JACK KILBORN ~ AFRAID (21 page)

What the hell were these people doing, shooting at civilians?

“I’m driving a woman and child!” He yelled through the open door but decided to keep his head inside the car. “They need medical attention!”

“TURN YOUR VEHICLE AROUND!”

“Damn it, we need help! We’ve been attacked! We need to get to a hospital!”

“YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO TURN AROUND, THEN WE’LL OPEN FIRE.”

Josh stared impotently at Fran, not knowing what they should do.

“We have to go,” Fran said.

“Where?”

“Maybe we can park someplace and walk to the road.”

“There are at least thirty army guys out there. They have a tank.”

“I thought the army was supposed to help us,” Duncan said.

“YOU NOW HAVE FIVE SECONDS!”

Josh had no choice. He backed up and continued driving backward until he felt safe enough to close his door and make a three-point turn.

“Now what?” he asked Fran. “This is the only road in and out of Safe Haven.”

“We could go back to my neighbor’s house. There’s obviously something going on. It looks like the authorities are aware of the situation. Maybe we should lie low, wait it out.”

Josh wasn’t convinced. He tried to come up with a scenario where the military would put up roadblocks. A quarantine of some kind? Were Bernie, Taylor, Santiago, and Ajax here to spread some sort of germ or poison? Or was this a media blackout, ensuring news didn’t spread? That could explain the phone problems they’d been having—someone might be jamming the signals and blocking the land lines.

“You need to see a doctor.” Josh stared at Fran so she could see how serious he was. “As soon as possible. Duncan does, too. And I’m not sure going back to Safe Haven is a smart idea.”

“How about Doc Wainwright?” Duncan asked. “He gives me my shots every year.”

Doc Wainwright had a clinic in town, open Tuesday and Thursday. The other days of the week he divided his time between Shell Lake and Eau Claire.

“He won’t be open now, Duncan,” Fran said.

“Can’t we go to his house? He told me he lives on the lake.”

Josh considered it. Wainwright had a house on Big Lake McDonald, on the shore opposite the Mortons’. But Fran needed more than a few stitches and some antibiotics. She needed surgery.

Still, Wainwright was better than not doing anything.

“Doc Wainwright it is,” Josh said. He hit the gas and then had to slam on the brakes once again to avoid hitting the man standing in the middle of the road.

S
treng and Erwin walked the still-docile Bernie over to the sheriff’s Jeep. Streng locked him in the back and tossed the McDonald’s bag full of Bernie’s things onto the floor of the front seat. Then Streng turned his attention to Sal Morton’s house.

“He twisted off Sal’s head, Sheriff. Like a bottle cap.”

Streng had no reason to doubt Josh. And he really didn’t want to go back into that house and see what his cousin had seen. But he’d dropped his .45 on the roof, and he’d feel much safer riding with Bernie if he had it back.

“Erwin, you and Olen come with me, help find my gun.”

Erwin’s face pinched. “I really need to get to the junior high, Sheriff. If those soldier guys have the mayor, then that whole lottery story could be BS. My fiancée is there.”

From what Streng understood, much of the town had gone to that lottery thing. Surely there was safety in numbers. But Streng wasn’t going to prevent Erwin from looking after his own.

“Okay. I’ll meet you there after I drop off Bernie at my office. If anything strange is going on, grab your girl and run.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice. See you later, Sheriff.”

“Good luck, Erwin.”

The men clasped hands, but it felt forced. Or perhaps final. Then Erwin headed back to the Honey Wagon, and Streng again focused on the house. His recent bad experience prompted memory flashes of fear and panic. He pushed those memories aside, shined Olen’s dirty flashlight at the front door, and made himself walk toward it.

Darkness and silence greeted Streng as he entered. Though the commonly accepted veteran stereotype spoke otherwise, Streng never had posttraumatic stress disorder, never had any kind of flashbacks. He’d seen some horrible things in the war and still had occasional bad dreams, but he managed to escape Vietnam with both his mind and his body intact.

Stepping into Sal’s house, though, brought back a feeling he hadn’t experienced in more than thirty years. The hell that was patrol.

Streng hated patrol. You had an equal chance of dying no matter how quiet you were, how careful you were. During those nighttime missions Streng felt like he had a hundred bull’s-eyes on his body, each one with rifle crosshairs zeroing in on a different body part. Nowhere to hide, and running was useless. The Cong were part of the jungle, and every tree, every rock, every shadow had deadly potential. All you could do was stay low and hope.

That same feeling enveloped Streng as he crept into Sal’s house for the second time that night. The feeling of being watched, hunted. Except this time he didn’t have a gun, just a Ka-Bar knife. Not that it mattered much. If Santiago was waiting in the shadows, Streng doubted anything less than a rocket launcher would keep him at bay.

He took the stairs slowly, shining the light on each step so he didn’t trip, pausing every three steps to listen. Streng’s injured kidney throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Halfway up the staircase the odor of death hit, and hit hard. Streng switched to breathing through his mouth, which didn’t help much. He pressed his hand hard against his aching side and ascended to Sal’s bedroom.

A snatch of childhood skipped across Streng’s mind, him and Wiley and cousin Sal, climbing the fence to the Safe Haven cemetery on Halloween night to prove their preteen bravery. Streng, the youngest of the trio, had been terrified, and before they took more than a dozen steps on hallowed ground he froze, refusing to move.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Sal had told him. “Everyone here is dead.”

“I’m not afraid of the dead,” Streng remembered saying. “I’m afraid of what made them dead.”

Streng thought he’d come a long way since those childhood years, a long way from being a grunt, from being a rookie cop. But much as a man matured, he stayed the same man. With the same fears.

The sheriff of Ashburn County steeled himself as best he could, pure will forcing emotional detachment, refusing to be swayed by the horrors that he would witness. Then he went into the bedroom.

There was blood. A lot of blood. Painted in black Jackson Pollock madness, thrown across the bedspread, the walls, the carpet.

But there were no bodies.

Streng’s shoes made squishing sounds as he walked to the closet, its sliding door closed. He opened it fast, stepping back, pointing the flashlight inside. The beam exposed some hanging shirts and a laundry hamper.

Where were they? Who could have taken them? Santiago and Ajax didn’t have time to dispose of the bodies—they’d been right behind Streng and Josh. Unless …

Unless they came back for them.

The gray hairs on Streng’s arms pricked out like a porcupine, and he had that tingle/surge in his belly that brought instant flop sweat. He could feel the sniper rifles aimed at him, ready to fire, and knew he had to get out of there as fast as possible.

Streng spun and saw Santiago standing in the doorway.

“I guessed you’d come back for your car,” he said.

I’m going to die,
Streng thought.
Horribly.

He wanted to ask what happened to Sal and Maggie, but his throat closed up. That was good—it prevented him from weeping. From begging.

“I’m going to enjoy making you scream,” Santiago whispered.

Somewhere, within the old body, the young man’s training kicked in, and Streng moved. He feinted left with the knife, then tried to get around Santiago, driving his shoulder into him, hoping momentum would take him to the stairs.

Santiago took the hit and grasped Streng by the shoulder, yanking the sheriff off of his feet. Streng got shoved to the floor, Santiago pouring onto him like liquid. The knife was pried from his grip and tossed aside. Streng reared back the flashlight and lashed out, catching the soldier in the chin. There was a delicious, revolting cracking sound, and Santiago’s head snapped back. But he stayed on Streng, his hands pinning down the sheriff’s arms, squeezing, forcing him to drop the flashlight.

“I think you broke my cheekbone.” Santiago’s words were slow, slurred.

Streng hoped he broke every bone in his goddamn head. He wanted to say that aloud, to show some defiance. But he knew he was trapped, knew the pain was coming, and he was afraid if he opened his mouth he’d vomit from fear. Blood—his cousin’s blood—soaked through the back of his shirt and pants, cold and wet. He smelled death, and staring up into Santiago’s dark eyes, he saw it, as well.

“Give me the Charge.”

That was the same thing Bernie said. Was it something Streng took from them?

“Give it to me.”

Santiago’s hand moved down over Streng’s body, seeking out his tortured kidney.
Jesus, no.
Streng tried to find his voice, to tell him there was some Charge in the Jeep, when he remembered the metal case he’d taken off Santiago earlier.

“My pocket,” he managed to say. “I’ve got some in my pocket.”

He felt the killer’s hand pause on his midsection, and Streng braced for the agony, if bracing for it was even possible. But Santiago’s fingers passed, probing lower, patting down Streng’s pants, finding the case. The killer tugged it out and cradled it in his palms like a junkie with a fix.

Streng’s fist shot out, knocking the case across the room, onto the bed. Incredibly, Santiago leapt off of him, going after the Charge. Streng didn’t bother hunting down the Ka-Bar. Instead he rolled onto all fours and crawled like hell out of the bedroom, heading for the hallway. If he could make it down the stairs, make it to the car—

Ajax filled the staircase.

Streng went right, into the second bedroom. His shins pleaded with him to stop, but he picked up speed instead, crawling toward the broken window, the cool breeze promising freedom, his .45 waiting for him on the roof.

He bumped something in the darkness.

Streng couldn’t see, but he knew. His hands rested on a body, cool and still, and even though he didn’t want to do it he reached up the chest … up the shoulders … until he found the empty space and the slick, sharp knot of vertebrae where Sal’s head used to be.

Revulsion swirled within Streng, rooting him. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, but he could faintly hear someone coming into the room behind him, someone who wanted to kill him or worse. Streng crawled around his cousin, his leg brushing something that rolled, something that could only have been Sal’s severed head, and then his hands were on the shattered windowpane and he was pulling himself up and Ajax grabbed him by the shoulder.

Streng tried to duck under the gigantic hand, but it locked under his armpit and tugged violently, hurling him across the room. His back hit something—a dresser or desk—bringing a rainbow banner of pain before Streng’s eyes. Then he fell, face-first, to the floor.

“Bring him,” Santiago said, or perhaps Streng imagined it. Ajax grabbed his ankle, pulled him across the carpeting, and Streng cast about frantically anything to grab. He touched something—something cold and sticky that felt like jelly.

But it wasn’t jelly.

It was Maggie.

The jelly feeling came from exposed fat and muscle, most of her skin having been peeled off.

Streng wrapped his fingers around her wrist, and for a moment his body stretched between Ajax and his cousin’s wife. Then the giant jerked hard, breaking Streng’s grip, making his face skip across the rug and causing a friction burn on his cheek. He was hauled into the hallway, past the staircase—so close yet so out of reach—and into Sal’s bedroom, where Ajax lifted him by his leg and held him upside down like a little girl’s doll.

Santiago had the flashlight tucked under his arm. Between his thumb and index finger, held at mouth level, was one of those capsules. But rather than eat it, Santiago broke it open and sniffed the contents. Streng watched as the killer vibrated like he’d been plugged into an electric socket, and then a mirthless smile creased his face.

Ajax made an awful sound, an inarticulate vowel jumble that sounded like the cries of the deaf.

“You’ll get some in a moment.” Santiago pointed at Streng. “Bring him here.”

Ajax didn’t move. He moaned again, deep and cowlike. The blood pooling up in Streng’s head made it feel ready to burst.

“Now, Ajax. Then you’ll get some Charge.”

Ajax moved forward, and Streng’s knuckles dragged the floor and bumped something hard and sharp.
The Ka-Bar.
He latched on to it and almost laughed at his luck.

“No playing around this time, Sheriff,” Santiago said. “You’re going to tell me where your brother is. Ajax, break his knees. He won’t be needing them anymore.”

The Ka-Bar Warthog had a thick, heavy blade, and Streng swung it at Ajax’s knuckles like he was chopping down a sapling—
hack hack hack
—and the huge fingers released him.

Streng landed on his shoulder, rolled to all fours, and then leapt for the doorway. He took the stairs three at a time, moving faster than he had in more than twenty years. Miraculously, he made it outside without anyone grabbing or killing him.

His Jeep was parked less than fifty yards away. Streng sprinted, pushing past the pain in his legs, his side, his whole body. He dared a quick glance behind him and saw Ajax emerge from the doorway at full speed, fast enough to break through a brick wall.

Streng focused on his vehicle. Fifteen steps away.

Ten.

Eight.

Jesus, they’re almost on me.

Six.

Two.

He hit the driver’s side and reached for the handle, getting out of the door’s way as he yanked it open.

“Charge,” Bernie said from the back seat.

Streng tossed the Ka-Bar on the passenger seat, dug the car keys from his pocket, wasted two seconds trying to find the ignition, and started the vehicle just as Ajax slammed into it.