Redlisted (37 page)

“Where are
we?” she demands. “What the hell happened?”

“We’re
three hours from Red Hook,” Adam says. “You were
attacked. Gabriel beat you unconscious.”

“He what?!”

“He beat you
unconscious,” Adam says in the exact same tone of voice.

“Fuck. I
must have been drunk.”

“Yeah,”
Adam says. “Thanks for that.”

I snort.
Hypocrite.

“But we’re
close now. So things are fine. Right?”

“Sure,”
Adam says.

“My head
hurts like a bitch.”

“There’s
ibuprofen in the trunk. Should we pull over?”

“No.”
She shakes her head. “Let’s keep going.”

We arrive in the
town of Red Hook around six in the morning, eight hours after leaving
Erie. Adam pulls into the parking lot of a public library, puts the
car in neutral and pulls on the parking brake.

“So,”
he says. “Here we are. Now where is this enclave?”

“It’s
east-northeast of here,” Haruko says. “It’s on the
edge of a wildlife preserve called the Drowned Lands.”

“Sounds
cheerful.”

“I can
drive,” she offers, unsnapping her seat belt.

“Are you up
to it?”

“It’s
not far. Come on.”

The two of them
switch places, and Haruko pulls back on to the road. We drive east,
passing through a tiny, deserted town, then head north down a series
of two-lane country roads with four-digit names. In any other
situation, the landscape might be really beautiful. The autumn leaves
might be stunning in the sunlight, and the rolling hills could be
idyllic, but it’s dark, and I’m anxious, and I keep
thinking I see malicious forms lurking behind the trees.

Soon Haruko turns
on the car’s high beams and slows to a crawl. We pass through a
clearing in the trees, beyond which the forest seems denser and
darker. The weight of night here is substantial, almost palpable.
It’s difficult to make out anything more than a few yards away.

I spot a tiny
black placard, nearly obscured by brush, emblazoned with three red
circles, perimeters intersecting to form a triangle with curved
edges. Next to the placard is a gravel driveway leading into a swamp.
We turn, our tires grinding against the rocks and pebbles.

We arrive at a
well-kept cabin. At least, my first impression is that it’s a
cabin, but as we draw closer I change my mind. It’s a little
too large, the architecture a little too elaborate. The tiled roof is
cross-gabled several times, giving the building a silhouette similar
to that of a pagoda.

“That’s
odd,” Haruko says. “Lots of people here, but no lights
on.”

“Lots of
people?” Adam asks.

“Yeah,
like... wow, maybe forty or so.”

She cuts off the
headlights.

“Aya,”
she says, “could you look inside the house?”

Aya nods. She
closes her eyes, concentrates.

“Haruko...”
Adam says.

Aya’s eyes
open.

“Turn the
car around,” she says. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

“What? Why?”

“The cabin
is full of ghouls.”

“The bodies
from DC...” Adam mumbles.

Haruko turns the
headlights back on and scrambles to put the car in reverse. She pulls
backward at an angle, then turns and puts on the gas. The wheels spin
on the concrete; the car lurches forward.

A bright light
flares ahead of us, then separates into two smaller lights:
headlights. The headlights of a massive tractor-trailer hurtling down
the driveway right in our direction.

Haruko swerves,
sending us off the side of the driveway and into a ditch. She keeps
her foot on the gas pedal; the back tires spin, the engine revs. The
car doesn’t move.

The tractor
trailer stops.

Haruko presses the
gas pedal against the floor. The engine screeches. “Fuck. Fuck.
What do we do?” she says.

Adam opens his
door and climbs out. “Oh God. Haruko, the trunk!” He
takes out his pistol from under his jacket and fires at something I
can’t see. “Haruko, open the trunk!”

Aya closes her
eyes and then suddenly is no longer. Her car door opens on its own.
Two more gunshots. Haruko grabs the keys and jumps out of the car.

What do I do? What
can I do?

“Stay in the
car!” Adam yells. More gunshots. The trunk pops open. I lock
the doors and climb into the back seat, looking out the back window.
Ten or so shadowy figures are stumbling toward the car. More still
are piling out of the back of the tractor trailer.

Adam rips into his
hand with his teeth, then flings blood at the oncoming crowd. They
all fall to the ground.

Are they dead?

“All right,”
Adam says. “That’ll buy us a minute...”

“Can we get
the car out?” Aya says from nowhere.

“It’ll
take too long,” Adam says. “We need to hide...”

“There’s
a storage shed around the side of the cabin,” Haruko says.
“Grab some ammunition and let’s go.”

I unlock a back
door and climb out. My shoes sink into the mud.

Adam hands the
black box to me. “Haruko, take her. I’ll be there in a
second.”

Haruko nods and
starts off into the trees.

I hesitate.
Adam—

“Go. There’s
no time.”

I turn and follow
Haruko, adrenaline burning in my chest. She’s running too fast;
I can barely keep up. I struggle to keep her in my sight as we get
further and further away from the tractor trailer and its headlights.
I turn back, looking for Adam, but I can’t see a thing.

We reach the shed.
I stumble inside, panting and wheezing. Haruko takes out her phone
and turns it on; the screen provides enough light for me to see her
face.

“I can’t
fucking believe this,” she mumbles.

“I can’t
believe
you
,”
Aya’s voice says from behind us. I turn around just in time to
see her become visible once more. “You betrayed me. You
betrayed Julian. After all he’s done for you...”

Shit. She must
have heard Adam’s story in the diner after all.

“What the
hell are you talking about?”

“You were
the one who stole Mnemosyne from Julian! You stole that card from
Adam to get to the sepulcher, and then—“

“Whatever.
Aya, we don’t have time for this.”

“And still
he turned against us. He betrayed Julian. For
you
.
I can’t believe it.”

“It didn’t
have anything to do with me,” Haruko mutters. “We didn’t
have a choice. Julian can’t be trusted with it any longer—“

“Obviously
neither can Desmond! He didn’t lose the head. How could he lose
it? No one can get into the compound without his permission. He
gave
it to Mirabel.”

“What? No.
That’s absurd. It was stolen.”

I hear leaves
rustling outside. I look out the door. Adam is walking toward us,
carrying the limp body of a ghoul over his shoulder. Haruko steps
inside to allow him to drag the body into our cramped hiding space.

From the way the
ghoul is dressed, he looks like he might have been a store clerk or
maybe a waiter at a cheap restaurant. He’s young, with short
red hair and freckled skin that’s taken on a greenish tinge. He
doesn’t smell like a dead body, but his muscles look stiff.

“What are
you doing with that?” Haruko asks.

“When I used
the blood to knock one of them out, I knocked all of them out. That’s
not normal,” he says. “I think they’re all...
networked, sort of, through some psychic link to Mirabel.”

“Great,”
Haruko says. “Problem solved, then. While they’re out,
we’ll just need to get inside the house, take the elevator to
the basement complex, get Desmond, take a car from one of the garages
and get out of here. The real enclave is underground. The ghouls
couldn’t have gotten in.”

Adam shakes his
head. “We won’t have enough time for all that. This one
woke up on the way over. Mirabel must have someone with her to wake
her up.”

Haruko looks down
at the ghoul. “Then why did you bring it back with you?”

“I want you
to remove Aya’s seal so she can fry their circuits. Not just a
whiteout—the real thing, complete sensory overload,” Adam
says. “Mirabel won’t recover so quickly from that. It
could buy us a good fifteen minutes.“

“I won’t
do it,” Aya says. “Not after what you did...”

Haruko laughs and
shakes her head.

“What’s
so funny?”

“Nothing, I
just... I finally get it.”

“Get what?”

“You’re
in love with him.”

“With Adam?
Don’t be ridiculous—“

“No, of
course not with Adam,” Haruko says. “With Julian.”

Aya sputters,
shakes her head, then turns away, speechless.

“Great.
Thanks for the help,” Adam says to Haruko.

“We don’t
need her,” Haruko says. “You can just keep putting them
to sleep until we can get to the compound entrance.”

The ghoul stirs,
its limbs twitching. Adam places his hand against its forehead; it
falls still again.

“Which is
where?” he asks.

“Inside the
house.”

“There’s
only one?”

“Yeah. There
are a bunch of exits, but only one entrance.”

“I don’t
know. I don’t think it’ll work. This seems to be getting
less and less effective, and I’m running out of bullets.”

“I don’t
care,” Aya cuts in.

“Aya, listen
to me,” Adam says, lowering his voice. “Do you want
Mirabel to take the head back?”

“It’s
not my problem anymore.”

“Don’t
be foolish. What do you think will happen to Julian if she does?”

Aya opens her
mouth to reply, but nothing comes out.

Adam rolls the
ghoul onto its back and aims the gun at its heart.

“Wait,”
Aya says. “If Haruko will unseal me, I’ll help you. I’ll
do what you want.”

Adam and Haruko
exchange looks.

“All right,”
Haruko says. “Give me your hands.”

Aya places both of
her tiny hands inside both of Haruko’s, looking up at the
taller woman with disgust. The Warden closes her eyes; soon Aya does
the same, her expression slowly shifting from anger to agony.
Rivulets of blood stream from the corners of her eyes, ears, and
mouth. She cries out, tries to retract her hands, but Haruko’s
grip on her tightens.

I can feel a pulse
of electricity surge through the air as Haruko finally releases her.
Aya stands silently for a few moments, trembling, then looks around
the shed as if seeing it for the first time. She brings a hand to the
space between her collarbones.

“Aya?”
Adam says. “Why...” The sound catches in his throat. He
doesn’t finish.

Aya crouches next
to the ghoul and places her hands over his ears for a few moments.
She draws her fingertips over both of his eyelids, then down across
his nostrils to rest on his lower lip and chin.

The ghoul’s
lips part; his eyes open. He stares at the ceiling with a rapturous
expression, as if seeing something too beautiful to comprehend. He
begins to laugh in a series of horrible choking sounds, his dead
voice box hardly better suited to the task than mine. He gasps as she
removes her fingers from his mouth; his eyes roll back in their
sockets.