Cold Springs(111)

“Three. Turn your back to me, Race. Kneel down.”

“You'll never get the money.”

“The money is secondary, Race. Very, very secondary. Now do what I said.”

Race turned, sank to his knees. His hands grabbed his ankles, and he felt the .22 in its holster.

“You know what I got in the car, Race? I got lead weights. Big, bowling-ball-sized things. They hold down plastic tarps in windstorms. I'm going to rope them around your ankles. You'll go down in fifteen feet of water right here—standing up. At low tide, the sunlight will just touch your fingertips. And you will rot there. Nobody comes here, Race. Nobody except me. This place is mine. Now I'm going to share it with you.”

And Race looked out over the dark stretch of shoreline—rocks and wind and the stench of dead fish, an acre of desolation with a view of two cities.

He felt the boards bow under David Kraft's weight. Race's fingers worked their way into his pants leg, around the grip of the .22.

“Don't forget your Mickey Mouse,” he told Kraft. “It's in my pocket.”

“Katherine's,” he corrected. And he patted Race's head, affectionately. “She gave it to me the week before she died. I'll remember, Race. Now why don't you pray or something? Do people still do that?”

And Race did pray, as he slipped the .22 out of its holster, trying not to move a single unnecessary muscle. He imagined his soul rising out of his body, the way his mother had always told him souls did, and choosing between trains—a BART train riding west, into the city, toward Norma Reyes, who was standing in her bathrobe on her porch. Or a fiery train east, toward Mallory and Texas, toward the Caldecott Tunnel where Samuel's condominium smelled like death, and Race would be another voice, another wisp of evil for the radio to drown out.

“This is for Katherine,” David Kraft said.

He gently pushed Race's head down, to expose his neck, but Race fell sideways, turning, bringing his gun up to David Kraft's wide eyes so that two blasts sounded at once—a single bright snap that echoed over miles of empty water and dissipated in the roar of the evening commute.

34

Mallory woke with a start. There were snuffling noises in the darkness, something scuttling through branches.

The fire was dangerously low, and she was still shivering. Her clothes felt like plaster of Paris, melted against her skin, and snow had frosted her shoes where they stuck out of the hollow tree.

At the edge of the red arc of firelight Mallory saw something rustling in the brush. She thought about the thing that had followed her yesterday. She moved her arm slowly, wrapped her fingers around an icy rock the size of a grapefruit. A month ago, she wouldn't have had the strength to lift it. Now, she hurled it at the dark shape—hoping she pegged it.

There was a sick crunch, and then a flurry of scuffling, which died down but did not go away.

Drawing her knife, Mallory advanced and found that her rock had landed squarely on the head of a football-sized . . . something. A giant roly-poly bug with hair. A thrill of terror shot up Mallory's spine, until she realized what it was—a stupid armadillo.

Its armor hadn't helped the poor thing. Its snout was crushed, and it was lying on its side, one glazed eye red in the firelight, a bubble of blood coming out of its nostril. Its claws scraped weakly at the air.

Mallory's fear turned to shame. She hadn't even managed to kill it, just torture it.

She was too numb to think. Some other part of her took over, and she approached the thing with her knife. She stuck at its head. The first stab missed, but the second hit home. It was still not quick, but the thing died.

It was the first time Mallory had killed, and she didn't like it.

She sat there trembling. The armadillo's smell was horrible—some defense mechanism, Mallory guessed—but she couldn't move away. She knew she should stoke the fire. She would probably die if she didn't.

In the end, the cold wasn't what got her moving. It was hunger. Mallory was disgusted with herself, but she realized the knot in her stomach wasn't revulsion, but the desire to eat.

She had killed her first animal. She felt like she owed the poor thing something—to make something good come out of its pain.

I can't eat that, she told herself.

But the answer came immediately, Of course she could. Hadn't she seen them hanging dead in shop windows in Chinatown?

They have leprosy or something, Mallory remembered. The thing is disgusting. It's probably crawling with parasites.

So are you, came the answer. You have a day to walk. You'll never make it without food.

In a daze, Mallory went into the woods and got more wood. She heard more rustling sounds in the darkness, wondered if the presence that had followed her the day before was still out there.

Let it come, she thought. I'm tired of being scared.

She stoked the fire to a blaze. Then she went back to the armadillo.

She touched its shell, which felt like a warm patchwork of toenails. She turned the animal over and looked at its furry underbelly, its claws. She counted to herself—one, two, three—then made the first cut, splitting the body from neck to anus.

She was no hunter, no country girl. The best she could think of to give herself courage were science class dissections—she and Race freaking out over the fetal pig they'd named Wilbur—but the dissections hadn't been in the dark, with no gloves, and with the intent of eating the subject.