Rust: One

Chapter 11

Fitch parked a few streets back from the Archer's house. His hands were still trembling as he killed the engine, and he had to stroke the thing in his pocket for a good five minutes before his heart stopped hammering against his ribs. His mouth tasted of gunpowder and there was muck dried on his jacket; some of it was mud, and some of it he couldn't identify. Maybe blood. Maybe worse.

He took a long, shuddering breath, and tried to make sense of the situation. No proof. No pipe bombs. He still had the pipes, screw lids and blasting caps but no more black powder. No way to fight.

So much for being the town hero. A break in, a custodian left dead, a bare escape from... something, and all he had to show for it was a pair of skinned knees. He felt like a grade-A fuckup.

He'd taken the long way, winding through the back streets. He'd passed police cars headed for Rustwood High. Fat chance it'd make the news, though. Another poor old man chewed up by the machinery of the town.

He stumbled out into the rain. As soon as his feet touched the pavement his left knee buckled, and he fell against the car door, swearing under his breath until the pain passed. He rolled up his left pants leg and winced as the denim tugged at his skin, glued there by blood. A bad gash just below the kneecap, the blood already drying. He must've bashed it against the wall of the cave without realising. Not so deep that he couldn't just stick a bandaid over it, but it'd keep him from running for the next few weeks.

He'd be lucky if Mrs Archer even wanted to talk to him, looking like this. Filthy, burned up, smelling like shit and blood. When he glanced in the pickup's side mirror he saw a wild man, hair tangled, sand in every fold of his jacket.

"You've become a parody, old son," he whispered. First thing he'd do when he got home was take a bath. Maybe even throw some bubbles in. Break out the clippers and give himself a haircut. Even a number one all over was better than this hermit's tangle. Pretend he hadn't seen what he'd seen in that cave. The crablike claw. The elephantine bulk of it. Pretend to be a real human again, a normal person living in a normal town, even if it was only for five minutes.

No. If he took his mind off the task for one day, even one hour, the doubts would creep in. The town would get into his head and make him forget. That was the only way to stay sane - to hammer on the walls so long and loud that the echoes never went away. Comfort was surrender. Surrender was death.

The beach was real. The men he'd left dying in the caves were real, and so was whatever was chewing their corpses that night.

It wasn't paralysis. The beast could be fuel, if he allowed it. And right now, Kimberly could be in trouble. He needed that fuel.

He pushed on to the Archer's.

Rosewater Avenue was a sloping street and number 118 was at the base of that slope, nestled between identical white-washed suburban bungalows. Fitch was still at the peak of Rosewater Hill, looking down at the Archer's house, when the police car pulled up outside.

He ducked left into the bushes lining the street, and watched through the gaps as a man in a dark suit marched up to the door of 118. Fitch didn't recognise the man, not from so far away, but he wasn't in uniform. Might've been one of the beast's servants, but he wasn't wearing those bug-eye sunglasses either, and he doubted any of the four had made it out of the cave. Not riddled with shrapnel. Not with that thing so hungry.

The policeman went inside. Fitch waited in the bushes, glancing back towards his pickup and then down the hill again, waiting for the man to leave. He didn't. There were lights on in 118, shapes moving behind the curtains, but no way to tell whose silhouettes they were.

He had to know.

Step by slow step, Fitch crept down the hill, keeping to the shadows of the ornamental oaks planted along the street. When he reached 118 he slipped around the side, easing over the back gate, following the sound of voices until he reached the kitchen window. There, he crouched low and pressed against the wall beneath the window, trying to make out words through the patter of rain on his coat.