Chapter 22

 

Twenty one hours. One thousand, two hundred and sixty minutes. More than seventy five thousand seconds.

That was how long Keller’s special guest had been on the run.

He’d realised his keys were missing just before the end of shift. Reached for the little unmarked key-fob normally tucked into his coat pocket and found it empty. Panicked, heart rising into his throat, sweat blossoming on the nape of his neck and between his shoulder blades. He’d run to the door, found it ajar, and skittered down the stairs with one hand on the rail. Flicked the lights and waited, trembling, for the old, yellowed fluorescents to catch.

His footsteps echoed back off bare concrete. The lights cast long, black shadows into the corners and gleamed off the gurney where he’d kept his patient strapped.

She was gone. The gurney was blood-spattered, leather straps chewed to paper. The shelves where he’d stored the sedatives used to keep her calm had been swept clean. Yellow cardboard packets of pills had fallen in the dust, dumped there by an uncaring hand. Broken ampoules crunched beneath his heels.

“Impossible,” Keller whispered. An illusion, maybe. He’d been taking too much Adderall - side effects included temporary psychosis, after all. But when he ran his hands across the rumpled sheets, the leather cuffs, the bit lying abandoned and spit-soaked on the floor, he knew the truth.

She’d gotten away.

He cast back. The keys were in his pocket as he left his office. Then... Mrs Archer? No, she didn’t seem the type. Or maybe he was looking at her all wrong. She knew more than she insinuated. She talked about impossible things, things he’d assumed were delusions but Christ, what if they weren’t? What if she’d known?

He ran back to the stairs. There was no way his private patient could’ve freed herself, walked up the stairs and exited through a crowded hospital lobby. Somebody would’ve stopped her, called the police, tackled her at the exit.

But nobody was screaming in the lobby. No panicked calls for security. St Jeremiah’s Hospital bumbled along, as it always did.

He’d fetched a spare, hidden key and locked the basement door. Retreated to his office. Poured a fat handful of Oxycodone and downed them with water. Repeat. Repeat.

Forty-eight hours later, his patient was still missing.

Keller chased two Adderall with a finger of Chattanooga and waited for the shaking to stop. From time to time he crossed his office to the window and stared out at the parking lot, as if expecting his private patient to be waiting down there, naked and afraid, begging for him to take her back.

She never was. Probably fifty miles away by now. He’d first found her in the woods near the hospital, lying mangled beneath a lilac bush, but it wasn’t until he’d examined her with his penlight that he understood she was something special. Brought an ambulance, tended to her as best he could, then scrawled the time of death on her patient chart when it became clear there was nothing he could do.

And yet, she lived.

It would’ve been a crime to walk away from her, all twisted and broken inside. So he’d faked the necessary paperwork, brought her to the basement and done his duty. Lord knew there wasn’t much he could do for the patients on the third floor with the blister sickness, but he could damn well care for her. Even if she wasn’t...

Wasn’t what?

Wasn’t alive?

The more he tried to chase the concept the more it slipped away. The idea was greasy, like trying to concentrate on a single word in the moments before falling asleep, words giving way to sounds giving way to dreams.

Like something didn’t want him thinking about it.

What he did know, with the absolute certainty that came with twenty years in the medical profession, was that his patient needed him. Somewhere in Rustwood, maybe hurt and maybe scared, was a woman in need of surgical attention. A woman who didn’t know what was best for her.

Just like Mrs Archer.

A knock at his door. “Doctor Keller? There are some people who’d like to speak with you.”

He didn’t recognise the voice, but that might’ve been the drugs. The pill bottle was lighter than he remembered. How many had he taken again? Three? Four? Ten?

“Doctor Keller?”

He slapped himself across the cheek, trying to get some fire back into his bones. Too much to do, not enough time. “It’ll have to wait!” He pulled on his corduroy coat even though he wasn’t feeling the cold. That was just the Oxycodone haze keeping him warm. An hour from now, when he was picking through the bushes by the side of the road with the rain sheeting down across his back, he’d be glad for the extra layer. “I have a patient.”

Two nurses waited outside, flanked by Doctor Mayfair and Doctor Creed. Both were scowling, fixed on Doctor Keller’s eyes. What was wrong? Was he unfocused? Pupils too wide? “Wherever you’re going, it can wait. We need to discuss-”

“Not now. Patient needs help.”

“Keller-”

He forced his way past, down the stairs, through the lobby, into the rain. The parking lot out front was nearly empty. Nothing moved in the bushes. The trees were still. An odd quiet had fallen over Rustwood - the only sound was the rat-tat-tap of rain bouncing off his skull, the puddles splashing beneath the toes of his crepe-soled Hush Puppies.

He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hello? It’s Doctor Keller!”

His voice echoed off the bowl of the sky. No other reply. Just the tickle of rain down the back of his neck, the steady beat of blood in his ears. But somewhere, he was sure, there was a voice. A low, desperate pleading.

His patient needed him.

Behind him, Doctor Creed shoved through the hospital’s glass double-doors. “Keller!” she called. “We need to talk! The hell are you doing?”

The voice called him on, down the winding hill, through the switchbacks. Into the evening shadows.

 

* * *

 

It was a hell of a hike, forcing a path through the mud and bushes with a shotgun tucked beneath her arm. Kimberly was bruised and dirty, scored deep by the blade-thin edges of stones and the unexpected whip of willow branches across her bare arms. Every slight noise, every click of pebbles or high spaghetti-snap of branches behind her, sent her spinning in a panic. Her finger rested alongside the shotgun trigger, teasing its spring-loaded curves. Enough firepower to cut a man in half at the waist.

The wind was a low, constant howl, fluttering the pines and scattering fallen needles around her feet. A hawk mourned in the treetops before taking flight, wings outstretched to block the noon sun; a strange, wavering light behind the rainclouds that reminded Kimberly of an infected eye leering down at her through the fir canopy. Every breath was thick with rotting mulch and deer shit.

All that, and the cops were closing. The thrum of red and blue came through the trees, shivering off the high branches. Either she found somewhere to hide, or she’d have to start shooting...

The thing in her chest kicked. It felt like a rusty nail being drawn down the inside of her ribs. Kimberly gasped, bouncing shoulder-first off a tree as she struggled for balance. “Son of a-”

She took deep breaths, staring at the dirt between her feet until the pain faded. Cockroaches swarmed over the toes of her shoes. She stomped them away and wiped the soles of her shoes against the edge of a rotten log. “Get off, get-”

Shouting carried from below. She gripped the shotgun tighter and pushed on.

The trigger was greasy, resistant. Worse, it felt good. As she ascended the mountain, she found herself breaking trigger discipline and stroking that little curve of steel, like she was chucking a cat under the chin.

There was power in a weapon, just as much as there was tucked away in Gull’s blood magic. A gunshot was a spell at high velocity. She didn’t need magic or the Queen’s gifts if she had a twelve-gauge slug ready to fire.

The slope grew steeper and shakier, until Kimberly had to use the shotgun as a walking stick, digging the butt into the soil for purchase. Twice, she staggered and found herself staring down the barrel, that black oily eye glaring back at her. Be careful! You want to die out here? That’s what I’m built for, kid. Killing, and nothing else.

Again, she wondered whether she could lift it when the time came. Aim and pull, she told herself. They’re not human. Just puppets made of meat. Long dead, ready for the casket...

Was that the crunch of a twig beneath boot treads?

Kimberly ducked low and waved the mists away, trying to pick out shapes in the gloom. No reply. Not a hiker, then. One of the cops. All she could do was scramble onward, alone, and hope to find somewhere to hide amongst the growing fog.

Leaf mulch gave wetly beneath her shoes. More roaches split the muck, emerging from beneath moss-kissed logs, wriggling over her laces. She grabbed a sapling, trying to pull herself up the slope, but her weight yanked it from the earth, roots and all. “Piece of...”

A branch snapped behind her. No mistaking it this time. Kimberly spun, a scream caught behind clenched teeth. A figure emerged from the mists on the slope below; a cop, scrabbling on hands and knees. His uniform hung askew, collar stained with blood. His lips were drawn back, tongue clenched between his teeth, the tip white and bloodless.

“Archer!” he coughed. No, not coughed - growled, the word gravelly, like he was speaking through a mouthful of chitin. “Queen wants you. You gotta stop. The Queen, the Queen!”

He reached for her. In his hand, shrouded by shadow, was the hard black sheen of a service revolver.

The shotgun swung around on instinct. She didn’t aim, didn’t blink.

A thunderclap rolled across the hills.

The blast slammed Kimberly flat on her ass. The recoil jumped the shotgun out of her hands, landing in the mulch, rainwater running along the length of the barrel.

The cop had vanished. No, not vanished; fallen backward down the hill, tumbling through the trees, finally coming to rest against a granite boulder with his legs splayed out before him. His blue peaked cap spiralled through the air, wind-tossed, before coming to rest in the boughs of a fir.

Kimberly tasted bile. His head was half-gone. Nothing but a ragged hole below the nose.

Her hands were numb as she groped for the shotgun. Somewhere on the slopes below, other men were calling her name. Their voices were distant, furred by the ringing in her ears. When she lifted the shotgun another flare of pain exploded in her ribs, sending her staggering.

She wiped the rain from her eyes with her free hand, trying to make out a path through the tumbled trees. All she needed to do was put one foot in front of the other, push on step by step, climb, never look back, not think about the man she’d killed, all she had to do was move faster than a bunch of dead men...

A low crunch behind her. She turned, not believing, not wanting to believe.

The cop was on his hands and knees, crawling up the slope inch by painful inch. Kimberly saw mist and tree trunks through the hole in his jaw. His sunglasses were still, somehow, perched on the end of his nose.

What was left of the man’s mouth fell open. He spat a stream of blood and teeth. Black, wriggling shoelace shapes like centipedes wriggled over his lips, tumbling from the ruin of this throat.

No, not centipedes. Too thick for that, too many of them. Not ten or fifty but a hundred, two hundred, all forcing their way from the dead man’s mouth to lap at the dirt, their tiny, silvery legs dragging the body up the slope.

The dead cop’s eyes were open, head tilted back, as the insects in his throat hauled him through the mud on his belly. He raised his one free hand and waved.