[Darkthorn 01.0] Pond Scum

by Michael Lilly

  I’m still breathing hard from my jog over here. My breath comes out in sharp, misty puffs and evaporates into the rainy cold. My chest is tight from the cold as well. My confidence slips slightly, but holds fast, more strength in its grip yet; this is not the time to back out. I committed to this the second I stepped out of Todd’s house.

  I make my way northward, careful not to stray within view of the cars surrounding the station, then cut east, then south, rounding to the opposite side of the station and preparing for launch. I pull my phone out to text Beth.

  It won’t turn on.

  I forgot to put my phone in a bag again, and the water got to it. I’m the proud new owner of a phenomenally expensive brick. I sigh and put it back in my jacket pocket, though I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe I’ll try the rice thing later.

  I think I actually do have to climb back in through the back window. Fortunately, my path from here to there is dimly lit, well hidden, and quietly traversable. I make it in fifteen seconds, pausing underneath the window for a few seconds to listen for voices or hurried footsteps. If there are any, they’re drowned out by the rain, and my only option is to be satisfied with that and move on.

  By the grace of …Todd, I suppose, the window is still open slightly. It’s low enough for me to open the rest of the way from where I’m standing. I hop up and hook my hands over the threshold and, with what I’m sure looked like absolute and total grace from the outside, I manage to prop myself up and slide inside, barely managing to get my feet underneath myself before I crash to the floor head first. Inside, I become much more aware of the noise I make. The hard-surfaced, enclosed bathroom exaggerates the squitch of my sopping wet socks in my sopping wet shoes, and as I drip onto the worn tile floor, the droplets sound like thunder.

  I listen for any noise in the building, but am met with overwhelming silence. I open the door slowly, relieved that the hinges aren’t squeaky. With the door halfway open, I hear the soft whirrs of the computers that have been left on. The heater has kicked on, wafting the scent of burnt dust through the bullpen. No floaters type or click at the computers, and neither Beth nor Todd is in sight.

  I crouch, feeling exposed under the fluorescent bulbs that grace the bullpen with suppressive artificial light. Staying low, I move through the desks, still dripping. I’m frustratingly aware of the trail of droplets that I’m leaving on the cheap carpet, but my options have been running themselves out since I left Todd’s house.

  I zip into the hallway on the opposite side of the bullpen, where only a few days ago, Beth was asking me for input on my father’s death. I spend a second being intrigued how different the hallway appears between now and then, the difference cast on it by near-death experiences, newly forged friendships, fortifying old friendships, and a dizzying acknowledgement of my mortality. Beyond the interview rooms, a door on the left grants passage to the basement via two small flights of stairs that meet at a ninety-degree angled landing between the two of them. This is where evidence is kept. The door to the stairwell is unavoidably loud, the handle requiring an amount of force that would also shove it immediately to its limit; there’s no quieting my entry.

  The wetness of my footsteps is even more prevalent in the stairwell than it was in the bathroom; the growing intensity of the mission seems to amplify the noise I create. Even so, I descend with as much care as possible, stopping to listen every few steps. The bottom landing presents a door not unlike the first, through which lies the evidence room. Slowly, I depress the handle, but the clatter still echoes through the stairwell.

  Holding the door open at a couple of inches, my heart arrests for a moment when I hear voices, then continues in relief when I recognize them as Beth’s, Todd’s, and Sanders’. They stop when they hear me coming, and Sanders’ head pops out from behind a shelf. He smiles in relief and lets me through the locked front door.

  “What the hell, man? Weren’t you going to text?” he says.

  “Sorry, my phone and I went for a swim.”

  “You fall into the pond or something?”

  “Nope. Just went outside.”

  I look at Beth and Todd, and perhaps more than I’d like, relief spills from my face. I can’t tell whether I’m tearing up or water has just dripped from my face into my eyes, but I do know that I’ve never been more glad to see a pair of faces than that moment. While I’ve been convinced that Sanders is on Team Not-Pedophiles for some time now, until this moment, it hasn’t entirely deterred the worries running through my mind that he may, in fact, have seized their phones and been texting me as them all along. It could very easily have been a trap, and a combination of foolish confidence and naïve optimism led me here anyway.

  The pair of them, while apparently in good spirits, also look worn, tired. This aesthetic is complemented by Sanders, his normally neat salt-and-pepper hair disheveled and askew. He normally wears a tie, but now has discarded it completely, having also unbuttoned the top button and rolled up the sleeves of his green shirt. His khaki pants have lost their crispness throughout the evening, and one of his shoes isn’t quite tied all the way.

  But despite his disregard for his wardrobe, he, too, is in good spirits. I’m nailed with a pang of guilt as I consider the potential consequences. Any or all of these three could be seriously hurt, brutally beaten, even killed, all because they happened to stumble over the event horizon of the black hole that is my private life. If anything happens to them, the burden of that truth will lie on my shoulders.

  I am aware that I will not be directly responsible for anything that happens, but by chain of cause and effect, I’m inviting violence and destruction into our lives, and even though I’m not pulling the trigger, I’m certainly painting the targets.

  “So,” says Beth. “We doing this? You bustin’ us outta here?”

  I smile. “You know it. I was going to run from the northeast corner to make it look like I was coming from in here, but now that I’m actually in here, it’ll be a lot easier. Just give me a twenty-second head start and head straight to Todd’s house. Don’t turn on any lights, just stay put and get dry. After I’ve lost them, I’ll swing back around to meet you.”

  Todd looks nervous. “You sure you’re up for this?” I’d be offended if it weren’t so heartbreakingly innocent.

  Beth vouches for me before I can open my mouth: “He’s our best shot at this. I once saw him run down three guys at once, all running in different directions. He’ll be just fine.”

  It was two, but Beth’s a great wingman. One guy ran himself into a corner and I cuffed him while the uniforms caught up just as I heard the crash of his accomplice tripping over an empty pallet two alleys away. Having hung my cuffs on Tweedle Dee’s pudgy wrists, I had to wrestle Tweedle Dum into submission and hold him there for long enough to resolve an awkward game of Marco Polo.

  Reunited with Beth and Todd, and with the addition of Sanders, I feel invigorated. The conviction with which I was filled on my way here was that of a lone knight facing a fierce dragon, but this one was, instead, that of leading an army into battle. For the first time in a while, I feel that I’m on even footing with Keroth. There is no longer an underdog in this fight.

  The four of us head back upstairs, my shoes still managing a faint squelch with every step. Crouching, we get as close as we can to the entrance without being visible from the outside. The lighting from within makes it near impossible to see anything outside, which frightens me. But this is how we need to do it; I don’t trust that all four of us could drop from the back window and remain both uninjured and undetected.

  After one more verbal reiteration of the plan, we glance around our little huddle, locking eyes with each other in turn. Again, I’m both emboldened and burdened by their relying on me, like squires helping me don my heavy armor.

  I eye the doorway and shake out my ankles. This may be a rough run.

  “Don’t stop, no matter what,” says Beth. Even she has a hint of worry in her voice now.

  I see my pa
th. A small step out from behind the desk, a leap over to the doorway, and once out the front doors, after I’m sure I have their attention, left. Until my heart and lungs threaten to implode.

  Twenty

  On the count of three.

  One.

  Two.

  Three. I slip out from behind the desk. Leap to the front door and fling it open. I pause for a second to make sure I’m visible. If what they were saying at my dad’s house holds true, they won’t shoot me; they want Boss to get a chance to chat with me first. I hear a car engine start, then another. One car door shuts. Probably the smart car. I inhale deeply, an appetizer for the unholy amounts of this air I’m going to be sucking down in the next few minutes.

  On the exhale, I blitz for the low concrete wall on the eastern side of the parking lot. Tires screech. A couple of voices yell, but their words are mangled by the falling rain. Splashy footsteps head toward me. I can’t lose them too quickly; I need to give the others enough time to slip away before the goons give up and head back to the station.

  I sprint the lengths of a couple of houses’ yards, running parallel to the street. One of the cars drives along the road next to me, the passenger brandishing a gun, but they won’t shoot. I brake and make a hard left just as a big, loud, expensive-looking truck hits a speed bump, to the surprise of the driver; confusion is my ally and tool here. Anything I can do to jar or disrupt their concentration is a weapon in my arsenal.

  I hear the vehicle skid to a halt, hindered by the rain, then a slamming car door, followed by another series of the same noises, the dirge of my doom sung in rounds. If the one who started after me from the parking lot is still on my tail, I have three of them coming after me on foot, and at least two driving cars. Excellent. I’m not sure how much manpower Keroth has, but I’d wager I have most of it on me.

  Now I can crank it up. I don’t know whose yard I’m in, but the tree by their fence has a perfectly placed branch for me to use to swing up and over the fence. Even amidst the rain, I hear a rushing of footsteps behind me, and upon my landing, I hear them hit the fence, trying to clamber over it. I continue north, to the back fence of whosever yard I’m in, to cover for the possibility that one of them ran to the east side of the house instead.

  With a mighty jump and a little tricky body work, I’m up and over the back fence without issue, too. I land in a small backyard with an in-ground trampoline and no fence separating the back from the front. I head east again, putting a line of family yards and fences and old trees in front of me, not wanting to be on the roads quite yet. There is a low lattice fence here, over which I hop before proceeding to the next yard over.

  This yard makes me wish I had grown up in this house; it has an in-ground trampoline, nestled under the majestic branches of a towering walnut tree, which acts as host to what looks like a solidly built treehouse, complete with a wooden plank ladder. I’m tempted to ascend the ladder and hide in the treehouse, but decide against it; I don’t know that I’ve put enough distance between myself and my pursuers to risk taking the time to do so, and they may see me climbing from a greater distance. Not to mention, if they did manage to find me, I’d be all but cornered up there. Not a good choice, enticing as it is.

  The heat that my body is generating invigorates me; I had no idea how cold I’ve been. Much more of this and hypothermia would have claimed me. All the more reason not to stop and climb a tree. I make a mental note of where the house is and continue onward. This backyard is vast, which is useful for me; there’s a decent chance that one of them will get a glimpse of me, elongating the chase and, thus, giving the others more time to escape.

  Pop!

  The noise itself startles me at first; not its proximity or its origin, for it’s not close and its origin is thus unknown. I slow to a jog for a moment, the better to hear, and I hear a whooshing echo.

  That was a gunshot.

  Don’t stop, no matter what.

  But what if that’s Beth? What if it’s any of them? It’s my fault.

  Don’t stop.

  I speed up again. My footsteps have a new weight to them.

  Maybe they missed. After all, the average person can’t hit a moving target at more than ten yards.

  Blind optimism must act as my vehicle into the night.

  I find myself running less strategically now, and more as a means of catharsis. As a high schooler, zipping through backyards was my way of conquering this town when I was a prisoner in my household. Now, even though I’m doing it for survival and protection, I find that I need the same stimuli in my routine and, more to my surprise, I find it. I hear two heavy, thudding splashes a distance behind me; two of my pursuers have landed in the end of the yard where I entered. They come after me, but I can tell that they’re weakening, and fast. The footfalls trailing me are less threatening now, with less plit and more splotch. In this wet Oregon terrain, lethargy is a sneaky predator to the unwary.

  My gift of fast, analytical thinking reveals to me a tricky series of footsteps and handholds that I can use to scale the corner of the fence, allowing me to cut kiddy-corner to another yard. At this point, I feel that it’s safe to return to the road. My shortcut has taken me into a yard that has clearly had a lot of landscaping attention over the years; it’s multi-leveled, each with a beautifully maintained patch of grass, as far as I can tell. I storm southward, toward the gate, and hop that, too.

  Now I face the street on which the station lies, but a block or so east. Across the street, a narrow and muddy footpath offers access to a small park, descending through tightly packed trees. I cross to it and, more sliding than stepping, descend the steep slope, thanking Orion that I don’t lose my balance; a fall there could have been just muddy, but could also have been concussive or otherwise dangerous. Fatal, if I was just unlucky enough.

  No flashlights, no headlights, no streetlights. This park is my friend. Back in the day, the local parents would petition every summer to have a series of floodlights installed so as to make the park accommodating at night, but the petition never gained any momentum, and the park thus remained my dark ally.

  I slow my pace as I cross the field and playground southward, to allow myself a slight rest. Upon reaching its southern boundary, I take off once more at a near sprint. I jump the low fence that marks the parking area and make sure that the path to the main road is free of scumbag. As far as I can tell, I’m all clear.

  At this point, I’m dangerously close to Beth’s house, and need to go farther west to avoid any patrols they may have in her area. As soon as I get onto a reasonably safe and seldom-traveled road, I hang a right, splashing through the flowing puddles up against the curbs that are seeking a storm drain. I’m two or three blocks south of the park where I killed my dad. I mentally confirm: three.

  I feel the water splashing up between my legs, but I’m already too soaked to give a damn. At this point, one may well have pulled me from the bottom of the sea.

  I come to a T in the road and a car approaches from the right; it’s going a fairly normal speed, so I’m not suspicious, but I duck away into a banked slope of grass just in case.

  Pop!

  Don’t stop. No matter what. Don’t fucking stop.

  This shot was closer than last time, but still not close enough that its origin is within eyesight. I’m drawing closer to Todd’s house now. I pause. What if they’re waiting for us there? What if they’re waiting for me there, and their showing up there only grants them death?

  With that in mind, I’m at a sprint again. Heading south once more, my left features a small farm, while my right is simply a hill with lots of weeds and other vegetation. If I take my next right, it should land me in Todd’s neighborhood, at least. I should be able to navigate from there. At last, I see a road cutting into the hill. But beyond that, the road curves right and out of sight, and I see the yellow glow of headlights turning the rain into little golden missiles around the bend.

  I take a forty-five to the right at the side street an
d jump with everything I have, clinging to a low branch of a mercifully strong tree. The car turns onto the road where I am and passes almost directly underneath me. I don’t recognize the vehicle, but based on its speed—or, rather, lack thereof—the driver is definitely searching for something. Or someone. Spoiler: it’s me.

  After it has rounded another corner, I lower myself from the branch and drop to the ground, sending a jolt through my leg muscles, which can only draw upon my adrenaline supply for so long. I then run off in the direction of the truck, hoping that it and I don’t share a destination. Fortune smiles upon me, however, as when I reach an opening on the other side of the hill through which the road cuts, I see the truck chugging southward on the next left. Todd’s house is three blocks to the west.

  As we’re in more suburbs, I dip once more into backyards and take my preferred route of hopping fences and swinging from tree branches. Fortunately for me, either there are no dogs in this area or they’ve all been rendered too lethargic by the rain to do anything about a perfect stranger dashing through their domain. In either case, I’m glad I don’t have to shake a Pomeranian from my ankle before hopping the penultimate fence before Todd’s house. I cross the last backyard and leap up onto it, rather than over it; I want to get a look at the scene before I commit myself to it.

  As far as I can see, there are no cars or people. I’m still wary, however, because this method of assessment hasn’t been all that reliable in the past week. I heave myself over the fence just in time to feel my muscles and circulatory systems come off of the adrenaline; I ache.

  Before my legs completely numb up, I hasten to the door and, despite my hands being stiff with cold, manage to pick the lock before I collapse. The warm gloom of Todd’s house swallows me, but I don’t hear any movement or voices. I hope that they’re just being cautious, but my gut tells me that they’re simply not here.