Redemption Road(67)

It wasn’t delusion.

He wasn’t insane.

At the house, he added a few more twigs to the fire, then stirred the coals until they caught in a sputter of flame.

“Talk to me, Eli.” He sat again, ancient trees above and the sky piled up forever. “Tell me what to do.”

But Eli was done talking, and that made it a bad night in the ruins. At one point, Adrian levered himself up and crept back to the road. The car was gone, but tracks were there, in the dirt. Even sleepless and pulled apart, Adrian knew what they wanted, and what they would do to get it. That made him not just cautious, but dangerous. The only reason no one had died yet was because he wasn’t yet willing, and they remained uncertain.

Did he know Eli’s secret or not?

They doubted it because no one should be able to suffer as he had and still keep his mouth shut. Not after so many years. Not after the knives and the rats and seventeen broken bones. What they failed to understand were the reasons. He didn’t keep the secret for greed’s sake. The reasons were older than that, and simpler.

He did it for love.

And he did it for hate.

Kneeling on the verge, Adrian put his fingers on the tire tracks where they were clearest. He saw cigarette butts, a damp spot in the dirt that smelled of urine. They’d been gone for an hour, maybe more. Had they given up? He doubted it. Laziness, maybe. Maybe they needed cigarettes.

When he returned to the fire, he piled wood until flames leapt higher. Dense clouds had moved in to cover the moon, so even with a fire the darkness pressed in. Adrian watched the flames, but visions still gathered in the dark.

“Fuck those guys, and f*ck Dyer, too.”

He held on to the anger because it pushed the darkness back. The dirt was real, the burned-out house and the fire. Anger kept all that bright, so he thought of the warden, the guards, how the whole thing could still end bloody. It worked for a while, but he blinked once and the fire burned away as if the eye blink were an hour. He’d drifted as he used to do, blinked and gone away. He tried to shake himself alert, but was heavy; everything was heavy. When he blinked again he saw Liz, distant at first and then close, a face across the smoke, the eyes liquid and troubled and impossibly deep.

“What are you doing here, Liz?”

She moved like a ghost and sat, soundless, on the dirt. The edges of her face were blurry, her hair as weightless and dark as the smoke around her. “Did you know I was going to jump?”

He tried to focus, but couldn’t; thought maybe he was dreaming. “You wouldn’t have done it.”

“So, you knew?”

“Only that you were frightened and young.”

She watched him with those impossible eyes. “Was it terrible? What they did to you?”

Adrian said nothing; felt heat in his skin. The eyes weren’t right. The way she watched and waited and seemed to float.

“I see the hollow place.”

She pointed at his chest and drew the shape of a heart.

“I can’t talk about that,” he said.

“Maybe, there’s some of you left. Maybe, they missed a piece.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“Doing what? It’s your dream.”

Her head tilted, a mannequin face on a mannequin body. He stood and looked down.

“You’re going to kill them, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Because of what they did to Eli?”

“Don’t ask me to let them live.”

“Why would I do that?”

She stood, too, then took his face and kissed him hard.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“What do the papers call me?”

“I don’t care if you killed those men.”

“Yet you dream of me,” she said. “You dream of a killer and hope we are the same.”





15

He liked morning light because it was so unused. Anything could happen with such soft, pink lips pressed upon the world, and he took a moment—just for himself—before dragging the girl from the silo. She fought harder than most, her skin filthy and her fingers torn bloody at the tips. She kicked and screamed, cuffs clanking on her wrists, both hands locked on a ridge of metal. He pulled until her hips rose off the ground, then sighed deeply and touched a strip of skin with the stun gun. When she went loose, he dropped her legs, then stepped away to blot sweat from his face. Normally, the silo made them easier to work with. Fear. Thirst. This one was a fighter, and he thought that might be a good sign.

When his breathing slowed, he rolled her onto a tarp, then removed her clothes and took his time cleaning her. This was a big part of it, and though she was beautiful in the light, he focused on her face instead of her breasts, on her legs rather than the place they joined. He cleaned dried blood from her fingertips and wiped her face with care. She moved once as the sponge slipped behind her knee, and then again when it touched the plane of her stomach. When her eyes fluttered, he used the stun gun a second time and after that moved more quickly, knowing how the light would harden and age her, how different she would appear if he waited too long. When her skin was scrubbed and dried, he used a silk cord to bind her ankles and wrists, then placed her in the car and drove to the church. Yellow tape sealed the door, but what did seals matter? Or police? Or worry itself?