Chapter 15
Liam did not draw the pistol.
He had thought about that moment, in some corner of himself, for six days. He had thought about what he would do if it ever looked out of her eyes at him in daylight, and he had promised himself, in the dark on the water, that he would be ready.
He was not ready.
He stood in the white light ten feet from her and his hand did not move and every plan he had ever made came apart at once.
"That's better," it said.
Chloe's mouth was smiling. It was not her smile. Liam had spent two years learning that face and this was a thing wearing it, and the wrongness of it went through him like a knife.
"You're very good," it said. "Nobody's ever worked me out before. Eight months in those trees and twenty-two people and not one of them ever got past ghost." Chloe's head tilted. "And you had it in a night. It's been a very long time since anything surprised me."
"Get out of her," Liam said.
"No."
"Get out of her now—"
"Liam." It sighed, with Chloe's lungs. "Sit down. You look tired."
"Liam." James Wilford's voice, low and steady, from behind him. "Don't answer it. Whatever it says. Don't."
"Ah," it said.
Chloe's eyes moved past Liam, and found the old man, and something in that dead face lit up.
"The preacher," it said.
James Wilford went white.
"I've been listening to you for a day and a half," it said warmly.
"You're marvelous. You're the most interesting thing that's happened to me in years. Do you know what you are?"
Chloe's head tilted the other way. "You're a man who wants to die and has built a very beautiful architecture on top of it so that nobody will notice, including you."
"I know what I am," James said.
"Do you? Because I don't think you did, before Tuesday." Her voice was gentle. It was terribly gentle. "You said no to those men, Pastor. Twice. And they killed forty-one people in front of you, and you have told yourself ever since that you were brave."
"Stop," Liam said.
"You weren't brave." Chloe's face was kind. "You were proud. You had spent thirty-one years being the man who stands up, and you could not bear, in front of your own congregation, to be the man who sat down. So you said no. And Dale Amberson's brains went out on the grass."
James Wilford did not move.
"And the terrible part," it said, "the part you cannot say out loud, is that you have never once, not for one second, been sure that you would do differently."
"That's enough," Liam said.
"He knows I'm right."
"I said that's enough."
And James Wilford said, quietly, "It is right."
Liam turned.
The old man was standing very straight with his Bible held against his chest, and there were tears running down his face, and he was looking at the thing in Chloe's body with absolute steadiness.
"It's right," he said again. "And I have known it since Tuesday, and I have not said it to a living soul, and it is a great relief to hear it said."
The thing stopped smiling.
"So say your next thing," James said. "Because that one's spent."
Nobody breathed.
And then it laughed.
"Oh, I like you," it said. "I like all of you. Do you know how rare that is? I've had eight months of that swamp. Twenty-two of them, sitting in their box, and they were so tired, and their grief was so simple."
Chloe's hands spread. "And then a boat comes into my cove with three people on it who have walked across a continent, and one of them goes into the water, and I got to ride."
"You made her row," Liam said.
"I asked her to."
"You made her—"
"I asked her," it said, "and she said no, for six days, and she was very strong, and then I told her something true and she rowed the boat."
"What."
"I told her you'd never get here in time," it said.
Liam's stomach dropped.
"I told her about the powder barge," it said, "which I heard about on your own boat, from your own mouths, because you all talk so much. I told her that four hundred men were coming and that you had four rounds and a code you'd never memorized.
And I told her that if she rowed north on the flood tide she could be at that door in six hours and be inside before the war started."
Chloe's face was luminous.
"And she believed me," it said. "Because it was true. And she rowed that boat with a hole in her side for six hours and she opened that door to save your camp, and every stroke of it was hers."
Liam felt the room move.
"She's still in there," he whispered.
"Of course she's still in there."
"Chloe."
"She can hear you," it said pleasantly. "She's been listening this whole time. She's been screaming at you since I turned around, actually, but she can't get to the mouth, and I'm afraid she isn't going to."
Liam took a step forward.
"Chloe, if you can hear me—"
"She can."
"Fight it."
"She's been fighting it for eleven hours," it said, "which is why her hands came off the door, and why there's a note out there in the street, and I would like you to understand that I did not let her do that. She beat me. For eleven minutes.
And it cost her everything she had and she will never do it again."
Chloe's bleeding feet took a step forward.
"And now," it said, "we're going to talk about the stairwell."
"No," Liam said.
"I need it open."
"Then you're going to be disappointed."
"Liam." It smiled again, and this time it was not kind at all.
"I have been in this world for a very long time and I have never once been able to pick something up. Do you know what that's like? Eight months and I couldn't move a spoon on a wire. Two years in that swamp before those people ever came, and I couldn't turn over a leaf."
Chloe's hands came up and flexed.
"And now I have hands," it said. "And behind that door there is a freezer full of the only thing in this world that ever moved without being touched."
The room went absolutely still.
"You want the sickness," Marcus Vance said.
He had come out from between the racks. His face was gray and his glasses were crooked and the .45 was hanging at his side, forgotten.
"I want the thing that spreads," it said.
And for the first time, something came out from behind the smile, and it was not human, and Liam felt every hair on his body stand up.
"You built something that goes from person to person," it said, and Chloe's voice had gone soft and hungry. "In the air. In the water. In a cough. It gets into a body and it makes copies of itself and it moves, and moves, and moves, and it does not need to ask permission."
Chloe's head tilted.
"I have spent my whole existence," it said, "standing outside doors and begging."
Liam looked at the red light on the stairwell door.
And he understood, with a horror so complete that it went past fear and out the other side into a kind of terrible calm, exactly what he was standing in front of.
"You'd be in every body on earth," he said.
"Yes."
"Everyone who breathed it in."
"Yes."
"That's not a plague." Liam's voice did not shake. "That's not what it would be. It'd be you. Everywhere. In everyone."
"Yes," it said, and Chloe Buck's face was radiant with joy.
Marcus Vance raised the .45.
He did it fast for an old man, and he did it with both hands, and the muzzle came up and steadied on Chloe's chest at fifteen feet.
"Don't," Liam said.
"Son, get out of the way."
"Don't."
"It cannot get down there without a body."
Marcus's arms were shaking but the gun was not.
"It said so itself. It has no hands. Take away the hands and it is a voice in a swamp forever, and I have been sitting in this room for two years and four months waiting to be useful and this is the thing, this is the one thing—"
"That's my friend," Liam said.
"I know."
"Doctor—"
"I know, son." Marcus's voice broke. "And I am sixty-eight years old and my brother walked two thousand miles and I will carry this one, and you will not, and I am sorry."
The thing in Chloe's body did not move.
It stood there in front of a locked door with its bleeding feet on the concrete, and it watched an old man point a .45 at its chest, and it smiled.
"Go on," it said.
Marcus's finger tightened.
"Go on, Doctor," it said. "Kill the girl. And then explain it to him." Chloe's eyes moved to Liam. "And then live with him. In this room. For the rest of your life."
"Shut up," Marcus said.
"You couldn't even open a door in a hallway," it said. "You've been in here two years because you were afraid to walk outside."
"Shut up."
"And now you've finally found a thing you're brave enough to do," it said, "and it's shooting a girl in the back."
Marcus Vance's arms began to come down.
And Isaiah Macklemore said, "Nobody's shooting anybody."
He walked past Liam.
He walked past all of them, straight out into the middle of that white room, unarmed, with his hands empty at his sides and the .40 still snapped shut on his hip, and he stopped six feet from the thing in Chloe's body.
"Isaiah," Liam said. "Isaiah, get back—"
"Hello, Chloe," Isaiah said.
The thing looked at him.
"She's not—"
"I know she's not here," Isaiah said. "I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to her. Shut up."
And it did.
Liam saw it. He saw the thing in Chloe's face stop, for a fraction of a second, out of sheer astonishment, and Isaiah kept talking straight through the gap.
"Chloe, it's Isaiah," he said. "I know you can hear me and I know you can't answer and that's fine, you don't have to answer, just listen."
"This is pathetic," it said.
"You told me at the marina to get down," Isaiah said. "Do you remember? You were up at the bow with the fouled line and I was at the wheel and you told Liam you'd almost got it, and I heard you, and I did not look at the bow."
Chloe's face was still.
"I have thought about that every single hour for eleven days," Isaiah said. "And this thing has been using it on me all week, and it worked, because it was true, and I let it work, because I thought that if I hurt enough about it, that would count for something."
He took a step forward.
"It doesn't count for anything," he said. "Hurting isn't paying. I learned that from an old woman in a cabin in Wisconsin and I forgot it, and I'm saying it out loud now so it can hear me say it, because it's the only weapon it had on me and I'm taking it back."
"Isaiah," Liam whispered.
"So here's what counts," Isaiah said. "Chloe. Listen. I did look at the bow. Not then. Later. I turned that boat around and I searched that water for six hours in the dark and I screamed your name until my voice was gone, and Liam did too,
and we did not stop until there was no light left to search by."
Chloe's hand twitched.
Liam saw it.
"And when we couldn't search anymore we still didn't stop," Isaiah said.
"We worked out where the tide puts things. We found the cove. We went into a swamp full of hanging bones in the fog because there was a chance you were in it, and we found a strip of bandage in the mud and Liam looked at it and he knew you were alive because dead people don't need bandages."
He was crying now, openly, and his voice was rock steady.
"Nobody left you in the water, Chloe," he said. "Not for one second. Not for one minute."
Chloe Buck's eyes filled with tears.
"Stop it," it said.
"There she is," Isaiah said softly.
"STOP IT."
"Chloe, take your hands off the door."
And Chloe Buck screamed.
It came out of her like something tearing loose, a raw wordless howl that went up and up and bounced off the concrete and the racks and the humming gray cabinet, and she went down on her knees on the bloody floor with her hands over her face.
"HELP ME," she screamed. "LIAM, PLEASE, IT'S IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD, IT'S IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD—"
Liam was there.
He hit the concrete on his knees and got both arms around her and she fought him, and she was strong, she was so much stronger than a girl with a hole in her side should have been, and he held on.
"I've got you."
"Liam, it's reaching—"
"I've got you, I've got you, I've got you—"
"IT'S REACHING FOR THE KEYPAD—"
Liam looked up.
Chloe's right arm was extended over his shoulder.
It was fully extended, straight, rigid, trembling with strain, and her fingers were spread and reaching, and the tips of them were four inches from the keypad on the stairwell door.
And her left hand was locked around her own right wrist, hauling back on it with everything she had.
Her own two hands, fighting each other.
"IT KNOWS THE CODE," Chloe screamed. "LIAM, IT'S BEEN IN HERE ELEVEN HOURS AND IT WATCHED HIM PUT IT IN—"
Liam's head snapped around.
Marcus Vance had gone the color of paper.
"There's no code," he said. "There's no code, it's a hard lock, it can't be—"
"YOU CAME DOWN HERE," Chloe screamed. "YOU CAME DOWN HERE AT MIDNIGHT WITH A LANTERN AND YOU STOOD AT THIS DOOR AND YOU PUT IN A NUMBER AND YOU DIDN'T PRESS THE LAST ONE."
The .45 fell out of Marcus Vance's hand and clattered on the floor.
"Oh God," he said.
"Every night," Chloe sobbed. "Every night for two years. It's been watching you. It's been standing behind you in the dark watching you not press the last button."
"Doctor," Liam said, and his voice was not his own. "Doctor, what is the number."
Marcus Vance was staring at the door.
"It's the override," he whispered. "It's the manual override. I built it. I built it in case, in case there was ever a reason to go down and, and I have stood at that door every night for two years asking myself whether I should destroy what's in there,
and I have never been able to make myself do it, because if I'm wrong, if the world ever needs to know what it was—"
"DOCTOR!"
"Six digits," Marcus said. "It's six digits and I have entered five of them every night for two years."
Chloe's arm surged forward.
Liam threw his whole weight on it and got both hands around her wrist and hauled, and she screamed, and her fingers came down on the keypad.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
The light on the panel went from red to amber.
And Chloe Buck's index finger, shaking, streaked with blood, hovered one inch above the last button, and stopped.
And the thing in the willows said, in her voice, from three feet away, right into Liam's face:
"Ask her what it is."
Liam did not move.
"Go on," it said. "She knows. She's known for eleven hours. It's the only thing she's got left and she's been holding it in the back of her skull where I can't quite reach, and she is so tired, Liam."
Chloe's finger trembled.
"Ask her," it whispered.
And Chloe Buck turned her head, and looked at Liam Perry with her own eyes, all the way, all the way in there, and said:
"Liam. I can't hold it much longer. You have to shoot me."