Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2

by Mark Lukens

  Besides, he knew he had to keep moving down the hall. He needed to be somewhere …

  Then he was at the metal sinks again … a massive pair of sinks situated in the middle of all of this furniture and appliances for as far as he could see.

  And there, not too far away, was an office built into the middle of the furniture. The office looked even more out of place among the sea of furniture than the sinks did.

  The water was running in the sink, and he was holding something soft underneath the faucet, washing it, being careful with it.

  “Hey!” the man from the office yelled at him.

  Palmer looked down at his hands, at the unidentifiable piece of flesh he was carefully rinsing off. He watched the dark blood drain from the soft flesh and his hands, the blood swirling down into the drain, becoming pink from the dilution of the water.

  The man from the office stared at Palmer, leaning back in the same old decrepit office chair, the springs screeching in protest at the angle of the man’s posture. His eyes were wide with shock, his mouth agape, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His lips trembled and his hands gripped the armrests of his office chair, clawing at it.

  “He’s coming!” the man said, his voice a shuddery whisper … yet Palmer heard him so clearly like you do in dreams.

  “You have to run. You have to run right now. He’s coming for you and by God, believe me, you don’t want to see him. You don’t want to see what he really looks like.” The man’s voice rose higher and higher, becoming a yell, then a scream of panic.

  Heavy footsteps thundered from the hallway.

  Palmer looked away from the man in the office towards the other end of the vast room, back to the wide hallway he had walked down only moments ago (or was it hours ago now). The sun was setting now, night falling so quickly across the land out there, smothering out the daylight like a giant blanket.

  A man was approaching from way down the hall, hidden in shadows. But it wasn’t a man … it was a coyote … and then a spidery thing … and then a man again … constantly changing.

  A growl, and then more thudding footsteps …

  He was coming!

  Palmer had to run! If he didn’t run right now, that thing was going to catch him.

  He turned and ran through the furniture, dodging around armchairs and loveseats and dining room table sets and end tables stacked on top of each other. He darted around a line of old refrigerators that looked like they’d been brand new in the early nineteen fifties. He bolted past armoires and dressers with mirrors attached to them.

  In one of those mirrors Palmer caught a glimpse of the thing right behind him, reaching for him with a spider-like leg that was somehow changing into a tentacle dripping with slime. Each sucker on the underside of the tentacle had tiny rows of rotating sharp teeth.

  Palmer woke up, stifling a scream as he sat up in bed.

  For a second he couldn’t remember where he was. He had an overwhelming urge to jump out of bed and bolt for the door.

  He had to run … that thing was coming.

  Palmer’s heart thudded in his chest and panic squeezed his lungs. He groped in the darkness beside him, looking for the familiar end table from home where the lamp was, where he kept his gun beside him while he slept … and the bottle of vodka.

  His fingers found the lamp, an unfamiliar one. It took a few moments for him to find the light switch, but then he did.

  The lamp lit up the room, driving back the darkness in a second.

  He was in a motel room. He was in Destin, Colorado.

  It was just a nightmare. The worst one he’d ever had. It wasn’t just what he’d seen in the nightmare, but also what he’d felt … an utter hopelessness. Why run? It would just hunt him down and find him. He couldn’t outrun it forever and it would never stop chasing him.

  Palmer got up and paced around the room. He only wore his underwear and a white T-shirt. The shirt was soaked with sweat even though the room was chilly because he hadn’t turned the heat down real low when he went to bed.

  Everything was coming back to him now. He’d driven back to Destin to get a motel room since the only hotel in Cody’s Pass was now a crime scene. It was late as he drove back down the snowy roads that wound through the mountains between the two towns. Debbie had already booked a room for him at a place called the E-Z Rest Motel on Sixth Street. He was checked in by a bored clerk who hardly spoke to Palmer.

  He’d picked up a sandwich from an all-night fast food drive-thru, wolfed the burger and fries down, and then drank a few nips from his bottle of vodka which now sat right beside his service pistol on the end table next to the bed. The lid was on the bottle of vodka, but he was still glad he hadn’t knocked it over while fumbling for the switch on the lamp.

  His heartbeat and breathing were finally back to normal. He grabbed the remote control for the TV and pressed the power button. He found a news channel and left it there with the sound down low. He checked the time on the alarm clock: Four o’clock in the morning.

  He lay back down and tried to go back to sleep, but he wasn’t so sure he was going to be able to.

  Instead, he propped his back up against all of the pillows on the bed and stared at the TV.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Southern Colorado

  Before the first lights of dawn broke the eastern horizon, Cole was back on the road. He’d slept two and a half hours and felt like he needed more, but he was too edgy to sit still in one place for too long. He knew it would only be a matter of time before some puppet of flesh approached their truck.

  Stella woke up for a few minutes when he started the truck—actually, she jolted awake.

  “You can go back to sleep,” he told her as he pulled out of the diner parking lot, following a semi-truck out onto the road.

  A few hours later in Cortez, Colorado, Cole pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot.

  Stella woke up as he looked for a parking spot close to the entrance. It was a twenty-four hour Wal-Mart, but it wasn’t too busy at this hour.

  “What are we doing here?” Stella asked.

  “I need to get a few things,” Cole told her. “I’ll get us a few more drinks and some snacks,” he said. “I won’t be long. Just keep the doors locked. Keys are in the ignition.”

  She stared at him and he could read her eyes: You’re really ditching us this time.

  He didn’t bother arguing with her. He’d told her enough times that he was going to see this through to the end, he didn’t know how else to convince her now.

  The Wal-Mart wasn’t crowded at all when Cole entered and grabbed a cart. He felt a little funny walking in this store with all the security cameras around; here he was, one of the most wanted men in Colorado right now walking around in a department store.

  He didn’t want to take too long in here. He headed right for the clothing section first. He bought some baseball caps, new coats for all three of them, a better pair of gloves for Stella (ones that actually fit her). He bought another set of clothes for David and a big shirt for Stella and another one for himself. They could all use a change of clothes.

  Next he bought a small cooler so they could carry some drinks with them instead of stocking up at gas stations and drive-thru lines at fast food joints.

  For his last purchase he would need to go to the tech section of the store. There he bought the cheapest Smart Phone they had and then he asked the guy working there to sign him up for one of the cheapest services. He only needed the service to work for one phone call. He paid for the phone at the tech counter with a stolen credit card he’d gotten from V.J. before the bank robbery job, and then he paid for the rest of his stuff at the checkout line using cash from one of the packs of money.

  Five minutes later he was out in the cold air again and walking to the pickup truck. He was relieved not to see cop cars racing down the parking lot aisles, screeching to a halt in front of the store, cops jumping out and aiming guns at him.

  Maybe they could really m
ake it down to the Navajo Reservation.

  “Everything okay?” Cole asked Stella when he got back inside the truck. He set the cooler in the back and handed some of the bags to Stella.

  “Didn’t see any cops,” she told him.

  David was sitting up in the back seat, knuckling sleepy bugs from his eyes. “Where are we?” he grumbled.

  “He’s alive!” Cole said.

  That got a smile out of David. “I’m hungry,” he whispered.

  “We’re going to get you something to eat right over there,” Cole said, pointing to a McDonald’s in the far corner of the massive parking area.

  “What are these?” Stella asked, looking through the bags.

  “I bought us some coats, hats, and gloves. Also an extra shirt for each of us.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “I wanna see,” David said and Stella handed him a gray coat that looked like it might be a little big for him.

  Cole started the truck and pressed the button to lock the doors. He turned the heat up one notch and then he picked up the cell phone and dialed a number from memory.

  The phone was ringing in his ear and he hoped to hell V.J. was going to pick up at this early morning hour.

  “Hello?” V.J. croaked into the phone.

  He had woke him up.

  “V.J.!” Cole yelled into the phone.

  “Who is—” A pause as V.J.’s mind came fully awake. “Wait a minute, is that you, Cole?”

  “Yeah. Sorry I woke you up.”

  “Naw. It’s okay, man. What’s up?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “Yeah, I figured that.”

  “I’ve got a throwaway cell phone and I need it scrambled so it can’t be traced. I also need it beefed up. Top of the line service. We’re going to a … a rather remote area.”

  “What? Costa Rica finally?”

  “Yeah. Eventually. But we have to go somewhere else first.” He glanced at Stella who wasn’t abashed at watching him while he talked on the phone.

  “Look, I’ve got some money in that account that you know about,” Cole told V.J. “Clean it out … it’s yours.”

  “That’s a little generous for what you’re asking.”

  “Well, I think I’m going to need a few more favors from you down the road. You know, before Costa Rica.” If I live that long, he thought.

  “Sure. You got it. You know that.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “No problem. I’ll get everything set up and send you some links in the e-mail that I’ve got for you. Don’t use the phone anymore until you get my e-mail. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  “When you get the e-mail, click on those links and let the info download completely. Then you should be good to go after that.”

  “You’re a genius.”

  “I know. Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment. Like I said, I might be calling you a few days from now for a few more favors.”

  “You know I owe you anyway. What about Trevor? How’s he doing?”

  Cole felt his throat closing up quickly. He knew V.J. was going to ask about Trevor eventually. He cleared his throat. “He’s … he’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “It’s a long story. Not one I want to talk about on the phone right now.”

  “Yeah, man. I’m sorry to hear about that.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You should probably get off this phone now.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Take care, man.”

  “You’ll hear from me soon.”

  Cole hung up the phone and wiped at his eyes. He sniffled in a big breath and set the phone in the center console. He looked at Stella. “You can’t use that phone until I get an e-mail that will make this phone untraceable.”

  Stella nodded like she’d heard that part of the conversation.

  “You hungry?” he asked her.

  “I am,” David said from the back seat.

  Cole couldn’t help smiling. He put the truck in gear and drove across the parking lot to the McDonald’s. A few minutes later they ordered a variety of sandwiches and hash browns … more food than they could eat right now, but they would save the rest for later—it wasn’t like that kind of food wasn’t going to go bad anytime soon with all the preservatives that were in it. And of course they got two large coffees for them. Cole felt like he was living off of coffee right now.

  He also took two No-Doz that he’d bought at Wal-Mart and swallowed them down with a few gulps of the coffee.

  He thought about switching vehicles again, but they weren’t too far away from the border according to the map. Besides, he wanted to get back on the road, back on the move. And this time of the morning was the safest time to be traveling, the least likely time to be pulled over by a cop. They would just be one more work truck.

  As they drove down the road, David munched a little on half a sandwich and drank a few sips of his soda, and then he lay back down to go to sleep again. He needed as much sleep as he could get, Cole thought.

  Cole wished he could sleep as deeply and easily as David could. But every time he closed his eyes he saw his brother, his body parts stacked up again, a collection of parts brought back to simulated life, a grotesque puppet controlled by that thing.

  All of this was still hard for Cole to wrap his mind around; it was like some nightmare that had come to life. He was used to the world being reliable, a natural set of physical laws that could be counted on. But now the world was tilting out of order, everything off balance now, like some kind of dream world that he was trying to navigate his way through now.

  And now that Trevor was gone it made everything so much more surreal. Of course he had prepared himself for the possibility that Trevor could die someday. It was a possibility all humans entertained no matter how much we tried not to dwell on it. And with Trevor’s choice of employment, his risk of death was a hundred times higher. But Cole hadn’t expected Trevor to die right in front of him. And not in that gruesome way … torn apart into pieces and then put back together into some kind of Frankenstein’s monster and possessed by that thing, that creature or being or whatever it was.

  Cole wasn’t particularly afraid of dying … he never had been. He wasn’t a religious man and he figured the lights just went out when you died … the show just ended. But after these last few days, after the things he’d seen, his idea of what reality was—and what existed outside of our own narrow perceptions—was changing abruptly.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Cody’s Pass, Colorado

  Special Agent Palmer jumped awake when his cell phone rang. He didn’t think he was going to be able to fall back asleep after the nightmare he’d had, but at some point he had drifted off … probably from pure exhaustion.

  “Agent Palmer,” he said into the phone after the third ring. He didn’t even look at the number, his eyes still blurry with sleep. The TV was still on across the room from the foot of the bed and the sound was turned down almost all the way. Daylight was invading the room from around the edges of the blackout drapes over the front windows.

  What time was it?

  He glanced at the alarm clock. The red digital numbers glowed brightly in the murky room. Almost eight thirty.

  “Agent Palmer?” the sheriff asked on the phone even though Palmer had just identified himself to the caller.

  “Yes, Sheriff,” he said with a sigh.

  “You said you wanted to speak to any witnesses.”

  Palmer nodded. “Yes, I did.”

  “We’ve got two of them lined up for you.”

  “Great. Text me some addresses and directions if you could.”

  “Sure.”

  • • •

  Both of the witnesses were young women and they were both cashiers. Palmer decided to visit the woman named Melissa Caldwell first. She had seen Stella and David at the gas station where she worked on the morning of the bank robbery. The other cashier was a teenager named Cass
andra who worked at a small grocery store in Cody’s Pass. Sheriff Hadley had pointed out that both of them had been questioned already, but Palmer still wanted to speak to both of them in person.

  He drove his rental car through the treacherous mountain pass from Destin down to Cody’s Pass. Melissa lived in a small two story apartment building and there was already a police cruiser parked outside to keep any reporters from harassing the young woman.

  Palmer parked his car near the squad car. He flashed his ID at the officer as he walked by and then climbed a set of concrete steps at the corner of the building that led up to a walkway protected from the snow by the edge of the roof. He walked about halfway down and a door opened up before he even got there.

  Melissa filled up the doorway, smiling at him.

  “Melissa Caldwell?”

  “That’s me.”

  Palmer pulled his ID and shield out again, flashing it at her. “I’m Special Agent Palmer with the FBI. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, the sheriff told me you were coming by.” She moved out of the way so he could enter her apartment. “Come on in.”

  Palmer entered Melissa’s small and cluttered apartment. The smells of old cooking grease and dirty diapers hit him right away. She gestured at a lumpy couch against the far living room wall. “Have a seat.”

  He sat down on the very edge of the couch cushion, his body hunched forward and tense.

  Melissa sank down into the corner at the other end of the couch, and it was like that section of the couch had become molded by her body over the years. She grabbed a gigantic To-Go cup (probably from the gas station where she worked, Palmer thought) and sipped something red and sugary from it, sucking the liquid up through a straw.