The Siege

by Hautala, Rick

  “Where does this take us?” Dale said. His heart thumped in his chest when he saw two circles of yellow light swing around the corner behind them. It was difficult to judge the distance, but it sure as hell looked as though those headlights were closing the distance… fast!

  “This is Burnt Hill Road,” Donna said breathlessly. “After a stretch of houses and a few farms, it gets pretty woodsy. After about—I don’t know, ten or fifteen miles, it connects with Town Line Road. We can either circle back around toward town or go south.”

  “Go south,” Dale said with a grim laugh. “I think maybe I should have taken your advice about leaving when I could have.”

  “Just fucking drive!” Donna said, still looking back at the following car.

  “I’ve got a good lead, now if I can just shake him.”

  Donna made a deep-throated sound and shook her head as she watched the car behind them. It looked to her as though it was slowly but steadily closing the distance. She tried to block from her mind the image of herself, stretched out on one of Rodgers’ marble slabs while he injected her veins. “No!” she said, closing her eyes and clenching her fists tightly.

  Dale was having a hell of a time, keeping his eyes focused on the road as it unfolded in front of his headlights. The houses and open fields, just as Donna had said, soon gave out, and they were enfolded by the thick, black walls of forest on both sides of the road. Donna was also right about the road; although it was relatively straight, the potholes and bumps made Dale’s teeth rattle. The only comforting thought was that the road was probably doing more damage to the heavier-bodied limo.

  “Can you go any faster?” Donna asked, her voice so tight she didn’t sound like herself.

  “Not if I’m going to keep us on the road.”

  As soon as he said that, Donna again saw in her mind what she wished to God she could forget: Larry Cole’s dead, smiling face as he looked up from his coffin and started coming after them!

  Dale expertly negotiated the road, taking each curve with a smooth, steady twist of the steering wheel. If he wasn’t exactly leaving the limo in the dust, it at least wasn’t running them down like an eighteen-wheeler over a rabbit. The only problem he saw was the gas! He glanced at the speedometer with trepidation: Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight miles per hour! These roads weren’t designed for this kind of speed, he thought.

  Both cars sliced through the darkness as though sucked forward by their cones of yellow light. Just as he was rounding a curve, Dale saw approaching headlights. His first thought was that Rodgers had signaled ahead, and this was someone aiming to cut them off. But as he whizzed past the oncoming car, he gasped with surprise when he saw the black and white designs of a cop’s cruiser.

  “Rodgers can’t touch us now,” Dale said. He considered slowing, when he saw the cruiser’s brake lights flash as the cop slowed for his own turn. By the time he had started his turn, though, Rodgers’ limo had also streaked past him. Dale knew that was their only chance. The cop would take Rodgers first. The devil take the hindmost! he thought. All the cop had to do was delay Rodgers only a few seconds, then they were home free.

  “He’s got him!” Dale said joyfully when he saw the cop’s blue lights winking off and on in his rear view mirror.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Donna said with a gasp.

  “Huh?” Dale said. He still wasn’t sure how this was all going to end, but the situation was improving.

  “That cop back there,” Donna said, her throat as raw as sandpaper. “If he stops Rodgers, he’s…”

  “Oh, shit,” Dale said as the full import sunk in. “The only way Rodgers is going to get out of explaining what he’s doing, driving like this on back roads at night, is to…”

  “Do to him what he did to Larry!” Donna finished for him.

  “But we’re safe for now,” Dale said, finding little joy in the thought that the cop back there, whoever he was, was going to be dead soon (sort of dead, he thought with a shiver), just so they could live. And that didn’t take care of anything!

  Rodgers still wasn’t going to be found out!

  He and Donna were still in serious trouble!

  And where was Winfield? Once Winfield heard the tape, he might be convinced. But all of this was turning into some insane nightmare, and they still had no way of getting out of it without ending up dead… or worse!

  “We’ve got to check out at your parents’ house, first,” Dale said. He rounded a curve and the cop’s blue light disappeared. A frigid chill hit his stomach as he imagined what would happen next back there on that lonely stretch of road.

  Probably what happened to Larry last Friday night, he thought.

  “There’s a dirt road up ahead. I don’t think we passed it yet. That’ll take us over to Mayall Road, just above Beaver Brook Lake,” Donna said. “We might be able to tell if Winfield’s been out to the house yet.”

  “It’s as good an idea as any,” Dale said tightly.

  A large part of his mind was screaming at him to turn around and go back to where they had left the cop. By now, Rodgers had probably been pulled over, shown his license and car registration, was now explaining, in his honey-smooth radio announcer’s voice, that he was driving to pick up a body. Because the car ahead of him had been going so fast, he had just sort of not paid attention to his speed.

  “Sixty-five, officer? Really? Isn’t it funny how sometimes it just doesn’t seem like you’re going that fast?”

  And then what?

  As the cop was putting his registration back into the glove compartment, Rodgers would pull out a gun or perhaps a scalpel. It would all happen so fast, the cop would be caught completely by surprise. He’d be crumpling to the pavement, his life seeping from him, before he could begin to react or think. He’d look up at the towering black trees surrounding the road, and he’d simply slip away into nothing.

  And then… then, what?

  Rodgers would take his body back to the funeral home. The cop would become something he would have thought impossible. His lifeless body would be filled with a drug that, while not restoring the true fire of life, would bring back the semblance of life. And in his death-clouded brain, would there be a spark left of the person he had been? Would he know that he had once been warm, living flesh and blood? Or would he simply, mindlessly lurch, like a puppet on strings, to do what his master Franklin Rodgers commanded him to do?

  Dale shuddered at the thought, and it was only with supreme effort that he didn’t scream his lungs out. The road and the surrounding night-stained trees became little more than blurs as he drove ahead, trying to block from his mind what had probably, by now, already happened back there.

  VIII

  When Officer Brooks heard the front door shake and then open, he assumed that the man and woman who had just been there had decided, after all, that it wasn’t a personal matter; he could help them just as easily as Winfield could. He stood up and came around the corner of his desk, a smile on his face as he called out.

  He took a step back, though, when he saw that it wasn’t the man and woman returning. At first, he didn’t recognize her. Her face was so pale, and her eyes were opened wide as she looked up at him. The ceiling lights reflected on the glistening curves of her eyes. Her teeth were chattering, and it took Brooks several seconds to realize that this was Lisa Grant. He couldn’t imagine why she was out on a cold night like this wearing only thin pajamas. She was barefooted, and her feet had left streaked, muddy splotches on the tiled floor.

  “For cryin’ out loud, Lisa,” he said as he took only a few steps closer to her. “Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused me tonight?”

  Lisa looked at him in spite of the bright lights. His face distorted, as though it was made of plastic that had gotten too close to the heat. To Lisa, his nose was a large, bubbly smear, and everything around him shimmered with pieces of light, pieces that were as real and sharp as wood splinters.

  “Your grandmother has been calling me every two minutes.�
� Brooks said as he slowly approached Lisa, his hands held out reassuringly. “She even threatened to report me to Chief Bates and have me fired.” He chuckled, but the laughter didn’t come from his gut; it sounded forced and unnatural.

  Lisa didn’t say a word as she stood there, shivering. Her hands slowly flexed until her fists were iron-tight balls. She could feel her fingernails pressing into the palms of her hands as the muscles in her shoulders knotted tighter and tighter.

  “Come on in here,” Brooks said as he as he swung open one of the office doors. “I’ll get you a blanket. How about a cup of tea? I don’t think we have any hot chocolate. Knowing Winfield, he probably drank it all.”

  A low sound came from deep within Lisa’s chest, but Brooks wasn’t sure if she meant yes or no. He took a rough gray woolen blanket from the supply closet and shook it open. On one corner was stitched the words “Property of Dyer Police.” He went over to Lisa and handed it to her.

  “Do you want to talk about anything?” Brooks asked. “I mean, did you have an argument or something with your gram? Is that why you ran away?” He couldn’t get over how terrible she looked. It was as though she had been lost in the woods for a week without sleep.

  Lisa held the blanket loosely in one hand. She trembled so hard Brooks was sure she would drop the blanket before she could get it around her shoulders. When he reached over to help her, he was surprised by the steel-tight grip that suddenly clamped his wrist. He looked at Lisa, shocked by the sudden wild fury that was blazing in her eyes.

  “I’m… hun… gry,” she said, her voice a tortured rasp. Her eyes held his with a smoldering rage that instantly flashed the policeman a warning: She’s crazy! She’s nuts!

  “Let me get you warmed up,” he said as he tried, gently, to break her hold on his arm. “I can see if anyone left anything in the refrigerator.” She was twisting her hand with his every effort, and her fingers just wouldn’t let go of his wrist. It was as if she had more strength than he had. But, he thought, he didn’t want to do anything that might hurt her; he couldn’t very well go beating up on a kid.

  “I’m… hungry!” she said again, and when Brooks looked down, he saw something that made his breath catch in his throat. She was leaning forward, her mouth open wide.

  Lisa brought her teeth down hard on his arm. For a split second surprise cancelled the pain; then it slammed up his arm to his shoulder like an electric shock, numbing and hard. Brooks felt momentarily detached from everything, as though he was watching this happen to someone else, but then his brain registered it all: the pain, the warm gush of blood, the grinding sound of teeth on bone. His bone!

  With a twisted shout, he jerked his arm back with all of his strength, but that only made the hole in his arm worse. Blood cascaded down his arm, and all he could hear was the gurgling sound of drinking!

  She’s drinking my fucking blood! his mind screamed as he struggled to free himself.

  But Lisa’s grip was tight, and she clung to him like a hawk to a rabbit. His panic and shock only aided her as her teeth ground back and forth, shearing through skin and muscle. Then there was a rough grinding sound that told Brooks she had gone clean through to the bone. He couldn’t even feel his fingers, just the gushing warm rush of blood, pouring from his arm.

  “Jesus Christ!” he wailed, backing up and trying to shake her off. “Jesus Fucking Christ!”

  He could hear a heavy plopping sound, and he knew the sound that was his blood dripping to the floor as Lisa’s mouth filled and overflowed. He could hear her swallow, and he tried not to think that his own flesh was going down her throat! She was eating him!

  With a sudden burst of frenzy, he shouted aloud as he slammed his arm first backwards and then forward. Lisa’s feet skittered beneath her, and then, mercifully, the pressure on his arm eased up. With one more vicious shove, he sent her reeling backwards. Her feet got tangled together, and she fell. Her head made a hollow, coconut sound when she hit the wall and then slid to the floor, ending up sitting with her legs awkwardly splayed. Her eyes were still open, but they were crossed and unfocused.

  Brooks doubled up in pain and almost vomited when he looked down at his arm. There was a ragged hole about the size of a baseball. Thick, red blood pumped up out of the wound and flowed in thick streamers down his arm to the floor. He had seen enough accidents in his years on the Dyer Police to know that the pearly white he saw was exposed bone, but he had never thought he’d ever see his own exposed bone!

  With stumbling, lurching steps, he went over to where Lisa sat against the wall. Thick gobs of his flesh hung from her mouth, and her pajama front was saturated with blood. It clung heavily to her heaving chest.

  Brooks had just enough presence of mind to take his handcuffs from his belt and clap Lisa’s wrists together before staggering back to the front desk and dialing the rescue unit. By the time the Medcu crew got there, Brooks was unconscious on the floor behind the desk. They at first overlooked him; and once they had found him, it took them some time to figure out who was the more seriously injured. Finally, though, they loaded both Brooks and Lisa onto the ambulance and, siren wailing and red lights flashing, drove to the hospital in Houlton.

  Chapter Eight

  “Trapped”

  I

  “Let’s take it a little easy, okay?” Donna said as Dale slowed the car for the turn into the driveway of her old home.

  Dale nodded quickly and took a deep breath. “Yeah, I think I’ve had enough excitement for one night.”

  The moon was riding high above a band of clouds. It cast a cold, eerie blue light over the landscape, making it look snow-covered. The house appeared about as forlorn as a house could look, sitting up on the gentle rise of land bordered by the woods. Judging from the outside, everything looked peaceful and quiet.

  But you could say the whole damned town looked peaceful and safe, Dale thought; what he had found out so far tonight easily put the lie to that idea!

  He realized he had been holding his breath as he looked up at the house; he let the air out slowly between his teeth as the car jolted up to the top of the dirt driveway.

  “I don’t see Winfield’s cruiser,” Dale said. He had a sudden thought that sent a ripple of panic through him: What if that was Winfield who stopped Rodgers back there?

  It didn’t strike him until just now that it could have been Winfield, driving back to town after checking the farmhouse; seeing two cars speeding down the road, even though he was off-duty, he might have given chase. Dale had assumed it had been someone else, some other poor soul who probably right now was on his way to Rodgers’ Funeral Home. If it had been Winfield, then the thin possibility an ally in all of this had just disappeared.

  Dale didn’t tell Donna what he was thinking as he pulled to a stop. He left the engine running and the headlights fixed squarely on the front door.

  “Looks okay to me,” he said. “Think we ought to take a look around?”

  Donna sat with her shoulder hunched forward. She was silent as she stared at the house. The black shadows cast under the eaves looked thick and solid.

  “Why don’t you stay here? I’ll take a peek inside,” Dale said. He opened the door and stepped out onto the driveway. The car was still running, and the lights illuminated the walkway. What’s there to worry about, he thought, but he couldn’t deny the chill that gripped him as he started up toward the louse.

  He quickly mounted the porch steps and, leaning forward, cupped his hands to the front door window and looked inside. Only a small square of light from the car reached the living room, and Dale couldn’t tell a damned thing from that. It wasn’t until he turned to head back to the car, convinced that Winfield hadn’t been there yet, that he saw a clump of mud on the top step.

  “Oh, shit,” he muttered as he knelt to inspect the mud. He probed it with the tip of his finger. It was fresh, still wet; whoever had made it, had made it recently. Maybe it had been Winfield. Maybe not.

  Looking up, straight into his glari
ng headlights, he smiled and waved quickly to Donna. Someone had been here, and not too long ago. But were they still here? Maybe it had been Rodgers! He would have had the time. He might have checked the house first while they were at the police station. Hell, if Winfield and Rodgers were in on this together, Winfield might have told him to come here, and this was nothing but an elaborate trap to lure them here.

  When a floorboard creaked behind him, Dale spun around, expecting someone to lurch out of the darkness under the porch roof and close off his throat with icy, dead hands. He waited, breath held until it burned in his lungs, but nothing came.

  He went quickly down the steps, but then in the distance, he saw a car approaching.

  “Jesus!” he shouted, waving his arms wildly over his head. “Donna! Get out of the car!”

  The headlights were low and widely spaced like a limousine’s. Dale crouched on the front lawn and waited to see Donna’s door open. There was no mistake: someone had turned off the road and was starting up the driveway fast! There was a slight chance it was Winfield, finally finding time to check on the house, Dale hoped.

  “Come on!” he shouted, waving his arm to spur Donna on. The headlights bounced up and down over the rutted driveway. Dale could hear the steady whine as the car tried to gain even more speed.

  “Come on!” he yelled. He took several steps forward, but then was relieved to see Donna’s door swing open. She was no more than a dark blur against the headlights as she ran toward the house. Dale could hear the frightened wail in her voice as she called to him.

  “What’ll we do?”

  “Run!” he yelled. “Run like a bastard!”

  The car raced up the driveway, but the bumps held it back, so it didn’t get the speed it needed. As Donna fell forward, collapsing into Dale’s arms, they both saw the black limo slam into the side of Dale’s car. The sound of breaking glass and bending metal filled the night as the heavy limo strafed along the side of the car, folding in the driver’s door. The car sagged to the side, threatening to roll over.