The Remnant (27 page)

The bites had really started to sting like
fire all over his body as Trace’s blood soaked the towels his
father ripped from the bathroom shelves to swaddle him in. His
mother had thankfully become speechless by then, biting her wrist,
her eyes wide with terror. She followed them out to the truck as
his father lay Trace gently across the seat, but she made no move
to climb in, and the image of her standing there, stricken as they
drove away haunted Trace for the rest of his life.

Remember your mother’s screams?

He remembered.

And he remembered that he would have probably
bled to death if his father had not come home early that day. Or he
would have died there on the attic stairs, with the rats eating him
to bare bones while his mother chewed her own wrist. It was the
first time in Trace’s life that he understood how much his father
loved him, and that knowledge made all the pain and blood
worthwhile. But that was also the instant that he realized that
there was more than one kind of love, and his mother had another,
an ineffectual, insular, cold kind of love. She had screamed in
fear at the sight of the rats eating her son alive, but it was his
father who had waded into the beasts to save him. At that instant
Trace would have gladly marched right back into the middle of that
army of rats again with his father at his side, win or lose.

Yes. He remembered his mother’s screams.

Love-even God’s love-without action is
meaningless... perhaps deadly, maybe even evil.

Trace nodded in the darkness. His father’s
love had saved his life, had shown him how to go on living even
with the scars and the pain that followed. His mother had sunk
deeper into her own world after that, ignoring both of them where
before she had mostly ignored Trace. So, was
that
the final
message the little man offered? Was it for
that
Trace had
been tortured by rats as a boy, forced to suffer the loss of Ashley
in Mexachuli, sent into the sewers of New York to be hunted, sent
here with her to be hunted again? There had to be more.

The drive to the hospital had been almost as
frightening as the attack.

"Fucking rats," his dad muttered, whipping
onto the highway on two wheels. "Fucking rats. I’m so sorry, boy. I
should have listened to you. Where in the world did so many fucking
rats come from? I never seen that many fucking rats in my
life."

Even babbling, the sound of his manly voice
was comforting. Trace shifted in the seat, frightened when not all
of his skin seemed to shift with him. He clutched at the bloody
mass of towel on his belly and jerked when another fiery pain
radiated outward from his palm and fingers. He stared at the torn
skin that looked as though it had been dragged across a grater. His
father glanced at him and shook his head, blood streaking his own
face.

"I’m sorry, boy. I’ll never doubt you again.
When this is over we’re gonna go back there and kill every fucking
rat in that house together. You understand?"

Trace nodded, although he couldn’t quite
picture that. He and his father had never done anything together,
much less commit to a crusade, but there was a determination in his
dad’s eyes he’d never witnessed there before. Determination and
shame.

The nurse at the admitting desk took one look
at the two of them and shouted for help. A couple of other
emergency patients were shifted into another room while three
interns and several nurses began cleaning Trace and his father on
adjoining examination tables. As Trace told the story he noticed
his father shaking his head and biting his lip.

"I never knew," his dad kept saying. "I never
realized."

"You’ll have to undergo the shots," said a
tall, dark-haired intern, frowning.

"For rabies, you mean?" said Trace’s dad.

The doctor nodded.

"Get it over with, then."

"You have to have several over several
days."

"That figures," said Trace’s dad.

Trace had no idea what they were talking
about, but he hated shots. And if they were so bad they frightened
his father he didn’t even want to think about them. Instead he
focused on the pretty blond nurse gently washing his wounds with a
warm wet cloth. He watched the liquid in the plastic bowl turning
crimson until she took it away and brought another. He could feel
both blood and tepid water staining the tissue paper beneath
him.

"I’ve never seen anything like this,"
admitted the smaller intern, a man with thick round glasses and
ball-bearing eyes.

He gently slid his rubber-gloved fingertips
along the tiny tufts of skin peeled up by scratches and bites and
over the punctures where the shape of a million incisors
polka-dotted Trace’s flesh.

"There’s nothing to suture."

The other intern just shook his head. "Clean
them up and sterilize the wounds, then bandage them. Then we’ll get
the series started."

Trace noticed that when the doctor said
series
the little blond nurse flinched, but when she looked
into his eyes she smiled.

"You’re a brave boy, right?" she said.

But when another nurse pushed a new steel
tray in between his and his father’s beds he saw the size of the
needles there, and his heart skipped two beats. His father caught
his eye.

"You’ll be all right, boy. I’m right here
with you. We’ll get through this together. Okay?"

Trace nodded as bravely as he could.

His father gave him a gritty smile. "And when
we’re done, we’ll go home and kill every one of those rat
bastards."

"Okay," said Trace, lying back on the thin
pillow and closing his eyes.

"You with me," asked his father.

"You with me?" whispered Ashley.

Trace opened his eyes onto dark forest again,
nodding. But he was equally inside his nightmare, and still locked
somewhere halfway through the memory. Everything that had happened
to him, his entire life, had been a prelude to this night, and yet
the reasons for that to be so still eluded him, and he feared that
they always would. As much as he needed the world to make sense, it
might not.

So, what do you do then? If this is all just
a cosmic pinball game what point is there to anything?

But staring at Ashley he knew that there was
a point. It might not be the point God or the devil, or aliens, or
whoever was fucking with him wanted to make, but it was the only
point Trace cared about. Screw their game. Whether or not he ever
got any answers from now on he was playing by his own rules.

"Don’t zone out on me," whispered Ashley.

"I was thinking about killing," he whispered
back, watching her frown in the thin moonlight. The expression
reminded him of the little blond nurse somehow.

"What about it?"

"It’s better done in pairs," he said
cryptically.

But the fact remained that rats weren’t that
easy to kill.

Stan spotted Ashley and Trace on the tiny
green screen of his head-mounted monocular and froze. Ashley was in
the lead, watching the trail instead of scanning the trees, and he
was off to her left and ahead of her about thirty yards. One thing
he had always preached was
in case of an attack
never use
a trail
. But he knew all along that in panic situations people
forget their training, and it was so tempting to move along a track
rather than to work your way torturously through the trees. Now
his
training was paying off. That she had come to him rather
than his having to trek all the way down and back up the fucking
mountain was a real bonus. Of course there was still the Veras girl
to search for, but he was hoping that by dumping Ashley in Rendt’s
lap he’d be off the hook. Let the Angels do their job and find
Marie.

As Ashley and Trace climbed closer to him he
could hear Maxie growling, but the dog was no problem. Stan had
known Maxie since he was a worthless pup.

Wentworth needed to be dealt with, however.
Stan raised his rifle to his shoulder and sighted in on the torso,
watching the crosshairs rise slowly to nestle on the left breast
pocket of Trace’s shirt. Stan’s finger pressed lightly on the
trigger, and he let out half a breath before tapping twice.

The wind blew out of Trace’s lungs first.
Then
he heard the blast of twin shots slapping through the
trees. He hit the ground on his side, a heavy weight pinning him
there.

"Ash!" gasped a male voice right in Trace’s
ear.

Trace gagged for breath, but his diaphragm
wouldn’t work.

"Stay down!" said the voice. But there was a
panting quality to it, and Trace felt something warm and wet
soaking his shirt.

Just above him in the darkness there was a
shape that might have been a head, then broad shoulders, a hand
moving across his eyes, a rifle. Then there was another gunshot,
and the figure atop him rocked.

"Damn!" grunted the man.

Trace clawed his way out from under and then
to his knees, finally recognizing Cole.

So it was
him
following them, the eyes
that Trace had felt on his back. But apparently Cole had been
tracking them not to hurt but to help.

"I told you to stay down," Cole gasped.

But he had no strength in his hands anymore,
and in the dim moonlight Trace could just make out the black stain
of blood seeping across his chest as he rolled onto his back.

"Stan... Sold us out," sputtered Cole.

"How do you know it was Stan?" whispered
Trace.

A vicious grin crossed Cole’s lips. "Got it
out of one of the Angels."

Trace didn’t ask where the Angel was now. He
was more interested in where Ashley had gotten off to. He heard
Maxie roaring. There was a burst of what sounded like pistol fire,
then silence again. Maxie would be with Ashley. Goddamnit! Where
was she?

"Why’d you save me?" whispered Trace.

Cole’s eyes closed, and for a moment Trace
thought he was dead. When they reopened they were glassy.

"Didn’t come to save you. Came to help
Ashley..."

"Now she’s going to get herself killed," said
Trace, starting to rise.

Cole grabbed his wrist. "They aren’t going to
kill her," he moaned. "Just take her."

"Shit," said Trace, feeling the strength
still flowing out of the man like water through a sieve.

Cole’s head fell back against the earth. But
he was still breathing hard between clenched teeth. "Rendt wants
her and Marie."

Then his breathing stopped altogether. Trace
felt for a pulse. There was none.

There was also no sound from the surrounding
woods anymore, not even a breeze through the trees. It seemed
unlikely that Stan would just leave a man with a gun loose behind
him, but in the flash he might assume that he had hit Trace and not
even have seen Cole.

He gently raised Cole’s head and removed the
band of the night vision goggle from his forehead, fitting it to
his own head. It felt strange being blind in one eye and seeing the
flickering green glow of the surrounding trees with the other, but
at least it put him on semi-equal footing-vision-wise-with his
enemy.

But the shotgun was useless now. It was
designed for killers who couldn’t shoot straight. You simply
pointed it and pulled the trigger, and the pellets made a wide
pattern. Unfortunately now his target had Ashley with him, and
Trace would not be able to chance hitting her. He reluctantly
rested the gun on the ground and picked up Cole’s M-16 instead. Not
that he’d be much more accurate with it, but at least it wouldn’t
be spraying deadly buckshot everywhere.

Instead of rushing off in the direction he
had last heard gunshots, Trace dropped to all fours and crawled
into the brambles. When he had progressed a few yards he stopped
and reconnoitered the surrounding brush. Nothing moved. No human
figures broke the pattern of trees. He waited, listening to the
whisper of his breath between his teeth, the thrum of his heart. He
couldn’t believe that if Ashley was alive and still close by she
wouldn’t call out to him, but she might not be conscious.

He hadn’t heard anyone crashing away into the
forest. Of course adrenalin had been blasting through him. He’d
been surrounded by firing guns, knocked to the ground by Cole. He
wasn’t even certain whether a couple of minutes had elapsed since
the attack started or ten, and Stan might not have been alone. It
was possible that one or more Angels were with him, that
they
had spirited Ashley away fast. But because one or more
of them might have been left behind to finish the job, Trace was
reluctant to stand and show himself.

So he crept ahead, keeping the slope to his
right. He hoped to reach some spot soon where he could make out
Raven’s Head again and get his bearings. That was where Ashley said
Rendt would be running the attack from. That was where Stan would
take her.

Some vermin to lead the way now wouldn’t be
bad, thank you.

But there was no rustling of foliage, no
eeping greeting from the underbrush, no flutter of leathery wings
about his head, and once again he thought of the lesson he had
learned from his mother.

Finally he reached a narrow break in the
trees and blinked at the shattered fragments of starlight
glimmering on the crags of the black granite cliffs above, an
explosion frozen in time. He was still well below the bluff, but
close enough that he would be able to easily make out any movement
there. He waited, but no figure appeared at the cliff’s edge, and
panic began needling him again. There was no telling how long Rendt
would remain. Once he got Ashley and Marie he might just leave the
Angels to finish up whatever killing was left to be done in the
valley.

That thought burned in his head.

Left to be done
.