She, however, would not do him. The dyke.
“Paybacks are a bitch, you tall twat.”
He watched her sleep. He would keep an eye on her, wait for her to slip up. One way or another, figuratively or literally, Sara Purinam was going to get fucked.
NOVEMBER 12: THE THING IN THE CAR
Implantation +3 Days
THE NEXT MORNING, Colding, Clayton and Sara rode along in Clayton’s Humvee. No Nuge that morning, but regardless, Colding kept his window rolled up tight.
They reached the fork that led to the harbor. This time Clayton took the road on the left. More trees, more snow, more collapsed houses. Five minutes later the trees ended, giving way to the old town. Clayton pulled into the town center, a stone-paved circle about fifty yards in diameter. Some of the snow-dusted stones were broken or just plain missing. A few small trees grew up through some of the gaps.
An old well made up of the same broken stones sat smack in the circle’s center. Some of the stones had crumbled away and lay on the ground like rotted-out teeth. The well looked like some B-movie version of a trapdoor to hell.
Clayton stopped the Hummer. The three of them got out and started walking.
“Welcome to downtown Black Manitou,” Clayton said. “I’m sure a city boy like you will feel right at home, eh?”
“Sure,” Colding said. “I’ll bet the opera house is right over the next hill.” The town’s structures were in marginally better shape than the dilapidated houses out in the woods. Buildings lined the paved area like numbers on a clock. With due north at noon, ten o’clock was the gothic, black-stone church. The thick building dominated the town circle, squatting down like a granite bulldog. It seemed to have so much weight the rest of the town might rise up at any moment, the light end of a lopsided teeter-totter. The few windows looked original, their glass visibly warped, giving the solid structure an almost fluid appearance. A bell tower (noticeably absent a bell) rose like a pinnacle from the steep slate roof.
Clayton pointed to a green building about twenty feet from the church at the eight o’clock position. The window was still decorated with a faded yellow banner cut in the shape of a star that said GROUND CHUCK ON SALE! Inside, Colding saw empty racks and shelves.
“That used to be Betty’s,” Clayton said. “Combination grocery and hardware store. She was still here when Danté bought everyone out.”
At seven o’clock, the road out of town ran between Betty’s and a red building with a moth-eaten moose head hung over the door. One glass eye was long since missing. Shreds of moose fur hung down like demonic streamers.
“That was Sven Ballantine’s hunter’s shop,” Clayton said. “He ran it during deer season. Magnus and that surly little prick Andy Crosthwaite came up about five years ago and went wild, killed every last deer. Cut their heads off, took a picture right by that well.”
“Jesus,” Colding said. “I didn’t know Magnus was such a conservationist.”
“Pissed me off to no end, eh? Deer been here since 1948, when an ice bridge connected da island and da mainland. Deer just walked over.”
Colding gave Clayton an untrusting look. “An ice bridge?”
“Yep.”
“From the mainland,” Sara said. “Three hours away.”
“Yep.”
Sara shook her head. “Clayton, you are so full of shit you’d float. It can’t get cold enough to make ice cover that much open water.”
Clayton hawked a loogie and spat it on one of the mottled paving stones. “You’ll see ice everywhere in another week. In a normal winter, Rapleje Bay will have ice two feet thick by da end of November. This winter? Gonna be cold. Maybe coldest ever.”
He gestured at a rustic building made of hewn logs and rough wooden beams sitting at about four o’clock, directly across from the church. Other than the church, it was the town’s only two-story building. “Da mansion you’re staying at was for da rich folk, but plenty of regular people came to Black Manitou Lodge here to hunt and relax.”
A few more wooden buildings dotted the town circle. All had peeling paint. Some sagged under rotted, moss-covered roofs. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
“Clayton,” Sara said. “I think you forgot that thing in the car.”
The old man looked at her, then nodded. “By gosh, I think you’re right, eh? Be back in a jiffy.”
Clayton turned and walked quickly to the Hummer.
Colding looked at Sara. “The thing?”
“The thing,” she said. “In the car.”
Clayton reached the Hummer, got in, started it up, then drove down the road right out of town.
Colding watched the black vehicle vanish into the woods, heading for the mansion. “You told Clayton to strand us?”
Sara nodded. “That’s right.”
“Huh. Wouldn’t the joke be better if you were in the vehicle with him?”
“No joke this time. I wanted your undivided attention.”
He looked at her, looked close. The pissyness was gone. She seemed all-business.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m listening.”
“Almost right. I’m the one who’s going to listen. You’re going to tell me some things. How you came to work for Genada, how you found me and my crew and why you had that one amazing night with me then vanished.”
“Sara, we—”
“Now, P. J. You will tell me now. We had a connection. I thought I was being a girly-girl about that, deluding myself, but in the past couple of days I’m pretty sure my initial instinct with you was right. We did connect, didn’t we?”
He could lie. Just say no, walk back to the mansion and be done with it. Instead, he nodded.
She smiled a little. Some of the tension seemed to drain out of her. “Good. That’s good. So make like a stoolie and spill.”
He looked around the town. They really were in the middle of nowhere. At least a thirty-minute walk back to the mansion.
Fuck it. Why not?
“I was in the army. Used to work for USAMRIID, the army’s division to protect servicepeople from biological threats. I met my wife there. Clarissa. She was a virologist. We were married for two years, then there was… an accident. Have you heard of H5N1?”
Sara shook her head.
“Bird flu. Terrorist cell was trying to bring it into America the old-fashioned way—by infecting their own people and shipping them over. CIA caught them. USAMRIID was called in to see if we could help the carriers. Long story short, proper restraint precautions were not followed. The guy in charge, Colonel Paul Fischer, he decided to treat the carriers like human beings instead of the terrorist animals they were. One of them… one of them got loose, tore off my wife’s mask and… coughed and spit in her face.”
Sara’s eyes widened with fear. She was probably imagining herself in Clarissa’s shoes. Trying to, anyway—who could really know what it felt like to have someone breathe death in your face?
Colding continued. He couldn’t stop himself now. “They brought Clarissa to an ICU. She caught pneumonia, got through that, but the bird flu gave her viral myocarditis.”
“Which is?”
“Viral infection of the heart. Came on particularly fast for her. Damaged the muscle tissue, made her heart weak, made it swell. Basically destroyed it.”
Sara’s hand went to her mouth. She was such a tomboy, but that gesture of empathy for a dead woman she’d never met ached with femininity. “Couldn’t they give her a transplant?”