Page 171 of Lone Star

Finally, at the top of a rise, the trees thinned, and Candy caught a glimpse of rusted, corrugated metal through the foliage. His pulse paused, and then sped, a terrible lurching beat that left his chest aching.

There. She was there.

Fox lifted a hand and signedcareful.

They drifted toward one another, closing ranks, lining up along the top of a ridge. The ground fell away below, carved up by summer flash floods, exposed roots and rocks and the striations of the sandy soil visible in the last red-gold rays of sunlight.

The promised workshop waited on the other side of the ravine, a rambling, ramshackle affair that had been added on to time and again, the metal marked by rust and rain, its windows small, barred, and painted-over.

Candy couldn’t breathe; his heartbeat strangled him. He wanted to charge down the hill, and go sprinting up the other side.

But Fox said, “Wait.” He cupped his hands around his mouth, and whistled. It wasn’t a human noise that left his lips, but three long, looping blasts that sounded like a bird call of some kind. A moment later, the same rhythm echoed back, faintly, from the far side of the workshop.

“Swing right,” Fox said. He glanced back over his shoulder as everyone moved to comply, and pinned Candy with a look. “No hero moments yet, okay?”

Candy bared his teeth in a semblance of a grin. “No promises.”

~*~

Dusk. When the last fingers of light had slipped back from between the tree trunks, Reese moved through the gloaming, quick and silent, toward the workshop. Albie had wanted to come, but Walsh had put a hand on his arm – fingers gripping tight, knuckles whitening with the effort of restraint – and said, “Let Reese. This is what he’s best at.”

A simple statement of fact, but it had felt like praise. So he moved now with a small kernel of warmth in his breast, as he flattened himself against a section of metal wall, melting into the shadows there.

The window beside his head had been brushed with a single coat of black paint: too thick to see through, but thin enough to allow the warmth of electric light, with which it glowed now. Someone might have left a bulb burning, but he thought it was more likely that someone was inside.

The window was barred from the outside, secured with screws that would be easy to remove – if he had the time or a screw driver.

But.

Roof it was.

It was low. He reached up and gripped its edge with gloved hands, took a breath, and pushed off from the ground. A flex, a pull, and he swung up and over and landed lightly on the balls of his feet. He’d made noise – impossible to avoid – but only a little, and his core burned pleasantly from the exertion.

The old tin crackled under his weight as he moved, slowly, on feet and hands, crawling to keep from falling through. He found what he’d thought he might: a fiberglass panel near the center – a line of them – to let in sunlight during the day. It was yellowed and brittle, but it too emitted a faint glow from inside.

Reese leaned down and pressed his ear to it a long moment, breath held, listening. Faint shuffling sounds, a rustling like bird wings. No voices.

He weighed the possibilities. In his experience, people like these Chupacabras couldn’t wait silently anywhere: always chatting and gossiping with each other. Passing the time, fighting the silence.

He drew one of his guns, and laid it within easy reach, then used his knife to pry up the panel. The noise of it inspired more rustling, and a few little squeaks; the unmistakable quickness of breath.

He set the panel aside and waited. Heard another noise, in the woods behind him: Albie growing impatient. That was why people like Reese existed, because people like Albie were too emotional and irrational to handle these sorts of jobs with the proper skill and caution.

When the noise from inside the workshop had died down again, he picked up his gun, and dropped down inside. Landed softly, absorbing the shock of it through bent knees. Turned, gun raised, scanning.

No Chupacabras, but he wasn’t alone.

Fifty-Two

Candy flicked a quick look toward Reese’s face as he stormed past him into the now-open door of the workshop, searching for a hint as to what awaited him inside. He didn’t find one, and wasn’t sure why he’d looked; that painted-black mask the kid wore revealed nothing.

Dark closed over him inside; a narrow space with open rooms on either side, hastily-patched-in additions to the original structure. He saw movement there, in the shadows; sensed the heat and volume of bodies. But the flickering orange light of a single caged bulb drew him to the heart of the workshop, to the wide-open, dirt-floored space in the center, where a row of tables waited. All of them was occupied, bodies stretched out atop them. The first was Jesse, from the convenience store, his throat a gaping second mouth. And then Eric. The girl, Gwen. Blood on the floors, soaking into the dirt, turning it to mud, stinking of iron and shit. The last table held another woman, and he saw the glint of golden hair–

The room tilted. His lungs seized, and he stumbled a moment, had to catch himself against the nearest table. Jesse’s body trembled atop it, but didn’t fall, held fast by cuffs.

Walsh and Mercy stood together, their backs to him. It was Mercy who turned, dark gaze sympathetic, and said, “It’s not her.”

His lungs opened painfully, and air rushed back in. He stood straight, and took the final steps up to the last table.

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