CHAPTER ONE

 

 

The far side of the Frine Mountain was steep, great shelves of earth giving wetly under the pressure of endless rain. Kimberly Archer skidded in the muck, grabbing hold of trees and passing roots, tearing strips of skin from her palms as she struggled to stay upright.

The cockroaches chased her all the way. They flowed around her feet in a tide of silvery backs and tiny twitching limbs, circling warily between her footfalls, a sheet of insects opening with each step to avoid the soles of her boots before closing again around the imprint of her shoes.

Kimberly didn't look at them unless she had to. Easier to pretend they weren't there. The bugs weren't hurting anyone, after all. Just following, like gawkers at the scene of an accident. Drawn along in her wake.

The police-things, on the other hand... Monsters puppeting the remains of human skin, centipedes clawing free of their mouths...

No telling how many more were waiting in the dark.

When the slope evened out, Kimberly found a hollow between two huge boulders and pressed into the cleft. She looked back up the mountainside, watching for signs of pursuit. Nothing moved in the trees behind her. Either the cops had lost her trail, or they'd given up.

Or maybe, she thought, the beast's creatures couldn't cross the border. Rustwoods pressed up beside Rustwoods, each of them a sovereign state.

She barked laughter, low and bitter. "Crazy. All of this..."

But she couldn't deny what she'd seen from the peak. The mystery Fitch had tried to shield her from, for all those months.

There wasn't one single Rustwood. Only from the highest point on the edge of town had it all become clear. To Rustwood's east, to Rustwood's west, were a network of identical towns, squeezed edge to edge. Clones or mirror images.

And if the mountains were identical, if the streets were all the same... were the people the same too? Was there a different Fitch waiting for her at the foot of the mountain? Had a mirror-Kimberly stepped over her own mountain range at the same moment Kimberly crossed the border? Each of them thinking they were alone until the moment they reached the peak and saw the truth...

A branch snapped on the path behind her. Kimberly bent low, pressing into the stone, barely daring to breathe.

Footsteps. A muttered curse. "Always the same ankle."

"Make an appointment, then! Don't keep complaining if you're not gonna get it checked out!"

"They cancelled my insurance! You think I'm made of money?"

She counted to fifty as an elderly couple in puffy windbreakers and woollen beanies passed along the trail. She didn't recognize them, and even if she had she wouldn't have crept out from her hiding place. Only when the path was clear did she emerge into the midday light.

The rain had soaked through her jacket, left it clinging to her thin limbs. She clutched it tight around herself. The highway snaked around the base of the mountain, a trail of tail-lights reflecting on wet asphalt, leading back to Rustwood.

But not her Rustwood.

 

She'd only been thumbing five minutes when a car pulled on to the shoulder and a young man leaned out the window, fingers drumming impatiently on the wheel. "Hop in! I've got places to be!"

Small town folk. Too trusting for their own good. "Saved my ass," she told the man as she slammed the door behind her. "Been out here an hour."

"Where you headed?"

"Anywhere."

He frowned as he kicked the car into gear. His grip was shaky on the stick. "Hell of a day to be out walking. Haven't seen it rain like this in... oh, I don't know." He watched Kimberly from the corner of his eyes, taking in her torn-up jeans, her mud-painted jacket. "You out hiking?"

"Please. Just go."

He shut up after that, leaving Kimberly to count passing streetlights. She was grateful for the silence. She pressed one hand to her chest, waiting for a thud, a skittering of limbs.

The thing Gull had put inside her had quieted, thank God. Maybe asleep. Maybe dead, chewed up by stomach acids.

Or maybe something worse. Maybe it'd grown comfortable. Carved out enough space for a little nest, then curled up and fallen asleep like a dog before a fireplace on a winter's night. Secure inside her ribs...

"If you don't mind me asking," the stranger said, jerking Kimberly back to attention, "you in any sort of trouble?"

She stared straight ahead, out the windshield. Rain speckled the glass, tap-tap-tapping with insistent fingers.

"Because you look like you're in trouble," he said. "And I don't need anything like that. So if you want me to drop you off somewhere-"

"Pharmacy," she said.

A pause. "Which one?"

"Any one. And then forget me."

"Christ." He turned his attention back to the road. "I sure do pick them."

She knew the street. Guilden Boulevard, one of the primary arterials funnelling traffic into the centre of town. They'd already left the woods behind. The same street, the same milk bar on the corner. She even recognised the houses - there, a wood-framed bungalow next to the skeleton of an apartment-in-progress, old terracotta tiles next to concrete slabs and rebar spines.

A new town where everything was the same. But not a mirror, otherwise she'd have passed herself coming up the slope, a reflected Kimberly Archer, mouth open wide in shock. Two clones meeting in the middle before continuing on in opposite directions.

A transcription, then. Or maybe a revision. Yes, that felt right. Before Rustwood, when she'd been a different person with a different life, she'd been going for a job at... Random House? Penguin? Somewhere that reminded her of inky fingers. God, it was a hundred years ago. Memories obscured as if glimpsed through a cataract. Something to do with editing, she knew that for certain. She understood the language of the red pen, manuscript after manuscript scattered with notes. Each telling the same story in slightly different ways, iterating over and over until the product was perfect.

Maybe that was it. Not an infinity of identical Rustwoods, but an endless series of attempts at getting the damn thing right. God was a lonely editor, rushing to beat a deadline, celestial office drowned in paperwork.

She wondered how Rustwood looked from the air. If she got high enough, above the clouds, would she be able to see all the towns squeezed together like cells in a hive, buzzing with drones? Idiots in suits and ties and new Ford Granadas, rushing from the office to the bar, not realising they were only following the orders of a distant queen?

"Cells," she whispered.

"What?"

The driver squinted at her from beneath his ridiculous shock of blonde hair. Open mouthed, vapid. Not his fault. He didn't know. How could anyone?

"Nothing," she said. The cool window glass soothed the pounding in her temples. Let her forget the sight from the top of the mountain.

Cells. Nuclei. High-school biology lessons, dimly remembered.

They divided and multiplied.

 

Mist rolled across the mountainside as the dead children advanced.

Detective Goodwell and Fitch were pressed back to back, only a few hundred yards from the mountain peak. They'd been chasing Kimberly Archer all morning, across town and up the mountain, but for all their efforts they hadn't quite closed the gap. There'd been less than two hundred yards between them when Kimberly stepped over the ridge and down the far side. Close enough for Goodwell to call for her to stop.

Not close enough for her to hear.

Goodwell tried chasing her. Fitch held him back. Wouldn't explain why. That was a problem Goodwell would have to solve another time, though. Right now, the teenagers he'd killed back at the Hill family farm were stepping out of the fog.

The stink was toxic, a rotten punch to the gut. Goodwell's fingers itched as he reached for his pistol and found only an empty holster. The gun was with Chan, he remembered. Lucky Karen Chan, always in the right place at the right time. When it rained shit, it always landed on Goodwell.

Now, as Dylan Cobber, Martin Goldfarb and Taram Traore advanced, all the detective could use as weapons were fallen branches. He grabbed one that looked heavy enough to break bone, while Fitch hefted a rock in each hand.

Idiot, he told himself. Should've run. Should've listened to the old queen. Whenever you get clever, you get hurt. Soon enough it'll get you killed.

Maybe even today.

The three dead kids grinned, teeth speckled with grave dirt. Their eyes were sour pits. Nothing but malice in there. Malice, and the shiny black backs of insects.

"Not today," Goodwell growled. "I'm not dying today."

They charged.

The boys came on in a blur of movement, a scrape of sneakers on dirt. Goodwell barely had time to raise his branch before they were on top of him, battering his hands down, driving him to his knees. The tree branch slipped from his fingers as Dylan stamped on his wrist. There was no pain. His whole world was pulsing panic, sharp teeth and blank white eyes. The three kids he'd murdered, returned to strip his skin.

"Fitch!" he managed, and then his screams were cut off as the dead children plunged their fingers into his mouth, ragged nails scraping the inside of his cheek. Dirt and rotting flesh, sour on his tongue. Young Martin, cheeks dark with moss, tongue swelling over his lips, prised Goodwell's jaw open. The boy's lips peeled back, baring his teeth, revealing something squirming at the back of his throat, ready to drop.

A blur of movement. A wet thud. Stone meeting flesh. Martin fell away, fingers sliding from Goodwell's lips, wet and slick against his teeth.

Fitch stood over the detective, a rock the size of a grapefruit in his hand, grey granite flecked with blood and hair. He raised it high, brought it down in both hands on the back of Martin's neck. The boy hissed like a balloon deflating, fingers splaying, bending back like the legs of fat pink spiders.

"On your goddamn feet!" Fitch grabbed Goodwell by the arm, hauled him up, shoved him down the mountain path. "Not dying here because you're too lazy to run!"

Goodwell spat blood. His feet skidded in the rain-soft earth. He groped for the branch he'd dropped but Fitch was already dragging him away from the peak. "They almost-"

"Just keep moving!"

The dead children stood as one, swaying in time, like they were suspended from invisible strings. One step, then another, toes dragging, arms swinging slack by their sides.

"We'll miss you, Goodwell." Martin Goldfarb, fat-cheeked and smiling, waved as Goodwell stumbled down the slope. "We could've had fun." His teeth were slick with lichen. His fingernails were black and when he blinked black beads of well-water fell from his lashes. "You made us, Detective! We're yours!"

"Fuck you!"

Laughter followed Goodwell down the slope. "Say hello to your wife for me"

Goodwell almost stopped. My wife?

Fitch kept a vice-grip on Goodwell's arm as they ran into the dark. Tall firs folded around them, needles scraping Goodwell's forearms, mud soaking into his socks. He spat, trying to get the taste of the dead boy out of his mouth.

Behind them came the constant rhythm of child-size sneakers on wet soil, echoing between the trees.