Rust: Four

By Christopher Ruz

"That's what you think we are? Soldiers?"
"Mrs Archer, it's been a war since day one."

Kimberly Archer fought her way to the border of Rustwood looking for an escape. Instead, she uncovered the town's greatest secret - and with it, brought the attention of the old and new queens down on her head.

Now she's on the run, fighting enemies on all sides while struggling to control the creature living inside her chest. Her powers are growing but she won't have time to flex them if the pretender queen's army of repurposed dead catches up with her. And with Fitch, Chan and Goodwell scattered across Rustwood in the aftermath of Kimberly's border crossing, will she be able to get the crew back together before the pretender crushes them all?

The penultimate story in the RUST horror saga is a tangled web of mystery, body horror and psychological thriller in the style of King, Lynch and Lovecraft.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Ruz
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386289395

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The far side of the Frine Mountain was steep, great shelves of earth giving wetly under the pressure of endless rain. Kimberly Archer skidded in the muck, grabbing hold of trees and passing roots, tearing strips of skin from her palms as she struggled to stay upright.

The cockroaches chased her all the way. They flowed around her feet in a tide of silvery backs and tiny twitching limbs, circling warily between her footfalls, a sheet of insects opening with each step to avoid the soles of her boots before closing again around the imprint of her shoes.

Kimberly didn't look at them unless she had to. Easier to pretend they weren't there. The bugs weren't hurting anyone, after all. Just following, like gawkers at the scene of an accident. Drawn along in her wake.

The police-things, on the other hand... Monsters puppeting the remains of human skin, centipedes clawing free of their mouths...

No telling how many more were waiting in the dark.

When the slope evened out, Kimberly found a hollow between two huge boulders and pressed into the cleft. She looked back up the mountainside, watching for signs of pursuit. Nothing moved in the trees behind her. Either the cops had lost her trail, or they'd given up.

Or maybe, she thought, the beast's creatures couldn't cross the border. Rustwoods pressed up beside Rustwoods, each of them a sovereign state.

She barked laughter, low and bitter. Crazy. All of this...

But she couldn't deny what she'd seen from the peak. The mystery Fitch had tried to shield her from, for all those months.

There wasn't one single Rustwood. Only from the highest point on the edge of town had it all become clear. To Rustwood's east, to Rustwood's west, were a network of identical towns, squeezed edge to edge. Clones or mirror images.

And if the mountains were identical, if the streets were all the same... were the people the same too? Was there a different Fitch waiting for her at the foot of the mountain? Had a mirror-Kimberly stepped over her own mountain range at the same moment Kimberly crossed the border? Each of them thinking they were alone until the moment they reached the peak and saw the truth...

A branch snapped on the path behind her. Kimberly bent low, pressing into the stone, barely daring to breathe.

Footsteps. A muttered curse. Always the same ankle.

Make an appointment, then! Don't keep complaining if you're not gonna get it checked out!

They cancelled my insurance! You think I'm made of money?

She counted to fifty as an elderly couple in puffy windbreakers and woollen beanies passed along the trail. She didn't recognize them, and even if she had she wouldn't have crept out from her hiding place. Only when the path was clear did she emerge into the midday light.

The rain had soaked through her jacket, left it clinging to her thin limbs. She clutched it tight around herself. The highway snaked around the base of the mountain, a trail of tail-lights reflecting on wet asphalt, leading back to Rustwood.

But not her Rustwood.

She'd only been thumbing five minutes when a car pulled on to the shoulder and a young man leaned out the window, fingers drumming impatiently on the wheel. Hop in! I've got places to be!

Small town folk. Too trusting for their own good. Saved my ass, she told the man as she slammed the door behind her. Been out here an hour.

Where you headed?

Anywhere.

He frowned as he kicked the car into gear. His grip was shaky on the stick. Hell of a day to be out walking. Haven't seen it rain like this in... oh, I don't know. He watched Kimberly from the corner of his eyes, taking in her torn-up jeans, her mud-painted jacket. You out hiking?

Please. Just go.

He shut up after that, leaving Kimberly to count passing streetlights. She was grateful for the silence. She pressed one hand to her chest, waiting for a thud, a skittering of limbs.

The thing Gull had put inside her had quieted, thank God. Maybe asleep. Maybe dead, chewed up by stomach acids.

Or maybe something worse. Maybe it'd grown comfortable. Carved out enough space for a little nest, then curled up and fallen asleep like a dog before a fireplace on a winter's night. Secure inside her ribs...

If you don't mind me asking, the stranger said, jerking Kimberly back to attention, you in any sort of trouble?

She stared straight ahead, out the windshield. Rain speckled the glass, tap-tap-tapping with insistent fingers.

Because you look like you're in trouble, he said. And I don't need anything like that. So if you want me to drop you off somewhere-

Pharmacy, she said.

A pause. Which one?

Any one. And then forget me.

Christ. He turned his attention back to the road. I sure do pick them.

She knew the street. Guilden Boulevard, one of the primary arterials funnelling traffic into the centre of town. They'd already left the woods behind. The same street, the same milk bar on the corner. She even recognised the houses - there, a wood-framed bungalow next to the skeleton of an apartment-in-progress, old terracotta tiles next to concrete slabs and rebar spines.

A new town where everything was the same. But not a mirror, otherwise she'd have passed herself coming up the slope, a reflected Kimberly Archer, mouth open wide in shock. Two clones meeting in the middle before continuing on in opposite directions.

A transcription, then. Or maybe a revision. Yes, that felt right. Before Rustwood, when she'd been a different person with a different life, she'd been going for a job at... Random House? Penguin? Somewhere that reminded her of inky fingers. God, it was a hundred years ago. Memories obscured as if glimpsed through a cataract. Something to do with editing, she knew that for certain. She understood the language of the red pen, manuscript after manuscript scattered with notes. Each telling the same story in slightly different ways, iterating over and over until the product was perfect.

Maybe that was it. Not an infinity of identical Rustwoods, but an endless series of attempts at getting the damn thing right. God was a lonely editor, rushing to beat a deadline, celestial office drowned in paperwork.

She wondered how Rustwood looked from the air. If she got high enough, above the clouds, would she be able to see all the towns squeezed together like cells in a hive, buzzing with drones? Idiots in suits and ties and new Ford Granadas, rushing from the office to the bar, not realising they were only following the orders of a distant queen?

Cells, she whispered.

What?

The driver squinted at her from beneath his ridiculous shock of blonde hair. Open mouthed, vapid. Not his fault. He didn't know. How could anyone?

Nothing, she said. The cool window glass soothed the pounding in her temples. Let her forget the sight from the top of the mountain.

Cells. Nuclei. High-school biology lessons, dimly remembered.

They divided and multiplied.

Mist rolled across the mountainside as the dead children advanced.

Detective Goodwell and Fitch were pressed back to back, only a few hundred yards from the mountain peak. They'd been chasing Kimberly Archer all morning, across town and up the mountain, but for all their efforts they hadn't quite closed the gap. There'd been less than two hundred yards between them when Kimberly stepped over the ridge and down the far side. Close enough for Goodwell to call for her to stop.

Not close enough for her to hear.

Goodwell tried chasing her. Fitch held him back. Wouldn't explain why. That was a problem Goodwell would have to solve another time, though. Right now, the teenagers he'd killed back at the Hill family farm were stepping out of the fog.

The stink was toxic, a rotten punch to the gut. Goodwell's fingers itched as he reached for his pistol and found only an empty holster. The gun was with Chan, he remembered. Lucky Karen Chan, always in the right place at the right time. When it rained shit, it always landed on Goodwell.

Now, as Dylan Cobber, Martin Goldfarb and Taram Traore advanced, all the detective could use as weapons were fallen branches. He grabbed one that looked heavy enough to break bone, while Fitch hefted a rock in each hand.

Idiot, he told himself. Should've run. Should've listened to the old queen. Whenever you get clever, you get hurt. Soon enough it'll get you killed.

Maybe even today.

The three dead kids grinned, teeth speckled with grave dirt. Their eyes were sour pits. Nothing but malice in there. Malice, and the shiny black backs of insects.

Not today, Goodwell growled. I'm not dying today.

They charged.

The boys came on in a blur of movement, a scrape of sneakers on dirt. Goodwell barely had time to raise his branch before they were on top of him, battering his hands down, driving him to his knees. The tree branch slipped from his fingers as Dylan stamped on his wrist. There was no pain. His whole world was pulsing panic, sharp teeth and blank white eyes. The three kids he'd murdered, returned to strip his skin.

Fitch! he managed, and then his screams were cut off as the dead children plunged their fingers into his mouth, ragged nails scraping the inside of his cheek. Dirt and rotting flesh, sour on his tongue. Young Martin, cheeks dark with moss, tongue swelling over his lips, prised Goodwell's jaw open. The boy's lips peeled back, baring his teeth, revealing something squirming at the back of his throat, ready to drop.

A blur of movement. A wet thud. Stone meeting flesh. Martin fell away, fingers sliding from Goodwell's lips, wet and slick against his teeth.

Fitch stood over the detective, a rock the size of a grapefruit in his hand, grey granite flecked with blood and hair. He raised it high, brought it down in both hands on the back of Martin's neck. The boy hissed like a balloon deflating, fingers splaying, bending back like the legs of fat pink spiders.

On your goddamn feet! Fitch grabbed Goodwell by the arm, hauled him up, shoved him down the mountain path. Not dying here because you're too lazy to run!

Goodwell spat blood. His feet skidded in the rain-soft earth. He groped for the branch he'd dropped but Fitch was already dragging him away from the peak. They almost-

Just keep moving!

The dead children stood as one, swaying in time, like they were suspended from invisible strings. One step, then another, toes dragging, arms swinging slack by their sides.

We'll miss you, Goodwell. Martin Goldfarb, fat-cheeked and smiling, waved as Goodwell stumbled down the slope. We could've had fun. His teeth were slick with lichen. His fingernails were black and when he blinked black beads of well-water fell from his lashes. You made us, Detective! We're yours!

Fuck you!

Laughter followed Goodwell down the slope. Say hello to your wife for me

Goodwell almost stopped. My wife?

Fitch kept a vice-grip on Goodwell's arm as they ran into the dark. Tall firs folded around them, needles scraping Goodwell's forearms, mud soaking into his socks. He spat, trying to get the taste of the dead boy out of his mouth.

Behind them came the constant rhythm of child-size sneakers on wet soil, echoing between the trees.

CHAPTER TWO

Mrs Rosenfeld and her employees, the Raconte twins, were closing on the mountain peak when she heard dragging footsteps echo between the trees.

She sighed. Dead men, live men. All the same to Rosenfeld. Raised to believe they were god's gift, that they owned the world. Take a little land or love or security for yourself and they got mean, like you were stealing what they were rightfully owed.

Rosenfeld had learned long ago that all it took was a slap across the muzzle to send dogs like that whining and scurrying back into the dark. But a woman could spend a lifetime beating down men and still not see the end of them, and Rosenfeld didn't have a lifetime. She could sense it in the air. Rustwood was trembling, the whole town being pulled to and fro by the queens. And if it was the new, pretender queen that got the upper hand...

No more Kimberly Archer. No more Rosenfeld. Nothing but black.

So when the dead policemen came ambling down the mountain trail, Rosenfeld didn't bother with warnings. Just motioned for the Raconte twins to spread out, left and right. Watch out for these two, she muttered. They smell real mean.

The cops stopped. Their heads turned with shuddering jerks, and the black things hanging from their open mouths twitched spindly legs in the air. Damaged, Rosenfeld noticed. One was bleeding dark blood from a gaping wound in the chest - maybe gunfire, maybe something worse - and the other was burned down one side, flesh curled, bone flashing shocking white where the meat had crisped away.

Rosenfeld didn't know whether it was Kimberly Archer or Goodwell that'd done the damage. Didn't much care. Anything that put a crimp in the pretender queen's style was welcome. But if they didn't have the raw power to finish the job, she was happy to step in.

Draw the circle, girls. Rosenfeld stepped back as the two men advanced, stumbling, drawn onward by dumb instinct. She knelt as quickly as her old bones allowed and sketched in the mud at her feet. Be ready.

To her left and right, the Raconte girls drifted through the trees. They each trailed the toe of one foot through the dirt, tracing a pattern that extended in a wide circle around the two dead men. If the cops noticed, they didn't seem to care. All their attention was on Rosenfeld.

As it should be.

Mrs Rosenfeld had never been one for fighting, even when she was young and fresh from the pretender queen's terrible womb. Every creature in Rustwood had a purpose, and hers had been to locate and contain. While her sisters maintained the convent and its gateway, she'd worked the streets, hunting for the vulnerable, the lonely, the abused. All the old queen's creations were ripe with potential - one by one, they'd be dragged home to be cut open and repurposed as tools of the pretender.

Those were the old days. The bad days. She was much better now.

Rosenfeld told herself that a lot.

The twins met at the far side of the circle. Their trails combined. The wards Rosenfeld had inscribed in the earth pulsed with life, old energy swelling up from the mud. The power of queens distilled into a series of letters older than the stars.

That's far enough, she whispered.

The two dead cops were in the centre of the circle when they stopped mid-stride, caught in place, one foot raised, one arm outstretched for balance. A moment frozen in time.

No, not quite frozen. A faint shuddering, a blurring of the edges. It was, Rosenfeld thought, like someone had hit pause on a VCR. A single frame twitching, flecked with static, straining to break free.

And they would break free, in time. The new, pretender queen's servants were fresh and Rosenfeld was old, old as the hills, old as the strata beneath her feet.

But the Raconte twins? They were young and ready to kill.

Take them apart, Rosenfeld told the girls.

The twins advanced. Emotionless, expressionless, they crossed the boundary. Their footfalls were ballet-light as they approached the two men. Their fingers flexed in the air, joints bending back, segmenting, lengthening until they were as long as forearms. Their jaws opened wide like cats yawning, and in the depths of their throats, gears of bone and flesh began to turn.

There was something beautiful in how the girls devoured. They so rarely had the opportunity. Rosenfeld had never known that taste, that animal need. She'd been grown by the pretender for one very particular purpose, and it wasn't in her nature to step away from that purpose. But the girls... she'd built them very specifically. To do things she couldn't. To be the weapons she needed in a war she'd seen coming for decades.

Now, as the squirming things inside the two dead cops desperately tried to break the wards and the air misted red and the only sound was the marrow-crack of bone, Rosenfeld thought she'd done a damn fine job. Weren't many things in all the world that felt as good as doing a simple task well. Like making a hearty soup, or comforting a lonely widower, or white-washing a dirty wall. Or taking a collection of the pretender's offcuts and building them into something new, something devastating.

The Raconte twins were finished. Their jaws hinged back into place, concealing sawblade teeth. Their hair, acid-blonde and waterfall-straight despite the rain, shimmered as they retreated from the circle.

All that was left were two slim white bones jutting from the muck - a pair of radii and ulna, crossed at the wrist. A flourish Rosenfeld hadn't asked for.

Rosenfeld didn't know whether that worried or excited her. The twins were developing their own little tics. That meant they were slipping out of her reach, inch by inch. Then again, hadn't she gone through the same process? Sliding out of the pretender's grip year by year, until she finally had enough autonomy to break free altogether?

All things aged. All things grew. Maybe this was just the girls' true path. The only real artists in Rustwood.

Come on, she grunted, knees crunching as she staggered to her feet. Got a long way to go. I'm thinking it's time to have an audience with my dear mother.

The Raconte twins turned as one, meeting her eyes. She could read the unspoken question in their expressions.

And if we meet any more of these cheap fucks along the way? She waved one hand like it was nothing at all. We chew them up and spit them out. Right, girls?

Was that a nod? The quirk of a smile on those thin, pale lips?

Good enough.

CHAPTER THREE

Detective Karen Chan crouched low in the brush, the pistol trembling in her hand. The woman-thing - Darling, she called herself - lay at her feet, curled around a spouting gut wound. She'd whimpered in pain when Chan grabbed her by the collar, hauling her away from the mountainside rest-stop and a hundred yards down the slope. Now Darling was silent, licking her lips, the things squirming behind her eyelids livid, trying to wriggle free of her sockets.

They'd been alone on the mountainside a half-hour, maybe more. Goodwell and Fitch had run off into the trees, chasing Mrs Archer while Chan got stuck on babysitting duty. Now she was half-drowned by rain, half shitting herself after what she'd seen under Darling's sunglasses.

Bad enough when she'd thought she was keeping an eye on a living, human woman. Worse once she'd learned the truth. And maybe she could've dealt with all that, had time to process the black-backed insects pushing free from behind Darling's eyelids, if the woman-thing's friends hadn't showed up.

The rain muted all sound, but Chan could still make out the thump-scrape-thump of footfalls. Like someone dragging a broken leg behind them. She didn't dare peek out from behind the bush. Didn't want to see what'd been set on their trail.

Her heartbeat was a desperate drumming in her ears. She was sure they'd hear it. So loud it carried across the slope. They could smell her fear, whatever they were. Running was the smart choice, but she couldn't bring herself to stand. That meant leaving the woman behind, and Chan would never abandon a prisoner.

The footsteps drew closer. Chan clenched the pistol in both hands and willed the shaking to stop. Cop mode, she told herself. Put Karen away. Time to be Detective Chan.

She hissed at Darling. Don't make a sound.

Hand shaking, Darling pressed a slim finger to her full, pale lips. They're after me too, she whispered. I'm a traitor to the cause.

I said-

Aim for the head. Their hearts are already dead.

Stand tall, Chan told herself. Ignore the monster lying in the mud. Square up. Front sight.

At her feet, the blonde woman whispered, Now.

Chan jumped to her feet, finger alongside the trigger, adrenaline painting the world in black and white. Two men in uniform, less than twenty feet away. Rustwood police, caps askew, their trouser legs spattered with mud.

They turned simultaneously. Their eyes were blank, rolled back. One cop reached for her with pale fingers. The other couldn't - his uniform was a rupture of blood. He'd taken a slug to the shoulder, his white shirt soaked arterial red.

Detective, the closest cop said. Black shapes wriggled behind his teeth. Orders are orders-

She shot him through the throat and he went down hard, kicking at the air, rolling like a beetle trying to get back on its feet. The second cop reached for a pistol with his good hand and she put two in his chest.

He went to his knees in the mud. His lips moved but Chan couldn't hear him over the gunshot whine.

She shot him through the forehead.

Everything was automatic after that. She shot the first cop through the face before checking the bodies, waiting for a hint of breath. Both were still, but she already knew how little that meant. She took a radio from one of the dead men's belts, turned the other off and threw it into the bushes before emptying their pockets. Ammunition. A second pistol. A stick of Juicy Fruit gum.

She tried not to look at what was left of their faces. Shoelace centipedes coiled from the wound in the first man's throat, twined through his hair.

Behind her, Darling said, Spend a lot of time on the range?

Not much else to do in this town.

No friends? No family?

Chan spun at the rustle of denim. Darling was trying to stand. She trained her pistol on the woman's chest. You stay where you are.

Oh, please. You think you can hurt me with that?

If I put one between your eyes, sure. She kept the gun up until Darling shuffled back, into the shadow of the bushes. Why're you celebrating? Aren't these your people?

Used to be. New queen sent someone else to manage the troops. An emissary. You might've met him, actually. Black raincoat with nothing inside?

Chan shuddered. How could she forget that thing coming at her across the lot of the Rustwood PD? Something so awful it sent out waves of static, left her jaw aching, sent tears running down her cheeks.

She could go a lifetime without seeing that asshole again. So, what? You've been fired?

If I wasn't before, I am now. Told you too much. Some secrets aren't meant to leak.

Secrets. A secret was Arianne Deuce from Human Resources faking overtime sheets, or Tom screwing Lucy in the photocopy room during the staff Christmas party. Secrets were cheap. What Darling had told her in the half-hour they'd spent alone, waiting at the mountainside rest-stop for Fitch and Goodwell to return...

Terrible truths. Like how Rustwood was ruled by a creature so huge and awful Darling couldn't even bring herself to describe it as anything but the old queen. How this queen had a daughter, a pretender who wanted to take the throne. Who'd tear the town apart, turn citizens into monsters, construct soldiers in caverns beneath the earth, in her quest to become the new queen.

She understood now who Goodwell worked for. The voice that'd come down from the sky was the old queen, the original regent of Rustwood, pouring all her energy into keeping her kingdom in order. A monster hidden somewhere in the earth, or in the woods, or buried in the quarries, patient and eternal. A brood mother birthing monsters in a desperate attempt to save her town from other, even worse monsters.

And that was the good guy.

So why'd you tell me? Chan asked. If you knew it'd make you a pariah...

Tired of the new queen's whiny princess bullshit, Darling said. Tired of not remembering. Always running around, cutting people up. Not getting my due. I want to know who I was.

She wouldn't tell you?

You don't question the pretender. She made me, after all. Darling pulled up her shirt to show the line of stitched flesh where the colour of her skin changed. She'd told Chan all about that, too. The massive claw-legged thing in the coastal caves that'd sliced her in half. Waking below the earth to find she had new legs.

Eternal life, or a version of it. It only made Chan feel more temporary.

One of the cops was twitching. Only lightly - a quivering finger, the leg straightening, creases appearing in rain-soaked linen. We've got to go, Chan whispered. Can you walk or do I have to drag you?

Darling smirked. You could always leave me behind.

They'd kill you.

What do you care? I tried to kill you. Tried to kill Fitch a whole bunch of times, but he's slippery. Fair's fair.

That's not how I operate. She stuffed one pistol into her belt and levelled the other at Darling's middle. Besides. You haven't told me half of what you know, and you've got me all curious.

Curiosity isn't healthy. Not in these parts.

Well, shit. I knew I shouldn't have become a detective.

Darling's laughter came out choked, like she was gargling on blood. Chan looked away. She needed a plan, and fast. Somewhere to hide.

She was short on options, though. Couldn't go home; they had her address, would already have it staked out. Same for the PD, that rat-warren of cops all hollowed out and turned into puppets. She couldn't get rid the image of Officer Henk dead in the hallway outside the holding cells, centipedes coiling from his wounds. The way they moved like jerky marionettes, stuttering into life...

She'd seen fear destroy cops in the past. The panic that followed a traffic-stop-turned-shootout. The nightmares that rose up to choke a man after doing the paperwork on one too many bodies.

Some police were always turned on, always primed. They burned out fast. Others self-medicated: sex, coke, cheap whiskey. The stereotype of the battle-worn detective hiding a bottle in their desk drawer was built around a kernel of truth, along with the fallout. Alcoholism. Splintered marriages. Suicide.

Chan couldn't crack. She had to use the fear, ride it, not succumb to it. Fear kept her alert. Keeping her moving when she wanted to sink into the mud and sob.

Fear was the only advantage she had.

Where're you taking me? Darling said, still squirming at Chan's feet.

No idea.

I've got a suggestion.

You think I'm listening to you?

You don't have to. You can go walk through the woods alone if you want. No difference to me. I've already died more than once.

Where?

Nearby. Might be safe. Might not. Depends on whether they bothered to think like me.

Would they?

I don't know. I'm nothing special. There are so many more like me, growing down there. And the emissary... She shrugged. The pretender will find me eventually. Find you too. New queen finds everything, in time.

You talk too much. Goodwell's coming back.

"A whole lot of cops went up the mountain to grab your boy. The two you just killed didn't come back down because they got