Feral (20 page)

Toni was nowhere near.
 
After scanning the cavern Charity found him with a group of six kids on the other side of the room.
 
He saw her coming and waved.
 
The others looked.
 
Some hid grins behind cupped hands; others didn't bother to hide their grins.
 
With a few parting words that she couldn't hear in the growing commotion, he met her half way.

“Morning,” he said with a smile.

“Is it?”

“I think so.” He shrugged.
 
“Guess we'll find out soon anyway.”

What did that mean
? she wondered.
 
Are we going out
?

“I'm kinda hungry,” she said, hoping it didn't sound too much like a whine.
 
Her stomach tightened again, and she clamped her hands over it.

“We're going out on a food run.
 
Wanna come with?”

She was about to say
sure
, and then Jenny was suddenly standing beside them.
 
“No,” Jenny said.
 
“She's not ready to go out yet.”

Toni looked thoughtful for a moment, then conceded silently with a nod that was almost a bow.

Charity did not.
 
She looked back and forth between Toni and Jenny, her face reddening.
 
“Excuse me,” she said.
 
“I've been a prisoner for as long as I can remember.
 
I won't be locked up again!”
 
She expected this to anger Jenny, possibly get her kicked out.
 
She was beginning to worry about this place and her strange company, but she didn't want to get kicked out.
 
As strange as it was, it was a safe place.
 
It was a place the Bogey Man couldn't see or reach.
 
Still, she couldn't help but be upset as these two casually made decisions about where she could go and what she could do.

Jenny reached out and brushed Charity with a cold hand.
 
“We are not your keepers,” she said gently.
 
“We're your friends.”

“And friends look out for each other,” Toni finished.
 
“Jenny's right.
 
It was stupid of me to ask.”

The group of kids Toni had been talking to were restless, ready to move.
 
“Hurry it up,” a skinny blonde girl with a tie-dyed shirt shouted.

Charity looked between Toni and Jenny again, then shrugged her shoulders and sighed.
 
“'Kay,” she said, resigned.
 
“How long am I
stuck
?”

“Not long,” Jenny said, her attention to the subject fading.
 
She drifted away to another part of the cavern on whatever strange business she had next.

Toni stepped closer and whispered, his lips almost touching her ear.
 
“We'll talk later.
 
I promise.”

As the group walked into the path back to the playground, Toni leading the way with torch in hand, Charity saw Ginger watching her.
 
Clutched in her hands like a trophy was a small black item, something Charity recognized from the first time she had run from the Bogey Man.
 
She had seen people walking by her on a sidewalk punching buttons and talking to other people through it.
 
A cell phone, probably taken from the same dead man as the gun. Ginger didn't seem to know what it was.
 
She glared at Charity, the look in her eyes promising pain and humiliation.

Charity pulled the Bogey Man's scissors from her belt loop, gripped them like a dagger.
 
She didn't want to hurt anyone but if Ginger tried to hurt her, she would rip the big girl's guts out.

She thought she understood now what Toni had meant when he asked her if she could count.
 
She hoped her memory, and her count, could be trusted.

D
irty Dave watched from his usual hiding place as the kids appeared at the playground's exit like dirty little genies from a bottle.
 
They didn't usually come out in the daylight, it was too dangerous for them, but last night's bloodshed had kept them from going far.
 
They would need food, so he had brought them some.
 
He had also brought them another gift, a copy of Ozzy Osbourne's Tribute CD.
 
He thought they would like that.
 
He watched them as they approached his hiding place in the bushes, heart beating a little heavier as the distance between them shrank.
 
They knew it was dangerous coming out in the daylight, but they were in more danger than they knew.
 
They didn't know Feral Park was under the eyes of the police following the events of the previous night.
 
Dirty Dave did.
 
He couldn't let them go any further.
 
When they were close enough that he could almost touch them, he stepped out of the bushes.
 
He held the bags of scavenged fast food and the CD out to them like an offering.

They stopped.
 
The boy, one of Jenny's boys, in the lead, watched him warily.
 
He knew they knew him, but that didn't change their distrust.
 
They danced the line between fight and flight for several moments before their leader spoke.

“What do you want,
Old Bogey
?”

Dave was not used to speaking; for years he had spoken to no one but himself.
 
The first thing he had discovered about himself was that he was not good company.
 
It was several seconds before he found his voice.

“I brought food,” he gestured with the bags.
 
“And music too.”
 
He crouched slowly, his arthritic limbs complaining all the way down, and laid the bags at his feet.
 
He pulled the CD from the plastic bag and held it out to the boy as the old men at the waterfront park in town held out pieces of bread to the half tame marmots.

The boy's eyes lit up; all their eyes lit up.

“Cool,” one of them whispered.
 
“Ozzy!”

Their leader watched him uncertainly for a moment, then stepped forward and took it.
 
“Thanks,” he mumbled, almost against his will, it seemed.
 
The others rushed forward and scooped up the bags of food, grinning at their good luck.

Dave felt the tension loosen and grinned himself.
 
It had been a long time since he had expressed that particular emotion, and it pleased him.

“
Hey, you down there
!”

The kids were frozen for a moment, all big eyes, out of their element and terrified.
 
A dark, wet spot appeared and grew down the pant leg of one of the younger boys in the little raiding party.
 
Then they were off, and before Dave even turned to see who had shouted at them, the kids were halfway to the playground.

Dave didn't need to turn to know who it was.
 
The police.
 
He ran too, stiff legs pumping awkwardly, back complaining at the sudden jarring.
 
His head pounded with the after effects of the previous night's dinner, a half bottle of Thunderbird.
 
He ran toward the river, hoping to draw the cops away from the playground, also hoping to make it to the woods on the other side of the park where he had a chance of losing them.

“Freeze, motherfucker!”
 
The cop was close behind, making up ground fast.
 
As Dave climbed the slope to the levee, he saw two more cops running down the crumbling asphalt trail from town.

“
Stop
!” one of them screamed.

He ignored them and kept running.
 
Sweat poured down his face, stinging his eyes.
 
He reached the top where sun-baked grass turned to dirt and small chunks of stray blacktop, and then he found the trail and continued.
 
Seconds later he felt a hand on his shoulder, fingers digging for a hold on the dirty green fabric of his jacket, then the hand slipped away.

“
Stop, old man
!”
 
They were too quick.
 
Dave knew he couldn't outrun them, but he couldn't stop.
 
He screamed.
 
It was a high meaningless noise of frustration.
 
A second later the hand found the collar of his jacket and yanked him to the ground.

“Fucking pervert,” one of the young cops said under his breath, just loud enough for him to hear.
 
Then he felt something long and smooth and hard come down on the top of his head, splitting his shaggy scalp down the middle.
 
It made a sound like a metal pipe hitting wood, and then there was a dull ringing in his head.
 
The pain was so much and so sudden he could taste it.
 
He struggled against the hand that held him, and there was another blow on the side of his head, just above the temple.

For a second there was perfect darkness, then his face pressed against the blacktop.
 
The taste of pain mingled with the salty taste of blood.
 
It felt like they had busted his head wide open; he was sure if he tried to stand up his brains would pour out onto the trail.
 
Blood ran down his face, into his eyes.

“You dirty son-of-a-bitch,” the cop on top of him said with real venom.
 
“What did you plan on doing with those kids?
 
Huh?”
 
He punctuated the question with a wilting blow to the side, just below the ribcage where it was tender.

Dave groaned in pain.
 
He hadn't the strength to scream.
 
He felt the world swirling away fast, like bloody water down a drain.

“Enough, Harris,” another voice said.
 
“That's enough, damn it. Go find the kids.
 
They went toward the playground.”

After that there was nothing but rolling waves of blackness.
 
There was no pain, no sound, and no sensation.
 
For a short time Dirty Dave thought he was dead, and the only thing he knew was rest.

T
he feral kids watched the cop from inside the playground on perches of wood and rusted metal; they could see him but he could not see them.
 
This cop had beat the old man who brought them food and music.

“Wait,” Toni growled from his place atop the rope bridge.
 
“Let him come.”
 
They had left their weapons in the playground when they went out, in the sandbox next to Toni's torch.
 
Now they had them again.

The cop trotted through tall grass and thistles, nightstick in hand, and stopped inside the playground entrance.
 
“What the hell?” he said, scratching the back of his neck with the nightstick.

Toni walked the rope bridge, rocking it, and stopped above the cop.
 
“Hey, Pig.”

“Huh?” The cop looked up sharply, his expression puzzled.
 
Toni grinned and stuck his tongue out.
 
This guy may be a cop, but he was still a Bogey.
 
He rocked the bridge, kept the cop looking up, searching above in confusion.
 
He was close enough that Toni could read the plastic nametag pinned above his breast pocket, Harris, but the Bogey couldn't see him.

The others gathered slowly, morning shadows closing around the cop.

Toni let the rocking bridge settle, then stop.

Harris looked around, behind, but saw nothing.

“
Kill
,” Toni shouted, and the shadow circle closed in.
 
They covered Harris like a blanket.
 
The cop's scream rang out for an instant, and then he was silent.

With a savage howl Toni dropped into the center of the shadow circle, his spear leading the way.

A few minutes later the shadow broke up, dissolved in the sun.
 
The kids were gone.
 
Officer Harris was gone.
 
The wood-chip covered ground was soaked in blood.

D
irty Dave heard the brief scream from the playground.
 
It broke through the thin crust of sleep, bringing back the pain in his head and the feel of dirty pavement pressed to his cheek.
 
His eyes opened slowly, the lids tacky with blood.
 
He saw the other officer's feet pounding away from him.

“Where are you, Harris?” he called.
 
“What's going on down there?”

 
The man disappeared down the dike's grassed slope toward Feral Park, and Dave was alone.
 
He tried to rise but his hands were cuffed tightly behind his back, and he was too weak to fight his way up.