“Pay them no mind,” Bruce told them, walking ahead of them. “Just keep moving.”
They continued deeper into the woods. At one point, Todd looked over his shoulder to where the children had been standing, and was surprised and a bit unnerved to find that they had vanished. He imagined packs of feral children, disfigured in their featurelessness, roaming the forested hillsides of the state for years and years to come.
In the basement of the sheriff’s station, Kate attempted to keep Charlie and Cody occupied by playing board games with them. They’d gotten through one full game of Monopoly and were halfway through Life when Cody began to whimper. The little girl climbed up onto one of the empty cots and curled into a fetal position. Worried, Kate got up and sat down on the edge of the girl’s cot.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
Cody just rubbed her eyes with her fist.
Kate pressed the back of her hand to the girl’s forehead. “She’s warm.”
Seated cross-legged on her own cot across the room, Molly grunted and began stacking pillows around her. “Are you a nurse or something?”
Kate ignored her. She stood and searched randomly around the desktop for anything that was not a bottle of liquor. In one of the desk drawers she located some bottled water. She opened one of the bottles and gave it to Cody. The girl took a few hesitant sips, then lay back down on the cot.
“I think your sister’s got a fever,” she said to Charlie.
“She gets headaches,” Charlie informed her.
“Does she? What kind?”
Charlie shrugged. He was picking at the rubber sole of one of his sneakers. “I don’t know. She used to take medicine.”
Oh please, you’re fucking with me, kid, Kate thought. “What kind of medicine, Charlie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it special medicine or just aspirin?”
“What’s a ass-prin?” he said. “I don’t know what that means.”
Molly snickered.
“Something funny?” Kate said, looking at Molly from the corner of her eye while she unfolded a blanket and placed it over Cody. The little girl was shivering now.
“You’re trying to be that little girl’s mother,” Molly said.
“No,” Kate corrected, “I’m trying to take care of her because no one else is here to do that.”
“Do you have any kids of your own?”
“No.” She hated answering Molly’s questions, humoring the bitch like that, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Are you unable?”
“Excuse me?” She felt some of the old Kate Jansen return to her—the Kate Jansen who would have gotten up, swaggered over to snide little potbellied Molly, and cracked her across the jaw. Lord knew she’d done similar things to nicer people in the past.
“I’m just saying,” Molly crooned, continuing to fluff her pillows. “It’s just, you’ve been fawning all over those two ever since you got here. It’s like you’re trying to make up for something.”
“Are we seriously having this conversation?”
“It’s just talk,” Molly said, as if her comments thus far had been completely innocent. “I’m just passing the time.”
“Well, you can pass it by telling me where I could find some aspirin.”
Molly shrugged and looked bored. She picked up one of the paperback novels stacked beside her cot and absently thumbed through the pages. “This is a police station,” she intoned, no longer looking up at Kate. “I’m sure there’s Tylenol or something around here somewhere.”
Kate tucked the blanket up under Cody’s arms and legs, then stood, running her fingers through her hair. Part of her was holding on to Gerald, and how worried he must be by now that he hadn’t heard from her…but a larger part was out there with Todd. Standing in the doorway of the sheriff’s station as they headed down to the road, she’d had the sinking feeling that she would never see him again.
“I’m going to find some aspirin,” Kate announced, and left.
They reached the river and found it frozen. It was about twenty feet wide and couldn’t possibly be very deep; nonetheless, Todd did not like the idea of plowing through the ice even up to his shins. It was cold enough out here that his feet would freeze instantly. And there would be no turning back until after they’d completed their task. He would just have to be careful.
“You can use these overhangs for handholds,” Brendan said, inching his way out onto the ice while he gripped overhanging tree limbs like monkey bars. “They don’t go all the way across but it’s better than nothing.”
“We should probably go one at a time,” Todd said, bending down to survey the thickness of the ice. He thumped a gloved knuckle against it and it seemed sturdy enough.
When his handholds ran out, Brendan stretched his arms out like airplane wings. He took minuscule steps and looked like a tightrope walker overcautious of his balance. On the other side of the streambed, the scraggly twists of overhanging limbs dropped back down; Brendan’s long arms rose and he gripped the limbs. A number of branches snapped away and shattered like glass on the surface of the frozen stream.
With two ungraceful bounds, Brendan made it to the other side of the stream. He executed an awkward bow that nearly sent him tumbling back onto the ice, before seating himself in the Y of a nearby tree. He lit a cigarette, looking like someone waiting for a bus.
Bruce eased himself out onto the ice next. As Brendan had done before him, he utilized the overhanging limbs to facilitate his way out to the center of the frozen stream. Releasing the last of the limbs, the deputy sheriff crossed the center of the stream much quicker than Brendan, his balance more aligned and steady. He didn’t even bother grabbing for the overhanging branches on the far end of the streambed; he simply continued across at a steady pace, half sliding, half galloping.
When Bruce made it to the other side, Brendan handed him his cigarette and Bruce sucked the life out of it.
Todd slid out onto the ice, one hand groping for the branches above his head. He grabbed a sturdy one and inched out farther onto the ice. Beneath him, the ice felt solid. Thankfully, blessedly solid. As Brendan and Bruce had done, he used the overhead branches as support until he got to the center of the stream. But then he took an overzealous step and heard something that sounded like a bone breaking.
He looked down and saw a hairline fracture in the ice. It ran perpendicular underneath his right foot. Holding his breath, he lifted his boot and took one easy step backward. His heart was suddenly racing.
Something clutched at his hair.
Todd uttered a cry and jerked down, feeling something clawlike scrape his scalp. His knees gave out, sending him backward toward the ice. The world spun.
“Shit—”
He struck the ice with the center of his back—a solid punch that knocked the wind from his lungs. Instantly, he became aware of a bizarre sense of give, of surrender, and freezing water was suddenly infiltrating his clothes. He struggled to sit up but couldn’t; the small of his back had crashed through the ice, trapping him like a turtle that has been turned on its back.
Bruce and Brendan snapped to their feet on the far side of the stream. “Rope!” Bruce yelled. “Todd! Hey, Todd!”
Todd’s legs pumped at the air. The heavy police coat was becoming saturated and heavy. The back of his head was against a shelf of ice…but he soon heard that beginning to crack and break, too.
If that goes, he thought, I’m going under. For all I know, this little stream could be twenty feet deep…
Something flitted in front of his eyes. He felt something sting the side of his face: Bruce’s rope whipping across his cheek. Blindly, Todd groped for it. He found it and wrapped the rope around both his hands just as the shelf of ice at the back of his head broke apart. He felt his head snap back on his neck, followed by the heart-stopping sting of the freezing waters that engulfed him. His whole face went under, his arms pinwheeling, his legs bicycling in the air.