Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [87]
And the goose bumps on the back of his neck, prickling his arms, skin that felt watched, kept him from turning around to look for himself.
“I have to go get help, Robin,” he said, then pulled off his coat and covered her with it. “I have to go get help right now.”
“Yeah,” she said, detached and blurred. “Yeah, Byron. Don’t leave me, okay.”
I have to leave you, he started to say. I can’t find help unless I leave you, but there were branches snapping behind him, and so he stood instead and walked away from her as quickly as he could.
8.
Halfway across town, the city crippled, already shutting down before the storm, Walter stood alone in the empty parking lot opposite Dr. Jekyll’s. The snow swirled down through the arc lights and stuck to his hair, melted against his face.
He’d walked part of the way from the diner, freezing and his clothes soaked through from the glass of water Byron had thrown at him, had finally hitched a ride with a woman inching cautiously along in her Jeep. She’d been wearing freedom rings and had talked too much, nervous chatter about the weather, what they were saying on the radio: blizzard conditions expected, the worst winter storm to hit the southeast in more than a century. She’d let him out in the short tunnel just before Morris, where Eighteenth Street ducked beneath the railroad, had asked him twice if he was sure he had a place to go. The warmth from the Jeep had clung to him for only a second or two before the wind rushing through the tunnel had ripped it away.
And the parking lot was as deserted as the streets.
Nothing he could do, no way to even know what had happened.
He shivered and stared across the tracks, the uneven lights, black pockets here and there where the lines were down. Looked for the exact place where Spyder’s house would be, but the mountain was just a black smudge against the sky. No way to tell, exactly, so he turned, fingers crossed that the Fidgety Bean would still be open, that he wouldn’t have to try to walk all the way home through the storm and the night. And then movement or the fleeting impression of form, quickest glimpse from the corner of one eye, something stretched too long across the snow and too tall across brick. He tried to turn fast enough to catch it there, finally, more sick of the dread than afraid, better to be damned and sure than to spend another night jumping at shadows.
But there was nothing to see but the storm, the wind making a silvery dust devil with the snow, and he pulled his damp clothes tighter around bony shoulders and walked away fast toward the coffee shop.
CHAPTER NINE
Paperweight
1.
They went to Keith’s, because Daria was afraid the cops would spot the van if they stayed anywhere on Morris. A single room a few blocks away, three flights up the carcass of an old office building. His uncle owned the place and was letting Keith live there rent-free, dodging zoning ordinances by pretending he only worked there nights as security. When Keith switched the lights on, they buzzed like drunken wasps, halfhearted fluorescence that made them all look like hung-over zombies.
“Oh Keith,” Theo crooned, sarcasm thick as old honey. “I do love what you’ve done with the place!”
They all followed him inside, Niki and Spyder last, stepped into the room, stark and ugly and soulless, almost as cold as the night outside. Nappy gray-green carpet, water-stained ceiling and walls, big holes punched through the Sheetrock in a dozen places, exposing pink insulation and two-by-fours. Unfurnished, except for a scary-looking mattress in one corner and two metal folding chairs, three bulgy cardboard boxes stuffed with dirty clothes.
“What do you call this, anyway?” Theo asked. “Late Bosnian refugee?”
“Theo, why don’t you just shut the hell up?” and Daria turned around and punched her once, hard, in the shoulder.
Theo flinched and dropped her purse, the flamingo-pink plastic Barbie lunch box, bump to the floor; it popped open and everything inside spilled