The Uninvited 03 The Unwelcomed

by mike Evans

  The Unwelcomed

  Book III of The Uninvited Series

  Written by Mike Evans

  Dedicated to my wife and children, I love you more than anything.

  **

  This Book is licensed for your personal enjoyment upon purchase. This Book may not be traded or sold to other people. If you want to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy. If you are reading this but did not purchase it, please return it to where you got it from. Thanks for respecting this author’s work.

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  © 2017 Mike Evans, All Rights Reserved

  Cover by Lisa Vasquez

  Thanks to my beta readers Karen, Leslie, Jon, Denise, Ricky, & Rosa. You guys are wonderful!

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  Books by Mike Evans

  The Orphans Series

  The Orphans: Origins Vol I

  Surviving the Turned Vol II (The Orphans Series)

  Strangers Vol III (The Orphans Series)

  White Lie Vol IV (The Orphans Series)

  Civil War Vol V (The Orphans Series)

  Divided Vol IV (The Orphans Series)

  Gabriel Series

  Gabriel: Only one gets out alive

  Pitch Black (Gabriel Book 2)

  Body Count (Gabriel Book 3)

  The Uninvited Series

  The Uninvited Book I

  The Stranger Book II of The Uninvited series

  The Unwelcomed Book III of The Uninvited series coming soon

  Buried: Broken oaths

  Demons Beware

  Chapter 1

  Chief Bill Snow sat in his office, happily breaking the Los Angeles Police Department’s firm rule on no smoking inside of a government building. He had the cigarette dangling from his lips, rolling it back and forth with his tongue. He was staring at the phone the dispatch operator had punched through to him the moment they heard Hardin was on his way to the house of the Kivett’s. “Oh, for good god damn sakes, why aren’t they coming back to you? We had two squad cars worth of men, not a damn one of them answering; no updates, no good news, I'm sure, either.”

  Snow put the phone on mute and typed in the code that only he could use. He did a test into the mouthpiece of his phone, hearing it come across loud and clear on his speaker mounted to his wall. He cleared his throat and said, “We have a possible 10-00. First responding officers have not responded since arriving at the house on Rangewood Drive; suspect in multiple murders, ex-detective Matt Hardin was thought to be on scene. I want paramedics called to the scene and I want Team A out front and ready to go in two minutes. You think going in there without a vest is a good idea, then you make sure you have your insurance papers signed and submitted. We all know what this psychopath’s body count is, and it only grows every time he goes on a killing spree. I'm on my way out, and I want you all out front, ready and waiting!”

  Snow checked his pistol and opened his desk drawer where he kept emergency magazines loaded and ready to go. He took everything he had stashed, sliding them into his jacket pockets. He thought of Hardin and how the son of a bitch had escaped repeatedly. It made little difference what they had done to catch him; it didn’t matter if they had an exact location anywhere across the United States. He always ended up fleeing somehow, just at the right time, whether injured, bruised, or lame from altercations; he always got away, and he always left a trail of blood in his path.

  Snow looked at the picture of his late wife, Mary, on the desk. While he wanted nothing more than to see her again, he did not want it to be because of this crazed man being his maker. He saw a slew of officers rush past him, all seeming to be freaking out. Snow followed slowly at first, then began to jog, running behind them down the hall to see what the update was that they were all in such a hurry for.

  Snow practically barked at them to get out of his way as he forced his way into the break room. The television station had previously-recorded live news coverage on it. He could not figure out what he was looking at until he saw most of the officers with tilted heads. Everything made more sense on the clip that they were seeing, now that he realized it had been the end of the footage. It depicted a very large man limping away from the camera.

  The news footage ended and came back to a reporter whose face was void of all color. She tried to smile, and when she held her hand to her mouth to keep the vomit from spraying on their newsroom desk, they cut to camera two, letting the anchorman cut in. “We here at Channel Six News are very sorry to have to show that. It just goes to show that killer Matt Hardin is not a man who has compassion; he kills no matter who it is, and even if they’ve never wronged him in life. We will miss Leslie Bryant and her faithful crew. They were never scared to go after a story, but it seems this time, the story got them. May God have mercy on their souls.”

  Snow yelled, “What in the hell is this horseshit? What are they talking about? What is this? God, I hate that damn anchorman. Nothing better than picking the bottom of the barrel to give us the daily fucking news!”

  A rookie in the department, Caldwell, stepped up, holding up his hand. “Uh, sir, sorry to interrupt you, but this previously recorded footage, this is in the Kivett house. I don’t think there’s any rush to get there.”

  “Because?”

  “I'm pretty sure she’s dead, sir. I mean, all of them are dead.”

  Caldwell was going to say something else but Snow held up a hand, stopping him and shaking his head no. The footage began again, and it showed the camera operator in front of the camera with only a shot of his ass crack showing. He was bent over and attaching a mic on Leslie Bryant’s lapel and saying—for what sounded like he’d been mentioning for a while—that this was a horrible idea and they shouldn’t be there. She was telling them how if they ever wanted to get anywhere in life that they needed to buck up, suck it up, and grow a pair of balls, or to get out and go find something easier.

  Everyone who was in the room stopped talking when the door was flung open. There was The Stranger, heaving for breath in a sweat drenched shirt, white mask, blood… covered in it from something very recent, and holding an equally bloody knife in his hand. He stabbed both of the camera operators, and then the officers that could stomach it watched as Matt spoke to Leslie before slamming her head into the door until her brains squeezed out the top of her skull.

  The chief hit his radio. The calls that had gone unanswered were a complete assurance that they were dead, but he was confident that if they had been alive, that Hardin would not have done the things he had. Snow spoke, almost in a trance, and said, “Get even more ambulances on their way there. Whatever you sent isn’t going to be enough, do you understand me?”

  The dispatcher came back. “Ten four, chief, we’ll get everything we can on their way out there. Don’t you worry about not having enough; we’ll get what they need and then some.”

  He walked back out of the room, not wanting to watch the replay yet again. When he didn’t hear any footsteps following him, Chief Snow screamed at the top of his lungs. It’d have done justice to any Marine Drill Sergeant ever blessed with the honor to serve. “Is there a reason there are no footsteps echoing in my damn path?”

  It took less than a few seconds for the words to touch on those that were suppose
d to meet him out front. Within three minutes, enough police were racing down the street to look like the OJ Simpson chase was on their way to the Kivett’s home. The chief and the rest of the officers raced through the night, looking paranoid driving through the city like a bat out of hell. When they arrived on scene, they set up a three-block perimeter and split up, circling the block. The men that were holding the lines had never been more thankful in their life to not be the ones going in through the doors. The ambulances followed the squad cars in slowly. Two cars stopped at the news van, quickly determining that it was safe to assume that there was definitely no one alive on the scene.

  When they ended up at the Kivett’s home, they realized very quickly that survivors wasn’t something they needed to worry about—not that any of them had been too optimistic about finding anyone with a pulse. The chief took the lead; he was never one to put another’s life before his own. He did the sign of the cross when he saw the pile of dead police officers. Each of them had smiley faces drawn in blood on their cheeks. Shell casings were sitting on the ground, and he could tell from the casings that this was a larger caliber than what his men were issued. The medics checked each of them, and the chief looked less hopeful each time they brought their fingers up, shaking their heads.

  No one checked Holly. She lay dead in the doorway. Her clothes and the hair that was still attached to her head were the only way to know she was a woman from the pose she was sitting in. Her head had been smashed in so badly that she gave the newswoman Leslie a run for her money for the most disfigured victim on the street.

  The two medics looked at each other. They were used to having to wait for the police, but knowing that The Stranger could very well be here was mind numbing, and turned what were usually stomachs of steel to that of a rookie who was at his first day on the job. When the police had cleared out the upstairs, one of the medics, Luther, looked out the window. He yelled, “Hey, hey, there’s a big son of a bitch in the backyard. He doesn’t look like he’s moving though!”

  The chief pushed the medic out of his way and yelled down the stairs. “Backyard, backyard, go now, go now!”

  A team of men rushed through the broken window into the backyard, guns out and pointed. When they saw the gold badge clipped to Special Agent Jack Gray’s belt buckle, they hit their radio. “We got one down; it’s one of ours, sir. He might still be alive!”

  The medics wasted no time waiting for the chief to give them his blessing; they rushed down the stairs, trying their best to not disturb the crime scene—as if it would matter, from what they’d heard after the video had been played on national television. They rushed to Gray’s side, putting fingertips to his neck, and were barely able to feel a pulse. The wound on his side had been hard to detect; had it not been for the wet blood, it might have been missed. The black of his shirt blended in perfectly with what had seeped out, soaking it.

  Luther said, “We got a chance with this one. I'm going to give him adrenaline. I want that heart back going again! I want it now. He’s a big son of a bitch, we might need two.”

  Jack smiled as he floated up, the light was the brightest he’d ever seen, but not painful. It was not one that would burn him. This was the most peaceful thing he’d ever seen. He realized the pain in his side, back, knees, and neck from falling out the second story window was no longer racking his body; as he floated, he felt nothing.

  When his eyes began to adjust, he could barely see the outline of a figure, something he had to try to tell himself was a dream. But it wasn’t; it looked as real as a picture. When he got closer, he saw that it was her. It was Krystal, and she had a hand outstretched towards him, wanting to welcome him and guide him up and to heaven. He had never thought in all the jobs and assignments he’d been on that heaven was going to be an offer he would receive. “Krystal, baby, is that you? Is that really you?”

  She smiled at him, nodding her head yes and motioning for him to continue his rise to heaven and towards the gates that he was going to pass through. But Krystal’s hand stopped stretching towards him and she suddenly retracted it. Gray said, “What is wrong, what are you doing? It’s forever, you and me. You remember, right?”

  “Not yet, honey. One day though. I fear we have a very long wait until we will get to see one another again, I'm sorry to tell you.”

  “I don’t understand, what is happening?”

  “You will. Remember that I love you, don’t give up on life. We will be together in the end, when he thinks that it truly is your time.”

  “But it is, I'm dead! Pull me through, I don’t want to go any longer without you. It is hell on Earth without you by my side!”

  She smiled and the light slowly disappeared until she was gone, and all that he could see was black. Jack’s eyes opened and saw the mask coming down over his face.

  Luther screamed, “He’s back, he’s back. We got him! Get the ambulance. Get him to the ambulance, now. He’s going to need immediate emergency surgery. Come on; let’s get him to the ambulance, now!”

  The two rushed him. They had to stop halfway because he began to buck and try to get up. “You gave him too much adrenaline.”

  Jack yelled, “You realize what you did to me. You realize what you two did!”

  “We saved your life, Agent Gray.”

  “My wife was there, she was right there! I was almost close enough to touch her. She was going to take me to heaven.”

  Luther said, “I think he’s hallucinating.”

  Jack pulled himself up, gripping Luther by the shirt collar, and with his last ounce of strength before he passed out, decked him straight across the chin, sending the man spinning and out for the count to the hard concrete below. His teammate Rick sat there, scratching his head.

  “You’ve got to be fucking with me, right? I mean this really happened. Can one of your officers give me a hand? My partner’s fine… well, I think he is, but he’s out for a minute. I got some smelling salts you can use on him. He can get a ride from one of the other medics in a bit. This guy doesn’t have long left. I honestly can’t fucking believe it, that he was able to do that. He was kissing the gates of heaven, I think, or at least he thought that he was.”

  They raced to the hospital, and after three hours of surgery, had him sedated enough to keep him from trying to come around until he could be brought back out of it slowly. From the man’s state, none of the doctors felt that the rest could do anything to hurt him.

  Chapter 2

  Washington

  North Pass Woods

  Matt watched his map closely, unsure where in the hell he was going. His dad didn’t give him an address at the time, but instead gave a highway marker that he was supposed to meet him at. Matt had taken twice as long as he needed to so he could get there. He’d taken every back road that he had the opportunity to. The last thing he wanted to do was run into anyone on the road. He’d thought about wanting a kill; one more before he went into hiding with his dad. But alas, he knew that one would be two, which would be three—until he had enough bodies racked up that he could bathe in blood. Matt looked at his phone, not seeing any new messages come from his dad. When he was an hour away, he pulled it out again, sending a message to let the older man know that he was almost there.

  Matt would have kept driving had he seen the car, but he did not. It was pitch black out and that helped calm his nerves. When he pulled up, he flashed his headlights twice as he’d been instructed to do. His dad came out of the woods slowly after shooting a light twice himself. Matt got out, machete in hand, and not completely trusting of anyone or anything out in the woods. His dad yelled, “I want you to put that machete away, Matt.”

  “I didn’t drive this long to kill you, Dad. I need a place to rest, to heal, to get my battery re-energized.”

  “It isn’t me that I am worried about, Kid.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, without a little explaining, it's going to seem all kinds of awkward, Son.”

  Paul waved
the light, flashing it again in a come here motion with it. A second later, a car door opened slowly. His dad said, “Now that is why I wanted you to put that machete away, I didn’t want you doing anything stupid without getting some answers that might give you a change of mind. Now, I’ve already gone over all of this in detail, Matt, so I’m not going to say it again; don’t do anything stupid, don’t act without thinking, and remember that if you do anything wrong, we are going to starve. I’m too damn old to start over, the last thing I want to do is have to uproot and move somewhere else. You on the same page with me?”

  Matt nodded slowly. When the light flashed on, the sheriff and his badge shined in the night. Matt pulled out his pistol he’d had tucked in the rear of his back and pointed it dead center at the man’s head. Zeke looked over to Paul on the verge of shitting himself, keeping his arms wide to his side and doing his best to stay as calm as he could. “Well, seems like it really helped that we had that conversation before the boy came up here, huh? He sure seems receptive to help, now doesn't he?”