Chapter 3

 

Detective Karen Chan watched her former partner grow more and more incoherent, slurring his words as his eyelids drooped, before his chin finally met his chest and he collapsed into sleep.

She held the pistol like a talisman, knuckles white on the butt, and counted to one hundred. Maybe Goodwell was faking it, waiting to see whether she’d run. Maybe he was bipolar, dropping into a trough of exhaustion before leaping up again, teeth bared in his bloodlust. Only hours before he’d tried to shoot her, and now he was handing her their only weapon? No way could she let her guard drop. Not until he was safely in a cell.

She trained the pistol on his chest, trigger cold against her skin. The wind ran frantic fingers along the corrugated tin roof, scratching at the loose mortar. The old shed was a thin shield against the world, the darkness twisting the tractor-junk and old wooden rakes into torture instruments.

A mad-man inside. Monsters outside.

Chan wanted to be anywhere else.

Goodwell snored like a rusted sawblade. He droned, steady, rhythmically, and Chan found herself nodding in time. Even after their panicked flight from the convent, the things she’d seen burning in there, things she still couldn’t believe in - masks, costumes, tricks of light, anything but real - she couldn’t fight off exhaustion forever. She dipped in and out of dreams. A nameless man with a familiar face. A golden retriever curled at the foot of her bed, a bed in a house she couldn’t quite remember. Watching a cop show on TV as a child, balled up on the sofa with someone pulling her close... father, mother? Just shapes now.

She snapped awake twice. The first time the pistol had slipped from her fingers, coming to rest barrel-down on the concrete floor, and she snatched it back up with her heart thudding in her ears. No need - Goodwell was deep in dreams too. He mumbled, sorry. Had to. Don’t. Don’t. Why won’t you stay dead?

Watch out for the dead kids, he’d said. She knew who he was talking about. Dylan, Taram and Martin, the trio they’d been hunting for at the Hill family farm. She’d found a bullet-hole plume in the side of the barn there, a hole large enough to twist her index finger through. Truth was, she’d known even before the bullet-hole. She’d felt it.

Detective Chan had dated a specialist from forensics once, a slim guy with tousled hair and clever fingers. Quiet, always wrapped in a blanket of his own thoughts. One night, after three cheap beers, he’d revealed he could taste blood on the air even before entering a murder scene. That the atmosphere around a recent kill grew heavy with death.

That barn felt the same way.

Goodwell had led her in circles, back at the barn. Made excuses. Done his best to drag her away from the well. Then, as they approached the convent, he’d aimed his gun at her head.

Didn’t take a genius to draw lines between the clues. Those poor kids...

She propped the pistol between her knees, making sure her aim was true. “Don’t sleep,” she whispered. “Couple more hours, come on, come on...”

The second time she woke, light was breaking through the gaps in the mortar. Rain tinkled off the roof of the little brick shed. They’d survived the night.

Her head throbbed and her mouth tasted like it was coated in deep-fryer oil, but she still had the pistol. Goodwell was slumped on his side, hands folded beneath his head, eyelids fluttering. Still dreaming.

Quietly, cautiously, she picked through the scraps of old farming equipment littering the shed. The rusted head of a hoe, a shredded tire. Lengths of tattered rope. All she had to do was tie his hands and lead him back to town. An hour in an interrogation room and they could find out what’d really happened to those kids. Or maybe Goodwell needed a psych eval followed by a permanent holiday in one of those resorts where all the walls were padded and the orderlies only allowed you plastic knives.

She inched closer to the rope. The pistol shook in her right hand as she stretched out. Closer...

“That hurts, Chan.”

Goodwell snapped out, grabbed the pistol by the barrel and jerked it from Chan’s grip. She swore, scrambled to her feet, and found herself staring down the mud-streaked bore.

“Thought you’d be better than that.” Goodwell stood with the pistol clasped in both hands. “You can relax. I’m not gonna shoot you.” He flicked the safety and stuffed the pistol into his shoulder-holster. Dried mud fell away from the leather in sheets. “Not unless you try something stupid. Did anyone come knocking last night?”

She knew he was fishing, testing how much she knew, but the bait was irresistible. “Who were you expecting? Three dead teens?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Goodwell peered out the door, one hand still on the butt of his sidearm. Through the gap, Chan watched morning mist rise like ocean tides. “Teenagers don’t knock.”

 

The Pentacost river was swollen by rain, lapping almost up to the tilted flood markers along the bank. They’d been walking for miles, Goodwell leading, one hand always on the pistol. The fog was clearing, burned away by morning sun, but that didn’t help the rainwater soaked into her socks, spilling over the lip of her shoes.

She was faint with hunger. The emptiness didn’t just gnaw. It roared.

“Wonder if the flooding is this bad in town,” Goodwell said. “Sewage backing up, Lincoln Boulevard all washed out-”

“It does this every spring,” Chan grumbled. “Big rains, same old story.”

“Spring, huh? I thought it was fall.”

Goodwell’s limp was getting worse, and he swore under his breath every time he shifted his weight. If he didn’t have that damn pistol she could break for the hills. Instead she was forced to follow at his heels, yes sir, no sir, whatever you say, sir.

She turned her face upward, to the rain. It washed away the aches, the needles pricking the soles of her feet, the acid hunger. The slow patter on her cheeks was soothing. It dulled the fire behind her eyes. She wasn’t scared with the rain on her lips. Just calmly analytical-

“Stop that!”

Goodwell’s hand on her arm snapped her back to attention. He shook her hard enough to click her teeth together. “Not the rain!” he growled. “Don’t get it in your mouth!”

She shoved Goodwell away and rubbed her arm. A bruise was already rising, a ghost-impression of Goodwell’s fingers. “The hell is wrong with you?”

“Saving your life. That’s how they get into you.”

“What is they?”

“You’ll see.” He pointed ahead, to where a little black smudge nestled in the flats between two hills. A gas station beside a winding dirt road, an umbilical joining Rustwood to the tunnel leading out of town. “We’ll stop for five. Grab clean water and potato chips. Then I’m taking you to meet the boss. The real boss.”

She couldn’t take her eyes off the pistol swinging at his side. “Whatever you say.”

The road was quiet, otherwise Chan would’ve thumbed a lift and gotten the hell away. No other option but to follow. The gas station was a podunk affair: a glass fronted convenience store attached to two self-service pumps so old that the paint had flaked away entirely and left them as rusted steel.

It wasn’t the pumps Chan was interested in. It was the phone booths at the corner of the convenience store. One was busted to hell, receiver hanging limp from shredded wires and half the buttons prised out, revealing the dark steel guts inside. The other looked intact.

In her pocket, zipped into a tiny coin purse, Chan had about four bucks in change. All she needed was a couple minutes without Goodwell breathing down her neck.

Her partner led her in a cautious circuit around the gas station. “Nothing suspicious. You think they sell shoes in there?”

“Tennis shoes, maybe.”

“Better than nothing. Can’t walk barefoot forever.” Goodwell glanced over his shoulder at the hills, the road winding down towards Rustwood. All empty as far as Chan could see, but she suspected Goodwell was past the point of only seeing what was real. Probably had ghosts and fairies whispering in his ears all hours of the night.

And still, a voice in the back her her head whispered, you saw the monsters too. You shot one through the head. How long are you gonna pretend it was all a bad trip?

Goodwell flipped his wallet from his pocket and inspected the few notes tucked inside. “I’ll only be a couple minutes. You wait here, make sure nobody’s following us. Is there going to be a problem?”

“No problem,” Chan whispered. “You’re the guy with the gun.”

“Would’ve let you keep it, if you hadn’t pulled that stunt this morning.” Goodwell shrugged as he buttoned his coat, hiding the pistol from casual glances. “I wish I didn’t have to do this. Hell of a thing, to keep a friend at gunpoint. Maybe after you’ve met the boss...”

“Sure, sure.” She leaned against the wall of the gas station, arms crossed, not meeting Goodwell’s eyes. “Go on, then. Get me a sandwich or something, okay? Nothing with fresh egg. It gives me a rash.”

Goodwell shot her an uneasy smile before heading inside. She counted to three after the doors dinged shut before heading for the phones.

The payphone booths were walled on three sides with battered steel sheet, plastered over with hand-stencilled A4 posters screaming PUNK ISN’T DEAD - POINTER HALL, $2 ENTRY. Below that, scribbled phone numbers advertising five buck blowjobs, or A night with the Monarchs of the Highway. Local band? Brothel? No matter. Chan peered around the side of the booth to watch Goodwell stomping back and forth inside the gas station, inspecting a rack of dime store flip-flops. He already had a cellophane packet tucked under his arm - her sandwich. She had a minute, maybe less.

Her hands shook as she thumbed coins into the slot. Low clunks echoed through the payphone. No need to pull out Commissioner Snow’s card - she had his number memorised.

A click. She clenched the phone tight. “Commissioner?” No reply. Just the low, steady hiss of a bad line. “Commissioner Snow?”

And then, finally, after a full day and night of uncertainty and terror and blood, the voice she’d been waiting to hear. “Detective Chan?”

She sagged against the phone booth in relief. The Commissioner was pissed, but that didn’t matter. It was going to be okay.

She was going home.

 

* * *

 

There were a lot of reasons why the woman in bug-eye sunglasses liked Commissioner Snow. He was tall and swollen with muscle, strong enough to crack bones and shear the tops off skulls if she demanded. His hair was an autumnal blaze - the forest of his sideburns alone was more colourful than the rest of the Rustwood PD put together. Plus, he swore like he was being paid per curse. Even in un-life, stumbling beneath the weight of the chains she’d used to bind his brain, Snow couldn’t keep the fuck it all’s and the shit this for a laugh’s from his lips. Half the time she didn’t even understand what he was swearing about, and that was half the charm.

There was only one part of Snow she couldn’t stand: the commissioner was wedded to his job. He’d been dead... or near enough to count as dead... for almost a week, and he still arrived at his desk every morning at eight, sitting mute and still until the clock hit six.

That was where she found him - door closed, shutters drawn, hunched over a stack of internal reports. Hands flat atop the desk, a ballpoint dangling from between his fingers. Not writing, not signing anything; those parts of him were long gone. Just a puppet now, a creature in need of a leash.

She closed the door behind her. “Commissioner.”

Snow grunted. He was wearing the sunglasses she’d given him, thank goodness. The first few days were the biggest problem with puppets - they needed to be told everything, how to dress, how to breathe. They regained little bits of control over time, as the parasites took hold: mannerisms, learned behaviours. Snow already knew to keep his eyes hidden. Another week and he’d be wiping his own ass.

“You need to get your employees under control.” She sat on the edge of his desk, shaking the last of the rain from her hair. “I don’t like them asking questions.” The duty sergeant at the front desk had given her a suspicious sideways glance as she’d entered the Rustwood PD, and a handful of wolf-whistles as she’d taken the stairs to Snow’s office. Talk around town was that Commissioner Snow had a reputation for entertaining strange women in his office. To the officers, she was just another in a long line of skirts.

She’d memorised the faces of every leering cadet. They’d get what was coming to them, in time.

“Wake up, Snow.” She clicked her fingers before Snow’s face. He turned, slowly, dumbly. “We’ve got work to do. Anyone ask where you’ve been the last few days?”

Snow shook his head. Ginger curls fell over the edges of his sunglasses.

“What about anyone looking for me? The Queen said she’d send someone. An emissary.”

Again, a shake of the head.

“Good.” She took the opportunity to remove her own glasses, to see the world without the filter of the smoky lenses. Which reminded her - she needed to buy a spare pair of tinted wraparounds for the meathead cooling in her hotel room. Disposing of the woman’s body had been simple, and the rain had washed away any traces of blood left on the parking lot asphalt. Then she’d taken the muscle-shirt Romeo back upstairs, strapped him down and let him see her eyes.

It was nice having friends again, even if she did need to drag them off the street and core their minds to keep them pliable.

She flipped through the papers and yellow legal pads scattered across Snow’s desk. Armed robbery, assault, assault with a weapon, noise complaints... None of it interested her. The whole of Rustwood was temporary. What did it matter if a couple schlubs got knifed before the New Queen devoured them all? “Orders from on high. The Archer woman...” She rolled the word Archer around on her tongue. It was starting to feel like a curse. “...has shacked up with someone new.”

“Who?”

“It’s our job to find out.”

Officers shuffled by Commissioner Snow’s office, reduced to silhouettes by the frosted glass. A hesitant knock at the door. Snow grunted, “Not now!” The silhouette retreated.

“Won’t take long for the gossip,” the woman said. “They’ll think we’re fucking.”

Snow looked up at her, mouth hanging open like he’d just been slapped. “We aren’t?”

“Catch up, Snow!” The conscious part of his brain was stuck in the groove left by the night they’d almost shared in that bloodied hotel room. In what was left of Snow’s mind, they were still undressing, fumbling with zips and buttons in the moments before she’d punched through his skull and left her seeds inside. “I need Kimberly Archer. Your Detective Goodwell was assigned to her, wasn’t he? Why isn’t he here?”

“Don’t know.” His voice was sluggish, drugged. “Told him to look into the missing boys.”

“What boys?”

“Three kids.” He waved one hand in the air about head-height. “Parents won’t stop calling.”

Children. What were they good for? There wasn’t another animal on the earth that spawned young as useless as the human. Couldn’t run, couldn’t fight, couldn’t tie their own shoelaces until they were twenty five. Compared to the gazelle, the bee, the ant, humming little hives of productivity from the moment of birth...

“Goodwell was with Chan,” Snow said. “Going to find them but they didn’t come back.”

“You have enough men spare to put out a search party?”

Snow’s mouth hung open, spittle shining on his lower lip. “What will I tell them?”

“Whatever you want. You’re the commissioner. You run this show, so act like it-”

The jangling trill of Snow’s telephone echoed through the station. He stared at it stupidly, hands still folded in his lap. Only on the fifth ring did he snatch the phone off the hook. “Yes?”

The woman had to crouch down and jostle with Snow for space to get close enough to the speaker. “Commissioner?” came a low, tinny voice. “Commissioner Snow?”

The voice was unfamiliar. She mouthed a question at Snow: Who?

“Detective Chan?” he said, although she didn’t know whether Snow was replying to her or the woman on the phone. “I expected better. Where the fuck are you?”

“Four, maybe five miles out of town. I’m with Goodwell. It’s... shit’s gone crazy out here, Commissioner. We need to talk.”

“Where are you?”

A pause. The sound of shoes scuffing on loose gravel. “Wattel’s Gas and Hotdog Stand. Don’t know the name of the road. Sir, Goodwell keeps talking about the missing boys. He says they’re following him. He’s taking me to meet someone.”

The call cut off. Commissioner Snow regarded the receiver like he was holding something distasteful. “Do I go collect them?”

The woman knuckled the cold, black hollows that used to be her eyes. The things inside there nibbled at her skin. “I know where they’re going.”

“Where?”

“There’s a place a mile walk from that gas station. A station of power. He’s going to contact the Old Queen. Might even bring her out of hiding.” She gripped the edge of the desk so hard the wood creaked. “Get your gun and three... no, five... screw it. Ten disposable officers.”

She peered through the shutters. Stormclouds were gathering just above the curve of the horizon. Old Queen and New, True Queen battling for their share of the atmosphere.

If everything went well, then maybe this would be the last storm over Rustwood. The end of the long war.

“Let’s get this done.”