The woods ended at a metal house that smelled of human blood and human death. Yellow strips hung around it. There were metal man-things in the weeds and lying on the crushed stone in front. Mixed in with the death scents was another, something he had never smelled before. Not a human smell, exactly, but like a human smell.
And female.
Putting aside his fear of the wild pigs, the fox moved away from the metal house, limping and occasionally collapsing on his side while he panted and waited for the pain to subside. Then he went on. He had to go on. That scent was exotic, both sweet and bitter at the same time, irresistible. Perhaps it would take him to a place of safety. It didn’t seem likely, but the fox was desperate.
That exotic smell grew stronger. Mixed into it was another female smell, but this one was fresher and clearly human. The fox paused to sniff at one of Lila’s shoe prints in the loam, then a patch of white stuff in the shape of a bare human foot.
A small bird fluttered down to a low-hanging branch. Not a hawk this time. This was a kind of bird the fox had never seen before. It was green. A scent drifted from it, humid and tangy, for which the fox had no context. It fluffed its wings self-importantly.
“Please don’t sing,” the fox said.
“All right,” the green bird said. “I rarely do at night, anyway. I see you are bleeding. Does it hurt?”
The fox was too tired to dissemble. “Yes.”
“Roll in the web. It will stop the pain.”
“It will poison me,” the fox said. His back was burning, but he knew about poison, oh yes. The humans poisoned everything. It was their best talent.
“No. The poison is leaving these woods. Roll in the web.”
Perhaps the bird was lying, but the fox saw no other recourse. He fell on his side, then rolled onto his back, as he sometimes did in deer scat, to confuse his scent. Blessed coolness doused the pain in his back and haunch. He rolled once more, then sprang to his feet, looking up at the branch with bright eyes.
“What are you? Where did you come from?” the fox asked.
“The Mother Tree.”
“Where is it?”
“Follow your nose,” said the green bird, and flew off into the darkness.
The fox went from one bare webbed footprint to the next, pausing twice more to roll in them. They cooled him and refreshed him and gave him strength. The woman-scent remained quite strong, that exotic not-quite-woman-scent fainter. Together they told the fox a story. The not-woman had come first and gone east, toward the metal house and the shed that was now burned. The real woman had come later, back-trailing the not-woman to some destination ahead, and then, later, returning to the stinking metal house with the yellow strips around it.
The fox followed the entwined scents into a brushy brake, up the other side, and through a stand of stunted fir trees. Tattered webs hung from some of the branches, giving off that exotic not-woman smell. Beyond was a clearing. The fox trotted into it. He trotted easily now, and felt he could not just run if one of those pigs showed up, but glide away. In the clearing he sat, looking up at a tree that seemed made of many trunks wrapped around each other. It rose into the dark sky higher than he could see. Although there was no wind, the tree rustled, as if talking to itself. Here the not-woman smell was lost in a hundred other traces of scent. Many birds and many animals, none of which the fox knew.
A cat came padding around from the far side of the great tree. Not a wildcat; it was much bigger. And it was white. In the dark, its green eyes were like lamps. Although the instinct to run from predators was bone-deep in the fox, he did not move. The great white tiger padded steadily toward him. The grass of the clearing rustled as it bent beneath the dense fur of its belly.
When the tiger was only five feet away, the fox lay down and rolled over, showing his own belly in submission. A fox might harbor some pride, but dignity was useless.
“Get up,” the tiger said.
The fox got to his feet and timidly stretched his neck forward to touch the tiger’s nose.
“Are you healed?” the tiger asked.
“Yes.”
“Then listen to me, fox.”
In her prison cell, Evie Black lay with her eyes closed and a faint smile on her lips.
“Then listen to me, fox,” she said. “I have work for you.”
CHAPTER 16
Clint was about to ask Tig Murphy to buzz him out through the main door, but Assistant Warden Lawrence Hicks came buzzing in first.
“Where are you going, Dr. Norcross?”
The question sounded like an accusation, but at least it came out clearly. Although Lore Hicks looked disheveled—his hair a mussed halo around his bald spot, stubble on his jowly cheeks, dark circles under his eyes—the Novocain from his morning dental procedure seemed to have worn off.
“To town. I need to see my wife and son.”
“Did Janice okay that?”
Clint took a beat to control his temper. It helped to remind himself that Hicks had either lost his wife to Aurora or would soon. That did not change the fact that the man standing before him was the last guy you wanted in charge of an institution like Dooling in a time of crisis. Janice had once told Clint that her second-in-command had less than thirty credit hours of Prison Management—from a degree-mill in Oklahoma—and no hours at all in Prison Administration.
“But Hicksie’s sister is married to the lieutenant governor,” Janice had said. She’d had an extra glass of Pinot on that occasion. Or maybe it had been two. “So you do the math. He’s great at scheduling and checking inventory, but he’s been here sixteen months, and I’m not sure he could find his way to C Wing without a map. He doesn’t like to leave his office, and he’s never done a single duty tour, although that’s supposed to be a monthly requirement. He’s scared of the bad girls.”
You’ll be leaving your office tonight, Hicksie, Clint thought, and you’ll be touring, too. Strapping on a walkie and making three-wing rounds, just like the other uniforms. The ones that are left.
“Did you hear me?” Hicks asked now. “Did Janice okay you leaving?”
“I have three things for you,” Clint said. “First thing, I was scheduled out at three PM, which was…” He checked his watch. “About six hours ago.”
“But—”
“Wait. Here’s the second thing. Warden Coates is asleep on her couch, inside a big white cocoon.”
Hicks wore thick glasses that had a magnifying effect. When he widened his eyes, as he did now, they looked ready to fall out of their sockets. “What?”
“Long story short, Don Peters finally tripped over his own dick. Got caught molesting an inmate. Janice canned his ass, but Don managed to load up her coffee with her prescription Xanax. It put her down fast. And before you ask, Don is in the wind. When I see Lila, I’ll tell her to put out a BOLO for him, but I doubt if it will be a priority. Not tonight.”
“Oh my God.” Hicks ran his hands through his hair, further disarraying what was left of it. “Oh… my… God.”
“Here’s the third thing. We do still have the other four officers from the morning shift: Rand Quigley, Millie Olson, Tig Murphy, and Vanessa Lampley. You are number five. You’ll need to make midnight rounds with the others. Oh, and Van will bring you up to speed on what the inmates are calling Super Coffee. Jeanette Sorley and Angel Fitzroy are pushing it.”