Monster (Gone 7)

Eat, the dark thing whispered soundlessly. Eat.

Sean ate.

CHAPTER 11

A Really Bad Commute

QUICK ACTION BY Erin allowed them to grab a taxi from LaGuardia to JFK and grab two seats on Virgin America to Seattle. The thinking—if that panicky, jittery, shell-shocked state of mind after the annihilation of the plane at LaGuardia could be called thinking—was simply to put miles between themselves and the scene of the crime. Three thousand miles on the first available flight.

It will take the cops a while to identify us, Justin thought, hopefully long enough.

They stayed overnight at Erin’s sister’s home in Lynnwood, south of Seattle, a depressingly average family home where Justin had to sleep on the couch. Then they borrowed/took the sister’s car and drove south to San Francisco, muddying the trail for pursuers.

Justin and Erin were at a roadside scenic pullout in the Marin Headlands, the great hills that anchored the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge, sitting in that borrowed Volvo SUV, looking through bleary eyes at the bridge and the bay beyond.

It was autumn and a workday and gloomy besides, so they were nearly alone. A camper van was a half-dozen spaces away; a determined cyclist powered his way up the hill, bearded face earnest and focused; a massive crow perched on the back of a wooden bench, preening and staring at them.

“Good omen or bad omen?” Justin wondered aloud, eyeing the crow sourly. He was in a foul mood, exhausted, frightened, and depressed. So was Erin, he knew, though the way she looked at him (and sometimes refused to look at him) created a sour realization that she was having a very different sort of reaction from his. Erin’s depression and avoidance were undoubtedly caused by the memory of the aftermath of the crash—when Justin had tossed that lit swatch of fabric and the whole thing stopped being an accident and became deliberate murder. He knew that act—that “necessary” act, he still insisted—had not sat well with Erin.

They had both heard the stories on the radio.

Justin DeVeere was a mass murderer. Of course, he reminded himself, she was in this, too. Her swatch of fabric, her lighter.

Stuck with me now, he thought. And I’m stuck with her.

Justin’s state of mind was perfectly rational to his way of thinking. He’d done only what he had to do to survive. It wasn’t malice, just calculation. By destroying the aircraft and the people on it, he had hoped to erase any evidence, and yes, twelve people had survived and were talking to the FBI and, worse still, the media. But that didn’t mean the initial decision was wrong.

No, there was only one true priority: survival. And anyone or anything that reduced his chance of survival had to be dealt with in the most effective way. That wasn’t him being some kind of bad guy, it was simple evolution, survival of the most fit.

And who was more fit than the dagger-handed monster who now lived within him?

A blue containership with the letters MAERSK painted along the side slipped under the bridge, heading toward Oakland to unload electronic goods from China. It swept through light fog gathered beneath the center span.

“Picturesque,” Erin said bleakly.

“Clichéd,” Justin sneered. “It’s just a picture postcard, basically, a shot you can find in a thousand versions online.”

“Whatever.”

Silence fell. There had been a lot of silence between them. A lot of silence and a lot of sidelong looks.

“We need a plan,” Erin said. She had a tooth that was bothering her, and she poked at it with her tongue, which garbled her consonants. Her hair was a mess, her makeup was nothing like the neat perfection Justin had come to expect, and she was dressed in her sister’s “mom” clothes.

This was not art, Justin thought, any more than the too-pretty view was art. Art was struggle and shock and the bleeding edge of the new and the never-before-seen. Like the . . . event . . . at LaGuardia. He closed his eyes and saw the blue flame racing across the spreading pool of jet fuel. He saw the way the escape chute crumpled like a leaf in the fire and spilled its absurd occupants into the flames.

A little girl in profile, back turned to him, stark against the rising flame, that was art, that shocked and challenged.

“Golden Gate Bridge,” Erin muttered. “Everyone’s favorite suicide spot.”

Was Erin considering it? he wondered. Did he mind?

With an inner sigh he realized he would. She was someone to talk to, after all, someone to enjoy in bed, someone to do useful things like flick a lighter when his hands were no longer hands.

“I can’t survive prison,” Erin said, biting her tense fist. “I can’t! This is unfair, all of it. If they had just left us alone. If they would . . .”

“You happen to have a plan?” Justin asked.

“No, Justin, no, I don’t have a plan!” she shouted, turning her face and her somewhat asymmetrically penciled eyebrows on him.