Chapter 19

 

Something clenched and tightened inside Kimberly Archer’s chest as she made her way down the asylum stairs. A scraping sensation, like a ragged fingernail dragging against the inside of her cheek, but lower, just to the right of her heart.

She staggered, unable to breathe, slamming one clenched fist against the mouldering floral wallpaper. A cloud of spores puffed through her fingers. “Son of a-”

Voices floated up from below. Two men, hushed, the tap of footsteps barely louder than their muffled commands. “Clear. Clear. Upstairs-”

She bit down on the pain and forced herself to walk. One foot after the other, the stairs spinning below her, the hospital walls flexing with each desperate breath. Echoes in the corridors she’d left behind. Was that fucker following her? Outside, the rain was easing, a gentle rattle against the grimy glass.

The footsteps moved away. Police patrolling, or the Queen’s servants, no matter. Last place she wanted to be was a cell. She trailed her fingers through the moss growing on the walls, a strange thrill running down her spine as it dragged beneath her fingernails.

Maybe it was the aftereffects of Gull’s weird little spell, or the fact that she’d only been on her feet five minutes, but she swore she could feel a throbbing beneath her fingertips. Like the asylum was breathing, so slowly as to be hibernating. That it wasn’t made of stone and mortar and rebar but something grown out of the earth, a tumour large enough to climb inside. Yes, a tumour with windows and doors for camouflage, teeth wet and bared, ready to crush anyone foolish enough to step into its parlour.

She came off the last step, emerging into a thin hall, the floor carpeted in dust. No footsteps had disturbed that patina of filth. Good, for now. “Back door, back door...”

She shoved through a rusted set of double doors, the push-bar grinding beneath her grip. The asylum’s rear garden was a grassy stretch the size of a basketball court overgrown with creepers and bushes with fat red flowers, leering like painted lips. The garden was walled on all sides, brick ten foot high, but an iron gate in one wall was ajar. Beyond was a pebbled path winding around the edge of the grounds, back to the road.

Back to the police.

Footsteps carried in the halls. “Find her. Where ever she’s hiding, find-”

Kimberly flinched as the door squealed shut behind her. No time to wait around and see if she was being followed. She splashed her way across the muddy earth and through the gate. Gravel crunched beneath her shoes as the path looped between weeping elms and hedges gone wild and toothy, finally passing through a peeling picket fence and returning to the street out front of the asylum.

Red and blue police lights strobed through gaps in the fence. Two cruisers... no, three, idling in the street.

She still didn’t understand why the cops had arrived. Was Goodwell trying to take her in? Why’d he have a hard-on for her, anyway? And who’d tipped them off about the asylum? Unless Gull’s severed-head foci had called to them in the same way it’d called the woman-thing...

In which case, they weren’t police at all.

She surveyed the street, the asylum grounds, the tumble-down houses behind tall iron fences on the far side of the road, trying to find a path that wouldn’t walk her between the cops. Nothing. If Fitch were there, he would’ve already had an answer. Some trick involving a tin can full of gasoline and a metal file between the ribs. Shit, if it were up to Fitch, the whole street would already be on fire. He’d be launching himself across the hood of a police cruiser with a pipebomb in each hand and a knife clenched between his teeth. A roadblock? A joke, he’d call it. After the inferno of the Pentacost Convent and the things that’d chased them through the graveyard, what was a police barricade?

Something tickled at the base of her throat. She coughed into one tight fist. Couldn’t pretend it was food caught in there, a stubborn crumb from her breakfast in Gull’s kitchen. The monster was squirming into place, building a warren through her guts.

The thought of it made her gag, and she took deep breaths until the nausea passed. A door slammed out on the street - a cop leaving his cruiser. Three cars. Two empty, when she squinted through the rain. That meant most of the cops were already sweeping the asylum.

Just one officer on watch, marching back and forth in the drizzling rain.

The fire in her chest had already faded. She knew she could run fast, run hard. The question was whether she could outrun a bullet.

Behind her, echoing through the dim asylum halls, came the thud of slamming doors. Cops were going room to room, flipping tables, kicking doors off their hinges. Wouldn’t be long until they found the woman-thing upstairs and realised she and Gull had split.

She hoped Gull had gotten away clean. She didn’t want him gunned down, let off easy. Too much satisfaction in tracking him down herself.

Time to move.

Kimberly stuck to the long morning shadows, pressing against the red-brick wall that bordered the asylum. The lone cop had moved to the middle of the street, hands on his hips. He wasn’t looking her way, but it was hard to tell through those big, mirrored sunglasses.

A faint putt putt putt carried through the rain as she reached the main gates. The closest cruiser’s engine was still running. The cop stood unmoving, unblinking, his uniform soaked dark, rain dribbling over his lips.

The thing inside her pressed against the cage of her ribs, and she bit down on a cry of pain. Like it was trying to reach out, communicate...

Not with her. With the cop. The officer was one of them. A drone, maybe. Or a runt.

No matter. What was important was whether he’d locked his car door behind him.

She didn’t have any other options. She’d take the chance.

Kimberly clenched her jaw and pressed her toes into the soft soil like a sprinter preparing to launch at the crack of a starter’s gun. Her knees trembled. Her world tightened down to a single point - the cruiser’s driver-side door. “Three. Two. Come on, come on. Don’t freeze. You can do this. You can do this. One!”

The rain stung her eyes as she exploded across the asylum lawns, feet skidding in the wet grass, her heart rising into her throat. The officer turned as she shoved through the wrought-iron gates, drawing his pistol with the jerky, spasmodic motions of a marionette. “Stop!”

She waited for the snap of gunfire, a hammer-punch to the chest, but none came. The door handle slipped in her sweaty palms. Then the button clicked, the door fell open, and she was through.

The plastic push-locks stung her palms as she slapped them down. The engine was running, keys in the ignition. Kimberly’s toe trembled against the gas. The cop was fixed in place in the middle of the street, pistol clenched in both hands, aiming straight at her through the windshield, but he wasn’t firing. Somehow, she knew he was glaring at her from behind those dark aviators.

They needed her alive, she realised. The woman-thing upstairs hadn’t lied. The Queens wanted her intact. Not to torture her, not for revenge. They needed her.

And she needed to know why.

Motion in the rear-view mirror. Two officers had emerged from the asylum, rain splashing off their caps. In front of the car, the single cop began a slow march, pistol still trained on Kimberly’s head.

A month before, she would’ve stepped out with her hands over her head, but that was a different Kimberly.

She slammed the patrol car into first. Rubber screamed against wet asphalt and the cruiser lurched forward as the tires bit deep.

The officer made no attempt to run as the cruiser filled with acrid blue smoke. She waited for him to jump aside, to shout for them to stop, to shoot.

He never flinched, not even as the patrol car snapped his legs from beneath him and threw him face-first into the windshield. He impacted with a thump like a hammer hitting meat.

The officer’s head shattered like an undercooked egg spiked against a brick wall. Kimberly arched back in her seat, lips drawn over her teeth, as the dead man slid away.

The wheel pulsed in her grip. All her attention was on the road, the growl of gears as she hit fifth. The dead cop was a tangle of rags in the rear mirror. The wipers squeaked back and forth, painting Kimberly’s view of the street with red.

“Not really a man.” Kimberly slammed around a corner. Momentum pressed her into the door as the tires skidded across wet macadam. In the rear mirror, police lights were closing. “Just puppets.”

She pressed the pedal to the floor and the cruiser surged. The midnight lights of Rustwood spat past. The roar of the engine echoed in her blood. Her jaw was clenched. Her toes curled inside her shoes. The wipers traced fractal patterns of blood across the windscreen. “So what the hell does that make me?”