“Rick. Well, Richard. But I always liked Rick.” He offered her one of the cups. She still had the iron spike in one hand, the silver lighter with its hidden switchblade in the other. She set the spike aside to take the cup and lift it to her mouth. It smelled vaguely like coffee and her body cramped with hunger and thirst, but she knew better than to drink it.
Rick shuffled around, adjusting more lights, and Kate lowered herself into a chair, her limbs stiff and her body clumsy with fatigue. She nodded at the curtain, the world beyond the house. “What happened out there?”
“What happened?” His voice tightened. “They came. Corsai, Malchai, everything with teeth.”
She could see it. First the Malchai had come through, tearing out throats, and then the Corsai, feeding in their wake. No wonder there was nothing left.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be here,” murmured Rick. “I was on my way into the Waste, thought the green would be a safe place to camp out for the night.” A nervous laugh.
“How did you survive?” asked Kate.
“At first I hid. And then I, uh, well, there were all these abandoned houses.” The fidgeting grew worse. He moved like an addict, strung out on fear. “I did what I could. What I had to.”
Kate turned the silver lighter between her fingers. “Why didn’t you leave? Head for South City or go out into the Waste?”
“Thought about it a hundred times. I’d walk outside in the light of day, try to get myself to go, but who knows what’s going on out there? There’s no cell signal, and hell, after what happened here, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole world’s gone dark. Man came through, a few months back, running from North City, and he said the Malchai had rounded the humans up, keep ’em like meals in a fridge.
“No,” Rick went on, “no, I’ve got everything I need here, and I’m gonna wait it out. Those bastards can’t live forever.”
Silence fell over the room, and then Kate’s stomach growled audibly.
“Hold on,” said Rick, getting to his feet. “I’ll get you some food.”
“What about South City?” she called after him.
“No idea,” he called back.
She leaned forward, fingers drifting over the collection of batteries, just as something sounded in the hall. If Kate’s head hadn’t been turned the right way, she might not have heard it. If she hadn’t been her father’s daughter, she might not have known what it was: a shotgun shell being locked into the chamber of a gun.
And that, thought Kate, is why I’m not an optimist.
Her own gun sat unloaded in the bag at her feet, but the lighter was still in her hand, and with a small snick, the switchblade came free, the sudden shine of its edge stirring the darkness in her head as she rose to her feet.
Rick was in the doorway, shotgun raised. He flicked the barrel toward the blade. “Put it down.”
Kate’s grip tightened on the knife, and instead of her heart racing, she could feel it to start to slow, to steady. It would be so easy. She could already see the switchblade buried in his throat, could—
No.
That wasn’t how it would happen. Rick had a shotgun, and even with addled nerves, it would be nearly impossible for him to miss from this close, not when there were more than a hundred pellets in a shell. He might die, but so would she, and even if the darkness in her head didn’t seem to care about that, the rest of Kate sure did.
She set the blade carefully on the back of the couch. “What now, Rick?”
His nervousness hadn’t stopped, but it had quieted, pressed down beneath a new resolve. “Hands on your head.”
Kate’s mind turned over and over—but between the eight-mile run from the Waste and the shotgun leveled at her head, she was coming up blank, every thought drifting back toward blind violence instead of logic, strategy, reason.
“Go on,” he ordered, hoisting the shotgun for emphasis. “Back toward the door.” She did what she was told, slowly, trying to buy time. “It’s nothing personal, Jenny,” he muttered. “It’s really not. I’m just so tired. They won’t let me sleep.”
“Who?”
They were at the front door.
“Slide the bolt.”
She did.
“Open the door.”
She did.
It was no longer dusk, but full night. The light from the doorway spilled out two or three feet, carving a narrow block of safety, but beyond that, the street was dark.
“I know you’re out there!” Rick’s voice echoed through the streets, ricocheting off empty houses and abandoned cars.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then the shadows began to stir. White eyes dotted the darkness, teeth gleaming like knives, and Kate’s stomach turned with the memory of music and running, of empty subway cars and breaking strings and claws slashing flesh.
The Corsai whispered their awful chorus.
beatbreakruinfleshbonebeatbreak
And then the words began to shift . . .
beatbreakruinrendlittlelostharker
. . . spacing themselves into coherent order.
little lost harker
Fear rose in her, sudden and visceral, and she knew the monsters could smell it on her skin.
“Look here!” called Rick. “I brought you something to eat.”
eat little harker little lost
“Just leave me alone for one night,” he begged. “Just one night. Let me sleep.”
give us the harker
Kate’s head spun, an irrational desire brushing up against her fear, the urge to throw herself into the dark, to claw at the things with claws, to tear them apart as they tore into her.
The steel barrel of Rick’s shotgun jabbed between her shoulders, and Kate took a halting step forward.
Do something, she thought.
Kill them all, whispered the thing in her skull.
Not that.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and the miserable edge in his voice told her all she needed to know. He didn’t want to shoot her. “I’m just so tired.”
“It’s all right, Rick. I’m going.” Kate shuffled a half step forward, and felt him sag a little with relief, shifting the shotgun away from the center of her back and up, over her shoulder.
She rocked backward into Rick’s chest, one elbow slamming into his face as she twisted around, taking the shotgun with her. Two breaths—that’s all it had taken—but Rick was on one knee, clutching his bloody nose, and Kate was in the open doorway, holding the gun.
Shoot, said the voice in her head as he got to his feet, but his heel skimmed the first stair and he lost his balance, tripping down the three short steps and out of the safety of the light.
Shoot, said the monster, but she didn’t know if it would be a mercy to Rick or a gift to the madness inside her, so she threw the weapon into the grass. Rick staggered toward it as Kate backed into the house, and the last thing she saw was the glint of the shotgun as he swung it clublike at the shadows before she slammed the door and drove the bolt home.
The house was empty.
Kate knew because she had checked the whole thing, top to bottom, back to front. Rick had done a solid job of securing the windows and doors, but if she listened she could hear the scrape of nails on wood, on brick, on glass, the trail of the Corsai’s claws outside, scratching to get in. Reminding her that she was trapped.