Once outside, she recognized the building. She was at St. Mary’s hospital, about ten miles from home. Walking wouldn’t be fun, but she didn’t see any other way outside of stealing a car, so she began to walk. It was cold, but she barely felt it. She was too concerned with what was happening to her to think about much else. That was probably why, a mile or so down the street she hadn’t seen the two thugs eyeing her from afar.
“Hey, baby.” The man was suddenly standing in front of her, barring her way. “Where you goin’ so fast?”
She felt the hot breath of the second man on the back of her neck. “Yeah, you too young and hot to be having white hair. It’s okay, though. I like it.”
“Please, I’m just walking…” She trailed off as the man behind her snaked his icy cold hands up her shirt and pawed roughly at her breasts. “No!” She yelled.
She grabbed his hand and squeezed with everything she had. She felt the bones in his hand snap and pop like a handful of twigs. Now it was he who was screaming. She whirled on the man and thrust her fingers at his abdomen like daggers and felt them sink into the warmth of his belly. She put her other hand on his throat and squeezed. She felt another pop as the cartilage in his trachea gave way and his screaming stopped instantly. He stared at her with wide eyes as if he were a spectator of the carnage rather than a participant. She gripped the soft flesh of his abdomen where her fingers were still inside of him and lifted. To her surprise, his feet left the ground with ease and soon after, he was flying through the air. He landed in a heap in the middle of the street.
When she turned to face the other assailant, his mouth was agape. He looked like a deer trapped in headlights. When he finally recovered from his shock, he turned and ran as fast as he could.
Seemingly before she even thought to do it, she was astride his back with arms and legs wrapped around him like an iron coupling. This time she didn’t resist the urge to rip into his throat. She tore huge chunks of flesh from his neck and spat them out like spoiled meat. He screamed, staggered, and fell to his knees. She sank her teeth in one final time and felt the flood of warm ecstasy slide into her mouth. It washed down her throat as fast as she could swallow. It was heaven. It was light. It was life. He fought her. He reached behind him to swing his fists but they felt like nothing more than a swarm of flies to her. She was completely rapt in the moment. Her body shivered with the pleasure she felt between her legs. It was like nothing she had ever felt before. She moaned and squealed. She could hardly control herself. Finally, after one last, massive rush, it was done. He was done. He no longer fought her.
She let his head fall to the ground. She looked around, suddenly frightened that someone may have seen. Did someone see the horrible thing she had done? Would anyone care? He was a “scumbag”, as Philip used to refer to such people. What would he have done to her if she hadn’t been able to defend herself? Thankfully, she would never know.
The street was still quiet. Aside from the dead man lying in the street like discarded laundry, there was no one to be seen. She grabbed the belt of the man she had fed on… Fed on him. Is that what I had done? …and dragged him into the alley behind her. She retrieved the body of the man in the street as well. She used the water from a puddle she found to hurriedly wash off most of the blood from her face and hands, but her shirt was another story. The entire front was covered in blood. Madeline took the shirt and jacket off of the first man she had killed. There was some blood where she had sliced into his belly with her fingers, but not nearly as gruesome as the shirt she had been wearing. And the jacket could be zipped up, even if it was much too large for her petite frame. She peaked from the shadows once again to make sure there were no witnesses. There were very few streetlights here and only a couple businesses that weren’t boarded up. Any witnesses in this area wouldn’t be likely to talk to police anyway. She edged out onto the sidewalk and began walking again.
Something thick bumped her from inside the coat and she reached in the pocket. She found a large plastic bag filled with an assortment of drugs that she promptly threw into the first sewer grate she saw. There was also a large wad of money in the pocket that would be slightly more helpful.
She walked to a busier area of town and saw people. She kept her eyes down and tucked her chin into the neck of her jacket to hide from the cold, or at least give that appearance. People were less likely to pay attention to you if you walked without confidence, like a victim. But she was far from a victim now. In fact, she was the exact opposite. Anyone mistaking her for a victim now would suffer the same fate as two nameless piles of flesh and bone that lay in an alley two miles away.
She was getting tired. She needed to get home quickly and without incident so she hailed a cab and hopped in the backseat.
“Where to, Lady?” The cab driver was quite jolly at first. He looked into the rear-view mirror with a polite grin, but his grin faded almost immediately. He visibly shrank in his seat when she spoke.
“343 Oakdale Lane.” Was it her eyes? Was it her tone of voice? She wasn’t sure, but he didn’t say another word until he pulled up in front of the house. He seemed hesitant to even tell her how much she owed as though he would be happy if she would just leave. She ripped a few twenties off of the wad of bills in her pocket and stuffed them through the partition in the cab. “Keep it.” She said.
The tires of the cab squealed a little as he sped off before she could fully close the rear door.
Now she stood in front of her home. Was it still her home? After what she had done, she wondered if she wouldn’t soil it somehow. She had taken two lives and nearly a third. She tried to shake off her disgust. She felt so dirty, so evil. It wasn’t right, what she did, but somehow, she felt justified.
She reached for the door handle and stopped. Thought for a moment, then raised her fist, preparing to knock on the door, then stopped short again and sighed. She couldn’t barge in and throw the night’s events in their laps like they had been thrown into hers. Philip and Virginia might not even believe it, anyway. She had to face the fact that she looked nothing like the Madeline of old. Odds were very good that Philip would call the police or just shoot her, thinking she was an intruder.
Madeline needed a safe place to think; to decide if they would still have her, if she could approach them at all. She remembered the loose roof vent in the attic. She walked to an area where she thought she could leap up to the gutter and pull herself up onto the roof, but when she jumped, she watched the gutter fly past and underneath her so quickly that she was standing comfortably on the edge of the roof before she realized what she had done. She looked back over her shoulder at the ten foot drop behind her. She was sixty-three years old and had just made a ten-foot vertical leap and landed as gracefully as a cat. As terrified as she was, she found her new strength and agility quite exhilarating.
She walked softly to the octagonal roof vent that always flapped open whenever a stiff gust of wind blew and found it still ajar. She was grateful that in this instance, Philip had been less than reliable. She had been asking him to fix it for months. She had been afraid some feral animal would get into the attic and make a nest. My, how right she had been. She chuckled at the irony as she crawled in through the porthole. The small hole grabbed at her slender hips and threatened to keep her wedged half-way in and half-way out until she squirmed a little and slid inside completely.
She closed the small vent behind her and moved through the attic quietly. In the dark, it was like some alien landscape she had never encountered before. Many of the things stood out as things she had owned, but now they seemed like items from a different time, from a different life; a time when things were simple and carefree. Things would never be simple or carefree again.
She began to rummage through a few of the boxes until she found some of her old clothes. She traded her ill-fitting garb for an old pair of jeans that she never thought she would fit into again, a sports bra, and a dark turtleneck sweater. It seemed the most logical outfit at the time.
>
She wandered the attic for a while longer. When she was above the master bedroom, she could hear Philip quietly snoring. It pained her to be so close to him. She wanted nothing more than to go down to their room and curl up in the bed next to him. To tell him she was alright, that they would be alright. But it was a little girl’s fantasy. There would be no “…happily ever after.” And she knew that.
She searched through some more boxes and found an old pair of baby socks. It was the pair they had put on Julia the day they brought her home from the hospital. It was hard to believe her girls were ever that small. She put one of the tiny socks in her pocket and wasn’t surprised to feel the tears running down her cheeks. Then she saw Anna. Anna was an old rag doll that Virginia had carried everywhere until she turned ten. Madeline had had to sew her arm back on a half-dozen times and Anna’s little face had two different buttons for eyes. But the sight of her pushed Madeline over the edge. She had to bite down hard on her lip to keep from crying out as the tears poured out of her. She clutched at the little doll and crawled to the deepest, darkest recess of the attic where she laid down, closed her eyes, and cried herself to sleep.
Chapter 6
Charlie’s phone rang near dawn. He woke and sat up in bed. He squinted at his alarm clock, trying to read the numbers that were blurred with sleep. He pressed the answer button. “Hello?”
No one spoke. All he could hear was a woman’s quiet sobbing. “Serena? Is that you?” He took the cell phone away from his ear for just a second so he could glance at the caller ID. It was her. “Serena. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Poppy, Charlie. He got attacked last night.”
“Oh, God. Is he okay?”
“The doctor says he’s stable. He’s sleeping. They gave him something to ease the pain.” She stopped to sniffle and what sounded like wiping her nose. “He broke a couple ribs, his wrist, and the doctor’s worried about a concussion. He got beat up pretty bad.”
“Are you okay?”
“I know what it means to be married to a cop, but it doesn’t make it any easier.” She sniffled again. “But you know me. I’ll be okay.”
“David?” He asked.
“He’s here. Sleepy. But I told him his Daddy is going to be okay and he seems content with that.”
“Where are you? At St. Joe’s?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He hung up the phone and threw on some clothes, hastily brushing his teeth. He kept telling himself that Al was going to be fine, but for some reason, this seemed different. A cop was bound to take some nicks and scrapes from time to time. And this really wasn’t that bad on the ‘terrible-things-that-can-happen-to-a-cop-in-the-line-of-duty’ scale. But Charlie couldn’t help but feel like something very real was at stake this time. In the Army, he learned very quickly to trust his intuition. That carried over well into police work. And right now, his intuition was doing somersaults in his belly. Needless to say, he broke a few speed limits on the way to the hospital.
When Charlie got to the waiting room of the ER, Sergeant Teegs was already there, talking to Serena and the doctor. He nodded to Charlie with a grim look on his face. When Serena turned to see who Teegs was acknowledging, she saw Charlie and ran to him, wrapping him a crushing bear hug. He didn’t say anything for a long time. He just stroked the back of her hair and let her cry on his shoulder.
Finally, after a long while, she spoke. “I didn’t want David to see my crying.”
Charlie nodded. He looked over to David, sleeping with his blanket on one of the wide chairs in the waiting room. He was still in his superman pajamas.
“The bastard bit him, Charlie. Bit him. Do you believe that? The doctor says all the wounds will heal just fine, but what if that guy was some heroin addict? He could have Hepatitis, HIV, anything. Oh God, help us. I can’t lose my Poppy, Charlie. No. I can’t.” She started to cry again.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll be alright. It’s gonna take more than that to kill Al. He’s too damn stubborn to go this soon.”
Serena laughed a little, lifted her head off of his shoulder, and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “You’re right, you know? He’s nothing if not bullheaded.” She smiled a weak, half-hearted smile. The kind people usually reserve for funerals. “I’m going to sit with David for a bit.” She patted Charlie on the chest as she pulled away from the embrace. “Thank you for coming Charlie. It means a lot to me, to him.” She nodded towards David and walked over to him. Sitting down next to her little boy, she ran her fingers through his hair and began to hum a lullaby Charlie had heard her sing a hundred times. This time there was a much sadder tone to it.
His concentration was broken when Teegs strode over to him. “Sorry about Al, Charlie. That was some messed up shit. Sounds like he’s going to be okay, though.”
Charlie nodded. “What happened, Sarge?”
Teegs sighed. “Al was out with Chandler. They had just gotten off a call over at Marquette. Some lady got attacked in the parking lot. Took him most of his shift to get done at the hospital and write the report. Then they go back out on the street and see some guy running around naked in the middle of the road. They got out to talk to the guy and he just jumped on Al right away. No provocation, no nothin’. He just pounded on Al until Chandler was able to get around to the other side of the car. Chandler tackled him and barely held him down before the other officers could get there. It took three guys to hog tie him and get him in the back of the squad. It wasn’t until we got him back to the department that we found out he was a biter. Bit LT Johnson on the ear, nearly tore it off.”
Charlie couldn’t help but crack a tiny smile at that. He did his best to keep his composure about him. “Where’s the scumbag now?”
Teegs was better about maintaining his poker face than Charlie was, but even he had a hint of a smile on his lips. “We’ve got him in the dungeon.” The dungeon was what the District Three cops had lovingly dubbed their cells in the lower level of the building. None of the cells had any windows and the cheap florescent lighting flickered irregularly off the cold cinder block walls like a torture chamber in a Hollywood horror movie. “We’re waiting for whatever he’s on to clear his system so we can ask him some questions. Got him all wrapped up in a straight jacket and a biter mask. And he was still ramming his head into the bars so we had to strap him down on the cot for his own safety.”
Just as Teegs was finishing up, Lieutenant Johnson emerged from a door near the triage desk, holding a hand over his well-bandaged ear. Teegs nodded to him and he nodded back. But he gave Charlie a deathly stare as he brushed past and knelt next to Serena. Charlie knew what the LT was telling her. Gosh we’re sorry. But the department is here to help you with anything you need. We all hope Al will be okay. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Of course, he would refer to Al as though they were on a first name basis even though the LT had never once referred to any one of them by their first name. It made Charlie’s stomach crawl. But the LT didn’t give Serena enough credit. She could see through the rhetoric and answered with a curt, “Thank you, Lieutenant.” And did all but dismiss him with her body language.
The lieutenant bid an uncomfortable farewell to her, a little surprised at her rebuke. He left the hospital in a bit of a huff, but not before he shot Charlie one more scornful look from the sliding doors of the emergency room. Charlie met the LTs gaze with his own.
“You shouldn’t antagonize him, Charlie.” Teegs said. “Alpha dogs don’t like eye contact. They see it as a challenge. I know you’re a proud guy, but the LT could put a world of hurt on you if he really wanted to. You wanna walk a beat the rest of your career? I’m telling you, man,” Teegs looked Charlie dead in the eyes. “nothing good will come from butting heads with the LT.”
Charlie nodded. He knew Teegs was right. He needed to get his temper in check or it was bound to get him in trouble. “Can we see him?” He asked Teegs.
“No, not yet. Doc wants it quiet so he can rest. In the meantime, we�
��re running every test we can on the perp to find out if he could have infected Al with anything.” Teegs stopped and looked over Charlie’s shoulder, studying Serena. Her attention was still focused on David. “She going to be okay?” He asked Charlie in a hushed voice.
“Yeah, I think so. She’s pretty tough.” He walked over to where Serena sat with David and knelt down beside them. “You want me to take him back to my place? I’ll get him some breakfast and you can call us if anything happens.”
Serena looked up at him with far away eyes. She nodded. “Maybe it will keep his mind off of things.” She looked down at David. “Baby. Wake up. Uncle Charlie’s gonna take you home.”
David’s eyes opened slowly, then he smiled. “Hi, Uncle Charlie.” He said in a weak voice. “Can we go to Smiley’s?” He asked as he sat up and stretched.
Charlie smiled. Smiley’s was a little family restaurant that specialized in breakfast. David loved their pancakes. They were shaped like Mickey Mouse and came out covered in sprinkles and whipped cream. “Sure, buddy. Right after we swing by the house and get you dressed.” He climbed into Charlie’s arms and laid his head down on Charlie’s shoulder.
“Bye, Mama.” He said softly.
“Bye, Baby.” Serena said softly as she got to her feet and kissed him on his forehead. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Before Charlie even got back to his car, he could tell David had fallen back to sleep. It was still only about 7:00 in the morning. He drove David back to the Vasquez house and got him dressed. Once he had brushed his teeth, he was raring to go. David grabbed Charlie by the hand and lead him back to the car, jumping up and down and yelling the Smiley’s jingle. “Smiley’s pancakes can’t be beat. Cuz Smiley’s pancakes are the happy treat.”
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