Over Your Dead Body (29 page)

“Just listen.” I wiped the sweat from my forehead and watched Officer Davis carefully.

“As you know,” he said, “this town has had five deaths in less than a week. We have no clear evidence linking any of them to each other, and one of them might even have been an accident, but the fact remains that this volume of deaths has very few precedents. The nature of those precedents suggests two courses of action, and I’m afraid you’re not going to like either of them.”

“It’s too damn hot in here!” shouted a frail voice behind me. The crowd looked over, and I turned to see Beth standing in the back row, shaking her cane. Ingrid tried to pull her back into her seat.

“Well,” said Ingrid, laughing drily, “everyone’s thinking it.”

The crowd laughed with her, some of the tension broken, and Beth eventually started laughing too. I looked back at Davis and hoped the laughter would ease the blow of whatever he said next.

“Number one,” said Officer Davis. “The presence of a possible spree killer, or even a mass murderer, has garnered national attention. This is good because it means the cavalry is coming: within the next twenty-four hours we will have national guard, active army, and the police SWAT team in from Oklahoma City. Do any of you remember the manhunt for the Boston bombers? That’s the kind of protection we’re talking about—dozens, if not hundreds, of boots on the ground, patrolling your city and rooting out this killer. You’ll be as safe as we can make you.”

“Dammit,” I whispered. “We’re going to get another Fort Bruce.”

“Boston was a lockdown,” said a woman in the crowd. “Are you going to trap us all in our homes?”

“That’s the bad news,” said Officer Davis. “There are only two ways to keep you safe in a situation like this, and if we evacuate you, we’d just be letting the killer slip out with you. We have to keep you here and, for your own safety, we have to keep you under lockdown.”

“No one’s told me about this yet,” whispered Mills, pulling out his phone. “Excuse me.” He got up and walked to the door, holding the phone to his ear.

“This is going to get ugly,” said Brooke. By the murmurs in the crowd I could tell they had similar thoughts. Even Beth was cursing under her breath, more harshly than I’d have expected.

“I know you’re not happy about this,” said Officer Davis, “but please remain calm. We will be bringing in food and water and other emergency services. While you remain—”

“What about our jobs?” a man asked.

“You get a day off,” said Davis.

“You can’t call in sick to a farm,” growled another man.

“I understand that this is difficult,” said Officer Davis. “But what do you want us to do? Martial law will give us the breathing room to catch this killer before any more of you die. We’re doing this to protect you.”

“You’re doing this to control us!” shouted Beth, and the crowd shouted in agreement. A mob was forming, and she was their voice.

“We have leads we are following as we speak,” shouted Officer Davis. “Chemical samples from the Glassman’s house. Footprints and weapon marks from the attack on Jessica Butler. Forensic data from the truck that crashed into Corey Diamond’s bedroom.”

“What’s to stop another truck from crashing through my window?” shouted a man in the back. “You can’t even keep us safe in our homes!”

“If anyone is on the street they will be seen,” Davis shouted. “If anyone starts a truck or walks through an alley or even picks up a weapon,
they will be seen
.” He pounded his fist as he talked. “Do what we tell you and no one will get hurt. And for the love of God, do not take the law into your own hands. Don’t open your doors for anyone but my men, but don’t shoot anyone, either. I know you all have guns and I want you to be able to protect yourselves, but if people start shooting each other through their windows I will come down on you like the hammer of heaven. Stay in your homes, enjoy your vacation—mandatory as it may be—and let us do your jobs. The army gets here tomorrow, but martial law begins in one hour. Meeting adjourned.”

“This is terrible,” said Ingrid.

“It’s a necessary evil,” I said. “Go home and get Beth home and just do what they say.”

“Are you coming?” asked Ingrid.

“Maybe just to stop by for our clothes,” I said. “I’m sorry I don’t have time to explain.”

“Marci?” asked Ingrid, looking at Brooke.

“Not anymore,” said Brooke.

Ingrid frowned, confused by the response, but took Beth’s hand and joined the crowd walking slowly toward the door.

“This is our chance,” said Brooke. “Mills is gone, so we can hide and get away from him.”

“We need him,” I said. “He’s our only way out of this town.”

“You want to leave?”

“I want to kill Attina,” I said. “But first I want to get you out of here.”

“No,” said Brooke.

“No arguments,” I said. “Getting you out is the number-one priority. There he is.” I grabbed Brooke’s wrist and pulled her toward Mills, who was talking to one of the local men.

“… don’t take the law into their own hands,” the man muttered as we came up behind him. I recognized him from somewhere. The church, maybe? Of course: it was Randy, the man in love with Sara. He seemed practically red with rage. “What do you think that Butler girl was doing?” he demanded. “Someone oughta pour some Drano down her throat, see how she likes it.”

“Agent Mills,” I said, “can we speak to you in private?”

Mills gratefully excused himself from the conversation, leaving Randy to rant at the next person who came by, and walked with us toward the nearest door. “Do you have something?”

“You were right,” I said. “Everyone in Dillon is crazy.”

“What?” asked Brooke.

“Not real crazy,” I said. “Gas-leak crazy.” I glanced at the other people and police still filling the room, too close for me to say my true suspicions out loud. “In a manner of speaking.”

Mills hesitated a moment, then leaned in as well. “You think the Withered is making people crazy?”

“The one we’re hunting is named Attina,” I said. “Brooke doesn’t remember his powers, and we’ve been wracking our brains trying to figure them out based on the killings, but what if Attina’s not doing any of it personally? What if he’s making other people do it?”

Mills nodded. “So we can’t find a unifying theory that ties together all five deaths, plus the arson, and you think maybe that’s because there are multiple killers and thus no consistent reason or method. Or, I suppose, the alleged craziness
is
the consistent reason.”

“It makes everything work.”

“Only in the barest sense,” said Mills. “You tell any cop in the country that their murder case is caused by ‘everyone just going crazy all at once,’ and they’ll laugh in your face. It’s not evidence. It’s not even circumstantial evidence.”

“A gas leak would be evidence,” I said, “if you could find one. Maybe Attina is a supernatural gas leak. He sits here in the town, minding his own business, but then something sets him off and he starts … leaking ‘crazy.’ He starts emitting violent tendencies into the air, like a psychic broadcasting station, and people just start hurting each other.”

“And Glassman’s bigfoot?”

“A lie to cover himself,” I said. “He’s probably the one that killed Jessica, overcome by Attina’s influence, and when he snapped out of it he made up that story to explain it.”

“Maybe he was hallucinating while he did it,” said Brooke. “Maybe he thought Jessica was a monster and that’s why he killed her.”

Mills looked around the room. “So who is it?”

“If it works the way I’m thinking,” I whispered, “it may as well be all of them.”

Mills clenched his teeth, looking around the room, then looking back at the closed interrogation room. “It’s not enough.”

“You have to get Brooke out of here,” I said.

“No,” said Brooke again.

Mills looked at me through narrowed eyes. “You want to leave? I thought you were going to posit some brilliant method of catching the Withered.”

“We’re in a town where random people are killing each other for random reasons,” I said. “This is not a town we want to be in.”

“But you’re supposed to be the idiot who runs into the mouth of hell every time it opens,” said Mills. “Your psych profile’s pretty clear about that: you don’t abandon people while a Withered picks them off.”

“Why else are we even here?” demanded Brooke.

“I’m staying,” I said. “But Brooke is … Listen. I have been alone my entire life.” I don’t know why I was telling him this, but it just came spilling out. “Even when I had people looking out for me, caring for me, doing everything they could to help me, I was alone because I thought I was alone. I acted like I was alone. I hated my life and myself and everything else, but now … somewhere…” I couldn’t say it in front Brooke—that somewhere inside of her was the only person I’d ever loved. That I was saving Brooke because of Marci. “Listen,” I said again. “When I’m with her I’m myself, for the first time in my entire life. She makes me, me. And I’m not going to lose her again.” I looked Mills right in the eyes. “Not to some lunatic town full of human booby traps just waiting to go off and kill someone. We can’t predict how it’s going to happen, or where, or by whom, so we get her out, we get her safe, and then I find this Withered and I make it stop.”

“Do you have a plan?” asked Brooke. Her voice was thin, but determined.

“I’ll make one when you’re safe,” I said firmly.

Mills shook his head, biting his upper lip as he looked around. “The cavalry are coming,” he said. “I just talked to DC—everything Davis said is true and it’s already in motion. This town is about to become the safest place on the whole frigging continent.”

“Are you not listening to me?” I asked. “You’re going to bring a bunch of men with guns to a place where people are randomly turning into murderbots? And you think that’s safe?”

“We can’t prove that’s what’s actually happening,” said Mills.

“You want to risk another Fort Bruce on me being wrong?” I asked.

Mills shook his head again. “Nuke it from orbit,” he muttered. “That’s the only way to be sure.”

“I was in that movie,” said Brooke.

Mills looked at her, blinking, then back at me. “Do you need to get anything first?”

“Her clothes,” I said. “And Boy Dog.”

His eyebrows rose in disbelief. “Does he make you, you, too?”

“I will kill you with my bare hands,” I said. “I don’t hurt animals or allow them to be hurt by inaction. I have rules that keep me controlled and you safe. Get my dog out of this town, or I cannot describe to you the cataclysmic ways I will make you regret it.”

Mills stared at me, then shook his head and walked toward the door. “Come on, then. And next time you see Nobody, tell her I put the cuffs on the wrong psychopath.”

We gave him directions to Ingrid’s house, and he drove in silence, presumably second-guessing this entire plan. Was he really going to just let me go? Could he possibly explain it to his superiors? Or was he going to go back on the whole thing at the last minute?

“You have to stay with her the entire time,” I said. I was in the front seat, Brooke was alone in the back. “Leave her alone for two seconds and that might be the two seconds a different personality takes over.”

“I’ll keep her safe,” said Mills. “And you have my rock solid guarantee on that because I know it’s the only way I’m getting you back again.”

“He’ll hold me hostage for your return,” said Brooke softly.

She sounded betrayed, but worse, she sounded resigned. Something horrible had happened, and she didn’t have the will to fight it. I didn’t how to respond to her, so I turned back to Mills. “Keep her away from anything that can be used as a weapon. She tried to slit her wrists with a screw from a table leg once.”

“I don’t want you to leave me,” said Brooke.

“I won’t,” I said. “I’m not. This is just like the shower at the truck stop, okay? You do one thing while I do another.”

She smiled wistfully. “I knew we missed our chance back there.”

“We’ll get another,” I said, feeling a wave of heat pass through my body. I wondered if I was blushing and what Mills was thinking, but I pushed that away and focused on Brooke. “I’m the one who walks into hell, remember? They can’t take you anywhere I won’t come to find you. I will always protect you, no matter what.”

At that moment, something massive hit the car, blocking out the light in my side window, and before I could see what it was the car was spinning out of control, swerving to the side. Mills yelled something incoherent, scrambling at the wheel, and then we slammed into something else and the airbags exploded, punching me in the face and knocking all the air from my lungs.

I blinked, stunned and deafened and trying to remember where I was. My seat moved, jostled by something, and then my window went dark again. The air was full of powder from the airbags, drifting and swirling in front me. Sounds returned slowly. A scream. A metallic rip. Another scream.

Brooke.

I tried to turn around to see her, but my seatbelt had locked itself tight. I swatted at the deflating airbags, trying to reach the buckle. When I finally released it I twisted in my seat, looking behind me. Brooke’s legs were leaving the car, almost as if she were flying. Or being pulled. Something huge was still blocking my window, I couldn’t tell what it was. I fumbled with the door handle and lock, desperate to get outside, screaming Brooke’s name. The door opened suddenly and I spilled out onto the road. I looked up.

A massive beast towered over the car, Brooke held tight in its powerful claws. It wasn’t hairy or scaly, but it had thick, rough skin, like a rhinoceros or a … a dried lake bed. I couldn’t even tell if it was flesh or mud. It roared when it saw me, clutched Brooke close to its chest, and ran.

And disappeared.

23

We were wrong.

I looked around the street; our car had hit a tree just a block from Ingrid’s house, and the street was full of people and other cars, all on their way home from the town meeting, all of them frozen in shock. I jogged a few steps in the direction the monster had gone, still reeling from the accident, and saw that people in that direction were still screaming and shying away from something I couldn’t see. The monster was still there, it was just … invisible, somehow, to people who were too far away from it. I sprinted after it as fast as I could, desperate to catch up, but the town was small, and I reached the end of it in just a few blocks. The monster was gone. With no people left to see it, I had no way to track it.