Superbia 3 (23 page)

He inched
backward; clutching the stick with both hands for fear that it would slip out of his grip from both sweat and a sudden fit of trembling.  He gasped in horror as Dez lifted his head from the ground and groaned.  Dez's speech was mangled by his broken lips and cracked front teeth and he reached up to touch them with trembling fingers, feeling nothing but blood as he shouted, "You motherfucker!"  

"Don't do it," Frank said.  "Stay down!"

"You son of a bitch!" 

Dez flopped on the ground in the area where the gun had fallen and Frank spun to get away, running for the only thing he could see, the rear exit framed by the
now almost nonexistent light.  He heard the gun scrape the lobby floor as Dez's fingers locked onto it.  He even heard the cylinders and mechanisms inside the chamber move and creak as Dez squeezed the trigger and the firing pin punched the end of the hollow-point bullet within. 

The bullet erupted out of the barrel with lethal speed, spinning through the air toward Frank just as he dove for the door, raising his arms to protect his face as he
crashed through the rotted wood.  He broke through a thick tangle of dry, thorny branches and felt himself thrown forward by the hill's steep decline.  His ankles twisted on the roots and leaves, the entire woods in dark blur save for the distant lights of civilization somewhere far off, somewhere too far to know that Frank was running for his life. 

His foot caught a root deeply buried in the much and it grabbed him like a skeleton's hand reaching up from the grave and Frank flipped in the air, rolling and falling and crashing and screaming as he tumbled end over end down into the tangled woods, down into the dark abyss.

Drip. 

Drip.  Drip. 

Something leaked onto a bare concrete floor like water from a loose faucet, the kind the you think you can deal with when you go to bed but by three in the morning all you can hear is−

Drip.

Drip.  Drip.

Frank tried to raise his head, but the sterile floor was cool against his face and he could not bring himself to leave it.  His entire body ached and he wondered if he'd been shot, but even as he tried to collect his thoughts he was distracted by the−

Drip.

Drip. Drip.

It was nearby.  Near enough that he could smell it, whatever it was.  A copper smell, the smell of a rusty iron door, a dank basement with water seeping through the cracks in the walls that went−

Drip.

Drip.  Drip.

Frank forced his eyes open just as the wheelchair rolled past him.  He saw the white rubber wheels turn along the polished concrete floor and the girl slumped over in the seat.  The Disney pillowcase
stretched over her head like a hood was saturated with so much blood it ran down her arms and dripped over the sides, leaving a trail that glistened in the dark like the back of a long, red serpent.

He gasped and
scrambled to get away, but the girl in the wheelchair suddenly flinched.  The dead thing's withered, crippled hands unstuck themselves from her chest and she reached up with arched fingers to claw at the pillowcase.  Her mouth opened and closed beneath it like she was being smothered and her head slowly turned to face him, the dark fabric sunk in around the places where her eyes should be.  "Help me, Frankkkkkkk," she groaned.  "You were supposed to help meeeeeeeeeeee."    

Frank
barked in terror as his hands touched the wet, leathery boots of someone standing behind him and he spun to see the enormous belly of Chief Claude Erinnyes looming over him.  Erinnyes's face was swollen and purple like he'd been holding his breath until the blood vessels burst and his eyes were bulging, glaring down at Frank.  The Chief opened his mouth and the hooded eyes of a black snake peered through, its tongue flicking the air as Erinnyes regurgitated it.  The snake uncoiled from the base of the Chief's being and descended to the floor, coming toward Frank.   

From every direction, they were coming. 
Eyes red and glowing with damnation, they closed in and grabbed for him.  Their claws and fangs bit into his feet and legs and arms, drawing evil symbols on his chest in blood, marking him as their own, marking him as damned for all eternity. 

Frank screamed and screamed and heard nothing but high-pitched laughter. 

Uncle Petey the old man, the grandfather pedophile, came up from between Frank's legs with his mouth dripping blood, still laughing and said, "I told you, Frank.  You're one of us now.  And we'll have you forever."  The old man smiled wickedly, as if he were recounting the moments of lust he'd enjoyed with the youngest of his victims and he sighed, "There are so many who are going to enjoy your company."       

They
leapt on top of him, swallowing him into their ravenous maws, fangs to his flesh, leaking poison into his blood until he too began to fade into the shadows.  The light inside of Frank slowly started to dim.

He watched in horror as the light flickered and nearly went out. 
All the goodness, all of the hope and love and courage that he contained began to drain out of him like a body being leeched of its vitals.  Cold overcame him.  The cold of the grave.  

There was movement in the distance that began like the low rumble of an approaching train, rattling the floor and causing the shadows to separate.  Uncle Petey stopped his heavy breathing
and his head shot up to search or the source of the disturbance.  His red eyes shimmered with hatred and he howled, "No!  He is not yours!  Get away!  Get away!"

A light appeared
that drove back the monsters at the furthest edges of the circle, glowing so bright that Frank had to close his eyes at the sight of it.  It would not be shut out.  It was something that could not be escaped.  It filled his face with fire. 

The light roared from a lantern held high in the air and the man holdin
g it walked through the demons with his head raised. 
Unafraid,
Frank thought.  The man's long woolen coat was dark, even in the glare of the lantern, but the ancient badge pinned to his chest shined brighter than eternity.  The Night Watchman walked to the place where Frank lay and stood over him, keeping the ghouls and freaks cowering in fear with the lantern's bright light.   

Frank
heard footsteps and turned his head in to see another figure approaching and realized it was Vic. 

Victor Ajax walked through the narrow gap in the crowd fast, coming up behind the Watchman and bent down to pull Frank into his arms.  He cradled Frank's head and held him tight and said, "It's all right now.
  We've got you." 

"He's ours
!" Uncle Petey howled.  There was fire in his eyes and speech and it seemed to enrage the rest of them into such a state that even the magnificent light of the Watchman's lantern wavered. 

Vic smiled softly and looked down at Frank, "
Never.  He's belongs to us and always will."  He patted Frank on the side of the face and said, "You did good.  But now you have to get up.  There's still one thing left to do, rookie."

Frank
heard Vic's words and gasped for breath as he opened his eyes and sat up, seeing nothing but the dark woods surrounding him. 

He was tangled in long lengths of vine and brush,
and twenty feet below the rear of the train station and the door he'd burst through.  Inside, he could hear someone shouting.

Frank struggled to his feet and stifled his whimpering curses as he clawed his way back up the incline. His legs were like lead weights and his arms felt too numb to support him but still he climbed.  Still, he fought. 

He went the long way around the station toward the parking lot and kept low, watching the front door carefully as he fished his keys from this pocket and unlocked his car door.  A man moved past the door and bent down to reach for something. Frank couldn't tell what it was, but the man was certainly Dez, and Dez was turning something in his hands and pulling it up.  The Psycho Rabbit's head.  Frank crept around the side of the car to get a better look, now able to see the rabbit's foot, flopped sideways and motionless.  The face of the man wearing the suit was obscured by shadows, but as Frank squinted to see who it was, Dez suddenly jerked his hand away in horror and screamed, "Fuck oh fuck oh fucking shit!" 

Fuck this,
Frank thought.  He quietly opened the driver's side door to his car and slid into the seat.  He kept the lights off as he put his foot on the brake and shifted the car into neutral, cranking the wheel until the car's front end was gently coasting down the hill and away from the station.  By the time he was half way down, he hit the brake, twisted the key to turn the engine on, and softly stepped on the gas, coasting down the rest of the trail until he reached the street below.

He kept checking his rearview mirror, half expecting the night to turn into a horror flick where bright white headlights would suddenly appear and the bad guy would come roaring after him.  A car chase and a gun fight through the dark streets of suburbia.  But there was nothing. 

Frank stopped at the next traffic light and did not move.  The light cycled from green to yellow to red, and he did not move.  He sat in his car, staring forward, unable to focus on anything more than the light as it changed. 
Dez tried to kill me.  He shot that fucking asshole in the rabbit costume.
 
What evidence did I leave behind?
 

It was hard to breathe and he found himself panting so hard his windshield fogged. 
He's not going to come after me,
Frank thought. 
He's too much of a coward to do it alone.  No…he'll try and set me up.  He'll come up with some fucked up scenario that makes it sound like it was all my fault. 

Think,
Frank yelled at himself. 
You're smarted than that Ivy League asshole.  Special Agent.  Bullshit.  That dude's a glorified bureaucrat and you're a down-and-dirty garbage-picking-detective.  So think. 

An idea shot forth into Frank's mind and he punched on the gas, flying through a solid red light.  It might not be the best idea and it certainly wasn't the most well thought out, but fuck it.  It was an idea, and it was movement, and it was better than sitting at a red light.  He could tweak it as he drove. 

He flew down 611 checking for cops, driving fast but arrow-straight.  At that time of night the road dogs were looking for drunks and they'd give him a few extra MPH as long as he used his turn signal and didn't swerve.  Well-maintained, suburban apartment complexes and synagogues became desolate shopping centers and trash-strewn intersections as 611 emptied into Broad Street.  Bums roamed the sidewalks pushing shopping carts filled with dirty clothes, because it was safer to sleep during the day on a busy street corner than it was to be found in a dark alley at night by the wrong person.  Or pit bull. 

Frank picked up his phone to check the time.  At that exact moment his phone's signal was bouncing off of every cell tower he drove past, leaving a digital signature of his movements.  All it would take was someone who knew how to look. 
Outthink them,
Frank told himself.  He turned off the GPS on his phone and powered it off. 

The Walgreens at Broad and Hunting Park Avenue was brightly lit and its parking lot filled with people heading out to the bars.  Dark-skinned men in perfectly matching outfits.  One had on lime-green shoes, a lime-green suit, and a lime-green bowler hat.  Their women ranged from ghetto fabulous big ladies to small firecracker girls in skimpy black dresses.  Frank admired a few of the women as he pulled in.  They were sexy enough to be distracting. 

The front of the store was crowded with drug zombies.  Old women with balding heads and morphine-thin arms limped toward everyone they saw with variations of the same story.  "Do you have any change for a phone call?" or "Can you spare a dollar, I ain't eaten in two days."

It was all lies. 

It was all drugs, and everyone knew it. 

Some of the men would reach into their pockets and peel off a few dollars just to impress their women.  They were generous though and treated the zombies with respect.  "Here you go, Ma.  Be careful out there," they'd say.

"Bless you.  Jesus is going to bless you."

"All right, now."

There was a kind of dignity to the exchange that Frank admired.  He'd seen cops practically shit on teenagers for carrying a dime bag of weed and call them "Asshole Druggies" more times than he could count.  Somehow, a man wearing nothing but lime green could manage to show respect to a piper.  Frank parked his car and walked toward the front entrance, instantly drawing the attention of the parking lot's entire complement of addicts.