Husk (16 page)

Tim grinned, continuing at a lower volume. “Besides getting kicked out of school, Brad got a summer’s worth of community service, so you can understand why he wants me dead. The sad part is he and I used to be friends when we were kids. He’s only two years older than me, but after he went to junior high he just changed. It’s like I never knew him.”

Mallory nodded in agreement. “I’ve had friends like that.”

She trailed off without elaborating, thinking of Derrick for the first time that night. Contrasting emotions dueled inside her, sobering her mood. Guilt tugged at her heart when she realized she probably would have declined Tim’s invitation to the fair had they met under normal circumstances. At her last school everything was a competition, a never-ending battle for status. Since her parents’ divorce, her popularity with her classmates seemed to be the one thing she could control. But rising in the ranks meant others had to fall, and it was usually the meeker kids like Tim that her and her friends stepped on to reach the top.

Yet here she sat, wondering if the shy boy who could barely look at her the other day would make a move on her, somewhat hoping that he would.

Perhaps sensing her shift in emotion, Tim picked a wildflower growing in the grass between them. “My dad used to tell me ‘you never know who your friends are’ … but he always meant it in a sarcastic sort of way … like you can never trust the people you already know. I tend to think of it the other way around, like you
always
know who your friends are, even the ones you just met. Kind of how some people say that you always know when you’re in love—you don’t question it, you just know.”

He looked into her eyes and handed her the flower.

Mallory studied him in silence, the clatter of gears and the hum of machinery filling the gap in their conversation. High Roller shot past overhead with the sound of a rushing river. It climbed skyward and made its turn, then dove downhill across from where they sat. Light from the tracks flashed between the cars, blinking in yellow bursts. She held Tim’s gaze the entire time, watching him across her shoulder and smiling at the bashful glances he gave her as his true nervousness began to show. On impulse, she leaned over and kissed him on the corner of the mouth, smiling at the look of shock that solidified his features.

“
What was that for?” he asked.

“
For being my friend.”

He opened his mouth to say something when Mallory spotted a pair of headlights approaching on the far side of the coaster’s skeletal framework.

“
Shh!” she said and pointed.

The vehicle grew closer—a golf cart judging by the size of it—and Tim nodded toward the thoroughfare, mouthing “Let’s go.”

Together, they hurried around the shed, following the low fence that surrounded
The Monster
ride until they rejoined the masses traveling the main road.

Mallory inhaled deeply, catching the sweet sent of fried food and powder sugar. “Hey, are you hungry?”

“
Starving.”

“
Let’s get funnel-cake!”

Tim eyed her. “You know there’s like a billion calories in those things, right?”

Mallory shrugged. “We’ll just have to run it off next week.”

Tim nodded his consent. “I’ll get two.”

She giggled as he escorted her to one of the benches along the thoroughfare, indicating for her to sit while he went to buy the food.

A smile lingered on her lips as she watched him go.

She’d been seated less than five minutes when Becky jumped in front of her.

“
Surprise!”

Before Mallory could reply, Adam Brant—Becky’s boyfriend—and two of their other friends, Elsa Williams and Lisa Nolan joined her, accompanied by two other boys she didn’t recognize. Then Derrick Nolan stepped forward, snaring her attention like a net.

“
Is this a surprise, or is this a
surprise
?” Becky asked.

Mallory nodded, speechless.

“
Hey, Mallory,” Lisa said.

Adam waved.

She smiled back at each of them, but kept her eyes on Derrick, asking, “Where’d you all come from?”

Becky licked her lips and slid onto the bench beside her. “Don’t you remember me saying how bad I wanted to come out here tonight when we were at the mall?” she asked, sounding utterly bewildered. “You had plans, so I asked Elsa to go, and she invited Lisa. It almost didn’t happen, though, because Adam’s crappy car is in the shop. Derrick and his pals were headed in this direction, anyway, to go to some party, and they were nice enough to give us a ride.” She twitched her eyebrows. “They still had some time to kill, so I talked them into joining us for a while. I knew you’d show up at the funnel-cake stands sooner or later, so we’ve been hanging out here waiting for you.”

Mallory grinned.

“
You owe me one,” Becky whispered.

CHAPTER 21

Orange light. Crumbling walls. Shouts for help.

Frank recalled the raid on Kale Kane’s farmhouse for Detective Humble, remembering every detail of the grotesque place with frightening clarity.

The fetid air of decay.

The confusion.

The pain.

Choking on the unsavory taste of spent gunpowder after his shootout with the killer, Frank stood at the threshold of Kale Kane’s root cellar looking at the bodies of the dead. The only illumination came from half a dozen stout candles burning at various points around the room, but even their meager light revealed the stain of death everywhere.

He lowered his weapon.

“
Good Lord,” he whispered.

Kane’s victims hung from the ceiling, suspended by thin wires anchored in their flesh with huge steel hooks. Each corpse had been taken apart and reassembled with additional body parts. Thick stitches bound the flesh of both humans and animals, creating a small army of half-rotten, darkly-hided, multi-limbed nightmares.

The eyes of one of the closest constructions still shined with false life, drawing Frank’s attention. Their positioning in the reshaped sockets of a worm-infested pig’s skull seemed to communicate the level of terror experienced by their former owner at their time of death, as if the very emotion had been fused into the corneas.

Frank looked at the floor to escape the thing’s gaze.

Further emphasizing the pure wickedness the hecatomb reeked of, he found a wide pool of blood the killer had gathered in a shallow pit at the center of the room. It gleamed in the candlelight, encircling a large column of stone. A host of cryptic symbols decorated the towering obelisk, strange characters chiseled in a three-dimensional pattern that caused Frank’s head to throb when he stared at them.

He swayed on his feet, then flinched when another officer reached out to steady him. He couldn’t fathom what sort of diabolic compulsion could’ve driven a person to commit such vile acts, what level of mental imbalance—

“
He’s still alive,” a medic roared.

Frank turned to see Kane’s eyes snap open and almost fell down the steps leading into the cellar when he flinched back in shock. It wasn’t possible for the man to still be conscious, not after the amount of damage he’d received. Yet the killer struck out with the speed of a springing viper, teeth bared and hissing.

Kane reached up and grabbed the medic by the neck, ripping out his throat in a single vicious action. The man dropped to the floor, hitting the ground as Kane arose from a lake of his own blood.

His eyes shimmered.

Shiny filaments of spittle stitched together the space between his open jaws.

Blood rained from his wounds.

Frank and the surrounding policemen trained their weapons on the killer in a uniform motion, but Kane lunged at the closest officer before anyone fired a shot.

“
Shit,” Frank growled, snapping up his weapon.

Several members of the tactical squad broke formation and rushed forward, reaching for their teammate. Kane met their charge with an animalistic battle cry, snapping the neck of his captive in one effortless action. 

The man’s death set off a chain reaction of rage, and the other officers charged.

Kane struck the first man to reach him with an uppercut to the mouth, knocking a shard of jawbone through his cheek. He jabbed at another, gouging out an eye.

Blood sailed from Kane’s wounds with each move, yet he twisted and flexed without the slightest sign of impairment. He met the onslaught of officers with a smile, hammering his adversaries straight through their body armor and Kevlar helmets with bare fists. He punched, flipped, kicked, backhanded, and head-butted opponents before any of them got close enough to help or do damage, then heaved them aside as though they weighed less than the clothing they wore.

The crowd shifted with each new assault, blocking Frank’s attempts to move forward and help.

Gunfire cracked from various points around the room as other officers took aimed shots at the killer, carefully placing each round so not to hit one of their own. Fresh wounds peppered Kane’s flesh. Yet the madman continued to attack, advancing on the crowd as they tried to fall back.

Kane snatched a man’s arm and broke it in two. The bone sprung through the officer’s shirt sleeve like a spring-loaded blade, and Kane rammed it into the throat of another man he’d seized by the neckline of his tactical vest.

Sergeant Rice plunged into the battle and thrust his sidearm into Kane’s face, firing a round directly into the killer’s left eye. Kane’s head rocked back with the shot, then snapped forward again as if recovering from no more than a hard slap. He bellowed at Rice, spraying blood and saliva across the officer’s face. In a blur, Kane punched through the man’s teeth, burying his fist in Rice’s mouth up to the wrist.

Frank flinched.

Kane yanked his hand free, taking Rice’s tongue with it, then hurled him at the other officers, grabbing the strap of his sub-machinegun in the process.

“
Oh, shit,” Frank hissed.

Kane opened fire the second Rice left his grasp, painting the cracked walls with lightning-quick pulses of light and filling the air with the repetitive thunder of gunfire. He panned Rice’s MP-5 left and right, emptying the weapon’s thirty-round magazine into the crowd.

Pivoting away, Frank ducked through the cellar doorway the same instant huge holes exploded out of its frame. Clouds of splinters and mortar dust sprayed through the air. From his new position, he had a clear view of the space across the landing and up the main staircase, where he spotted reinforcements frozen on the steps.

“
Get down here,
God dammit!
”

The first floor door swung shut without warning, slamming into its frame with such force the candlelight at Frank’s back flickered with the sudden change in air pressure. With the door closed, only two cops remained on the steps, cut off from above like him and all the others.

Before he could dwell on the door’s abrupt closure, the hail of gunfire ceased, replaced by the faint, bell-like sounds of spent 9mm casings bouncing off the concrete floor. Then nothing.

Silence descended over the room like a smothering hand.

Frank tensed, listening, afraid the fracas had affected his hearing. From above came the incessant pounding and muffled shouts of the officers on the first floor as they fought to break down the door. Beyond that, he picked out the haggard gasping of the wounded men in the adjacent room, followed by the louder sound of the empty MP-5 clattering to the floor.

Frank brought up one hand, signaling for the officers on the staircase to hold their position. Given the number of men Kane had dropped in the other room, a veritable arsenal of loaded weapons awaited the killer’s hands.

He looked to his own weapon. Smoke rose from a bullet hole that had peeled open the breach, exposing the copper shell of a cartridge.

Shit!

He knelt down and set the weapon on the floor. His helmet slipped forward on his sweat-slicked forehead when he did, and he quickly pushed it back, eyeing the doorway.

He unholstered his sidearm, a 9mm Sig, and readied to move.

Staying low on the narrow cellar steps, he tipped his head around the corner of the bullet-shattered doorframe and got a quick glimpse of the other room.

Kane stood amongst the crumpled bodies of the fallen officers like the sole survivor of a war, splattered with blood, surrounded by smoke. The final moans of the dying faded to silence.

Frank concentrated on the fact Kane hadn’t replaced the MP-5 with one of the other firearms scattered about the floor. Instead, the killer stood amidst the wreckage of bodies, arms in front of him, palms up, studying his own injuries in soundless contemplation.

Frank’s grip on the handgun tightened. He flicked off the safeties and put two pounds of pull on the trigger.

Across the room, Kane pulled apart the two halves of his shirt and Frank tensed. The cloth had once been faded brown with a lighter tan check pattern, but now glistened almost solid crimson.

Multitudes of dark gunshot wounds peppered Kane’s torso, each a fatal ticket that should’ve secured his passage to Hell. Stranger still, among the scattering of bullet holes lay a series of deep lacerations that could’ve only come from a knife. Not random cuts, either. They looked like designs carved into his flesh, symbols similar those written across the stone pillar sitting in the pool of blood.