Children Of The Mountain (Book 2): The Devil You Know (32 page)

The wind gusts shrill through a gap in the cement truck’s chassis and I have to shout to make myself heard.

‘Are you feeling okay?’

He hesitates for a second and then I think I see him nod inside his hood.

I slip off my mittens and dig in my pocket for the roll of duct tape. It takes a while for my frozen fingers to find an edge but eventually I manage to tear off a strip. I stick it to the sleeve of my parka and then pull the zipper on his jacket down. But when I go to stick the tape over his mouth he shakes his head vigorously and pulls away. I guess right there is where I should have thought it through some more but I just figure he doesn’t care for being gagged any more than Weasel did. I’m about to explain this bit’s not up for discussion when he holds out his hand. I pass him the tape. The mittens he’s wearing make it difficult and the wind’s certainly not helping but in the end he manages it. I zip his hood back up then start transferring the things I’ll need from my backpack to the parka’s large side pockets.

He squirms a little as I pick him up and hoist him onto my back, but then the lightning flashes and he grips tight and buries his head in my parka. The arms around my neck feel no thicker than the branches I cut for firewood, but they’re surprisingly strong. I stand. He weighs less than my pack would after a day’s scavenging. We’ll make much better time now; I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.

Okay, a little bixicated there, maybe. But in my defense, it wasn’t an altogether terrible idea. There was just one kinda important thing I forgot.

*

W
E CROSS BACK INTO
West Virginia at a place called Ridgeway. It’s somewhere approaching the middle of the night and the cold has turned cruel now. With each step I curse it through chattering teeth.

I stop us at the first place we come to, no more than a hundred yards over the state line. A sign above the door with a grinning pig’s head says
The Hogtied
and underneath it
Cold Beer To Go!
A single pickup, buried deep under a decade of snow, waits patiently in the parking lot. I stagger up to the entrance. The outer door hangs askance in its frame but the inner one seems to have held. I guess the cold’s finally getting to the kid because he continues to cling tight even after I bend down to let him off; I have to pry his arms from around my neck and slide him to the ground. He crouches there for a second and then scurries off inside. The door swings shut after him.

A single withered tree still pokes through the snow on the other side of the road. I dig the handsaw from the pocket of my parka and cross over to cut a few limbs but I’m having trouble gripping the handle and it’s slow work. When I think I’ve finally collected enough wood for a fire I head inside.

The Hogtied’s not a big place. To one side there’s a bar. The shelves are empty, anything that could have been drunk or been used to start a fire long since removed. The wall behind was once mirror but the few shards that still cling there now just throw back crazed reflections as the beam from the flashlight slides over them. Across the room a dozen or so booths crowd around a small pool table, the balls arranged haphazardly as if a game had been interrupted.

There’s no sign of the kid. Maybe I should have given some thought to that but I figure his mouth and mittens are taped and right then I’m too cold and too tired to go looking for him. I make my way over to the nearest booth. Snowmelt must have found its way in through the ceiling at some point, because the floorboards are buckled; they flex and groan under my boots. I dump the firewood and sit on the ground next to it, already fumbling in my overladen pockets for the squeeze bottle of gas. I know I should really check behind the bar before using it; there could be a bottle of liquor back there that’s been missed. But the shelves look empty and now I’m down I’m too tired to get up again. I fumble off the cap and squirt a measure Private Kavanagh would have been proud of over the blackened branches. Within minutes there’s a small fire going, steam rising lazily from the hesitant flames.

I dig out Weasel’s radio to see if there’s any news on the search but all I get is static. As I set it down I spot a corner of a newspaper that’s been missed underneath the table behind me. In different times that would have been treasure, but now I just twist the pages into tight twirls and feed them to the fire. I hold my hands as close as I dare, desperate to catch whatever heat’s thrown off before it’s lost to the cold.

The soft hiss from the radio is somehow soothing and I feel my eyelids growing heavy. I can’t afford to nap; if I do I may not wake for hours. I dig the tin mug from the pocket of my parka, fill it with water from my canteen and set it among the flames. We’re making better progress now I’m carrying the kid. If I can keep it up there’s still a chance I might catch up to Mags and Hicks before morning.

When I reckon the water’s as hot as it’s going to get I tear the top off a packet of coffee and dump it in. The dark, sour aroma mixes with the smoke from the fire and the damp, moldering smell of The Hogtied. I put on my gloves and fish the mug out of the already guttering flames. I need to drink the coffee to wake me up but right now the warmth soaking into my frozen fingers feels good. I lean back against the booth.

I’ll just close my eyes for a moment.

*

H
E SITS IN THE CORNER
in darkness. The restroom is small, windowless, a single stall occupying most of the available space. Its door is missing, or maybe there never was one. A steel urinal runs the length of the wall opposite; holes dot the space above where a vending machine once hung. Graffiti spreads across the crumbling plaster, competing with the sprays of black mildew that climb from the tiled floor.

The air is musty, stale, freighted with a decade of enclosed decay, but he doesn’t notice. His hood is pulled back and his goggles lie discarded among the garbage strewn across the floor. He purses his lips and drags the back of one mitten across the tape at his mouth, trying desperately to lift an edge.

A door opens in the next room and he looks up. The boy has come back inside. The door closes again, the sound of the storm abating. There’s the creak of boots on floorboards and a few moments later the sweet cloying smell of gasoline and then the damp smokiness of fire.

None of these things are important.

He resumes his work on the tape.

There was something on the boy’s jacket. He smelled it earlier, in the restaurant, and afterwards, when they stopped in the bank. Outside the wind was strong and it carried the scent of it away into the swirling darkness. But now they are back inside the heavy, coppery aroma sings to him.

The blood, on the tiled floor of the kitchen where they left the soldier; somehow some of it must have gotten on the boy’s jacket. Just thinking about it now causes the hunger to well up in him, so sudden and strong the muscles in his stomach twist and coil with it.

He drags the mitten across his mouth again and this time a corner of the tape lifts. He feels for it with his fingers but it is too small yet for them to find purchase. Soon. He goes back to work with the glove.

It is stronger now, the thing inside him; it will not allow itself to be confined much longer. It is a large animal, straining on a fraying leash, a tether that cannot hope to hold. He has felt its claws, raking his insides, desperate to tear its way out. He is ashamed of what he will do when that time comes, and yet giddy with the anticipation of it.

More of the tape lifts and this time when he reaches for it with his mittens his fingertips grasp it. He rips it off, letting the spent tape fall among the litter scattered at his feet. His small teeth set to work on his mittens. Soon they too lie discarded.

He shuffles over to the door and opens it a crack. Over by one of the booths the boy is sleeping. He will do it now. But as he steps through lightning flares, for a moment bathing the inside of The Hogtied in stark white light. He raises his hands to his eyes to block the light, but he is too late, and for a second the blinding glare pushes the thing inside him back.

He blinks and looks around, unsure of how he came to be here, but certain of what he had been about to do.

Outside the storm is getting worse. The wind is shrill; the door shudders in its frame with the strength of it.

The soldier with one eye was right.

He must go now, quickly, before it is too late.

*

T
HERE’S A CRASH
of thunder, loud enough to rattle the Hogtied’s remaining windows in their frames. I wake with a start.

This time when I pulled the trigger I saw her face. It takes me a moment to figure out it was just a dream and there’s an instant where relief washes through me. But then the lightning flashes and I see him, crouched on the other side of the fire, his small shoulders hunched up like whatever carrion bird is etched into the handle of Hicks’ pistol. He shrinks back at the flare and his eyes close to slits but they never leave me, and as soon as it darkens again he inches forward, taking a cautious step around the dying fire. The tape on his mouth’s gone and as I look down at the small hands splayed out in front of him I can see that so too are his mittens. His palms rest flat on the water-buckled boards but the fingers are curled into claws.

I fumble in the pocket of my parka. The forgotten mug of coffee slips from my lap, spilling its now-cold contents across the floor. His eyes flick to it for a second, but then return. My fingers close around the grip; I feel the compact heft of the metal as I pull it out. The round’s already chambered from earlier. I level it at him and flick the safety forward.

He tilts his head to one side, regarding the gun with animal interest. I slip my finger inside the trigger guard, feeling it curl around the cool metal. I shout his name and he pauses, like some part of him remembers. But then he sniffs the air and takes another step forward. I can see the muscles along his jaw working, clenching and unclenching like he’s grinding his teeth.

Hicks told me this moment would come, and that when it did I shouldn’t hesitate. I push myself back against the booth and take aim at his head. I squeeze gently, feeling the last of the slack go out of the mechanism. But at the last second I shift the barrel to the left. There’s a sharp crack, loud in the Hogtied’s single room. The muzzle flares and he flinches. I drop the gun and hold my hands up, ready to hold him off. But his face has softened. He blinks and looks uncertainly at me and then at the door.

After that the kid and I have a chat. He promises to warn me if he’s feeling he might get like that again, although if Hicks is right and it’s like a switch being flipped I'm not sure how much stock I can put in that. I need to start being a lot more careful than I've been so far tonight.

I fetch his mittens from the restroom and he puts them back on and then I tape them to the cuffs of his jacket and hand him an extra strip for his mouth. I use a little of the water from my canteen to scrub the front of my parka and then I mix up a paste with coffee powder and the contents of one of the little bottles of Tabasco that comes in the MREs. I work it into the material everywhere I think Weasel’s blood might have gotten on it. It smells really bad, but then that’s the point.

When I’m done I hold out the parka and ask him if it’s any better. He sniffs it and nods his head warily. I’m not so sure though. I suspect the kid may not have long now ’till whatever’s inside him takes over for good. I feel his tiny body stiffen as I haul him onto my back, just like the girl in the closet did when Marv held the knife with his blood on it under her nose.

The wind’s strengthened while we were inside. It shrieks around The Hogtied and I have to lean my weight into the door to open it. As I step outside I look up into the skies. I’m not sure how long I was asleep but the storm’s used the time well. It’s almost on us now.

I point us north and we set off. Lightning strikes all around, the intervals between flash and clap so short as to defy the counting. At least when it flares I can see though, and for the next hour I search those half-seconds of light for road signs, telephone poles, abandoned cars; anything to mark our place in the world.

The cold is raw, an onslaught. It claws my fingers inside my mittens, threatening to crack the bones there with the sharpness of it. I pull the zipper up as far as it will go and tuck my chin to my chest but I have no defense against it; it slips inside the parka with absurd ease. The muscles across my shoulders and back tighten; soon they ache and grind like the cogs of a long-neglected machine.

There’s another strike, so close that for an instant it smells like the air has been charred, and the road in front of us is briefly bathed in stark white light. The heavens crash, like they’re being torn asunder. The kid starts, but then he grips my shoulder and I know this is something different. I set him down and he crouches there, wrestling with whatever other thing is locked inside his head. He’s like that for a while and I'm beginning to wonder if he’s ever coming back but then he looks up and nods inside his hood and I bend down and let him clamber back up again.

We don’t make much more than a handful of miles before the storm finally catches us. Soon heavy flakes are tumbling and twisting out of the tortured sky. The wind picks them up and drives them, swirling them around us in furious flurries.

I can’t see worth a damn now and the cold’s so bad I’m struggling to wind the flashlight’s stubby handle. We’re nowhere near as far as I’d like us to be but we’ll have to take shelter. There’s a town up ahead. I figure we’ll stop, get another fire going, maybe let the storm blow itself out for an hour or so.

I feel the kid squeeze my shoulder. I reckon he needs some more alone time so I start to bend down to let him off but instead he lifts one mitten from around my neck and points. A flash of lightning illuminates a sign close to road that says
Pikeside Bowl
. I ask why he wants to go that way but even if he can hear me over the wind he can’t answer through the duct tape. He just keeps pointing in the same direction.