downhill, letting gravity decide which direction she should take. Mountains lead to valleys. Valleys lead to streams. Streams lead to people. Oh hell, it sounded good, but was it true? Already her knees were stiffening up, the aftermath of the fall she’d taken. Another tumble and she might not be able to walk at all.
And now another pain gripped her. It brought her up short, catching her in midbreath. A contraction. She doubled over, waiting for it to pass. When at last she could straighten again, she was drenched in sweat.
Something rustled behind her. She whirled and faced a wall of impenetrable shadow. She felt evil closing in. All at once she was running away from it, tree branches slashing her face, panic shrieking at her.
On the downhill slope she lost her footing and began to tumble, and would have slammed belly first onto the ground if she had not caught herself on a sapling.
Then the trees magically evaporated. She broke through a last tangle of vines and her feet slammed onto packed earth. Stunned and gasping, she stared across ripples of reflected moonlight. A lake. A road.
And, in the distance, perched on a point, the silhouette of a small cabin.
She took a few steps and stopped, groaning as another contraction gripped her in its fist, squeezing so tightly she could not breathe, could do nothing but crouch there in the road. Nausea flooded her throat. She heard water slap against the shore, and the cry of a bird on the lake. Dizziness washed over her, threatening to drag her down to her knees.
She staggered forward, the contraction easing now. Pushed herself onward, the cabin a shadowy hope. She started to run, her knee throbbing with every slap of her shoe against the dirt road. Faster, she thought. He can see you here against the lake’s reflection. Run before the next pain clamps down. How many minutes until the next one? Five, ten? The cabin looked so far away.
She was pushing herself all out, now, legs pumping, air roaring in and out of her lungs. Hope was like rocket fuel.
The cabin windows were dark. She rapped on the door anyway, not daring to shout for fear her voice would carry back up the road, up the mountain. There was no answer.
She hesitated only a second.
Inside she smelled cedar and stale air. A vacation house that had been closed up and neglected too long. Glass crunched under her shoes as she hunted for a wall switch. An instant after the lights came on, she realized: He’ll see it.
She looked around the room and saw a fireplace, stacked wood, furniture with plaid upholstery, but no phone.
She ran into the kitchen and spotted a handset on the counter. Picked it up and was already dialing 911 when she realized there was no dial tone. The line was dead.
In the living room, broken glass skittered across the floor.
She slipped out the kitchen door and quietly closed it behind her. Found herself standing in a small garage. Moonlight filtered in through a single window, just bright enough for her to make out the low silhouette of a rowboat cradled in its trailer. No other cover, no place to hide. She backed away from the kitchen door, shrinking as far into the shadows as she could. Her shoulder bumped up against a shelf, rattling metal, stirring the smell of long-gathered dust. She reached out blindly along the shelf for a weapon and felt old paint cans, their lids caked shut. Felt paint brushes, the hairs shellacked solid. Then her fingers closed around a screwdriver, and she snatched it up. Such a pitiful weapon, about as lethal as a nail file. The runt cousin of all screwdrivers.
The light under the kitchen door rippled. A shadow moved across the glowing crack. Stopped.
So did her breathing. She backed toward the garage bay door, her heart battering its way to her throat. Only one choice left.
She reached down for the handle and pulled. The door squealed as it slid up the tracks, a shriek announcing:
Just as the kitchen door flew open, she scrambled out under the bay door and ran into the night. She knew he could see her moving along that pitilessly exposed shore. She knew she could not outpace him. Yet she struggled forward along the moon-silvered lake, the mud sucking at her shoes. She heard him moving closer through the clattering cattail reeds. Swim, she thought. Into the lake. She veered toward the water.
And suddenly doubled over as the next contraction seized her. This was pain like none she had ever known. It dropped her to her knees. She splashed down into ankle-deep water as the pain crescendoed, clamping her so tightly in its jaws that for a moment her vision went black and she felt herself tilting sideways, toppling. She tasted mud. Writhed, coughing, onto her back, as helpless as an overturned tortoise. The contraction faded. The stars slowly brightened in the sky. She could feel water caressing her hair, lapping at her cheeks. Not cold at all, but warm as a bath. She heard the splash of his footsteps, the snapping of reeds. Watched the cattails part.
And then he was there, standing above her, towering against the sky. Here to claim his prize.
He knelt beside her, and the water’s reflection glinted in his eyes in pinpoints of light. What he held in his hand gleamed as well: a knife’s silvery streak. He seemed to know, as he crouched over her body, that she was spent. That her soul was only waiting for release from its exhausted shell.
He grasped the waistband of her maternity slacks and pulled it down, revealing the white dome of her belly. And still she did not move, but lay catatonic. Already surrendered, already dead.
He placed one hand on her abdomen; with the other, he grasped the knife, lowering the blade toward bared flesh, bending toward her to make the first cut.
Water fountained up in a silvery splash as her hand suddenly shot up from the mud. As she aimed the tip of the screwdriver toward his face. Muscles taut with fury, she drove it upward, the pathetic little weapon suddenly launched with lethal aim at his eye.
She thrust deep, felt the weapon penetrate bone and brain, until the handle lodged in the socket and could sink no deeper.
He dropped without uttering a sound.
For a moment she could not move. He had fallen across her thighs, and she could feel the heat of his blood soaking through her clothes. The dead are heavy, so much heavier than the living. She pushed, grunting with the effort, repulsed by the touch of him. At last she rolled him away and he splashed onto his back among the reeds.
She stumbled to her feet and staggered toward higher ground. Away from the water, away from the blood. She collapsed farther up on the bank, dropping onto a bed of grass. There she lay as the next contraction came and went. And the next, and the next. Through pain-dimmed eyes she watched the quarter moon wheel across the heavens. Saw the stars fade and a pink glow seep into the eastern sky.
As the sun lifted over the horizon, Mattie Purvis welcomed her daughter into the world.
THIRTY
TURKEY VULTURES TRACED LAZY CIRCLES in the sky, the black-winged heralds of fresh carrion. The dead do not long escape Mother Nature’s attention. The perfume of decomposition draws blowflies and beetles, crows and rodents, all converging on Death’s bounty. And how am I any different? Maura thought, as she headed down the grassy bank toward the water. She too was drawn to the dead, to poke and prod cold flesh like any scavenger. This was such a beautiful place for so grim a task. The sky was a cloudless blue, the lake like silvered glass. But at the water’s edge, a white sheet draped what the vultures, circling above, were so eager to feast on.
