Desolation
Authors: Derek Landy
First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Children’s Books
2016
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Derek Landy blogs under duress at
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Copyright © Derek Landy 2016
Jacket photography © Larry Rostant 2016
Jacket design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016
Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents
portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental
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Source ISBN: 9780008156985
Ebook Edition: © April 2016 9780008156947
Version 2016-02-18
This book is dedicated to all the horror icons who passed away while it was being written.
This is for Gunnar Hansen, and Angus Scrimm, and the mighty Wes Craven. Icons. Inspirations. Heroes.
And I’m left with nothing funny to say.
Sorry.
Table of Contents
T
HEY WERE ALIVE WHEN SHE WALKED IN
.
Fourteen people, including the short-order cook and the waitress with the badly dyed hair in this little rest stop just outside of Whitehorse in Yukon. Everyone looked tired, this time of night. They ate pie or drank coffee or read newspapers or sat in their booths, focusing on their phones. Nobody glanced up when Amber entered. Nobody talked. Music played, drifting through from the small kitchen. Something by Bon Jovi. It was safe in here. None of these people wanted to kill her. She was getting good at spotting the telltale signs.
She went straight to the restroom. It was chilly, and not very clean, but she didn’t mind. She’d had to pee in worse places these past few days.
When she was done, she washed her hands. In the cracked mirror above the cracked sink, her hair was a mess and there were bags under her red-rimmed eyes. Her pale skin was blotchy. She looked like she needed a shower. She looked like a scared girl on the run.
Funny that.
Her belly rumbled and Amber turned off the faucet, wiped her hands on her jeans, and left the restroom.
They were all dead when she walked out.
She went instantly cold. All moisture left her mouth, her knees weakened, and every nerve ending jingled and jangled and screamed at her to run. But she couldn’t run. Her legs wouldn’t obey. She could barely stay standing.
Some of them had been attacked where they sat – others while they tried to escape. Bludgeoned to death, every one of them. A woman in a brown cardigan was slumped over her table, blood leaking from the mess in the back of her head. A trucker in a plaid shirt had half his face caved in. The waitress had been dragged across the counter. Blood dripped from the dented gash in her temple, forming a growing pool on the floor beneath her. Amber couldn’t see the cook, but knew he was lying on the floor of the kitchen. She could see his blood on the wall.
Fourteen people when she’d walked in. Fourteen corpses. But now there was a fifteenth person. He was sitting in the booth next to the door, his back to her, wearing a baseball cap and a grey, faded boiler suit. He was singing along to the radio. ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’ by Poison.
The booth moved closer to her. Closer still. No, it wasn’t the booth that was moving – it was Amber. She frowned, looked down at her feet as they took another step. Apparently, they were on their way out of the door, and they were taking the rest of her with them. She was okay with that. She didn’t want to stay here, anyway, not with all those corpses. She just had to pass this guy and then she could run out into the quiet street, shout for Milo, and he’d come roaring up in the Charger and they could get the hell out of there. Easy. No fuss, no muss.
The man in the boiler suit had a claw hammer on the table in front of him. It was bloodstained. There was a chunk of scalp hanging off it.
“How you doing?” he asked.
Amber froze.
He didn’t have a nice voice. It was curiously strained, like he’d spent most of his life shouting.
She kept her eyes on the door and took another step. And another.
“Amber, isn’t it?”
She stopped.
“Yeah,” the man said. “It’s you. I expected something else, to be honest. All the things you’ve done, I expected someone a little more …” he licked his lips, “… impressive.”
She looked at him. She had to. Her gaze moved slowly, and reluctantly, from the door to the booth. First she looked at the claw hammer, then at the remains of the pie he’d been eating. Then at his rough, worn hands, and the blood-splattered sleeves of his boiler suit. He was thin. Wiry. He had a narrow face and a pointed chin and a nasty smile. No hair. His cap had a faded logo Amber couldn’t make out. Her eyes finally settled on his and she had the strangest feeling of vertigo.
“You’re the one killed the Shining Demon’s representative, right?” the man asked. He had an accent. Southern. Georgia, maybe. “Made him go splat? I like your style. I’d been searching for the best way to kill that prick for years, but you got there first.”
“What do you want?” Amber asked.
“It ain’t what I want, little girl. It’s what you can give me.” He slid slowly out of the booth. He wasn’t tall, he had maybe two inches on Amber, but she took a step back nonetheless. “You’re my ticket,” he said.
“To what?”
He breathed in, and spread his arms. “All this.” His right arm dipped, and he picked up the claw hammer.
“Why did you kill these people?”
He gave her one of those nasty smiles. “No one told me I wasn’t supposed to. Besides, it’s been way too long since I got to kill new folks. Do you know what it’s like, little girl, do you have
any idea
what it’s like to be trapped in a middle-of-nowhere town where the biggest challenge is to find someone worthy to stalk? Jesus H. Christ, what is it with the young people of today? I’m old-fashioned and I make no apology for it. I like to stalk and kill teenagers. I like a challenge, you know what I mean? Teenagers are fit and strong and they’re surrounded by family and friends … but do you know what makes them so perfect to stalk? They run to parents, they run to cops, they tell them a bad man is trying to kill them, but no one takes them seriously. The look on their faces when they realise they’re alone – that they are truly
alone
– after a lifetime of being told they’ll be supported no matter what … Well. It’s just heaven, is what it is. But these days, trying to find one who can put up a decent fight is an impossible task. Worthy teenagers are a dying breed, and that is a sad state of affairs.”