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A wall of noise hit him the moment he stepped inside.
“Things get hairy, you’ll want me as a friend, Matt,” Peterson said as the door swung shut between them.
47
Matt
MATT IGNORED EVERYONE ANDwent straight for Sally’s desk. She looked up, her face frazzled. “Did you find her?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled the framed county map off the wall behind Sally’s head and set it on an empty desk. His index finger landed on the center of Hollows Bend; he circled the small town, leaving a smudge on the glass.
Mount Washington was directly behind them, with the Saco River bordering the east and the Swift River on the west; all of it protected federal land known as the White Mountain National Forest. The rivers could be crossed, he’d done that plenty of times, but the woods surrounding them were another story—dense, impenetrable, nearly a million acres of wilderness. There was only one way in or out—Main Street became Route 112 at the edge of town, and 112 became nothing for nearly fifteen miles before running through Barton, and Barton wasn’t much to look at. Jackson might be the closest real town, and you’d have to drive for more than an hour to find anything bigger, nearly two for theclosest airport or the feds in Portsmouth. Growing up, he’d loved the isolation of the Bend. It was like being tucked into a warm blanket and peering out from the folds—safe, secure—someplace he could retreat to away from the rest of the world. Now he realized that was a two-edged sword.
They were completely alone.
“She wasn’t there, was she?”
Matt didn’t take his eyes off the map. “I found her cruiser,” he told Sally low enough so nobody else could hear. “Abandoned. There were signs of a struggle. Someone smashed her radio. Some blood, too, but that was probably from Newton.” Hehopedit was from Newton. His voice dropped lower. “Her car wasn’t the only one out there. I found at least a dozen more. Someone disabled them with spike strips and forced them off the road.”
“Forced how?”
“There’s at least two snipers out there, positioned on either side of 112. When I tried to walk toward the crest at Lower Falls, they fired warning shots to hold me back.”
“Someone shot at you?”
“Whoever they are, they’re not letting anyone leave town. I think they took whoever tried.”
Matt’s index finger was still on the map. He didn’t realize how hard he was pushing until he noticed the tip of his finger had gone white.
Sally said, “You found abandoned cars, but what about the drivers? Passengers? Any other people?”
Matt shook his head. “I’m guessing they took them somewhere. Everyone who’s tried to leave town. I think most of the tourists got out, or there’d be more cars. It started right after that … with the birds.”
It took a lot to silence Sally, but that did it. She didn’t speak for a long time, and when she did, her voice was shaky. “So I was right about our communications, the internet. Someone cut us off.”
“Matt?”
Gabby had sidled up beside him. Matt wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. He didn’t want to let go. He felt Addie’s eyes on him from across the room but refused to look. He kissed the side of Gabby’s head. “How’s Riley doing?”
“Sleeping. She passed out the second her head hit the pillow.”
Matt looked around the room. If Riley was sleeping, she was the only one. While a few people had left since he was here earlier, others had come in. The chairs near the door were all full; others sat around the various desks and tables. A couple on the floor. And more still were just wandering about, circling the room, slow and listless. Someone had righted the vending machine and cleaned up the broken glass, tried to restore some kind of normalcy, but the tension was thick in the air. People were either watching him (and quick to look away when he met their eyes) or lost in their own worried thoughts. A couple were huddled outside the door to Ellie’s office, including Ben Molton and Ed McDougal, whose right eye was swollen shut and black. He didn’t like the way they were looking inside, looking at the girl.
“Matt,” Sally said, following his gaze. “You know this didn’t start with the birds. It started whensheshowed up. You don’t get in there and get the truth out of her soon, someone else is bound to take a run at her. The only thing that has kept that from happening so far is a flimsy lock and a bit of civility. Neither of those things will hold up if what you just told me gets out.”
“What did he just tell you?” Gabby asked, rolling out from under his arm.
Careful to ensure nobody else heard, Matt quickly told her.
The color left Gabby’s face. “It’s some kind of sickness, isn’t it? We’ve all been exposed to something, and someone is keeping it from getting out.”
“You’ve seen too many movies,” Matt told her. “It took the government four days to figure out how to get bottled water toNew Orleans after Katrina. No way they could pull something like this off.”
“If it’s not that, what is it?”
Matt knew Sally was right. He needed to talk to the girl. If he were being honest with himself, he should have already done that, but he hadn’t. It was like he didn’t want to. At every opportunity, something steered him away. Even now, glimpsing her through the window of Ellie’s office, some instinct was telling him not to go in there, something primal, lizard brain. He felt the headache coming back on at just the thought of it, the one that first hit him in the coroner’s office, this throbbing behind his eyes.
“Matt, are you okay? You look like you’re going to pass out,” Gabby said.
