Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2

by Mark Lukens

  “You don’t have the kid to protect you now, Cole!” the man’s guttural voice cried out from behind him.

  Cole could hear the thing coming in through the doorway, rushing inside the room. But he didn’t turn around to see what it was doing. He could imagine the thing rushing towards him, feelers and tentacles and spindly legs propelling the mutilated body forward, closer and closer towards him.

  Two seconds later Cole was out on the balcony, the keys and his gun already shoved down into his coat pockets. He could’ve shot at the thing, but he knew from experience that it wasn’t going to do any good. He was up and over the railing in one smooth movement, sliding down on the spindles in the railing until he hung from the bottom of the balcony, his legs dangling in the cold air. His gloved hands were slipping on the cold metal of the balcony spindles and he knew that at any second one of those feelers or tentacles was going to wrap around his hands and grab him … and then they would never let him go.

  He dropped to the ground, not even looking to see where he was going to land. He felt the cushion of snow break his fall and then he hit the hard ground underneath, tumbling away down onto the parking lot. He hit something hard under the snow … it felt like it might have been the edge of the sidewalk. But he didn’t let it slow him down. He was on his feet in a second, adrenaline coursing through his veins, heating up his muscles.

  Cole drew his gun and aimed it up at the balcony he had just dropped down from.

  Nothing there.

  It hadn’t come after him.

  Well, he wasn’t going to wait for it to find him again. He yanked the set of car keys out of his coat pocket and pressed the unlock button on the key fob. He looked around the parking lot, pressing the lock and unlock buttons until he saw a white Chevy Tahoe’s headlights and taillights flashing on and off in rhythm with the push of the button.

  That was their ride.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn

  Travis fired his gun at the ceiling as the tears streamed down his ashy pale face. “I’m not playing around, lady!”

  Stella stole a glance at the clerk. He was still waiting near the counter, his face slack and his body frozen like he was a robot that was turned off for now. Except for his eyes—they were still watching her and David.

  “What’s your name?” Stella asked Travis.

  “We don’t have time for that,” he cried. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just need to kill the boy, that’s all.”

  “You can’t do this,” Stella told Travis.

  “That thing … whatever it is, it’s got my sister and my mom. It’s going to tear them apart if I don’t do what it wants me to.” His words were running together as he cried harder.

  Stella stared at the boy … he was really still a boy. “Listen to me. It’s already too late for them. It’s killed them already.”

  The fear crossed Travis’ face and he shook his head no. “No. No, he promised that he wouldn’t hurt them anymore. He said he wouldn’t kill them if I did what he wanted.”

  “That thing is a liar,” Stella said.

  Travis aimed his gun at Stella now, his hand shaking. He wiped at his eyes with his other hand, trying to clear his sight to shoot.

  Stella heard a noise at the top of the stairs. She saw Bruce the salesman … or what was left of his mangled body … crawling towards the steps, tentacles whipping out of him, propelling his ruined body along as it slid down the stairs. Bruce was screaming with every movement.

  He couldn’t still be alive, could he?

  Every exit was blocked again.

  Stella looked back at the clerk who had taken a step forward with his backwards legs, that creepy smile on his face again.

  It was over, Stella thought. She and David had nowhere to run to now. This kid was going to shoot both of them or those monsters that used to be the clerk and the salesman were going to close in on them. She looked down at David. He was their only hope now, but he looked too frightened to fight back.

  “David,” she whispered as tears streamed out of her eyes. “You have to do something. You can’t let that thing win; you can’t let it get you.”

  “Last chance, lady,” Travis said, bawling now, his hand shaking even worse than ever.

  “Do it, Travis …” the clerk uttered as it took another awkward step towards Stella and David with its backwards legs. “Do it or I’ll take your mother and sister apart.”

  Bruce was still screaming over and over again as the remnants of his torn and shredded body was propelled down the carpeted steps by the feelers, tentacles, and segmented legs.

  His name was Travis, Stella thought. Maybe she could get through to him by using his name. “No, Travis,” she said. “You can’t shoot David. He’s just a boy. That thing lied to you. It’s already killed your mother and your sister.”

  Travis looked at the clerk with tears on his face, lowering his gun a little. “Is that true?” he asked the clerk. “Did you kill them already?”

  “Do it, Travis,” the clerk growled. “Do it or you will experience things you never thought were possible.”

  David looked at Travis, at the gun pointed right at him. But then Stella realized that he was looking beyond Travis … at something outside the glass doors, out in the parking area.

  Something else was coming for them.

  And then Stella heard the noise from outside. It was a low grumbling sound, hard to hear at first underneath Bruce’s constant screams.

  Travis heard the noise from behind him outside the glass doors, but by the time he turned around, it was too late. The back end of a big white SUV crashed in through the lobby doors, knocking Travis down flat on the tiled floor, and then the vehicle drove right over top of him and skidded to a stop inside the lobby.

  The driver’s door flew open as the glass and pieces of metal framing crashed down to the floor and the parking lot outside. Cole was out of the vehicle in an instant, pulling the back door open like a limousine driver. “Get in!” he yelled at Stella and David.

  Stella grabbed David’s hand and they bolted across the lobby to the waiting vehicle.

  Cole was still behind the open back door, using it as a shield and waiting for them. He had his gun in his hand, aimed beyond Stella and David as they ran towards him. He shot at the thing that used to be Bruce the salesman, and then he shot at the thing that used to be the clerk.

  When she and David reached the back door of the SUV, Stella looked back to see if Cole had stopped either one of them with the bullets. And then she froze as she watched them. The air seemed to warp around the clerk and Bruce as the bullets hit them, like the air was shimmering for a moment, folding in on itself, distorting anything near the two of them. And then the whipcord tentacles propelling Bruce’s mangled body forward were gone, only his mangled body was left behind. The clerk’s dead body collapsed down onto the floor like nothing was holding him up anymore. The Ancient Enemy was gone from their bodies now. It seemed like the Ancient Enemy had bent time and space around their bodies and then teleported away.

  But to where?

  Where would the Ancient Enemy pop up next?

  David crawled inside across the back seat of the waiting vehicle.

  Cole still had his gun aimed at the two dead men, ready to fire again if he needed to. “Get in!” he yelled at Stella.

  Stella was sure Cole had just seen what she’d seen. That thing … those things that were inside those bodies were gone now. They had just disappeared.

  She got in the back of the Chevy Tahoe and pulled the door closed.

  Cole was back inside the SUV, stomping down on the gas pedal as he closed the door. Tiny diamonds of shattered glass poured off the hood and roof of the white SUV as he gunned the gas and drove out of the lobby of the motel, one of the back tires spinning on Travis’ arm for a second, smashing it flat, the skin splitting and blood jetting out.

  “You okay?” Cole yelled at Stella as he jerked the steering whee
l to the left, taking the curve too quickly, speeding down the parking lot exit towards the road. He hit the brakes and the truck slid the rest of the way down into the street. He turned the steering wheel the other way and the back end of the SUV fishtailed out into the middle of the road. Cole took his foot off the gas, the motor roaring with power. He didn’t touch the brakes, letting the truck slide all the way. Then he gently pressed the gas, turning the wheel the other way now to overcorrect their spin. The whole world of white snow raced by outside the windshield in a blur, but Cole finally got the truck straightened out.

  Stella looked out the rear window at the Mountainside Inn, at the destruction they were leaving behind. But she didn’t see the Ancient Enemy anywhere.

  Cole sped down the street, but he was slowing down a little as they came to a curve, the road climbing up into the mountains, the woods beginning to get thicker now.

  David was sobbing with terror. Stella held him close as he cried. “Sssh,” she told him. “It’s okay. We got away. It’s not following us.”

  “Why won’t it leave me alone?” he cried.

  She didn’t have an answer for him. “I won’t let it get you,” she promised him.

  Cole didn’t say anything as he drove.

  David’s cries stopped and he wiped at his eyes. He was still tired, she could tell.

  “Lay down here,” she told David. He curled up on his side on the big back seat, drawing his legs up to him.

  Stella looked down at the sea of garbage on the floorboards of the back seats. There were soda cans and bottles, crumpled up fast food bags, potato chip bags, candy wrappers. She looked behind her at the back and saw stacks of boxes of samples of whatever Bruce had been selling. She didn’t open any of the boxes.

  “This is a salesman’s truck,” Stella told Cole from the backseat. “His name was Bruce. We met him at the vending machines.”

  Cole just nodded. “Yeah, I met him, too. Only he wasn’t Bruce anymore.”

  Stella saw a quick flash in her mind of the salesman beaming at them while they bought their cans of soda and bottles of water. He’d just wanted to talk to them and she had brushed him off. Then she saw what that monster had done to him, twisting his body up, parts of him crushed, pieces of jagged bone sticking out, yet the Ancient Enemy had kept him alive somehow so he could scream with every painful movement down those set of stairs.

  “We need a map,” Cole said. “This guy’s a salesman, maybe he has a map.”

  Stella brushed David’s hair back from his forehead. His eyes were closed but he wasn’t sleeping yet. “I’m going up front to look for a map,” she told him.

  David didn’t nod or even open his eyes.

  Stella crawled up to the front from the back and sat down in the passenger seat. There was as much garbage on the floorboard up here as there was in the back. There were a few issues of some kind of trade magazines among the trash. In the cup holders there were two Mountain Dew bottles and a soggy McDonald’s paper cup with a lid and a straw. Obviously Bruce had lived off of sugar, fat, and caffeine.

  Stella searched the center console first. She found a car charger for a cell phone, two lighters, packs of mints and chewing gum, several pens, wadded up pieces of paper, self-help cassette tapes, a few CDs.

  “Maybe the glove box,” Cole suggested as he drove. The sky was still clear, but it was darkening quickly, the sun was already down behind the mountains. There were hardly any other vehicles on the road which was good, but it also made them more of a target to a passing police car.

  Stella opened the glove box and found three maps among the other clutter inside the glove box which was stuffed to capacity. One was a map of New Mexico, and two were maps of Colorado. She opened up one of the Colorado maps and refolded it until she had a square of the section they were in right now.

  “We need to find the most remote roads down to New Mexico,” he told her. “The backroads.”

  She nodded, following a series of roads with her finger. She found Cody’s Pass and followed 217 down the map. “In a few miles, take a right,” she told him. “It’s called Cutler Road.”

  Cole nodded.

  She put the map on the center console and managed to get the glove box closed. She glanced in the back seat and David looked like he was sleeping now.

  “We need to find a place to lie low for a few hours,” Cole told her. “Rest for a bit. I don’t want to drive too much farther until later.”

  She nodded.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Cody’s Pass, Colorado—Nora’s house

  Sheriff Hadley followed George Joekel in his squad car down Route 217 to Nora Conrad’s house as George plowed the road in front of them. The sheriff had called George thirty minutes ago and told him to turn around and come back; he’d changed his mind and now he wanted him to plow the road down to Cody’s Pass now that Ronnie had already taken off on the police snowmobile to follow the tracks. The sheriff still hadn’t heard anything from Ronnie yet.

  Special Agent Palmer followed Sheriff Hadley’s cruiser. Palmer was on the phone as he drove, making sure the forensics team from Denver was on its way to the cabin. He wanted everything bagged and tagged, no mistakes on this one. This case was too big, too strange. Next, he checked in with Debbie: still no leads on Stella or David. No sightings of them anywhere, no credit cards or bank cards used.

  Even though the road was plowed now, the back tires of Sheriff Hadley’s car kicked up snow and Palmer had to constantly use the wipers to push the scattering of snow out of the way. He dropped back a few more car lengths and it gave him the opportunity to take another few sips from his bottle of vodka. He was pretty sure the sheriff might smell it on his breath, but he didn’t care.

  Could these bank robbers be the ones who had killed all of those people down at the dig site in New Mexico? Palmer wondered. Could they have taken Stella Weaver and David? It had to be the same killers because the deaths all seemed similar … they all seemed strange.

  But something was wrong. Palmer felt like he was missing something very important, overlooking some clues that he wasn’t piecing together.

  Twenty minutes later the sheriff’s car slowed down to a crawl on the slick road and parked on the side of the road near the entrance to a driveway that was hidden in a group of trees much like the driveway to the burnt cabin had been.

  George stopped his truck and jumped out onto the snowy road. “You want me to plow that driveway for you?” he asked the sheriff.

  “No, that’s good enough,” Sheriff Hadley told George as he got out of his squad car and slammed the door shut. “We’ll walk to the house from here.”

  George nodded. “You still want me to plow all the way down to Cody’s Pass?”

  “Yes,” Palmer answered for the sheriff as he walked up to the two men. “I have a feeling we’ll be going there soon.”

  George didn’t nod at Palmer; he waited for an affirmation from the sheriff, showing his loyalty to him.

  Sheriff Hadley looked a little annoyed at the intrusion from Palmer, but he looked back at George and nodded. “Yeah, George. Go ahead and plow all the way down there. Then come back up with another pass all the way back to Destin.”

  “You got it, chief,” George said and smiled. He hurried back to his big truck which was rumbling in the middle of the road.

  Sheriff Hadley looked at the driveway full of snow in front of them. “More snowmobile tracks,” the sheriff said, pointing at the sets of tracks with a gloved finger. “Looks like he’s been in and out of here a few times today.”

  Palmer didn’t say anything. He sucked on a breath mint which made the chilly air taste even colder around his teeth. He figured the sheriff suspected the reason for his breath mint, but Palmer still didn’t care. He was probably a walking cliché in the sheriff’s mind anyway—the FBI agent with a drinking problem but too good at his job to get fired. Why not live up to it?

  They both trudged through the snow that blanketed the driveway, both of the
m walking in the ruts created by the snowmobile tracks, their shoes crunching the snow down as they walked. The trip to the house took a few minutes, but neither man spoke, both of them had their hands shoved down into the pockets of their jackets.

  Nora’s house was a simple wood framed one story structure with a wooden deck built onto the front of it that continued around the right side of it, presumably to the back, Palmer thought. The windows were dark. No smoke drifted up from the chimney.

  “They might not be home,” Palmer said.

  Hadley chuckled like he knew an inside joke. “Nora doesn’t go anywhere. She’s hardly been out of the house since her husband died six months ago.”

  Palmer wasn’t sure if the sheriff was expecting him to express some kind of sympathy or not so he changed the subject. “Your dispatch get a hold of any of them here?”

  “Nope,” Sheriff Hadley answered. “But Nora’s truck is here, and like I said, she never goes anywhere anymore.”

  Palmer thought they were there to talk to Travis, not his mother. But he didn’t say anything.

  “Well, we’re here,” the sheriff said and started trudging through the snow towards the house. “Might as well knock on the door.”

  They walked through the snow, the sheriff already beginning to huff and puff a little from the exertion. “I don’t see Travis’ snowmobile over there,” he said through misty breaths. “Might have to come back later.”

  Palmer thought he would head on down to the next town if Travis wasn’t here.

  The sheriff waited by the wood steps that led up to the deck as Palmer climbed them. “You go ahead and knock,” the sheriff said. “I’m going to go look around back for Travis’ snowmobile.”

  Palmer didn’t argue. He continued up the steps as the sheriff worked his way through the snow to the far corner of the house. Palmer approached the front door that had a glass storm door in front of it. There was some scattered snow on the deck up here, but a porch roof had kept a lot of it off of the floorboards, and it looked like some of it had been shoveled off recently. Maybe yesterday. He opened the storm door and pounded on the wood door with the edge of his balled-up fist—a police knock.