Chapter 26

 

Kimberly’s legs wobbled beneath her. She slumped against a boulder as she took in the town on the far side of the mountain. The ground felt distant, her fingers tingling, like she would float away if she didn’t sink pitons into the rock. Her breath came in a desperate, tyre-puncture whistle.

She knew those streets. There, the lights of Central Avenue dividing the town into two neat hemispheres. The river on the northern edge, winding along the base of the mountains. In the east, the grey coastline, the bridge swallowed by mist.

God, she could even pick out her house... her fake house... in Rustwood Heights. One of those tiny brick pinpricks on Rosewater Avenue. The place where her fake husband had lived, changing diapers on a fake child.

She turned. The mists were clearing as if burned away by the thin sunlight, and she could just make out the shape of Rustwood behind her. A tapestry of streetlights woven across the landscape. She turned again. It wasn't a hallucination. The town was there, laid out on both sides of the ridge, bordered by two identical sets of mountains. Cookie-cutter clones jammed up against each other.

Headlights slipped along the second Central Avenue. Moving cars, driven by real people. She tracked one as it turned off the main road and glanced over her shoulder.

It was miles away, impossibly distant, but Rustwood was small enough and she was so high on the ridge that she could pick out identical headlights bouncing as they traversed the potholes on Georgia Boulevard.

The towns were mirror images. Same houses, same people. Was there a Kimberly standing on the mountain range opposite her, squinting across the expanse? If she’d brought binoculars, she could’ve-

Beyond the mountains in the west, far past the jagged rise and fall of the mirror-image peaks, were more scattered lights. The same soft yellow glow that she saw over the Rustwood at her back, and the copy lying before her.

A third town. A third Rustwood.

The mountain ranges. The long angle of the shore. She'd seen it before, when she'd first pored over a map of the town, looking for an exit. It'd been right there, the geometry so plain, but she hadn’t been thinking straight. All she'd cared about were the tunnels, the bridge arcing out across the white-capped waters. Now, as she stood at the very peak of the mountain, she saw the town as it truly was.

Rustwood was bordered on six sides. The shoreline on the east side of town, the mountains in the west, joined to enclose all the little streets and houses like a colossal cell in a map of honeycomb.

And every cell was the same. Rustwoods met Rustwoods on all sides, in all directions, forever.

She remembered the tunnels. The time she’d tried to escape and found the path looping back upon itself. No, not looping. Exiting one Rustwood and entering another, a manufactured family in each. Her legs didn't want to hold her weight but she gripped the nearest shelf of rock and held steady. No point falling now. Not when she'd come so far. If the town thought it'd beaten her...

She could sense it. Something waiting below, something vast, pulsing just below the skin of the town. Like all those alleyways and bridges and church spires and two-buck cinemas were moss growing on the pebbled back of a creature too vast to take in.

The roaches flooded over Kimberly’s feet, recognising her as one of their own. In her guts, the little monster kicked and settled. Far below, the city lights dimmed and swelled, as if the whole town had taken one long breath, held it, and exhaled.

Nowhere to go but down.

 

* * *

 

Goodwell arrived just in time to see Mrs Archer silhouetted against the sky, standing at the very peak of the mountain. Then she stepped off, hands stuffed into the pockets of her coat, and was gone.

“Mrs Archer!” He surged up the slope, trying to close the distance, but Fitch grabbed his sleeve. “The hell are-”

“No use,” Fitch said. “You don’t want to see, Detective.”

“Let go of me!”

“Won’t. No sir.” With unusual strength, Fitch jerked Goodwell back and tossed him on his ass in the mulch. “Some things you’ve got no business with. Don’t need any more madmen in this town. Better I go alone.”

Goodwell glared up at Fitch from where he sat in the mud. “You son of a-”

“I’m saving you, you understand?” Fitch shook the mud from his sleeves and turned his collar up, whisking strings of hair back over his ears. “No use both of us getting chewed up.”

“So what the hell do you want me to do?”

“Go home. No. Better. Go to Mrs Archer’s house. She might turn up there.”

“You think she’s coming back?”

“One leaves and another arrives. That’s how it works.” Fitch gave Goodwell a sad smile, his withered face pinched and tired. “Me and Gull, we crossed a hundred towns but we never found an end. Not all the same, but almost. Little differences if you squint, like twins.”

“Fitch, you’re not making any sense.”

“Never have, never will.” He clapped Goodwell on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll catch you up.”

“Don’t-” But Fitch was already pushing up the slope, the mists folding around him. “Fitch, wait!” Goodwell braced against a tree stump as he struggled to stand. He was getting too old for this sort of bullshit. That was why he’d taken the detective’s exam; to leave the foot-chases behind. Trade the bloodied knuckles for quiet arrests and interviews. Now he was exhausted, bruised, soaked to the skin.

He missed his desk. Missed his quiet office. Shit, he even missed Commissioner Snow. “Fitch!”

A shape wavered in the fog. A figure slipping between the trees. “Fitch?” he whispered.

The smell hit him before the shape came clear: a stink of grave dirt and rotten flesh, damp leaves and deodorant. His hand dropped to his waist, groping for a pistol that wasn’t there. He forced his voice to stay even. “Thought you kids had somewhere to be.”

They were back. Dylan Cobber, Martin Goldfarb and Taram Traore waited in the trees. They stood as statues, hands by their sides, eyes wide and dark. Moss grew across their cheeks and their hands were leached of colour by long nights at the bottom of the well.

Not real, he told himself. They couldn’t be. Dead children chasing him all over town, strangling him in his dreams, whispering in his ear? He was already mad.

“Detective.” Dylan’s mouth fell open. Fat, purple worms crawled in the pit of his throat, coiling over his bottom teeth. “It’s cold down here. Should’ve brought you with us. Could’ve had a party.”

Goodwell blinked hard, hoping the kids would vanish. They didn’t. “I had to kill you. No other way.”

“There’s things inside me now,” Martin mumbled. “Things making nests. You should’ve joined us.” Leaves crunched beneath sneaker treads as the kids advanced. Dylan’s eyesockets were green with rot, strange fungi blooming in the hollows. A worm crawled along his upper lip like a pencil-moustache, then burrowed into his nostril and vanished.

“It’s not too late,” Dylan mumbled around a mouthful of gravedirt. “There’s space for you down here. All of us like a happy family, me and you and the Queen.”

Goodwell went to one knee, grabbing at fallen branches. Nothing thicker than a bundle of twigs. “She’s not your Queen. She’s a pretender, some up-and-coming fad. She won’t last a minute.”

“Your Old Queen is weak, Goodwell. Your pitiful, wrinkled matriarch. The New Queen is life. The New Queen is birth.”

Sticks would have to do. He gripped them in both hands like a talisman. “I put you down once and I’ll do it again.” His voice trembled. Every thud of his heart left him faint. “Get the hell out of here! You’re dead! You’re already dead!”

“Dead is different when you’re there,” said Martin. A slug slid free of his ear and plopped on to his shoulder, leaving a shiny trail across his tattered jacket. “It’s not so bad. You’ll see.”

Rocks clicked on the mountainside. A curse. A hiss of pain. “Goddamn... Detective, you okay?”

Fitch. He’d come back. Idiot. “Get the fuck out of here, Fitch! You’re supposed to be with Kimberly!”

“I heard you shout...” Fitch’s face went the white of old milk as he came out of the fog. “The hell are those things?”

“Dead kids. My dead kids. They don’t want you! Just run!”

“They look like kids to you?” Fitch picked up a rock in each hand, hefting them like a pair of shotput weights. “I got your back, Detective.”

“Don’t be an idiot! You can still stop her!” The kids advanced with slow, shuffling steps. Left leg forward, right leg, left, hands swinging limp at their sides, all smiling now with dirt in their teeth and worms in the jelly of their eyes.

Fitch was circling, finding a better angle of attack. Dumb fuck was going to get himself killed, but at least he wouldn’t be dying alone. Small mercy. The branches seemed more and more ineffectual as the dead children closed the gap. Better to fight with his fists, claw their black eyes from their skulls. Do as much damage as he could before they brought him down.

And Hannah would never know. Just another cop vanishing from his beat. Snow would write him off as a victim of the slaughter at the Rustwood PD and Hannah would never see a body. All they’d give her was time, decades to brood over the empty space in their house, the silence Goodwell used to fill.

“Fuck that,” he growled, and gripped his branch tighter. “Bring it on.”

As one, the dead children charged.

 

* * *

 

Peter Archer didn’t know what else to do but follow.

He tracked Kimberly as she left her apartment each morning, briefcase in hand, knocking on doors downtown and handing out resumes. He watched from a distance, hidden inside phone booths and behind lampposts plastered with faded posters and hookers’ phone numbers, as she ate lunch in a little Jewish deli and told the elderly woman behind the counter to keep the change. He waited nearby, silent, squinting, as she argued with a taxi driver over a fare she could no longer afford thanks to her kindness.

He’d thought he was beyond pain when the Queen first sent him on his mission. That misery had been cut out of him and left him pure.

He wasn’t.

When Kimberly - his wife, his lover, the mother of his child - came home in the evenings and knocked on the apartment door, when that man took her hand, when they leaned in close and kissed...

The agony of having his insides opened by the Queen was nothing in comparison.

He didn’t sleep. There was no need. He was an engine fuelled by anger. Whenever he grew tired, all he had to do was think of the times he’d held her close. Watched her feed Curtis at her breast.

Now he watched her kiss a strange man, squeeze his hand through her lamb-skin gloves. He listened to them argue at night, and recalled the times they’d argued - not in screams but in measures of silence.

She’d never been half so passionate with him. There’d always been a wall there, one he couldn’t quite hammer through. He’d spent nights sullen, clutching himself, wondering what he lacked.

Now he knew, and he didn’t care. All he needed was the anger.

The new, true Queen had sent him to kill Kimberly’s lover, but Aaron was rarely alone. He spent his days hunched over a desk, pulling the staples out of insurance forms for minimum wage. Peter listened to his complaints when he shadowed Aaron to a local bar, a sticky-floored dive where cigarette smoke stained the ceiling yellow and the bartender had bandaids knitted across his knuckles. After that, it was less than a block back to the apartment he shared with Peter’s wife.

Peter could’ve killed Aaron on the street as he stumbled half-drunk through the snow. All he needed to do was close the distance, grab Peter around the neck, and sink his thumbs into his soft, pale skin. Feel the blood on his fingers.

The time wasn’t quite right. Peter didn’t know when the moment would come - he assumed he’d feel it in his gut, a churning sent by his master. He felt the Queen sometimes, a hissing in the back of his head. Cut bleed empty taste twist.

He pushed those voices away. Not to deny the Queen, oh no. That would be blasphemy. He only wanted enough time to be sure.

There was only so long he could watch before it became too much.

Rains came the night before. It was unusually warm, and the New York snowdrifts had melted into the gutters, leaving the cracked sidewalks slippery underfoot. Mist shrouded the streets. Women walked hunched, fur-lined coats turned around their faces. A hot-dog seller steamed in the dawnlight, his breath pluming as he shouted down passers-by, offering five kinds of mustard with sauerkraut.

Peter wasn’t hungry. Hadn’t been in weeks. He crouched in the shadow of an alley across from Kimberly’s apartment, waiting for the happy couple to emerge.

It didn’t take long. Kim had an interview that morning, some publisher in the city. He’d heard as much, listening at their window the night before. The lover told her no, that it was only an internship, that they’d use her up and spit her out.

Kimberly didn’t listen. Kimberly never listened. That was half the reason Peter fell in love with her. Headstrong and tenacious to a fault.

Now, as the pair left the apartment hand in hand, headed east toward the sunrise, Peter fell into step behind them. Kimberly was dressed in a hard-shouldered power-suit, straight-backed and ready for her interview. Her lover, Aaron, was a slob in comparison, stained sneakers flapping at the end of ragged bluejeans.

It’d be a pleasure killing him, Peter thought. He’d open the man’s throat. Leave him kicking and mewling. Watch the light fade from his eyes.

But not yet. Not today.

The couple crossed the street hand in hand, headed to the Franklin Avenue station. Peter kept close. He became part of the crowd flooding up the stairs, the huddled commuters waiting for the arrival of the nine fifteen C-Train.

By the platform, Kimberly was whispering into the shoulder of her young lover. With her briefcase in hand and her neat suit hugging her hips, hair falling in permed blond curls across her shoulders, she looked like a young Pam Ewing, the executive daughter off Dallas. All power and hard edges, taking no shit.

It looked like the two were fighting, albeit quietly. Then, as the roar of the approaching train filled the platform, Kimberly pressed one hand to the stranger’s cheek and kissed him.

It was brief, almost chaste, but it left Peter gasping. Something about that tenderness, the light in her eyes, the light she’d never shown him...

Now, the Queen whispered. Rip and bleed and bite.

He pressed against the wall, small square tiles cold against his palms, and tried to keep from screaming as Aaron and his wife pressed lips against lips. The rage was a living thing, hot and spiked, uncoiling in his belly.

There was no walking away. Not any more. Not with the Queen in his head.

He tasted vomit as he forced a path through the crowd, shoving commuters aside with fists and knees. A thudding pain behind his eyes urged him on, whispering sibilants only he could hear. Slice screw strangle kill

The world dropped away as he closed the distance. There was only his wife, the woman he’d married, the woman who’d blushed and turned her head as he slipped the ring on her finger, who danced to Prince in the kitchen as she made breakfast on Sunday mornings, who kept him up past midnight reading dogeared Ruth Rendell mysteries in bed, gasping at the twists before clapping her hands over her mouth and whispering apologies.

There was only so much Peter could bear. He was only human, after all.

Kimberly and her lover broke apart. The man walked away - for a moment it looked like he would turn back, but as the C-Train howled in the depths of the tunnel, he hunched his shoulders and slipped through the crowds, headed for the stairs.

Kimberly turned back to the platform as Peter eased into the morning crush to stand behind her. His hands were bloodless fists by his sides. In his stomach, the Queen’s gift unfurled and pricked the inside of his ribs with needle talons.

He whispered, “Kimberly.”

She didn’t turn. Didn’t even twitch at his voice. Her gaze was fixed on the oncoming lights.

No anger. No disappointment or crush of abandonment. He’d known this was coming. After all, wasn’t this what the Queen had meant for him to do? To tie off all loose ends? If she’d given the order that night in the mines, he would’ve refused. He had to see for himself, to understand what needed to be done.

“You abandoned your son,” he said. “I love you... I loved you.”

Kimberly was looking the other way, staring down the mouth of the tunnel, briefcase clasped in both hands, when Peter Archer planted one hand in the small of her back and shoved.

Her screams were lost beneath the roar of the train.

 

* * *

 

 

THE END

OF RUST: THREE

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for reading book three of Rust!

 

It’s been a long time coming, I know. As it turns out, three novels a year is a pretty heavy schedule. Who would’ve thought? So I deeply, sincerely appreciate your patience and dedication to this ongoing horror saga of mine.

If you'd like to keep up to date with my work, including Rust, my fantasy series Century of Sand, and my Olesia Anderson thriller series, join my mailing list.

You can also help hurry the next book along by telling people about Rust. Leave a review on Goodreads. Talk about Rust on Facebook and Twitter. Make your friends read episode one, at gunpoint if necessary. Got a blog? Write a quick article about Rust. Don't like writing for your blog? Drop me a line and I'll whip up some content for you.

Talk about it in book clubs. Gift book one to a stranger on Reddit. Print a copy of the prologue and slip it into someone's newspaper. There are hundreds of ways to spread the word about Rust, and a hundred ways to support an author without buying a book.

If you've got questions, email me through christopher.ruz@gmail.com. If I can answer without spoiling the plot, I will! If I can't answer, then I'll still take note of what plot points you're most concerned about, and will make sure to give them twice the attention when the time comes.

 

Thanks again!

 

Sincerely,

 

Christopher Ruz

Rust will return in 2016!

 

 

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Other works by Christopher Ruz

 

 

 

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The Magician isn't far behind, and he's brought a pet: the Culling, an undead stitched-together tracking dog with a taste for blood. But Richard has his own weapon, stolen from the Magician himself: the calcified heart of a demon, which he hopes to trade back to its original owner in exchange for sanctuary. What he doesn't know is that his daughter, Ana, is far more valuable than the stone. She was the last piece in the Magician's grand weapon, and he'll tear the desert in half to get her back...

Century of Sand is the first book in an epic fantasy trilogy that follows Richard and Ana as they chase down legends and battle to stay one step ahead of the Magician. Murderous warlords, a priest with a dark past, and creatures torn from Richard's nightmares lie between him and salvation.

Century of Sand is available from all major ebook retailers.

 

 

 

Olesia Anderson is a sharpshooter, quick talker and corporate spy-for-hire, employed by the mysterious Blackrock Association to do the dirty work that major corporations don't want the public to know about. Kidnapping, data theft, the occasional assassination... if it pays, Olesia is the woman for the job. 
But the assignments are getting more and more dangerous, and Olesia is rapidly collecting enemies. A terrorist organisation known only as Zero Error is attracting more followers every day, and it seems that Blackrock and Zero Error are on a collision course that's likely to leave Olesia in an early grave...

AGENT 806 is a novel-length collection of three erotic spy thrillers: DIRTY DEALS, BLACK MARKET, and MUZZLE FLASH, and is available through all major ebook retailers.

 

 

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