by Chad Huskins
“Spencer,” Kaley said warningly.
“You too, bitch. Hush up.”
The boy said, “I-I was, uh, j-just out walking. I got up and opened my window…climbed out while my parents were still asleep. I was going to my best friend Jared’s house. He had the new Assassin’s Creed game, and I w-wanted to play it. I cut through the park. And…a car. There was a car following me. Moving slow right behind me the whole time.” He swallowed hard. “Th-then a man got out and just ran at me. I just remember…a rag put over my face. I squirmed and fought, and I got away, at least at first. I was screaming, but nobody heard me. Everybody was asleep. Then…I don’t know, the rag was put over my face again. Then I was in some basement with two other boys…and a girl. We had toys to play with. Me and the boys tried to scratch at the door and fit through a vent, but the girl just sat in the corner and stared at the wall.”
The boy went silent for a time. Spencer slowed down for the first stoplight. The Subaru slid a bit—the water was refreezing on the roads, and the snow was piling higher across it. Presumably, the salt trucks weren’t running up this way, at least not anymore tonight. Spencer watched the cars going by, looking carefully at the drivers. He took a toke, exhaled, and stared at the red stoplight. “How long ago was this?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said.
“Best guess.”
More silence. The boy shrugged. “A f-f-few months?”
“What happened durin’ that time?”
“Please don’t rush him, Spencer.” He looked at Kaley warningly. “I said please.”
“They…they, um…” Peter trailed off. Looked out the window. Wiped his eyes. Sniffed.
Kaley leaned over, but couldn’t touch him. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s okay. I know. I’ve been through it before. Me and my sister both.” The boy turned to look at her. Ahead, the light turned green and Spencer slowly applied the gas, taking a left towards the turnpike that would take them to M-51, the main highway into Chelyabinsk. “You don’t have to go through all the bad stuff. We know they hurt you. All we need is some information so that we can tell the police, so that these people never hurt anybody again.” She added, “We can catch them, Peter.”
Spencer looked in rearview mirror again. The boy was coming around. Spencer’s way of threatening him would’ve worked, too, he wagered, but Kaley’s method was getting it done her way so why mess with success? He could see the kid about to open up. Peter wanted the bad people caught, but more than anything he wanted to go home. Spencer believed he saw this in his eyes, and he was never wrong about people, not even children.
“We stayed in their basement for a long time,” Peter said. “But I don’t know how long. They came for me and the two boys, took us away.”
“What about the one girl?”
“They took her a couple days before. She never came back.” Now, some streetlights were appearing at regular intervals along the side of the road, here and there a gas station (Petrol station, Spencer thought, thinking of Zakhar).
The lights were bringing Peter and Kaley in and out of shadows. One streetlight swished by, bathing them in a pale yellow glow, and then the car went dark again. This happened a few more times. Spencer glanced at the two kids in the rearview mirror, and as the boy spoke, he could swear he saw something moving in the back seat, something crawling around in the darkness.
Spencer took another toke, relished it, exhaled slowly, and smiled.
The Subaru Forester was infested with a far-reaching evil. Kaley felt it permeating every corner. It didn’t matter how far she traveled, not at her school and not here in Siberia. It didn’t matter how fast the Subaru went. It didn’t even matter that she was in two places at once. The tear in the fabric between her world and the Deep was wherever she was. It moved with her, in both places, yet both of those places (Cartersville and Siberia) were one as far as the Prisoner and his Others were concerned. At least, that was her best guess.
The little SUV slid and coasted, then steadied. Kaley never took her eyes off the boy, partly because he required a focused outpouring of courage from her, and partly because it took her attention off the swarm of things she knew was feeling their way through the waters. “After they took you out of the basement, where did you go next?” she asked.
“To a car. A red one…don’t know what kind. We drove for a long time.” Peter now spoke in a daze. He was almost adorable in his oversized clothes, but that face of his, it looked like what Kaley had seen in pictures where people came stepping out of a shelter after a bombing raid, shocked to the marrow of their bones, their minds stunned to the point of dumb inaction. Kaley could not control most of her powers, but she could control the one that alleviated pain and appeased suffering. At least she was good for that much.
“Where did they take you?”
“T-to a big place, like a warehouse. We stayed there a couple of days. Then, they put us in a van, and w-w-we didn’t come out of the van for a day…maybe two days, I dunno. They fed us, stopped in the woods where we could pee, and then handed us off to…some other people. They drove us to some docks somewhere. I was so tired and sleepy, but they kept us in the back of the van, watched by a man with a gun. At the docks…they…” He swallowed. “They put us in a large steel box, like the big boats carry. There were six others in there…they fed us, but then we just…I felt so tired, and I fell asleep.”
In the front seat, Spencer was nodding. “They fed ya some sleepin’ pills for the ride, so ya wouldn’t need to eat, an’ so ya wouldn’t panic an’ beat on the sides o’ the shipping containers. Smart.”
“It’s not smart,” Kaley snapped at him. “It’s cruel!”
“Smart and cruel,” he said, pointing a finger into the air, as if to say, Take that as a lesson, little girl.
“What happened next?” she said.
Peter sniffled. “I was in and out. I woke up when they opened the container again, when the light came through. A man was ready with a car. He said his name was Zakhar. I got in the back seat and…” He shook his head, tearing up.
“So that’s it?” Spencer said.
The boy nodded.
“I didn’t hear anything about At-ta Biral.” In the rearview mirror, he eyed Kaley. She looked right back at him. Don’t you even think about it, asshole, she thought, aiming the threat at him and this time letting him get the gist of it.
Spencer smiled in the mirror. I warned you about issuing a command to me, little girl, came his voice, far more substantial in her mind than even the Prisoner’s had been. And I also told you the price for lyin’ to me. The boy doesn’t know anything. Not a damn thing I can work with. He was enjoying this. As much as he was angry at her for leading him on, Spencer also relished the chance to retaliate against others that had used him. Whenever he made a decision, especially one made as a follow-up to a threat, it was final. She’d never encountered a heart or mind more resolute than his.
Back in room 225, Mr. Boulier’s classroom, Kaley was just taking her seat. She put her bag beside her desk and took her seat, staring straight ahead for a moment before beginning to take her things out. Mr. Boulier already had his lesson written on the chalkboard:Read Chapter 14 and answer the Summary Questions at the end. Read the Short Bio on Genghis Khan at the end, then answer the questions I have written below.
Genghis Khan, she thought. Something resonated with her, something Spencer had said to her seven months ago about Khan, in that car ride away from Avery Street…
Class wasn’t yet settled, the tardy bell hadn’t yet rung. Tall, rotund Mr. Boulier sat in his swivel chair behind his desk, rocking gently back and forth, the chair squeaking in protest. He wore a pink button-up with a blue-and-white-striped tie, his gray hair was combed in a way to minimize his receding hairline, and his glasses were at the bottom of his nose. He looked down through those specs critically at a sheaf of paper in his hands.
To Peter, Kaley said, in a low voice, “What did you see at the docks? Were there any signs?” Outs
ide, more and more cars were swishing by. Now, Spencer began to slow down. Up ahead, there was a toll booth, and they were at the back of a line of cars to get through.
Peter thought for a moment, shook his head again. “Nothing was written in English. I didn’t…I didn’t…I didn’t know where I was…I…I…I want my Mommy!” he blurted suddenly, and buried his head in his hands. Kaley had felt the well of emotions building in him a full two seconds before the outburst came.
Spencer issued a warning. “Shut that boy up, if ya don’t want to attract attention up here.”
Kaley looked at the toll booth up ahead. “It wouldn’t be good for you, would it?”
“Not for you, either, little girl. Hush him up.”
She looked at the boy. “Peter—”
“Why did they hurt me?! Mommy! Mommy, why did they hurt me—”
“Peter, calm down. Ya hear?” Here came Nan and Jovita to the rescue again. “Listen, young man, you tell us where those people took you. The ones that hurt you. Give us something to work with, and I promise—I promise—we’ll get you back to your Mommy.”
“Who the hell are you talking to?” some kid in her class said. Some boy named Brian, a kid who always wore blue jeans shredded at the knees and frayed at the ankles, with a hippie’s tie-dyed shirt and bead necklace. His hair was perfectly parted and combed, though, a contradiction to the rest of him, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be a hippie or a preppie.
Brian stared at her, waiting for an answer. Kaley ignored him. “Peter,” she said. “Tell me. And we’ll get you to your Mommy.” She tried her hardest to focus on the love she bore for her sister, and aimed that at the boy.
Just as the tardy bell was ringing at CMS, the boy in the Subaru said, “Some…some birds. Like gulls. But not like the ones we saw when we went to the beach in France. Different ones.”
“Gulls?” Kaley said, excitedly. “Can you describe them?”
The boy sucked in his lower lip, gulped hard, wiped away another tear. “Mostly white, with yellow bellies, and wide black bills. I saw a bunch of ’em…circling overhead, just above the car that…that…Zakhar put me in.”
“Anything else about the docks? Anything else you can remember?”
Peter shook his head morosely. “No.” He buried his head in his hands again.
In the front seat, Spencer had just paid the toll and the Subaru trundled on through, the booth’s operator never even giving a second look into the back seat. “That’s it, then,” said the psychopath. “The kid knows nothin’. I’m pullin’ over up ahead, an’ if he hasn’t divulged anything else by then—”
“We can find the docks!” Kaley hissed, trying to keep her voice down in Mr. Boulier’s class.
“—I’ll blow his goddam brains out and I don’t care who sees.”
“I said, we can find the docks!”
“Yeah? How we gonna do that?”
“The Internet. You have iPhones—”
“I’m not getting any reception anymore,” he said, tossing one of the phones back to her. “Storm’s gotten too bad, I guess. An’ the GPS I took from those SUVs back there isn’t working. Besides that, I’m just gettin’ plain tired of your delays. Either this kid knows somethin’ or he doesn’t—”
“I’ll look it up,” she pleaded. “Just leave him be!”
“You don’t have a computer—”
“In the library. Downstairs!” Kaley stood up and started walking towards the door. “Mr. Boulier, I need to go to the library.”
The older man lowered the sheaf of paper he’d been inspecting. “Why?” Short and to the point. A man of few words and even less patience, Mr. Boulier had always had a great deal of mistrust towards all students, at least as far Kaley knew. She could sense it in him, some deep burning suspicion that somehow, somewhere, many things were being pulled behind his back. His paranoia had been with him all his life, weighing him down, holding him back from making any real friends—this was evident by varying degrees of stinginess, loneliness, and a disliking for optimists, which Kaley also sensed in him.
“I think I forgot two of my notebooks there yesterday,” Kaley improvised. “One for this class, and the other is a sketchbook for Ms. Hurgess’s art class.”
“You won’t be needing your notebook in my class today,” he said, tossing the sheaf onto the desk and pulling up the roll call sheet. “Take a seat.”
“But I really need to—”
“Take a seat,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.
In Russia, on a long stretch of highway that had gone completely dark and covered in snow, Spencer Pelletier was looking for a place on the side of the road to pull over, and Kaley could see into his mind. The man wasn’t bluffing. He was insane, and would prove to her that it didn’t end well for people who ordered him around or lied to him.
Kaley turned and stepped out of Mr. Boulier’s classroom. And just as he was shouting “Hey!” she did something else reflexive. A feedback, a loop of his emotions, siphoned through her and reformed, gladdened, all of the pessimism removed. It took a bit to mollify him, because he felt undermined by her sheer audacity, but Mr. Boulier stopped in his doorway, and just watched her go. Kaley didn’t know how long this effect would last—for all she knew, as soon as she got out of visual range of him, Mr. Boulier would call for the principal to retrieve her from the library. They might also send Officer Bauer, the female security guard that sometimes dropped by CMS and roamed the hallways.
I’ll take that chance.
“I’m on my way to the library,” she told Spencer, rushing down the steps, darting around a trio of nerdy boys she knew from fourth period who always talked about some video game called Skyrim.
“Better hurry,” he said. “I see a rest stop up ahead. Looks like a nice place to pull over.”
The flames had been licking high above the treetops, signaling the problem well before Shcherbakov got there.
The snow had gotten heavier and more hard-packed. The Priora did well enough on city streets in snow and ice, but these rough country roads were tough even at the best of times.
The Grey Wolf switched off his headlights well before he reached the cabin. He had only gone as far as it took to come just within sight of the lake and the burning lodge, then parked and got out, reached inside his coat, and unholstered his Beretta. He went to the trunk, removed the second satchel filled with tactical gear he’d needed in case Vasilisa Rubashkin had been late to her apartment, and in case circumstances had required him searching the house in the dark.
The winds picked up, knocking him sideways once. On the drive over, Shcherbakov had listened to the radio for weather reports. They were calling it the “Unpredictable Storm.” Apparently, it wasn’t supposed to be nearly this big, and at one point it had looked like it was going to suddenly slow down, even die off. But it hadn’t. It had now gained strength again, and was headed for a level of ferocity Shcherbakov hadn’t seen since he was as boy.
With his pistol aimed at the earth, he moved slowly between a few trees. No need to rush now, he thought. They’re likely all dead. An inferno like that was no accident; no one had just left the oven on, he was sure of that much. Shcherbakov pulled on the night-vision goggles, scanned the front yard. Two bodies lay inert and most likely dead near a dark SUV. He did a slow parabola curve around the house—no one could be inside that blazing mess, so if anyone had remained behind to lay an ambush, they were going to be in these trees somewhere.
The NVGs also had an IR setting, but nothing was showing on infrared. Nothing, of course, besides the lodge. If there was anybody out here, they had buried themselves beneath the snow. Shcherbakov thought that highly unlikely. Still, if it was even a possibility, it was worth checking.
His wide, parabola-curve search took him almost ten minutes, prowling for footprints in the snow leading away from the house. A person could be slick as they wanted, but unless they could levitate, they would leave some kind of trail out here. Even if the tracks wer
e being covered, there would still be noticeable indentions in the snow. When he finally approached the house, he paused to investigate the five dead bodies lying at the back of the house, one of them cooking up on the porch. He could go no further; any closer to the house and the heat and smoke would just be too oppressive. The cooking man would have to remain cooking for the time being.
By their faces, Shcherbakov knew only one of the dead men. Semyon Travkin. A decent man, but an even better hitter. So how did he take a bullet to the head, and from the side, standing amidst his comrades, all of them armed, and yet no dead enemy to be seen? The Grey Wolf knelt by Semyon’s side, then leaned over and sniffed at his neck. Gunpowder residue all over him. He was shot at close range. Gun pressed to his neck.
Shcherbakov stood up, removed his NVGs, and by the intense firelight he scanned the blood spatter patterns. The snow hadn’t buried it all, not by far. He checked the alpha angles on a few of the spatter marks—that is, the impact angle of the bloodstain path moving outward—and did a few rough estimates.
As a professional interested in the many facets in his trade, Shcherbakov had purchased many books on forensic analysis, and had even paid to take forensics classes from two family members who worked in the blood labs of Novosibirsk Police, and, while not the world’s leading authority, he now knew enough to obscure the details of a crime scene when leaving one if necessary. As a result, he knew the fundamentals of piecing together the events of a bloody crime.
He stood right here, he thought, looking around at the bodies. He held Semyon hostage for a moment, used him as a human shield, then started firing. The Grey Wolf glanced behind him. The SUV wasn’t too far away. Was he going for it? Perhaps, but if so, why didn’t he take it?
The house crackled and spat, and heated glass snapped while he pondered. Shcherbakov saw the blood trail leading from the center of the other corpses up to the porch. He dragged that one, he thought. An interrogation? He nodded to himself. Probably. If that was so, then their killer(s) likely had some information on the families or their operations, perhaps both.