Maggie laughed again. This wasn’t the voice of their mother, breaking through the wall of death to communicate with them. This was the Morák in her, the thing she was becoming.
“There were so many that night… even after they knew I would die… they wanted to tear me apart. The pain I caused them… it drove them away. They thought it would only affect them in Shediak and they fled for the mainland, a screaming exodus. When they got across the bridge, they knew the truth. There was nowhere for them to run, so they burrowed into the ground right where despair felled them.”
“Oh my God,” Violet said. “They buried themselves right here.”
“How many?” Jennie asked. “How many of them were here that night?”
Maggie rasped, more a grunt than a laugh. “Dozens.”
The engine rumbled as Malcolm slowed the Frazer to a halt. The car vibrated, snow falling, wipers shushing. The headlights illuminated several silhouettes far ahead, impossible to identify, but they all knew.
“There’s no way across,” Maggie said. “Set me free. The sun will rise soon, and you’ll have the daylight hours to run for your lives.”
It was Malcolm’s turn to laugh. Slowly, careful not to let the tires get stuck, he turned the car around.
“You have Maggie’s voice and face, you’ve got her memories, and maybe part of you is still her,” he said, “but you’re not Maggie Wise. She was damn clever, and you’re far from that.”
The tires slid but found new purchase. The Frazer wouldn’t let them down.
“We’ll get you to Shediak, and we’ll bury you deep.”
47
Violet had never felt so cold. Her neck and shoulders ached from the way she tensed, but she held Benjy close and tried to use what little heat her body held to keep him from freezing. Winter wouldn’t officially arrive for weeks, and there would be much colder nights than this, but the wind and exhaustion and, if she were honest with herself, the weight of despair made the chill so much worse.
“Malcolm,” she said, “it can’t be long until dawn. A couple of hours, probably less.”
He glanced at the horizon. Still dark. Still gray with low clouds and falling snow.
“We should have tried the bridge.”
“Just hit the gas, drive as fast as we can, and hope they don’t drag us out of the car?”
Violet nodded. “I know how it sounds, but you see how sluggish Maggie is now—this close to ground zero. We could make it.”
“No, Violet,” Jennie said. “There are too many of them. Too strong and too desperate and too hard to kill. If there’s another way, we have to try that first.”
And if it doesn’t work?She didn’t say that out loud, but it haunted her. If this didn’t work, there would be no time to drive back and cross the bridge to Shediak.
Benjy had his arms around her neck, holding on for dear life. He hadn’t said a word in at least fifteen minutes. In the back seat, Jennie watched over her mother. The thing that had been MaggieWise had drawn her legs up beneath her and turned sideways, fetal again, showing the handcuffs that cut deeply into the flesh of her wrists. Her skin looked blue, either from cold or from death, or from whatever transformation she had begun. Violet thought of Elias and what had happened to his skin.
“How do we bury her?” Violet asked, keeping her voice even to avoid disturbing Benjy.
Malcolm glanced at Jennie in the rearview and said nothing. He focused on the road and on the coastline to their left. They were driving southwest now, opposite from their destination. Malcolm scanned the rocky shore. The road had turned narrow and winding. Less snow had fallen here, but no plow had cleared the way, and Violet thought the Frazer’s tires might surrender at any moment.
“Are you ignoring me?”
He glanced her way. “No. I’m sorry, Violet. It’s just that you’re right—sunrise will be here before we know it.”
Horrible visions had begun to play out in her mind, images of what she imagined would happen if they failed. Maggie had said there were dozens here, near Shediak, but Root had been hundreds of miles away and so had the others traveling with it. How many more were there, scattered around the country? And how many more would they have made, like Elias, just since they began to drag themselves from their burial sites?
She wondered what the country would be like afterward. Would they reproduce quickly? Would they begin a national slaughter, or hide among people and prey on them from the shadows? Violet felt numb from something other than the cold.
All she had wanted to do was sing. Make people happy. Then Elias had come along with his smile and that charm and made her think he was capable of falling in love. What a fool she’d been not to cling to music instead of a man. Malcolm and Maggie had been so kind that they’d persuaded her bright days were possible. Falling in love with Malcolm, being with him constantly but unable to speak her mind or share her heart, had made her realize whatshe’d felt for Elias had never been love. This kind of yearning was the full bloom that grew from infatuation.
Only a woman in love would have been insane enough to come along on this trip.
That isn’t fair, she thought. Malcolm and Maggie had become her family. This was about more than love. If she’d stayed behind, she would have felt forever that she had abandoned them.
