Wilder Girls(78)

It only comes halfway up my calves, but it’s a wrenching cold, worse than any day we’ve had so far. I shiver violently, remind myself not to make a break for the shore and to hold the boat so Reese can get out.

She slings the backpack over her good shoulder and slips over the side easy, like she’s done it a thousand times, and of course she has. She sloshes around to the stern and pushes while I guide the boat from the bow. Together we get it beached, a foot or two above the waterline.

The ground between here and the visitors’ center is mostly marsh, with almost no cover before we hit the trees keeping the center out of sight. We stay off the boardwalk, stay low to the ground, creep through the gnats and the stink only just dusted with white. Safer that way, but I feel hot, my skin crawling, and sweat is fresh on my upper lip. Maybe the jets aren’t coming, and maybe they haven’t been evacuated, and maybe they’re still here.

   Things keep shifting in the corner of my eye. I keep hearing the click of a safety releasing. A reed snaps behind me, and I flinch, drop to my knees. They’re coming. It’s over, it’s over.

“Hey.”

I just hope they do it quick, put the bullet between my eyes. I won’t fight it—I’ve earned it, I deserve it—but please, don’t make me wait.

“Hetty. Jesus, you’re burning up.”

I feel it, then, a hand on my forehead, and I blink hard. Reese, it’s Reese, and she maneuvers me to sit, my chin to my chest, the ground damp and seeping underneath me.

“We should take a break,” she says as she roots through the backpack for the first aid kit. “You need rest.”

“I’m fine.”

Reese throws the first aid kit down, a bottle of aspirin slipping out and into the mud. “It’s not enough,” she says, anger tearing at her voice. “What will any of this do?”

When she helps me up, we leave the first aid kit behind.

At last we’re across the marsh and in the trees, picking our way through them until we come out the other side and see the visitors’ center looming, plastic tent whipping in the wind.

   The walkway is just ahead, the flagstone path sneaking out from beneath the tent. I know I should have some sort of plan, some special way to sneak in, but my hand hurts, and I’m so tired, and all I can think to do is lift the tent and duck under it. Reese swears behind me, and then she’s following. The plastic drops down behind her, sealing us into the stifling dark.

We pause for a moment, in case somebody comes running, but there’s only silence, and if the jets are on their way, the research team must have already evacuated. The center’s double doors are an arm’s length away. I reach out, pull lightly on the handle, and it opens with a squeak.

“Should we just go in?” I ask.

Reese shrugs, her shoulder brushing mine. “What, you want to knock?”

Inside, the main lobby looks the way it did on my first day at Raxter. Faded and yellowing, the walls painted with abstract shapes in shades of green and blue. We cross the room to the reception desk, which is long enough for three or four people. Only one chair behind it, and most of the surface covered by wilting catalogues about the area’s recreational points of interest.

“It’s so quiet,” Reese says. “And so warm. Do you think anybody’s here?”

I think of Headmistress, promised a way out and then left behind. “No. They must have evacuated.” I lean over the desk, pick through the catalogues, but there’s nothing important, nothing to help us find Byatt.

   “Where would they put her?” I say, turning to Reese. “They’d need a big enough room.”

“There’s an event room at the back of the building, in the new bit.”

She leads me along the ground floor. We follow signs down a main hallway and then around a room labeled as a chapel to another lobby, this one smaller, shabbier.

There’s blood on the linoleum. That’s the first thing I notice. Pools of it, drawing a path in either direction away from the stairwell that leads up to the antenna tower. I exchange a look with Reese. It’s a lot. More than anybody could really stand to lose.

“Left or right?” Reese says.

We head left, follow the signs for the event room. A bank of windows opens up, and inside, the room is all gurneys and curtains and tears in the linoleum tile. Along the far wall, a small row of cabinets and a sink, a wet bar for the parties nobody ever had here, and above the cabinets, papered over but showing through, posters advertising all Raxter has to offer.

“Where do you think they went?” Reese asks. “The doctors, I mean.”

“Back to the base on the coast, maybe. This place is far enough from school that we wouldn’t see if somebody came to get them.”

The door’s open, the trail of blood disappearing through it, and I go first, take careful steps into the ward. Four beds, three slept in. Across from me one bed is rumpled, the covers thrown off, an IV stand knocked over next to it. Red stains are smeared across the floor.

   Reese picks up the clipboard tied to the foot of the gurney and scans it. “This is her. There, see? Byatt Winsor.”

She really was here. But I’m too late. I’m always too late.

I turn, scanning the rest of the room for some sort of clue, when I notice the bed to the left of the door. It’s drenched, the covers soaked with deep maroon splotches. In the middle of it all there’s a scalpel, glinting softly in the flickering light. And there’s something else too.