The Dead Run Page 15

  The Virgin took one to the mouth, and Galvan watched her head snap back. The sweat was running freely down his arms and legs—Hell, maybe I can swim away—and he passed the machete to his left hand, wiped the right dry, passed it back.

  Another kick, Fake Dad pairing this one with a primal scream, and she was gone—vanished back into her hole, like a shark breaching and lunging, missing and diving. Fake Mom fumbled with the gear shift again, Fake Dad urging her on, the two of them complicit in the fiction that they’d won some kind of reprieve, that escape was possible. She was breathing in jagged gasps, hyperventilating almost, and it wasn’t helping. The two of them lasered in on the gear shift as if they could make the world beyond disappear through force of will, ignore it into submission.

  They never saw the second girl burrow up out of the ground, readjusting her faded T-shirt and pulling her skirt down her hips like it was date night and her boyfriend had just pulled into the driveway, beeped his horn.

  They missed her runway-worthy beeline for the car, didn’t pay a whit of mind until her hand was clamped around Fake Mom’s forearm, dirt-caked fingernails drawing blood, mouth open and teeth bared, a predator about to feast.

  Fake Mom’s instincts kicked in, and Galvan had to give it to her: they were good ones. Her legs kicked straight out, against the car door, propelling her into her husband’s arms as if her body were on springs. At the same time, she remembered the one thing she had going for her, and without releasing her grip on the box, Fake Mom reached for the big six-shooter jammed into her waistband, wrapped both hands around it, and squeezed off three quick shots.

  From that distance, she didn’t have to be Annie fucking Oakley. Galvan watched the trio of bullets exit through the back of the dead girl’s skull, saw gore and gray matter paint the ground, felt his own heart clench into a fist.

  The impact knocked her flat on her newly ventilated cranium, and for a moment everybody—Fake Mom and Dad, Galvan, the two girls cowering by his side, Payaso, Britannica—stopped breathing as if in solidarity.

  Even the three other Virgin Army foot soldiers who’d unearthed themselves from various hidey-holes and were strutting toward the car seemed to pause for a moment, though that might have been Galvan’s imagination.

  Why any of them thought a gunshot to the dome would keep a dead girl down, he couldn’t have said. Wishful thinking, maybe, or some stubborn, childish belief in the laws of biology.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t last long.

  She popped back up as if it had been a beach ball that hit her in the head, not three chunks of lead moving a thousand feet per second.

  Fake Mom’s eyes grew saucer-sized as the girl retraced her steps, unfazed by the clumps of tissue sluicing down her face, surfing a waterfall of blood.

  Indecision was a bad look. The girl reached through the window, grabbed Fake Mom by the leg, and yanked. Fake Mom flew through the window, landed in a cloud of dust. The gun flew from her hand, skittered across the ground and came to rest paces from where Galvan stood. The box was still pressed to her chest.

  Gave heart-to-heart a whole new meaning.

  The un-girl with the ponytail was on her first, skittering from beneath the car like a giant spider. She went straight for the carotid artery; teeth tore into flesh, and a spray of blood arced like a fountain, spattering against the side of the car with the force and the sound of hail. Fake Mom bucked so hard she caught air, and now three girls were on her, tearing meat from bone as a thin trail of black smoke twirled up toward the heavens.

  The box slid from her lifeless grip. It teetered for an instant on its edge, then clanked to the ground, raising a tiny scrim of dust.

  The girl oozing brains was on it like it was a fumbled football. The other girls—the two crouched over the corpse, and another two just joining the party—snapped instantly to attention.

  Under new management, thought Galvan as she scooped the box into her arms. The other four huddled around the heart-bearer in a kind of protective phalanx, leaving Fake Mom sprawled, forgotten, in a pool of blood.

  And off they walked.

  Where were they going? Galvan wondered as he prepared to make his move. Would they eat it themselves? Deliver it to their mistress, wherever and whatever she was? Was she calling them home right now? Could she see what they did? Was she orchestrating every un-girl’s every move, deciding whether pseudo-seduction or simple carnage was the proper tactic? Or was all this freestyle, the general of the Virgin Army a laissez-faire commander?

  You’re stalling, Galvan.

  Here goes nothing.

  He walked straight toward them, stooping to snatch up the six-shooter on his way over, better armed than un-, and stashing it in his belt.

  Who would’ve thought a loaded gun could ever feel so useless?

  “Little help,” he barked over his shoulder in the general direction of Britannica. “I’m about to do something really stupid. For a change.”

  It took a beat for the old con man to find his voice. “Wh-what can I do?”

  “Look alive,” Galvan replied, in lieu of a decent answer. Realizing, even as he said it, that he’d spoken more out of a desire to hear his own voice than to convey any particular information.

  Or, perhaps, a desire to hear another voice.

  One final time.

  “Take care of those girls, if this doesn’t work out.”

  “You got it, boss.” Britannica sounded as jittery as Galvan felt.

  He was closing in on the Virgins now, the five girls clustered tight and moving slowly back into the desert, looking like nothing so much as a clique of gossiping high schoolers.

  They paid him not the slightest mind, and for an instant Galvan really did feel like he was fifteen again, trying to work up the nerve to ask out some hot cheerleader in full view of all her amigas.

  Deep breath.

  And . . .

  “Pardon me there, chica. But I think you’ve got something that belongs to me.”

  He grabbed the nearest girl by the shoulder, pried her away from the group. She spun toward him with a snarl, and now Galvan had their attention—every one, and every bit. His skin prickled with it. The fucking blood was sloshing around in his veins like river rapids, Galvan 100 percent white-water adrenaline right now, if that made any goddamn sense.

  As they ran their eyes over him—their eyes or whatever it was that these things, these abominations, used to sense—Galvan stepped into their midst, until he stood before the brainless girl.

  And the box.

  She was tiny, he realized now that he was close: five-two on tiptoes, what his mother would have called a little slip of a thing. Without knowing why, he wrapped a hand around her neck—didn’t squeeze, just held it there, as if his touch might communicate something that words did not.

  Hell, Galvan was just making this up as he went along anyway.

  “Give it to me,” he whispered, trying to look her in the eyes rather than the bullet holes. “I am the Righteous Messenger, and I . . .”

  What was the word he was looking for?

  Right.

  “ . . . I compel you. Now hand it the fuck over.”

  He took his hand off her throat. She didn’t obey, but she didn’t attack, either.

  Gently, Galvan lifted the box out of her hands. Still, the girl did nothing.

  Galvan felt the weight of the steel, listened for the gentle tha-thunk of the heart.

  It was there, but the sound was faint, the rhythm slower than he remembered. For a moment, Galvan panicked. Was it dying? Had it been out of his control too long? Even as he wondered, the heartbeat grew louder, more robust. Galvan exhaled a cloud of relief, took a step backward, and then another. The Virgins watched him go, all that skin-prickling attention still focused on Galvan.

  And then, abruptly, it was gone. They turned away, each one reorienting
herself toward the grave from which she’d come.

  And off they walked.

  Party over. Turn out the lights.

  Galvan watched them go, heart somersaulting in his chest, jukebox kicking on someplace above.

  You babblin’ / so your chain be unravelin’ / hit you like a javelin / through your abdomen . . .

  Then a blur streaked across his peripheral vision, and Galvan turned his head in time to see Fake Dad, sprinting away from the car and into the vast, yawning desert ahead. Away from the girls he’d kidnapped and drugged. The girls he planned to sell into a fate worse than death. Whose families he’d broken. Whose parents would never recover from the loss, the mystery, the faint hopes and the vivid waking nightmares. The girls whose names would be whispered fearfully, in the halls of their schools and on the streets of their towns, invoked like ghosts or curses, and then gradually forgotten.

  Just running away from it all.

  So he could do the same thing again.

  The gun was in Galvan’s hand before he knew it, muzzle tracking the man as he sprinted into the distance.

  He squeezed the trigger without a second thought.

  Without a first.

  The clap of hammer to primer shuddered through the emptiness.

  Fifty yards away, Fake Dad went down.

  He wouldn’t be getting up.

  Galvan stared at the faint wisp of black smoke trailing from his body and felt nothing.

  “Nooooo!” Britannica wailed, running toward him.

  The priest or not-priest snatched the gun from Jess’s hand. “What are you doing?”

  Galvan opened his mouth to answer, but Britannica wasn’t looking for back talk.

  “The Righteous Messenger cannot kill unless his life is threatened! Look!”

  The dead girls had turned around.

  They were marching straight toward him.

  CHAPTER 23

  Sherry Richards’s scream filled more than just the cavern. It filled the world, the heavens, the hollow space inside where her soul should have been. Only minutes earlier—as she’d steeled herself for revenge, felt herself grow hard with resolve—Sherry had been sure that she had nothing else to fear, nothing else to lose. After all, what could be worse than discovering her mother’s headless body?

  Here was the answer.

  Seeing her mother’s severed head. Suspended, by its hair, from the hand of her mother’s murderer.

  He returned it to the bag from which he’d pulled it, but Sherry kept on screaming. The noise blotted out reality, a little bit. Postponed whatever came next.

  The rope the monster had thrown lay before her, coiled like a snake. He was speaking now, over the full-throated wail emanating from her. His voice boomed, louder somehow than the sound of her own despair.

  Even this, denied her. Sherry could not compete.

  She closed her mouth. He waved his gun.

  “Come up now, or I shoot your friend.” He spread his arms. “That’s it. That’s the whole enchilada.”

  Eric was behind her now, his breath hot against her ear. “Go,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you.” And ever so gently, he eased the gun out of her waistband and stuck it in his own.

  Numb to all sensation, Sherry plodded toward the rope, took hold of the thick, bristly thing. Thought of her mother’s ponytail. Forced the thought away.

  “Wrap your legs around,” the monster instructed. “I’m gonna pull you up.”

  “Wait!” Eric stepped in front of her. “Me first. So I know you won’t just leave me here to rot.”

  The monster looked down at them, his face inscrutable.

  “Fine,” he said at last. “But if you try anything, I’ll kill your whole family. Slow as I know how. You get me, pretty boy?”

  Eric didn’t respond, just nudged Sherry out of the way and grabbed on. He gave a tug, testing, and the slack straightened right out.

  “Here I come,” he said, and Sherry watched as he pulled himself up, hand over hand. The monster retreated from the precipice, backed up until Sherry could no longer see him.

  The thought of hiding flashed across her mind. Find a crevice, a corner, a hole, and wedge herself in, as far as she could go. If she wouldn’t come up, he’d have to come down. And when he did—the gun.

  The gun she’d given Eric.

  Fuck.

  His torso disappeared above the ledge, and then his feet. A moment later, Eric was standing above her, voice echoing into the pit as he called her name, told her he was safe.

  “Start pulling,” the monster intoned, unseen, and Eric seized the rope. Sherry did the same, gripping with her arms and thighs, and felt the earth fall away beneath her.

  Raptured to heaven, she thought deliriously.

  The progress was jerky and incremental, Sherry’s knees and elbows banging against the sheer wall as the rope swayed. Then Eric’s hand-over-hand rhythm began to slow, and she could hear his breathing grow labored.

  “You’ve gotta take over,” he panted. “I’m not strong enough.”

  A few seconds of silence. Sherry pictured the monster sizing Eric up, wary of tricks.

  “Fuckin’ pussy,” he growled at last. “Stand over there, and don’t move.”

  Sherry looked up just as the monster’s hulking mass darkened the world, blocked out the light at the cavern’s mouth as surely as a boulder. And then Sherry began to ascend, fast. The ledge came into focus, just above, and her breathing accelerated.

  He needs me alive, she told herself.

  And I need him to die.

  She imagined clawing his eyes from their sockets. Falling on him, the moment she reached solid ground. A kick in the balls was supposed to take any man out, wasn’t it? That’s what she’d always heard. But for how long? Was it even true?

  Suddenly, the rope stopped moving, with a wrenching jar that sent her body bouncing off the cliff wall and then arcing out through space.

  Before Sherry could look up, it slipped, and she plummeted a terrifying three feet before her descent was arrested with a teeth-rattling jerk, the rope gone taut again.

  A scream caught in her throat, and Sherry craned her neck, trying to see what was going on. She couldn’t, so she started climbing—finding purchase against the rock as best she could with the flimsy rubber soles of her flip-flops, angling her body until it was almost parallel to the ground.

  Hand over hand. Once, twice. Three times. Four. Finally, Sherry’s torso breached the ledge, and she could see what was going on.

  The monster still held the rope. But Eric stood behind him, arm rigid, her father’s gun fisted in his hand. The muzzle hovered inches from the back of the killer’s head.

  You wouldn’t have known it from looking at his face.

  “Don’t move, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

  The monster stood motionless, looking for all the world like a man chiseled of granite.

  “Do it!” Sherry shouted. “Eric! Pull the trigger!”

  “Get up here,” he called back, and Sherry remembered where she was: at this height, and this angle, a fall might break her back. Open her skull. She made for the ledge, fast as she could, hand over hand.

  And then the monster let the rope go slack, and she dropped back to where she’d been, her eyes just high enough to see the smile on his evil face.

  Buchanan. That was the monster’s name.

  In a rush, it all came flooding back. The compound. The fear. The stories, told in sobs and whispers when the lights went down, and the stories strangled by silence. The Rod of Correction.

  “I said don’t move!” Eric shouted, and the monster cackled.

  Eric darted forward. In one fluid motion, he snatched the gun out of Buchanan’s holster and threw it, backhand, into the abyss. Sherry heard it tumble down an outcropping of rock, then bang
against the floor.

  She imagined herself doing the same, tightened her grip on the rope, and started climbing again.

  “Fucking kill him!” she called, panting. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Hand over hand. Sweat popping from her pores.

  And again, the monster reversed her progress, sent Sherry sliding backward just far enough to keep her in limbo.

  Too far to climb. Too far to fall.

  Sherry tried again, bending her knees as deeply as she could, then crouching and springing with all the strength left in her legs. Reaching upward until her arms ached from overextension.

  Again, she crested the ledge.

  Just as Buchanan turned his head to stare at Eric, and at the gun.

  The monster’s grin widened, and Sherry’s stomach dropped.

  “Your safety’s on,” he said, and then everything happened at once.

  His hand flew off the rope and knocked the gun from Eric’s hand.

  It clattered to the ground.

  And they both dove for it.

  And the rope went slack.

  And Sherry fell and flailed and scrabbled.

  She found the ledge with the fingertips of her right hand and swung her left arm up to join it just as the gun went sailing past her, disappeared.

  Pulled herself up and over, just as the last of the rope shot past and followed the gun into the inky blackness, a wet noodle slipping off a tabletop.

  Just as Buchanan threw a roundhouse left that smashed the right side of Eric’s face to pulp.

  He was unconscious before he hit the ground, landing shoulder-first with a loud snap and then a dull thump. Buchanan was on him in a flash, straddling Eric’s prostrate form.

  The monster bent forward, grabbed Eric by the hair, lifted his head a few inches. With the other hand, he reached for Eric’s chin.

  Sherry knew what was about to happen. He was going to twist. Break Eric’s neck. Kill the only person she had. Again.

  Buchanan was focused on his task with a sadistic singularity of purpose; he hadn’t noticed that she’d failed to hit the ground with a dull thump of her own when he’d let go of the rope.