by Chad Huskins
Shcherbakov knelt to check out a pair of shell casings, turned them over in his hand. He stood, turned around and around, admiring the work. A decent shot, but not a superb one. It was a messy gunfight. He somehow got the drop on them, or else they would’ve blown him away once Semyon was down. They must’ve been severely distracted by something else to let this happen. The Wolf knew something else, too. I just missed him. This was all very recent, so he couldn’t have gotten much information out of the cooking man—
“Help!” someone cried.
Shcherbakov spun. The plea had come through the high winds, but it was so terribly distant and he couldn’t trace the source. He pulled his NVGs back on. Using night-vision, he could only see the wall of falling snow all around him. He switched to IR, and for a moment saw nothing at all. Then, a small, red-orange dot appeared on his screen. It was bobbing up and down, and getting closer.
The Wolf held up his pistol, and knelt. He took careful aim. “Help!” Whoever it was, they were still coming closer. Perhaps they had spotted him against the blazing fire behind him. Shcherbakov knew that his dark silhouette would stand out against the inferno. “Help!” He took careful aim, and waited. As the person got closer, two more red-orange images emerged behind them. Then a third. Then a fourth and a fifth. Now a sixth. “Help!” Shcherbakov never let his aim waver. As the person approached, he saw their dimensions take shape—arms and a head, and then finally the legs—and just as he was about to call out to the person to halt, six more red-orange dots emerged behind them, chasing them down.
Wolves.
Shcherbakov switched back to night-vision. The man approaching looked familiar, no doubt one of Semyon’s gang that had fled when the shooting started. Shcherbakov took aim at the lead wolf and fired, but just as he did, the ten or so predators leapt onto the man, pulled him down, and consumed him. He got out one more scream before Shcherbakov opened fire on the wolves. He hit a few of the animals, but the others were too determined. And they were too many. Now six more emerged from the cold forests. Now eight more. Now five more. His comrade’s final screams were lost amidst their ravenous growls.
Shcherbakov backed away, somewhat stunned. He had the good sense to move towards the burning house. All animals feared fire, after all. He heard a single howl on the wind. A call to the rest of the pack that dinner was served. Good god. And this is the land Zakhar Ogorodnikov clung to? Thinking on it a moment longer, he figured that was part of what Zakhar would need to keep his playthings in, and strangers out.
It was a few more minutes before he got over the shocking scene. Then, he switched back to IR and looked all around. More red-orange dots were moving all around him, just within the curtain of cold forest. There could be dozens all around me. Hundreds.
He moved with greater purpose now, searching around the house some more, finding one more corpse behind a shed, a large fellow that Shcherbakov thought he recognized. Wasn’t his name Yulian or something like that?
More howls from the woods.
By the time he was going into the front yard to inspect the two dead bodies by the SUV, Shcherbakov already had his cell phone in his hands, about to make the call. He paused. He recognized one of these men’s faces right away. Timofei Derzhavin. The small family gathering six years ago. Shcherbakov recalled it now. It had happened at the hall in Saint Petersburg, during the once-a-year family reunion, the only one in the last ten years he hadn’t been too busy to attend. He removed one of his gloves, touched Timofei’s face, gauged his body temperature. The first one to die.
Well, maybe not the first one. On the front porch was another corpse, this one’s pant leg just starting to catch flame. Shcherbakov took a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it against his face. The front porch wasn’t as badly engulfed as the rest of the house, not just yet anyway, so he moved up onto the porch and, using his foot to roll the body over, discovered Zakhar Ogorodnikov was dead. It came as absolutely no surprise.
When he finally made the call, it only got off half a ring before Zverev’s voice came on at once. “What went wrong?” He knew something wasn’t right because it was Shcherbakov calling him and no one else.
“They’re all dead.”
“What? All of them?”
“Yes,” he said, starting the walk back to his car. “Send someone to take care of our friends.” He said “our friends” just in case Interpol, FSB, or Chelyabinsk Police were listening. They were listening far more these days. “Also, send someone to put out a fire. The cabin’s far enough from the road that no one will see it, but it’ll probably still be smoking come dawn, and that could be seen from far away.”
“Why don’t you get rid of the—our friends yourself?”
“I’m surrounded.”
A short pause. “By who?”
“Wolves. A massive pack. They took down the last survivor before I had a chance to save him.”
“Wolves?”
Some growling and snarling from somewhere far off. A fight breaking out amongst two or three others in the pack.
“Just get someone down here to clean it up. I don’t have enough firepower to keep these animals at bay while gathering up our friends. Besides, I’m on to something else.”
“What else?”
Shcherbakov paused in front of the shed just in front of the house. He used his cell phone to take a picture of the tire tracks in the snow, up close and from four different angles. On the phone itself, Zverev was still shouting at him, “What else?” He finished taking a fifth photo and put the phone to his ear. “Tell me, cousin, do you know what kind of car Ogorodnikov drove?”
When Kaley stepped into the library, Mrs. Sanchez was standing behind the desk sorting out returned books. The librarian glanced up at Kaley and opened her mouth. Perhaps Mrs. Sanchez was about to ask her just what she presumed to be doing here with classes about to start, but something caused her to swallow her question. Kaley couldn’t be certain—maybe it was the determined way she was walking, maybe Mrs. Sanchez just realized she didn’t really care all that much, or maybe it wasn’t all that uncommon for students to be sent to the library on errands by their teachers—but she believed it had something to do with her charm.
The boy’s fear was on Kaley’s palate, and it was mixing with her own variegated fears—fears of the Prisoner, fears from those Others in the Deep, but (and this was the strange part) most of all fears of Spencer. In that moment, despite every other strange and horrific thing she had seen, Spencer’s resoluteness to harm the boy eclipsed all other matters. Later, upon reflection, Kaley would realize she was unconsciously sending these fears out in all directions. The fears permeated the walls, soaked every book in the library, and drenched poor Mrs. Sanchez into almost paralysis. Perhaps a tingle went up the librarian’s spine, a worry that Kaley might be one of these bullied kids bringing a gun to school, that she, Mrs. Sanchez, would have her face on the six o’clock news with the caption beneath her picture reading THE FIRST VICTIM OF CARTERSVILLE MIDDLE SCHOOL MASSACRE. Or maybe, just maybe, on some level Mrs. Sanchez got a taste of that quaking evil in Kaley’s world, maybe she even thought she saw things moving around her feet, and heard the voices that made up the fugue…
Whatever the case, Kaley wasn’t stopped by the librarian, nor was she questioned at all by anyone else exiting the library—two students and one teacher, who, incidentally, appeared to be exiting the library with a little more haste than one might expect, and with a degree of worry written about their faces. That is, if Kaley wasn’t just imagining it all, and she didn’t think she was. Spencer’s affecting me, and I’m affecting everyone around me.
No excuse was therefore needed when she sat down at the middle computer in the small lab at the far end of the library, and logged on using her Student ID. Just as every other place she went, every surface in the library was coated in a watery film. And like all other places, there were things swimming beneath the floor, and up on the ceiling. Poking, prodding, testing.
“Spencer,
” she said. “I’m there. Just hold on. Please?” she added. “I’m there, I’m looking it up. Okay? It’s going to be okay.”
“I know it is,” he said coolly, pulling the SUV over into the right lane, which petered off to the side into a parking lot for the rest stop. Beside her in the back seat, the boy was looking up, eyes looking around like he was waking from a dream, gauging reality, testing its authenticity. Was he really here? Was this really happening?
“I’m looking it up,” she repeated. She clicked on the little “e” icon at the bottom of the desktop to bring up Internet Explorer…and it was slow coming. Agonizingly slow. “C’mon, c’mon,” she whispered. A white screen, a rotating circle at the top telling her that the computer was working on its connection. Finally, after an eternity, and after Spencer had pulled into the parking lot and began circling to look for a spot, the page came up. She could feel his anticipation so much her own hands started shaking. Nervously tapping at the keys, she brought up Google and typed in “gulls with yellow bellies in Russia.” She clicked SEARCH, and it came up with “Did you mean: yellow-bellied terns.”
“No,” she whispered. Around her feet, something slithered. “Gulls. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…” Her eyes had started watering again—it was a wonder she had any water left in her body, for all the tears spilled today—and her hands tried rewording the search: “small gulls in Russia” and “small yellow Russian gulls” and “gulls of Russia.” That last one brought up a lot of possibilities. She clicked on the top option, a list on Wikipedia, and she scrolled and scrolled. There was over a hundred.
“Heeeere we go,” Spencer said, pulling into a parking spot directly under a lamppost. He stopped, put the SUV in park.
“No, wait, hold on! I’ve almost got it!”
“So do I,” he said, and pulled out his Glock with every intention of using it. The glee that was emanating off of him, mixed with the boy’s wondrous fear…it was almost too much to bear.
“No…no, I’ve got it.” And maybe she did. He said it was like a gull, but not like the ones he saw in France, different ones. Maybe it’s not a gull at all. Kaley went back to her original search string: “gulls with yellow bellies in Russia.” At the top was the same suggestion as before: “Did you mean: yellow-bellied terns.”
She clicked on it. At the very top was another Wikipedia entry: Yellow-bellied Tern. She clicked on that, and here was an article with pictures, and with something very much like what Peter had described: totally white except for strips of yellow on their bellies, with wide, flat bills that were fat enough to look kind of like the gulls she’d seen on TV. Not a gull at all, but kind of like one.
“All righty,” Spencer said, turning around in the seat.
“Wait! I’ve g—”
“Time’s up.” The Glock was at the kid’s face.
“Chelyabinsk!” she screamed. Spencer slowly turned to her. In the library, Kaley saw Mrs. Sanchez poke her head around the corner and give her a queer look. “They’re rare! Nowhere else in the world but in a place called Chelyabinsk, or however you say it! On the Miass River!” In the SUV she looked at him with pleading eyes, while in the library her eyes remained fixed on the screen, still scrolling. Mrs. Sanchez, perhaps still under Kaley’s spell of fear, disappeared back around the corner. Quick as she could, Kaley clicked on the blue-highlighted words MIASS RIVER and found that it was home to a few ports. “M-main ports are Kras…Krasno…Krasnoufimsk?” she struggled to pronounce. “A-a-and the Ruffa Docks. Both are at the m-mouth of the river. The Ruffa Docks are best known f-f-for the flocks of yellow-bellied terns that stay there year-round, even during this time of year when the Miass freezes over. Their bills help them peck into the ice and wedge portions open, especially the sh-shallow parts where some f-f-fish get trapped.” She was rambling now, just trying to throw as much information at the psychopath as possible, keeping him occupied and hoping the litany of facts would keep him—
The gun went off, and in both worlds Kaley screamed and turned away. She remained so still, her eyes clenched shut, and her body quivering.
“Did you hear?” said the Prisoner. She knew it was his voice. His stood out in the fugue. “Do you feel? She’s weakening. She cannot keep the gap hidden from us much longer. It’s there. Do you feel it? Do you?” The Others answered. A sound like lust leaked into her heart, mind, and marrow. A song of such rapture she fell into despair. The only thing that brought her back was the presence of something else. The presence of fear. The boy’s fear. This was how Kaley knew he was still alive.
When she finally dared to pry her eyes open again and look, Kaley sighed so heavily she thought she might never inhale again. Peter was alive. Terrified, head turned against his seat, eyes shut and hands over his ears, but alive. A smoking bullet hole was in the back rest just between him and her.
Kaley looked at Spencer, panting. “H-he’s a diabetic,” she whispered, fuming at him. The monster was looking back at her, and all she sensed in him was cold indifference. “Stress will only make him more likely to bottom out. I know that much about diabetics, you…” She bit her tongue. Insulting him would only push him more. “It’s n-n-not smart to…that is…I don’t think we should scare him anymore.” She swallowed a lump in her throat.
Spencer remained stoic. Only moments ago, he had been positively ecstatic about teaching her the lesson of playing him, and now, having gotten what he wanted, and having tasted both her fear and Peter’s, the beast seemed sated. My God, she thought, he’s no different…no different than the Prisoner. Indeed, it seemed the only thing separating the two of them was a thin film between planes and a few million millennia in age.
Slowly, the psychopath put the safety back on his gun and tucked it back inside Zakhar’s black jacket. Never taking his eyes off of her, he said, “Ya got Google Maps on that thing?”
In the Subaru, Kaley couldn’t move. Back in the library, her body jumped into action as though she’d touched a stripped live wire. Five seconds later, she had it on her screen. “Uh, yes, y-y-yeah,” she whispered. “Got it right here.”
“We’re on Highway M-51,” he said conversationally, as though he hadn’t just been about to murder a child in cold blood. “See what the route looks like from here to the port.” He turned around in his seat, put the Forester in reverse, and backed out. Kaley was trembling, but Spencer neither looked nor felt tense to her. Muscles, mind, and pulse were all relaxed. He even calmly waved another car ahead of him on his way out of the parking lot.
Seconds later, they were back on the highway. Ahead, through a dense curtain of snowfall that only seemed to be worsening, a glowing city was emerging. They passed a sign that had the same message (presumably) written in four different languages. The one in English said “Chelyabinsk, Ahed 2 km.” In some dim part of her mind, she noticed that the letter “a” was missing from the word ahead.
“W-we’re entering Chelyabinsk?” she asked. It was the same city that she’d brought up on the computer.
Spencer never answered her question. Beside her, Peter was still more or less in a fetal position. Kaley wanted to reach out and hold him, give him a reassuring kiss on the head, but couldn’t. Neither could she summon the emotional wherewithal to pull him back from the brink of fear and loneliness.
“You see?” said the Prisoner. “She’s weakening. She can no longer keep the wound closed.” Up until now, Kaley hadn’t really questioned the language the Prisoner and the Others were using. It was English, but probably only interpreted through her charm. Somehow, she understood that innately. Yet now that the Prisoner had used the word wound instead of opening or gap, she sat there, stunned and wondering about that usage.
“The wound you opened on Avery Street,” Spencer said from the front. “That’s what he means.” He’d already lit another cigarette, and was smoking it as nonchalantly as a man might while waiting on the bus on a sunny afternoon with nothing else to do. “You tore a hole in something, in this little ‘filmy divider’ of yours, and tha
t wound never fully healed.”
“You heard that?” she said. Part of her wanted to admonish him for terrorizing Peter, but she was just too exhausted at this point. Besides, this was Spencer Pelletier. Chastising him often brought about terribly penalties.
He shrugged, blew out some smoke. “I hear bits an’ pieces. Just like I hear little nuggets from your noggin.”
In both worlds, Kaley wiped her eyes. “How could he know about the wound? How could he have predicted it would happen at all?”
“He didn’t.” Another toke. He put on his blinker and merged left. “But like any prisoner lookin’ to get out, I reckon he waited patiently, observed, made friends, got rid of his enemies an’ obstacles, maybe figured out the guard patrols and shift changes. Then, one day, he found the hole in security, a tiny little gap that let in a ray of sunshine. Like any thief, hacker, or prisoner, he got his team together an’ exploited that gap.”
“How would you know—” She stopped herself. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”
And that confirmed it. Both of them were prisoners, and both of them had found their gaps. Now, Kaley found a new level of fear that was altogether paralyzing. If one considered how much pain and violence Spencer Adam Pelletier had spread once he escaped his prison, what might the Prisoner unleash once liberated from the Deep?
“You guys hungry?” Spencer asked in an upbeat, family-on-a-road-trip kind of tone. “I’m starvin’. Need to make a pit stop on the way to the port.”
They drove on in silence—Kaley, Spencer, and Peter—all in the same SUV, yet all living in separate worlds.
7
Her plane landed at 8:03 PM, Chelyabinsk time. Aurélie Rideau’s phone chimed as soon as she switched it back on. Four text messages were waiting on her. The very first one caused her to furrow her brow in consternation. I wonder how forthcoming Chelyabinsk’s finest will be about this tidbit of information, she thought, and put her phone away.