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Fresh snow. The smell assaulted his mind through nostrils burning with the cold air of every ragged breath. The smell of ozone, of ice, of wet stone and frozen ground.
And blood. His blood.
* * *
He sat bolt upright from sleep, sweat soaking his skin and the threadbare sheets, entangled in the aging, cheap, bedclothes, startled to wakefulness. Moments later, Charles groaned, the pain replacing panic, and flopped backwards in an ungraceful arc into the tangled mess of seedy hotel bedding, every inch of his body protesting the sudden movement and the lack of painkillers, his head swimming and his stomach churning. He waited for the world to stop spinning, trying to focus on the bedside clock until the numbers resolved themselves into their normal, slightly fuzzed red shapes.
Four in the morning – again. Every night, that blasted dream woke him up at the same time. He tried to push the thought aside, and reached, fumbling, for the two prescription bottles beside the clock on the battered bedside table. Two tablets – half tablets, he forced himself to take half tablets – one from each bottle, vanished down his throat without water, the bitter taste of the broken pills and the sharp edges now as familiar as the rotten metal taste he woke up with in the back of his mouth every morning.
He waited, staring up at the ceiling, for the dull, numb feeling to spread from the base of his gut, covering the aches and pains just enough to let him function. Nine months and he still hurt everywhere, from the broken bones in his feet, which should have mended months ago, to the constant headache that a crushed fossa temporalis and a cracked jaw had left him with as they mended too slowly. He tried to focus on the dirty, off-white textured ceiling, tried to blank out his thoughts while he waited. The images of the dream looked back at him from inside his mind.
Why that dream, of all the nightmares he could be having? He shivered, pulling the sheet back over him, though he was hardly cold, and tried to sleep.
* * *
He could hear the sounds of the pursuit behind him. He ran, stumbling over snow-slick rocks, hidden roots, and hidden holes in the ground, never seeming to gain a foot, losing ground with every fall into the cold, wet snow.
He had to run, even though he knew he could not escape.
* * *
At six, his alarm went off, the gray dawn of morning oozing under the battered blinds, stained with the grease and grime of the window beyond. He wasn’t sure if he had slept again, but the groggy feeling that had curled around his brain suggested he had at least dozed some. He sat up slowly, grateful that the world didn’t spin this time, and out of habit reached to the bedside table, his hand closing over air. Of course his glasses weren’t there, he chided himself, how long had it been since he had a pair? Yet every morning he did the same thing, reaching for one more thing that wasn’t there.
He stood, slowly, still cautious of a knee that had more than once proved to be tricky, bare feet planted on the off color shag carpet. He tried not to think of what sorts of stains that dull brown pattern hid in its blandness as he shambled to the closet of a bathroom for a shower. He shrugged out of his undershirt and underwear, leaving them piled as neatly as he could manage on the tile floor of the little room. A pang of longing hit him as he undressed, for the comforts of his rooms in the Hause, for sleeping naked in his bed, under his own sheets. He shoved the thoughts away with the reminder he should be glad he was at least not sleeping in his clothes for weeks at a time any more.
He turned the water as hot as it would run, letting the steam rise on the cold tile, and stepped in, the shock of the water on his skin breaking the drowsiness loose from his mind. He let it run over him bowing his head under the uneven but strong flow of the showerhead, running through his hair – how had it gotten so long, he wondered – and across his back. The hot water coursed over pale skin now marked with new scars, still red and healing, over muscle he had fought every inch to regain from too long unable to move, and over the reminder of his duty – branded low on the small of his back to be nearly invisible – its brand still dark after all these years, but three of the cogs freshly red and angry. His back ached in muscle and bone, his ribs still complained with nearly every breath, but on the surface, at least, he was whole again.
But would it be enough? Could he be enough? He would have to be.
Charles washed, using the harsh, pungently scented hotel soap, on skin that was past missing the care he used to take with it, letting the hot water run out to ice cold before he stepped out to the embrace of a rough, tattered towel. At the sink, a disposable razor and a gas station toothbrush waited for him, where he had left them the night before. As he shaved, the face in the mirror that looked back at him was a stranger’s.
* * *
He could see it now, caught in glimpses as he fell, a silhouette in the moonlight against the snow. Its hulking, dark outline moved beyond the trees, just far enough back that he knew it was only waiting for him to tire.
And he was. He was so tired, bone weary. He only wanted to lie down in the snow and give up. But he couldn't.
He had to run. And so he did.
* * *
The coffee could have been used to clean grease off axel bearings. Instead, Charles drank it, hoping vaguely that he had added enough sugar and cream to delay it eating through his guts of its own accord. The taste, at least, covered the bitter acid taste of stress in the back of his throat, and – more importantly – the taste of the food on the plate in front of him. He needed the food, so he ate. But the taste was horrific, worse than any time one of the boys had tried to cook.
Charles slammed the thought away, and focused on his situation. The hotel – motel really – was a survivor from a past era when the little two-lane had been a prime artery, and sat, sprawled in a line of rooms facing a single gas station turned diner and truck stop. Both looked as though they were waiting to dry up and blow away, stuck into the dusty dry ground around them like the remains of the clumps of grass which dotted the edge of the sun cracked highway. Miles from anywhere of interest, and thus, of interest only for that fact – he needed another day before he could face what was coming, another day for the situation to be right.
He looked up for a moment over the rim of the cup, watching the pig eyes of the waitress skim over him for what felt like the thousandth time. Deloris, her nametag said, watched the world from between rolls of fat around her eyes, and seemed particularly interested in him. When she saw him glancing her direction, she giggled. Nothing, thought Charles, with an ass large enough to hold a book shelf on it, should be able to giggle like that. Charles clenched his jaw and set the empty cup down, knowing it would bring her over, but needing more coffee.
She bobbed over, smiling in a way that was both motherly and obscene, and poured him another cup. She glanced down at his mostly empty plate, and asked: “You want some pie, hun?”
The steak, if that was what it had been in a past life, was mostly reduced to a thin bone on his plate, and the eggs, white pools of half burned and still raw liquid, had vanished similarly. But he could still taste the burnt grease and boiled meat, even over the bitter, viscous coffee. The thought of what pie this place might produce threatened to bring everything back up, and Charles quickly waved her away. He looked at the coffee for a moment, palmed two halves out of the pocket of his jacket, and downed them with the scalding hot coffee, not even bothering with cream and sugar this time.
* * *
The woods were burning now, snow gone to mud, and steam, and still, it chased, and he ran. He ran through fire – the tongues of flame licking at his legs and feet – but could still only feel the frozen cold from before, dragging him down.
It was still there, still behind him, closing in now as every step became harder, and every stumble more difficult to rise from. It would have him, and there was nothing he could do.
* * *
The little color TV had seen better days, but it had cable, if in a vague sense, and it managed to resolve an image well enough for Charles to be able to pick through the news, even if the sound was garbled and murky. Every nugget he caught about the boys made his guts twist with guilt. If things were this bad on the surface, how bad were they really?
Will they forgive me, he asked himself not for the first time, as he watched yet another press conference go from bad to worse to bloody, this time a replay at least, rather than a fresh one. Will they understand that I had to do this; that I had to leave them on their own through this?
He knew he could set right all that had gone wrong in the last nine months, that didn’t worry him. A lesser man would have worried about the money, the destruction, the harm to the public image and employee morale: none of these things were really even vaguely in Charles’ mind. After all, if Iceland could go bankrupt, and still survive, so could his boys. They were, after all, a larger economy in of themselves than some pittance of an island nation. He could rebuild, restructure, and reinvest once he was back. The money didn’t really matter, anyway, not in the end.
He didn’t even doubt that the boys would trust him again after this. They would, he knew, because it was in their natures to trust him. And even if there was hesitation, he knew it wouldn’t take much to win them back. If anything, they trusted too easily, too quickly: that issue with Fjordslorn had shown that.
No, even if they did trust, even if all the money came back, even if everything went back to the way it had been, he knew his boys might, each in their own way; never forgive him for being gone. For being dead, he corrected himself. They’d all lost people, they all had abandonment issues, hell, they’d probably had more death and destruction in their lives than some large wars could muster. It made his gut ache thinking that he’d added to it. Again.
* * *
He could see it clearly now, standing in the flames, its body a hulking mass of muscle and pent violence. Every step was agony, his legs burning with each much protested and staggering step. He couldn’t feel the heat of the flames, only the cold, still eating into his body. There wasn’t much further he could run, he knew, but he would make it work to claim its prize.
In the distance, it howled.
* * *
The sunlight oozed across the bed, waking Charles from the nap he hadn’t meant to take. He’d dozed off watching the endless loops of the same news and interviews that seemed to fill the few channels the TV could turn to, bare feet tucked under the sheets but still fully dressed from his morning outing for food. He hated napping, but it had become a necessity with the lack of sleep and the painkillers, and the constant muzzy feeling in his head made them all the worse to wake from. At least there were still enough of the painkillers in his system that he didn’t wake to excruciating pain this time.
He stared blankly at the television for a few moments before turning it off with the remote. The silence echoed in his head, making it ache even more than sleeping sitting up had added to the background noise of pain he was only just becoming accustomed to. He wanted to get up out of the bed and do something, but there was nothing to do, no reason to get up. He clenched his fists in frustration, and felt his fingers clench into soft fabric in his lap. When had he gotten that out of his bag?
It had been one of the better ideas some of the Kloclateres had developed, and even more so once Charles had the ringleaders killed and made the operation official as a profit generating venture: selling the used clothing from the band online, through a variety of fake channels, and directing the money back to the band made a small fortune for the boys daily. That one day Charles himself would find himself tracking down one of his own EBay plants, and buying something from them had never occurred to him until he found himself holding the package in his hands, six months ago. He still didn’t really understand why he’d bought the thing.
He wasn’t even kidding himself, and he knew it. He missed his boys more than he had words for, and buying one of Nathan’s black t-shirts – not a concert one, he hadn’t gone that far – to comfort himself had been his way of easing that dull hollow ache in his chest just a little bit. Even now, it still smelled faintly like Nathan. Even now, with all he knew, he missed them and wanted nothing more than to be back with them. Even Murderface.
He got up and put the shirt back into his small duffel, trying not to think about anything but his plans for the following day. There would be a lot to do, a lot of variables that could make things go wrong. But the thoughts kept creeping back into his head.
I’ll be back soon, boys. Just, hang on a little longer.
* * *
He knew the green eyes that looked down at him. He knew the voice that growled his name. He knew them, and because he did he didn’t fight what the voice said, what the eyes said was true.
“Mine.”
* * *
He had woken, just as he had the night before, and every night before that, from the dream with a start. The same dream, every night. He knew what it meant, knew now, just as he had the first time he’d really consciously been aware of waking from it, wrapped in bandages and still feeling more dead than alive. He set his jaw more firmly, barely glancing at the speedometer as the tires of the motorcycle ate the miles between him and the concert.
He might call them his boys, he might feel that twinge of possessive ownership of them every time he looked at them, and every time he watched a show he might swell with pride; but the truth was, they weren’t his. They didn’t even belong to themselves, how could he claim they belonged to him? He knew better, especially now, but he had really always known it. It had been the second realization that had been much harder.
“Mine,” the voice said in his dreams every night, and he knew it was true. He had stopped belonging to himself when he had become the manager for the band. He had probably never really belonged to himself, all things considered. Yes, it was Nathan’s voice, but it wasn’t Nathan that said it. It was the Band that said it.
No more running. There was nothing to run from.