“We found her,” he said.
Jordan fought to stay awake as his jeep rolled to a stop at the intersection of Wichita and Cross. It had already been the longest day of his life and it wasn’t even six o’clock. Since Sean awoke this morning in the good doctor’s office he had seen and done things he never thought he’d do in Danaid, or anywhere else for that matter. His mind drifted backward through the day and the images he had seen. At the time he thought he would never sleep again. He had stayed wired and alert riding a powerful wave of adrenaline and fear, but even that wave couldn’t last forever. He felt wrung out and done. All he wanted was to get home to his own bed and crash. His eyelids felt as heavy as lead weights. His head had been bobbing the whole way from the police station. He told himself he was only three blocks away, but even that felt too far.
Finally, his eyes slid shut. Garth Brooks sang somewhere far away. A horn’s beep behind him snapped his head up. He glanced in his rearview, then up at the green light and pulled out.
Halfway through the intersection, a pickup truck nearly tore his front end off. Running straight through the red light it never even braked. Jordan slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop, watching the maniac go. “Jesus Christ on a crutch!” he cursed, fully awake now after a sudden hit of adrenaline.
In the middle of the intersection with cars honking as they pulled around him, Jordan nervously grabbed his radio and called it in. A moment later Jordan hit the siren and the lights and tore up the street after the pickup.
Violet tiptoed into her spareiroom and gently shook
Sean awake.
“Sean? Sean?” she whispered. He awoke with a start.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Kelly’s on the phone for you,” she said. “Says Jordan found Norman’s truck.”
Sean jumped out of bed and blew past Violet out into the hall. He grabbed the phone from where it lay on the kitchen counter.
“Where is he?”
“He’s at Fourth and Howard, heading north. It looks like Mulberry Road.”
“Tell him I’m coming. Tell him not to do anything till I get there. You hear me, Kelly? Nothing,” Sean said and slammed the phone down.
He raced for the door. He slipped on his boots, grabbed his coat and he was gone.
From the bedroom window, Kevin watched his dad’s jeep back out of the drive and disappear down the street.
26
Petra stopped in the textured darkness of the forest. Moonlight sifted through the knotted canopy above, lending a silvered edge to the bark of the shadowed trees. Behind her, Zijin panted softly in the hushed silence, their hot breath smoking in the frozen air. Their lean, muscled bodies were ready to begin again their trek through the thigh-high snow on her word.
It was true that Petra was a door, but she was also a vessel, a life raft for the Zijin race. Inside her she carried the entire population of the doomed species. They had moved through worlds for centuries, like parasites, an infection or a virus. They spread from human to human, converting as many as possible. For every converted human allowed a Zijin to once again know life. Petra closed her eyes and listened. The sleepers, the waiting ones, called for her. Their cries begged for awakening.
Suddenly, she cut to her right, tearing through the fence of trees, gripping thin branches to pull herself forward even faster. Behind her the Zijin grunted with the effort. The impenetrably dark forest lightened as they approached the edge of the wood, where fluorescent light illuminated the knotted trunks.
Petra stopped at the edge of the darkness just inside the tree line and looked out over the expanse of yard.
A large red barn blocked most of the house from view. Behind it, firewood had been cut and stacked neatly against the back wall. A blue tarp was draped over the pile, doing its best to keep the wood out of the elements. An axe was wedged deep into the large stump nearby, which had been used as a chopping block. With the barn as cover, Petra and the Zijin broke from the tree line. As Petra passed the woodpile, she pulled the axe easily out of the stump.
Tammy Matthews stood next to her mother, shivering in the doorway. Her thin arms wrapped around herself. Her cotton Spice Girls pajamas just weren’t enough against the bitter cold and the gusts of wind that found their way inside.
“What is he doing out there?” she asked, her teeth chattering. Martha Matthews leaned outside, her hands wrapped around a mug of hot coffee, and called out, “C’mon, Frank, the movie’s coming on.”
Tammy moved from the doorway to the window in the laundry room where she could see her dad, smoking his nightly cigar, a wine-tipped job that mom couldn’t stand, as he flooded the backyard ice rink with a garden hose. Meanwhile her fourteen-year-old brother Jamie skated in circles around the hockey net, his feet crossing over gracefully as he made the tight circle. He cruised in front of the goal and ripped a puck over the strapped-in plastic goalie’s right shoulder.
“Just a few more minutes, Mom, okay?” Jamie replied, digging the puck out of the net and skating hard to the edge of the ice. Stopping on a dime, he spun and fired a slapshot that rang right off the goalie’s head and went straight up into the night air.
“Go ahead, hon,” Frank said, with a wink and a smile as he swept the spray from his hose from side to side. “We’ll be right there.”
Martha returned the smile and said “all right,” but soon her smile faded. Frank watched her smile dissolve and followed her stare over his right shoulder into the darkness around the barn.
Frank pinched off the hose and listened. He took a step toward the barn and waited. Skeins of snow blew across the open field into the black woods. Nothing there but shadows. But then the shadows moved. Three of them materialized out of the dark, scrambling down the side of the barn like spiders. As large as a man, they moved like animals, dropping gracefully into the snow from fifteen feet up.
Without taking his eyes away from the shadows, Frank called to his son. Jamie ripped a shot off the goal post and spun around toward his father.
“C’mon, Dad. I don’t even care about the stupid movie.”
“Jamie, goddammit, get in the house. Now.”
Jamie stopped skating and looked at his dad staring off into the dark.
Three shapes scrambled over the snow, picking up speed, charging into the light.
“Dad? What is that?” Jamie asked, standing next to his father.
“Frank! Jamie! Get in the house right now!” Martha cried.
The sound of terror in Martha’s voice ripped Frank from his stupor. As the first creature dipped its head into the light of the flood lamps, illuminating its terrible visage, he grabbed his son by the jacket and pulled him away across the ice.
Frank whispered. “Get in the house. As fast as you can.”
Jamie took off like a shot, his thin legs pumping hard, his skates tearing up the ice. Frank took off after him across the ice, that being the shortest distance between the two points.
His boots slipped across the slick surface as the night filled with the sounds of teeth chattering and nails scratching, digging into the ice.
Martha and Tammy screamed helplessly from the doorway. “C’mon, Dad, run!” And Frank ran. His legs pumped, his heart pounded. Frank slid through the layer of water he had just applied and fell heavily to his knees. He scrambled to his feet but fell again. Soaked and scared he crawled as fast as he could.
Jamie raced back out across the ice, head down, arms pumping, driving him forward.
“Jamie! Get back here!” Martha screamed from the doorway.
Frank looked up and got to his hands and knees. His family screamed for him to get up. He stole a glance over his shoulder. The creatures charged across the ice on all fours, their claws digging through the ice. Milky white skin, black eyes. Jaws ready to snap.
Jamie stopped hard next to his dad and grabbed his father’s coat, pulling him to his feet.
The creatures leapt from the ice and tackled the two men together, knocking them clea
r into a drift and into the darkness. Frank and his son scrambled to their feet, kicking in the snow. Jamie screamed, a high-pitched shriek. And then there was silence as Jaime’s scream was viciously cut short.
“Frank?”
“FRANK!” Martha screamed. But there was only darkness.
A woman emerged from the shadows and stepped into the light of the ice rink. The hood of her coat hid the top part of her face but the woman’s lips pulled into a smile. She held the axe in her right hand as she stepped toward the house.
“Mommy?” Tammy asked.
“Frank?”
The woman kept coming, slowly, deliberately.
“Frank!”
“Mommy?” Tammy pleaded.
Martha slammed the door and locked it. She spun away from the door and grabbed her daughter.
“Get upstairs, Tammy. Hurry.”
“Mommy, where’s daddy? Where’s Jamie?” she asked, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Daddy!” she screamed.
Martha ran to the kitchen where she snagged the portable phone off the wall and dialed.
The phone was dead.
The windows shook in their frames as the creatures clambered over the glass, peering inside, watching the two women. Tammy screamed again as the monsters pressed close, their panting breath fogging up the glass. Their black eyes tracked them as the pair edged toward the stairs.
Suddenly, the blade of the axe bit through the back door. Martha screamed, dropped the phone and ran upstairs, pushing her daughter ahead of her every step of the way.
At the top of the stairs they followed the short hall to the left. Martha pulled Tammy along by the hand. The sound of breaking glass was everywhere as the creatures entered the home through the windows.
Martha yanked Tammy into a room near the end of the hall and eased the door closed.
Her husband, an amateur taxidermist and avid hunter, kept his trophies here. Stuffed ducks, geese, even a fox lined the blonde wood shelves. Martha headed straight for the gun cabinet. As she passed his worktable where an owl lay half completed, she grabbed a stone carving of a wolf and smashed the leftmost glass panel of the gun cabinet. Tammy stared in awe at her mother as she pulled down a shotgun from its rack and a box of shells.
“Get in that closet, honey,” she said as she dumped the box of shells out on the floor and fed them into the chamber.
“Mommy, please,” Tammy whined as she clung to her mother’s side like an infant.
“It’s going to be all right, Tammy.”
Suddenly the house was thrown into darkness as the power was cut. Tammy screamed, throwing herself into her mother’s arms. Martha set down the shotgun and rocked her daughter gently. She whispered low and fast, “Tammy, Tammy, quiet, honey, okay, please, you got to be quiet. I need you to be brave right now. Can you be brave? Can you be brave for me right now?”
Tammy nodded weakly, staring up into her mother’s dark brown eyes.
“Okay. We’ll both be brave, okay?”
“Okay,” Tammy whispered.
Martha let Tammy go and she slid into place beside her mother. Huddled on the floor they listened to the darkness as Martha slid the remaining shells into the pockets of her jeans.
Beyond the door, the hardwood floor creaked as footsteps shuffled toward them. Claws scratched the plaster in the hall and the creatures chittered in their rattling machine gun language.
“Get behind me,” Martha whispered. Tammy did what she was told and slid across the floor where she crawled behind her mother. Martha raised the shotgun. The barrel pointed at the center of the door. The footsteps drew closer.
Bishop slid all over the road, struggling to control the speed through the drifted streets of Danaid. Oliver rode shotgun. He peered through the windshield and the whipping snow. Wraiths had lined the street and converged on the farm house at the end of a long drive.
The headlights of the pickup swept over a row of mailboxes at the end of the driveway and Oliver shouted, “There! Turn right there!”
Bishop cranked the wheel and the truck spun nearly 360 degrees. Charging through the snow behind him was the sheriff’s jeep. Bishop had nowhere to go. The jeep T-boned the pickup, driving it straight off the road and into the ditch. Bishop was thrown against the window, shattering the glass with his head.
Both vehicles came to a stop, blocking the narrow driveway. Gun up and ready, the deputy slid across the hood of his jeep and dropped into the ditch next to the smashed window in the pickup. Bishop came around, slumped against the broken window.
“Let me see your hands! Show me your fucking hands!” the deputy said.
Bishop turned his face to the young deputy, blood streaming down into his right eye from a gash on his forehead.
“Get your fucking hands up! Now!” the deputy said. “Do it!”
The deputy cocked the hammer of his pistol and took aim at Bishop’s head through the broken glass.
Bishop pressed his hands against the window glass as the deputy opened the door, backed up a few feet and said, “Okay. Nice and slow, get out of the truck.”
Bishop did as he was told. The gash on his forehead had stopped bleeding as it sealed quickly.
“Listen to me, boy,” Bishop whispered.
“Shut the fuck up and lean against the truck. Hands on the hood.”
Bishop turned to the truck and the deputy pushed him into the position. As he went for his handcuffs with his right, Bishop spun and grabbed the deputy’s gun hand. With his wrist pinned, the deputy fired harmlessly into the truck’s engine block. In the next instant Bishop drove an elbow into the deputy’s face, knocking him flat.
Bishop threw the deputy’s gun into the ditch as headlights swept over him. He turned to see Sean coming up the driveway, already jumping out of his seat. Bishop ran toward the Matthews’ house.
Sean was a few seconds too late. His jeep skidded to a halt ten feet from the blockade that the other two vehicles had created. He ran down the driveway shouting, “Freeze! Freeze!” But Bishop didn’t stop. Sean stopped, skidding in the snow. He shouted once more for him to freeze and then he took aim. The first shot was high, the second went off to the right, but the third slammed home, punching a fist-sized exit wound in Bishop’s chest. His body was lifted off his feet and pitched forward into the snow where he skidded to a stop and didn’t move.
Sean breathed hard as he ran to where Bishop lay.
“Stay down! Stay down! Show me your hands!”
Bishop didn’t move. Sean dropped a knee down hard into the middle of his back and roughly cuffed Bishop’s hands together. He rolled Bishop onto his back. The snow beneath him was stained red. He pulled apart Bishop’s shirt. An angry red eye slowly closed in Bishop’s pale chest.
“Jesus Christ,” Sean whispered.
“You don’t know what you’re chasing,” Bishop said, as blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.
“I found what I’m looking for.”
Jordan came to a skidding stop beside Sean and stared down at Bishop, cuffed and bloody.
“You all right?” Sean asked.
“Yeah,” Jordan replied absently. “Jesus, you shot him.”
Sean nodded.
“Why is he cuffed?”
“’Cause he’s not dead.”
Jordan knelt down close to Bishop’s head and felt for a pulse.
“He’s dead, Sean.”
Sean pushed him roughly away, down into the snow.
“Keep away from him!” Sean said. “Don’t touch him. You hear me?”
“Jesus, Sean. He’s dead,” Jordan replied. “No pulse. Nothing.”
“He’s not dead,” he said. “I don’t know what he is.” Sean grabbed Bishop by his ankles and dragged him back to his jeep.
“Sean, what the fuck is going on?”
“He’s not dead. He may look dead, but he’s not!”
“Sean, you shot him through the chest, there’s blood everywhere, he’s got no pulse. He’s gone.”
Sean dro
pped Bishop into the snow, knelt down and tore open his blood soaked shirt.
“Look!” Sean said. “Where’s the wound? Where’d I shoot him?”
Jordan stared at what remained of the bullet wound, a small red scar turning to pink just above Bishop’s right nipple.
“Oh, my God.”
“Listen to me. I saw this guy take a butcher knife to the throat and walk away. I don’t—I don’t know what’s going on or what he is.”
Jordan couldn’t take his eyes away from Bishop’s chest as the pink blemish of the bullet wound faded to pale white skin.
“What do we do?”
“Mom?” Tammy whispered. Her mother held a finger to her lips.
“Who’s shooting?”
Tammy and her mother had heard three quick gunshots, then nothing.
“Quiet, Tammy.”
“Is it dad?” she whispered.
In the darkness of the den Martha could just make out the metal doorknob, glinting in the weak light. She watched it twist, its old mechanism creaking in the silence as it was wrenched from side to side. Martha’s finger slid into the trigger guard, resting on the trigger.
Martha’s body tensed as someone threw their shoulder into the door. It buckled under the strain and rattled in its frame. Again and again the door was attacked. The weak light below the door flickered with every hit.
“Mommy?”
Suddenly the door was silent. The knob hung bent in its socket, but the siege had ended. Martha’s arms trembled from holding the shotgun.
“Is it gone?”
Martha turned to find her daughter’s pale face in the gloom, tear-stained and afraid. An axe blade sliced through the door nearly shearing it in half.
Martha spun and fired wildly. For a moment the door and the shining blade of the axe were illuminated in the muzzle flash. A pale hand snaked through the rent in the door to pull the axe head free. Martha aimed at the hand and fired and fired and fired. Tammy screamed but her voice was obliterated by the thunder of the shotgun blasts.
Sleepers Awake Page 13
