by Dan Wells
But I was so close! I couldn’t just leave. Especially not if the FBI was moving in on Lewisville—the last two times they’d come hunting Withered, they’d gone way overboard, filling the city with cops and SWAT and soldiers and guns, and it had ended poorly both times. If Rain and her army of monsters were really starting a shadow war, a huge government response could bring it out into the daylight.
The SUV drove away, and almost instantly I heard Margo calling my name: “Robert!” I ignored her and ran through the halls to the front door; I had to see which way Mills turned when he left the mortuary. He’d obviously already spoken to the local police—he had their crime-scene photos and a local search warrant. That meant that he had three obvious leads to follow up on next if he wanted to find me: Kathy Schrenk, Luke Minaker, and Crabtree Jones. The three Withered victims. If he turned right, he was headed to the highway, out to Crabtree; if he turned left he was headed to one of the other two. The only other people who’d seen me were the men at the bar and Jasmyn’s friends, and Mills had no way to link them to me. I got to the front door with seconds to spare and watched as Mills turned left, into the center of town.
“Robert!” said Margo, shuffling up behind me. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Thank you for covering for me. I’m leaving now.”
“That man had a picture of you,” she said. Jasmyn stood next to her. “Did you light that fire?”
“I did not.” I watched Mills’s car drive away, disappearing out of sight behind a row of houses. I looked at Margo. “Yes, he was looking for me, but no I didn’t do anything he said I did.”
“What did you do?”
“You’re better off not knowing.”
“Which one is your real name?” asked Jasmyn.
I looked at her, terrified of telling the truth.…
… But I couldn’t bring myself to lie to her. “John.” That one word had the power to unravel everything I’d worked for, if she wanted to.
Her voice was quiet. “Did you hurt somebody, John?”
I stared back for far too long before I answered. “No one who didn’t deserve it.”
Margo started to talk, but I cut her off. “You won’t see me again. And you should probably get out of town.”
“I have a funeral to take care of,” said Margo.
“The man you just met is … well, not a bad man, but like a bad omen.” I tried to find the right words to make her believe me—which meant it couldn’t be the whole truth, but it had to be a version of it. “Let me put it this way: there’s a group in Lewisville. Think of it like a cartel, though this is not about drugs. Agent Harris is hunting that group, and that group does not like to be hunted. There will be trouble, and please understand that while that word is one hundred percent accurate in meaning, it’s maybe only two percent accurate in scale. Many, many people will get hurt, and I don’t want you to be one of them. You’re good people.”
“You’re going to do something stupid,” said Margo. “I can see it in your eyes, and I know what trouble-eyes look like.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Eventually. First things first: I’m doing exactly what I told you to do. I’m disappearing.”
I pushed open the door, and my backpack chimed as I walked away.
CHAPTER 12
Mills would be going one of two places: the Schrenk family or the Minaker family. Which one? I didn’t know much about Mills, but I knew he was smart—smart enough to deduce that one of the Withered was already dead. He’d found the soulstuff and connected it to the fire, so he could guess that the dead Withered was the fire one. Plus we’d had another drowning, so he’d know that the drowner was still active. He’d want to talk to the first drowning victim’s family, so Schrenk it was.
I should run, I told myself. I should head straight to the highway and get out of town, waiting until the heat cools off before sticking my nose back into the middle of Lewisville. That would be the smart thing to do.
But then people might die, and I can’t let that happen. Not if I’m here to do something about it.
I turned left and followed Mills into town.
Kathy Schrenk’s house was empty and maybe even sold, but her sister Carol was still around and the closest family Kathy had. Carol only lived about a mile away from the mortuary, by a hill, and the Lewisville canal made the road to get there much longer than that. If I cut through some yards and jumped a few fences, I could be there before Mills could. I started running, strapping my backpack tightly and buckling the waist belt to keep it from flopping up and down as I ran. I tried to keep the overhead view in my mind as I ran, remembering which streets and cross streets went where, and circumventing almost all of them by vaulting my way through yards and gardens. I reached the canal and stashed my backpack by a culvert—I could come back for it later—and then dove in, swimming across and trying not to think about what might be in the water. On the far side I got lost in a maze of identical suburban houses, but only for a few minutes. I found Carol Schrenk’s house just as Agent Mills knocked on the door, and I watched from the edge of a fence at the corner of the road as Carol let him in.
I waited until I was sure he wouldn’t see me, then slipped across the street and crept up to the house. I found an open window, half filled with a whirring swamp cooler, and stood beneath it and listened.
“… what I’ll do,” said Carol. “Kathy was all I had.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” said Agent Mills. “I’ve heard great things about her.”
“What is today?” she asked. “Monday? Kathy used to come over every Monday night. We’d knit together. I was working on an afghan, but now I guess there’s no point finishing it.”
“Was it for Kathy?”
“It wasn’t really for anybody. I suppose there’s got to be somebody around the neighborhood who might want it, but I suppose none of them would miss it, either, if I never got it done.”
“Ms. Schrenk, can I show you a picture? I’m wondering if you might have seen this boy anywhere. The police say he has a job working at the funeral home.”
Crap. So he knew Margo and Jasmyn were lying.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Carol. “I don’t want to get involved in any trouble.”
“He’s not in trouble, ma’am, he’s missing.”
I shook my head, marveling at Mills’s ability to pick up so quickly on what made Carol tick. She didn’t want to say anything—it was even possible that Margo had already called, warning her to stay quiet—but once Mills presented me as a missing person instead of a fugitive, it pushed all of her I’m-so-lonely buttons. He dropped a kicker at the end, just to make sure. “His sister is searching everywhere for him. Their mother passed away a few years ago, and he’s all she has left.”
“That’s terrible,” said Carol. “Are they from Lewisville?”
“They’re not,” said Mills, “but we have strong evidence that he might be here now. At the funeral home, like I said. Did you happen to see him at your sister’s funeral?”
“I think so,” said Carol. “In fact, now that I think about it, I’m certain he was at my Kathy’s funeral. He stood in the back with Jasmyn, and then again at the graveside service.”
“With Jasmyn?” he asked. So now he was even more certain that Jasmyn had lied. “Is he dating her?”
Why did everyone think I was dating her?
“He’d be foolish not to,” said Carol. “She’s such a sweet girl, and so lovely.”
“Do you know Jasmyn Shahi well?”
“Only through Kathy. Kathy worked at the mortuary, you know, and sometimes I’d visit her and talk to the other employees. Jasmyn is quiet, but she’s a darling.”
“Do you happen to know where she lives?” asked Agent Mills. “I’d love to talk to her.”
“I’m afraid I only talked to her a few times, and only in passing. I don’t talk to people easily, and she’s so young. What am I going to say to a young girl like that?”
“Who
do you talk to?”
“Now that Kathy’s passed away? No one.”
It occurred to me, listening to Carol Schrenk talk, that she was even lonelier than her sister. At least Kathy had had a job, and friends, and things to do; Carol had nothing. I’d theorized that Rain was killing lonely people, but if that was true then she’d gotten the wrong sister. And Shelley Jones, as well—at least Crabtree, hated as he was, saw people. He’d come into town to go shopping and whatever else he did. Shelley had never gone anywhere. Was Rain killing the families of lonely people, instead of the lonely people themselves? Was she trying to make them lonelier? Who was she trying to hurt by killing me?
“Do you have any of Kathy’s belongings?” asked Mills. “Perhaps a calendar or day planner or something? A cell phone?”
“I have a few things,” said Carol. “Will a box of photos help?”
“Ideally I need something with notes in it,” said Mills, “maybe an address book? A … Rolodex? I don’t know, anything that might have names or phones numbers.”
“She kept a planner,” said Carol, “but it was in her house, and the bank is taking care of that. The estate and everything.”
“Do you have access to it?”
“I’ve never asked,” said Carol. “It would only make me sad to go through her things like that.”
Mills grumbled, a low sigh that was half growl. “Can you give me the name of the bank? And I guess we may as well look at those photos, then, if that’s all you’ve got.”
“I’ve got them right here,” said Carol, and I heard her chair creak as she rose to her feet and shuffled slowly across the floor. The photos would be useless—he was just being nice at this point—but sooner or later he’d find something, and through it he’d find me. The bank would give him Kathy’s things, or he’d push harder on Jasmyn and get her to give up some info. I didn’t want to leave town, but maybe I had to. With the full weight of the FBI behind him, how could Mills not find me?
“Who’s this?” asked Mills. “This girl standing next to Jasmyn?”
“One of her little friends from college,” said Carol. “I forget her name, because it’s so hard to spell. Something with an exclamation point.”
This just kept getting worse.
“An exclamation point in her name?”
“Replacing one of the ‘i’s,” said Carol. “L!sa? El!sa? Al!cia, that’s what it is. Kids these days.”
“Tell me about it,” said Mills.
If he could find Al!sha, then he could find Parker, and eventually he’d find where I was staying. They wouldn’t cover for me like Jasmyn had—they’d spill everything, and eagerly, especially if they thought they were protecting their friend from some dangerous drifter she’d gotten messed up with. I had to leave.
I didn’t wait for Mills to finish his conversation with Carol. I jumped the back fence into the neighbor’s yard, went to the culvert to retrieve my backpack, and then walked toward the edge of town. The highway to the Crabtree Junkyard went west, so I went east. I could come back later, when the hunt had died down.
In the Midwest, a town like this would trickle out slowly, surrounded by farmland or ranchland or some other business trying to make use of the prairie. Arizona has no prairie to make use of, so when the city ended it ended abruptly: the houses stopped, and the desert started, and the road wound slowly toward the red-rock canyons. I walked out a good half hour, curving around a couple of low hills, and then stood in the shade of a saguaro cactus trying to thumb a ride. Nobody stopped. I pulled a ball cap from my backpack and pulled it low over my eyes, trying to protect my head from the sun, and wished that I’d brought some water with me.
The truck I’d rode in on when I’d first come to Lewisville had passed a couple of restaurants and a gas station a few miles outside of town, at the mouth of one of the canyon trailheads, so I started walking again, thinking I could hitch a ride more easily out there. I made the trip in about an hour, and drank water ravenously from the faucet in the bathroom sink. A few people stopped for gas, but they were all just on day trips out from Lewisville, here to go hiking and then head home again. Useless to me as transportation. I hung around for as long as I dared, and when the clerks got too suspicious, I headed out again, going east across the desert. If I didn’t manage to catch a ride by nightfall … well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d slept outside. The road rejoined the canal, or some other canal that fed into or out of it, and I walked for a time in the shade of the trees that grew along the banks.
Twilight was just starting to fall when I saw a girl in the shadows ahead.
She was moving oddly, almost furtively, like she was a wild animal sniffing for predators on the wind. Or prey. She wore a skirt and some kind of a blouse, and as I drew closer I saw that it was ragged. Almost instantly I recognized her: the homeless girl from the viewing. Run from Rain. It wasn’t a skirt and blouse but an old A-line dress, so out of fashion even I could tell it was strange. Her hair was wild and tangled, and her feet were bare.
She looked up suddenly and stared at me from thirty yards away. I stopped walking and held myself motionless. She cocked her head and swayed softly, never taking her eyes off of me.
“Hello,” I called out. “Do you remember me?” She’d asked me before if I knew her, or if she knew me. I couldn’t remember exactly. When she saw me now, would she remember me from the viewing? Or would she remember whoever she thought I was?
She didn’t say anything.
I walked a little closer.
“I was at the viewing,” I said. “Kathy Schrenk. Did you know her or did you just walk in?”
She sniffed again, three quick breaths through her nose. I stopped walking, and she circled me warily. She looked like she was thirty or so, weathered by the elements but not as much as I’d expected. How long had she been homeless? And why was she out here, so far from the city?
“Are you okay?” I asked. “What’s your name?”
She opened her mouth and hissed.
The woman I’d met at the viewing had been bedraggled but lucid—she’d looked uncomfortable in the room, but not scared by it. Our conversation had been short and confusing, but it had been intelligible. She’d been smart and alert and human. This woman seemed completely feral.
“Are you okay?” I asked again. “When’s the last time you ate?” Had she been out here alone in the desert this whole time? Did she have heat exhaustion, or maybe even heat stroke? What had happened to her mind?
She continued to circle me, moving out onto the highway as if the barrier between dirt and road meant nothing to her. I shrugged my backpack off of one shoulder and she froze, watching me cautiously, though I couldn’t tell if she was getting ready to run or attack. I slowly opened the zipper on my backpack and rooted inside of it for a pack of fruit leather. I still had a little left from my last time on the road, the bag carefully folded around the few strips that remained. When I pulled it out she sniffed again, so like an animal I couldn’t help but frown and take a step backward. Who was she? What was she? And what had happened to her?
Her eyes fixed on the bag of fruit leather and she stepped forward, keeping her knees bent and her posture low. I unfolded the well-worn bag and pulled out a piece and held it out to her as far as my arm would reach. “I don’t have any water, but if you need food you can have it.” She took a few more steps, until her outstretched arm could just reach mine, and snatched the fruit leather from my hand. She smelled it, but kept her eyes on me. She didn’t eat it.
Is this what Rain did to the minds she controlled? Use them so much they got completely used up? Is this what Simon Jacob Watts could look forward to, after years or months or even just days of mind control? An atrophied brain that couldn’t control itself without a powerful Withered intelligence guiding its every move?
I pulled another piece of leather from the bag. “It’s food,” I said. “You eat it. Go ahead.” I gestured toward her, and her eyes darted back and forth between me and the leather.
“Look, like this.” I put the fruit leather in my mouth, trying to tear off a piece to show her, when suddenly she lunged, howling like a cat and snarling in a vicious grin that showed off every filthy jagged tooth. I stumbled back but she was already on me, clawing at my hands and mouth with her chipped fingernails, snapping her teeth and hissing, clutching at the leather and the bag of fruit leather with terrifying ferocity. I let go of both, just trying to stop her from biting me, shouting at her to stop while her nails dug deep, bloody grooves in my arms. Suddenly she lit up, like a bright light was shining on her, and she looked up with that same animal alertness. A truck was coming toward us on the highway. She let go of me and sprinted toward the canal, disappearing into the trees and undergrowth. I clambered back to my feet, keeping my eyes on the bushes, and frantically motioned for the truck to stop. I was standing in the middle of the road, so it did. The driver rolled down the passenger window.
“I need to get out of here,” I said, still watching the bushes. “She just attacked me.” I picked up my backpack from where it had fallen in the scuffle. “I don’t care where you’re going. Just let me ride in the back, I just need to get out of here.”
“Oh come on, John, as long as we’ve known each other? You can ride up front with me.”
I turned slowly, already recognizing the voice. He sat in the driver’s seat looking far too pleased with himself.
“Agent Mills.”
“Didn’t you hear?” he said. “It’s Agent Harris now.”
“How’d you find me?”
“I’m a psychological profiler, John, give me some credit. You knew I was looking for you, and you knew what would happen when I found you. Obviously you’d run the first chance you got, and there’s only one major highway in and out of town, and the west route goes toward a key crime scene. This is the road you’d be least likely to accidentally be seen on, so this is the road I looked on.”