The Killing Season (18 page)

“Tabi tabi po,” I whispered under my breath, asking the tundra for permission as my eyes flickered from shadow to shadow. Gran had taught me the words with a warning to say them before passing through an area full of spirits and creatures.

I scurried over to the snowmobiles, where Nyny strapped in her precious coffees, just in time to hear Thad say, “Ollie can ride with me. Sunny, you can go with Nyny. Just watch out. She tends to take the corners too fast, so hold on tight.” His smile didn’t quite meet his eyes, and his shoulders flexed with tension.

“I get motion sickness,” I said quickly. “Best to ride with you.” I pushed past him and took a seat on his snowmobile without giving him the chance to argue. I refused to let Ollie ride with him, not after he’d stared at her like that. I smiled sweetly and waited.

Ollie just shrugged and got on behind Nyny before the scientist complained about how long we were taking. Thad’s jaw clenched in frustration, but he climbed on in front of me without a word. I wondered what he was thinking, why he was so focused on Ollie today. At the thought, a warning tingle spread up my spine. I would have to watch him closely, but I welcomed the task. Anything to keep my mind off Hatter for a while.

The snowmobiles roared to life, shattering the uneasy quiet around us and making me cringe. We were basically calling every ’swang in the area to us. If they couldn’t follow the sound, they certainly would be able to follow the smell of the exhaust.

We moved fast. We had to or else something might have time to eat us. Numerous paths cut through the lakes in all different directions, but we stayed on the biggest one, where the snow was packed down tight like white pavement. I might have ridden on Thad’s snowmobile to keep him from Ollie, but I was glad when I saw how reckless and crazed Nyny drove. I didn’t know how much coffee she’d drank this morning, but it was way too much. They careened into a corner, Nyny’s sled fishtailing and Ollie whooping like a mad woman. In front of me, Thad shook his head and accelerated.

I gripped him tighter and sent up another prayer. These people were crazy.

The edge of town appeared much faster than I’d anticipated, the low-slung buildings of the Barrow side stark against the dark sky and darker slab of frozen ocean behind them. We skirted the airport and trundled up Stevenson Street, toward Browerville, the central part of Barrow. Beneath countless floodlights beaming down onto the streets, numerous hunters ambled between buildings and talked to residents. Some had come up from Fear University with us, but most were the ones that stayed in Barrow full time during the Killing Season to guard the town from attack. Wearing their vests and throat guards, they walked, nodding and chatting to each other, with guns casually draped across their chests. I couldn’t help but scan for Hatter, even though I knew he and Luke were always in Killian’s search and kill groups. Coldcrow never assigned them anything like town watch.

Nyny steered toward the post office, and Thad followed. When they cut off the snowmobiles, my ears drummed from the sudden silence. Without a backward glance or word, Nyny hurried into the building, but Thad stayed outside to talk with a nearby hunter. I took a deep breath when he was out of earshot and safely away from Ollie.

Ollie grinned at me like a fool. “I have got to get one of this things.” She patted the seat fondly.

I grimaced. I might have used motion sickness as an excuse, but I really wanted a barf bag right then. “You’re insane.”

“How are you feeling?”

My eyes cut back toward Thad. He was still talking to the other hunter, but his eyes never strayed too far from Ollie. Beneath his throat guard, his perpetual bandage poked up. As a doctor in training, I knew his wounds had healed long ago, which meant he was too self-conscious to display them. His embarrassment was disrespectful to every hunter who bore their scars proudly. I remembered the time Seth came home a few weeks after graduation sporting his first claw mark down his arm. He’d been so proud. He died six months later.

“I’m fine, but we need to watch Thad,” I said with my voice low enough so he wouldn’t hear.

Ollie knew better than to glance in his direction. “Why?”

“He was staring at you weird earlier. That’s why I took your spot on his snowmobile.”

The post office entrance opened again and a tall man with wide shoulders and a trim waist stepped out. He looked around, eyes landing on Ollie’s back before nodding at me and stepping down toward the hunters. “Is this a military base or something?” he asked Thad in a young voice that surprised me.

I was looking at his face as he asked the question, taking in his patchy beard and unscarred skin, when I saw Ollie stiffen, her eyes flaring wide like a deer caught in headlights.

“Something like that,” Thaddeus answered. “Bad time to be visiting northern Alaska.” He nodded toward the man’s brand-new boots and heavy parka, which marked him as an obvious tourist.

Ollie took a step toward me, and only then did I notice how badly her hands shook. Her face had gone pale, and her chin wobbled, lips trembling as she pressed them together, like she needed to hold in a scream.

It took a long moment for me to process her reaction and understand.

She was terrified.

She stumbled toward me as the man continued talking to Thaddeus about the weather and places to stay in Barrow. Her legs wobbled like a filly’s, and I met her halfway, wrapping my arm around her waist.

“Don’t let him see me,” she whispered, nearly choking.

I glanced over her shoulder toward the man, who stood a few paces away. He flicked a curious glance back toward me and Ollie before he returned to his conversation with Thad. “I don’t think he noticed you. He never saw your face.” Ollie’s body shook so hard I felt it all the way through my heavy coat. I held her tighter, leaning down closer to whisper. “Who is that?”

She looked over at me, our faces so close together it probably looked like we were going to kiss. Tears swam in her eyes and a cold sweat broke out across her brow.

“That’s Max Taber,” she choked out. “He found me.”

T W E L V E

Ollie

H
e’d found me. He stood right behind me, close enough to step over and run his hands through my hair like he had that night. That night I watched as his father pressed a rusty blade under the little girl’s fingernail.

I clapped my lips tight to hold in my scream. Sunny’s face swam before my eyes, the ground at our feet sloping dizzily. For a horrible moment, I thought I was going to pass out and draw Max’s attention for sure.

“He’s found me,” I repeated, feeling my spine lock up with a tremble.

“Oh, fuck,” Sunny said, and the sheer surprise at such a word coming from her was enough to bring me back to reality. “Are you sure?”

I angled our bodies so that we just looked like two girls trying to keep warm in the cold. “I’ll never forget that voice.”

Ollie, do you feel it now? Don’t lie to me. Good girls don’t lie, and you’re supposed to be a good girl, right? What about this? Do you feel me breaking your finger? What if Daddy breaks hers? Ollie, you have to say the words or we start over.

Yes, sir.

“He hasn’t seen us yet.”

Here’s the shovel, Ollie. Start digging.

Yes, sir.

“We have to get out of here.”

“Thad will say something if we try to walk off.”

“Is my hair covered?”

Sunny’s eyes ran over my face. Reaching up, she tucked a strand under my cap. “Your hood hides it. Maybe he’ll just walk away.”

“Oh my God, Sunny,” I said, wanting to sink right into the snow and melt away. “Why is he here? How did he find me?”

I came close to losing it again. The careless, haphazard stitches holding me together over the years threatened to shred apart, leaving me to crumble right there on the street. He wouldn’t kill me here with all these witnesses, and Thad would shoot him before he could really do anything to me. I was fine. Everything was fine.

I don’t want to bury you, Ollie. You’re my good girl, you know? But Daddy says we have to bury the bodies. That’s why you have to dig the graves. But you’ll always be my good little girl.

Yes, sir.

If I had a gun, I would turn around right here and shoot him. But Sunny and I only had a whip and some little knives. I couldn’t scream for Thad to kill him. He wouldn’t cut down a seemingly innocent person right there on the street. The only people who knew about Max were Sunny, Luke, and Dean. My only choice was to get away and not go outside the base again.

My thoughts jumbled and raced around each other. “Sunny,” I pleaded, my face ice cold with wet tears, “help me.”

For a second, Sunny looked horrified to see me crying, but then she nodded, a quick, certain jerk of her chin. Her eyes narrowed as she thought it over. She discarded the notion of using her knives as quickly as I did. “Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll make a distraction and you slip away.” She paused, biting her lip. Neither one of us knew this town very well; we had nowhere to meet back up. “Get a hunter to take you back to the base. Tell them you were bitten. Or steal a snowmobile. You remember the way we came.”

I managed a tiny nod. Distraction. Slip away. Get back to Luke. Stay alive. I could do that. A whimper escaped between my lips. Every time I blinked I saw a little girl in a shallow grave. Saw how the dirt skittered over her unmoving eyelids like tiny bugs.

Sunny pulled my shoulders around to face her, standing up on her tiptoes so she could look me in the eye. “You can do this, okay? Just get back safe. If you don’t think you can make it back, meet me by that sign we passed on the way into town. You have your whip. You can defend yourself. Don’t let him take you.”

She gave me a squeeze before stepping away. I nearly fell to the ground without her support. I marveled at how such a little person could be so strong, so fierce. Sunny had come to Barrow and became a warrior to protect her friends.

Why couldn’t I be more like her?

I edged away toward a narrow alley between the post office and the next building. I had no clue what Sunny’s distraction would be, and I doubted she did either. Hopefully I would know it when it happened.

I shouldn’t have worried. The whole town knew when Sunny made a distraction.

“’Swang!” she screamed. “Over there! I just saw it! Oh, my gosh, there’s another one!” For good measure, she let out another blood-curdling, horror-film worthy shriek that made my hackles rise.

All around me, the town erupted. Without a second thought, like the instinct was ingrained in them, the townspeople ran in purposeful directions, shouting orders and instructions. Doors slammed shut and locked as alarms started to wail, amplified by countless speakers mounted throughout the streets. Hunters slipped over the icy snow, fanning out, some shooting at shadows, others swinging their guns around with faces pressed against the stocks. Up on the roofs, hunters swiveled the floodlights, sending wild beams slicing across the snowy ground, shattering the darkness with light. I ducked my head, careful to angle away from Max, and fell into step with a group of people running across the street to the grocery store.

Barrow was ready. Minutes after Sunny screamed, the townspeople deserted the streets. Buildings went into lockdown. Windows and doors sealed with boards across the entrances. A few pulled out guns and flipped off the safeties, but they stayed collected, in control, ready to kill the monsters preying on their little town. Only the hunters remained in the streets to look for Sunny’s fictional aswang. I stood in the grocery store with about twenty others. I scanned their faces. Max wasn’t among them.

Taking my chance, I slipped to the back of the group, my fingers dancing along the scars on my face.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” an older man with gray hair and a receding hairline beside me asked. I looked up at him. He wore the grocery store’s uniform and name tag that read “Teddy.”

“Just a little dizzy,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie. The adrenaline made me sick and twitchy, the terror rendering my muscles useless.

“Here,” Teddy said, gently taking my arm. “Let’s get you to the back. Don’t feel bad. A lot of people feel this way during an attack, but once you’re as old as I am, you get used to it.”

He patted my back as he led me toward the store room. Inside, a metal desk and an old, creaky chair sat beside the door. Boxes were stacked along the shelves in neat and orderly rows. On the back wall was another door with a board braced across it. The door had to lead out back.

“Thank you. I appreciate this,” I managed to say.

“Sure thing, dear. Sit right here and I’ll go grab you some warm tea. I had some steeping at the counter as soon as the alarms went off. People need tea when they’re afraid, you know. I’ll be right back, okay?” His eyes were kind and warm as he waited for an answer. I nodded weakly, and he squeezed my hand before hurrying away. I needed to move now before he came back, but it was a struggle. I wanted to stay here with Teddy and let him give me tea and calm me down until Max was far, far away.

I scolded myself. That wasn’t going to happen. Max had come here for some reason, and it must have been a good one because he wouldn’t have come this far north in Alaska on a whim. I had to go now to make it out alive.