Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.
Chapter Thirty-Three: In Hestia's Hearth
September 17th, 2011 5:32 PM
You know better than this, Rachel told herself as the vehicle slowed. The mid afternoon sun forced her to squint and flip the visor overhead down. Far in the distance, a speck she knew to be a car went up and then back down, vanishing behind a hill. You should have told Chloe about this or at least Max. She had not. She had not let on that she was going to be doing this at all. Rachel checked all of her mirrors as she eased the Sedan forward, slowly coming to full speed again. She wanted to be able to stay close to the car in front of her but not so close as for him to see who was behind him and realize he was being followed. He has to know what my car looks like by now. God, I hope he's distracted and angry.
For almost five minutes she had not seen a car other than David Madsen's. It was simultaneously relieving and concerning. They were still just barely on the edge of Arcadia Bay, but they were not heading in a direction Rachel had ever traveled alone. That meant that staying as far back from him as possible was the only chance she had of not getting made before she reached wherever David was going. At least he'd know what it felt like to be followed when you didn't want to be, she thought, bitterly. The downside to keeping her distance was that each time something like this happened. When David passed over a hill, if there was a side road nearby or he got a particularly wild hair up his ass and slammed the pedal to the metal he could theoretically escape her without much of a problem.
She just simply didn't know what the better option was.
Rachel figured her best option was, if that happened, to look for any side roads that looked like they had fresh tire tracks in them. They were already on a back road, after all. Most side roads were dirt or gravel or, Rachel suspect, were actually extremely long driveways to homes situated outside of the city. Out in this direction the countryside was pretty damned sparsely populated. You were more likely to find a small wooded area than you were a house. Sounds boring, she thought. Maybe I don't want fuckall to do with this whole 'drive through the countryside' thing.
She crested the hill and was pleased to see David still on the road. At least she figured it was David's car unless one of a similar shape and color had turned onto the road and David turned off. Don't rule anything out with Sargent Stepdouche, here. It was better safe than sorry, though, so Rachel kept on the road. I hope Chloe slept in this morning. I hope Max ate this morning. She had kept her phone on silent most of the day so that, on those occasions where she followed David on foot, she could not be given away by a sudden ringing. That meant that she had missed more than a few messages from the girls.
Frankly, though, after a day full of a whole lot of nothing, including one quick shopping trip where she nearly gave herself away by knocking over a display of Bush's Baked Beans, Rachel was glad to be back in her car. She was just growing to dread what was coming. If she was right and David was after Frank with this little trip into the country, that meant that David was currently leading her to what Frank talked about as his 'home.' There were about a hundred and one problems with that idea, including one she had not really let her mind make manifest until she noticed the houses spreading out, the city giving way to a whole lot of nothing.
If you had to hide a body, where would you take it? Rachel had never particularly thought about killing anyone, but if she were the type, she reasoned that hiding a body in the middle of nowhere was the safer choice. They were almost certainly going to the middle of nowhere. You're probably just being paranoid, Rachel. You've spent too much time chasing David and he's rubbing off on you. What was the phrase? 'And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.'
Mercifully, when David took a sudden turn from the road, Rachel could see him doing it. The road was flat and the day clear and he was still about a quarter of a mile ahead of her. They were mostly alone on that stretch of road and it had turned to gravel some time ago, so Rachel slowed even further. Okay, breathe. If you're right, just warn Frank and then do like we planned. Lure him away. Everything's gonna be alright. Tomorrow you'll be able to tell Chloe and Max about this shit and they're going to be a little jealous they weren't there.
The ride was even bumpier the slower she took it but, Rachel slid past the turnoff at the speed of creeping death. It was a long, winding driveway. She caught sight of four things and tried desperately to analyze them as she eased past. First, there was a house that might have been white at one point but the paint was chipping off. If she was not mistaken, part of its roof was missing. It was absolutely ancient. Parked not far off from it was David's dark car, with the 'true detective' who drove it nowhere to be seen. A small brown toolshed rested almost as close to the far edge of the property as Rachel could see from the road and, right beside it, sat a pale RV which Rachel knew fairly well.
She found it a fair guess that this was what Frank called his home. Rachel continued to roll by, not bothering to speed up until she could no longer be seen from the driveway. She did not want to make any sudden noise and draw David's notice, though she wondered why she had not seen him during her drive by. He's smaller than a car, she told herself. Probably just a little far from the road for me to spot him. The turnoff to the property began to vanish in her rearview mirror as Rachel coached herself on how to recognize it again from the road. Unfortunately 'a dirt drive surrounded by trees' was not a particularly unique landmark out in this particular stretch of nothing and nowhere.
The jacket around her shoulders was beginning to feel heavy and constrictive when she pulled the car over half a mile later. It was nothing compared to the outfit waiting in a plastic bag in her backseat and it also didn't have the stench of sweat and burned fabric in it, but Rachel still shrugged the jacket off after shutting down the engine. Probably her favorite item of clothing thudded on the passenger's seat loud enough for her to remember that her phone was waiting in its pocket. Okay, now's where I probably piss Chloe off a bit, she thought, dialing Steph. The phone only range three or four times before the brunette on the other end answered her phone.
"Rach, what's goin' on?"
"Not much," she lied, trying to match Steph's casual, friendly tone. There wasn't much casual about her pounding heart and the horrible thought that David could lead to the discovery of, at best, where Frank kept his supply and at worst where he might have buried Damon Merrick. "But I need a little favor. Shouldn't take more than a minute."
"Hit me with it," Steph replied. She heard the clink of silverware against a plate. I suppose it's getting close to dinner? Rachel thought, slightly worried that she had not felt hungry since she had eaten a banana that morning. Can't give Max shit if you start doing it yourself. "Rachel? Y-Yeah, it's her," Steph was talking now to Chloe. "You want to talk to Chloe?" The girl was obviously confused about Rachel's tone and hesitation.
"More than you know," Rachel told her, "but not this second." She sighed into the phone and then continued. "You were telling us a couple weeks ago about that site that lets you send a text from a restricted or unknown number right?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"I need you to send one for me, preferably as soon as possible. Like, 9-1-1 style as soon as possible."
"What's this all about?" Steph asked. The sound of a chair scraping against the kitchen floor in the background suggested the girl was going toward her laptop. Rachel breathed a sigh of relief.
"I need to distract someone or something really bad is going to happen, any moment now. Grab Chloe's phone before you go, you're gonna need it."
"Why?"
"Because you're texting David Madsen." Steph went quiet on the other end of the line, beyond a momentary muttering to Chloe and then after a few seconds Rachel started to hear typing. There was nothing and no one in Rachel's rear view mirror and she rolled her windows down so that she could hear if, gods forbid, she heard a gunshot. On the phone, the typing began to die down. "Are you ready for the message?"
"Yes," Steph replied. "You're hanging up as soon as this sends aren't you?"
"Kind of in a dangerous situation, so I'm sorry, but I am."
"Then get out of it without getting hurt, do you hear me?" Steph paused and waited, and Rachel, smiling despite herself answered.
"Yes mistress," she retorted in a low, Igor-like voice.
"Don't let your mouth write a check your ass can't cash," Steph finished. "Give me that message." Rachel decided to let the racy response slide and paused long enough to be sure her plan still made sense. Nothing had changed so that she particularly questioned anything about it, so she gave the message to Steph that she had always planned to.
"It has to say, 'We need to meet. Pan Estates. Thirty Minutes.' and you'll need to sign it S.P." There was a slight pause before she heard the typing continue.
"Are you sure about this?" Steph asked. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yes," Rachel promised. "And I'm going to tell Chloe and Max what I'm up to in a couple of hours so if you can try not to worry about it, you'll probably be hearing the whole tale about the same time." She imagined Steph's sharp eyes filling with frustration and knew that this was asking a fair amount of her, to get her involved without giving her any information. It's not like she doesn't know David works for Prescott. She has to understand what I'm trying to do here. "I won't lie to you and tell you I'm going to be safe. But I've done stupider shit with less preparation."
"You're going to come back from whatever you're doing or I'm gonna whip your ass from here to Hell." That's more like it.
"Yes ma'am."
"What did I say about writing checks you can't cash?"
"If I didn't come back, before you start that posthumous ass kicking, tell the girls I love em." Rachel hung up before Steph could say anything else, or before she could. Outside the wind was picking up unnaturally. How long has it been? Five minutes? Too long. She pulled up her conversation with Frank. The last message in it had been essentially Frank telling her to fuck off and never text him again. She didn't think she had the luxury of following that order, not anymore.
Me
Frank I followed David Madsen, he's parked near your RV right now.
Frank
I know, staying low. You need to find a way to get him away from me. Or else.
Me
Or else what
Frank
You know what.
Me
If DM is there, it needs to be moved today. I think I know what to do to get him away for now.
Frank? Do you understand?
Frank did not respond again. That was alright. Rachel wasn't entirely sure she expected one. There were three unread messages from Chloe and one from Max. Rachel set aside her phone, intent on answering them later. For the moment all she could do was sit there in her car and count. When she had counted the passage of five minutes in relative silence, she started the vehicle and did what was surely an illegal u-turn. There's no place like home, there's no place like home. She turned the old blue sedan around and made for Arcadia Bay.
It was kind of absurd, she thought to herself as she drove, that all of this was happening on such a nice day, especially for late fall. Somewhere, kids were playing games. Somewhere someone was having a birthday party. Oh fuck, she thought as the road began to pass from gravel to busted, cracked pavement. Max's birthday. Her girlfriend's birthday was four days away and somehow, Rachel hadn't realized. And this is the perfect time to remember, too, she chided herself. Rachel reached down into the console by her right leg and freed a pen. Across her left arm she scrawled, hastily, 'Max 16 Weds 21.' The pen dropped from her hand as she tried to throw it back into the console but Rachel wasn't about to reach down for it while she drove.
Over the next few minutes she drove with her destination firmly in mind. She was not off to Steph and Chloe's place nor going back to Blackwell to see Max. Rachel had a job to do and it did not involve having time with one of her girls or any of her friends. No, when Rachel shut the car off it was on Cedar Avenue, a block down from the Madsen residence. She left the keys in the ignition and scooted her seat back. It was not what would particularly call dignified nor comfortable to change clothes in a car. It was, at least, not difficult.
She worked quickly but took the process one article of clothing at a time, and was eventually able to get the sweatpants and sweater part of her 'cat burglar' outfit in place. The mask, bandana and gloves could wait. As for the boots, she was already wearing them. Actually, Rachel thought. I kind of understand why Chloe likes a pair of heavy boots on her feet. Hers look better with her style, but that's fine.
Once she was as comfortable as she thought she was going to get, Rachel leaned her seat back slightly. From her angle she could still see the house but, someone was going to have to be specifically looking into the car to really see that she was there. With any luck, David was none the wiser that he had a tail. If luck was on my side I'd be snuggling Max or Chloe or both, not giving Douchebag Madsen a taste of his own medicine. She couldn't come up with a counter thought for that sentiment so Rachel simply sat and waited, trying to remain calm and attentive. The silent phone helped, but it was tempting as hell to pull it out and read her missing messages, to call Chloe or Max. Her attempt to get answers from Frank was met with total silence.
Me
Did you send your friend away?
David Madsen returned home an hour later and stayed for no more than half an hour. She watched the entire thing go down from down the road. He had pulled into the driveway, gotten to the door and been forced to knock for some reason. A brief, if hostile looking conversation had taken place between Joyce and David that had stressed her out, made her concerned that he was going to spot her car at any moment. Instead, after the two disappeared inside, she had been only given a few minutes of rest before David came flying out of the house in a long jacket.
Me
Your visitor is on his way.
By that time the sun was beginning to sink below the horizon. Rachel prayed it held out a little longer. She had done her best not to follow David too closely, waiting a couple of minutes before she started her car and made her way toward what she suspected was Frank's property. The downside of this was that as the day turned to night she was going to have more and more difficulty finding it. By the time asphalt turned to gravel, Rachel had been forced to turn on her headlights. Still, the head start she gave David was more than enough to keep the man from noticing her: she didn't spot him once the entire way to Frank's.
That being said, as she realized she was coming to the turnoff in question, Rachel's head swung around. It was dark as night on the property where Frank's RV had been parked earlier that day, but the faint light from what she guessed was a pair of headlights at least suggested that David was there, as she predicted. Okay, okay, fuck. If Frank's there, I need to get there. I was hoping he'd just run or something, but he hasn't said fuckall. Half of a mile down the road, not far from where she had parked earlier, Rachel pulled off into the grass and shut off her engine. She made sure that the doors were unlocked and then stored the keys beneath the front seat.
Me
I love you both. Just in case you ever forget it or doubt it or something
Rachel pulled her battery from the back of her phone. The phone she stuffed into the glovebox and the battery went down the back of the pouch behind the driver's seat. There was no lump in her throat this time at the thought that that message might be incredibly necessary. She wasn't intent on anything horrible happening tonight but that was what people always did when they went off to battle. Not that she wanted a fight. Still, she couldn't help but harken back to an episode of Deep Space Nine, to the squat Chief of Operations recording a goodbye to his wife and child, to the science officer reassuring him that they all do it, before every fight. Rachel wanted to suffer the fate that Jadzia Dax had predicted for Miles O'Brien: to live to be 140 and die in bed, surrounded by family and friends.
I'm sorry, Chloe. I think I'm a Trekkie. It's a foregone conclusion.
It took far less time for her to work the bandanna, gloves and ski mask into place than it had for her to get the sweater and sweatpants on. Clad head to toe in black, again, Rachel adjusted herself. If you have to scare David again, do it all at once. Big and flashy, anything to make him run. If he runs, you can get Frank to run. The car door shut behind her, making a louder sound in the night than she had wanted it to, and Rachel turned and began to run. Heavy footfalls fell first against gravel and then against the grass on the opposite side of the road as Rachel made her way back toward the last known position of Frank's RV.
It took her far longer than she wanted to admit but Rachel was not a sprinter and it was a dark night, devoid of city lights. There could have been any kind of snake or rodent, rock or root in her path and Rachel was as likely not to see it as she was to see it through the darkness and the thick, unkempt grass at the roadside. Rachel was feeling unaware of herself, much as she had before she started therapy. It was so severe a shift that frankly she didn't read the signs of nerves: shaking hands, dry mouth, rapid heartbeat for what they were until she observed that quite out of the blue the sky had begun to cloud and the winds were swaying with an unusual wind.
The gusts that resulted were fairly impressive by the time she turned down the drive. David's car sat halfway down it. Originally all Rachel had wanted was to keep David away from Frank. Now, as she approached the guard's car, she could hear the sound of two men arguing in the distance and she knew Frank was still there.Maybe I can still get him away, she told herself as she came to a stop, kneeling behind David's vehicle. The car's headlights were still on but they weren't aimed very well to give Rachel much of a picture of what was happening.
In fact she only knew that the two of them were standing so close together because of the glare from a flashlight in David's hand. LED flashlight. My flashlight. Asshole. If she were to try to get Frank away from David, or perhaps to stall David from going and getting help ( assuming that's his plan, she thought) she was going to have to do something about his wheels. The exact words being shouted back and forth were beyond Rachel's comprehension, but they were growing quicker, less silence between them. It's heating up.
And perhaps, she realized, that was what the situation called for. Looking down, Rachel placed a hand on the rear left tire in front of her. Maybe that's what I need to do. If she wanted to do anything to help Frank out at all, she was going to need her fire. Now was as good a time as any to call it. The fire came with its own downsides, though, beyond the risk of causing a forest fire, that is. The first was the rage itself. That particular emotion was the easiest key she had found to accessing the heat, the fire inside of her. There were others but they were not particularly conducive to the situation she was in. As for the rage itself, well, it made her feel like shit and she always crashed for half a day afterwards, emotionally. Pairing the pervasive cold when she overdid the fire and her memory of the state that had left her in the year before, Rachel was dubious about risking it.
Yet, you got yourself into this. You knew this was going to have to happen, do it. Truth was, thinking of David for any particularly long period of time got herpissed enough on its own. Frank had saved Chloe and Max and her biological mother from Damon Merrick. She owed him this one. Closing her eyes she pressed a glove hand against the tread of the tire and focused. David fucking Madsen. Works for Sean Prescott under the table. Pushes around those weaker than him. Makes them feel like shit. Pushes Chloe to violence. Sneers at everything she loves. Spys on her and says its for her own good. That David Madsen. It was a start, but it wasn't enough. As the yelling in the background began to turn to screaming, she ran through every interaction she herself had had with him, every time he had talked down to her, the few times he had called her "girl" and the one time he had called her "recruit" before she told him that she was not 'cut out' for the military. ( Why's that, he had asked. Don't Ask Don't Tell, she had responded with a wry smile, happy to remind him that his step daughter was her girlfriend and nothing he did could change that.)
It was about the time that she realized that a truly pissed off David was capable of more than calling the cops in this situation that she felt the heat begin to almost drip, almost ooze like a viscous liquid down the inside of her right arm. Just like last time, only more control. More control. She smelled the burning rubber before the fire actually started. To actually get a fire started, she thought it would take either a significant burst of heat or a longer time than she thought she had, but there was a very brief, small flame before the tire deflated with a magnificent pop. The pop was loud enough to draw very clear shouts of aggression and confusion from the men farther into the property, not to mention enough to make Rachel jerk back in surprise, gravel and dirt digging into her through the thick clothes.
The head did not leave her as she fought to her feet. She was in this shit now, and it was up to her to see it through. Think about Sera. Think about Max. Think about Chloe. Now think about how Frank saved all of them and David treated two of them like shit, like suspects, like monsters. When you think you're the protagonist of your story but you're actually a bigger asshole than a seedy fucking drug dealer, you've fucked up! David Madsen had fucked up, time and time again. Rachel planted both feet firmly under her and started toward the sound of the voices and the shine of David's flashlight as he spun about, trying to source the loud pop he had just heard.
Some people never learn, Rachel told herself. Some people grab their moral compass and think it points to True North. The bright LED passed horribly close to her as Rachel turned and began to approach at something more like a diagonal. The shape of Frank's RV was beginning to take shape. Like James. Like my father. He was right and everyone else had to be his kind of right. There was no end to the depths he would go to impose his definitions of right on everyone around him. He would kill. The grass was fairly long around her ankles. Frank did not care for this lawn. She absentmindedly wondered if the property was even his or just completely abandoned.
The RV was mostly unchanged, pale and a little filthy, even by the dim echoes of the light put off by David's flashlight. The door was hanging wide open, but there was no sign of Pompidou. He was not even barking. If David had hurt that dog, she sweared to fuck he was going to need something stronger than aloe vera before the night was done. David was willing to literally punch Chloe when her back was turned to him to express how right he was, to try to show that she couldn't fight him. Some twenty feet behind the back end of the RV was something that fucking terrified Rachel to see. At first glance it was nothing special, some pale mass.
The closer she got the clearer it was that, while David and Frank argued about whether David had any right to be on that property or whether Frank was worth the needle David thought should end his life, Damon Merrick lay feet away from them, wrapped in an off-white tarp. It was just long and wide enough to be a body and it looked to be stained with dirt. Rachel tried to keep low, to move slowly through the night as neither of them had yet noticed her approach. Looking around showed no sign of a freshly dug hole, but there was a shovel leaning up against the RV, positioned between the open door and a folding lawn chair which was aimed toward the remains of a fire.
A fire, she told herself. Even if David's figured out what's in there, will it matter if there's no evidence left? Rachel shivered. It was just slight, but it was enough to concern her. She was cooling and it made little sense with the wind dying down unless it was a response to using the fire. If I try that, I'm going to have to use a lot more fire. She turned in the night to watch David's face contorting with disgust as Frank told him for what she was sure wasn't even the fifth time, to get off of his property. All Rachel could see, though, was Chloe's face instead. Chloe's devastation after leaving the house she'd grown up in. Maybe that's all I need to see,Rachel told herself, seething. The heat began to boil somewhere around her heart.
She was no longer anything resembling cool.
"I will end you like the parasite you are if you do not surrender to a citizen's arrest right now," David promised the man. Okay, we've escalated to death threats. Move now. She hurried forward five or six steps, aware that she could easily attract David's attention like this. She was not so sure about Frank: he spoke with an angry slur. If she had to guess, Frank was absolutely plastered. It did not bode well for him being able to run if she found a way to handle David. Every black mark he's ever left on every good day, Rachel counseled herself, all the times he must have been watching us, taking photos. The things he must have seen on that video feed, no matter what the point of it as. The total and complete disregard for basic human decency.
Coaching her rage, Rachel focused. Just under a year ago, Rachel had taken a large buildup of anger, of rage and pushed it out of her body all at once. That night, the fire had not traveled along the veins of her arms into her hands, as she had felt just a minute or two ago. No, it was more like a pair of arms which she could not see had sprouted all at once from her chest, pulling hatred, panic and rage away from her heart all at once. The result had been immediate. That was what she needed now. She needed to do this all at once.
Even seething, chest straining against the clothing she wore as she drew in heavy breaths, Rachel could think clear enough to know the difference between that night and this one. She knew what she had to do but she was still capable of being scared enough to hate the idea of doing it. Chloe, Max, you better have gotten that last message. If this went to fuck, she wanted them to never forget that they mattered to her. Rachel turned on her heel, still picturing the tarp that she suspected contained Damon Merrick's year old corpse inside intently in her mind and, in a voice she had last used to try to scare David, she spoke. No, she yelled.
"You couldn't listen to me," she yelled across the twenty or thirty feet between them. Frank and David momentarily stopped arguing as David spun around, flashlight flaring in her eyes. Stop that, asshole. She was forcing breath from her chest almost as soon as it came in, inhaling just as rapidly. "You should have taken my advice, David. You should have stuck to your fucking job." She liked to pretend that she could see David's face crack in panic through the flashlight in her eyes but the honest truth is that she didn't even notice that he was holding a gun in his other hand, much less him raising it.
In a second she would process impressions of a revolver, but in that moment all she knew was that a bullet had been fired and the person most likely to be shooting it was David. Rachel flung herself into the long grass ( When was the last time someone mowed this, does anyone ever?) as Frank let out some kind of yell that was not all that far off from an animal's roar. Rolling over, she saw the man charge and heard his fist connect solidly with David's jaw. David dropped like a bag of bricks. It was all Rachel needed. Adrenaline surging from what she could only guess was a near miss with a bullet, Rachel pushed to her feet, turned andforced the fire out of her.
As last November there was no physical sensation of it leaving. It was simply heat, and rage and strength around her heart and then it was gone. Some fifteen feet from her the fire roared immediately into being. It bathed the RV and the scene in front of her in a pale orange light which Rachel used to further assess the situation. David was not unconscious, he was scrambling for his gun. Confused and enraged, Frank looked around twice, somehow missed her and then hurled himself a step or two forward.
Rachel told herself she did not hear bones crack when Frank slammed his foot down on David's hand, the one closing around something that glinted as metal would in the dancing flames. Focus, Rachel told herself, focus. This fire isn't hot enough and David knows you're here. If he shot at you once he'll do it again. She was loathe to look away as David cried out in pain but she did. Rachel's attempts at disguising her voice vanished as she screamed at the fire. She didn't yell some magic word. She didn't even tell it to 'hurry the fuck up' she just screamed. It was the only non-violent expression of her desire, her panic, her fury that she could think of.
It flared brighter. That's right. That night in May there was a fire already in the trash can. I got angry and I made it worse. I turned it from nothing into something, into one of the biggest forest fires Arcadia Bay has ever seen. If I can do that because I caught my father frenching a stranger, I can do this. I can do this for Chloe. I can do this for Max. I can do this for Sera. I can do this for me. I can do this for ME! Slowly but surely the flame changed from orange to almost white. Rachel pulled her gloves off when she raised them toward the fire and realized that they were beginning to smoke.
"Who the fuck are you?" Frank was screaming. She turned. The man was still standing on David's hand with his left foot, but his right was pressing David's windpipe. He's going to kill him. I have to stop that. I have to stop all of this. Frank was looking at her. I wasn't exactly invisible, was I? Rachel had to appeal to Frank's emotions. He was all emotion in that moment and so was she. Higher logic was going to be beyond her for some time. Tomorrow morning was going to be spent in her dorm room, hurting, trying to understand.
"Someone who knows you're better than him," she yelled back over the suddenly roaring fire.
"You don't know fuck," Frank screamed, desperation in his voice. The fire flared behind Rachel as she took a step forward, bathing the area in fresher, brighter sickly-orange light. "Stay back!"
"Let him go. Get in your RV and run. I'll handle this." She tried to speak to him like a friend but to him she was a stranger, yelling and angry and doing things that his booze-addled mind could not understand. Rachel realized in that second that Frank had no friends in the world that walked on two legs and that he knew it. A part of her hoped wholeheartedly that Pompidou was okay somewhere, perhaps trying to find his way back to his friend.
"I said stay the fuck back," Frank told her, gun raising. She froze in place. What do I do? God damn it Frank. Frank stumbled backward as a massive gust of wind blew across the property. Him stumbling was all that David needed to draw a gasping breath and grab for his gun. For a moment, Rachel wasn't sure which of them David was going to shoot first. Frank was closest and carrying a weapon, but she wielded fire and surely David understood that by now. She was looking to Frank to see if he was going to recover and react in time when she realized that whatever David's next move was, it did not matter.
Frank had recovered, alright. By the light of the fire behind Rachel she saw the man right himself and then, looking between them like a trapped animal, she watched him decide that he had no way out. Maybe it was the liquor in his system. Maybe it was the life he had lived or the life he had taken. Maybe, even this had always been coming and if she were smart enough she might have been able to see it in his face the twenty or so times she had seen him since that first day they met. Rachel did not know, and despite her best efforts she felt like she would wonder until she drew her last breath. The man dragged one hand up his filthy, dirt-and-beer-caked bare chest, a hand holding cold hard metal of his own. She knew what was going to happen too late to look away.
The flames grew bright with her fury and fear, with the wind feeding it unnaturally, with Rachel's very will a constant line of fuel. She saw the splatter of blood and gore in unnatural, surreal clarity, emerging from the left side of Frank's skull. Bone and something else, something thick, wet and not without obvious mass sprayed into the air and then dropped. Frank hit the ground less than a few seconds later.
She did not remember screaming his name but she did remember feeding every inch of that moment into the odd sense of connection she had with the blaring fire behind her. David, who for a moment looked horrified from his spot on the earth, his gun uselessly pointing at where Frank had just been, cried out. Rachel spun, her vocal cords straining as the flame in front of her changed to an unreal, unnatural bright hue of blue and even the grass around it began to singe.
Her lungs never seemed to empty, the scream was eternal, endless as the grave and deeper than the romantic darkness between stars. It was not pregnant with all that darkness's potential but instead with every type of horror she had or would ever feel. The blue flame danced under the pressure of the sudden storm-like winds. The mask threatened to blow from her skull and she stayed upright only by sheer force of will. Whether the ground moved beneath her back or the wind pushed her to and from, Rachel did not care. She was not sure she would care again.
David had gotten to his knees and was speaking, gun shaking between his hands as she pointed it at her. She could see his lips moving but all she cared about was that this man dropped his weapon. His fault his fault his fault. The metal grew bright red in his grip almost instantly. She saw his anguish, she saw his lips part in a pained scream but nothing could be heard over her own voice. Why were her lungs not empty of air? Why was bright blue flame spreading across grass and toward the RV, and yet she felt as if someone had dipped her fully clothed into a pool and then locked her, soaking wet, into a freezer?
The gun began to smoke and David dropped it. She watched it turn pale white and heard a small pop. Rachel saw the weapon warp and the faux wood handle burn in inhuman detail and then knowing that her strength was about to give out, she turned and fled from the man still weeping over his injured hands. Almost all she could do was count one foot in front of the other. At some point her mouth shut and she began to draw breath in rapid-fire bursts, like a minigun going off more than a pair of lungs inflating and deflating. Her bare hand reached up to knock a thin branch from her way as she flew into the woods and it immediately lit up with flame.
If she had had the sanity, the sense of mind to turn back, she might have seen the flaming outlines of her footprints. This behavior continued for almost a minute, with any sort of contact between her body and the world around her leaving its mark and it did not stop until about the time she realized she was being followed. All at once the world grew quiet, the wind ceased to blow and all she heard was the sound of her footsteps and a set behind her, one which snapped every trick and trampled every crispy leaf. Faintly, a sign that she must have truly lost her mind, she heard a familiar sounded engine in the distance.
Rachel did not know which way she had run. She simply ran. Earth and stone, root and undergrowth, her still smoking boots rose and fell but at least she left behind no blackened handprints and no fire followed her. Far behind her, now in the distance, she expected that a roaring fire was at work. It will put the one last May to its shame, some part of her predicted. That voice was enough at least to bring her to her senses. Instantly the cold was worse than it had been a second before. Her limbs seemed to be moving only by sheer chance. Something was oozing down the front of her mask, along her shirt. She knew it was vomit but she wasn't sure how she hadn't asphyxiated on it.
"Stop!" David called out from some distance behind her. Then, absurdly, she thought she heard him call her Chloe. Makes no sense. No sense. Nothing makes sense. Why did he do it? Why do they do any of this? What is wrong with them? What is wrong with us? What is wrong with me? David was still some ways off judging by the sound of his voice but Rachel stumbled and fell to her knees every few seconds. It did not help that what little night vision she had was beginning to fade. Or you're sleepy, she told herself, trying to hold her mouth shut so chattering teeth could not give her away.
Her breath was beginning to slow, which would have made it easier to keep quiet if not for her feet snapping twigs and tripping over roots. I'm gonna fall over and not get back up. She wasn't sure how many times she had fallen at that point. In fact she wasn't entirely sure of where she was going, just that she was runningfrom David and David was, no matter what else he was, a bad man. Like her dad. Bad man. If she did fall over, Rachel thought as she tried to make herself run, tried to make her legs work, it would be okay. Because really, why was she running?
It would all be okay.
If she just laid down, maybe she could sleep. People slept when they laid down right?
Maybe after a nap, it would be warm.
She could go for a nap. It was funny, funny enough that she laughed. Rachel always used to fight her mom about naps as a kid. Nap time, she thought.
Stumbling dumbly around a tree, she felt a hand reach out from behind her, pressing over her mouth.
Someone pulled her down, down for a nap. Something covered her, big and dark. The rest of the forest went dark.
There was a nice sound in her ear.
It sounded like the night between the stars.
Interstella.
She could go toward it.
That would be nice.