Then she spun and hobbled toward the cruiser, a state trooper car, cutting between the two vehicles, making it nearly impossible for Wacko to see her in the driver’s side mirror. The rain stung her cheeks, her eyes. Her soggy sneakers slapped the pavement. She yanked open the door of the cruiser, and as she scrambled inside, two shots rang out, echoing across the empty road.
Mira hunkered down against the seat, shivering from the cold; shudders of terror ripped through her and she prayed that the cop had shot Wacko. In the event that it was the other way around, that she had shot him, she hoped that Wacko would think Mira had shouted from inside the trailer and would take off.
The wind whistled around the cruiser, rain pounded the windshield. No keys in the ignition. But there was a radio. Mira grabbed the mike, pressed the button on the side, spoke softly, urgently. “Hello, Mayday, Mayday, this is a Mayday, is anyone there?”
Despite her five years with Sheppard, she didn’t have any idea what the protocol was on a police radio. Were you supposed to say “Mayday”? And just how the hell did this thing work, anyway?
She dropped the mike and raised up, slowly, carefully, her heart pounding in her throat, and peered over the curve of the steering wheel. And suddenly the cop appeared, running toward the cruiser, and Mira frantically waved her arms and realized he couldn’t see her because of the rain. She hurled open the door and scrambled out, rain hammering her face and eyes, and stumbled toward him.
The wind whipped his hat away, he faltered, and then he toppled forward like a little tin soldier that some malicious kid had knocked down. It wasn’t until he struck the ground face first that she realized her own need had blinded her, twisted her perceptions. He hadn’t stumbled, and he hadn’t been running back to the cruiser to call for backup. He’d been shot and was fleeing, and now he was dead.
And when her head snapped up, Wacko struck her in the temple with the gun. Stars burst in Mira’s eyes, she felt herself going down—and then shot upward again and rammed Wacko in the chest. Wacko stumbled back, the gun went off, and she tripped over the cop’s body and sprawled gracelessly in the road. Mira’s only thought was to get away, to escape, to run like hell. And so she ran, but Wacko lunged at her, grabbing onto her bad leg, her injured leg, and Mira fell.
After that, she wasn’t sure of the sequence of events.
Everything ran together like warm butter, the sequence didn’t matter. She was fucked.
Time blinked off and on. Rain, darkness, pain. Rain, darkness, pain. Then: she was inside the Rover, behind the wheel, Wacko shrieking, “Drive, Freak, drive.”
The gun was jammed to Mira’s temple, pressed so hard into the skin that it seemed she and the gun were one, they had gone into a kind of Spock mind-meld, with the metal coughing up Wacko’s secrets. Shoot her now, do it now, doitdoitdoit.
Foot to the accelerator. Hands gripping the wheel. Rain streaming down. Thigh on fire. Blood soaking her jeans.
…leaning over the little boy’s body, whispering...
What? What was Wacko whispering?
Off again.
On again. Wacko screaming, “Turn, slow and turn. Jesus, where’d you learn to drive?”
Brake, slow down. Turn wheel to the left. Good, she was doing good, except that she could barely see the road.
The tires kicked up pebbles, dirt, mud. The Rover slammed through potholes. The headlights burned through the darkness, revealing massive trees to either side of her.
“Slow down,” Wacko yelled.
“Then take the fucking gun away from my head,” Mira shouted.
The pressure of the gun against her temple vanished. But the gun didn’t go very far away. It poked into her ribs now, a hard, constant pressure, and Wacko described in graphic detail what a shot at point-blank range would do to Mira. She got it. Even though she wasn’t afraid to die, even though she knew death was just another transition, she didn’t want to die. Not yet, not here, not like this.
“Follow the road.”
“It’s not a road, it’s a goddamn footpath.”
They passed the crumbling ruin of an old house. “It’s the summer place,” Wacko said. “I didn’t want to bring you here, it wasn’t in the original pattern. But we’re fully into Plan B now. Dean almost drowned here one summer. It was Keith’s fault, the whole thing was Keith’s fault. And afterward he felt so guilty he taught Dean how to swim.” She giggled. “I lost my virginity here, up in the loft of the old barn. It’s still standing, see it over there?”
No, Mira didn’t see it. She could barely keep her eyes focused on the road. When had it gotten so dark? What day was it? What time? Who cares? Think, think, we’re coming down to the wire here. She’s going to hang you, skin you alive.
Gun in her ribs. Bleeding in her thigh. Stitches torn, ripped out, she was on her own.
“Through here,” Wacko said.
“There’s no road.”
“You can get through. Drive, Freak, just drive.”
Mira drove until they ran out of road. Until the Rover stood at the lip of a sinkhole, the beams of the headlights shooting out over the still black waters.
“Get out,” Wacko said, her voice strangely calm, even, almost soft. “End of the line.”
The Rover idled, the rain fell, and the wind blew, shuddering through the trees. Her thigh screamed, her temple throbbed; she felt the hot, insistent pressure of the gun in her ribs.
“I said, get out, Freak.”
Fuck you.
And Mira floored the gas pedal.
Chapter 25
1
The chopper came down through the pounding rain and the rapidly fading light, and landed in a field just past the abandoned police car. Sheppard leaped out, Curry and Lia close behind him, and loped across the slippery grass. His raincoat flapped at his knees, the blowing rain stung his cheeks like needles.
They had spotted the cruiser from the air, while the pilot had been looking for a place to land because of the inclement weather. The pilot had made one low pass and Sheppard had seen the body sprawled on the ground near the cruiser, a sure sign that Allie Hart had passed this way. Like some rampaging force of nature, she left bodies strewn in her path.
Sheppard reached the body first and turned it over. A young guy, less than thirty. He’d been shot twice, from what Sheppard could tell, once in the shoulder and again in the abdomen. His skin was still faintly warm and the water that streamed around him was pinkish, not red. Sheppard guessed he’d been dead for maybe fifteen minutes.
Sheppard patted him down quickly, found his car keys, took his weapon. “What do you want to do?” Curry asked.
“Get him into the chopper. Then we’ll take the cruiser.” Sheppard tossed the car keys to Lia and she hurried over to the cruiser while Sheppard and Curry picked up the dead cop and carried him over to the chopper. They set him on the floor and Sheppard shouted at the pilot to get the body to the nearest state trooper headquarters as soon as he could take off again. Then he and Curry grabbed their bags and raced back to the cruiser.
Lia was already behind the wheel, revving the engine. Curry got into the front seat with her, Sheppard scrambled into the back with the bags. “The radio’s been destroyed,” Lia said as she swerved out onto the road.
“It looks like a rabid animal went after it,” Curry added. “She’s definitely gone over the edge.”
“She went over the edge years ago,” Lia remarked.
The words filled Sheppard with an elemental dread. At this point backup wouldn’t arrive in time to help them. He unzipped his bag, brought out a flashlight, his SIG, Goot’s Beretta, and the cop’s weapon. “Can you shoot a gun, Keith?”
“Yes.”
Sheppard passed him the Beretta. “Lia?”
“I’ve shot one, but I’m no gun whiz, Shep.”
“It’s for defense.” He passed her the cop’s weapon. “The turnoff is just ahead,” Curry said, pointing. “It’ll be on the left, Lia.”
“How far in is the far
m from the turnoff?” Lia asked.
“Maybe half a mile,” Curry replied. “But she’ll hear the car if we get too close.”
“The rain will mask some of the noise,” Sheppard said, leaning forward. “Let’s play it by ear.” He wondered if Mira’s future had shrunk to minutes or to mere seconds. “Step on it, Lia.”
Moments later, the cruiser whipped into a turn and slammed onto a dirt road. Trees rose on either side of them like thick, wet walls. The cruiser bounced down into a ravine of mud; the tires spun, the engine died.
“We’re stuck,” Lia muttered, and threw the gearshift into reverse, forward, reverse again, trying to rock it out of the hole. The engine flooded. She turned it off.
“Fuck that,” Sheppard said, and hurled open the door and leaped out, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other.
2
The Rover’s engine shrieked, the tires spun, and for seconds Allie couldn’t believe what her senses told her. The freak was going to take them into the sinkhole. Them.
She didn’t intend to drown. It’s not in the pattern.
Then the car suddenly dipped and Allie realized that the combined pressure of the Rover and the trailer was too much for ground already eaten away by the relentless assault of the rain—and the subterranean springs and rivers that fed the sinkhole. Like the little figure in the old-fashioned Pac-Man games, the water had an insatiable appetite and eventually there was nothing left beneath the surface and it caved in.
Allie’s brief distraction nearly proved fatal. Mira suddenly whipped sideways and her arms or her hands struck Allie in the side of the head and she fell back into the passenger window. Her finger jerked back on the trigger and the gun went off, blowing out the rear window. In such close quarters, it was as if a bomb had detonated inside Allie’s skull. Her ears rang and the reverberation sang through her bones and blood. And then the freak was on her, pummeling her with her fists, biting her, clawing, her wild, primitive fury driving Allie down into the seat.
Allie struggled, one hand grappling for the door lever, the other clawing at Mira’s face, her chest, whatever she could grab onto. But she had no leverage, she’d lost her grip on the gun, and now the freak’s hands tightened around her throat, tightened until darkness swam in Allie’s peripheral vision. She jerked her knees toward her chest and they struck the small of Mira’s back. She reared up, gasping, her hands loosening just enough so that Allie could breathe. That single breath revived her and she snapped forward at the waist, the heels of her hands aimed at the freak’s windpipe.
But the freak grabbed onto Allie’s hands, twisting them, and slammed her forehead into Allie’s. She fell back again, pain shuddering through her skull, the shock of it echoing through her teeth and gums, eye sockets and sinuses. She thought she blacked out briefly, because the next thing she knew, the driver’s door was open, Mira was gone. More ground gave way under the car and the Rover tilted into a steeper angle.
Allie scooped up her weapon and her flashlight and scrambled out of the car.
3
Mira had rolled under the trailer and huddled against a tire, her body drawn into a tight ball. She struggled to stay conscious, to make herself small, to blend into the deep shadows. The Rover’s headlights were still on, and in the ghostly backwash, she could see Wacko’s legs, her feet.
Don’t look under here, please, don’t...
She dug into the pocket of Nick’s jacket, looking for the knife, but realized she had left it inside the trailer. She knew that Wacko’s weapon had fallen to the floor of the Rover and wished she had scooped it up and hurled it into the sinkhole. Then they would have an equal advantage. But she’d been in too big a hurry to escape, to run, to get the hell away from the wacko. Now she struggled not to shiver and kept her mouth clamped shut to keep her teeth from chattering.
Wacko stood about four feet from the trailer, turning slowly in place, the beam of her flashlight moving as she moved. Mira pressed more tightly to the tire, arms wrapped around her knees, her forehead pressed into her bleeding thigh.
The beam passed just in front of her, inches from the tip of her shoes.
No, no, no...
And then the light went away, shining off into the trees.
Mira flattened out against the ground, arms sinking into the mud, and crawled toward the opposite tire, propelling herself with the tips of her sneakers, fingers hooked like claws and sinking into the mud, seeking something to grab onto. She crawled out from under the trailer, stood on legs that threatened to collapse any second—and Wacko slammed into her from the side and they crashed through the door of the trailer. They rolled across the floor, locked together, and suddenly the trailer shifted into a thirty-degree angle and they rolled through the galley.
Mira screamed and the Rover shifted again and she managed to free an arm, a leg, and then her other leg. And suddenly she was on her feet, moving against the angle of the trailer as though she were on a treadmill. The temperature in the trailer suddenly plunged, the lights winked on, off, and on again, and then maintained a dim but steady glow.
And then between her and Wacko, a shape seemed to materialize from the cold, as though the cold itself were giving it form, life.
“What the fuck,” Wacko said, her voice choked, soft, and terrified.
As the shape drifted toward Mira, it assumed greater clarity and detail, and Mira heard a quiet, familiar voice in her mind. May I? Dean asked.
4
Allie’s senses told her that the air in the trailer had turned bitterly cold, that a soft glowing shape that looked vaguely human now drifted toward Mira, and then seemed to cover her or slip inside her with the ease of a lover. Allie’s senses recorded it all, but nothing registered. She had no concept that fit or described this impossible strangeness.
Her arm jerked up and she squeezed the trigger—and nothing happened. The gun had jammed. Allie wrenched back. Mira’s body twitched, her eyes opened wide, and it seemed that her face began to shift, change, to rearrange itself. One moment she looked like herself, the psychic freak, and the next moment she looked male. “Allie, Allie,” Mira said in Dean’s voice. “Give it up. First Ray, then four people in the cabin, then the cop... It ends here.”
Ailie’s jaw dropped open, her gun fell from her hand, and she started to scream.
5
She and Tom are lying on a thick rug in front of the wood-burning stove, his hands moving over her with such familiarity…
And at the same time, Mira was aware of a presence sharing her physical body, her perceptions, using her senses... and aware of Wacko’s screams.
Tom holds her tightly and she begs him not to go, not yet, please.
Images exploded inside her skull, events from Dean’s life, Wacko holding little Ray underwater while his arms flailed, his legs kicked, and she kept holding him, holding him, shaking her head. No, no, six is one too many....
And Tom touches his fingers to her mouth. “I’m never far away.”
And now Wacko carried Ray’s lifeless body out of the pool and set him on the ground....
And the screaming went on.
6
It was a sound so primal that it took Curry a moment or two to realize it was human and that it was coming from someplace very close by. He raced toward it, crashing through underbrush and low-hanging branches, and emerged in a small clearing where the sinkhole was.
A trailer was hitched to his sister’s Land Rover, which was tipped at a steep angle, the headlights shining down into the water, the ground beneath it crumbling, the trailer listing to the left.
Curry burst into the trailer like some foul and random wind, clutching the Beretta in front of him, his adrenaline pumping. The air inside was as cold as the Arctic in the dead of winter, so cold he could see his breath in the strange, muted light that seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere. His sister was pressed up against the wall, eyes as wide as dinner plates, hands curled into tight fists under her chin. The scream came from her, a scream tha
t alternated between a wail and a weird, staccato burst of air.
“Keith,” Mira said.
But the voice was deep, familiar, and when Mira turned, when she looked at him, Curry saw his brother Dean’s eyes, nose, chin, and mouth superimposed over Mira’s.
“I never had a chance to thank you,” Dean said.
And then Lia and Sheppard came through the door and Mira turned to her and held her arms open and spoke in that voice that was not her own. Lia uttered Dean’s name, the word falling from her mouth like a stone; then she was moving toward Mira and Curry simply stood there, unable to take it all in.
Mira’s appearance shifted, transformed, seemed to flow endlessly from male to female and back again. In one moment she looked taller, more robust, her hair so blond it was nearly white, and in the next moment she looked like herself again. Curry felt as though he had fallen through Alice’s looking glass.
Frost now covered the windows. The air in the trailer grew colder and colder. Allie kept screaming, Lia was in Mira’s arms, and Sheppard just stood there in a kind of shock.
Then Allie stopped screaming and the abrupt silence was somehow worse, more ominous, and she lunged toward her fallen gun, swept it up, and aimed it at Mira and Lia.
The ground seemed to heave, like some huge giant expelling his breath, and the trailer shifted violently, throwing them all to one side. Curry hurled himself at Lia, knocking her out of Allie’s way, and Sheppard fired. The first shot shattered the windows behind Allie, the second hit her hand and she shrieked and dropped her weapon, and the third shot struck her in the shoulder and she fell back, clutching it, her face seized up in shock.
The Rover struck the water and began to sink. The trailer, subjected to impossible pressure, shrieked and moaned and squealed as joints and screws and metal surrendered to the inevitable. It snapped into a forty-five-degree angle. Cabinet doors swung open, dishes tumbled out and shattered against the floor. Canned goods rolled down the steep slope, following the forward tilt of the trailer. The lights winked off and on, and Curry, still gripping Lia’s arm, scrambled toward the door.
Total Silence Page 32