She looked along the corridor.
Next thing she did, she took out her long knife.
“Ettie,” she said softly.
No answer came. She imagined Albert banging about upstairs with all the gumption of a water ox, shouting for the child. She imagined how loud he’d be, and the ease with which they’d find him…. She bit her lip. This was not a good time to allow her imagination free play. She moved onward quickly down the corridor, letting its silence flow around her. She did not think they were down there, and she did not think the girl was either, but she had to check. It took her less than a minute. In each room she kept the light off, spoke Ettie’s name, waited, listened, and withdrew.
She returned along the corridor to the dining room. Now that she was looking for it, she could see the spots of blood in the dust of the concrete floor, where they’d carried the head. Why they’d carried that particular head out of the killing room and taken it to that particular office she didn’t have a clue. Why did they do anything? It could be some ancient ritual, could be they were afraid of his ghost, could be that it was just some mad and mindless act, and there wasn’t any reason at all. Truth was, if you thought too hard about anything the Tainted did, it drove you crazy too.
Back in the frozen dining room, with its scattered chairs and the half-eaten sandwiches of the poor doomed men of the trading post, Scarlett made for the wooden staircase. As she did so, her eyes flickered to the open door and the courtyard’s dusk, and just for a moment she imagined flitting away quietly down the hill under the oak trees, alone and free and never once looking back. And in that moment, she was once again in the wrecked bus, the instant before she’d discovered Albert, in the split second when she could have climbed out and gone her way and spared herself a whole heap of trouble. That had been one of life’s pivots, and here was another, and they were pretty much the same. In the bus, there’d been one idiot to save; now there were two. That was the only difference. If she was honest, she didn’t have any real choice either time.
She swore under her breath but didn’t touch her cuss-box. It was no time to fiddle about with coins. It would have made a noise.
Flowing like an untethered shadow, like a patch of liberated darkness, Scarlett climbed the stairs. At the first turn, she paused and craned her head around the corner. More steps. An angled ceiling. The stairwell was a tilted tube with the light draining toward her. She couldn’t hear a sound.
Pressing close to the wall, she eased herself up the remaining steps. Not too slowly now. Resist the temptation to delay. Hesitation bred fearfulness; it was no good for the nerves. Even in a house of cannibals, it was best to keep on moving, aim to get a brisk job done.
She reached the corridor above and stepped out onto it with her knife held ready. There was good news about the silence and bad news too, and they sort of balanced each other out. The good news, almost certainly, was that they were eating. It tended to distract them, keep them penned up in the killing room; they might be gorging themselves for hours. That gave her space to maneuver. The bad news was that they might be eating Albert and Ettie, and the longer she went without finding either, the more likely this would be.
There were doors to the left along the passage, and windows on the right that looked out onto the courtyard. The implacable dusk flowed across everything, thick, granular, heavy as syrup. It was getting hard to see, but Scarlett had no intention of switching on a light. She moved toward the first door—and now at last she heard something: a soft thud, up ahead.
She paused, listening…
The thud was not repeated. Scarlett pressed her teeth together. She stole forward again and reached the doorway, which was wide open and very dark. It was also ostentatiously quiet; there was a quality to its silence that Scarlett did not like. She did not walk through but stood at the entrance, peering inside. Just visible, at the margin of the gray light from the window behind her, she saw a wooden bedstead, a meager mattress with a slough of crumpled linen hanging over it to reach the floor. It would be a good place to hide from bad things, if either Albert or Ettie had the wit to do this, which she doubted.
But she had to check.
Scarlett stepped into the room.
At once, a shape broke clear of the shadows behind the door. It lunged at her back with vicious speed. Scarlett flinched downward; she heard a whistling as something heavy whizzed above her head. Her knife arm was already jerking backward, but she halted the stroke and instead spun around to grapple her opponent by the throat. He gave a high-pitched gargle and dropped the broom handle he was using as a weapon.
“Shut up, Albert,” she hissed. “It’s me!”
“Scarlett!” He was wide-eyed, his voice scarcely audible. “I thought you were—”
“Yes, I almost thought you were too. That’s why I nearly cut you in half.”
Albert stepped back, clutching at his throat. “How did you know it was me?”
“I had my back to you, I was a sitting duck, and you had a massive cudgel. Yet still you managed to miss me. The clues were there. Have you found Ettie?”
He stared at her; she could see him shaking. “There’s something terrible in this place, Scarlett….”
“I know. Speak quietly. Have you got Ettie?”
“I haven’t got her.”
“Have you any idea where she is?”
“She’s down the end of the passage.” The anguish in his voice was clear. “I was going to get her—then something came out of the next room. I ducked out of view, but—but I saw it…. Oh, Scarlett—I saw its thoughts. It was so thin. It looked around and went back inside.”
“Did it get Ettie?”
“No….” He gripped her arm. “It was so horribly thin. And it was holding, it was holding—” He swallowed, his body trembling.
“Try to calm down. Did it see you?”
He shook his head. It hadn’t, of course. The fact that he still had a head gave her the answer.
“Good. And where’s Ettie? Somewhere beyond?”
“At the end of the passage. There’s another room there. I saw her slip inside. At least I think it was her—it was just a tiny shadow. I hope she’s hiding. But—but we’ll need to go past that door….”
“Not ‘we.’ ” Scarlett prized herself clear of him. “I’ll do it.”
“I’ll go with you. You’ll need me.”
“I really won’t—not unless your talent’s going to break out now.” She gazed at him. “No? Then just wait here. And be ready to run like hell.”
She moved away before he could reply, and before she could think too hard about what she was doing. The corridor ran the length of the side of the fort. It was not very long, but more than long enough in the circumstances. She could not see the end of it, but Scarlett wasn’t interested in that yet.
Her eyes were fixed on the second entrance up ahead.
Closer and closer, step by step. There were dark markings on the wooden boards, glistening smudges and smears that curved toward the door. Scarlett edged nearer. Her knife felt damp in her hand.
Now she began to hear things.
The door in question was closed. There was no light from under it, but she could hear plenty of soft movement inside—faint thumps, and wet sounds of a feast being undertaken in the dark. There was a kind of low-level muttering too, a reverberation that was not quite laughter, nor a growl, nor a groan, nor anything approaching real speech, but which possessed, horribly, some of the qualities of all these things. It was of such an abhorrent nature that the hairs rose on the back of Scarlett’s neck.
She walked past on soundless feet and a few moments later came to the chamber at the end of the passage, a social room perhaps, with armchairs, and a billiard table, and a machine gun bolted to a stand beside a narrow window in the outer wall. Much good it had done the men of the fort. She wondered how the Taint
ed had got in.
The window faced to the west. A last horizontal spear of pink daylight angled through it, hit the side of one armchair, and also illuminated the little girl, who was curled up on the floor in the fringe of the light, very small and still, one cheek resting on her pudgy knees and her arms cradled tight round her legs.
“Hey, Ettie,” Scarlett whispered. “Keep quiet now. You got to come with me.”
As she started forward, the child jerked away, shuffling on her bottom around the chair and back into the dark. Scarlett pressed her lips tight.
“I’ll take you back to your granddaddy on the raft,” she whispered. “But you got to come quiet now, you understand? There’s some bad things close by.”
Another flinch. You could see the cheeks wobbling, the round eyes welling, as if she was going to cry.
Her only hope lay in Ettie’s instinct for self-preservation. She clearly had one: somehow she’d managed to avoid notice so far. Scarlett had to risk it. She bent in close with what she hoped was a reassuring, natural smile. The child was unconvinced. She took a sudden deep breath, evidently in preparation for a foghorn blast of outrage.
“Albert is here!” Scarlett hissed desperately. “He’s waiting for you. Just down there!”
The kid’s chest remained swelled. She neither breathed out nor erupted. Scarlett was frozen too.
She held out a hand. “Please come with me, sweetheart,” she said.
Almost in the same motion, she had swept the child up and was moving back along the corridor, not trying to stifle her, hoping that by projecting calm and honest confidence she could keep her still. They reached the closed door, where the horrid champing sounds continued. Scarlett stepped over the stains on the floor. Her pace was rapid, but not as rapid as the thumping of her heart. The girl sat dormant on her arm.
She ducked into the first bedroom, where Albert was waiting close beside the bed. When he saw Ettie, he reached out to take her, but Scarlett was reluctant even to break stride.
“In a minute,” she hissed. “Wait till we get out.”
She made to move on. Ettie shook her head, lunged to get to Albert. As Scarlett struggled to avoid dropping her, the little girl gave a single squeal of fury.
Scarlett jammed her hand over the open mouth. She wrestled her other arm tight round Ettie and held her, wriggling, staring at Albert over her head.
They waited in the dimness of the room.
Nothing. Just silence.
Scarlett exhaled slowly. Albert’s shoulders sagged. He smiled at her faintly.
There came the creak of an opening door.
Another moment of time passed, both very short and very long. Albert’s face was stricken. He closed his eyes and held them closed. Scarlett went on staring at Albert over the head of the struggling girl, as if by simply doing so she could reverse the consequences of the child’s fatal noise.
But the door did not shut again.
Now there came a soft and rhythmic rattling, as something padded up the corridor.
Scarlett moved. She nudged Albert, pointed at the bed. Mercifully, he understood. He dived beneath, wriggled his way in. It was good that he was thin, good that there was nothing already there. No sooner had his trainers vanished from sight than Scarlett was on her knees and passing the little girl in after him. She had to take her hand off the child’s mouth; at once, Albert’s hand replaced it.
The rattling noise drew closer. Scarlett darted low and inched her way in after Albert.
They lay alongside each other in the dirt and dust and dark, with the child pressed close between them. Scarlett was facing the open doorway. Strands of hair had fallen across her eyes, but she still had a good view of the passage—or the place where she knew the passage was, for there was almost no light beyond the frame of the door.
The source of the rattling appeared in the opening. Two feet moving—faint, grainy, and very pale. They were so thin as to be little more than stacks of bone, hinged inside bags of dead-white skin. The toes were long; sharp, curved nails sprouted at their ends. The skin was horned and callused. Two ankle bracelets of some white material bounced and trilled above the left heel, making a gentle click and clinking as the feet halted, turned toward the open room.
The feet became still. There was a sound of jaws and teeth going to work on something out of sight. Dark drips fell and splotted on the floor.
Scarlett breathed noiselessly through her open mouth. She could hear Albert’s breathing beside her, coming fast and a lot louder than necessary.
How intelligent the thing was you couldn’t tell. Some people said they were more animal than human, others that they were a degraded subspecies, still others that they were human in every capacity, only driven mad by cannibalism and eerie vice. A true human would be curious enough to enter the room to investigate the noise; a true human would almost certainly look under the bed. A beast might use its superior senses—scent, hearing—to locate them without taking another step.
Scarlett hoped the abilities of the thing at the door fell somewhere between the two.
The feet did not move. She heard the sound of chewing; another dark blot of blood fell and splashed across the toes of the right foot.
Scarlett had her knife in her hand, but right now, wedged on her front like this, it was impossible for her to use it. She imagined the moment of discovery, the bed being torn away…
With a clink of bone bangles, the feet stepped into the room.
A low whistle sounded from up the corridor, a hollow, soulless summons. At once, the feet halted. They turned, retreated to the passage, and padded out of sight.
Scarlett, Albert, and Ettie lay quiet: Scarlett and Albert out of sheer terror, Ettie because she was compressed mercilessly between them. Perhaps Albert was frightened they had overdone it and he might asphyxiate the child. He loosened his grip on her mouth slightly; at once the girl began wriggling and uttered a tiny noise. Albert clamped his hand back.
The clinking noise receded up the corridor. Presently, they heard the door close.
Scarlett counted to three, slowly and silently, calming herself as best she could. Then she pushed herself out from under the bed. She bent to help the others, with the darkness of the passage billowing at her back. Extricating the little girl was not easy; in the end, Albert had to emerge first, and it was only with his coaxing that Ettie was persuaded to shuffle out at all. Wordlessly, he picked her up; Scarlett led them from the room and down the stairs, not going too fast, not going too slow, and then they were picking their way through the dimness of the dining hall and out into the courtyard.
The first stars were shining above the battlements. The evening was clean and fresh—until that moment they had not realized how corrupt the air inside the rooms had been. They breathed deeper as they jogged across the concrete space. As they went, Scarlett inspected her revolver. She caught Albert’s eye and they grinned at each other, watery with relief. The little girl was also happy. Snug against Albert’s neck, she laughed to see the stars.
Perhaps she laughed too loud. Perhaps it was just that their luck had finally run out.
Seconds later, a screech came on the wind, high and full of hate; the echoes seized it, sent it bouncing between the walls to batter them as they ran.
Scarlett looked back. Something with thin white limbs was leaning from an upstairs window. The arms waved at them, extravagantly, madly, like someone recognizing a long-lost friend or lover. The screams redoubled. Answering howls came from the depths of the building.
They ran to the gate. The thing was scrabbling and straining at the window. Scarlett had the notion that it was going to drop forth like a spider, come scuttling after them across the yard. She had no idea if it could survive such a fall, and she did not want to find out. She stopped, stepped deliberately two paces back toward the building, raised her revolver in both hands
, and emptied it at the shape. It fluttered madly at the aperture, gyrating bonelessly and screeching.
At the gate, Scarlett snatched up one of the fuel canisters. Not the sack. Food they could do without.
Under the arch and out over the dim-lit grass of the hilltop. At first the path showed white and was easy to follow; then it plunged in amongst the trees and was not. They threw themselves down it regardless. The little girl bounced and gurgled with pleasure at Albert’s every stumble. Behind them the baying of the Tainted momentarily became faint; now it grew loud again, and Scarlett knew they were spilling out after them through the gate.
Downhill beneath the oaks, along the endless zigzags of the path. As Scarlett’s eyes grew used to the forest dusk, she dispensed with the twists and turns, cutting a precipitous route straight down. Thorns sliced at their legs, branches sought to decapitate them. There was a crashing noise above them and a volley of eager whistles.
The ground leveled at the base of the hill; they broke out of the brush and could see the path again, away and to the right, winding to the river amongst the reeds. The howls behind them crescendoed as they gained it. They pelted along the track to the jetty.
And halted, doubled up and gasping.
The raft was gone.
Beyond the jetty, nothing but dark water. At the mooring post, a dangling rope end.
The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne Page 22