Chapter 21

 

Goodwell made sure the pistol had one in the chamber before he peered out into the morning mist. Fog sat heavy across the suburban lawns, coiling hungrily through the wooden slats of Fitch’s front fence and choking off the street. The houses on the far side of the road were drowned in grey.

Anything could be out there. Police, creatures in black robes. Dead children...

A floorboard creaked behind him as Detective Chan stood on tip-toes to squint over his shoulder. “Are we good?”

“We’re never good.”

“But is it safe?”

Goodwell shrugged. “Suck it and see, I guess.”

He crept out into the fog, weapon clenched in both hands, lips pressed tight together to keep the rain from getting in his mouth. A shadow on the far side of the street peeled away from the black silhouette of a streetlamp. He forced his breath to slow, keeping the automatic down by his side. Just a woman walking her dog, a yappy rat straining at the end of its leash.

“Jumpy?” Chan whispered in his ear. “Why don’t you let me handle the gun?”

He deliberated, but only for a moment. If Chan was going to shoot him in the back, she’d have done it while loading the magazine. He spun the pistol in his hand and offered Chan the butt. “If anything comes at me... Don’t think. Just kill it.”

“Even if it’s a kid?”

He flipped Chan the bird and crept across the garden to the carport. The cruiser’s busted window had allowed a skin of condensation to settle across the dash during the night. Goodwell wiped the radio clean with the sleeve of his shirt before kicking the car into gear and sweeping the airwaves.

Nothing but crackles and static. Chan, leaning through the window, shook her head. “Don’t make anything like they used to. They built those radios just up the road, you know. Once upon a time, at least. I knew a guy who lost his job when the place closed down-”

“Think I got something.” A voice blurred through the static. Goodwell clicked through frequencies but the signal eluded him. “They must be messing with the channels.”

“Move over.” Chan jumped in the passenger side and set to adjusting the knobs. Her brow wrinkled as she concentrated on tickles of frequency Goodwell thought little more than background noise. “I think they’re using the higher bands. Guess they knew we’d be listening... Gotcha!”

The voice was indistinct but Goodwell could just make out the words when he pressed his ear to the speaker grille. “Headed north... two suspects. This is a priority one, caution alpha-”

A young voice, not one Goodwell recognised. The EMS code was garbled, like some kid was hijacking the frequency, a teenager who’d learned police codes from late night cop shows. “Who the hell is that?”

“Some recruit.” Chan played the radio like she was fine-tuning an instrument. “Sounds bored, doesn’t he?”

She was right. Every word was drawn out, sleepy, like the officer was reading from a script. “Poor sucker. Dead like the rest of them. Just doesn’t know it yet.” He shivered at the memory of the bucket of blood, the gore scrawled across the cellblock floor, Officer White drumming his heels as Fitch choked out what little life he still had. The room piled high with offal and limbs. “I didn’t think it’d go this way. I thought you’d meet the Queen, we’d work together...”

“Shit rolls downhill, Goodwell, and we’re at the bottom of the hill.” Chan brushed damp hair back from her eyes as she finally found the perfect frequency. “You hear that?”

It was unmistakable: the crackle of a familiar voice. Commissioner Snow. “Cut them off! I don’t care how many it takes. Pull Prez off the mayor’s house, and Bausa from... Yes! Send everyone!”

A needle of ice dropped into Goodwell’s stomach. They’d been found. Whether they’d tracked the cruiser or broken Fitch’s wards didn’t matter. They needed to grab their gear and get out-

Another squeal of static. “Her friend-”

“I don’t care what you do with him, but bring Archer back intact. Not a scratch!”

Goodwell didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified. “They’re not hunting us. They’re hunting Kimberly.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to walk back into that mess.” Chan’s lips were thin, stern lines. “We barely got out of there alive, and you want to-”

“We have to.” Goodwell was already warming the engine, the cruiser purring in his hands. “The Queen says she’s important, and she’s not the type to exaggerate.”

“Fuck your Queen.” Chan clambered out of the car and slammed the door behind her. “I didn’t sign up for this crazy zombie shit, and I’m not going to risk my ass for this lady. Your problem, not mine.”

“Chan, you can’t-”

“You don’t tell me what to do!” She got close enough that Goodwell could feel the heat rising off her skin, the fury boiling in her eyes. “You’re an asshole, Goodwell. You’re trash. You killed three kids and you would’ve killed me to save your own skin. You don’t get to beg favours.”

His mouth opened and closed soundlessly. It would’ve been easy to swear, to protest, but Christ, she was right. It was the reason Hannah never talked any more. The reason nobody in the office knew his first name.

He couldn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah, I’m an asshole. I’ve done...” One deep breath. Memories of men screaming, flick knives in dark alleys, the itch of hemp rope pulling taut around a stranger’s wrists. “I’ve done worse than shoot those kids, all on the Queen’s orders. If we were anywhere else, I’d be on the way to the chair. But this isn’t about me. Kimberly Archer’s just some lady. She has a kid, Karen. Less than a year old.”

“Don’t you get noble on me, Goodwell.”

“Me? Noble? This is about you. I know you, Chan. No chance you’d walk away from a civilian in trouble.”

“How dare you. How dare-” Chan jabbed one finger at Goodwell, her jaw jutting, trembling with indignation. “You motherfucker.”

“But I’m not wrong.”

Detective Chan looked ready to punch him in the teeth, and Goodwell forced himself to sit still, to keep from flinching. Never show fear, he thought, not when you were about to lose your only ally, but it was hard not to think about those red-painted nails taking trenches out of his cheek.

Finally, Chan drew back. “I’ll get Fitch. Keep the radio on. Figure out where they’re taking her.”

As she trudged across the matted lawn, Goodwell allowed himself a smile. He hadn’t lied. He felt bad for the lady. Kimberly Archer needed help, sure. Needed to be kept safe. The thought of her being captured and dragged into the mines below the city scared him down to the core.

But it didn’t scare him half as much as the thought of disappointing the Old Queen.

 

* * *

 

Mrs Rosenfeld felt the panic in the air as she stepped out of the shelter of the Mission and into the sleeting rain.

It was a sensation she couldn’t describe in words. Like walking through spiderwebs? No, tighter than that. It was wire strung between telephone poles. A constant, tingling static shock. Like her bones were iron and she was caught between two huge magnets.

The whole town hummed with an angry buzzsaw burr that set her teeth on edge. It was in the asphalt beneath her feet, in the walls of the Mission, in the lamppost she leaned against. Even the rain was hot on her wrinkled cheeks.

Rustwood was mad. Seeking... what? The tug in her chest pulled her north, and she had to clench her teeth and fight the urge to follow. It’d been a long time since such simple tricks worked on her.

Behind her, beneath the eaves, the Raconte twins hesitated. They carried canvas satchels, heavy with Rosenfeld’s tools. The bowls, the brushes, the spoons. Simple things, elegantly engraved. Fifty cents apiece in the local charity shop, but in the right hands they could melt stone and turn flesh to paper.

The enemy would have its own tools. There’d be damage, no doubt. The town might not recover if things went too far. But, Rosenfeld reminded herself, she hadn’t started the war. The thing in the sunglasses, the once-was-woman, had come to her first. This was self defence.

A strange light rose in the east as Mrs Rosenfeld staggered down the cracked-paver sidewalk with the Raconte girls trailing behind. A fool would think it the sun. She knew better. The only light that fell on Rustwood was the light of the Queen, and what she saw in the east was sickly, malevolent. A great red eye glaring down on the empty streets, burning through the raincloud shroud.

“Keep up!” she called over her shoulder. Better for the twins to walk ahead. They were faster, ready to fight. The pain in her guts was receding, but she wasn’t repaired quite yet. Enough strength to walk and swear and snap her fingers.

That’d have to be enough.

On the far side of the street, two men in baggy tracksuit pants were arguing, nose to nose, butting heads. The rain sizzled off their shoulders. In a sedan parked beside the mission, a young woman - only a teen, Rosenfeld thought, her perm so tall it brushed the tattered felt of the car’s roof - clutched the wheel, eyes staring straight ahead, sightless.

“It’s in the air,” she whispered. “Getting ready for war.”

The Raconte girls said nothing. They so rarely did.

The tug was growing. She could walk the other way, but the stronger it became the harder it was to ignore. Yes, it was the Old Queen calling... or the New Queen, the pretender, the beast. One and the same, in a dim light. But it wasn’t a call to fight, or a call to kill, or the peculiar scar on Rustwood’s surface that marked a new arrival. No, this was... panic.

It needed help. This was an all-points bulletin.

What, then? Had they finally broken the truce between mother and daughter? The two great energies of Rustwood colliding after so many millenia? Or was it...

She felt the call, the whisper like a rattle in her old bones.

Archer.

She spun, fixing the Raconte girls with an iron stare. “We’re headed to the mountains. If I fall, you carry me, you hear?”

As one, the twins nodded.

 

* * *

 

Kimberly aimed for the horizon, and hoped.

Whenever a police-siren war cry sounded in the distance, she took a turn. When the traffic was light, she kept her foot to the floor. It didn’t matter where she was headed, so long as it was away.

A wail of red and blue lights sent her left at the intersection of Daley and Torrance, and she found herself on two-lane blacktop, switchbacking up the south face of Frine Mountain. Not the mountain she’d tried to cross weeks before, in her earlier escape attempts, but close enough that she could see the tip of that particular bad memory rising above the morning mists.

You have to see for yourself. You’re too young to go there now, too... innocent.

If Gull didn’t want her to see what was on the far side of the mountain ranges, he could go fuck himself. Innocent? She had brains drying on the hood of her stolen car. Hadn’t been innocent in years.

She aimed for the peak.

The gas needle was tipping empty as she passed a rest stop, and she hammered a quick U-turn, parking in the shadow of a copse of leaning pines. The engine spluttered as she rocked to a stop, gave a final kick, then died altogether.

The sudden silence was eerie. Kimberly found herself staring at her hands. They were so still on the wheel, so calm. Too calm for a woman who’d just seen a police officer explode across the windshield.

They wouldn’t stop. She knew that much. They’d chase her up the highway, run her down, drag her to whichever Queen they served with her legs broken and embossed with their tire treads. For some reason, the thought didn’t scare her. Death, here? No chance. She’d always pictured herself dying somewhere a whole lot sunnier. Miami, Italy, Spain. Peter always said he wanted to retire in Hawaii.

Sirens warbled at the base of the mountain, so distant Kimberly could’ve mistaken them for birdcalls. Even so, she knew it’d only be a few minutes before they closed the gap.

Sit and die, or get up and fight. See the peak of the mountain. Give Gull the middle finger from the top of the world.

She chose to fight.

No pistol in the glovebox. Only registration papers, cigarettes and a flashlight that flickered when she jammed down on the switch. She had more luck with the trunk. Rain pelted down across her shoulders as she turned the key, revealing a shotgun mounted on a black steel rack. The gun was three feet long, pump action, polished to a fine sheen, and a hell of a lot heavier than it looked.

Last time she’d fired a shotgun was clay shooting with her Dad, a lifetime before. Couldn’t recall the name of the range, or even what her father had looked like, but she remembered the smooth action of planting her heel, swinging the gun, sighting on the target...

She imagined raising the shotgun, sighting on a human face. Would it be harder than thumping the accelerator, watching a man bounce off the windshield?

Kimberly scooped a box of slugs into her jacket pocket and shivered in the sudden chill wind. They’d catch up soon. Best chance was to get herself lost. Stick to the dark places. Force them to stumble in the mud. The wind lashed the pines, sending them reaching with needle-fingers. She wiped the rain-wet shells dry on her shirt, thumbed them into the port, and pumped one into the chamber. The sirens were closing, echoing strangely off the bowing trees.

“I wish Fitch was here,” she whispered, and ran into the darkness of the forest.