Winter's Rage, page 4
The fake wood paneling was straight out of the 1970s. So was the orange carpet. It wasn’t a room to wake up in with a hangover.
Anna was dressed. Chase was still in his PJs, playing with his action figure on the floor at the foot of the bed. He liked to escape to his own little world, one where he had a normal childhood. No doubt the orange pile was some sort of lava pit for the caped crusader to fly back and forth over. She had no idea what went on in her son’s mind half of the time. He seemed to be capable of making an adventure out of anything. She envied him that. Sadly, the world would batter the innocence out of him soon enough.
She swung her legs out of the bed as Anna grabbed hold of her hands and helped her sit. The world swam around her, the grain of old panels taking on a psychedelic life of their own.
Her clothes were laid out over the back of the motel room’s only chair. She shuffled through to the bathroom to splash water on her face. She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror, not like this, not almost naked, because there was no way to hide the line of bruises around the crease in her left arm, which reminded her she wasn’t anywhere near as clean as she needed to be, and that her last fix was too long ago now for her body to pretend it wasn’t in withdrawal. The sweat still glistened on her skin. She was a mess.
She turned the shower on, only for Anna to shout through, “We don’t have time, Mom. The bus pulls out in seven minutes!”
“Shit,” Raelynn muttered to herself. She splashed some water under her pits and soaped up, let it sluice away, and then was done.
She didn’t have a toothbrush. Or toothpaste. She’d buy a coffee when the bus pulled into a rest stop along the way. Someone had written a name in blue on the wall beside the mirror, with a heart and an arrow through it.
She dried quickly and dressed even quicker, but still had less than four minutes to get out of the room, across the street and into the bus station, and then she had to find the right bus.
And Chase was still in his PJs. Well, there was nothing she could do about that. She gathered up his clothes and stuffed them into a plastic bag, then scanned the room quickly to make sure she’d left nothing behind. The clock on the wall said three minutes and twenty seconds. She grabbed Chase by the wrist, and ran out of there, Anna two steps behind her.
Their room was on the second floor, which meant clattering down an iron fire escape and racing head down across the parking lot out front, playing Frogger across the four lanes of traffic and into the back of the bus station. There were six silver buses in the different bays, all identified at the back by numbers rather than destinations. Only one had people waiting to board. She ran toward it, making it with seconds to spare.
“One adult, two children, all the way,” she said.
“Three tickets to Charleston,” the driver said, parroting it back to her. “Four hundred and seventeen bucks,” he said.
She fumbled in her pocket for change. She didn’t have anywhere near enough. The room had left her short. She fumbled out what she had anyway, feeding it into the dish between them until there was no money left. She didn’t even have enough for her own ticket. “I don’t …” She glanced around for a Good Samaritan. “I’m sorry. I’m short.”
“How old is he?” The driver nodded at Chase.
“Seven,” Anna said, from behind her.
“Try again,” the driver said.
“He really is.”
“No, he isn’t,” the driver said, leaning forward to tap the sign beside his change machine, which said that children under two rode for free.
“Two,” Raelynn said.
“That’s what I thought,” the driver said. “And the girl?”
“Two,” she said again.
“Looks like you’ve got just enough money then,” the driver said, not printing out tickets for them. “If we fill up he’ll have to sit on your lap.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me. They’re two, right? Rules are rules.” The driver nodded for them to go take their seats. Over the PA he said, “Settle in folks, we’ve got thirty-one hours between here and Charleston, plenty of time to get to know each other far too well for a Wednesday morning. So, kick back, relax and enjoy the sights, read a good book, stare at your iPhones. We’ll be in Tampa before you know it.”
The door’s hydraulics hissed as it closed behind them.
11
Like so many veterans of war, I no longer welcomed sleep. I didn’t dream well. Not anymore.
My subconscious was like a best friend who had decided to screw you over one time too many, then left you holding a big old bag of shit and expected you to smile about it. This time it served me up a foreign field and, in the middle, a girl with an explosive suicide vest strapped to her chest. She was crying. Then she saw me, and her expression changed. Suddenly she had hope.
That was the worst part of the dream, the hope. Because I knew how dreams like this played out. They always ended the same way: the girl died and there was nothing I could do about it. The only mercy was that my dreaming mind didn’t dwell on the horror, sparing me the details. I didn’t feel the wet flesh hit my skin or the visceral heat of the detonation or the razor cuts of the shrapnel.
I woke suddenly, disoriented, part of my mind still in the field, but the primitive hindbrain had gone over into survival mode: there was someone else in the room.
There had been no obvious movement, no tell-tale sound to betray the intruder. They might have succeeded in sneaking up on a lesser man. My enhancements outstripped every imaginable evolutionary leap. My mind raced. The two-room shack I called home had one way in and one way out. I hadn’t felt a drop in temperature when the door must have been opened. No kiss of the cold or faint brush of a breeze on my skin.
I’d taken to sleeping on the small couch in the room, which served as kitchen, dining and living space, rather than retreat to the bedroom. There was logic in the choice. It was all about making the best use of the residual heat in the potbellied stove. Even in the summer the bedroom couldn’t shake off the damp and cold that clung to it. The smell was what got to me, though. It was just there. In everything. Permeating it all. The place was musty. Like a critter had crawled in there to die.
I’m a suspicious soul. It’s part of my charm. It keeps me alive. I slept with the SIG Sauer tucked beneath the cushion, in easy reach, but I didn’t want to risk any sudden movement in case the intruder was trigger-happy. Things would change once they realized I was awake, though, and making a move would be too late. It needed to be natural, the kind of tossing and turning a normal sleeper might make.
“Byron,” a voice called, breaking the silence. It sounded so loud, like it was inside the plates of my skull and forcing its way out, not the other way around. I finished my roll, half on my stomach, half on my side, completely uncomfortable.
I was in another place, another time. I snatched at the gun, instinct taking over. Even in the gray early-morning light, I knew who it was. I didn’t need to see her face. But her name wouldn’t leave my too-dry lips.
She moved closer, stepping into the thin smear of light filtering through the grime-streaked window. Snow already fell out there, making the light struggle to find a way through the glass.
The girl reached out to me. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the hollow, pleading look in her eyes.
The eyes. It was always the eyes.
“Please, help me,” she begged.
I had heard her cries more times than I cared to remember, and experienced every shred of her agony so many more times than that. It should have been my pain not hers. A red bloom began to form on her stomach, a rose that grew too fast, blossoming impossibly bright.
I hated myself because even as I witnessed her death again I had a gun in my own hand, almost as though I’d pulled the trigger and caused those horrific injuries.
I tried to call her name, but it wouldn’t come. It was as though she was drifting away from me, leaving me alone in the cabin with my shame and guilt.
I wanted to yell at her that it wouldn’t work, that I was inured, immune, that they’d stolen everything human from me, but I didn’t.
Something moved outside the window, or perhaps it was just a sudden flurry of snow caught up in the wind. It pushed at the glass. It was enough to steal my attention for a heartbeat—the only real measure of time worth a damn. When I looked back, the girl had gone.
I still had the SIG Sauer in my hand. The elements had been enough to keep me in the here and now, on the mountain, and help me maintain my grip on reality.
The stove was still warm, but no longer too hot to touch. The fire was more or less extinguished, but unlike the girl it wouldn’t take much to resurrect it. There was kindling and a couple of logs stacked beside it, but not enough to keep the stove burning through another night.
Given the weather was about to turn, I needed to bring some more wood into the dry. The low lean-to I’d built onto the side of the shack was enough to keep the logs out of the worst of the rain, but snow and ice had a way of creeping into places rain feared to soak.
I was reluctant to put the gun down.
The cabin was a fair distance out of town. I was the stranger. I would be the stranger in town if I lived the next three or four years of my life on the mountain. That was just the way it was in places like this. I tucked the weapon into the back of my jeans before I slipped my coat on and stepped out into the night. The girl might have been some relic of my mind, but that didn’t mean something out there hadn’t woken me. Better to be prepared.
A gust of wind almost took the door out of my grip as I stepped into a world of white that took my breath away.
There was already a thick blanket of snow on the ground, easily four inches deep, and banked up much thicker where it had drifted against the walls of the shack. The wind kept the newly falling flakes in the air, bullying and swirling them as if it was playing some game with them.
I could make out fresh tracks running along the side of the cabin. They passed beneath the window. I crouched and reached out with one hand, tracing the outline of the hooves with a sense of relief. For now, at least, the only enemy was inside my mind.
“Deer,” I said, not realizing that I had spoken aloud.
The tracks led a short distance further up the mountain before they disappeared into the tree line.
The thought of being close to Nature and her world of creatures, which posed no threat to my hidden existence, was comforting. The deer brought with it the kind of calm that people rarely did. That was partly why I had chosen this place to rebuild my life. It was healing.
Day by day, I’d felt more and more at peace: I was leaving my past life behind. I could rebuild myself, and the time to do it was one thing I had in abundance.
As long as I was left in peace.
That really shouldn’t have been a lot to ask from the world.
The shelves weren’t bare—there was enough fresh stuff to last for a couple of days if I was snowed in, maybe three at a push. The wood wouldn’t last half that time. I was going to have to swing the axe before I thought about doing much else. There were canned and dried goods so I wouldn’t starve, even if I was cut off from civilization. There was a stream of clear water running nearby that would be more than adequate for my needs, even if it froze. I had enough oil for the lamps to see me through the winter. Who needed electricity?
Twenty minutes later the stove was warming my quarters and I’d made a mug of coffee, which I took back outside.
The snow had stopped for the time being. The sky was gray and heavy, threatening more to come.
12
For Henry, life was good. They’d driven in silence for the last hour—the Caddy’s cassette player had finally given up the ghost. The ancient deck had chewed up the magnetic strip. Better still, the radio hadn’t managed to conjure more than a few crackles of white noise.
Still, Dale was intent on ruining the precious silence. He found a pen and tried to spool the tape back inside the plastic case, slowly turning the wheel to suck the magnetic strip back inside, but it looked like a relief map of the Rockies. There was no way it was going to play, even if he managed to get it back inside the deck. That didn’t stop him trying. And it didn’t stop Henry snatching it from him and tossing it out of the open window.
Caleb watched as it disappeared in the rearview mirror, the brown magnetic tape fluttering in the car’s wake. A bird swooped down to examine the cassette but, realizing it wasn’t some enormous worm, took to the wing again.
Dale shot Henry a look. When Henry stared back at him, his chin dropped to his chest, and he went into a sulk.
Five minutes later, they stopped. They were still twelve miles or so from their destination.
“What are we stopping for?” Dale whined. “Can’t we just get this over with and go home? I miss home.” He rocked in the plastic seat, the sweat pulling at his shirt.
“Because we need to blend in,” Henry explained patiently. It was like talking to a child sometimes. “If we show up dressed like this we’re going to stand out. People will remember us. And that, my friend, is exactly what we don’t want. We need to go native.”
“So, we’ve got to dress up like hicks?” said Dale.
“Can’t be worse than what you’re wearing,” said Henry.
“What’s wrong with it?” Dale took a moment to look down at his dark suit, the white shirt and the wingtip shoes. He liked it, Henry knew. It made him look smart. It made him look like a man who deserved respect, even if it did hang on his wiry frame like he’d left the coat hanger in it when he’d put it on.
“There’s nothing wrong with it if you want to look like an undertaker,” Henry said. “Which is fine as long as you stay in the car. But the minute you step outside someone is going to look at you, and remember the skinny dude who looked like Papa Death walking through town. We don’t want people to pay us any attention, not now the world is full of cell phones and cameras that remember everything. You know what a bunch of suspicious bastards country folk are. They see something that don’t belong, they remember it, they talk about it in the post office, then argue about it later in the bar. The fewer raised eyebrows, the better.” It was hard to argue with that.
* * *
Half an hour later they were back inside the car wearing their new gear. It was cheap stuff. Work clothes. All three wore identical jeans and heavy-duty boots, but they’d managed to find three different shirts. Henry felt like a logger or a miner, someone who made a living with his hands. That was exactly what they wanted others to think. He ran a hand through his hair. Their suits were in the trunk, carefully folded in the brown-paper bags their new clothes had come in.
“We’ll have to move them if we need to put another body in there. I don’t want blood on my suit,” Dale said.
“Let’s see if we can get through the day without putting anyone in the trunk, shall we?” Henry asked.
“No promises,” Dale said, grinning. “I mean, look at me.” He raised his hands to make the Y of YMCA above his head.
Caleb laughed. Henry didn’t. He hated Dale when he acted up.
There was no doubt their new clothes would stand out less than the Mormon missionary suits they’d worn in the city, because that’s exactly what three men rocking into town dressed in black suits and white shirts would look like to the locals. So, sure, the three of them all wearing brand-new clothes would raise an eyebrow or two, but only if people really looked at them, and he wasn’t about to encourage a bunch of strangers to do that. It wasn’t his style.
Dale argued, but his whining was still an improvement on the music. Just.
13
By morning, the snowfall had melted, leaving behind a slick, icy sheen on the timber. I wasn’t looking forward to working on the roof, so instead I concentrated on prep work, getting the timber in place to haul up there. It was backbreaking labor, and we were up against it, but Wayne wanted the place fit for habitation, and a month had become a week overnight, or at least the best part of one.
For his part, Wayne spent the morning grinning like the Cheshire Cat. I could understand his excitement, even if I didn’t share it. His little girl was coming home.
It didn’t matter how old Raelynn was, she’d always be his little girl. The same one whose hair he’d braided and whose knees he’d picked tiny stones out of. She’d always be the same one he’d taught to read with The Cat in the Hat and whose face he’d watched light up as she tore into the wrapping of the Christmas gifts he scrimped and saved all year to buy her. That was how it went with dads and their daughters, the sense that all we have is each other, no matter what.
Those thoughts took me back to Julia, the wife I’d left behind, along with all the other remnants of my old life. I’d had no choice, but that didn’t make it sting any less. It was a wound that would never heal. Picking at it wouldn’t help. I grabbed a fresh piece of timber, focusing on the feel of it in my hands, and pushed her from my mind.
I looked up at the cabin. With a little luck, we’d get the last of the joists in place before the day was out. That was my focus. And then there was the added work of patching the damage Wayne’s near miss had caused, but that was two hours at worst. Anything beyond that was gravy.
“What do you reckon?” asked Wayne, following my gaze. “Think we can get her watertight in time?”
“I’m the wrong man to ask. It’s not like I’ve ever built anything. I figure we’re racing those clouds.”
“And all the others,” Wayne said. “Hey, would you be okay by yourself for the rest of the day? Only Raelynn called. I’ll need to pick her up in a few hours.”
“No problem. I’ll be fine here.”
If I wasn’t being watched I’d be able to move faster, and get more done. A few hours to push myself would be good. Holding back was frustrating, but I couldn’t risk powering through the work with him watching if I didn’t want those difficult-to-answer questions, like “Who the devil are you?” Or, more accurately, what.
