Page 87 of Heartbreak Bay

“You got any bolt cutters?” I ask her, and she shakes her head. “Ladder in your pocket?”

“Shut up and pop that hubcap,” she says. “Y’all don’t know how to improvise.”

I smile and use the knife to get the Honda’s hubcap off. She catches it and goes to the fence, kneels down, and starts digging. The soil’s soft and sandy, and she scoops out a big pile, then flips on her back and slithers under. “Good thing about body armor,” she says. “It also keeps you flat for things like this.”

Not that I need a ton of help in that department. Kez and I are otherwise of a size, so the hole she’s dug works for me too, with some creative wriggling. I roll up to my hands and knees and take a step onto the bare ground. It’s harder packed here, but it was used as some kind of outdoor lunch area; there are still a few rusting metal tables and some yellowed plastic molded chairs scattered around. I can’t imagine it would have been too pleasant out here in the summer, but no doubt better than inside the cannery.

There’s no door on this side, so we head around to the parking lot, which faces a loading dock with six roll-up doors. The pavement is buckled and cracked like dry mud; we watch our footing and head up the steps at the loading dock. Kez tries the metal back door. Locked. We work our way down the line of dock doors. One moves, but not much. Maybe six inches up before it sticks fast. It’s a gap, but it’s tight. I don’t ask, I just go first, and push myself underneath. My belt catches, and for a second I panic, thinking that the door’s coming down, that it’s automatic and going to crush me, cut me in half ... but then I suck in my breath and fumble at my belt buckle and am able to fit through. I roll to my knees, shotgun heavy in my hands, and scan the area.

It’s empty. An empty warehouse that once would have held pallets of canned food shipping out to the area, if not the country. Very still, concrete the shade of mist and ghosts. It’s been cleaned out completely. I don’t even see spiderwebs or broken windows. Therearewindows, up high toward the ceiling, which is a blessing because it’s otherwise dark. I have a flashlight, but I’d rather save it.

My heart’s pounding. My head’s throbbing. The reek of dead fish is stronger in here, an almost tangible odor, like it’s radiating from the bare concrete. How did people stand it, day after day? They must have never been able to wash the stench out of their hair, their skin, their clothes.

Kez slips under the door and joins me in silent appraisal for a second. “Well,” she says. “This might have been useless.”

“This room is,” I say. “But let’s take a deeper look.”

She coughs into her elbow. “Should have brought Vicks. This is as rank as any crime scene I’ve ever been to.”

She’s right, but we push on. We cross the bare concrete to the far-left wall, where a broad double door stands, big enough to admit forklifts. It’s closed. I try it, and the knob turns easily in my hand. When the door swings open, it doesn’t make a sound. I’m ready. Ready to fire on him if he’s standing there. I will not hesitate.

I’m so focused on that, it doesn’t occur to me to wonder why the door moves so smoothly. And then I’m blinded by a white-hot glare of light and a wall of sound so chaotic, so loud that it stuns me like a physical blow. The noise is crippling, astonishing; it drives me to my knees. I’ve dropped the shotgun and clapped my hands to my ears and I don’t care,anythingto stop the noise, though even that doesn’t stop it, only muffles it the slightest bit. I can’t see either. Blinding strobes in my eyes. By that time, I realize I’ve triggered a trap and drop flat, which I should’ve done in the first place, and try to roll away. The farther I get from the doorway, the better I feel, but I can’tsee. My ears are bells ringing with incoherent noise. Kez. Where’s Kez?

Someone’s pulling me away from the chaos, hands under my arms. Taking me farther from the torture.Thank you. Thank you, Kez.I try to say it, but I don’t know if I’m actually speaking, shouting, screaming. My ears don’t work yet.

I can’t see anything. Just blindingly white ghosts of strobes that persist and twist and move.

The noise gets fainter. The strobes get less blinding. I feel myself being pulled into a dark, quiet area, and I suddenly need to throw up. I roll on my side and do that, horrified and ashamed and wildly out of control, and I can hear myself sobbing and gagging now, but as soft and distant as a memory.

“Kez,” I whisper. Or think I do. “Kez—”

A shadow moves in front of my blurred vision and leans close. I try to focus.

It’s not Kez.

It’s him.

Empty, bland face, expressionless eyes. One side of his head is crushed in, but healed over. It’s been years since the day his sister was taken. Years for him to learn how to pretend to be normal, or some approximation of it.

The fumbling uncertainty of Leonard Bay is gone as he searches me, finding and collecting my weapons. I feel a tug at my pants legs, and then he flips me onto my face. Zip ties tug my hands together behind me. Fast, efficient, merciless. I can’t get to the ankle gun, if it’s even still there.

“It’s for your own protection.” I hear the words indistinctly, like they’re coming from the surface and I’m far, far underwater. “Trust me.”

He flips me over again. I’m trying to get control, but I just manage an uncoordinated flail with my legs before he has the collar of my jacket and is pulling me relentlessly onward. I can’t see anything but what we pass, and that’s just shapes and shadows that resolve into concrete columns, padded iron supports. The acoustics of the room shift, or my ears do, and I realize that we’re passing a silent, still sculpture of a processing line. The smell is horrific here. A physical presence forcing itself down my throat.

But everything is soclean.

“I knew you’d choose this,” he says. His voice is faint under the constant ringing. “Clever people always do this to themselves. You just can’t help it.”

“Kez,” I say. “Where’s Kez?” I try to fishtail, slow him down. It doesn’t work. He’s strong, and when I manage to hook a foot onto a passing support, it just slides free at his next tug. “What did you do to Kez?”

“She’s fine. I didn’t want to hurt her, you understand that? She’s not thepoint. I admire what she does.”

He’s pulled me through most of this assembly line, I think, but no, it just keeps going. Conveyor belts and metal bins, snaking off in all directions. The guts of the machine. Millions of fish passed through here. Billions. All bled and gutted and filleted and packed for easy consumption. And now it’s me being processed.

“You said there’d be choices!” I manage to shout it, and now, finally, my voice sounds nearly normal to my ears, though there’s a constant loud, sizzling hiss I’m not sure I’ll ever lose again. “This isn’t a choice!”

“We haven’t even started,” he says. “Do you know how much time it takes to destroy a life? One second.” His voice is strangely flat and unaffected, like he doesn’t know how to communicate emotion or doesn’t care to try. If he had an accent, he’s lost it with time and training. “Sometimes it takes longer. It took my sister a lot longer to die. Minutes.”

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