Brian Freeman: The Burying Place

The last miles melted away, disappearing with the hypnotic throb of the engine. The forest thinned, and she drove closer to civilization again. Buildings appeared. Dark houses hugged the highway. It was two in the morning as she wound through the downtown streets, which were as vacant and artificial as a movie set. The silence followed her across the last bridge over the water.

Then, behind her, the noisy whine of a police siren shattered the peace. Red lights swirled and grew large in her mirror, and a Sheriff's vehicle sped past her. The car turned where she was about to turn, on the road that led to Valerie's house.

Serena didn't need to be told. She realized with despair where it was going.

'Oh, no,' she said.

Stride watched Kasey's flashlight swivel in his direction and capture him where he stood amid the rubble and hanging wires of a jagged gap in the wall. He held his gun with both hands. Kasey's head turned, and she saw him, but she didn't lower her gun. She aimed it at Maggie at point-blank range.

'It's over,' he warned her.

Her face was covered with blood and dirt. Her ripped shirt hung open, exposing the swell of her breasts. Her red hair was matted down. The gun quivered in her outstretched arms. He held her stare and didn't like what he saw in her eyes. Behind the exhaustion and panic, she was obsessed. Desperate to escape.

'Put the gun down right now,' he said.

Kasey's lower lip trembled. Her chest heaved as she hyperventilated. The cage she had built began to close in around her.

'Kasey, I'm not alone. Do you understand me? Cops are coming. There is no way out. Are you listening? No way out. Just put the gun down, so no one else gets hurt.'

His eyes flicked to Maggie. She was pale, and her neck was bleeding. She showed no fear with the barrel of a gun inches from her face.

Instead, when she saw him watching her, she mouthed two words back to him.

I'm OK.

But she wasn't. Kasey's finger was still curled round the trigger.

'We know about Callie,' Stride said. 'Listen to me, Kasey, it's over. The police are at your house right now. Callie's going home to her parents. Nothing you do here is going to change that.'

'You're taking Callie?' Kasey murmured. Her voice sounded like a lost little girl.

'I'm sorry.'

'You can't take her away from me.'

'The secret is out, Kasey. Everyone knows the truth. It's time to get help.'

Hopelessness and horror washed across Kasey's face. 'My God, it was all for nothing.'

He watched the gun. He watched her finger. Neither moved. 'I need you to put the gun down now.'

'Nothing,' she repeated. 'It was all for nothing.'

'Kasey, do what he says,' Maggie instructed her sternly. 'Put the gun down.'

Kasey's wide eyes turned toward Maggie again. 'I'm sorry. I can't. I need to get out of here.'

Maggie's voice softened. 'Listen to me, Kasey. I understand. I've had miscarriages, and I blamed myself. I went crazy. I did things I'll always regret. I know how it must have been for you. You loved your boy, and there was nothing you could do for him. That's the worst pain a woman can endure. It's worse than dying yourself. But this isn't the answer. You know that.'

Kasey's elbow sagged downward. The barrel of the gun tilted toward the blasted foam tiles in the ceiling. Her whole body caved in on itself. Stride took a step closer, with both hands still tightly wrapped around the butt of his gun.

'That's good, Kasey, now bend down and lay it on the floor, and put your hands on the top of your head.'

Kasey stared at him with those same wounded eyes, putting him off guard. She knelt to the floor. He began to relax, but then he realized that her hand was still locked fiercely around the gun. Her grip hadn't changed. She hadn't taken her finger off the trigger. He looked into her eyes and realized that her submissiveness was a ruse.

She wasn't giving up.

Maggie saw it too. 'Stride,' she warned him, her voice urgent, but he reacted too slowly.

Kasey's finger moved, not on her gun hand, but on her other hand. She switched off her flashlight, throwing the ruins into blackness again. Stride knew what was coming next. He threw himself sideways as fire flashed from Kasey's gun. Something hot burned through the skin of his neck, and he felt warm blood running on his skin and soaking into his shirt. He hit the ground and spun, rolling through sharp glass and a mountain of fallen stone.

More bullets exploded, pounding the floor and walls around him, ricocheting madly. Dust and flakes of concrete fell in a cloud over his face. He kept rolling until his body collided with a concrete pillar, and then he slid behind it and pushed himself up into a crouch. He peered around the beam, but he couldn't see or hear anything in a room filled with blackness and silence. The air around him was choked with smoke.

Twenty feet away, Kasey's flashlight flicked on again, but before he could aim and fire, the light switched off. He heard her footsteps in the aftermath, running, getting further away. The light went on and off again in a split second in a room beyond the far wall, as she used it to guide her.

'Mags,' Stride hissed.

'Over here.'

He followed the sound of her voice, leading the way with his hands. He kicked through a jumble of metal spikes and ducked as the noise clanged through the open space, but no one fired at him. He could still hear Kasey stumbling through another room, looking for a way out.

'Stride,' Maggie whispered. He felt along the chair to find where she was tied.

'Are you OK?' he asked.

'I'm alive.'

He clawed at the tape with his fingers but couldn't unwrap it. He felt on the floor and found a sharp piece of glass and used it to tear a cut in the tape that he peeled open, ripping it quickly off her skin. Maggie gave a strangled cry. He used the glass to free her other hand and then her feet.

'Don't stand up too fast,' he whispered, but she didn't listen. She bolted off the chair, then wobbled and fell backward. She toppled against him, and he caught her in his arms. The chair overturned. Her hands wrapped around his neck and got lost in the blood flowing from the open wound.

'Fuck, you're hurt,' she said.

'It seared me. It burns like hell, but I'm OK.'

A cone of light stabbed through the corridor opposite them, throwing shadows past the concrete towers. For the first time, Stride caught a glimpse of the bodies hidden in the school, and he swore. Maggie gestured at the nearest body on the floor — a large man with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

'That's our guy. The farmland killer. Kasey shot him.'

Stride nodded. In a distant corner of the school, at the source of the light, they heard Kasey hammering against the plywood boards nailed over the windows. Explosions rattled between the walls as she fired twice more. Wood splintered and broke. They saw smoke in the beam of light. After a pause, they heard the impact as Kasey threw her entire body against the wooden barrier.

The plywood tore away with a scream. They felt the air pressure change as a gap opened in the school wall. The light vanished.

'She's out,' Maggie said.

Stride put an arm around her waist to steady her. 'We have to get out of here,' he said. 'The first thing she'll do is go after Callie.'

'Valerie's disappeared,' Denise told Serena.

'Disappeared? What happened?'

Serena didn't get an answer. Denise looked over her shoulder to where Callie slept in the back seat. The mask of the tough cop on Denise's face melted away. Serena heard Denise catch her breath and watched her cover her face with cupped hands as if she was praying. Denise opened the back door and gently undid the straps of the car seat. She lifted Callie like fragile china into her arms. The little girl didn't wake up.