he did.”
“See what he drew in the salt? That’s Mr. C’s symbol for Henry.”
“It looks like a face, maybe. Eyes but no mouth or nose.”
“Close, it’s a tribal mask. Where he got that from, I’ll never know. We didn’t teach it to him, he just started doing it. Had his own symbol for everyone. He can draw out simple maps and things like that as well.”
“Huh. What’s Abe’s symbol, little bug?”
Mr. C turned to an empty spot in the salt, and drew a circle, then several triangles on top and bottom, like an open-toothed maw. A prickle ran up the back of my neck. “That’s not right. My symbol was three V’s on top of each other, like a sergeant’s stripes.”
The wooden spider retraced the image, and then tapped twice next to it, firmly.
Anne looked up at me. “Not anymore.”
I picked up Mr. Careful and put him into my shirt pocket, where he curled up into a tight flat oval. Then I rubbed the images out of the salt with my finger, feeling unsettled. It sounds crazy, but having Mr. C identify me differently was like looking into a mirror and seeing somebody else staring back at you. I didn’t like it.
We left the house through the shattered front door, reminded as we stepped into the deserted street that this house, this tragic site of desperation and loss, was only one of many created by Piotr. It was warfare on a personal level, fought house to house, family member against family member, all in fearful silence.
People held hostage for months at a time with nobody around them any wiser, forced to live with a monster who looked out at you from stolen eyes. What does that say about us, that we can live next door to someone and never be close enough to see what’s going on right under our noses? When did we start hiding in our tiny worlds behind closed doors, and relying entirely on our televisions and computers for companionship? Maybe the fact that something like this could go on unnoticed for so long was more frightening than the resulting devastation.
We piled back into the truck, and I dropped Mr. C onto the dashboard, where he promptly spun to face the same direction he had indicated in the kitchen. Seeing him there brought back memories of days and nights driving with him on the painted steel dash of a jeep, legs scrabbling for purchase as we flew over ruts and road debris.
I remember Shad using his battered Ka-Bar to punch knifepoint slits into the dashboards of every vehicle we ended up in, so that the little spider could get a secure foothold. The memory brought back smells of mud, bad feet, and cordite, all mixed up with the faces of my old squad.
Patty used to ride shotgun next to me, issuing warnings with a tap on the side of his nose, with Shad, Two-Penny, and the Professor crammed in the back with the guns and gear, taking turns complaining for hours on end about my driving and keeping count of every rut and pothole I hit.
Mr. C swayed with the truck during turns, his legs rolling in time with the dash to keep his body perfectly still. Henry had to have smuggled him into town when he was captured, which was typical of Henry’s foresight. We didn’t call him the smart one for nothing.
I wanted to jam the pedal to the floor mat and follow Mr. C’s directions to where Piotr was keeping Henry, but I held steady and wove through town towards the Nail Barrel instead. The people in town needed me first. Piotr had gone to all the trouble to kidnap Henry in order to make sure that I showed up on time and was cooperative when he called, so there was no doubt in my mind that he would be safe until Piotr felt some leverage was needed.
Until then, if I could save whoever was left in this hellhole, I’d do it.
50
We found the Nail Barrel inside a ring of empty cars that were full of bullet holes and shattered safety glass. I flicked off the headlights and put my trust in my inhumanly acute night vision and the faint green foxfire glow of the clouds overhead. Lights were on inside the store, but only in the rear of the building. The front of the store was dark, giving the shattered plate-glass windows in front a yawning, toothy look.
I nosed up against the closest wreck and killed the engine. Silence pressed in on us, disturbed only by random bursts of gusty wind in the street and the ticking of the cooling engine.
Anne’s head swayed left and right as she tried to peer across the street and into the store. “Looks deserted.”
“Still have to check.” I reached into my pocket and fished out the little lock-blade folder that I carried. I snapped it open and looked at Anne. “Give me your hand.”
She i
mmediately balled up her fists and stuck them in her lap. “Why?”
“I want to introduce you to Mr. C, so he can find you if we get separated. A drop of blood is all I need.”
“Ugh, creepy.” She stuck her hand out and turned her head away. I nicked her palm as gently as I could, and then squeezed the little cut until a dark drop welled up. I dipped a finger in it, and then smeared it down Mr. C’s back while he sat on the dash. He remained perfectly still, but the shiny streak vanished into the dull wood of his back as though absorbed by a sponge.
“Now you,” I said to Chuck, turning towards the back seat.
“Here.” His hand was already out, palm up, with blood on it, a fancy stainless steel pocketknife in his other hand. I dabbed a different finger in it and repeated the process. That blood, too, sank out of sight.
“Okay, that should do it. Now he can find you wherever you go, no matter the distance.”
Chuck wiped his hand on his jeans. “You sure? How do we know if it works?”
I shrugged. “We don’t, really, but that’s all I know how to do, so if it doesn’t work, it’s not like I can fix it or anything. I only know what Henry told me about working with Mr. C, and that’s pretty much it for introducing him to new people. Now, let’s see what’s going on in that building.”
I picked up the little wooden spider, rolled down the window, and tossed him out into the darkness. I left the window down and leaned back in my seat to wait. The smell of damp and mud and vegetative rot swiftly filled up the cabin.
After ten long minutes, a tic-tic-tic on the hood of the truck heralded my scout’s return. Mr. C flowed across the hood, dipped onto the side of the door, then over the sill of the window in a flash, legs a blur of motion. He dropped into my lap with the tiny impact of a matchbox. I picked him up and held him in my hand.
“Okay, show me.” Instantly, the spider dipped and sank his tiny steel fangs into the flesh at the base of my thumb. Impressions and images lunged and jostled for attention in my head. Bodies on the floor, a lot of them, seen from twenty or thirty feet up in the air. A towering, shadowy mountain of guns thrown into a corner seen from an inch off the floor, then a head-level view of people sitting on the floor, Mazie and Greg right in the front of the crowd. One of those big helmeted bags with a shotgun and a companion, a regular bag by the look of him, standing over the group. A portable CB on a desk, looming high. All of this was interspersed with rapid-fire flashes of hallways, doorframes, and window corners.
Mr. C stood up, pulling his fangs out of my hand, and then sprang to my shoulder. He stood stock still for a moment, then his legs snapped up around his abdomen, and he slid down my shirt to land neatly in my pocket. I took a deep breath and focused on settling my queasy stomach. There was no doubt about the usefulness of Mr. C’s scouting reports, but the dizzying succession of views and angles was nauseating to say the least.
“Looks like they made their last stand, and they lost. The weird part is that they’re still alive and being guarded by a couple of bags, two or three at the most, and one of those helmeted fuckers thrown in for good measure. They don’t seem to be out of their minds like the rest of them, no clue why.”
Anne raised an eyebrow. “Why take hostages?”
“Piotr’s not one for leaving things to chance. I imagine he has a good reason.”
“Like using them as bait to lure us in?”
“That would be my guess.”
Chuck leaned his head into the space between the front seats. “So, if those guys are bait, then all we have to do is to ignore it and go after Piotr himself. Problem solved.”
I looked back over my shoulder at him. “One question. What do you do with your leftover bait after you’re done fishing and you don’t need it any more?”
Chuck’s cheeks reddened. “Yeah, good point. What’s the plan?”
I started the Rover and backed away from the cars in front of us, lights still off. “The plan is we go in and rescue some hostages. We’ll figure out the rest after that’s done.”
51
I drove around to the back of the store, which faced an empty communal parking lot for employees of the various businesses along the street. I stopped ten feet from the back door, put it in park, and got out. Chuck swapped places with me and got behind the wheel as we had discussed. My plan had the advantage of being simple and direct. It had the disadvantage of being the kind of plan that I usually come up with when I don’t have any time or resources to speak of.
Anne hopped out of the Rover. She took up position on the left side of the door while I stepped to the front bumper. The winch let out a soft electric whine as it began to turn in reverse, letting stainless steel cable spool out into my hands. I used the tow hook to make a lasso out of the end, like a miniature version of the collar I used on the Mother. The cable kept unspooling at my feet. When I judged that I had enough, I held up my hand and Chuck killed the winch.
I stepped up to the back door and pulled out my baton, holding it in my right hand, loop of cable in my left. The parking lot grew brighter as the truck’s reverse lights came on.
Anne nodded at me, both hands wrapped around Chuck’s Taurus. She was the best shot of the three of us by a wide margin, but even she wasn’t going to be able to fire that shotgun towards the hostages in the center of the room without killing some of them. So she opted for precision over firepower.
I counted to three under my breath, then slammed the end of my baton into the deadbolt keyhole. It went clean through, knocking the cylinder out the other side. I yanked the door open and the deadbolt fell out, ringing when it hit the concrete.
Everyone inside was still pretty much where Mr. C had last seen them. The big bag with the motorcycle helmet was on my right, next to the door. The two regular bags were about ten feet inside, closer to the hostages.
My reflection stared back at me from the glossy black faceplate of the big bag as he spun to face me. These things scared the hell out of me, and I had no desire to go toe-to-toe with one again any time soon. Fortunately, I wouldn’t have to.
The engine of the Range Rover roared as Chuck gunned it in neutral. I dropped my baton and used both hands to ram the loop of braided cable over the motorcycle helmet. I shoved hard against its chest and threw myself back out of the door and to the side as the Rover’s tires squealed and smoked.
The cable snapped taut as the Rover shot backwards. I had expected to be able to get the drop on the bag and get the loop over that helmet of his, snaring him in the same sort of trap I had used at the quarry.
I had not expected that it would grab the door frame as the truck yanked it head first towards the parking lot. It did manage to stop its body from being hauled out of the building. Its head, on the other hand, was another matter entirely. When the body came to an abrupt stop at the threshold the cable simply sheared right through its neck and the worm inside, sending the helmeted head flying out across the lot.
Two shots rang out before the helmet could bounce off the pavement. I got up in time to see both bags inside the store drop to the ground, identical holes in the center of their foreheads.
Anne and I stared at each other in the quiet aftermath. The whole thing had only lasted a few seconds. She shook her head, eyes wide. “I cannot believe that worked.”
“That makes two of us.”
I went through the door with my baton high, but the room was empty except for the hostages, maybe twenty in all. Greg and Mazie were seated front and center on the floor with gags between their teeth.
I motioned to Anne. “Go get Chuck so we can start cutting these people loose.” She dashed outside.
I holstered my baton and walked up to the group, uneasy. It was very quiet and the corners of the room were dark, the only light coming from a few camping lanterns on the table next to the hostages. Greg and Mazie were staring at me with wide eyes and shifting back and forth on the floor. That’s when I realized that the only sound in the room was coming from them.
Chuck and Anne trotted back inside, with Anne calling out, “Okay, let’s get started.” I put my hand up, palm out, towards them. They slowed as they sensed my wariness. Both of them did the dark corner check, same as I had.
I moved up to Greg and Mazie, carefully, and looked over their heads. Their hands were bound with nylon tie wraps that were secured to the floor by a metal bracket bolted into the concrete. Mazie’s restraints were bloody from where she had been fighting against them.
Behind her was the first row of five hostages, all sitting on the floor with their heads down, gags in place. But they were still and quiet. I moved around her and gingerly touched the man directly behind Mazie. He was stiff and cold and dead. Behind him was a wooden plank that was bolted to a metal bracket that was in turn bolted to the floor. The plank was screwed into his back, holding him upright. A quick glance down the row showed the same macabre support system attached to the other hostages.
Piotr’s voice rang out behind me, closing the trap.
52
“I thought you would be more angry when you figured it out. But your face just went kind of sad instead,” said Piotr as he stepped through the doorway behind us.
At the sound of his voice, Anne spun around and snapped off two rounds into his chest. It was fast, precise, and shockingly loud.
The bullets hung in midair for a brief moment, suspended by the same tendrils of milky fog that we had seen at the lake. Metal fragments clattered to the concrete floor as the tendrils seeped back through Piotr’s shirt to a spot over his heart. He shrugged gracefully, even apologetically.
One of the hugely swollen bags came through door behind him, sans helmet. His neck was purple and stretched taut with the massive trunk of the worm distending it, and his jaws were locked wide open by the thick black tentacles hanging and curling out of it. I doubted he could still get a helmet on over all of that.
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