Page 2

At least he hasn’t woken up yet. Makes dragging him a little easier if he’s not fighting for his freedom. I kick the back door open and heave him out into the shivery autumn air. The leaves are mostly off the trees at this point, but the sky is that brilliant, impossible October blue. It reminds me of the day Mary died.

The first Mary. The one I didn’t kill.

My body goes hot with anger, remembering it. I heave my victim around, throwing him on the patch of dying grass by the stump where I was splitting logs. He lies there, unmoving, and my anger courses like fire through my veins. He looks nothing like the man who tortured and killed my Mary. That man was thin and sleek and rich, with a waxed mustache and neat, slicked-back hair. But it was a man who did it, and through the distortion of my gas mask, I can almost pretend it’s him lying there in the dirt.

I want him awake and screaming when I do this.

I leave the back door hanging open. Careless, I know that. Just like it’s careless to leave the blood on the tile in the storefront, careless not to at least go in and lock up. Someone else could come by. Maybe I want them to. It would just mean more killing.

I grab the water hose, yank it out, turn the water on. When I blast the victim’s face, he howls and sits up, his panic thick and choking, the scent of it almost enough to drown out the scent of autumn. I toss the hose aside, let it keep running so the dirt turns to mud.

The victim scrambles backward, eyes glazed, movements sluggish. “What the—where am I?” His words are slurred from me knocking him out. I probably cleared out some of his memory, too. He blinks, whipping his head around, and then his gaze settles on me again.

He shrieks and tries to get to his feet, although in his panic, he just trips and slams back among my split logs.

“Get the fuck away from me!” he shouts, the words still slurring together. I lift my axe and step toward him, squeezing my hands around the handle. My palms are chapped from the cold and from chopping wood. I never bother with gloves when I’m doing chores, or when I’m killing someone.

My victim fumbles for something in his jacket. A gun, probably. It doesn’t matter. My blood is up, and that makes me even quicker than I normally am.

I swing the axe, only this time, the sharp end is pointed at his head.

It hits his skull with a sound not that dissimilar from splitting wood. But unlike wood, his body is filled with hot, unctuous blood, and it fans out of him when I pull out the axe, splattering across the dying grass. He makes a strangled, choking scream and lifts his hands toward the wound, the gun forgotten. I swing again, bringing the axe down into his neck, deep enough that his head falls sideways.

He’s gone now. I feel it happen, his heart erupting into cardiac arrest from the terror and the panic. I keep swinging, though. The blood splatters across my mask, turning the world red. It soaks hot and thick through my clothes. I come, something I usually don’t do, the pleasure hot in my belly. It’s a small pleasure, though. Unsatisfying.

Just like killing this man is unsatisfying. He’s not a Mary. I can’t pretend, even for a second, that I have her in my arms again. The blood feels good, hot and sticky, but it’s wrong. It’s all wrong.

I throw my axe aside and wrench off my gas mask so I can look at the mess I made. The man’s head has separated from his body, rolled off to join my firewood. Everything else is just mangled meat. I breathe it in, the scent of death, then smear some of the blood across my face, like that’ll help. It doesn’t.

I stumble over to the hose and turn off the water, then I slump down into the cold mud and stare at my victim, breathing hard. It slaked the urge to kill, I guess. That’s something. My skin doesn’t feel so hot and tight and itchy. But the sky is still that terrible October blue, and my chest still feels empty.

It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Mary.

Of course, none of them are. But sometimes, they come close.

I breathe out, dropping my head between my legs. A car drives by on the road out front, although it doesn’t stop. I just hear the roar of it flying past, a reminder of the world outside my trap.

I’m shaking a little. I need to clean up. Wipe down the evidence up front. Shower. Cart the body down into the deep woods, get rid of the truck. God, there’s always so much fucking work afterward. I hadn’t been thinking about it, in the split second I decided to kill this man, hoping it would help.

I force myself up to standing and stumble into my back room. The CCTV screens glow softly. No one’s on my property. But I stand there, dripping blood, watching the screens longer than I should, like I can will the perfect victim to arrive.

She never does.

1

PENELOPE

THREE WEEKS LATER

My stomach grumbles, reminding me yet again that it’s been a vacant pit for the last two hours. Unfortunately, I’ve already eaten the last of the beef jerky and crackers and apple slices that I had packed up, nice and tidy, when I set out from Chicago two days ago. The ham-and-cheese sandwiches, too. And the entire bag of Cheetos.

Clearly, I didn’t plan this well.

I’m not sure how much farther it is until I get to my destination: Clifwell, a secretive, obscenely wealthy town nestled on the western side of Foster Peak. If I were on the main highway, it’d probably only be another two hours or so. But I’m not on the highway. I’m on a two-lane back road where I haven’t passed another car for at least thirty minutes.

Or a gas station, for that matter. They’re everywhere on the main roads, bright and glossy and stuffed to the brim with junk food and hot food alike. Unfortunately, they’re also surveilled to the fucking gills. Cameras everywhere: guarding the aisles, watching the cash registers, monitoring the parking lots. And with what me and my friend Adrian have planned in Clifwell, I don’t want to get caught on camera unless I really, really have to.

That doesn’t help me feel any less hungry, though.