Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

‘Alec might have told any number of people. He might be innocent, he . . .’

‘Even if he didn’t do it . . . someone who inspires such hate, such attention . . . a man like that is never innocent. Not of everything.’

‘Alec got sick, too. He survives going out to the island, taking the samples, coming back, only to infect himself at the last minute?’ Cooper shook her head. ‘He’s a victim.’

‘Everyone’s a victim.’ Ada took out her cigarettes.

The lights shone along the shore.

‘The letter . . . the crows . . . they were for you. They were responding to you, whether you and Alec, or you alone . . .’ Ada lit the match. ‘We’ll clean up. We’ll take care of the sick. We’ll wait for more bodies. But you, Cooper . . . you’ll be able to do more than wait. You’ll be able to solve this. For the dead. For yourself . . .’

Ada told her that she was there for her. That her government was there for her.

She told her that we were all in this together.

‘I’m not a detective,’ Cooper repeated.

Ada smiled, exhaling smoke.

‘You will be.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

On Ada’s final night in Ilmarsh, she sat in her car out near the forest. She sat just a few yards away from the site of Alec Nichols’s car crash, of a stag’s death, of a boy’s abduction and possible murder. She sat here in her car, the window rolled down, a cigarette in her hand, all the lights on. She was alone.

The government response had already been deemed incompetent. Ada’s career would probably be over soon. Once the media had moved away from stirring up geopolitical and religious fears, once they’d realized the disaster was home-grown, the news cycle had shifted almost immediately. Many seemed to believe the horses themselves had died from anthrax, in spite of official briefings and discussions. The animals became a footnote, and even Ada’s superiors seemed to adopt this strange position, as if they’d forgotten all else, and perhaps they had. The government, their society, it was meant for greater things. The clean-up was in progress. The local police could handle the finer details of horse theft, mutilation and death.

People thought fiction was the problem – that films, television, games, comics would all desensitize the world to violence and horror.

Real things were far harder to care about.

There were so many of them.

Day after day we seemed to learn how awful the world could be, the things people could do. It’s why people imagined conspiracies. It made things manageable. It made things human.

Cooper kept working. She immersed herself in every file, every report, every movement of the case that occurred.

She kept doubting she was enough. Ada kept telling her otherwise.

But of course, who knew?

Cooper would rise to the challenge or she’d serve as bait. She had little official status, her funding still ostensibly provided by the local police who were compensated in turn. If she failed to uncover anything, then she was just a vet who had got in over her head.

Ada thought about her friend.

Ada wanted to go back home, back to her office. She wanted takeaways and life and people, she even wanted family again.

Something moved within the woods. She turned immediately, dropping cigarette ash, gripping the wheel.

Someone was there. She’d seen them, she’d seen a shape move quickly, like it was dancing.

She got out of her car, gripping her pepper spray now. She stared ahead, removing her torch and shining it into the darkness.

There was nothing there.

In the hours to come, as their men searched the area, they’d find nothing but animal tracks.

Two Weeks Later

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

You know, I used to have this one really bad dream when I was a kid . . . It was one of the only ones I had more than once, that I remember at least.

I didn’t know what it was at the time, not at first. The way this thing looked, in my dream I mean . . . it was this place, this black building on a hill, it was dirty.

Your gran and me, we’d be driving through town – we’d be coming back from a friend’s house, or the beach, sometimes . . . It was cold and dark – colder than anywhere had ever been, in real life at least. And the wind, it blew down newsagent signs and restaurant menus and even dog walkers, it was just silly, really . . . I’d try to look at the sea, but there’d be nothing there, just noise. It was a town a little like this one, but bigger – in better condition, I guess. We’d be in the car, and I’d see this black building . . . this ruin . . . and it looked at us from the hill. I couldn’t make out anything but for some letters – great big dirty white letters, the others all missing. It was tall. And I wasn’t myself.

He scratched his head.

I’d see this building and I’d—

I’d crash my car.

I’d wake up.

I’d be myself again.

You’d never have been born.

I’d be myself again.

All the world a dream.

I’d—

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

When Alec Nichols woke in his hospital bed, at first he could move only a flicker of an eyelid. So no one came.

His heart took a while to beat at its former pace. He’d always been bad at winking – it had always looked like something was wrong with him.

He supposed that this was true, now.

No one came, and he faded away once more.

He had spent weeks dreaming of houses and hair. Of the last days of his marriage.

In these dreams he’d be crawling onto his mattress.

Even in the past, even with sleep music – the sounds of rain, of wind, of birds lulling him to unconsciousness – he could not rest. His wife could. He’d play the big spoon and little spoon with her cold body. He’d put one arm around her, and struggle with where to put the other, whether to allow it to succumb to pins and needles.

Sometimes he’d be alone, and he’d roll towards her to stroke her hair, but she wouldn’t be there. The bedsheets would