Black_Tide (16 page)

It spoke to her, a million words and none, a swirling vortex of comfort that held promise but no meaning.

She opened her mouth to respond, and water filled her lungs. She jerked upright, coughing and gagging, sloshing cool water over the sides of the tub.

"She's awake!" The female voice came from the hallway, nasal New England vowels like fingernails across a chalkboard. Monica gagged and took stock of the tiny bathroom, just large enough to fit a tub, toilet, and sink, all in white as stark as the tile walls.

A wood-framed cross-stitch hung above the toilet. "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down."
Gross.
Water conservation had never been that much of a problem in Tennessee.

A brunette stepped through the door into the tiny bathroom, a teenager with dazzling, golden-brown eyes, her high cheekbones and prominent chin lacquered with too much makeup. She uncrossed her arms, revealing a green T-shirt emblazoned with the words
Division By Zero
in stark white letters. "You had a close call there. Sorry about the bath. Feeling warmer?"

Monica stood from the almost warm water, snatched a towel from a bar on the wall, and wrapped it around her naked body. "Where's my son?"

The girl turned around while she covered herself. "He's okay. My boyfriend's got him. What were you doing in the woods all alone, and after all this snow?"

"I'd like to see him, please."

"Sure. I got you some clothes that should fit now that you're all warmed up. Come on downstairs and we'll get you some tea. You hungry?" She turned around and smiled with dazzling white Hollywood teeth.

The gnawing pit in Monica's stomach weakened her knees. She nodded.

"I'll make you something and meet you downstairs. Take your time."

She dried off, threw on jeans and a man's T-shirt too big by half, and walked out of the bathroom on wobbly legs. She passed a bedroom where a pair of men played cards on a king-sized bed. They ignored her as she walked by, and the hair rose on the back of her neck.

Curved wooden stairs led to a large living room complete with a stone fireplace, the workmanship closer to the American Revolution than the new millennium. The girl sat on a large couch, a gaudy 70's throwback of stylized flowers on faded ecru. On the coffee table in front of her sat a tea tray with two cups and a steaming bowl of grits with butter and brown sugar. Saliva sprang unbidden to her mouth.

"Sit, please." The girl patted the cushion next to her.

Monica sat and shoveled a spoonful down as the girl poured the tea. It burned her mouth, but she didn't care. She used the scalding tea to wash down gulps of hot grits, buttery and too sweet, and didn't stop until she'd finished both. She leaned back, still hungry, and gave her host a thin smile.

"Thank you so much. Now I'd like to see my son, please."

"In a minute." The girl turned so that they almost faced one another. "What were you doing way out there in the woods? Seems a weird place to be during a travel ban."

Monica closed her eyes a moment at the memories, then forced them open, still woozy from the mental and physical trauma. "You heard about the fires in White Spruce?"

She nodded.

"Well some men, terrorists or something, they come looking for me." She held up a finger to forestall the interruption. "They killed my friends, but I managed to hurt one of them and run with my boy."

"So after you hurt this man, you just ran off into the woods? We found you eleven miles from White Spruce."

"Eleven miles? That's not . . . it couldn't have been. I walked, but no way it was that far. Now if you don't mind, I'd like to see my son now."

"Hold on a minute. I'm still trying to figure out if we need to call Child Protection."

"Child Protection?"

"We can't be sure it's your child. Maybe you took him, and that's why you were running through the woods."

"You're out of—" Monica stopped and studied the girl, scrutinized her as Sifu taught her to analyze an opponent. She seemed relaxed at first blush but kept her hands in front of her, her weight shifted toward the front of the couch, ready to strike or run. Even through a haze of shock and hypothermia, Monica recognized the potential for violent action. "Honey, I don't see my son right quick you're going to need a mortician."

The girl patted her hand, and a tingly electric jitter shot up her arm. "We already need one. That man you hurt, he suffocated when you crushed his throat. His name was Ben. Ben Carpenter. He kept bees, ran a store. He'll never see his wife again. Never pet his dog. A good man, dead. Because you killed him."

Monica jerked her hand back with too much effort, too slow. A million words in her defense came to mind: they'd killed her friends, attacked her, burned her town. Self-defense. Defense of her son. She shook off the haze, smiled as sweet as tea, licked her lips, and said, "Sweetheart, I'm giving you two seconds to bring me my son, or I'm breaking your twiggy little neck."

The girl's expression didn't change but for a flash of anger in her eyes. "Your devil-spawn's not here, Missus Rowley. For some reason we found him just impossible to cut up, and I thought maybe you could tell us why."

Monica struck, or meant to. She jerked to the side, snarling, and slid down to lay on the couch.

"Shit," the girl muttered, then leaned down to whisper in Monica's ear. "Yeah, that paralytic in your grits acts pretty fast, so you're not going to be able to do much more than talk, and not even that very well. So let's try this again."

The girl shoved the coffee table with her foot, then rolled Monica off the couch and face-down onto the floor.

Monica banged her head and saw stars but couldn't catch herself or even roll over. Blood stained the floor in a widening pool, a cut on her head or maybe a bloody nose. It didn't hurt like it should, more a vague throb than a concussive blow. The girl's weight on her back felt dull, a vague pressure in her lungs.

"What sick, twisted shit did you do to your son?"

Her defiant scream came out as a groan.

"I asked you a question."

Monica's tongue filled her mouth, thick and sloppy. She tried to swear around it, but nothing intelligible came out.

"Answer me, you bitch!"

"Hey," a male voice said, soft and deferential. "How much did you give her?"

"Two pills."

Monica tried to turn her head to see the man, but her neck wouldn't respond. She strained to stand and kill them both, but nothing happened.

He snorted. "Those are for hundred-kilo sows, and you just gave two to an eight-stone girl. She's not answering any questions. We got to go, anyway. Company's coming."

"Stone" meant ten or twenty pounds or something in England, but he didn't sound English. His accent couldn't be more generic, middle America or maybe southern Canadian.

"I'm not done." Monica felt more than heard the petulant pout in the girl's reply.

His voice lost its velvet glove. "You gave her too much. She won't feel anything anyway, and she won't be able to talk. C'mon. They just called Homeland Security. It's run time."

The girl sighed. "Car thick, you don't
always
have to ball so hard."

Monica tried to make sense of that, but couldn't. She tried to open her eyes, realized she'd closed them, and couldn't do anything about it.

"They'll take care of her. C'mon. Let's go."

"Car thick—"

"Now."

The pressure lifted from Monica's chest. Her next breath came slower, and the next slower still. The world hazed white in the memory of beating wings.

*   *   *

Matt's helmet beeped as he bolted down the ATV tracks through the woods, chewing up the miles at a dead sprint, his boots sucking mud with every step. "Rowley. Go ahead."

"Service is restored," Sakura said. "Three casualties, no friendlies." She briefed him on the operation as he ran.

"Thank you. Janet?"

"I read you. Nice to have you back, go ahead."

"We have multiple hostiles active in the White Spruce area. At least three civilian casualties, probably more. Suspected Humans for Humanity terrorist cell, heavily armed with personal weapons, RPGs and explosives. Suicide bombing already in evidence. Requesting DHS counterterrorism support, and right now wouldn't be too soon."

"Wow. Sounds like you kids are having fun. You running? Go ahead."

"They have Monica and Adam. I'm tracking suspects through the woods a few miles south of town. If the uplink's working route GPS to my helmet. And get me that backup!"

"Roger. Requesting support."

He ran another several miles through peaceful, white forest, every step a fight against the giant globs of mud that adhered to his boots. He spooked a doe that ran off, white tail bouncing through the thickets, and in the distance a fox stalked a rabbit through the snow. Worry destroyed any enjoyment he might have gotten from the peaceful scene.

The GPS icon popped up on his HUD, so he brought up the map as an overlay.

"Do we have real-time satellite on this position?"

"In Tennessee?" Janet asked. "Not a chance. I can put in a request, but it'll probably have to go through a judge. It'd be a few days, if ever."

"Forget it. Call Arnold. See if you can't scramble a surveillance drone."

"Who the fuck is Arnold?"

"Air Force base, Janet. Southern Tennessee?"

She sighed. "Arnold AFB hasn't had an operable runway since two thousand nine."

"Then call somewhere else, dammit!"

"Yeah, okay. Request for aerial reconnaissance up-going. Hold your nuts."

An enormous farmhouse came into view, red brick surrounded by acres of lawn, with a hundred yards of clear field in every direction. The ATV tracks led to a huge barn, red paint faded and peeled from years of neglect. Matt stopped at the wood line, stepping sideways to deny a clean shot.

"Janet, can you see this?"

"Uplink's clear, go ahead."

"See what you can figure out about this house, please."

"Give me a minute. I'm on hold with the Air Force."

*   *   *

"Wake up, bitch."

Cruel man hands shook her, grabbed her by the hair and slapped her. Monica heard it, but didn't feel more than a dull heat. She tried to speak around a thick tongue, tried to gasp for water or something, anything to drink. Her throat screamed for relief, but nothing came out her mouth. He hauled her onto the coffee table, sweeping away the tea tray and bowl with her flopping limbs.

He slapped her again, then lifted her head by her hair, so she could see the pistol he held in her face. He put it in her mouth and slid it in and out. She tasted nothing as it passed over her tongue, but she gagged, and retched, and tried to squirm and scream and scratch his eyes but instead just lay there.

"You like that, do you? You slut. You fucking whore. They said to get rid of you, but use you first. I think you've got some oomph left in you."

He dropped her head to the table and jammed the gun in her mouth hard, one hand wandering to his waist to unzip his pants. He squirmed out of them, exposing stained white underwear stretched to capacity by his erection, a wet spot already formed in his excitement.

"See her looking?" someone said behind her. "She really wants it."

"Yeah, you want this, you fucking slut?" He looked over her shoulder and laughed. "Yeah, boys, keep your pants on until it's your turn. Nobody needs to see that."

He let go of the pistol, leaving it in her mouth, and moved behind her.

She moaned around the gun as her belt came off. She willed her hands to move, to grab the gun and shoot his pathetic little balls off. Nothing happened.

His arms came around her waist, and she heard rather than felt her zipper come down. As he tugged her jeans off, she closed her eyes and tried to pray.

Men cheered and joked as a dull pressure pierced her. Her body rocked, seeding a nauseous pit deep in her stomach. She felt nothing else, but as he grunted and gasped, her thoughts fell to the pit, to darkness and death and murder and a lake of unending fire.

Lost somewhere in madness, Monica screamed, but her mouth stayed silent around the pistol.

*   *   *

The psychic shriek sent white tendrils of thought worming through Matt's mind, heard without being heard, overwhelming the whispers in a deafening silence. A demon of twisted thorns and cruel, slivered nails raked and clawed at his wife, cackling in glee at each line of blood, each strip of flesh. She writhed as it took her, filling her with darkness and loss and unending pain.

Matt bolted for the house, screaming, carried forward on wings of silvery ice, all thoughts of stealth incinerated in white-hot wrath.

He lurched as something impacted his shoulder. The AA-12 fell from his grip. He spun to the right as the whispers warned him of a second shot. He drew his pistol left-handed and fired four shots at the upstairs window to force his assailant to take cover.

He dropped his visor and cleared the porch in one step.

The bay window exploded as he leapt through. He raised the pistol and fired as his feet hit the floor. Two shots took the man in the corner, another two at the men in line behind his wife, pants around their ankles, dicks hard in their hands. Others scattered.

The rapist stopped, kneeling in mid-pump, his white ass between Monica's slack legs. Matt wrapped his left arm around the man's neck, pulled him up and backward, and grabbed his face with his right hand.

He saw and refused to see Monica, face down, shirt ripped upward to expose her bra, eyes glazed, drool-covered pistol in her mouth.

As Matt's fingers entered her rapist's mouth the man bit down. Matt jammed them deeper into the slimy, writhing heat, and punched his thumb up through the underside of the man's jaw. Hot blood streamed down Matt's wrist, mingling with that from his shoulder.

He pulled, a steady pressure that would not relent. Muscles tore. Skin fissured, split apart with a soggy wet rip, like splitting a rotten log. The jaw shifted outward, gnashing teeth scraping the skin from his fingers. The man shrieked. His jaw came free in a spray of hot crimson mess and an inarticulate, gurgling choke. Matt jammed the separated lower jaw into the man's naked abdomen, and the smell of hot shit filled the room.