Children Of The Mountain (Book 2): The Devil You Know (20 page)

Stroke by stroke I work my way across the churning waters. The wind kicks up icy spray; waves lap furiously against the prow and crash against the sides. My arms are soon burning but in the darkness between flashes it’s hard to tell how much progress I’m making. At last I hear a creak and a second later the front of the boat rides up as it crunches into something. Above me lightning strobes, for a second illuminating the crumbling remains of the bridge towering over me. One more pull on the oars and the prow nudges concrete and comes to an unsteady halt. I climb out and carry the end of the rope to the piece of bent-back rebar Hicks used as a mooring point on this side. I feed it through and tie it off to the metal eye that’s bolted to the prow, then clamber back in and push off again. It takes me a while to turn the boat around but as soon as I’m pointed in the right direction I ship the oars; I can use the rope to pull me back now. I brace my feet against the sides and start grabbing armfuls of it. The wind that was at my back on the way out is in my face for the return. Even in the lee of the bank I can feel its strength.

There’s a blinding flash of light, followed by a crash of thunder and for a second the sky above me reveals itself, a seething maelstrom of grays and blacks, lit from within. Heavy ashen flakes start to tumble and swirl out of the darkness. The visibility drops, like a thick curtain pulling itself around me, and soon I can barely see the front of the little skiff as it pitches through the waves. The wind wants to push me back but I refuse to let it. With each armful of rope I curse it. The thermals I wear are supposed to wick the sweat away but they’re already overwhelmed and soon it’s running freely down my back and sides. I look down into the boat. Only half a dozen loose coils remain and I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll make it. Then finally just as the last of them starts to unwind I feel the bottom nudge something.

I pick up the torch and wind it. The beam shows me nothing more than swirling snow, but when I point it over the side I see chunks of ice bobbing up and down in the dark, agitated water. I must be close to the bank. I grab an oar and feel for the bottom. Waves are lapping furiously at the sides but it’s no more than a couple of feet deep. The rope’s tied to the hook on the prow; if I untie it to give me the extra few yards I need I’ll lose the end in the water and then this will have been for nothing. I give one more pull. The boat moves forward and I feel the wooden hull grate over something that might be rubble. The last of the rope slips over the side.

I look down at my makeshift boots. The duct tape’s fraying badly where the snowshoes’ bindings have worked against it, but the plastic underneath seems to be holding. I’ve wrapped several strips of tape around the top where my pants go into the boot, and the material there is waterproof. It should be enough.

I stand up. The boat rocks dangerously as my foot sinks into the icy water. The surface is uneven and I stumble but in a couple of steps I’m up on the bank. I grab the tarp from where I left it by the water’s edge and step back into the shallows to bundle it in, resting the oars on top so the wind can’t catch it. I take the bottle of gas I stole from Boots’ pack and douse the thick canvas. I cup my hand around the lighter. It takes a dozen or more tries for it to hold flame, but eventually I get the tarp to light.

I step back out of the water and start to pull the boat across the river. The flames creep up over the sides, like a funeral pyre. For a while I can follow it, but before long the storm has swallowed it whole. I keep grabbing armfuls of rope until eventually I feel resistance. I give one last heave to make sure it’s grounded then I find a loose lump of concrete and wrap the end of the rope around it several times and tie it off. I go down to the water’s edge and heft it as far as I can into the river. The wind drowns the splash; I never hear it. The rope sits on the water for a second and then slowly slips beneath the surface as the concrete sinks to the bottom.

I open my pack and grab some of the firewood I brought from my room. I use the last of Boot’s gas to light it. The wind harries the fragile flames, threatening to snuff them out, but whatever he adds to the mix makes it tenacious. I huddle close but it’s too small for any warmth. I tell myself that was never its purpose, but the truth is I need it now. My makeshift boots seem to have kept the water out, but inside my feet ache with the cold. The exertion that warmed me on the crossing is already working against me; inside my parka I can feel my sweat-soaked thermals cooling against my skin. I set an MRE to heat. As soon as it’s ready I wolf down the half-mixed contents before they too have a chance to give up their warmth. When I’m done I scatter the packets that came in the carton around, wedging them under crumbling concrete or impaling them on sections of twisted rebar until the area around me is strewn with trash.

The fire’s already burning down and I’m starting to shiver, but at least down here I’m mostly sheltered. I look up. Above me the wind howls over the collapsed bridge, sending flurries of ashen flakes tumbling over the edge. I’d like to stay a little longer, but that’s not possible. I need to get back now.

Hicks told me Gilbey had a code to get them into The Greenbrier, except that when they got there it didn’t work. There’s no keypad for the vault door in the Exhibition Hall, though; it only opens from the inside. Which means there must be another door somewhere, one that will take a code. I don’t know where that might be, but my guess is finding it won’t be too difficult; it’ll be big, way bigger than the one I’ve already seen. The blast doors at Eden and Mount Weather and Culpeper were all large enough to drive a truck through, and there’s no reason The Greenbrier should be different. Places like that needed to be stocked after all.

Once I find it what’s on Marv’s map should get me in, just like it has everywhere else I’ve tried. I don’t have that map on me of course; it’s tucked behind a pipe organ up on the balcony of a little chapel in Covington. But that doesn’t matter. I’ve studied it often enough over the winter that all I have to do is close my eyes and I can see the twelve numbers and letters Marv had written there.

I stand, hoist the backpack onto my shoulders and pull the straps tight. My makeshift boots feel heavy and when I look down I see they’ve iced up from when I stepped into the river. I knock the worst of it off and then slowly start to climb back up.

This will be the last night Mags spends in that bunker.

*

E
XCEPT THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS
out of course, but I guess that bit you already knew. I don’t think it was the plan. That was as good as I could have come up with in the circumstances, and on a different night it might even have seen me through. It was the storm. I just didn’t account for how bad it would get on the way back.

Without Marv’s map it’s hard to be sure, but I reckon it’s a little shy of six miles from the spot where the bridge gave out to what remains of The Greenbrier’s gates. I don’t know how many of those I made in the end, only that it wasn’t enough. Not that it matters. One mile or five, the truth is the storm had me beat before I hauled myself back up from the river; it just took me a little while longer to figure that out. I guess Marv was right: the cold really is a vicious bitch; it can seriously mess with your thinking. I only wish I had learned that lesson in time.

I’d like to tell you she was the last thing I thought of, as the drifting snow covered me over and the last of my body’s heat leached out into the soft, enveloping flakes. But she wasn’t. By the time my head came to rest in that gray powder I couldn’t have told you where I was headed or why.

*

I
T IS THE FOOTSTEPS
that bring him back, echoing down the stairwell. He doesn’t know how many he has missed, but he suspects a lot because they are loud, as though their owners are already right outside the door.

He hears the lock click and he opens his eyes. Although somehow he doesn’t think his eyes were actually closed, it is just that now it is his turn to use them again. He blinks and looks around the cage. He feels like he has been away somewhere, although he knows that is impossible. For as long as he can remember the cage is all that there has been.

Something is wrong.

Down here in the darkness time has little meaning; it is difficult to say where one part of it begins and another ends. But that unrelenting sameness makes it easy to tell when a piece has gone missing, like it just has. He can’t have fallen asleep, can he? He doesn’t sleep anymore. He hasn’t in a very long while.

Something is definitely wrong.

The door is already opening. The girl must have heard it too because she’s sitting up, waiting. He tilts his head to one side and sniffs the air. The scent from her cage is weaker now, but still, infuriatingly, there.

Somewhere at the end of the row a flashlight comes on. The doctor’s heels click sharply on the concrete as she approaches, like she’s angry. He can tell from the soldier’s shuffling gait that he’s struggling to keep up. He suddenly realizes his face is still pressed against the bars. He scurries back to his corner. Moments later the hem of a lab coat appears in front of his cage, glaringly bright in the flashlight’s beam. The soldier’s grubby fatigues arrive seconds after, the bottoms spilling over the tops of his scuffed boots.

The doctor bends down to check on him, but it’s a cursory examination. She glances at the untouched tray and turns to the soldier.

‘No more food for 99, Corporal. And you’d best prepare a cage in the other room.’

‘Yes ma’am.’ The boy can’t see the soldier’s face but he thinks he detects a trace of a smile in his voice, like this is a task he might relish.

The doctor takes a couple of plastic containers from her pocket and slides one through the bars and then he is forgotten as she turns around to face the cage opposite. The girl starts to inch forward but the soldier raps the bars with the stick.

‘Stay right where you are, missy.’

The doctor bends down.

‘Magdalene, show me your hands.’

The girl hesitates for a moment and then raises her cuffed wrists. The doctor leans forward so that she can see what’s written there. The boy sees it too and now he understands what the girl has done and where the intoxicating smell has been coming from.

‘Very clever, dear.’ The doctor turns to the soldier. ‘You didn’t think to check her hands, Corporal?’ The soldier’s boots shuffle awkwardly on the concrete but he doesn’t say anything.

The doctor slides the container through the bars and takes a step back. The girl reaches forward and grabs it, like she’s worried that at any moment she might change her mind. It takes her a moment to unscrew the cap with her wrists still bound together but she manages it. She holds the container to her lips and drains it, gasping with the taste.

‘Well, Magdalene, it appears Gabriel has taken your advice. He wasn’t in his room this morning when Sergeant Hicks went in to check on him. Every indication is that he has absconded.’

The girl wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and says
Good
.

‘Do you really think so, dear? I have to say, it doesn’t say much for his devotion to you, does it? And how far do you think he will get? He set off into a blizzard, without footwear. The best we can hope for now is that the storm clears and he can be found before he succumbs to hypothermia. I will have to remove those appendages that he will inevitably lose to frostbite, and then, assuming of course that he recovers, he will join you down here.’

The girl doesn’t look up. She stares at the floor of her cage for a long while. When she finally speaks her voice is little more than a whisper.

‘Only someone like you might consider that to be the best that could be hoped for.’

The doctor lets out an exasperated sigh.

‘And perhaps you would prefer that he die out there in the cold?’

Johnny 99 strains to hear the girl’s response but she has nothing to say to this. She just crawls to the back of her cage and turns her head away.

*

F
ROM SOMEWHERE FAR AWAY
in the darkness I hear my name. The voice is familiar, but muffled, like it’s coming to me from deep under water. I really don’t want to open my eyes. There’s an immense coldness lodged inside me but I’m too tired even to shiver; I just want the voice to go away so I can sleep. For a moment it recedes, once again becoming distant. But then it returns, and this time it’s insistent.

I manage to open one eye a fraction. A large wooden crucifix hangs at an angle on the wall in front of me, the gaunt figure nailed and thorned there looking only marginally less comfortable than I feel. All around me long wooden pews sit in silent disarray. It takes long seconds to process these clues, but at last I have a conclusion I think I might be willing to stand over. I’m in a church.

I wonder how long I’ve been out. The windows closest to me are darkened with snow, and at least where the panes remain intact, years of silt and grime, so it’s hard to tell. Further up there’s a gaping hole in the vaulted roof. The section of sky that shows itself looks bruised, restless, but the storm seems to have mostly blown itself out.

I’ve been here a while then. A day, maybe more.

My breath hangs white and heavy in the air above me. Somebody’s covered me with their parka but it’s still bitterly cold. I smell burning and realize there’s a fire. I shift my gaze and now I see the smoke, rising upwards in slow, lazy coils from somewhere behind me. I try to sit up so I can move myself closer but my limbs are stiff, unresponsive, like I haven’t used them for years.

‘Best stay where you are. Don’t want to warm you up too quickly.’

I try to turn my head in the direction of the voice but even that small act seems beyond me; the muscles in my neck respond to my commands with only the vaguest of twitches.

‘When I was stationed up in Fairbanks we had a soldier fall through the ice. By the time we fished him out he’d been in there for almost half an hour. We walked him all the way back to camp and then some idiot thought it’d be a good idea to give him a hot drink. Stopped his heart in a second.’