Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

Raise her arm, drive the knife down, penetrate his flesh. Mother, make me strong .

Michaela was silent from the grave. Cat realized she was calling out to the wrong parent. It was her father who would guide her, her father who would teach her to be brutal and ruthless, to call out the devil in her soul. Marty Gamble wouldn’t hesitate to do what had to be done. He would take the knife and cast out every weak emotion and rain down death and pain and blood.

I must stop him, Father. Show me how.

Mother, forgive me.

But it didn’t matter how long Cat stood there. She couldn’t do it. She stood paralyzed, wracked by trembling, the knife quivering in her fingers, and she couldn’t do it. She told her arm to move, and it wouldn’t move. No matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she needed to, she couldn’t lift the knife; she couldn’t sink it in another person’s body. This man, this murderer, was going to get away because she was weak.

Cat felt cool fingers on her hand, the hand that held the knife.

It was Brooke Hahne, standing beside her. Brooke’s eyes were calm and determined.

She peeled the knife away from Cat’s hand and in a single motion, a graceful arc, she buried the blade to the hilt in Ken McCarty’s neck.

It happened fast, and it happened slowly.

Ken howled in pain, and his body spasmed as the knife sliced through his nerve endings and severed his artery. Blood erupted. A red fountain. The arm he held around Serena’s neck gave way, and she spun out of his grasp. She slipped on the ice and went to her knees. Ken swayed, his gun arm shot skyward, but as he collapsed against the wall, the gun was still locked in his hand.

A mortal threat.

Stride saw it happening and couldn’t stop it. He shouted. He screamed. He took a shot himself in the same split-second, but his bullet struck the wall above Ken McCarty’s head and ricocheted harmlessly up into the cross-beams of the freeway.

He heard the wind. He heard cars racing.

His flashlight beam lit up Ken’s drunken dance and glinted on the metal of the gun, and the gun danced, too, danced and swung. With the tiniest twitch of Ken’s finger, it fired. The gun spat flame. The shot was like a bomb.

The bullet drove into Serena.

*

Flashbacks.

Stride didn’t remember throwing himself over the wall into the creek. He knelt over Serena and saw the faces of the other women he’d lost, as if they lay beside her. He was at their death beds, when it was too late to change anything, when they were already out of his grasp.

‘Michaela.’

His finger in the blood of her neck. No pulse.

‘Michaela!’

His voice choked and ragged.

Her eyes closed, angelic. He put his hands on her cheeks; they were still warm, as if life had only just left them. Minutes earlier, she’d begged for his help, but in the time it took to reach her, he was already too late. He’d already failed her.

He was conscious of Ken McCarty limping toward the archway. He didn’t chase him. Ken had nowhere to go.

Serena was on her back. The dank, frozen water puddled around her. Her upper body was matted in blood, so much blood. More blood than one body should give up. Her eyes were open, but she was looking over his shoulder, at the angels, seeing visions of things to come.

‘Don’t look there,’ he told her. ‘Look into my eyes. Stay with me.’

‘Cindy.’

The shell of his beautiful wife.

He heard her breathing catch. Each breath was a labored effort. Each one came a little harder and a little farther apart.

Her lips moved. Cindy murmured something he didn’t understand. Stride leaned closer. The sight of her skin, and the smell of disease lingering on her body, crushed him. It wasn’t his battle to fight. He was a bystander in the worst event of his life.

She tried again. He tried to hear her.

‘It’s okay, Jonny.’

It was a whisper that didn’t sound like her at all. He didn’t understand. She couldn’t be telling him that everything was all right, because nothing was all right. But for an instant, he saw a glimmer in her eyes that reminded him of who she was.

She spoke again. It was a terrible effort.

‘It’s what I want now.’

He nodded. He could never accept it, but she could. She had to. There was no other choice.

He brushed his lips against hers. When he moved back, her eyes were closed again. The gasping, painful sound of her breath was gone, replaced by peaceful silence. The color left her face. He sat there, staring at her, and he found he could talk again. He told her how cold it was. He reminded her of that camping trip in the spring and how they had laughed together. He told her how beautiful she was and how much he loved her. He was still talking when the doctors came and led him away.

‘Serena, look at me,’ he begged her. ‘Look at me. Stay with me. Help’s coming. Help’s almost here.’

He leaned in, kissed her, stroked her wet, dirty hair in the creek.

‘I love you. Don’t go.’

*

Ken McCarty coughed. Blood flecked from his mouth. He didn’t have to make it far. His car was near the freeway where he’d crashed it. He still had that cabin near Solon Springs waiting for him. He could hide there while he healed.

He put a hand on the wall and it left a bloody print. It didn’t matter.

Outside the graffiti graveyard, the night looked darker than it had before, as if the darkness were in his eyes. The rocks on the slope under the freeway looked funny. He realized it was because he was on all fours. Crawling. The mud and snow squished through his fingers.

He coughed. Liquid dripped from his neck. More blood made little pearls dotting the rocks, like a spatter painting. It would be easier to sleep. Sleep here, rest here, then get in the car and head across the bridge into Wisconsin in the sunshine of the morning. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

No. He had to keep going. He couldn’t wait for daylight.

Ken pushed himself to his feet, an effort that felt impossibly hard. He saw his car. The light post was on top of it. The doors were open. He could reach it; he could run; he could escape. He took a wobbly step and sank to his knees again. Something cold pressed into his head. It was a feathery touch, but it nearly knocked him over. The barrel of a gun.

‘Hello, Ken,’ Maggie said.

Somewhere behind her, he saw flashing lights. He heard sirens. Police cars. Fire trucks. Ambulances. People running. People hurrying past him into the graffiti graveyard. Shouts. Radios.

‘I was hoping to shoot you but it doesn’t look like I need to bother,’ she told him.

‘Huh?’ Nothing made sense now.

‘You have a knife sticking out of your neck,’ she explained. ‘Looks like it got your carotid. Payback’s a bitch.’

‘Think I’m dying,’ he said.

‘I think so.’

‘Help me.’

‘Not much to help, Ken.’

‘Come with me.’

‘Not where you’re going.’

*

‘Serena,’ Stride said.

He saw the lights and heard the stampede of boots. They were coming for her.

‘Serena,’ he repeated.

She didn’t answer. She was still looking beyond him, as if she could see things that living persons shouldn’t see. He wanted her frozen green eyes to move. He wanted her to see him kneeling over her.

‘Don’t you dare leave me,’ he told her.

Brooke Hahne sat in the dirty, icy water six feet away. She shivered uncontrollably, her knees pressed together. Her fists were clenched in front of her face. She didn’t say a word; there was nothing to say, even though she had led them here to this place. He wanted to hate her, and he couldn’t.