Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (20 page)

The left side of E’s face was relatively whole, but made horrific by the cut on her forehead. Blood had streamed over brow and cheek nearly to her throat. Long since dried and crusted, flakes had fallen away until the stain took on the appearance of an old rotting abrasion. Ashes clung in tatters to hair, skin, and clothes.

They all looked like zombies in a postapocalyptic horror movie.

Thin drizzle began leaking from the sullen sky. Wet, burned lichen peeled from boulders in a parody of skin peeling from a body. Drizzle turned to rain. Great oily drops fell, thick and slow as treacle, leaving scabrous-looking spots on charred wood and scarred stone.

Heath realized they must be trekking through part of the burn that had ruined the campground they’d planned on using. They were somewhere in the thousands of acres of burned area that ended at the Fox River.

The moon, the mall, Disney World: Where they were was irrelevant as long as they were under the control of the dude.

He stopped. They stopped. All listened for the plane. Sean took the opportunity to sit, dropping to the ground with all the grace of a puppet whose strings have been cut. Leah and Elizabeth stood in what would have been the traces had they been mules.

Heath reached out to tug herself another half a foot forward with the aid of a burned black claw of a limb. Realizing she did it because she was afraid if she stopped she could never get going again, she forced herself to drop her arm.

“We wait here,” the dude said.

“This is fucking nowhere, man,” Reg growled. “It’s got nothin’. No water, nothin’. We got nothin’ to make a fire with. It’s all burned. I say we keep going.”

“The plane isn’t coming back today,” the dude said. “The clouds are too low. The pilot can’t see to fly. It’ll lift tomorrow, and we’ll go on.”

“We got a couple hours’ light. Let’s go on now,” Reg insisted.

Heath hoped the dude would punch him a few times as he had Elizabeth. He didn’t.

“Mom, want out of that thing?” Elizabeth asked.

“God, yes,” Heath said. The exhaustion she had been holding at bay flooded her words. E’s face screwed up the way it had when she was a little thing and trying not to cry. “I mean, why thank you, E. I confess I am growing weary of sitting in Mr. Shaw’s lap.” She made her voice light and mocking. The effort was akin to lifting a compact car.

To a certain extent the act was a success. Elizabeth’s face unscrewed. Heath could tell it was taking her daughter as much willpower not to cry as it was Heath not to sound like she was about to pass out. At present, reality was a bitch. They were pretending to be stronger and braver than they were.

Maybe that was all courage was, pretending not to be afraid, and taking the next necessary step.

“Shitaroonie,” Sean whined as he delicately eased his foot out of his shoe. “I’m all tore up. I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this, Dude. My feet are all tore up to hell.” Sean wasn’t into pretending to be a better man. He looked and sounded like a vicious, beastly little boy, the sort that strangles the neighbor’s cat, then screams bloody murder because it scratched him in the process.

Leah, weariness paring her low voice to a whisper, said, “Rest, Katie.” Katie looked around vacantly, either trying to see who cared about her enough to suggest rest or trying to find a place that looked alluring. Leah untied Heath’s ankles from the footrests. Heath’s legs immediately kicked out.

“Kids at recess,” Heath said. During the first few years, the spasms had embarrassed her. As if they were rude, in the same category as belches and farts. When her legs “acted up,” as she called it, she would apologize. E was the one who made her stop.

“It would be like me saying ‘sorry’ every time I blink or breathe,” she’d snapped one evening as Heath was apologizing during a movie Elizabeth had been wanting to see. “It’s silly. You twitch. Like anybody is going to die because you twitched at them? Twitches don’t even stink or make noise.”

After that Heath had ceased apologizing, because it annoyed her daughter. Over time her motive changed. She didn’t apologize because E was right. Eyes blinked. Hair blew in the wind. Legs twitched.

“I can do it,” she said as E started to help Leah lower her to the ground. “Your ribs must be killing you.”

“They’re waiting in line,” Elizabeth said with a grim look at the dude.

Heath made herself laugh.

At Elizabeth’s suggestion, Leah helped her upend Rick Shaw. The paddle handles were shoved into the ashen earth, the wheel braced against a burned tree trunk. Upside down, the seat formed a tiny place of shelter from the rain. Heath insisted Katie and Leah use it. E disapproved, but Katie was quick enough to scuttle under. For Heath it was a small victory. This time it was she who had given comfort. It was better to give than receive, if for no other reason than that having something to give was a facet of power.

Heath found a rock and scooted back until it supported her upper body. Elizabeth sat next to her and leaned her head against her shoulder. Leah joined Katie beneath the pretense of shelter. Their shoulders touched. Heath realized that this was only the second time she’d seen them so close to one another. Both their heads drooped on their necks. Hair once black and hair once blond were now the same ashen hue. For the first time they looked like mother and daughter.

Heath dug in the pocket of her jacket to get a cigarette. The pack of Camels was mashed and slightly damp where sweat had soaked through the jacket. Smoking in the burn felt redundant, but, without food, she hoped the nicotine would soothe her nerves and give her energy a boost. Anyway, it was something to do.

As she patted pockets in search of her lighter, she remembered Sean had taken it the night before. It was a cheap hot pink Bic, and it never failed. Since knowing Heath, Anna had taken to carrying a lighter in the backcountry. Cigarette lighters weren’t nearly as fashionable as small, watertight tins of ten sulfur matches, but Anna wasn’t as interested in fashion as she was in function. As every smoker knew, a Bic could go through the washer and dryer and still light.

“Could I have my lighter?” Heath asked.

Sean looked up from his study in personal podiatry. “What for?”

Heath held up the cigarettes.

“Give her the lighter,” the dude said.

Sean threw it. It landed near Leah’s thigh. She retrieved it and tossed it gently into Heath’s lap.

“Thanks,” Heath said.

“Watch out for Smokey Bear,” Elizabeth said wryly. “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

Heath lit her cigarette. The first drag was heaven.

“Bad example, you smokin’ in front of the fuckin’ kid,” Reg said.

“Yeah,” Heath agreed. “Where do you take your kid on father-daughter day? Joliet?”

Reg was nearly as fidgety as her lower limbs. His head snapped up at every thump of a branch falling from a tree or caw of a crow. She was too tired to care if her remark pushed him over the edge. For nearly two days, she had been ringed round with precipices. There came a time when even fear got tired.

He looked away. He’d lost interest in her. She didn’t scare him. The woods did, despite the fact that they were reduced to the leavings of an inferno.

“I’m telling you, dude, we gotta keep going. We’ll fucking freeze to death, if the wolves don’t get us,” he insisted.

“So go,” the dude said and began walking back in the direction from which they had come.

“What the hell?” Sean cried. He tried to shove the foot he was crooning over back into the boot with such haste he must have peeled off a layer of flesh. Squeaking like a stepped-on rat, he dropped the shoe.

“Where are you going?” Reg’s hand was in the pouch of his hoodie, where he kept the Walther.

“To get firewood so the wolves won’t eat you.”

“Hey, wait up.” Reg trotted after him.

Heath, Elizabeth, Leah, and Katie were left alone with Sean. Raindrops plopped toadlike onto the ash. Heath pulled E closer to keep her warm. Leah’s eyes narrowed behind the lenses of her glasses. Her hand slipped into the pocket of her coat as if she might find a gun she had forgotten about.

Sean stopped fiddling with his feet. He watched until the dude and Reg had gone from sight.

“You girls like games?” he asked and smiled.

THIRTY

Greens and browns gave way to sodden gray and black. At the edge of the living forest, Anna and Wily stopped. There was little to tell between the wet ash and the darkling storm clouds.

“Damn,” Anna muttered. “Must have been a hell of a fire. No cover left for such as we.” For a moment she stood, Wily at her side, staring through gray rain at the gray landscape. “We could circumnavigate the black and intercept the others on the far side,” she suggested.

Wily said nothing.

“You’re right,” she decided after a minute. “Chances of finding them again are slim to none.”

Wily made a sound between a yawn and a cough. Anna suspected he was laughing at her. “I can’t sniff people out as well as you can,” she said defensively. “We wait till dark, you think?”

Wily rolled his eyes.

If the dude kept going, the hostages could arrive at the airstrip in a matter of hours.

Then what? Killing Jimmy had been a stroke of luck. All day Anna had waited, but neither Reg nor Sean so much as fell behind to take a leak.

Sean’s feet were being flayed alive by his boots. If he’d straggle behind, she might be able to pick him off. Doing it in the light of day would be harder than taking out Jimmy had been, and killing Jimmy was more difficult than Anna had thought it would be. He was small, not terribly bright, she had a knife, his back was turned, she had the element of surprise. If she’d been writing a plan it might have read: (1) sneak up; (2) plunge knife into back; (3) never, ever tell Paul.

Like the king in chess, the human heart was well guarded, and, too, the little bastard had not wanted to die. Taking lives wasn’t as easy as it looked in the movies.

Sean was bigger and smarter by a few IQ points. Evil hung around him like a cloud of gnats. Evil things were harder to dispatch than stupid things. Slitting his throat was an option. No coat or bones to get in the way. Sean’s cheap knife should have enough of an edge for that if she sawed a little. She’d have to be directly behind him.

“Wily, would you act as bait and lure Sean over with the old injured puppy routine so I can cut his throat?”

Wily licked her fingertips. He’d do it in a heartbeat.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky again,” Anna said.

When she thought about it, it was surprising how many successful murders there were in the United States. Murder was a lot of work. Guns helped. Guns with gigantic ammo clips helped a lot. It also helped if the shooter thought of himself not as human but as a weapon of mass destruction, dealing death anonymously.

“We haven’t heard the plane in a while,” she said. “It can’t fly in this stuff. I doubt the dude knows he led everybody in a circle yesterday, but he has to know he was lost. I figure him for the kind with too powerful a survival instinct to make the same mistake twice. If he has the sense of a potato bug, he’ll find shelter, build a fire, and stop for the day. Get out of the rain.

“Wily, between us, do we have sense enough to come in out of the rain?” Anna asked.

Wily whined.

They backtracked to where two boulders, exhausted by geological time, leaned on one another. Soil had collected in the basin where they came together, and a maple tree had taken root. Beneath this wilderness triptych was a sheltered space about eight feet long, six wide, and four high. Plenty big enough for her and Wily.

“The lighting sucks, but so far the roof hasn’t started leaking,” Anna said, unloading their treasures from Wily’s papoose sack.

“We don’t have anything resembling a towel,” she apologized as she redistributed the goods into various pockets in Jimmy’s coat. “The underside of my sleeve will have to suffice. Can’t have you smelling like a wet dog.” While she rubbed his head, Wily stretched and groaned. “I suppose it’s the pot calling the kettle odiferous,” she admitted. “In this rig I probably smell like a wet sheep or a wet creep.”

Discussing the merits of various odors with a moderately interested dog, she began folding the nylon she’d rescued from the shell of the sleeping bag. When she’d achieved a rough trapezoid, she used the knife to cut a slit along each of the narrower ends.

“Hold still,” she said. Obediently Wily sat on her lap, his good foot on the ground, his rump supported by her thigh. She slipped his head through one slit, wrapped the cloth over his back, then slipped the other slit over his head. Carefully freeing his ears, she said, “It’s called a cape. The nylon isn’t waterproof, but it’s water repellent. It should keep the worst of it off your fur. At least until the nylon coating gets soaked through.”

Wily’s tail thumped against the side of her coat as he gave her a wry grin.

“Let me see how it fits.” Anna gently nudged him off her thigh. He hopped a few paces, then turned to look back at her. Before she recalled that there might be more ears around than was strictly safe, she laughed. The bright green fabric covered Wily’s back and part of his tail. Over his chest it parted in a neat V that accented his ruff. With the ragged ears of a dog who’d done his share of fighting as a pup, the effect was wonderful. “Green Lantern,” she said. “Who does that make me?”

Not knowing whether she was star or sidekick, and not caring, Anna rested, Wily beside her, gazing out at the destruction of what had once been a tract of forest.

This burn was probably the same that had been stopped by the Fox River. Anna vaguely remembered hearing about it. “Nearly twelve thousand acres,” she said as the number rose in her mind. “Other than toward the Fox, I haven’t a clue in which direction those acres are spread. Any thoughts?”

If Wily had them, he kept them to himself. He flopped down on his side with a groan and closed his eyes.

Anna gazed at the view until mist clouded her mind. Hypnotized by the soft patter of rain, her vision blurred, and for a while she was flying over the burned land. A cold front was boiling in from the north, clearing the rain before it. The winds carried her up. Spiraling over the blackened earth, she saw specks of humanity on the ash, and the golden brown of living forest around the perimeter. Somewhere a large cat was purring.