Ruin Falls (38 page)

“We can’t go that way,” Tom said.

Liz braced her hips with her hands and bit back a breath. “Why not?” Sweet, compliant, she’d thought about the other kids. But this one was trouble.

“Because we’re going to be missed,” Tom said, a
duh
in his tone. “They’ll see our tracks and follow them.” He paused until Liz looked at him. “My father will follow them.”

Liz quelled a rising panic. Minutes had been devoted to mere treats. The Shoemaker may have already detected their perfidy. He might be stalking them now, unseen and unheard.

Cody began to approach Ally, moving amongst the twigs and brush on the ground. A stick snagged his leg and he tripped, crying
out. The crack of the branch disturbed the whole woods, louder than all their voices combined, violent where the whistle had been playful.

Liz gathered the boy up, shushing him, looking around. Then she turned back to Tom. “Do you know another way out?”

For the first time, Tom looked doubting. “The only place I can imagine them not thinking we’d go … it has a path if we can get across …”

Reid picked up where Tom had left off. “The falls.”

THE SHOEMAKER

K
urt had to deal with the body.

Yesterday had been spent finishing up a few essential tasks, as well as restoring Madeline’s mood, making her understand why her mother had to be dealt with as she was. That hadn’t been easy, but Madeline’s girlish adulation had helped.

Kurt had succeeded in keeping the others close to the barn—he’d always had a hold on people, commanding them to his will without their even knowing they were being commanded—but children were an unknown quantity, as Kurt had learned from Tom. For the time being the horde seemed content, hacking at brush that blocked the entrance to an old haymow, but that job was nearly complete. And there was work to be done elsewhere on the grounds.

Kurt’s misadventure with Madeline’s mother was not why Paul had a composting method that would get them out of this predicament. It was just opportune that he did. What was less ideal was that in order for Kurt to make use of it, Paul would have to know what he had done.

Kurt wasn’t worried about anyone coming to look for the dead woman. He could read her story as if it were one of the true crime books he used to love poring over. He’d always had that ability, and it hadn’t failed him, even with things unraveling here in much the same way that they had when he ventured off to college.

But they hadn’t spun out completely here—at least not yet—and this woman’s death wouldn’t be the cause of their doing so. Madeline was the sole person on the planet the woman had been able to convince of her importance. No one would search for her, not hours away from where she lived, in what was a nearly undiscoverable location. The woman wouldn’t be missed by anyone that much.

Kurt hated the distant, knowing look in her eyes. As if she could read him as he did her. He leaned down, thinking to press her eyelids shut, but the idea of touching her with his hands was repellant. That cupped shell of skull would burst so satisfyingly, like the hull of a coconut, if he kicked it. Kurt forced himself to turn away. He had more important things to do.

Paul was pulling reeds from the pond, shirtsleeves pushed up for the messy task. He’d been at this since they arrived, asserting repeatedly that the pond was going to be key to their processing system. The reeds he was pulling out would also make excellent watertight containers; Paul laid each one down as carefully as a tube of glass.

“Ahoy, the pond!” Kurt called out, in the joking way he knew to adopt with Paul.

Paul looked up, screening his brow with a muck-streaked arm. “Hello, the meadow!” he shouted back. “Hey, does the meadow want to get down to the pond and help?”

Kurt put on a good-natured smile, parting tall grasses and descending the bank. When he arrived, he didn’t enter the water, and he made sure his face turned serious.

“Paul, we have a bit of a situation.”

Paul blocked the bright light with his forearm again. In a little while, he wouldn’t have to. The sun was disappearing fast, covered over by scudding clouds.

“The children all right?”

“Sure, sure.” Kurt nodded. “That isn’t it.”

Paul turned back to the diminishing stand of reeds, clearly itching to return to his task. “What is it, then?”

“This might be best as a visual,” Kurt said. Water was lapping at
his boots and he stepped back with a feeling of distaste. How would this slimy pool ever be put to use?

“Kurt …” Paul said. “I’ve got a lot to do here. As you can see.”

The eruption was close to the surface; Kurt felt every part of his body fill with heat. But he managed to speak with the jovial demeanor Paul had come to expect from him. Kurt played the willing assistant so that Paul could believe he was in charge.

“I do see,” he said. “And don’t think I don’t appreciate you getting your hands dirty. But Paul—we have a different kind of dirty work to do right now.”

That was all the preparation he would give, the only hint he’d provide.

Paul finally turned away from the pond, a faint frown appearing between his brows. “And it’s a visual, you said?”

Kurt nodded, glad to be leaving this slop bucket, even if the job ahead would be equally nasty. He waited until Paul had climbed out before indicating their direction.

The hardest part would be when Paul saw, and Kurt had already determined that warning him in advance would only make things worse. Best to be brisk about this relatively trivial blip on the radar of their creation. He had also concocted a story to engage Paul in the righteousness of this act. As the best stories did, this one contained an element of truth.

Paul flung droplets from his hair, wagging his head as they trudged uphill. He wiped a hand across his face, licked off damp lips.

“Don’t you ever worry that what’s in the pond shouldn’t be ingested?” asked Kurt.

“Well, it’s not like I’m drinking it by the jugful,” Paul responded, and Kurt contributed a chuckle.

“By the creek?” Paul asked, scouting with his eyes as they walked.

“You got it. That big tree over there.”

“The willow,” said Paul.

Again, pressure rose inside Kurt. The idea that this rinkydink college teacher—this nothing of a man—thought he could inform Kurt
of anything made him want to take Paul’s windpipe and crush it. But Kurt suppressed the urge, speaking merrily, “That what it is?”

Paul gave a nod. “See those drooping boughs? That’s why they say it weeps.”

“Learn something new every day,” Kurt said.

“Especially in this place,” Paul responded, and turned to clap Kurt on the shoulder.

Kurt hid his instinctual wince, offering a nod for cover. “You got that right, too.”

Paul slowed his pace. “Kurt?”

Kurt was distracted; it took him a second to work up a grin.

“Have I thanked you?” Paul said. “For making me—not making me, that’s not the right word—”

Oh yes, it is
, thought Kurt.

“—for giving me the support that enabled me finally to act?”

Kurt slowed down, too. “No thanks needed, buddy.”

“No, but—” Paul broke off. “I
want
to thank you. I know some would criticize what we’re doing out here, at least the way we did it. But I needed to make a better life for my children. For myself. And if we hadn’t met … Well, I might’ve stayed where I was, fat and cushy, and never realizing my …”

Kurt knew Paul wasn’t going to fill in the word, but he waited the required beat. “Destiny?” he offered after the pause had gone on for the right length of time.

Paul gazed up at the sky as if he owned it. Pressure boiled again inside Kurt but he managed to regard the scene neutrally.

“Yeah,” Paul said at last. “That’s right. My destiny.”

“Well,” Kurt said as they resumed walking, “I’m glad. But I still say no thanks are needed.”

Paul would get the chance to repay him momentarily.

They had arrived at the place where Madeline had been suckling her mutt, and Paul registered what lay there before the truth slightly penetrated his consciousness.

Kurt could read the reaction in his shoulders.

He allowed for the inevitable denial. A snake’s tongue of lightning forked across the sky, diverting Paul’s attention, and Kurt waited that out as well. When Paul again lowered his eyes, one of two things was going to happen. Either Paul would drop to his knees and feel for a pulse, having no idea that this woman was almost twenty hours dead, or else he would ask Kurt how he had found her. What Paul wouldn’t do was put two and two together. Most men couldn’t stomach the idea of standing next to a murderer.

Kurt had killed somebody once before. Another nobody, a classmate who thought he would match wits with Kurt for an assistant-ship. Their rivalry had gotten out of hand; Kurt would’ve been the first to admit that. He hadn’t meant his kick to land in the boy’s solar plexus when they finally came to blows. It had been an accident, but Kurt had still served time and, of course, was forced to leave school.

It had been for the best, though. A wrong turn that wound up being right.

Everyone maintained they were innocent when they were inside, but for Kurt’s celly it had actually been true. And the guy for whom he was taking the ride had intrigued Kurt. He learned more about Paul Daniels in the time he slept beneath Allgood’s bunk than Allgood would ever know he’d given up. Once free, Kurt made it his calling to locate the man who had never paid for his crime. Paul hadn’t spent one day in prison for murder, while Kurt had lost four years of his life to a brawl.

Kurt lived a regular life after getting out—got married, sired a child—but he spent his leisure time tracking Paul down, then identifying the chat room Paul stared at every night.

Kurt wanted to leave his icicle of a wife, and the chat room revealed that Paul was uniquely positioned to enable a disappearance. To a place where neither money nor resources were needed, and where Kurt and his boy would leave no tracks. The menial work of creating such a spread would’ve been beneath Kurt, but Paul had accomplished a great deal in a short period of time. With Kurt watching him every step of the way.

He looked at Paul now.

“Kurt …” Paul let out a breath. “You just found her here?”

Kurt had considered this as a way out, but ultimately rejected the I-can’t-imagine-where-that-body-came-from ruse. He would’ve had to kill Madeline to make it work, and even if there’d been enough time, he rather enjoyed Madeline. More than that blabbermouth Abby. Abby reminded Kurt of one of those dogs who tagged along at your knees, tongue lolling out.

While Terry knew how to keep quiet. If Kurt indulged the woman in her quest to take ownership of Madeline’s infant, she would avert her eyes from just about anything.

Which left Paul.

Kurt knew he could maintain a better hold on Paul if the man continued to see him as up-front, genial Kurt Pierson, nary a false word, certainly not a lie between them.

He spoke with weighty seriousness. “This is Madeline’s mother.”

Paul took a staggering step back from the body. “What the hell are you—her mother came
here
?”

Kurt decided to ignore the discourtesy. Paul was in shock. It was making him stupid in multiple ways. He nodded once heavily. “She did. And not only did she try to get Madeline to leave, she physically threatened her. Assaulted her really. I was forced to step in.”

“Step in,” Paul echoed. “Are you telling me that—you killed her, Kurt?”

Kurt had trouble not laughing. Laughter would’ve ruined all the work he had already put in. “I didn’t have a choice,” he said gravely. “It was her or Madeline.”

A man like Paul would not look too closely at the body. If he did, then the mode of death would’ve argued against Kurt’s explanation, or at least put holes in it.

One hole anyway. Again, Kurt had to suppress a smile.

The hardest part was still ahead, and after a moment, Paul set it on its course.

“All right,” he said. “Okay. If you offer that explanation to the authorities, it will clearly be a case of defense. Not self-defense, but still, you did the right thing …”

Kurt let him go on a little while longer.

“… it’s not great that people will find out where we are—I can’t
even imagine the battles we’ll face—but it’s not like there’s much of a choice …”

Much
, Kurt heard with some relief.

“There is a choice,” Kurt said, and he took the measure of Paul’s response.

“What?” Paul asked raggedly. “What else can we do?”

“What else can we do?” Kurt repeated. “Besides reveal the empire you are building? Lose it, surely? This place of salvation in a world hurtling toward destruction? What else can we do besides sacrifice our children to that?”

Tears were rolling down Paul’s face. “Yes,” he said. “What else?”

“Why, you know the answer better than I, Paul,” said Kurt, masking distaste at the statement. “It’s perhaps your biggest accomplishment so far,” he added. “You were just describing it to me. How most compost entails a great deal of wasted product. But not your kind. Your system, you said, produces such heat that meat, bones, whole cattle break down within months.” He paused to look at Paul. “Even big bodies are consumed.”