Lost Cargo (7 page)

“Great, look at this stuff,” she said and stepped outside.

The trees beyond the lawn vanished in the cloudbank that had settled over Macomb Street. He knew parked cars lined the road, but he couldn’t see more than twenty feet in front of his face. As soon as they took a few steps past the grass to the sidewalk, wide wisps of fog rolled back to reveal the cars by the curb.

They left the house behind and headed downhill in the muffled quiet. Luminous streetlights lit up phantom shrubbery and trees.

“Burke must be exhausted,” she said.

“Why was he going to the Adirondacks?”

“A spa, I think, then to Montreal to buy antiques. I don’t know where exactly.”

“We’ll get him back tonight,” he told her, thinking they would be lucky to even find Spa-Boy in the dark woods. “So he was going to a spa.”

“He does that. You know, massage, manicure, a businessman thing. When we find the wreck, I want to try to short-circuit the floor. It has to be some kind of security system.”

“There’s the library. I didn’t even recognize it.” He pointed to the darkened windows of the Cleveland Park branch library at the bottom of the hill where Macomb Street ran into Connecticut Avenue. Fog drifted in ragged streamers across the deserted intersection. They headed across the well-lit avenue, relieved to be on one sure path in the murky landscape. Stores and restaurants loomed up, first the rain-drenched flag and green awnings of the Irish pub, followed by a deli that disappeared as more stores appeared out of the mist.

A realistic mannequin in a store window made them jump. As they moved past the theater with its dark marquee and empty ticket booth, the fog rolled away under the glow of red taillights. A city patrol car was idling outside the 7-Eleven on the corner.

“Cops.” Travis touched her shoulder. The fog was so thick he couldn’t tell if the cops were inside the store or still in the car. The 7-Eleven was the only place open on the street. Hazy yellow light from the windows stretched across the sidewalk.

Lexie wiped her damp hair from her face. “Maybe they’ll help us.”

“They might figure out you called them before.”

The door of the 7-Eleven opened and a cop stepped outside with a cup of coffee in his hands. He took a few steps and then with perfect cop instinct stared right at them.

“I’m going to ask them anyway,” she said.

Travis fell in with her, almost feeling like her boyfriend. The cop got behind the wheel and said something to a second cop in the passenger seat. When the traffic signal changed, they pulled away from the curb and disappeared in the fog up Porter Street.

Lexie threw up her hands. “I can’t believe it. Look at that.”

“You know we’re never going to find Burke in this fog,” he told her.

“I guess we should wait for it to burn off.”

“Let’s get my cell phone,” he said. “We can make coffee and wait a couple of hours and look for him when we can see. Come on.”

“Okay, you’re right,” she sighed.

They left Connecticut Avenue and went up Porter. The fog grew thicker, drifted over the black road, and parted in streamers to reveal the inky windows of darkened houses. Gloomy lawns appeared and disappeared, bordered by trees that vanished behind them.

“Do you hear something?” he asked.

She froze. “Where?”

“Behind us. Listen!”

Footfalls came through the fog up Porter Street. The slow footfalls made a sound like claws on the sidewalk, faint at first and then distinct, until the walker paused as if to listen.

“The cops?” Lexie whispered.

Travis peered into the fog, but couldn’t see anything. The footfalls started again. “It sounds like claws, some kind of an animal.”

“Maybe it’s a dog,” she said.

He took her arm. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

They hurried along until they came to a brick retaining wall with ivy trailing over the top, and beyond it reached a familiar landmark. The 34th Street signal glowed through the haze across the silent intersection, quite a change from daytime when the crossroads streamed with traffic.

He stared back down the hill. Maybe they could shake whatever was following them if they got off Porter. He took her hand and headed up 34th Street. The fog grew thicker. Macomb Street was somewhere nearby. They could forget the cell phone and go back to her house. It was closer than his place.

The sound of claws came after them. His heart was racing a hundred miles an hour. When he looked over his shoulder, he still couldn’t see anything. They stepped up their pace. Darkened condominiums gave way to homes surrounded by towering magnolias and the deep shadows of walled gardens. Hiding places, but he wasn’t stopping. If a dog was after them, it would be able to smell them out.

The hill sharply rose. Then 34th Street forked, and he realized they were on the wrong side of the road.

To reach Burke and Lexie’s house, they would have to take the right fork and dash across the pavement, where the streetlights would expose them in the middle of the road. They continued up the left fork, heading in the opposite direction from the way he wanted to go.

“What are we doing?” she whispered.

“Listen,” he said. The footfalls came to a halt and started again. He turned, trying to locate the sound.

“Do you hear anything?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” he lied, but when he saw her face he knew she could hear it, too. They began to run uphill, hand in hand, past brick walkways and arched doorways and shuttered windows, racing over the grass to muffle the sound of their shoes, covering several blocks in silent panic until they doubled over, gasping for breath.

Lexie clutched the camera. “Where are we? How did we get lost in our own neighborhood?”

“I hear something,” he said, his skin prickling. “It’s coming after us.”

A street sign materialized out of the night.

“Newark!” she said. “We’re all turned around.”

They began to climb the steep hill, past more nineteenth-century homes that rose like magnificent ships sailing in a sea of fog. The block was too long. His sides ached. Lexie struggled beside him with her damp hair plastered to her coat. The fogbank closed in behind them as they pushed up the hill.

The sound of claws turned up Newark.

A dog, Travis told himself. Some crazy dog hellbent on catching them. He hoped it wasn’t a pit bull. The thing could probably smell them and hear them no matter what they did. He tried to swallow his panic, but he was running out of ideas. The hill leveled off and fell away into a shallow valley bordered by dark woods. He knew Newark Street went on for blocks until it ran into Wisconsin Avenue, a busy commercial boulevard far out of their way. They couldn’t keep going in that direction.

They hurried over the grass, keeping to the trees. A pale mansion decorated with intricate plaster swags and flowers and framed by stately hollies appeared, followed by more palatial homes. At the edge of one of the grand lawns they crept under a spreading pine tree and lay side by side on the damp needles, hiding their faces.

The peculiar footfalls came closer. Travis lifted his eyes, expecting to see a pit bull or a Doberman pad into sight, its claws ticking on the sidewalk, but instead a familiar shape stepped out of the darkness. The giant stopped under a streetlight as though she was listening for them.

It’s her. Don’t move
. His pulse pounded. The pine boughs barely hid their bodies.

She was even bigger than he remembered. Her head seemed too small, a mere stump. For a nightmarish moment her neck and chin seemed to be missing, melted away like heavy wax into her shoulders, but then her whole face appeared after all. Yes, she had a neck, and a chin, and her mouth was where it should be.
The fog must be doing something crazy to my eyes
. What kind of shoes was she wearing? Her voluminous gray cape pooled over her feet into the gutter and in the dim light seemed to be the same shade as the pavement. Seconds passed. Her figure faded in the fog until her huge form seemed to be rising out of the road.

The seconds turned into minutes. Travis grew angry as he lay in the dirt. His pulse hammered. Following them all this time. Creeping after them like a ghoul. What was she up to? She didn’t seem to have any weapons, but in one of her huge hands she held a large, flat purse.

A car with the headlights off rumbled up behind them and rattled off into silence. The smell of cigarettes and beer floated out into the night.

“Pookie, look,” a man said.

Travis met Lexie’s eyes and shifted his weight, ready to fight.

A second man gave a husky laugh. “Boo yeow, what a hit!”

The heavy metallic
clunk
of a car door sounded, followed by the soft sound of feet pattering across the pavement. A figure came out of the shadows. Sixteen or seventeen, thin, jittery, jogging up and down, with a black ski mask, oversized green hoodie, baggy black pants, and one long, black, mean looking gun. The engine rumbled as the car crept behind a screen of trees. They had it down.

And they didn’t see Travis and Lexie after all. The mugger went after the giant, who crossed the street. He crossed with her, pace for pace, like a sauntering panther stalking his prey, cut her off, and pointed his weapon at her dull face. Her cold eyes stared out from under folds of fat.

“Gimme your purse or I’ll kill you,” he said in a husky voice. “And I mean it.”

Pookie. Streetlight shone over his ski mask. The enormous woman lifted an arm like a tree trunk and held out the purse. When Pookie took it, his eyes grew wide through the mask.

“Empty. Give it to me.”

The giant’s jaws opened down to her monstrous breast. Then she lunged, bit off Pookie’s fingers, and devoured his gun and hand in a single greedy gulp. Seconds later, she ripped his right arm out of the socket. Pookie opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out, and he stood there, tottering like a marionette.

The giant seized his ski mask, jammed his head in her mouth like a lollipop, and snapped it off. Dark blood streamed over her cape as she turned her back to the pine tree. Like a figure from an old nightmare, she opened her threatening cape to the corpse that no longer had eyes to see, once a man, young and strong and raw and cruel, now just a bloody slab of flesh stretched out under a moonless sky. Her cape dragged over the sidewalk. One more step and she stood on the headless body, pulled it into position, and devoured the remaining arm.

When she finished with the top half of Pookie, she ate through the bottom. She gorged on his baggy pants and swallowed all the pathetic incidentals of his brief life buried in the blood-soaked pockets, gnawed his organs, splintered his bones, and ended with his feet, hard, agile feet that must have jaywalked ten thousand times across the rotten city streets, timing the traffic, daring the cars, predatory feet that sauntered and stole and stretched and ran, now just two bloody stumps oozing onto the sidewalk.

The grisly feast ended. She trailed her cape over the smear that had been a human being and stared through the shifting fog.

Get down
. Travis pulled his dark coat over Lexie’s pale hair and threw his arms around her, but to his shock she struggled to her elbows.

The bloodstained giant turned her back again.

Click, click
, rapid and soft. The flash went off in succession. Lexie got off ten shots before he could grab the camera and shove her down again. Fog blew over the road in streaming clouds as the giant turned around.

The car crept forward into the fog.

“Pookie? Pookie?” The driver screamed. “Monster monster monster monster!” He gunned the motor, threw the car in reverse, hit a utility box, ripped up the grass, and bounced with a bone-jarring thud over the curb. “Monster monster monster monster monster monster!” A headlight smashed against a parked car. Glass and metal scattered and burning rubber filled the air. Then the spinning tires squealed as the one-eyed car fishtailed and roared down Newark Street.

“Kree-ee-ee-ee,” the giant shrieked in a murderous wail down the middle of the dark road, narrowing the gap. The car let out a loud
blatt
and chugged uphill. The giant seemed to give up the chase, but then she rushed across a lawn, her cape extended like great wings, and soared to the housetop. She scrabbled across the tiles where she squatted like a gargoyle and turned her fiendish gaze on the fleeing car lights.

A yellow square blinked on in the house. An upstairs light. Seconds later a smaller yellow square appeared. A bedroom and a bathroom. The bedroom drapes opened and fell back. Somebody was up, probably calling the police. The thing on the roof moved over the peak and disappeared in the shadows behind the house.

“Now,” Travis whispered. If they ran for it, they had a chance.

He crawled out from under the pine tree, heart racing, moving through a dreamscape to the bloodstained sidewalk. Glass glittered under the streetlight. The light would expose them when they crossed the road.

Run. Run for it. Run run run now
. When he turned to Lexie, he was horrified to see she’d moved away. She was off in her own world, bending over the sidewalk, kneeling, then standing, black coat moving in and out of the light, camera clicking, the flash going off, recording the dreamscape, the river of blood, the bashed-in utility box, the glittering glass-strewn street, the rooftop at the bottom of the hill where the thing had flown only a moment before.

Travis took long strides to her side. “No, we have to get out of here,” he whispered.

She lowered the camera and took his hand as they ran into the shadows. He didn’t care where they were going or what was in their way. Darkened houses passed by in a blur until a sign for Macomb Street appeared out of the fog.

“W
hich way?” Travis barked. For a frightening moment he didn’t recognize the street. Porch lights glimmered up and down the hill. They were on Macomb, but where? The wrong side of 34th again? All at once he got his bearings. A familiar hedge appeared, and the pickets of an iron fence, and a tall shape with grasping arms that shrank to an old oak he’d passed hundreds of times before. Just tree limbs. Just a few blocks to go.