“Not crazy,” Malcolm said intently. “I’m a soldier. Sergeant Rose drilled a few things into me. Honor and loyalty, no question. But the one that got me home alive was the third one—survival.”
He cranked the steering wheel, and the minibus slewed sideways, backing onto the soft shoulder of the road, flattening one of the rhododendrons planted there. Malcolm braked and turned to Violet.
“Take that shotgun and jump out right now. Take cover. Don’t let us burn the whole day in a jail cell.”
Jennie started to question him again, but Violet understood. They didn’t have time for questions. She grabbed the shotgun and threw open her door, slid out, and barely had time to slam the door before the tires were spinning in patchy grass and then heading down the road.
The first police car flew over the top of the hill, no siren, blue ghost lights flashing. Violet dove behind the intact rhododendrons. She watched as the minibus slowed, the doors opened, and Jennie and Malcolm stepped out with their hands up. The second police car skidded to a halt while the officers were climbing out of the first one, guns drawn. Shouting ensued, but as soon as the cops realized they weren’t getting a fight, Malcolm and Jennie were cuffed and put into the back of the second car.
One of the officers opened the back of the minibus. Bathed in flashing blue light, he began to unlace the heavy ties on the canvas shroud. Violet could tell the moment he realized what he’d found, because he stepped back as if something had bitten him.
“Jesus Christ!” the cop shouted. “Marty, come and look at this! The sick freaks are driving around with a dead lady in the back!”
Their shock unspooled in a strange sort of slow motion, but after that, it wasn’t very long before the two police cars drove away, their prisoners in the back of one car, Maggie Wise’s corpsein the trunk of the other. They left the darkened VW minibus on the side of the road, presumably for someone to retrieve later.
Violet gazed down the road, back the way they’d come, and wondered how long it would take for Root to catch up to them. Root, and Elias, and however many others there were. She didn’t know where the cops were taking Malcolm and Jennie. The nearest town, she figured, but how far might that be? And how long would it take to walk there?
How long till sunrise?
She stared at the horizon a moment, then ran to the minibus and looked inside. Several wires stuck out of the steering column. Malcolm had stripped the protective sheath off them, and she knew he’d twisted them together to start the VW. It looked as if the police had tugged them apart to stop the minibus. She set the shotgun on the seat and studied those wires. Violet had never tried this before, but she’d watched Malcolm do it. She worried about electrocuting herself or doing something that would damage the engine instead of starting it up, but when she twined the wires together, the engine coughed and turned over, settling into a purr.
Don’t let us burn the whole day in a jail cell, Malcolm had said. And he was right about that. Shediak was probably a seven- or eight-hour drive. She needed to get the police to set the Wise siblings free, no matter what stood in her way. The trouble was that she had no idea how to begin.
In the sky not far behind her, something caught sight of the minibus and followed along for a few seconds before it flew faster, passing overhead and beyond, still searching.
29
Even from inside a jail cell, it was easy to see that Crowson, Massachusetts, was a tiny little town. Based on the terrain they’d seen since the train wreck and the two small towns they’d passed through, this part of the state reminded Malcolm of rural Indiana. In the back of the police car, they’d driven by farms and homes and thick forest, and then past the sign that readENTERING CROWSON—A SWEET LITTLE TOWN.
The “sweet” part seemed to spring from it being the home of a company called Sundrop Taffy. Malcolm had never heard of the candy, but based on the size of the shop they’d passed on the main street, he figured it must be a local favorite. It was also just about the only thing worth noticing on Crowson’s main street, which in the pale light just before sunrise had looked like the perfect slice of American pie. The kind of thing Malcolm had always been told he’d be fighting for in the army. Aside from the police car that brought them in, the only other vehicle on the street had been the milkman making his rounds.
He wished they could stay here, but he and Jennie—and Violet, wherever she was—would certainly not be welcome.
“What’s with these people?” he muttered. “Do they think we caused the train to derail?”
Jennie didn’t reply. She’d sat against the wall with her knees drawn up beneath her chin. Now her breathing had deepened and he thought she might be asleep. They were sharing a jail cell—one of three in a row—at the back of the building. Callingit a police station seemed generous, but Malcolm supposed it was accurate. There was a foyer with a reception desk and some chairs. A corridor led past a few doors, one of which had stood open, revealing a clean, organized office inside. There were stairs going down to some kind of basement, and then in the back, the cells. That was it.
Not much of a jail, not much of a police station, not much of a town.
“How did you find me?” he asked his sister.
Jennie’s breathing didn’t change. Malcolm went and slid down the wall to sit beside her. Either she’d been faking or just not sleeping very deeply, because her eyes opened and she shot him a sidelong glance that did not invite conversation. Malcolm figured he didn’t need an invitation.
“Jen.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“We’re locked up.”
“Yeah. And we’ve gotta get the hell out of here. The sun’s up. Even if we get out of here in an hour, we’re not gonna make Shediak by dark.”
Malcolm shrugged. “As long as we’re there in time to bury her by sunrise tomorrow.”
“It would’ve been a lot safer to make it before the sun goes down again.” Jennie banged her head softly against the wall. “That’s impossible now. But the faster we get out of here, the more time we’ll have to get through whatever trouble gets in the way.”
The monsters were sleeping now, or at least hiding from the sun. Jennie had confirmed that, or at least that it was what she’d been taught. Every hour of sunlight they could use for traveling would be that much more of a head start, so he felt the same urgency to get out of jail. But something about Jennie’s words and tone implied a different kind of trouble. It worried him.
“You want to elaborate on that?” he asked.
