Dead eyes.
Margaret “Maggie” Knoll. Her fragile body obliterated on impact.
John’s heart was hammering. He couldn’t breathe.
He gently lowered the trunk lid, then growled and slammed his fist into the roof of the car, again and again. He was screaming now. Somewhere, he thought he could hear Nymph laughing.
John was making so much noise, in fact, that he almost didn’t hear when a man said from behind him, “Did you get him? Did you get Nymph?”
John turned, and saw Ted Knoll.
6. THE RAIN CONTINUES, AND ALSO JOHN DIES
Ted was holding his shotgun, the barrel aimed down at the splattery pavement. John said nothing.
“I saw you tearing ass down the street, I was comin’ the opposite way, recognized your crazy Jeep. I did a bootleg turn and followed as best I could…” Ted looked over the wreck. “Is this his? Is Nymph in there?”
John still couldn’t speak.
“Hey, man, are you hurt? Talk to me.”
Ted took a step forward.
He saw the blood.
He looked at the trunk, then he looked at John. Piecing it together.
John said, “Don’t look in there, man. Don’t.”
“What? Is … is it…”
Ted edged up to the car, the gun still pointed at his feet.
“Don’t, man.”
Ted turned and met John’s eyes. Just stared at him, his face a cracked dam holding back a flood of contempt. Making very deliberate movements, Ted slowly opened the trunk and took in what he saw inside.
John watched Ted’s face. The whole mental process didn’t take more than a minute. The man stared into the trunk, let the reality of it sink in, then squeezed his eyes shut and worked his jaw.
Then he calmly closed the trunk and, without turning around, said softly, “I thought I told you to call me. If you found Nymph. I said to call me, instead of trying to handle it yourself.”
“There was no time, I—”
“Do you know why I asked you to do that? To call me?”
“If I’d had a chance—”
“Because,” said Ted, sounding like he was using every ounce of his strength to contain himself, “this wasn’t a matter of who gets credit for taking down the bad man. This was about getting my daughter back. My daughter. Not yours. And unlike you, I have actual training.”
“It wasn’t my fault. Nymph, he took off, I followed, I thought I could tail him back to where he was keeping—”
“What training do you have? For anything? What have you worked hard for, your entire life? You sit at home and you play your games and you do your drugs and then when the shit goes down, you fall apart and people die. Because you don’t have the necessary skills, because practice is boring.”
“Listen, the guy who did this is still—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Ted raised the shotgun. Pointing it right at John’s face. The father of the dead child bared his clenched teeth, rage and despair wearing the rest of him like a suit.
John put up his hands. “Whoa! Look, calm down. I’m not who you’re angry at here—”
“We used to have this saying in the marines. ‘Ten, ten, eighty.’ Ten percent of people are heroes, ten percent are assholes, and eighty percent are nothing. Just blobs that go along. Leeches. Sheep. You understand? The world isn’t in the shitty state it’s in because of people like Nymph. It’s because of people like you.”
“You’re not thinking straight! You’re—hey! What’s the password?”
“What do you think this is? It’s ‘bushmaster.’ And this is for Maggie.”
Ted fired. John ducked, not sure if the shot had missed or if he just hadn’t felt himself die yet. Without pausing to find out which, John lunged for the gun. He didn’t have a plan, he just wanted that barrel pointed in any other direction.
He got his hands around the shotgun and shoved the barrel up, aiming it at the sky. John’s and Ted’s limbs tangled and they went to the ground along the shoulder of the highway, splashing in the mud. Ted rolled over on top of John, rivulets cascading down around the man’s face, his crazed eyes just inches away. The hot barrel of the gun was between them, touching John’s chin.
John growled and gritted his teeth and tried to shove off his attacker—
BANG.
And then there was a spray of warm blood and Ted Knoll’s face was gone.
Me
I waited for the storm to calm and then headed for the church at Mine’s Eye, passing downed trees and severed limbs. When I got to the church, I found that their sign with the clever slogans had been crushed by a fallen tree. The roof of the church had also been damaged and rain was cascading in; I didn’t know if that part was because of the storm or something John had done (his methods aren’t subtle). Otherwise, there was no sign of John or his vehicle. Had he already come and gone? Maybe he went somewhere to ride out the storm? Then I noticed the tire tracks—deep ruts and sprays of mud dug by a vehicle peeling out across a wet lawn. I could see where the tracks joined the inlet road that curved around the mine. This looked a hell of a lot like a pursuit. I checked my phone and again got the “no network” message.
I followed the road for a stretch but found nothing and soon I was passing multiple points where a chase could have branched off in different directions. Eventually I just took two left turns and got pointed back toward town again.
Well, shit. I’ve lost Amy and I’ve lost John, within five minutes. By this afternoon I’ll be the last non-missing person in Undisclosed.
Could they be together somewhere? Maybe he’s the one who dropped by to have breakfast? I was lost, which as you’re probably gathering, is something of a regular state of being for me.
My phone dinged the sound of an incoming text message—the cell network back up, apparently—and I got a text from John that said, simply:
girls dead
And then it dinged again with a second message:
find nymph
And then, after some hesitation, a third:
im sorry
I called, he didn’t answer. I texted back asking him to clarify:
fuck?
I slammed on the brakes and did a U-turn in front of a honking car. I headed to John’s house, the only place I could think to find him.
* * *
What I fear most in this “job” (the sarcasm quotes are there to denote the absence of a paycheck) isn’t some lumbering horror smashing its way through my windows. It’s the groupies—obsessed fans who make the journey to Undisclosed based on the legends, like they expect to find a bus running monster tours around town. They come to try to get a glimpse of us, or to ask us to solve their problems and/or to tell them scary stories. This is why I never disclose the name of the town—the way I see it, the monsters might try to eat your soul, but at least they don’t feel like they’re owed anything.
That’s why I like to move around. From one apartment to the next, places that don’t require a lease, rarely leaving forwarding addresses (not that I don’t still get my packages—the local postal workers know who I am, they make sure the bullshit arrives). John, on the other hand, bought a two-story house in town and proceeded to paint the entire thing flat black, from top to bottom, including the roof and the windows. He joked that he was turning it into a stealth house, but of course the intention was the opposite. Every weirdo who managed to reverse engineer our location could spot that place from a mile away.
I pulled up to that black house, John’s Jeep in the driveway. I went around to the other parking spot at the rear and headed to the back door, hearing the dog yapping from inside. I wondered if I’d have to kick that door down, but it was unlocked. I turned the knob and prepared to be incinerated.
Oh, that’s the other thing: John’s entire house is now booby-trapped. The doors, for instance, are surrounded by four nozzles that in theory will fire four jets of propane-fueled flames, instantly turning any intruder into an intruder who is on fire. Won’t this almost certainly catch the exterior of the house on fire, you ask? Yep. And, once the flaming intruder stumbles inside, the interior of the house will also be on fire. When I raised these concerns to John he simply said, “It’d be worth it.”