by Logan Fox
She’d wanted to say ‘alive’, but knew it would break down whatever walls Tina had put up to get her through this. Knew the woman would no longer be in command. Knew she wouldn’t be able to communicate everything that so desperately needed to be communicated.
“The gate,” Tina repeated, voice no longer directed down at Pearl. “Okay. Okay, honey.”
An absent hand stroked the side of Pearl’s face.
“Adam? Adam, I need you to focus real quick.”
The sound of Adam’s heavy breathing paused for a second.
“I need to leave for a few minutes. Help is on the way. They should be here in about five, ten minutes. Think you can hold out that long?”
Adam made a noise, but whether it was consent or protest, Pearl didn’t know.
Didn’t care.
Below her, Greg’s heart beat slowly in his chest. Behind her, Pearl could hear the sound of Morgan releasing that silent, watching audience.
She let her eyes open, blinking away a forlorn tear.
There was a pool of blood less than an inch away from Greg’s outstretched hand. It had already begun to congeal — a footprint stood proud in that irregular shape. But the rest of the puddle was still wet enough to show a vague reflection of the world back to her.
Adam, arms outstretched, as he manipulated someone’s chest. Adam, dipping down. The sound of air forced through someone’s mouth.
“Come on.” Adam’s voice. “Come on!”
Whether it had been five minutes or ten, Pearl had managed to slip into a short, hard sleep that ended violently when the crash of something metallic filled the Earth. She jerked, heart slamming into her chest, and spun to face the door.
She’d been crying — her cheek was wet where it had lain on Greg’s chest.
Pearl wiped absently at it with the back of her hand, staring groggily at the dark-uniformed man hurrying towards her.
The paramedic, one hand clasping a massive bag, faltered in his brisk walk when he saw her. His mouth moved, but whatever he said was too soft for her to hear. It looked like, ‘Holy shit’, but could just as easily have been ‘Oh my God.’
The clatter of stretchers and the murmur of voices coming from outside the Earth was near deafening.
Until the man turned and pulled the Earth’s doors closed. Light faded with the noise, cloaking the Earth in a dingy hush.
Pearl put her head down, trying to burrow into that warm coat as she snuggled against Greg. He wasn’t warm anymore — either that or she was now warmer than he was. But she could still hear his heart.
“Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?” That hesitant voice was laughable compared with Tina’s no-nonsense tone of before.
A shadow fell over her as the paramedics moved past. She was glad that Tina had brought her a robe — not only because it helped with the shivers, but because she didn’t know how she would have felt about a stranger seeing her naked.
A tiny giggle shook at her.
Strangers, seeing her naked?
“What’s your name?” the man asked, crouching beside her. “Can you tell me your name?”
A shudder coursed through her. Of course she knew her name. Who wouldn’t? She hadn’t gone crazy. She just didn’t want to leave Greg. Not until she knew he was okay. Why did no one get it?
“Pet,” she managed. It hadn’t been what she’d wanted to say. She’d wanted to say Pearl. Pearl was her name.
“Pet?” the man repeated. There was a click as he opened his bag. “That short for something?”
“Just Pet,” Pearl said.
Keith had to force his hands into action. They moved reluctantly, a voice in his head moaning incessantly about how he should have stayed in bed this morning. That headache he’d had on waking had transformed into something sullen and destructive. It thumped through his skull, making thought difficult. Had he been able to push aside the thought of how many people had died here today — how many might still die — then maybe, just maybe, he could’ve walked away.
But the girl draped over the patient beside him gave him pause. The way she clung to the guy under her, the way her thin body shook…
How much of this carnage had she witnessed?
He’d been to more than one murder scene in his time. There’d always been blood. Sometimes guts — he still thought of them like that, even though the textbooks he’d studied kept trying to force his mind to think intestines instead.
But not like this.
There was so much spilled blood in here, it made the air smell like pennies. It was stuck to the bottom of his shoe. There was so much of it everywhere that he’d had to put his jump bag halfway in a puddle of it — so much for pathogen procedures — or prop it on the dying guy’s chest if the girl ever got out of the way. She seemed intent on clinging to him until they loaded his gurney into the back of the ambulance.
Vital signs. He had to check for a pulse.
But he didn’t want to have to tell her she was holding onto a corpse either.
His hand moved, slowly, reluctantly. The girl shied away, but then relaxed when it became clear he didn’t want to touch her. She had a bunch of red paint smeared over her face. That, along with the altar, the pews, the flash of horned masks he’d seen…
This had to have been some kind of ritual.
Keith’s skin crawled at the thought. And here he was — just him and Chelsea — in the dark. In the blood.
“What’s his name, Pet?”
“G-Greg.”
“Greg?” Keith snatched his torch-pen from his pocket. And peeled away the guy’s lids. “Greg, can you hear me?”
“Can’t hear you,” the girl murmured.
“Greg?” Keith glanced at the girl, watching her from the corner of his eye as he found the guy’s hand. More blood. He ran his fingertips over the patient’s fingers, pausing for a second before pressing his nail into Greg’s nail bed.
His eyes flickered up to Greg’s face.
Nothing.
Shit.
Keith touched his fingertips to the guy’s throat. He could feel the faint thrum of life beneath the skin, and almost wilted with relief. This one they might save. The others…
He glanced to the side.
Nearby lay a heap of flesh. Whoever had shot him had made pretty damn sure he wasn’t getting up again. Keith looked down, eyes sliding past the blood. No gun. Hopefully the cop lady had taken care of that. The last thing he wanted was another Richardson case, where the damn perp had been playing possum.
“He’s got a pulse, Pet.” Keith tried for reassuring, probably got closer to condescending. What the hell kind of a name was Pet, anyway? What, like Petunia? Or… maybe… she did have a satin collar around her throat…
“That’s good,” he added, clearing his throat when the girl didn’t respond. “He’s doing good.”
She was probably in shock. He’d have to make sure she was good. But first…
“Can you move over a bit? I have to check for injuries.”
“Got hit on the head,” the girl said.
Pet pushed herself up on shuddering arms. She wore a thick, fur-lined robe — another reason why he was suspecting she was deep in shock — she shook, but with that robe it wasn’t from the cold.
“Know where?” Keith asked.
“Back.” The girl lifted her hand, pointing to the base of her skull. “Hard.” That finger moved, stabbed accusingly at that massive, unmoving bulk of man flesh behind Keith.
“Him. Motherfucker.” The words spat out of her, venomous and low.
“Okay.” Keith lifted a hand, gesturing at Chelsea. The woman was lugging her gear up the steps, eyes narrowed as she took in the scene. Stuff like this always made Chelsea mad. She hated senseless violence. But the angrier she got, the more focus she applied to her duties. He sometimes wished he could get mad. Instead he just became… sad.
“Uh… Pet, was it?” Keith looked back at the girl as he tugged a brace from his jump bag. “I need you to move again
. Have to get…”
But she was already scooting back. With that movement, her robe shifted and fell from her left shoulder.
Chelsea was facing them now, mouth tight with determination. She’d no doubt already cataloged the crime scene, noted which patients needed her first, and the best route to take without disturbing any critical evidence all without unnecessarily endangering the life of a patient.
But the woman stopped, eyes widening as she stared at the now half-naked girl in front of Keith. Those brown eyes of her were disbelieving, her mouth parting. Chelsea hurried up the remaining two steps and dropped her jump bag beside the girl with a thump that made the poor thing jerk like someone had whipped her.
Chelsea reached out to touch the nape of the girl’s neck.
“Those look infected,” Chelsea said. Her eyes flickered up. She planted a scathing glare on Keith. “You think to check her, Lawson?”
“She… she didn’t…”
But his words failed him.
No, he hadn’t thought to check her. She hadn’t turned to him, but she’d responded to his voice, had even answered his questions. The guy laying under her had needed him more. Possibly even the guy behind him, the one being given inexpert CPR by a man who looked about to pass out from shock.
But now he did check her.
His eyes roved her skinny, shuddering body with the same reluctance as when he’d first arrived.
They took in the girl’s paint-streaked face. The scratches over her cheeks and forehead. The visible patches of scalp where someone had yanked out sections of her hair. Her lips were moving. At first, he thought she was mumbling or trembling. But then he realized it was her tongue, exploring the gap where a tooth had so recently been.
That wasn’t just paint on her face.
It was blood.
And those wide, blue-grey eyes weren’t focused on him. They were staring at something else. Something internal. Infernal, perhaps.
“I’m taking her to the truck.”
“Pet,” Keith managed.
“What? Chelsea’s voice snapped out.
“Her name, I think, is Pet. That’s what… what she gave, anyway.”
“Pet?” Chelsea shook her head. “Okay… Pet.” She seemed loathe to use the word.
“Are you hurt anywhere else? Can I check?”
The girl shied away from Chelsea’s exploratory hand. Instead, the woman closed up that thick robe and tried to support her as they stood.
“Okay, let’s get you—”
The girl cried out then, face contorting. They both tumbled back to the floor, Chelsea barely managing to avoid having the girl fall over the unconscious man beneath them.
“What’s wrong?” Chelsea asked, eyes flickering to Keith when the girl’s contorted face didn’t clear.
Keith leaned across his patient, gripping the edge of the girl’s robe. He’d seen which leg had given way. When he tugged the robe away, his stomach went tight. He wouldn’t puke — he’d taught himself to get over that a long time ago — but there was nothing in the world that could have prevented that swell of nausea.
The girl’s leg had a wide, festering sore through the flesh. Someone had used a thick, black cord of some kind to crudely stitch the skin back together. But that measly attempt at healing had failed — stiff thread poked out between the torn flesh, ripped open by some or other trauma to the leg.
And then there were the rope burns. Keith forced a hard swallow.
“Jesus,” Keith muttered. “She needs a board.”
“So does everyone else in this goddamn place,” Chelsea said.
Surprisingly, the girl spoke. “Hurts,” she whispered.
“I know,” Keith said, forcing his eyes away from the wound. “We’re getting—”
“Feet,” the girl mumbled. “They hurt.”
Holy shit, he didn’t want to look. But he had to — it was his job.
The girl sat silent and unmoving on the edge of the gurney as Chelsea bandaged her feet. They’d found a dress for her — it was bright yellow and too revealing to be worn by someone so young — and had managed, on the third try, to get it over her head.
Now she’d slipped into something approaching catatonia, eyes fixed on the ambulance where Keith sat administering to the man she’d been draped over.
No wonder she’d been so pale. She had so many infected wounds on her body, Keith was amazed she was still alive. It did explain why she’d called herself Pet, instead of Pearl, which apparently was her real name.
He’d overheard a cop taking one of the hostages’s statements. Morgan — another young, pretty thing with close-cropped blond hair — had been downright chatty. Hysterical, almost, until one of the paramedics had given her a tranq.
Now that girl stood a few feet away from Pearl, the same far off look in her eyes as the paint-streaked girl beside her.
One of the ambulances returned. It had shot off down a gravel drive a few minutes ago after a phone call to Fredericks, the team leader. The truck’s lights were on, but in an effort to retain some modicum of calm to the bustling war-zone of a scene, they had left the sirens off.
A young woman jumped out of the passenger seat, face white and tear streaked. She wore one of those yellow dresses, but a police badge hung around her neck, bouncing angrily against her diaphragm as she came up from ducking under the yellow security tape someone had strung up around the perimeter of the gravel drive. Because, of course, the cops had announced everything — including the mansion — a crime scene. They’d had to move their patients all the way out, almost to the freaking gates of the property so they wouldn’t contaminate evidence. Like there was a shortage of it, or something.
Keith snorted.
There was enough evidence here for fifty crime scenes.
The young cop’s mouth was set in a grim line as she stormed past Pearl and her friend, headed for a group of police offers conferring quietly amongst themselves near a beautiful, tinkling fountain.
She didn’t get very far.
Pearl blinked, her head swinging to follow the brown-haired cop as she stormed past.
Keith paused, breath catching.
She was back on planet Earth again. He had to tell—
But Chelsea had noticed. She paused, glancing up at the girl. Even so, she was too slow to catch Pearl before she slid off the gurney.
She moved like her feet weren’t bandaged. Like she didn’t have a gash three inches wide in her thigh. Like she wasn’t so close to succumbing to sepsis that funeral directors should have been swarming her body like vultures.
No, the girl ran. She ran after the young cop and snatched the duffel bag she held from her hands.
“Hey—” The cop swung around, cutting off when she saw Pearl. “Pearl? What—”
“Twenty-seven of them!” Pearl screamed.
Every face in the yard turned to the girl, conversation grinding to a halt.
The girl fell to her knees, hands fumbling over the duffel bag.
“Pearl, you can’t—” the cop began, trying to jerk the bag away.
The girl ignored, her, yanking it back and scrambling away from the cop.
“It’s here. It’s all here!” Pearl zipped open the bag, her hands shaking like she had epilepsy. They dove inside, elbow deep, as the girl tipped her head up to the cop.
“Everything. She wrote it all down. Gia. Gia wrote it all down. Twenty-seven of them. They’re all gone. Sold. But there’re more. The dead ones. The ones they buried.”
Keith’s skin began crawling. Twenty-seven what? Sold? Others?
A few of the cops approached, low murmurs springing up between them. Keith absently reached out, slinging the IV he’d just inserted into his patient’s arm over the metal hook intended just for that purpose. He squeezed the bag, eyes wide as he watched the cops sidling up to the girl.
What, did they think she was going to pull out a damn assault rifle? Couldn’t they see how distraught she was?
One of the cops h
ad his hand on the gun at his side.
Keith opened his mouth, but closed it again. Calling out might just make these trigger happy idiots overreact. God, they might just put a bullet through him.
“Everything,” Pearl cried out. “She wrote it all down. When they came. When they left. Names. Wolves. Dragons.”
Christ, slipped into some kind of psychosis, hadn’t she? The poor thing was delusional—
The girl yanked out a notebook. She slapped it on the gravel drive, stabbing at it with a blood-encrusted finger. Her red hair swung around her head as she noticed the policemen approaching her. Instead of relenting, her voice rose.
“Read it! It’s all here. She wrote everything down. Put it here, so I would see it. It’s got everything—” a sob cut through her words “—in it.”
The young female cop went to her knees in front of Pearl.
“Okay, honey. I got it. I got it.” She tried to embrace Pearl, but the girl pushed roughly at her.
“More. There’s more!” Her hand delved inside the bag, hunting frantically as she spun to face a cop that was trying to sideline her. “They all took turns writing down. Abby, Rex. Maybe not Rex. Charlie? Maybe him.” Pearl shook her head. “Don’t know. But they wrote down where they buried them. All of them.”
Buried them? Keith’s hand slipped down, resting lightly on his patient’s chest. Good God, what the hell had happened in this place? This was starting to sound like one of those cults where everyone drank the Kool-Aid because of spaceships or something.
“Some of it got wet, but I’m sure you can still—”
Pearl’s face froze. That hand, searching, hunting through the duffel bag, froze.
Then it began to shake. Her arm trembled. Her teeth chattered, the sound reaching Keith where his ambulance idled twenty feet away.
“No, no, no, no, no, no—” the girl’s mantra ceased abruptly.
She jerked her hand out, flailing it.
Trying to unsnare her fingers from the hair tangled through them.
Golden hair.
Keith stumbled out of the ambulance. He had a syringe in his hand, fingers already on the cap to tug it off.