by Tom Crown
The photos were still the same, the first one with the dead girl, the second one with Mats’s face turned away from the camera, then one with him glancing right into it with a startled look, and a couple more that added little to the story already told by the first three. Nothing about it had changed, but she had changed, and now that she dared to look again something about them made her think. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but she recognized something, more than Mats staring back at her with a guilty look on his face, and she knew it was imperative that she figured it out.
She brought the first photo closer to her face and tried to find what it was that seemed so familiar. She scanned the edges and slowly moved her attention closer and closer to the center, to the butchered body of the girl.
Suddenly she heard a noise from the living room. Breaking glass?
A piercing scream cut through the air.
She tossed the photos aside and rushed toward the noise.
A gunshot rang out.
Jenny kept moving.
The girls were all screaming in absolute terror.
From the doorway Jenny saw Alex pulling Anna across the floor, holding a gun to her face as the others cried hysterically. All except Yelana. She was already dead, slumped on the sofa with a splash of red staining the towel she had wrapped around her body.
Jenny was watching with her heart hammering in her chest. Alex hadn’t seen her yet, he was busy with the girls, all crying and clamoring as he wielded the gun he had already used once.
The rifle was in the kitchen. She had wondered about it when she left it there, thinking she should perhaps keep it closer than that, but she had dismissed the danger then. Big mistake.
She lunged across the hallway, back toward the kitchen.
“Jenny!” Alex fired off a bullet, but he didn’t really take the time to aim. Instead, he hit one of the girls huddling in the armchair, and Jenny saw her die in an instant. Her body fell limp to the floor and her head hit the hardwood with a sickening crack.
Jenny leaped into the kitchen, keeping a thin wall and the refrigerator and freezer between herself and Alex’s weapon. Alex fired off another bullet, hitting the back of the refrigerator with a metallic thud. She saw the rifle where she had left it, leaning against the kitchen table and a pulled-out chair, and she threw herself in that direction.
But Alex had seen it too.
He had come from the porch right into the living room and apparently hadn’t spotted the rifle when he entered, but now he was going for it, coming around the wall from the other side, straight from the living room. She had a good head start, though, and he was still ten feet away when she felt the cold steel against her fingertips. Her entire body slammed into the chairs and table, but she still found a steady grip around the barrel.
But he already had a gun ready to fire.
She got the rifle right in her hands and pulled the trigger. The recoil slammed her against the table and she immediately regretted letting all that power out without thinking.
Alex only came closer, grinning as he raised his gun and aimed it at her face. Her shot had only hit the ceiling behind him and done nothing to stop his forward motion.
She saw him squeeze the trigger and pulled back, moving herself under the kitchen table now, hoping desperately that it wouldn’t prove to be a death trap.
He fired again.
The bullet slammed into the table top with a deafening crack, but didn’t make it all the way through. Alex had moved closer so fast he had lost his line of fire.
But she hadn’t. She could still see his legs, and she saw the gun in his hand, and she saw him moving down, pulling his trigger again.
She fired.
The bullet hit his thigh. The injured leg instantly collapsed under him. She fired again as he fell and watched the bullet rip right through his neck.
The body sank to the floor and slumped to the side.
She got up from under the table and kicked the gun away from his hands. He was dead, very much so, but she was taking no chances now. She put the rifle on the table and leaned down and looked at the body.
Her hand instinctively went for the scratch on her own neck, where the necklace had cut deep, and she wondered about this sudden, sickening power of hers that seemed to kill anyone coming against her. But thinking about it would do her little good, she would only lose herself in a torrent of emotion and confusion.
She would call the police, she had to now, and she could no longer understand why they hadn’t before.
She looked at Alex again and wondered what she would do about the body, but she understood immediately there was nothing she could do. It would simply have to stay where it was, with bullet holes and all.
She noticed his phone protruding from an inside pocket and leaned closer, ever so slowly, and snatched it free. The screen displayed a list of numbers marked as the most recent phone calls.
A cold dread came over her.
She was looking at Steve’s number.
It couldn’t possibly be coincidence. The call had been made less than an hour ago. That call he took in the kitchen. The only call Steve had received. It had to have been from this phone.
But what did that mean? Could Steve really be involved in all this somehow?
She couldn’t think of much of a defense against the horrible feelings that were washing over her. Her experience with men was so bad that him spending the night with her only counted against him. Of course she had wanted him to be everything she needed, but she hadn’t really believed it, not fully, not completely, and this development made so much more sense.
She suddenly remembered the photos in the bedroom and pushed herself up again. She rushed back, ignoring the girls moving about numbly in the living room. The photos were still on the floor where they had landed. She studied them again, and she saw it now. Of course. The photos of the dead girl were printed on the exact same glossy paper all the other photos here were printed on. She turned it over and saw a marking along the edge. She went to the printer and looked. The paper tray was empty, but she saw a sealed package on the desk. She ripped it open and pulled out a clear sheet.
The markings on the back were exactly the same.
She felt all energy drain from her body and sank to her knees.
Steve had to be the one who had photographed Mats with the dead girl and then sent the photos, for some reason she couldn’t yet understand. It also explained why Steve had appeared in the forest right after the crash, why he hadn’t insisted on the police, and why he always went along with everything they did, always keeping his head cold no matter how crazy things got.
She had to warn Ryan.
She reached for her phone and selected his number. The seconds dragged on endlessly as the tone kept coming, again and again, and she felt her fear growing with every ring.
He didn’t pick up.
She looked over her shoulder and saw the carnage in the living room, and the three surviving girls stumbling about, uncertain of what to do.
“There!” Jenny said to the nearest girl and pointed at the phone in the hallway. “Call the police!”
She tried Ryan’s number again but she still didn’t get through. She looked at the dead bodies again in the living room. If she didn’t warn Ryan it was very possible he would be the next to die.
If he wasn’t dead already.
* * * *
Ryan heard his phone buzz but chose to ignore it, focusing instead on Katia behind the wheel of the Volvo. He understood what she was doing, why the car was facing the river and the engine racing. She was going to end her life in that water.
“Careful now,” Steve said.
Ryan just nodded, dismissing him.
The road between the two vehicles was bad, barely existent, but he was only fifty feet away now and he had to stop her. He thought about getting out, about running to her, but the car was still faster and he kept going.
She suddenly opened her door and looked right at him
, and he felt a premature flash of relief. Then she pushed herself out and bolted for the forest.
Ryan released his seatbelt with one hand and opened his door with the other, and then burst out of the moving vehicle.
“Hey!” Steve called out behind him, grabbing the wheel.
Katia was making her way deeper into the forest and he wasn’t going to lose her this time. He raced as fast as he could, over slippery stones at first, then with twigs and leaves slamming into his face.
“Katia!”
He saw her up ahead, and she stopped for a moment and looked back, but he was still far behind her and she hadn’t stopped to let him catch up. She set off again and quickly disappeared in the greenery, and all he could do was continue in the direction he was going. The ground was hilly and the foliage thick, and he soon realized he had lost track of her.
He climbed up a ridge and looked around. The greenery was complete around him.
“Katia!” he called out. “I know I was wrong before!” He listened for a response but couldn’t even hear birds. The forest seemed to swallow every sound. He cursed under his breath.
“Katia!”
Suddenly he heard a blaring train horn signaling repeatedly. He had no idea where a railroad track might be, but it had to be close by. The crossing they had traversed when Mats had been chasing them had to be more than a mile away, but the track could very well have continued here.
The horn signaled again, much closer now. He instinctively moved in that direction, then froze when he heard a horrible noise of metal grinding against metal. The train was braking, its wheels skidding along the tracks with a piercing noise, but cutting above that was a gut-wrenching shriek.
“Katia!” He stumbled forward through the dense foliage until he slipped and lost his balance. The leaves had concealed a steep hillside, and suddenly he was rolling downhill, tumbling as he went. He desperately tried to protect his head with his hands and his arms, but he felt twigs and branches lashing his face.
Finally he landed.
On the tracks.
He was stunned, knocked out of breath, and could only move his eyes. Everything was red around him. His eyes roved from one bloodied hand to the other, trying to comprehend. The metal tracks stretched into the distance. He couldn’t see clearly. But he was lying on the tracks.
In flesh and blood.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
KATIA DROPPED TO the ground and covered her ears with the palm of her hands. The shriek from the stopping train cut through her body until it suddenly vanished as abruptly as it had started. She lowered her hands and looked around. The forest was dead quiet.
Something terrible had happened.
She had just crossed the railroad tracks and made her way up the steep hill on the other side, with Ryan not too far behind. She had found a good hiding place under a low pine with a view toward the railroad and had hoped to be able to spot him from there. Her plan had been to watch him, to see which way he would go, and try to understand why he had come after her again. That had been her plan, but everything had changed now.
That horrible noise was playing back in her mind. The train hadn’t just stopped, it had hit something. It had signaled again and again, and then hit something. She could see the tracks from where she was, under the pine, but not very much of them, and she couldn’t see the train itself. She would have to get to her hands and knees and crawl out.
She pushed the pine aside and looked around. Everything was silent. Too silent. She crawled out and moved toward the edge of the cliff, pushing tall grass aside with a hand as she went forward. It only took a few moments, then she saw the scene below, the steel tracks, the cross ties, the gravel.
The blood.
She moved her hand a little more, pushing the vegetation in front of her aside.
Still that blood.
And Ryan.
Her breathing stopped. She closed her eyes and opened them again, but he was still lying there, motionless, in the blood on the tracks. The train had stopped far in the distance. After running over him, tearing him to pieces.
Tears were streaming from her eyes and her body began to shake. She couldn’t see much, but she saw the blood. She saw the flesh. And that utter stillness.
She stared for a long while, it seemed, as tears trickled down her cheeks. Then she twisted away and began to hit herself again, her legs, the ground.
It was her fault. He had chased her here. He had wanted to talk, once again, and she had run, once again. Her running had forced him to come after her, and why? Because it felt good to know someone cared enough to follow? Because she was still that selfish? But perhaps she was just flattering herself. Perhaps that wasn’t at all why he had come after her. Perhaps he had simply come to stop her, to turn her over to the police. Whatever his reasons, she had run because it had been her best option, her safest option, the option most to her advantage, with no regard for anyone else. She had run because it was easy. And now, because of her weakness and her selfishness, Ryan was dead.
She steeled herself and then looked again. He still hadn’t moved, and how could he? She knew he was dead, even though she hadn’t yet fully taken it in. She wanted to go down to him, but the scene was too horrible. Perhaps she was being childish again, but she couldn’t live with what she had just done.
She closed her eyes. Saying that it was too much to bear wasn’t good enough. She had to go down to him. It was the only thing she could do, even if it seemed impossible. She simply had to do it.
With her eyes wide open again she forced herself forward. She was on the edge of the steep hillside, and the climb down would be more difficult than the climb up. She leaned down, carefully swung her legs over the edge, and began searching for some solid footing. She looked down to see where to put her feet, but her eyes drifted to the tracks, and the blood.
But now she saw some other movement in the distance. People were leaving the train and walking back along the tracks. She didn’t want them to find her. Perhaps it was just another excuse, but she didn’t want to get caught by strangers.
She swung her legs back up over the edge and looked at the motionless Ryan one last time. That was how she would have to remember him. The way he had died. The way she had killed him. It would be her final memory.
She cast a glance at the approaching people, but they were still far away and didn’t seem to have noticed her. She got to her feet and moved further up the rise, and then continued quickly deeper into the forest.
Ryan and Mina had both died here. Katia knew she had to die somewhere else. She didn’t deserve to be here with them. She wouldn’t take too long to find the place, but it wouldn’t be here. She would find a place where she could be alone, where she could remember everyone and everything she had an obligation to remember.
She had often thought she could never do it. She didn’t want to die like her uncle. She didn’t want to go the way he had, or to the same place. But why shouldn’t she?
The tears came again, as she treated deeper and deeper into the forest, but she immediately wiped them with the back of her hand.
Why shouldn’t she?
* * * *
Ryan struggled to push himself up to his knees. He was still dazed, still weak from the shock, from having the wind knocked out of him, and from the gravel beneath the tracks cutting into his hands and knees. He put a hand on the smooth metal of the track to push himself up but the surface was slippery and his hand slid against the blood. Images from his escape from the basement in Afghanistan flashed through his mind. The missile impact. The stone turned into gravel. The blood on the floor. The blood on his hands. Slipping.
Katia.
He felt nauseous. His stomach was turning upside down. His mind was numb. He didn’t want to take all this in. He didn’t want to take any of this in. He had chased Katia onto the tracks. Why had he run after her when she clearly didn’t want him to? He should have stopped and given her room to breathe. She had already been pushed around, by every
one she had ever met, and Ryan had just kept pushing.
He looked at the blood on his hands. He couldn’t breathe.
A noise above him made him look up. Steve was sliding down the slippery hillside, balancing precariously until he stopped right on the edge of the blood and gore, studying the scene matter-of-factly, and his calm brought a moment of stability to Ryan’s world of reeling confusion.
The blood was still warm on his hands and knees, and he could hear it drip from his shirt to the ground below. He couldn’t make sense of this. It couldn’t have come to this.
He felt his stomach turn upside down.
“It’s reindeer,” Steve said and touched a bit of bloodied fur with the tip of his shoe. “Insurance fraud, most likely. People poke out their eyes and leave them on the tracks. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know if it’s actually true, but here we are.” He kicked the fur again. “Exhibit A.” He looked around. “I think we have the whole alphabet.”
“Reindeer?” Ryan looked at the mess around him. It was a lot. He could see fur sticking out from the blood. He saw hoofs.
“Yes,” Steve said and came closer. “Reindeer. Two or three, I believe.” He navigated the blood carefully until he was only a few feet away from Ryan.
“I thought...” He didn’t want to finish the thought.
“She’s gone,” Steve said. “Somewhere else, I mean. She’s definitely not here.”
Steve had to be right. This accident had nothing to do with her. She could still be nearby, that was possible, or she might have made it a mile or two away, but this wasn’t about her. He looked around, at the rocky hills, at the forest, and the sky above. She wasn’t here. He felt himself smiling.