Ming drew back from the woman, as close to the metal rings as she could, anything to be away from the killer and her fetid breath. Bile climbed Ming’s throat. She heaved but nothing came out. She couldn’t see Jackie but images of her torn and chewed neck bloomed in her mind as Ming fought to control the panic clenching her guts.
“So scared … so cold … can’t take it.” It was as if someone had clicked off the mute in the room.
The woman laughed ponderously, like the chop of an idling motorbike, and the flashlight bobbled along with the sound.
The fear hanging palpably in the chamber was tearing them apart, bleeding them of their last stores of energy. More than ever, Ming realized, they must not be overcome. To be overcome would be to panic and to die.
“Hey!” Ming yelled—the light stilled. “Jake, Luke, Anya, Leslie, Cordell … Alistair …” She blanked on the rest of the names, only coming up with Jackie’s, and they kept crying. “Hey!” Everyone quieted and the laughter of the woman was left to echo alone. “Don’t give up. Stay with me.”
The woman brought the light so tight to Ming’s face that the bulb warmed her cheeks.
“What d’you say I challenge you to a staring contest?” Ming asked. She glowered into the light with her sewn-open eyes.
“Come on, if I blink, you can kill me next,” she said. “You blink, you let us go.”
The woman remained silent.
“Hey, miss, look at us.” Ming managed a crazy cackle. “We’re eyeballing you.”
“Saidtowaitsaidtowait …”
“Don’t mean to stare,” Ming told her. “Don’t mean to be rude.” Ming flushed and tasted the salt of her tears. “Blinking serves a function, you know?” The woman’s laughter began to idle again. “I’m not crying; my eyes are just watering.”
“I want my mommy,” Luke whined.
“The tears are not for you …” Ming trailed off as the light disappeared, and she was left with the echoes of Luke’s cry and the retinal afterglow as her eyes adjusted to darkness again. Ming strained to hear the woman, but sensed neither breath nor movement until a sudden snick of a blade broke the silence.
The gag was stuffed back into Ming’s mouth. The blade burned over her cheek, forcing a whine. Then the woman stepped lightly around the chamber, walking in a slow outward spiral. Metal dragged across metal, the scratch hiccoughing as Ming imagined the knife tip tripping over imperfections in the wall. The blade left the wall, and the steps of the woman’s spiral began to tighten, and her muttering stopped.
She paused; Ming sensed her close, her breathing ragged with excitement. Ming flexed her stomach, ready for the blow.
“Not me,” someone cried. A girl. Probably Susan. Twelve, a voice like an angel, still reversed some letters and numbers when she wrote, but wanted to be an English teacher when she grew up.
Oof. Something smacked into flesh, followed by a wet gurgle. The gurgling splashed over the ground and a metallic odor pervaded the room while the woman shrieked.
“Why should I wait,” she yelled. “WhyshouldIwait?”
And the chamber filled with Susan’s screams. Ming’s stomach rebelled again and again. With the gag, she feared she’d choke on her own vomit; or worse, she would need to use her free hand to remove her gag and let on that she was free.
In pained chorus, everyone added to Susan’s voice.
The woman jabbed. Her breathing became heavy and labored. She loosed grunts with each impact, and must have struck bone as she’d swear and the grunts would stop and she’d make a sound like she wrestled with an axe stuck in a chopping block.
Susan was silent.
Ming swallowed her vomit. They’d all hung for so long without food and water that the noise quickly died. They listened to the smacks of fists, and the sucking thrusts against Susan’s sternum. Many whimpered and moaned. Blood drizzled into the pool at their feet, the rhythm of the drips gradually easing.
The light flicked on, and Ming struggled to focus her vision. The woman’s appearance was shockingly gentle-looking, despite the red spattering her cheeks, ringing her mouth, and dousing her cleavage. Pretty. She wrapped one arm tight about her, leaving bloody prints on her triceps. With the other, she reached out and rested her fingers across Susan’s carotid artery. She inspected Susan’s eyes and opened her mouth as if hoping to find something.
“Fuck!” Her fist mashed Susan’s nose. She shook her hand and breathed noisily as she bit down on her bloody knuckles to stave off the pain.
She looked to Jake’s drooping head and pressed her fingers at his neck. The fingers had long sharp nails, and Ming could feel their tips as if they pressed into her own throat. The woman slowly lifted Jake’s chin so that she could peer into his eyes, turning his head left and then right.
“Now let me see you die …”
The groans of the children began again, cranking over like a tired, desperate engine.
Ming and Cordell shared a look, an identical, pleading stare.
Chapter 22
I’d told Pat to contact Volt when we were half an hour from the target.
The symmetry bothered me. Cars were encircling the Gramsbeak grain elevator, just as they had the steel mill. Headlights illuminated the elevator, leaving room for Pat to land within their glare, just like at the steel mill. I didn’t want to make an entrance this time. Amongst the officers and agents would be those with injured friends.
Morph’s impending death left me feeling more alone than ever, and the verdict of Corporal Brant still rang in my ears—never. I pressed my palms against the sides of my head but could not shut Brant out. His daughter would have no memory of him. What was legacy but living on in the memory of others?
Night had drained color from the granary’s battered walls. What paint remained, curled and flaked, drifting in the wind like ash from a fire. Four stories high, the granary loomed over rusted rails that divided the surrounding fields of wheat stubble. The grain reaped from these lands now moved on a wider gauge rail, some miles distant. The land was clear and stark. Here, no one but the crows would have heard the screams of the children.
There was one addition to the scene, a large bomb-squad truck.
The helicopter descended, swinging around the rusted funnel that hung over the rails and then landed.
“I’m going to stay and watch this time,” Pat commented and went to say something more, but I cut him off.
“Not planning a show,” I told him.
But it was too late for that. A procession of ambulances rumbled over the rutted track, whirling lights hazy red in the dust. Above them, the beam from the light beneath a helicopter’s fuselage scythed through the air.
“This is heli TTV-6, tuning into Secret Unit 1, do you copy?”
“You’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Leica Takers, have you?” Pat asked.
“Takers? How the hell did she get a helicopter? I thought she was freelance.”
“If you mean by freelance, running her own media empire, then yeah, she’s freelance.” He placed a finger to his chin and smirked. “And figuring out whatever you all do is her pet project. She’s flying the incoming.”
“Damn the general.” The man had glossed over the fact Takers was a media baroness. He wanted me to fail.
“Secret Unit 1, come in,” the radio said, delight in the voice.
Pat spoke into his headset as he set the bird down. “This is go-fuck-yourself responding, over.”
“Nice,” I said.
“We don’t get along,” he muttered as he flipped switches. “She once tried to follow me back to base, nearly took us both down.”
I alighted and a shadowy arm waved, backlit by an SUV’s rooftop lights. I moved toward the lights, heart thudding when I saw that the person waving was Handso. The last I’d seen of him was him screaming naked through the steel mill. His moustache was
gone and red welts spread out from beneath bandages laid across the left side of his face.
“Aren’t we a pair?” The words sounded like a rake over gravel.
“You shouldn’t be here, Handso,” a deep, familiar voice responded.
We both turned; Volt stood pinioned by light.
“You should be in the hospital or resting at home,” the agent continued and nodded at me.
“Can’t rest till my job’s done,” Handso replied.
I knew his type, this wasn’t about the kids; it was about pride, about legacy. Never.
Volt ignored him. I heard the slowing whomp of helicopter blades and wanted to enter the building before the reporter could show.
“So what are we doing here, Colonel?” Volt demanded.
I swallowed. “We have reason to believe that this is where the kids are being held.”
“I understand that, Colonel, but why are we here?” Volt’s jaw set and his temples bulged. “How do you know? Before I risk more of my people, it’s time you coughed up your source.”
Handso craned his neck, and I was aware of someone pushing their way past the officers that formed a perimeter.
“I can’t tell you that,” I replied.
“Because it’s illegal,” a shrill female voice rang out.
“Are we going to keep what’s inside waiting?” I asked.
Handso chuckled, the sound breathy from the burned throat. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
Leica made it to Volt’s side and held up her press card like it meant something. She was diminutive. Thin, brown, almost black hair shone in a style with jagged bangs. Her eyes flashed coldly, contributing to an expression of perpetual suspicion. Her lips were full and set neatly on a pretty Hispanic face that I suspected was attractive to the two men, but she wasn’t focused on them. She stared at me.
“What’s the name of your unit, Lieutenant Colonel Christine Kurzow, born July 12, daughter to Staff Sergeant Jack Kurzow?” Her voice and face were a mismatch. The sound from her mouth should have been from a seven-foot harpy with talons for nails and a landmine up her ass.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Your unit commander is General Frank Aaron.” She paused for confirmation, which I refused to give. “What’s the significance of the unit leader having been your father’s commander, Colonel?”
“What?” I couldn’t withhold surprise.
“Your father served with General Frank Aaron in Vietnam.” She grinned at me, and I knew I was being recorded. “That’s where your father died, is it not? Vietnam?”
I began to respond and then turned away. “Agent Volt, for her safety, will you have the press escorted outside the perimeter, please?”
“Is this some sort of weird delayed nepotism?” Leica asked as an officer gripped her arm and led her away. This question relaxed me a bit; she was grasping at straws if she believed nepotism had anything to do with my recruitment. “What is the mission of your unit? Is it true that you work with a psychic?”
“Oh, ho!” Handso hooted. “A psychic? That might explain everything.”
“Everything if you believe in ghosts,” I snapped. “Tabloid reporter,” I added to Volt. I turned and started walking toward the granary, trying to compose myself.
“Where are you going, soldier?” Volt demanded.
Ahead of me, the granary’s door groaned on its hinges.
I stopped and turned.
“I agree with you,” I said. “You should have proof of what’s in there before sending your people in.” I waved at the gaping door. “So I’m going in.” I pulled out my gun, slid the flashlight beneath the barrel mount until it locked and then turned it on. I nudged the gun’s safety to red. When Volt approached, I said definitively, “Alone.”
“Suicidal bitch,” Handso said.
“I’d advise against that.” Volt spoke with the air of confidentiality.
“Agent,” I said. “Half the men and women here were at the steel mill. I can feel the anger. I can’t tell you from where we received our information, and after what happened at the mill, I don’t know why you’d trust me. I also know that we can’t afford to wait for clearance from a bomb squad. Too much time has passed already. So I’m going in. Alone. I’ll check for live kids and then you can send in whatever cavalry you want.”
His bottom lip swelled as he ran his tongue beneath it.
“Take a radio,” Volt said and pressed one into my palm.
I snapped it on to my belt and turned without another word.
Chapter 23
“Ready!” Volt shouted to his forces. Doors slammed and conversations ended.
The silence afterward harkened back to the steel mill and sent a shiver through me. But I was committed to entering the granary alone.
“Look alive,” Handso said, and the words hung awkwardly.
I panned my gun across the entry, but in the powerful headlights, the beam from my flashlight added little illumination. I could hear Leica ordering her cameraman about in the distance. The night was cool and clear, but sweat ran into my eyes and itched across my burn. At the door I paused and shone light through the crack and passed it along the bottom of the door frame, eyeballing for trip wires. Two concrete paths for truck tires led through the doors and into darkness. Seeing no danger, I slid inside, heart in my throat.
The air was laden with the scent of rotting grain mixed with bird shit and the dust of old beams. The doors opened on a bay large enough for a small truck to park and be filled or to offload grain.
I scanned the rafters, caught the green eyeshine of rats, and swiveled to the stairs, which led upwards. More vermin. Before ascending I crept past the bags of grain and inspected a belt of metal buckets that had once moved the loose wheat from the truck bed to the upper cupola for distribution into storage bins. Along the left side of the grain elevator were three doorways framed by two-by-fours. In the offloading area the floor was stone and hard pack dirt, but in the offices a shallow basement showed between the cracks and knotholes of floor boards. Thick wooden pillars supported the floor above.
Beyond the first door was a plank table that I was surprised didn’t grace some gentleman farmer’s kitchen. Little else remained of the offices but some leaves from the distant forest, a couple broken beer bottles, and a thick, scabrous rat. It stood its ground as I backed away from the threshold. The second room was entirely empty except for sacks of moldy grain. A few of the burlap bags spilled their guts onto uneven boards.
The final door, closest to the train tracks, opened onto a tube of metal that plunged through the floor. A trap door led downward and I pulled it open, coughing in the dust. I bit my lip, trying not to scream as rats scrabbled out and across the floor. A metal bin was set in the floor, still partially filled with wheat that obscured the base of the auger and a nest of gathered bits of tattered cloth and pink rat kittens. A chute ran outside to the rail for the offloading of grain. No bodies, but the sheer number of pests rattled me, as did the nest. It was woven with a variety of fabric: silk, wool, corduroy, cotton.
“Level one, clear,” I announced into the radio and hitched my pants higher to support its weight.
A pigeon burst from a rafter, and I caught it in the light.
I reminded myself that I didn’t care about dying, and doing so eased the flutter of my heart. I scuffed up the steps, following tight-fitted boards on my left and the outer wall on my right through which lights from the gathered cars shone. The stairs moved straight past the second story with only a small landing, and then on to the third floor.
“Second clear, I think I’m following the storage bin upward. No bodies. Smells like shit.”
Halfway up the third flight of stairs, a long drip like hardened tree sap ran down the side of the storage bin. It was black and congealed. Something ha
d found it long before and licked parts of it clean, but the dark stain remained.
“There’s something on the fourth. No movement, but I have blood on the wall.”
“I’m sending men in,” Volt replied.
“After I complete the sweep,” I said. “There’s nothing alive here, agent. Nothing worth dying for.” A knot formed in my chest at the realization as I climbed the stairs. The kids were dead. Ranks of green eyes ogled me from the top step. The fourth story was the peak of the building, the cupola. Here the stench had been caught by the rafters and stewed in the summer heat. I had to fight down my gorge. I kept the gun up, with my other sleeve over my mouth. When I reached a view of the cupola, I loosed a cry, muffled by my elbow crook.
Hanging from the ceiling was a forest of fishing line. A dozen lines refracted the light of my beam. At their tips, hooked like shrimp, were shriveled eyeballs. I swallowed my horror and traced the first line to the rafter, looking for a trigger mechanism. I tugged on a line and considered what Handso would say if he were watching. Nothing happened.
“We’ve filled half a dozen missing persons reports,” I said before moving deeper, threading through the lines that dangled from high beams.
Narrow boardwalks stretched across six storage bins, each fed by the pipe from a metal turnhead. The turnhead’s mouth aimed at the bin furthest distant, and I imagined it to be Hillar’s index finger pointing at whatever he’d left for me to see. My boots sucked at the blood that pooled over the floor. White guano coated the rafters and the handrails, but no bird roosted here. A rat slunk upon the turnhead and padded down the pipe to nose an eyeball.
There were no bodies save one laid out, face chewed away at the end of the walk. I already had a sense of where the rest would be. My light didn’t reach the bottom of the first and second bins, but the third was half-full of grain, otherwise empty. I took the long way around the turnhead, jerking each of the fishing lines, attempting to trigger whatever trap Hillar might have set.
The rat leapt away and disappeared into the recesses of light. The fourth bin was empty, but the fifth, from which the smell billowed up, was a mess of arms and legs. The bodies were butchered into quarters, ribcages sawn in half. To escape my light, rats scurried into fleshy hollows. I gasped and turned away.
The Terminals Page 15