“Slow down, Christopher,” he said. He shook his head to clear the grogginess. “What is happening? Why are you so excited?”
“I heard a noise,” replied the boy in an urgent whisper.
“What kind of noise?”
“Breaking glass. Footsteps. I think there’s someone in here. In the store.”
Billy shook off his dreamlike lethargy, stood up with a grunt, and walked around the desk. He found it hard to concentrate while part of him tried to keep the memory of his time in dreamland from fading. “Get it together, Bill,” he whispered, and then opened the desk’s bottom drawer and removed the pistol. From there he went to his duffel bag – inside which his folder sat quietly, the pencil and paper taunting him with their lack of use – and took out the flashlight. He clicked it on. The beam was weak. This had better last through the next ten minutes, he thought, and headed for the door.
“Hey, Mister Mathis,” said Christopher.
He paused. “What is it?”
“Be careful, okay?”
“I will be, son. You have nothing to worry about.”
The store was quiet. He felt a tickle of unease creep into his thoughts. The thin beam of his weakening flashlight created haunting shadows out of the clothes racks. Get a hold of yourself, he scolded. There are only phantoms here.
He stood in the center of the showroom floor and listened. The gusting wind pushed against the exterior of the building. It creaked. The tapping of the Venetian blinds against the front windowsill followed. These were nighttime sounds, empty sounds. I am becoming paranoid. Just like the boy.
A woman’s scream pierced the air. He heard Christopher yell, “No! No!” He whirled and sprinted back the way he came, cursing his stupidity for not locking the office door behind him in the process. Perhaps he hadn’t been paranoid enough.
When he arrived at the office he stormed in, pistol raised. What he saw caused him to stop mid-stride. Sure enough, there was a woman in there. She was dressed in old rags that were much too big for her slender, sickly frame. Her face was hidden by long tangles of gray hair. She sat with her back against the far wall, feet working, pushing backward in a desperate attempt to find shelter when there was none to be had. Christopher stood across from her. He held an aluminum baseball bat over his head. His body shook. Spit and vitriol spewed from his lips.
Billy lowered his weapon and held out a steady hand. “Christopher,” he said, “step away from her.”
“Hell, no! She’s one of them!” bellowed the panicked teenager. He thrust the head of the bat at the woman as she again tried to scamper away.
“No, she is not. Look at her, Christopher. She is just as afraid as you are. Now put down the bat and step away.”
Christopher started to cry. “I can’t do that, Mister Mathis. Sorry, I can’t. She’s gonna kill us.”
“Put down the god damn bat,” said Billy, harshly.
“But…”
“But nothing,” he said, using a tone he’d employed quite often when giving a particularly lazy student a good berating. “You will listen to me right now. This woman is alone, afraid, and most likely starving. Who knows how long she has been on her own. Now you will put down the bat and step over here before I make you.”
Christopher complied, obviously startled by his friend’s raised voice. His expression went from terrified to humiliated in the span of two seconds. He dropped the bat to his side and shuffled to where Billy stood. He leaned the hollow aluminum tube against the wall, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and hung his head in shame. Tears dribbled down his cheeks.
“Calm down, son,” said Billy. He ruffled the boy’s hair. “Now let us see what we have here.”
Christopher stepped aside, allowing Billy to breeze past him. He knelt beside the old woman, who sat with her knees drawn to her chest, not making a sound. He tried to sweep the hair from in front of her face. She jerked away before he made contact.
“There is nothing to be afraid of here,” he said. “I will not hurt you.”
These words didn’t seem to give the woman any solace. Her body quivered. She slapped the ground like she was in the throes of a temper tantrum, her hands still concealed by the cuffs of her soiled jacket. Billy reached out and grasped one of those flailing arms. He gripped her tight, but not in a forceful way. The woman appeared to calm down. Her chest heaved. Billy gave her arm a comforting squeeze. He was sickened by how thin her bones felt beneath the layers of clothing.
“That is more like it,” he whispered. “All is well.”
She said nothing.
“Can you talk to me? What is your name? How long have you been out there?”
Still nothing.
“Interesting,” he muttered. He glanced at Christopher, whose head was still down. He snapped his fingers, but the boy wouldn’t look at him. “Well,” said Billy, turning his attention back to the old woman, “let us see what lies beneath this mess, shall we?”
He brushed aside her disheveled hair with the back of his hand.
Coming to grips with what he exposed proved difficult.
The skin on the woman’s face was gray as ash and knotted. Her eyes were stained a jaundiced shade of yellow. The bulging black dots of her pupils stared at him. Her sickening, rotten-olive eyes swished back and forth in their sockets. Her lips were black and her lower jaw distended. Rows of brown teeth, broken and jagged, clanked together each time she closed her mouth. She looked like a demonic ghost. In fact, the only thing about her that seemed vibrant in any way was her tongue, a long, slinking muscle, bright red and dripping saliva, that lolled to the side when she turned her head. She furrowed her brow and stared at him.
I was wrong, he thought. This is not good.
The woman lunged at him. Her quickness took him by surprise and he lost control of the gun, dropping it harmlessly to the carpet. Clawed hands emerged from inside her sleeves. He held out his own hands to fend her off. Their fingers locked. He staggered as she pushed him backward. Her strength was amazing.
For a moment they spun in place. Though he was at least a foot taller than she and much heavier, when the woman squeezed his fingers they bent back. His tendons stretched.
Billy slumped to one knee. The woman snapped her jaws at him, barely missing his cheek. She leaned into him and he lost his balance. He fell and thumped his head. The woman jumped on his chest with their fingers still locked and squeezed his sides with her knees. His kidneys started to burn.
A hollow thump rang in his ears. The woman atop him eased her grip. Her eyes bulged. A sickening burst of hot breath erupted from her mouth. Mucus splattered his face. She fell off to the side and he rolled in the opposite direction, desperately swiping at the gunk dripping down his cheeks. His gag reflex told him to get it off before he swallowed any.
Another clank followed, and Billy looked up. Christopher stood above the woman, bat raised over his head in a repeat of the vision he’d walked in on. The expression on the kid’s face was frightening; lips curled back, teeth gnashed together, eyes bulging from his head. It was as if he’d gathered whatever animal instinct remaining in his cellular memory and unleashed it all at once.
The boy struck the woman in the head. Bone splintered. The woman still writhed despite the force of the blow, trying to get to her feet. Christopher would not allow it. He brought the bat down one last time. The woman’s hairline split down the middle as the aluminum tube fractured her skull. One of those putrid eyes popped, exploding in a foot-long stream of clear pus. A torrent of fluid – brown, not red – gushed from the gaping wound where the bat lodged. It ran over her face, obscuring her ghastly features. She let out a bubbling hiss and collapsed. After one final whole-body quake she stopped moving.
Christopher let go of the bat and let it fall. He stared at Billy with frantic eyes.
“See?” he said, shaking. “I told you so.” There was no haughtiness in his tone.
“I apologize, Christopher,” replied Billy. He stood up, flexed his sore finger
s, and approached the youngster. He draped his arms around the shaken boy and held him, passing along a silent thank you. So often in his life he’d watched teenagers freeze when presented with even the most minor of stressful situations. Christopher hadn’t, and for that he was appreciative. He felt terrible for thinking, even for a moment, that the boy had been similar to Calhoun.
This is a good kid, he thought. I will do well to remember that.
Christopher’s eyes brimmed over with tears. Bill stroked his hair and uttered the one statement he thought could make his young companion feel better, as it had for himself the first time Arthur Sweetney used it on him.
“Christopher,” he said, “I will never doubt you again. I promise.”
* * *
“Where we gonna go?” asked Christopher.
Billy carefully wrapped his binder in cellophane and packed it into his travel bag, along with a few extra sweatshirts and a pair of jeans. He tucked the pistol into his belt loop.
“Pittsburgh,” he replied.
“Really? What’s in Pittsburgh?”
“I am not entirely sure,” he said with a shrug. “But, if we use last night as an example, anyplace is better than here.”
“You think there’s gonna be people there? Normal people?”
“I could not say, son. But I have a feeling there will be.”
“How’ll we know where to look?”
Billy closed his eyes and listened. Marcy’s voice appeared, hidden behind the clamor of his thoughts. He smiled at the sound of it, at the sound of her, and wondered if she sounded as beautiful in real life as she did in his head.
“What’re you thinking about?” asked Christopher.
“Music. Nothing important.”
“Oh.”
He leveled his gaze at the boy. “Son, do you have the cans packed like I asked.”
“Yes, sir. All ready to go right here,” he slapped his backpack, “but it’s kinda heavy.”
Billy nodded and handed the other bag over to him. “You carry mine, then,” he said. “I think you will find it a much easier load to bear.”
Christopher laughed.
“You find something humorous?”
“I just love hearing you talk, Mister Mathis. It’s kinda…well, cute, I guess.”
“I appreciate that you find me amusing,” said Billy. He grinned. “But you watch out, or I might just go back on my word and make you haul all of our supplies behind you, like a sled dog.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Most likely not. But we will go over the virtues of sarcasm and irony later. Right now, we have more packing to do.”
Fifteen minutes later the odd pair, loaded to the gills, climbed out the shop window. They slid down the mound of snow that blocked the front entrance. The sun was shining, the third straight day it had done so. I hope it stays this way, thought Billy.
They trudged through the thigh-deep mess. Soon after, they approached the signpost for Laird Street. The sound of their boots crunching in the packed snow was all they could hear.
“So, how long’s this gonna take?” asked Christopher.
“The trip is about thirty-five miles,” replied Billy. “On foot, in this mess, I would guess two days. Perhaps three if we rest more often, which we might need to.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
“Absolutely not.” He pointed at the second bag that hung from his shoulder. “This is why I brought the tarp. We can build a lean-to at night for shelter.”
“Really? Even if there’s more of those…things…out there?’
“We will just have to be cautious.”
Christopher stared at the ground. “That’s a helluva long walk either way,” he muttered.
“It is,” Billy said. “But trust me, son, it will be worth it once we arrive.”
And up the road they went.
Chapter 7
Hideaways
i
Tom Steinberg hated them from the moment they arrived. He despised the way they traipsed through his secluded paradise like a pack of belligerent sailors out on a pleasure-seeking binge in the Orient. They invaded his personal space and restricted his movements. At night he could hear them whooping it up in the lounge three floors down as if they had no care in the world. He wished them all dead, these tactless sorts who rudely annexed his new home.
The home in question was the Clinton Hotel, a mountaintop resort originally built in the late twenties as an all-season getaway for political figures and the extravagantly wealthy. The resort had stayed afloat during the depression through the funding of foreign dignitaries and oil barons who, despite the hopelessness which had befallen the country, still wanted a place where they could kick back with a martini in one hand, mistress in the other, and pretend the world outside didn’t exist. As an establishment built for simplicity, excess, and seclusion, it did its job well. Very few who stayed there left disappointed.
The hotel itself was a huge, brick-lined rectangle with a hollowed-out notch that ran down the center. Its grounds were lush and green through two-and-a-half seasons, with winding botanical gardens in front and a courtyard, complete with tennis courts and a putting green, in the rear. An eight-foot-high concrete wall (engraved at great expense with designs by world-famous artists) sealed the place in, gave it that sense of seclusion, and presented it with the look of an eclectic medieval fortress.
In the winter, if the beauty and solitude of the Shenandoah Mountains wasn’t enough to satisfy the occupants’ cravings, there were events held inside to quench their thirsts. From concerts to plays to lavish all-night parties, the Clinton Hotel had amenities for one and all.
Its extravagances were many. Limestone stairs led to a terrace that stretched the length of the front entrance. At the top of the steps, a heavy set of carved oak doors opened up into a large and impeccably decorated reception area. The ceiling was seventeen feet high, which allowed room for the marble fountain that bubbled streams of crystal-clear spring water. A winding staircase lined with ivory railings, located twenty feet behind the fountain, rose to the second level, where two dozen copious suites awaited the highest-paying customers. It was in these rooms that Tom and family had slept when vacationing with the rest of the Cabinet and their families. It was in these rooms that he and his wife Allison bunked, little Shelly in the neighboring suite, for weeks at a time. It was where they resided for the two months after escaping Fort Meyer, until the interlopers showed up and forced them into hiding.
He sat on a stool in front of the boarded attic window and peeked through the slats. A pair of figures meandered across the snowy courtyard below. The duo made their way down the driveway and opened the massive front gate. He hoped they were leaving but knew better. Probably going to hike one of the trails, he thought. I hope they fall down the side of the mountain and break their necks.
“Tom, what is it?” asked Allison. She placed a tentative hand on his back.
“Nothing,” he growled.
“Is it them?”
He nodded.
“Can we meet them today, Daddy?” asked Shelly. He glanced over in time to see his daughter lift her cherubic face from the book in her lap and smile. Her coiled brown hair bounced.
“Can we go play?”
“No.”
Allison leaned into him. “When do you think they’ll leave?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. But it better be pretty damn soon.”
He slapped his knees and stood up. His body snapped and creaked. He paced around the spacious attic with his eyes to the floor, glancing up every so often to see Allison, standing in the corner of the room, grimacing. He knew she was beginning to fear for him, perhaps even be fearful of him.
As well she should.
He caught his reflection in an old stand-up mirror. He looked like death, far beyond his fifty-two years. Most of his weight had disappeared. The excess flesh drooped from his bones. Black circles surrounded his eyes. His hair, thinning to start with,
now sat atop his head in stringy clumps. His cheeks were sunken and his teeth hurt. I must be dying, he thought.
His outward appearance matched his mindset. He couldn’t sleep. His evenings were filled with horrible nightmares that made him sweat and grind those sore teeth. His joints ached. He couldn’t eat, no matter how many gourmet meals Allison languished over in the hotel’s abundant kitchen. Where he now found himself, stowed away in the garret with nothing but canned vegetables and corned beef to eat, didn’t improve matters. He felt like he was fading out of existence.
And to make everything worse his conductor, his mind’s gatecrasher, remained silent.
It had been sixty-five long, excruciating days since he last heard that alien voice, two months since his insides had felt the comforting, almost intoxicating effect of that strange aura. Ever since dispatching Pendergrass there had been nothing. At first he thought he could handle it. He’d lived his whole life without assistance, after all, and could learn to do so once more. But the emptiness he felt soon became too much to bear. It was as if that connection had devolved him into something lesser, a pocket calculator in a world populated by supercomputers.
A Doctor Seuss-like rhyme bleated about in his head. Where-is-he, where-is-Sam, will-he-come-here-when-he-can?
“Tom?” an unsure voice said. In his daydreaming state he thought it might have been his master, come back to answer his prayers.
It wasn’t. It was Allison.
“What?” he grunted.
“Michelle’s tired. She needs a nap.”
“I’m sleepy, Daddy,” his daughter said.
Allison tugged on his sleeve. “Can you read her a story? She wants you to.”
He shrugged her off. “Do it yourself,” he said, and then continued to pace. The thought of performing such a childlike task made him feel sick. That queasiness combined with the vision of those residing below him, in the hideaway that was supposed to be his, and turned into rage.
I’ll make you all pay, he thought. Just you wait and see.
Dead Of Winter (The Rift Book II) Page 11
