Authors: Chuck Wendig

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Supernatural, #Fantasy, #Paranormal, #Urban, #Suspense

Mockingbird (27 page)

BOOK: Mockingbird

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"Come on, Miriam. We're birds of a feather – if you'll excuse the pun."

She manifests false bravado. Puffs out her chest. "I will not excuse a pun. Lowest form of humor, dude. You should be ashamed."

"Always quick with the wit. It's your defense, isn't it? Little girl doesn't want the world to know how sad she is, how damaged. Your words, your attitude, all a big misdirection. A magician's trick."

"Fucking die."

"But we're the same. We both kill for purpose."

"I'm not a killer."

Five feet.

"Carl Keener would beg to differ. You did a number on him."

"You and Keener working together? Are you the one who shot Annie?"

He just smiles.

Almost there.

Get ready.

"There's so much you don't know," he says.

"Here's what I know," she growls through trembling lips. Tears burning hot at the edges of her eyes. "I know you like to hurt girls. But those days are done. Maybe I am a killer. Maybe that's who I've become, or maybe it's who I always was. Keener found out. And you'll find out too."

Now run.

She pivots, crosses the last couple feet between her and the door, between her and
freedom
–

–she slams into the door–

It doesn't open.

She shoulders the emergency bar.

Nothing.

She screams. Pulls on it. Kicks it. Jacks her body into it again and again. Still doesn't open. She sobs. Puts her head against the door – cold metal against warm skin. Hears Beck clucking his tongue behind her.

"I locked it, of course. Fire hazard, I know."

Her hands ball into fists.

She tries to kick off from the door like a swimmer. She plans to run toward his office where maybe,
maybe
he's got a gun stashed somewhere, a gun he'll one day use to parachute his monstrous brains out of his fucking skull–

But Beck has other ideas.

He moves fast. Spins her, shoves her face first against the wall. Two pistoning rabbit punches against her kidneys steal the strength from her legs.

Before she falls, he catches her.

He turns his arm into a triangle, a crushing vice with her neck at the nadir, and he begins to choke.

She swats backward, rakes his face. Struggles. Kicks.

The world goes blue at the edges. Then black.

She tries to call for Louis.

Tries to say something, anything.

It's all just a whispered whimper.

"Go to sleep," he whispers. Kisses her cheek. "Shhh." She does as she's told.

FORTY-EIGHT

The Protector

2.30am.

Louis doesn't know what to do.

He thinks,
I could run them off the road
. Ram them. The Mack would handle it. It would crush the bumper and push the rear of the car into a hard spin.

But Miriam's in there. The little girl, too. Wren.

Twenty minutes ago he'd just been sitting there in the parking lot. He thought about leaving the engine to idle but eventually he just turned it off. It was frustrating just
waiting
for something to happen. While worry gnawed at him like a starving rat.

And then he saw.

Then, at the other end of the lot, a black car pulled up. Mercedes, by the looks of it. Nice, too, an S-Class, brand new.

A man – hard to see who, but Louis could see that he was young, strong, with a shock of dark hair and a white T-shirt stained with something dark.

He came out holding Lauren Martin the way you might carry a barrel or a beer keg: both arms wrapped tight around her middle, pinning her arms. Louis couldn't tell whether she was gagged. Her head lolled. She was knocked out.

Or
dead.

The man tossed her in the back of the Mercedes.

And then he went back inside.

Returning moments later with a new body. This one carried over-shoulder, like a rolled-up rug. And it was then that Louis saw the flash of bleach-white and hotpink and knew exactly who the man was carrying.

Get out. Stop him. Kill him.

But he'd be too slow. It would be too late. And he had no plan.

You have to have a plan if you're going to save her.

You lost your wife. Don't lose her.

They pulled away. Louis followed.

Now he drives. Keeps the black car ahead far enough so that he can see the pinprick tail-lights ahead, glowing red like demon eyes.

What to do?

Stay calm
, he thinks.
Just follow.

Don't lose them.

See where they're going.

Then call the police.

The Mercedes crosses an intersection. A four-way stop framed by a thicket of trees. The car doesn't stop. Just coasts through.

Louis thinks to do the same–

The world lights up. Red and blue. A cop car comes gunning in from the east, and Louis thinks,
Here comes the cavalry
. But the car slams to a stop in the center of the intersection, and Louis has to punch the brakes.

The truck brakes lock up. Wheels skid. The Mack grinds to a stop mere feet from the cop car.
What the hell?

A cop gets out of the driver side. He's squat, thick, built like a fire hydrant. Bushy black horseshoe mustache framing an acid scowl.

He's got his gun out – a Colt Python by the look of it, a .357 with a vented barrel and a shiny nickel finish that captures the strobing lights.

The cop points the weapon at the windshield and fires.

Louis tilts hard to the right, diving across his front seats as a hole the size of a golf ball punches through the glass. He hears another two shots and suddenly the truck shudders and tilts forward.

He shot the tires.

Then: footsteps off to the left of the truck.

Louis quick shuts off the engine and snatches the keys.

The driver-side door flings open, and the cop fires a shot into the cab. But Louis has already popped the opposing door and is clambering out the other side on his hands and knees, palms stinging from the bite of gravel.

He gets his legs under him, starts to stand –

And there's the cop. Already around the front of the truck.

Gun leveled at Louis's head.

Louis holds up one hand. The other hand – holding the keys to the Mack – dangles by his side.

"Why?" he asks. Desperate. Confused.

The cop seems to consider this. "Because it's what I do."

With a fat thumb, the cop pulls back the hammer on the revolver.

Louis's thumb has its own mission.

He presses the alarm button on the key fob.

The truck lights up like a tree at Christmas. The horn honks and the alarm woops and wails.

Distraction. That's how Miriam fights, he thinks. It's enough. The gun goes up and fires–

But Louis is already under the cop, plowing forward like a linebacker and slamming him to the ground.

Wham.

The gun cracks Louis along the side of the head.

But he's not having any of it.

Anger swells up inside of him. It's like a dam breaking. He doesn't know what's happening but he knows this cop is
in his way.
Preventing him from finding Miriam. Worse, the cop is a part of it. He has to be. How could this assassination attempt be any other thing?

Louis grabs the cop's wrist with one hand.

And with the other, he forms a fist – the truck key sticking out between the second and third knuckle.

He pops the cop right in the mouth.

It cuts the cop's lower lip – splits it in half, leaving behind an inch-deep V-shaped cleft from which fresh blood swiftly flows. The cop gags and coughs.

Louis wrenches the gun from his hand and staggers backward to stand.

The cop sits forward, pressing his sleeve against the key-split lip. He looks up to see Louis pointing the gun at his head.

"One-eyed man points a one-eyed gun," the cop says, mumbling around the cut. Probing it with his tongue and wincing. "Between the both of you, you've got one good set of peepers, at least."

"Tell me what's going on." Louis thumbs the hammer back.

"You'll never know the scope of it."

"I'll kill you."

"Will you, now? See, I don't think you have it in you. I don't think that's who you are. I know killers." He smiles, spits blood against the pavement. "That little girlfriend of yours, she's the real deal. But you ain't shit, Hercules. A big gentle giant. With piss-poor depth perception."

The gun shakes.

Show him
, Louis thinks.

Show him what you're made of.

The cop sneers.

Louis pulls the trigger.

INTERLUDE

Uncle Jack

Jack's got a cigarette pinched between his teeth, and he sometimes picks tobacco bits from inside his lip and flicks them off into the grass.

"Here," he says, pushing Miriam's cheek so it's pressed against the cold blue steel of the barrel. "Look down the gun. Match up the sight at the end to the little – you know, the little notch right here at the back sight. Close your one eye. Go on, close it up."

She does – squeezes that one eye shut real tight and glances down the sights. The robin hops into view. Stabbing at the ground with its beak. A wan little worm flung up and down.

"Target acquired."

"The bird?" she says. "I'm supposed to shoot the bird?"

"Uh-huh. Now, what you wanna do is this, you want to take a deep breath and then let it out – I saw this in a movie, it's a sniper thing – and then you exhale so that your heart slows down real good, and you don't pull the trigger, I mean, you don't jerk it, you just – well, you just squeeze it real gentle-like, as if you're trying to pleasure your–"

Biff!

The bird tumbles to the side. Feet sticking up in the air.

Miriam shrieks. Throws the gun against the lawn and hops up over the rock they were leaning against and hurries over to the bird.

The worm lies nearby, still alive.

The bird's dead. A few drops of blood wet the grass.

Jack sucks on the cigarette hard enough she can hear it sizzle. He claps her on the shoulder, laughs like a hyena.

"Goddamn. You popped that robin right in its head. She ain't going home to her babies anytime soon, is she?"

Miriam looks up. Cheeks wet. "Babies?"

"Sure. Shit, I dunno." The robin isn't even a female, and it's too early in the spring for the robin to have bred. But what does Miriam know? She's only twelve. "All I'm saying is, this one's not heading back to the nest." He flicks the butt of his cigarette into the woods. "Nicely done, killer."

"I'm not a killer!"

"That dead bird says otherwise."

She stands up. Wipes tears away. "Don't say that."

"The hell's your problem? That was an ace shot, little girl."

Miriam sticks out her lip. "I'm not a murderer. And I'm not a little girl. You say mean things."

"Okay. Uh-huh. Fine." He starts to walk back to the rock.

But she runs around the other side and beats him to it. Picks up the rifle again.

He whoops. "There you go! Now we're cooking with gas. Let's go shoot something else. Whole shitload of squirrels around here, that's for damn sure."

Miriam fishes in her pocket for a pellet while he's lighting another cigarette. She cracks the barrel open, tucks the pellet in its hole, and then snaps the barrel shut.

When Uncle Jack looks up, he's staring down the barrel.

"Say it," she says, still crying.

"Say what?"

"Say I'm not a killer!"

"Put that damn gun down. You're gonna get someone hurt."

"Say it!" she screams.

But he doesn't care. He marches toward her and reaches for the gun. But she backpedals and–

Biff!

Jack's suddenly hopping around like a bee-stung rabbit, clutching his knee, the cigarette falling from his lips as he howls. He pulls his hand away – the denim at the knee has a little ragged hole in it, the pellet wound looking like a little popped tick.

Miriam runs away into the woods.

Jack cries after her, "Better not tell your mother about this!"

FORTY-NINE

Birds of a Feather

Tap tap tap.

Miriam struggles to find air. Submerged in shadow.

A thundering rush of noise, like white water, like the crash of the ocean surf or the muddy churn of the Susquehanna.

Tap tap tap.

And above it all, that noise.

Tap tap tap.

Hands hold her beneath dark water. Cold water.

She reaches. The shadow has shape. Her fingers curl around it. A rope.

It slips from her grip and again she's gone beneath the surface, sinking once more into those wintry depths – the sound of the water mimicking the sound of the blood in her ears, a sound like someone breathing sharply through clenched teeth as a drum beats in the distance.

But there: the rope once more. And she grabs it and pulls, pulls until every synapse in her brain fires in a twenty-one-synapse-salute, white lancing needles of light arcing through the know-nothing void–

Tap tap tap.

Her eyes bolt open.

Above, a square of gray light. A smeary water-slick square.

BOOK: Mockingbird

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