‘I wanted your job,’ said Channer, ‘but not like this.’
The radio in Henkel’s car squawked to life from the front of the house. He stepped over his ex-girlfriend – because that was what she most assuredly was, and he didn’t believe he needed to confirm for her that they were no longer an item – and went to pick up the handset.
‘Henkel.’
Lucy’s voice was both urgent and excited.
‘We have reports of shots fired at Dryden’s Inn,’ she said. ‘And it’s burning.’
83
Hannah and Sherah entered the prison house earlier than usual, Hannah leading, Sherah with two meals on a tray: bread, cereal, fruit, and some lukewarm coffee in plastic cups, to avoid any chance of the captives using them as scalding weapons.
The routine was well established. Paige and Gayle were required to be seated at the table when the women entered, so that the inner door could be locked before the meal was served. One woman would place the food before them while the other maintained her distance, just in case an attempt was made to get at the keys. In reality, though, the procedures had become more relaxed as the years had gone by, with either Hannah or Sherah – because they were the ones who most frequently tended to the breeders – taking care of the food while the other checked the rooms, or replenished the cupboard, or just looked bored. On this occasion, though, there was clearly some urgency involved, and Hannah was standing close by Sherah as she served, keys jangling in her left hand.
This was all good.
Paige gave the slightest of nods to Gayle, who toppled her cereal to the floor and began to wail. Hannah turned away to grab a cloth while Sherah squatted to rescue the food, which was when Paige brought the piece of brick in her right hand down hard on Sherah’s left temple. Paige thought she felt something crack, but Sherah didn’t fall. She just rocked on her feet, and made a sound like an old crow on a branch, so Paige hit her again, and Sherah dropped.
Gayle moved as soon as Paige struck the first blow. She pushed Hannah so hard from behind that the older woman tumbled face first to the floor, but Hannah managed to get on her back and started struggling against Gayle, who was sitting on her stomach and working her way up Hannah’s body in order to pin her arms.
Beside Paige, Sherah was trying to rise. She pushed herself up on her hands and knees, and shook her head. There was a swelling on her temple where the brick had connected, with a slight cut to the skin that wasn’t bleeding much. Most of the blood was coming from her right ear, a steady drip-drip-drip that pooled on the floorboards, and her right eye now had a downward cast to it. Sherah’s lips moved, and an assemblage of noises emerged, but they made no sense to Paige. She raised the brick again, Sherah’s remaining good eye trying to follow its progress as Paige put all her upper body power behind the blow. This time, Paige both felt and heard the crack, and Sherah’s eyes rolled up in her skull as she slipped sideways and lay twitching on the floor.
Now that Sherah was taken care of, Paige could help Gayle, but Gayle needed no assistance. She was standing beside Hannah, who was convulsing on her back by the kitchen closets, her hands clawing at her mouth and neck. Hannah appeared to be having some sort of seizure. Her face had turned purple, and a series of clicking noises were emerging from her throat. Paige didn’t make any move to help her, or to reach for the discarded keys. She was fascinated by Hannah’s suffering, but she also noticed that Gayle’s left cheek was bleeding.
‘What happened to your face?’ Paige asked.
‘She cut me with a key.’
‘Ah.’
They returned to watching Hannah, whose struggles were clearly nearing their climax.
‘And what did you do to her?’ asked Paige.
‘I made her eat the stone,’ said Gayle.
‘Ah,’ said Paige, again.
The top of Hannah’s head banged hard against one of the closet doors. Her eyes grew very large, her throat clicked one last time, and her struggles ceased. Paige stepped around her and picked up the keys from the floor. She went to the window and saw that the Square was clear, with nobody in sight of the prison house. She removed Hannah’s shoes, while Gayle took off Sherah’s. They were about the right size for Gayle’s feet, but Hannah’s were too big for Paige, so she stuffed some newspaper into the toes, which helped.
Paige had no idea of their location. She knew only that the window onto the Square faced south, but as for where the nearest road or even town might be, she could not say. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. They couldn’t stay here, not now. They could only flee, and hope.
The door was to the far side of the house, which meant that the safest approach would be to turn left out of it, skirt the eastern wall, and then allow the building and the early morning gloom to shield them while they made their way into the woods at the rear. She explained this to Gayle, who took her hand as they walked to the door. Paige thought that she looked sad.
‘What’s wrong?’ Paige asked.
‘It’s silly,’ said Gayle.
Paige released her hand, put the key in the first lock, and turned it. The outer door was slightly ajar. She peered through the gap, but there was still no one in sight.
‘Tell me.’
‘I wanted to kill more of them,’ said Gayle.
‘Honey,’ said Paige, as they prepared to run, ‘I know just how you feel.’
Odell followed Perry Lutter deeper into the Cut. He’d heard stories about the dangers of this place, and his momma had warned him against venturing into it. Some kids in school said that the Cut’s territory was guarded by metal traps, and pits with spikes, and explosives that would blow your dick and balls off so you’d have to pee out of a hole below your belly. Odell didn’t know how much of that was true, but he understood that the people of the Cut were dangerous. He had the evidence of his own eyes. He sometimes wondered what had happened to the prisoner he had witnessed being bundled out of the van and into the trees. Nothing good, Odell thought. Now he himself was following a similar path, walking as if in a dream, descending into the Cut with a presence that was as much of another world as this one.
Gosh, but his mom would be mad.
And still he was not afraid, because Perry was with him, and he had something that he wanted Odell to see.
Odell stayed very close to Perry, walking in his footsteps, because Perry left marks on the ground, which made Odell question whether he was really a ghost at all. He could see the patterns indented in the dirt and grass by the soles of Perry’s sneakers, and the bushes and branches moved as Perry pushed his way through them. If he was a ghost, then he wasn’t like the ones in movies. You couldn’t look through him. He had substance.
But Perry was dead. Odell would have been certain of that even if he hadn’t glimpsed the hole in the crown of Perry’s head, the hair around it scorched away, the entry wound rimmed with red and pink, and a whiteness glistening inside the skull. The bullet hole was just confirmation, although it didn’t explain where the blood on Perry’s sneaker had come from.
Perry stopped and stared back at him. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked sad and angry.
He knows what I’m thinking, thought Odell. He knows that I’ve been staring at the hole in his head.
Perry untucked the front of his shirt from his pants and lifted it up with both hands. There were stab wounds in his belly, some of them so close to each other that they’d combined to form a single, larger lesion. Perry turned, hoisting the shirt at the back, and Odell saw more gashes revealed. He had a vision of Perry crawling through mud and dirt, crying for his momma, before a shadow fell across him, and a gun uttered his name.
Perry tucked his shirt back in. Odell couldn’t figure out how his clothes were so clean, with only a single sneaker bearing the trace of what had happened to him, but then Perry had always liked being neatly turned out. It didn’t seem like death had changed that situation much at all.
Perry pointed into the undergrowth to Odell’s left, where a trail of sorts ran
between the trees. Metal gleamed in the dawning light, and sharp teeth were revealed. It was an animal trap, laid just where a stranger might have walked had they chosen to take the easy way into the Cut, which explained why Perry was leading Odell along a rougher path.
They resumed their advance, Odell keeping an even closer eye now on where Perry put his feet. He didn’t want to die out here. He didn’t want to be like Perry.
And he didn’t want to look any longer at the hole in Perry’s head.
84
One truck returned to the Cut bearing the dead and wounded in the back, the two remaining vehicles having been abandoned at the inn. Cassander, Lucius, and Marius watched them come. Oberon joined them, tucking a pistol into the band of his trousers. They’d been warned in advance that all had not gone well at Dryden’s. It had been a mistake to entrust the attack to Jabal and Benedict, and now it seemed that Parker had the latter. None of the survivors knew whether he was dead or alive. They’d fled to save themselves.
The police would come. That was inevitable. There had been witnesses.
A wailing arose from the women as the bodies were passed down. One of them was wrapped in an old blanket, and a strong smell of burnt flesh came from it. A blackened arm slipped from the blanket, and the wailing increased in pitch.
Oberon looked around for Sherah and Hannah, but could not find them. They’d be needed, Hannah especially, because she was the most skilled physician among them. When last he’d seen them, they’d been preparing food for the bitches in the hut.
Cassander approached him.
‘What should we do?’ he asked.
‘We blame the dead,’ said Oberon. ‘Some of our young men argued with Parker and tried to kill him. We knew nothing about it until the truck appeared, but the driver was the only survivor, and he died of his injuries. Have the wounded tended to, then get them away from here.’
It might work, thought Oberon.
It won’t work. It will just buy time.
Cassander couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘We’re going to brazen this out?’
‘What choice do we have?’
Lucius, who had been listening in, interjected.
‘We can fight.’
‘This isn’t just going to be a local dispute with Henkel. This will be the state police, maybe even the FBI and the ATF. We can’t stand against them all.’
And maybe it’s best that we don’t. I should have left while I had the chance. I could have taken Tamara, and Sherah – if she’d been willing to come.
He stared at Cassander, and felt a rage sweep over him at the betrayal that he suspected, before his gaze passed on to the prison house. Sherah and Hannah had still not appeared. Something was wrong. Maybe one of the bitches was ill.
‘We don’t have to worry about Henkel,’ said Cassander.
‘Why not?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘I sent Nestor after him.’
‘I didn’t authorize any move on Henkel.’
‘I know,’ said Cassander. ‘I did.’
Which was when Lucius moved behind Oberon, placed the gun close to the back of his head, and pulled the trigger.
85
Cassander walked to the prison house, Lucius following. The women would have to be moved out. They were worth too much to kill, but if they were discovered by the police then all would be lost. Blame the dead, Oberon had advised. Well, that was just what Cassander planned to do. Oberon had ordered the attack on Dryden’s Inn, and on Henkel. He had then tried to kill Cassander, and Lucius had been forced to intervene. They had witnesses who would swear that this was the case. The Cut might yet survive. But the women had to be hidden away.
The women, and the Dead King.
Lucius tried the door. It was unlocked, as was the inner door, which was never supposed to be open, not even when meals were being served. He stepped inside and saw Sherah lying on her side on the floor, and Hannah on her back by the kitchen closets. Cassander was right behind him, and pushed him aside to get to Sherah. He found a pulse, but it was faint. His fingers hovered over her damaged skull.
‘Hannah’s dead,’ said Lucius.
Sherah is not, thought Cassander, but he could see the severity of her injuries. Nobody in the Cut was skilled enough to deal with this kind of damage. Sherah would have to be taken to a hospital. More questions would be asked.
The piece of brick that had been used on Sherah lay beside her body. Cassander saw traces of blood and hair on it. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, used it to pick up the stone, and said to the unconscious Sherah, ‘I’m sorry.’
He hit her twice, but she made no sound. When he was finished, the pulse had been stilled.
Cassander cast the brick aside.
‘Find the women,’ he told Lucius, ‘and bring them back here. Alive.’
86
Paige had tried to keep herself in shape as best she could, but walking around a fenced yard for an hour a day at best, in between sexual assaults, pregnancies, and the aftermath of difficult births, wasn’t conducive to flight.
Jesus, I’m joking about it, she realized. I’m running – no, stumbling – for my life. I’ve been raped, abused, and I’ll soon give birth to a third child, but I’m joking.
And I thought Gayle was insane.
Her legs were weak, she was struggling to catch her breath, and the weight of the child in her belly kept threatening to drag her to her knees. The paper in her shoes was coming away from the toes, and her feet were moving around freely inside them. She’d already fallen twice, and was bleeding badly from her right knee and shin. Gayle had helped her up each time. She was having less trouble than Paige, but then she wasn’t as far along in her pregnancy, and she’d spent months instead of years cooped up in the prison house like a battery hen. But Paige also noticed that something of the girl that Gayle once was had reared its head, as though it had been lying dormant beneath a veneer of craziness in order to protect itself. Now it was Gayle who was carrying Paige, encouraging her to keep going and not look back. But, Christ, she was tired, and her damn feet hurt so much.
‘Wait,’ said Paige.
She paused, slipped Hannah’s shoes off, and cast them into the woods. She’d take her chances without them. It would be less painful, or so she believed until she started walking again and the first of the twigs and stones bit into her soles and heels.
‘Shit!’ she said, as a particularly sharp pebble lanced her right foot and lodged itself in her flesh. She stopped again, dug it out, and ran straight into Gayle’s back.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
And then they were both staring at the small black boy who stood amid the trees, watching them with surprise.
Perry Lutter had disappeared. One moment he was walking in front of Odell, the next he was gone, and in his place were two white women, both of them with swollen bellies, although the older one’s was bigger than the younger’s. Odell knew what a pregnant woman looked like, and he was pretty certain that he was looking at two right now. Were they from the Cut? If so, why were they out here, and one of them barefoot? Odell didn’t want to get into trouble with the Cut. He wasn’t supposed to be on their land. He’d been following Perry, but now Perry had vanished, and it wasn’t like he’d left Odell with detailed instructions about what he was supposed to do in the event of meeting two women with babies in their bellies.
Then the younger one said, ‘Help us. Please!’
And Odell Watson knew why Perry Lutter had lured him into the Cut.
Lucius and Marius were tracking the women. It wasn’t difficult. They’d left a trail through the woods that a child could follow.
Cassander’s instructions had been clear: the women weren’t to be killed, not even after what they’d done to Hannah and Sherah – although Sherah’s death couldn’t entirely be blamed on them, not that Lucius would ever let anyone know what his father had done to her in the prison house. Luci
us had never liked Sherah anyway. He knew that his father had started sleeping with her, and a woman who’d cheat on her husband wasn’t to be trusted.
And a man who slept with the wife of another – was he to be trusted? Lucius wasn’t sure. His feelings about his father were complex. He loved him, but at the same time he understood that Cassander favored Marius, and had always viewed him as a potential leader of the Cut. But by the laws of primogeniture, Lucius was the one who should have been groomed to assume authority after Cassander, now that Oberon was dead. That would have to be discussed once their current problems were dealt with. Marius might have been smart, but it was Lucius who was always left to do the dirty work, such as killing and burying Killian and Huff, or putting a bullet in Perry Lutter’s head after Benedict had fucked up the knife work. Marius wouldn’t have been capable of performing any of those tasks, even if Cassander hadn’t done his utmost to ensure that his younger son maintained a distance from the Cut’s bloodier tasks. True, Marius had set Harpur Griffin alight, but only when Griffin was too drunk to struggle much against his bonds. Marius wasn’t a leader. He had no guts. But still Cassander preferred him to Lucius.
In his darker moments, Lucius sometimes wondered if he was being set up by his own family. If someone had to take the fall, then let it be the troubled older son, it seemed, and not the cautious – no, call it what it was: cowardly – younger one.
Lucius stopped to let Marius catch up with him. This was all his brother was good for: hunting women and killing drunks. And when they apprehended Paige and Gayle, would Marius join his brother in inflicting some punishment on them, because bringing them back alive wasn’t the same as bringing them back unharmed? Lucius had always wondered what it might be like to take Gayle by force. There was something vulnerable about her that appealed to the baseness in him. As for Paige, he might take her too, just to teach her a lesson, and, while he fucked her, he’d let her know that he’d be the one to kill her once her baby was born, and would make sure that she went slowly. There’d be no mercy for her. It was what Hannah and Sherah would have wanted.