The Cold Nowhere

59

It happened fast, and it happened slowly.

Ken howled in pain, and his body spasmed as the knife sliced through his nerve endings and severed his artery. Blood erupted. A red fountain. The arm he held around Serena’s neck gave way, and she spun out of his grasp. She slipped on the ice and went to her knees. Ken swayed, his gun arm shot skyward, but as he collapsed against the wall, the gun was still locked in his hand.

A mortal threat.

Stride saw it happening and couldn’t stop it. He shouted. He screamed. He took a shot himself in the same split-second, but his bullet struck the wall above Ken McCarty’s head and ricocheted harmlessly up into the cross-beams of the freeway.

He heard the wind. He heard cars racing.

His flashlight beam lit up Ken’s drunken dance and glinted on the metal of the gun, and the gun danced, too, danced and swung. With the tiniest twitch of Ken’s finger, it fired. The gun spat flame. The shot was like a bomb.

The bullet drove into Serena.

*

Flashbacks.

Stride didn’t remember throwing himself over the wall into the creek. He knelt over Serena and saw the faces of the other women he’d lost, as if they lay beside her. He was at their death beds, when it was too late to change anything, when they were already out of his grasp.

‘Michaela.’

His finger in the blood of her neck. No pulse.

‘Michaela!’

His voice choked and ragged.

Her eyes closed, angelic. He put his hands on her cheeks; they were still warm, as if life had only just left them. Minutes earlier, she’d begged for his help, but in the time it took to reach her, he was already too late. He’d already failed her.

He was conscious of Ken McCarty limping toward the archway. He didn’t chase him. Ken had nowhere to go.

Serena was on her back. The dank, frozen water puddled around her. Her upper body was matted in blood, so much blood. More blood than one body should give up. Her eyes were open, but she was looking over his shoulder, at the angels, seeing visions of things to come.

‘Don’t look there,’ he told her. ‘Look into my eyes. Stay with me.’

‘Cindy.’

The shell of his beautiful wife.

He heard her breathing catch. Each breath was a labored effort. Each one came a little harder and a little farther apart.

Her lips moved. Cindy murmured something he didn’t understand. Stride leaned closer. The sight of her skin, and the smell of disease lingering on her body, crushed him. It wasn’t his battle to fight. He was a bystander in the worst event of his life.

She tried again. He tried to hear her.

‘It’s okay, Jonny.’

It was a whisper that didn’t sound like her at all. He didn’t understand. She couldn’t be telling him that everything was all right, because nothing was all right. But for an instant, he saw a glimmer in her eyes that reminded him of who she was.

She spoke again. It was a terrible effort.

‘It’s what I want now.’

He nodded. He could never accept it, but she could. She had to. There was no other choice.

He brushed his lips against hers. When he moved back, her eyes were closed again. The gasping, painful sound of her breath was gone, replaced by peaceful silence. The color left her face. He sat there, staring at her, and he found he could talk again. He told her how cold it was. He reminded her of that camping trip in the spring and how they had laughed together. He told her how beautiful she was and how much he loved her. He was still talking when the doctors came and led him away.

‘Serena, look at me,’ he begged her. ‘Look at me. Stay with me. Help’s coming. Help’s almost here.’

He leaned in, kissed her, stroked her wet, dirty hair in the creek.

‘I love you. Don’t go.’

*

Ken McCarty coughed. Blood flecked from his mouth. He didn’t have to make it far. His car was near the freeway where he’d crashed it. He still had that cabin near Solon Springs waiting for him. He could hide there while he healed.

He put a hand on the wall and it left a bloody print. It didn’t matter.

Outside the graffiti graveyard, the night looked darker than it had before, as if the darkness were in his eyes. The rocks on the slope under the freeway looked funny. He realized it was because he was on all fours. Crawling. The mud and snow squished through his fingers.

He coughed. Liquid dripped from his neck. More blood made little pearls dotting the rocks, like a spatter painting. It would be easier to sleep. Sleep here, rest here, then get in the car and head across the bridge into Wisconsin in the sunshine of the morning. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

No. He had to keep going. He couldn’t wait for daylight.

Ken pushed himself to his feet, an effort that felt impossibly hard. He saw his car. The light post was on top of it. The doors were open. He could reach it; he could run; he could escape. He took a wobbly step and sank to his knees again. Something cold pressed into his head. It was a feathery touch, but it nearly knocked him over. The barrel of a gun.

‘Hello, Ken,’ Maggie said.

Somewhere behind her, he saw flashing lights. He heard sirens. Police cars. Fire trucks. Ambulances. People running. People hurrying past him into the graffiti graveyard. Shouts. Radios.

‘I was hoping to shoot you but it doesn’t look like I need to bother,’ she told him.

‘Huh?’ Nothing made sense now.

‘You have a knife sticking out of your neck,’ she explained. ‘Looks like it got your carotid. Payback’s a bitch.’

‘Think I’m dying,’ he said.

‘I think so.’

‘Help me.’

‘Not much to help, Ken.’

‘Come with me.’

‘Not where you’re going.’

*

‘Serena,’ Stride said.

He saw the lights and heard the stampede of boots. They were coming for her.

‘Serena,’ he repeated.

She didn’t answer. She was still looking beyond him, as if she could see things that living persons shouldn’t see. He wanted her frozen green eyes to move. He wanted her to see him kneeling over her.

‘Don’t you dare leave me,’ he told her.

Brooke Hahne sat in the dirty, icy water six feet away. She shivered uncontrollably, her knees pressed together. Her fists were clenched in front of her face. She didn’t say a word; there was nothing to say, even though she had led them here to this place. He wanted to hate her, and he couldn’t.

Cat knelt beside him. Their eyes met, and in that moment she might as well have been his own daughter. His own flesh. He loved her; he needed her. The girl took his hand and squeezed it fiercely. She pulled Serena’s hand out of the water and clutched it, too, like a chain among the three of them. Cat’s eyes closed. Her head tilted toward an invisible sky.

He heard her murmuring, praying, over and over, the same words.

‘Do not take her, do not take her, do not take her, do not take her, do not take her, do not take her.’

The medics were on top of them. They moved to gently push them away.

Stride took Serena’s other hand as they gathered around her. He and Cat held onto her, refusing to let go, as if blood and warmth could pass through their bodies. He prayed, too. The same words, aloud, in unison. Do not take her. Not after Michaela. Not after Cindy. There could be no more loss.

He held his breath, and out of nothingness something changed, like a miracle happening. He saw her eyes shift, finding his face, recognizing him again. She turned away from the angels and let them go.

There was life in her hand.