The Chain

by Adrian McKinty

  Rachel raises her shotgun.

  She remembers what she was told at the range: wait until your target is close or your target flees. But this man is not running toward her or running away from her. He’s just standing there at the end of the long corridor.

  He finishes reloading. He looks at Rachel and raises a long black gun.

  Rachel pulls the trigger.

  Her aim is off.

  The wall to her right erupts in fire. The kick takes her in the shoulder. The man yells, drops his gun, and staggers into a room next to him. Pete turns, checks that Rachel’s OK, and goes down the hallway after the man, but he’s gone.

  Pete picks up a dropped MP5. A perfect weapon for close work. He clears the mechanism and shoulders it.

  “I think I’m out of ammunition,” Rachel says. Pete hands her the nine-millimeter and she sets down the shotgun, which has served its Chekhovian purpose.

  The house’s lights finally go off and stay off.

  The darkness is nearly complete.

  Darkness. Smoke. Pools of dank water.

  What can they do but forge on by iPhone light?

  They come upon a big open-plan living room. Dozens of hunting trophies on the walls, and not just local animals—antelope, cheetahs, lions, a leopard. Predators and prey together.

  Fear is coursing through her, but fear is a liberation too. Fear releases power and is the precursor to action.

  Pete is drenched with sweat. “Are you OK?” she asks.

  “Fine,” he replies. He feels the opposite of fine but the MP5 is comforting against his shoulder, there’s nine left in the magazine, and he still has his trusty .45. All good.

  “Mommy!” a distant voice calls from somewhere outside.

  They slide open a set of glass doors and find themselves in the snow. It’s blowing hard from the north and swirling about them in an icy wind.

  “Over there, I think,” Rachel says, pointing to a series of disused farm buildings. There are footprints in the snow heading toward the closest structure.

  They follow the prints toward the entrance to an old abattoir. This had presumably been a working slaughterhouse once but now there are gaping holes in the walls and roof, and ivy covers everything.

  They kill the phone lights and go inside.

  They’re immediately hit by the stench of blood, putrefaction, and rot.

  Broken glass litters the floor and crunches under their feet.

  It’s hard to see; the only illumination comes from the flickering lights of the house erupting in flames behind them.

  Wind howls through the ruined walls and the roof.

  Rachel jumps as she almost collides with a sow hanging from a ceiling beam. The pig’s lifeless dead eyes are level with her own.

  Adjusting to the dark, she sees other animals on hooks—pheasants, crows, a badger, a deer.

  The abattoir is on two levels with a small set of steps between them.

  “They must be on the upper level,” Pete whispers. “Stairs are a classic place for an ambush. Watch out.”

  Rachel nods and tries not to make so much noise with her boots.

  They move forward slowly.

  Broken glass, wet snow, stale air. Rust, dried blood, death.

  They get only halfway up the concrete steps before someone starts shooting.

  “Handgun, three o’clock!” Pete screams and returns fire with the MP5 as he runs to the top of the steps. He shoots three more times as his target ducks behind a piece of machinery and vanishes.

  He smiles grimly to himself. The bastards have wasted their chance.

  He looks at his clip. The MP5 is empty now. He drops it and pulls out his trusty .45.

  “Did you hit someone?” Rachel whispers.

  “No.”

  “Be careful of the kids,” Rachel says, following him up the steps.

  Her hands are shaking and she forces herself to grip the pistol tighter. She can’t lose it now, not when they are so—

  An overhead arc light comes on.

  Rachel spins the nine-millimeter in a 360 around her. The abattoir is a filthy concrete ruin with bits of old farm machinery and garbage everywhere. Near her, two more pigs are hanging from hooks in the ceiling. One of them has been freshly slaughtered and is dripping blood into a bucket.

  But none of that is relevant.

  What’s relevant is what she sees thirty feet away at the end of the upper level of the abattoir: Ginger is standing there with her twin brother, Olly, both holding pistols aimed at Kylie and Stuart.

  Kylie and Stuart are crying and terrified; their wrists are handcuffed in front of them. Marty is sprawled near them on the floor, apparently only semiconscious. His head is bleeding and he’s breathing hard and moaning in agony. Ginger is holding Kylie by the collar of her T-shirt and pointing the gun straight down onto her skull. Olly has his arm around Stuart’s neck and the barrel of his weapon is shoved into Stuart’s ear.

  Pete and Rachel both freeze.

  “Mom!” Kylie cries.

  “Let her go!” Rachel screams at Ginger.

  “That doesn’t seem likely, now, does it?” Ginger says.

  Rachel aims the nine-millimeter at Ginger’s face. “I’ll kill you right here,” she says.

  “You’re that confident about hitting me from this distance? How many times have you even fired a pistol, Rachel?” Ginger asks.

  “I won’t miss you, you bitch.”

  “Drop your gun or I drop the kids.”

  “We’re not dropping our guns,” Pete says. “That’s not how this is going to work. You’re going to let the children go and we’ll leave, and you’ll have plenty of time to get your crash bags and your dummy passports and everybody wins.”

  He sways a little before catching himself and getting his balance.

  “Whoa, steady there, sailor boy. Why don’t you sit down and take a load off?” Ginger says, looking significantly at Olly.

  “You should listen to me,” Pete mutters, inching his way closer. They are a confident pair. Overconfident. Another few feet and he’ll have a clear shot at Olly. Stuart comes only halfway up his chest, so if he aims at the top of Olly’s skull, the big powerful .45 round will kill Olly instantly. Has to be soon. The adrenaline in his system has definitely plateaued and he’s on the downslope now.

  “Clicking the hammer back is such a cliché,” Ginger says. “Do you really need me to do that? Are you so dense that you need a visual aid? I will kill this little girl if you don’t drop your goddamn gun.”

  “Then you’ll die,” Pete says. He’s about twenty feet from them now. A fast shot might just do the trick.

  “Put the gun down now, asshole!” Olly barks with a cool, imperious air.

  Pete takes aim at the top of Olly’s skull. He should act. He should act now. But everything hurts. Everything aches. His hand is shaking.

  “You need to drop the gun now or—” Olly begins.

  There’s a loud bang, and a bullet from Ginger’s .38 hits Pete in the torso and he’s down.

  Rachel dives behind a concrete blood-collecting trough as another bullet misses her by inches.

  “You shot him,” Olly says to Ginger.

  “The theatrics were getting on my nerves,” Ginger replies. “Now, Rachel, it’s your turn. Drop the gun and put your hands up or we kill Kylie. Olly, keep your arm around that one’s neck but put your gun in little Kylie’s cheek.”

  Olly sticks the barrel of his pistol in Kylie’s right cheek.

  “Mommy!” Kylie wails.

  Rachel’s stomach lurches. Her eyes are streaming. Pete is shot; Marty is down. And she’s so exhausted. Weeks of this. Years of this. Everything has gone wrong since that very first oncologist’s report from Mass. General.

  She’s doomed and part of her wants to lie down on the filthy floor, close her eyes, and sleep.

  But she can see Kylie’s face, and Kylie is her world. She crouches behind the blood trough and points the nine-millimeter over its lip at Ginger.<
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  “Drop your gun and put your hands up!” Ginger screams as the snow whirls around her.

  “No! You drop your gun,” Rachel replies, tears running down her cheeks.

  “Put your hands up and we’ll let you go. You and the kids. Like your friend said. We know the game’s over,” Olly says. “Ginger here has screwed it up for us. Not for the first time. We’ll let you go and you’ll let us go. We can make a deal. Give us twenty-four hours and we’ll be in South America.”

  Rachel’s heart leaps. Here’s a new possibility. A slim lifeline of hope.

  “Promise it! Promise me you’ll let us walk out of here,” Rachel says. “If—if you’re fleeing the country, there’s no need for any more killing.”

  “Put your hands up, drop your gun, and I give you my word that you and the kids will be unharmed,” Olly says.

  “You’ll let me take the children and go?” Rachel asks.

  Once she gets the children to safety, she can call the police and come back for Marty and Pete.

  Olly nods. “I’m not a monster. You can leave with your family. And in return, you give us a day before you call the cops. All you have to do is drop your gun and put your hands up. Come on, Mrs. O’Neill, let’s work together on this, for all our sakes!”

  Her mind is in overload. A collage of competing images and instincts. Don’t trust them, get the kids, don’t trust them, get the kids…

  She has to choose, so she decides to believe him.

  Get the children back first, worry about his intentions later, she tells herself.

  She stands, puts her hands up, and lets the nine-millimeter fall to the floor.

  “Come out from behind that trough, put your hands on your head, and get down on your knees,” Ginger says.

  Rachel does as she’s ordered and Ginger pushes Kylie toward her. Kylie falls into her mother’s arms and Rachel hugs her.

  “This time I’m never letting you go,” Rachel whispers.

  Olly shoves Stuart toward the little pietà. He turns to his sister. “That, Ginger, is how you do these things. That is how it’s supposed to work. Not with this,” he says, waving the gun at her. “With this,” he says, touching the side of his own head. “You see what I did there? All I did was talk to her. No guns, no violence—a self-correcting mechanism. All you need is a phone and a voice. And a little bit of brains.”

  “So you’re really going to let them go?” Ginger asks.

  “Of course not! How can we possibly let them go? Jesus Christ, Ginger, I worry about you.”

  “We’re going to kill them?”

  “Yes!” Olly says with exasperation.

  “Might as well do it now,” Ginger says. “It feels like we’ve been here half the night playing reindeer games in the snow. Better close your eyes, folks. For you the war is over.”

  72

  As early Christmas presents go, the Ultimate Houdini Magic Kit couldn’t be more geeky, and Kylie is at the age where her friends will tease her about such things. Magic? I mean, seriously, who does magic?

  So she didn’t tell any of them. Except Stuart, of course. She told Stuart.

  And she learned a few tricks. As she promised herself in that basement when she’d been chained to the oven, she did, in fact, learn how to escape from handcuffs. She watched those YouTube videos and she practiced. A lot. She got good at it. As good as one can get in a few weeks. She can escape from a standard handcuff in under thirty seconds. Now, zip ties are a different story, but all metal handcuffs can be opened with a universal key if you know what you are doing. As a good-luck totem, she always carries a handcuff escape key with her on her key chain.

  Always.

  Unseen by anyone, she unpicks the lock that is cuffing her hands in front of her.

  Now what? Snow is pouring in through the holes in the roof. Her mother is holding her, Stuart is crying, and there on the floor right in front of her is the pistol that her mom dropped.

  She reaches down and picks up the gun. It feels heavy. Impossibly heavy. The twins are talking. “Might as well do it now,” Ginger says. “It feels like we’ve been here half the night playing reindeer games in the snow. Better close your eyes, folks. For you the war is over.”

  Kylie lifts the nine-millimeter, aims, and pulls the trigger.

  73

  Olly’s face caves inward, rushes out the back of his skull, and sprays over the cinder-block wall behind him. Kylie has never seen anything like it. It’s beyond horrific. But she has only a fraction of a second to be horrified. Ginger swings her gun around and points it at her.

  “You little bitch!” Ginger screams and shoots blindly at Kylie.

  Kylie fires again, but this time she’s miles high and the bullet clangs into the ceiling.

  A rusted piece of the roof thuds to the floor between Ginger and the body of her brother. Startled, she turns to see what it is. Kylie hustles her mom and Stuart behind the concrete blood-collecting trough.

  Ginger recovers herself and fires four times in quick succession.

  Four shots slam hard into the trough.

  Ginger moves, closes one eye, and aims carefully at Kylie’s shoulder peeking out from behind a crack in the concrete, but there isn’t going to be another shot. The revolver is empty.

  “Shit!” Ginger says.

  She’s out of ammo, Rachel thinks, and she takes the nine-millimeter from Kylie, stands, aims, and deliberately pulls the trigger. The trigger doesn’t do anything. The nine-millimeter is empty or, more likely, jammed and she has no idea how to fix a jam.

  The two women glare at each other.

  Another look of recognition.

  Mirror Rachel, Mirror Ginger, you could be me, I could be you.

  Rachel shakes her head. She’s not buying into that we’re-not-so-different-you-and-I bullshit. We all have choices.

  Ginger smiles and drops her gun.

  “I’m coming for you,” Rachel snarls and runs at her.

  Ginger quickly assumes a self-defense stance, but Rachel’s momentum knocks them both to the ground.

  Ginger springs to her feet and Rachel finds something metal on the floor and tosses it at her; it misses and thuds into the cinder-block wall.

  Rachel gets up and throws a fist at Ginger but she’s far too slow and Ginger easily dodges it with a neat sidestep. Ginger’s blue eyes glint with pleasure as she head-butts a stunned Rachel in the face.

  Rachel has never had her nose broken before, and the pain is so shocking that she is momentarily blinded. Ginger punches her in the ribs, stomach, and the left breast.

  Rachel winces, collapses onto one knee, and then somehow gets up again.

  “You liked that, bitch? You’ll love this,” Ginger says and she punches her in the throat, the left breast again, and then square on her bloody nose.

  Heavy, well-placed, well-aimed blows that hurt.

  Rachel goes down hard.

  Ginger leaps on top of her and flips Rachel onto her back.

  Ginger is so quick and efficient that Rachel has no chance.

  “No, ugh.” Rachel gasps as Ginger’s hands wrap around her throat and squeeze.

  “I knew you were trouble. Knew it right from the start,” Ginger says, her wild, ecstatic, crazy face leering above Rachel. Spittle is flying from her mouth. She’s grinning. She’s enjoying this. “I knew it!” Ginger says and squeezes harder. In FBI self-defense class, she learned how to choke someone out in a few seconds.

  Rachel’s vision is tunneling.

  Everything is becoming white.

  “You’re going to die, bitch!” Ginger yells.

  Tunnel.

  Whiteness.

  Nothingness.

  Rachel knows she is disappearing forever now.

  She can feel her life dribbling away onto the grimy concrete floor.

  How to tell Kylie she loves her but that she isn’t going to make it?

  Can’t tell her. Can’t talk. Can’t breathe.

  Nothing anyone can do.

 
Rachel understands everything now.

  The Chain is a cruel method of exploiting the most important human emotion—the capacity for love—to make money. It wouldn’t work in a world where there was no filial or sibling or romantic love, and only a sociopath who is without love or who doesn’t understand love could use it for her ends.

  Love is what undid Ariadne and Theseus.

  The Minotaur too, in the Borges story.

  Love, or a fumbling attempt at love, is what nearly undid Ginger.

  Rachel sees all that.

  She understands.

  The Chain is a metaphor for the ties that bind all of us to friends and family. It is the umbilical link between mother and child, the way or path that the hero must travel in a quest, and it is the thin clew of crimson thread that is the solution Ariadne comes up with to the problem of the labyrinth.

  Rachel understands it all.

  Knowledge is sorrow.

  She closes her eyes and feels the darkness wrap around her.

  The world is diminishing, fading, falling far away…

  Then she feels something else.

  Something sharp. Something that cuts. Something that hurts. A long, thin shard of glass.

  Her thumb drags it across the floor and her hand wraps around it.

  Her hands are bloody but her grip is strong.

  Rachel Klein, avoider of mirrors, has tumbled through the looking glass and taken a piece of that glass with her.

  She will give it to Ginger as a gift.

  Yes.

  And with the last breath in her body, she arcs the splinter of glass hard into Ginger’s throat.

  Ginger screams and lets go of Rachel and claws at her neck.

  She fumbles at the glass and tries to save herself but the carotid is severed and a fount of crimson arterial blood is already pouring from the wound.

  Rachel rolls away from her and gulps air. Ginger’s eyes widen. “I knew you were…” she says and collapses to the floor, dead.

  Rachel breathes and closes her eyes and opens them again.

  And now it is only Kylie hugging her.

  Hugging her for twenty seconds and then getting up and pressing a rag against the wound in Pete’s abdomen.

  The bullet somehow missed the major blood vessels, but he needs medical attention. Quick.