Wickerman Cove

Part 35: Couples Counselling

If it had been a movie, that would have been the moment the Guide stepped out, and Mansfield sprung a trap.

It wasn't.

Steph stood for a moment, staring at the thing. Her stomach lurched as she realised it wasn't one creature – there were at least two more bodies fused into the mass. One even had a recognisable face – round, older, male. It had a beard that became sideburns and now-staring blue eyes.

"I was wrong," Steph said. "He's not dead, not exactly."

Leah nodded. "The professor is part of the Guide now. We needed to know what he knew. He sensed us closing in. My mother worked a miracle to stop him escaping the town."

Steph thought about the weird sunrise, and the unseasonal cold. "This place is in a world of its own, isn't it?"

"When the Guide wants it to be," Leah said. "My dad was sure the Singer could get us out."

"I'm still not convinced he's one of the good guys," Steph said, taking a last look at Lenkersheimer's blank expression. "How do I leave?"

"You have the power to end it," Leah said. "I can see you don't want to hurt people—"

"Right now," Steph said, teeth gritted. Ensure compliance, keep control. "If you stand between me and the way out, I'm going to hurt you. How do I get out?"

The smaller woman's lip quivered. "The doors, they go straight into the parking lot," she said. "You can take our van. The keys are in the ignition."

Steph gave her a brittle smile. "Forgive me if that feels a little too neat."

She stepped into the Wyrd. For a moment, she could still see the room – Leah's expression of shock as she watched whatever it looked like when Steph disappeared. Then it was chaos – a jumble of things and images that she guessed the human brain just wasn't built to make sense of. She propelled herself through it, in the direction of 'out' as Leah had pointed her.

The cultists rippled in the Wyrd as she passed through them. Five bodies, standing near the double doors. She moved past the grey van. Space didn't have any meaning here, but she could feel a difference between 'safe' places and 'bad' ones. Six safe places, and a lot of bad. She picked her way through them, to the safe place furthest from the doors.

The world abruptly made sense again. It was warmer here than she'd been inside the factory – she was inside an oldish car, about a hundred feet from the main building, parked where the light didn't reach. She peered at where she'd come from: a concrete block of a building with a pale blue sign that read, 'Hudson Canning.'

The six people weren't exactly an ambush. They looked like they were unloading things from the van – plastic crates and cardboard boxes. Steph felt around the steering column of the car. It was easier to hot-wire a modern vehicle. After a memorable six hours stranded in an Afghan town with only an ancient 4x4, she'd learned a lot about getting cars started.

The glovebox wasn't locked, which was a blessing, since it meant she could plunder it for a small lighter. She used it as a light to see the colours of the wires she needed. Squeezing herself into the space around the steering column, she stripped the wires with teeth and ragged fingernails.

There was no time to wait for the right moment. Steph came up from the footwell to see Leah yelling at the group who'd been unloading. They were looking in every direction. The darkness at the far end of the parking lot would only hide her for so long.

The car rumbled to life surprisingly easily. The only bad thing was whoever had last used it had left the headlights on, and they burst back into life. The cultists stared.