Authors: Anthony Izzo
Evil Harvest (25 page)
C
HAPTER
23
HAPTER
23
The bullets exploded out Rafferty’s back, taking chunks of flesh and spraying the ebony blood on Jill’s walls.
He gurgled once and collapsed against the bed, a big man in a small space, his arm folded at an odd angle over his head. The revolver fell to the floor next to the bed.
Matt had done what he came to Lincoln to do: kill the man who had taken his family from him. It all happened so quickly, he didn’t have time to tell Rafferty exactly what he thought of him, or express the rage that had built up in him over the years like steam in a radiator. But the bastard was dead, and that was what mattered.
Matt said, “You can get up. He’s dead.”
Jill peeked over the mattress and then stood up. Her shirt was torn, exposing her stomach. Blood stained her skin, soaked her shorts.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” she said.
“He looks dead enough.”
“What about the thing underneath the skin? Do you think it dies with him?”
“Good point. Maybe I should finish him off.”
“How?”
“Cut his head off.”
“Omigod, Matt, no.”
“Any better suggestions?”
“I suggest we get out of here. You and I know about the monster underneath, but other people may not. It looks like we just killed the Chief of Police.”
“How long to get a few things together and patch yourself up?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Make it five,” Matt said. “I’ll get the first-aid stuff.”
Jill rifled through her dresser, pulling out underwear, shirts, shorts and jeans, and kept her head as far down as possible, trying not to look at Rafferty’s corpse.
Matt checked the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and found a tube of Neosporin and some Band-Aids. He yelled to Jill, asking if she had any big gauze pads, and she answered no.
He dug through the linen closet in the hall and found a blue washcloth and matching towel. He ran the water in the bathroom, letting it get steamy hot, then soaped up his hands and scrubbed them vigorously. After wetting the washcloth, he returned to the bedroom with it, the towel and the Neosporin.
He glanced at Rafferty, half expecting him to jump up and leap at them. But his corpse remained in place, arm cocked over his head.
“You got any crop tops? You don’t want anything rubbing against that.”
“I’ll throw my scrubs on. They’re nice and loose.”
“Now it’s my turn to take care of you.”
He touched the washcloth to her abdomen and she winced. He mopped the blood off of her belly and then cleaned up her legs. Once the blood was wiped away, he could see the marks Rafferty had made, crude strokes that luckily were only superficial cuts. If Jill were fortunate, they would heal without leaving any scars.
“How’m I doing, nurse?”
“It’ll do under the circumstances.”
He unscrewed the cap from the Neosporin and squeezed a dab onto his index finger. Gently, he applied it to the cuts, her abdomen tightening with pain. When he was done, he put the cap back on the Neosporin and stuck the tube in his pocket.
“We’ll stop and get some gauze pads for that.”
She stripped off the shorts and her panties, surprising Matt.
“Don’t look so surprised. We’ve got no time for modesty. Besides, you’ve seen it before.”
She took a set of gray scrubs from the closet and put them on. After tying her hair back in a ponytail, she slipped on socks, and grabbed her spare clothes off the bed.
“Let’s get going. He’s giving me the creeps.”
The phone rang, jolting them both.
“Forget it,” she said.
It rang four times before the answering machine came on. Jill’s voice came on the recording, sounding fuzzy. The beep went off.
“Jill, you there? It’s Donna from the hospital. If you’re there, pick up.”
Jill took two leaping steps to pick up the phone before Donna hung up.
Matt overheard Jill telling her that they were in bad trouble, and that Rafferty was dead. He wanted to tell her to keep it quiet, not tell this Donna what had happened, for Matt hadn’t met her and didn’t know if he could trust her. But Jill had let it out of the bag, and they had to trust Donna not to turn them in to the cops.
Matt took out the phone book from underneath Jill’s desk and looked up the number for Lincoln Firearms. He didn’t have Harry’s number with him, and he couldn’t remember it off the top of his head. Hopefully Harry would be in the shop.
Jill said she would call Donna back and then hung up the phone.
“Ready?” she said.
“One more call and then we go.”
Hands shaking, he punched in Harry’s number and the phone rang. Eight rings, nine rings.
“Lincoln Firearms. Yello.”
“Harry, it’s Matt.”
“Looking forward to our dinner. Still bringing that date?”
“Listen to me. We killed Rafferty. He was waiting for Jill in her apartment. He’s dead.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“We’re getting out of town. We’ll hole up at a hotel.”
“No, don’t do that. I’ve got a cabin up in Pottsville. Take Four Hundred to the end and turn right on Sixteen. Make the first right you see and take that road up into the hills. Cabin’s at the top. There’s a spare key inside the mailbox.”
“Thanks, Harry. You sure you want to do this?”
“The shit’s gonna hit the fan here anyway, Matt. I’ll be up in the morning with a care package for you.”
“And you can tell me what you know.”
“Get going. I’ll see you in the
A.M.”
A.M.”
The line clicked on the other end and Matt hung up the receiver.
“Where are we headed?” Jill asked.
“Pottsville. Harry’s got a cabin off of Route Sixteen we can stay in. He’s gonna bring us some goodies tomorrow.”
“Guns?”
“Hopefully. We might need them.”
“We’d better go.”
They linked hands, Jill carrying a blue duffel bag with her clothes in it.
Jill locked the door behind them and they went.
The tingling started in his fingers. His arm was bent over his head as if he were doing a crazy aerobics stretch; he wiggled his little finger.
His limbs were paralyzed and his chest burned like hell, but he was alive, and even better, he had heard every damn thing the two of them said. Rafferty had taken worse punishment than this and lived to tell the tale. Once he was hunting a gang member named Johnny Fernandez, and Johnny surprised him by flicking open a switchblade and stabbing him in the throat. The wound would have killed an ordinary man. Rafferty had torn Fernandez’s arms off before he killed him.
He wiggled all his fingers, then rolled his hand in a circular motion at the wrist, the paralysis slowly fading. Within ten minutes he had sensation back in his entire body, although his tattered face and wounded chest hurt like hell.
His skin itched as it mended itself together, the slugs that had entered his body falling out like gumballs from a machine. Reaching up to his face, he held the tattered flap of skin to the cheekbone and it fused with the flesh.
Crowe had mentioned cutting his head off. That was one way to kill Rafferty’s kind. The other was fire.
The ability to self-heal from even the most devastating wounds made Rafferty’s kind superior to humans. If a regular man had taken those bullets, he would be lying on a morgue slab right now. His kind cut down by bullets rose to fight again in a matter of hours. Both the human skin that disguised him and the beast underneath were healing by the minute.
He stood up and looked in the mirror over the dresser. The skin on his face was flawless again, no sign of a scar or any trauma. The only signs of being shot were the black bloodstains on his face and the bulletholes in his uniform.
After picking up his revolver and holstering it, he left the apartment and walked around the block to where he had parked his cruiser. An elderly woman in a wool coat pulled a shopping basket as if it weighed as much as a Volkswagen. She looked at his tattered uniform and said, “Are you okay?”
“Mind your own business,” he said. She looked as if he had reached out and grabbed her tit. Scurrying away, she muttered to herself.
He plunked himself into the driver’s seat of the cruiser and called Clarence from his cell phone.
“Yeah, Chief.”
“Keep your eyes peeled for a red Chevy pickup. Fifteen hundred model.” He went on to describe Matt and Jill.
“What’d they do?”
“Put a couple new holes in me where I didn’t have holes before.”
“They shot you?”
“You catch on quick.”
“Well, where are they? Let’s go get them.”
“I don’t know at the moment, numb nuts. But I think they’re heading to a cabin in Pottsville.”
“You want me to set up a roadblock?”
“No. They left a few hours ago. We’ll let them get up there and then take them. We’re gonna do some hunting.”
“Before the Harvest?”
“Fuck that rule. Meet me at my house in an hour. We have a lot of people to take care of. But first call up to Pottsville and find out who owns cabins up there. It’s a small town, so someone should know.”
He hung up the phone.
The drive to Pottsville took forty minutes, most of it down Route 400. Pines and spruce lined the road, creating dense woods where sunlight dabbled through in places, but never really penetrated. Not somewhere you’d want to be lost, Jill thought.
They took the last exit on 400, Route 16 South, and made the first right down a dirt road cut out of the pines. Matt urged the truck up a hill, the road winding left and then back to the right until the cabin was in sight.
The cabin sat five hundred feet off the road, in among the pines and cloaked in shadows. They pulled up the stone driveway and parked the truck at the side of the cabin.
It was constructed of brownish-black wood, with red shingles on the roof. The chimney sagged to the right, and the bricks looked ready to topple. There was a four-foot wood cutout stuck into the lawn, painted like Uncle Sam and holding a small American flag.
They approached the front door and Matt reached into the mailbox that hung on the front of the house. After fumbling around for a moment, he pulled out a brass key and stuck it in the lock. He jiggled it left, then right, before the lock clicked and the door opened.
The cabin smelled of wood smoke but it seemed to have the things they would need to stay here for a while. A double bed faced the door, and next to the bed was a stand with a clock radio on it. The place had a stove, a card table and chairs and, to Jill’s relief, a phone.
“Looks homey enough. It’s got a wood stove in case we get cold,” Jill said.
“Don’t think we have to worry about that yet. I’m going to run outside, so why don’t you bandage yourself up?” Matt suggested.
They had stopped at a Rite-Aid and picked up gauze, tape and more Neosporin.
Matt headed for the front door.
Jill said, “Do you think they’ll come after us?”
“I think it’s a pretty safe bet.”
“Harry’s bringing guns, right?”
“Right.”
“Good,” she said. “I never thought I’d hear myself say that.”
She crossed her arms and rubbed them for warmth. The thought of things coming out of the woods to hunt them gave her the shivers.
Picking the Rite-Aid bag off the table, she went into the bathroom to put gauze over her wounds.
The bathroom was done in bubble-gum-pink tiles, and the toilet had a furry hot pink cover over its seat. It smelled a little damp, but the place was free of mildew, and the sink gleamed.
The door banged as Matt went outside. She liked the way he had insisted on taking care of her at the apartment—sweet, but not overbearing. He had applied the ointment to her stomach with such a light touch, careful not to hurt her in any way.
She was used to caring for others, putting in an IV or bandaging a wound, so it was nice to have someone take care of her, even in a small way.
As she took the gauze and tape out of the bag, she hoped this Harry was good on his word to deliver weapons to them.
Although she disliked guns, a firearm had saved their lives today, and it was a good bet that wasn’t the last time they would need one.
But could she bring herself to fire one again? That she didn’t know.
Matt walked around the back of the cabin. He had the hunting knife in the sheath on his belt and the gun tucked into the rear of his pants.
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