Moron!
Another noise erupted, less distinct than the cell phone ring, but equally as startling.
“Coggins,” his radio hissed, but the word was so peppered with static that he only barely recognized Deputy White’s voice.
He tossed his useless cellphone on the passenger seat and snatched the radio.
“Yeah.”
More static.
“Speak up, Paul, all I’m getting is static here.”
He found himself again thinking of the night that he had found Alice, and another shiver ran up his spine.
“...power out up by... Wharfburn... cell phone...”
There was more static, and Coggins waited.
The power was out by Mrs. Wharfburn’s? Well, wouldn’t that be ironic.
He thought of the sheriff alone in the dark with the woman.
Ironic and terrifying.
“You hearing me?”
“I am now,” Coggins replied, pressing the talk button.
“Power out everywhere north of Mill Road,” the deputy repeated, his voice coming through with unexpected clarity.
“10-4. Looks like I’m going to be here a while anyways. Johnny No-Good got his truck stuck.”
He paused, but this time there was no static response.
“Paul?” he asked uncertainly.
But the only answer was a gust of wind that struck the side of his squad car with enough force to push the ass end a foot back onto the road.
Fuck.
6.
The Lights Went Out again at almost exactly seven that evening, about an hour after the last tendrils of sunlight stopped licking the skyline. Whether it was some sort of psychosomatic response, or the temperature had somehow instantaneously dropped a handful of degrees, the puffs of moist air that exited Cody’s lips and nose grew thicker.
He looked up, his eyes red and his eyelids heavy like they had been dipped in cement. His gaze fell upon his eldest daughter, who lay on the couch, her head still resting in her mother’s lap. Despite the fact that she had at least four inches of blankets covering her body, Cody could see that Corina was still trembling slightly. The girl’s eyes were mostly closed, but her pale, almost translucent lids fluttered every now and again. The low light emitted by the single, lantern-style flashlight on the kitchen table shot an eerie gloom over the entire room, and Cody found himself subconsciously writing the scene in his mind.
Stop it.
He shook the practice from his head and allowed his gaze to drift upward, briefly letting his eyes fall on his wife’s face. Marley Lawrence’s eyes were directed downward, staring at nothing halfway between Corina’s chin and her waist. The woman’s round cheeks appeared stiff, as if all of the tears that had dried on them had somehow dehydrated her skin instead of making it smooth and vibrant. Her long brown hair was knotted and greasy, wrapped in a loose ponytail that hung at the back of her head. Without warning, she looked up, and when Cody’s stare met hers, she looked away. Even though their eyes had met but for an instant, her message had been as clear as if it had been tattooed in black ink on her forehead.
This is your fault. You said the storm would pass. You selfish bastard, I knew we shouldn’t have come.
A blast of wind struck the house at that moment, and Cody was brought back to reality. Outside, the snow had stopped falling, but the wind, which gusted every few minutes, seemed to have increased in intensity.
Come
The wind blew again, this time flapping the makeshift cardboard covering that Oxford had placed over the broken window. They had wanted to board up the window—all of the windows—but whatever wood had been out back had long since been buried by the blizzard. And thus they were stuck using some old cardboard boxes they had found in the basement to cover the hole as best they could. Looking at it now, however, the cardboard already damp and bent, Cody wished they had looked a little harder for a piece of plywood.
It’s best to stay away from the windows, he thought.
Just then, the back door flew open and Oxford stepped inside the house, pulling Seth in with him. Oxford quickly closed the door, trying to limit the amount of cold air that followed them over the threshold. Like the rest of them, he looked tired, his eyes sunken into the back of his head so deeply that with his cap pulled low Cody could barely make out the whites. In his mitted hand he held a dark red gas can.
“This is it,” he said, his tone flat and even. He shook the can, and Cody could tell by how long it took for the liquid inside to slosh from to one side to the other that it couldn’t have been more than half full.
Oxford bent to remove his boots, but he left his jacket, hat, and mitts on. His face was white with frostbite, the tip of his nose so pale that it looked like he had applied zinc sunblock.
“Aside from this,” he said, holding up the gas can, “I put the rest of the gas from the cars in the generator. Got about an eighth full.”
He paused, his eyes darting from Corina to Marley before returning to Cody.
“Should give us another two or three hours.”
He looked away when he said this, a clear indication to Cody that his estimate was generous.
Seth, who had also removed his boots but left his outer garments on, said nothing. Cody wasn’t surprised—the man seemed to have lost the ability to speak, or maybe he’d never had it.
“The power should come back on in a minute or two—but we should keep the lights off; use the flashlight. Maybe turn on a bit of heat when we go to sleep,” Cody offered.
The wind blew again, and Henrietta fell on her backside. She was wearing so many layers of clothing—including a snowsuit—that, like a turtle on its shell, she was unable to get back up again and started to cry. She had been crying so often that her voice had become hoarse.
When no one responded to his last comment, Cody shrugged and made his way to his youngest daughter.
“It’s okay,” he said unconvincingly and picked her up. He could barely feel her body beneath all the clothing.
In his arms, the little girl stopped crying for a brief moment and looked up at him with her big, moist blue eyes.
Cody’s heart nearly broke.
“I’m ‘cared, Daddy.”
He looked at her again; he was almost certain that she was going to say that she was cold.
Scared?
“I know,” he replied, barely able to hold back his own tears.
I’m ‘cared too, baby girl.
The little girl’s button nose was red, but her cheeks were white and glistening. He would have to cover her face with a scarf soon to avoid frostbite.
“I’m ‘cared,” she repeated, then started to cry again.
The wind blasted again, flapping the makeshift window covering like a baseball card jammed into the spokes of a bicycle wheel.
Come Come
Cooooooome
Cody nervously looked around the room.
Do they hear that?
No one spoke or raised their eyes; instead, they were content in burying their faces into the collars of their coats, trying desperately to conserve heat.
Did I hear that?
The house went silent for several minutes. Even Oxford seemed to have stopped fidgeting.
“Well,” Cody said at long last, “what do we do now?”
What the fuck do we do now?
Chapter Four
Fragmented
1.
I Don’t Think I’m in any shape to see him,” Alice Dehaust said. Or you, she wanted to add, but decided against it. It didn’t matter anyway; there was no answer—the connection had been lost. As if to affirm her last comment, she looked down at herself. Without a bra, her breasts sagged beneath her black t-shirt, which was ridiculously thin and inadequate for the weather. Thoughts of her shirt reminded that she had found it wrapped in a ball by the end of the bare mattress and she shuddered.
Alice didn’t dare look at her reflection in the mirror for fear of what she might find there. Instead, she
focused her attention on the road and drove onward, even though she slowly began to suspect that she might be able to walk to Askergan faster than she was able to drive—if walking had been possible in all the damn snow.
Alice had left the creep’s house with the intention of heading home, but after falling asleep at the wheel twice, she had decided to check into a small motel.
An hour. I’ll stay an hour, she had promised herself, but when she finally woke up—thankfully on a different mattress, one covered with a sheet this time—the entire night and most of the next day had passed. And thus she had left again, not showering, not freshening up, and in pretty much the same shape as she had arrived. Only the rash from the gluten in the alcohol and whatever else she had ingested—You fucking cunt, come back with my H!—was nearly gone now, but her mind was still a jumbled mess as she tried fruitlessly to recall exactly when things had gone so wrong.
The roads out of the city center had been fine, and although the major highway leaving the town was a little slushy—the salters must have just gone by—it was okay, too. But as soon as she had gone more than forty miles outside of—hell, she couldn’t even remember where she had left her bra, let alone the name of the shithole she had come from—the town, blowing and accumulating snow had her driving at just half the speed limit. Twenty miles beyond that, she was forced to put her hazards on and barely pushed the gas pedal at all. It was as if clouds had conspired to congregate above Askergan County, combining their efforts to make the place a virtual dome of snow and ice.
Unfortunately, her slow pace gave her ample time to think—and thinking was the last thing she wanted to do. To force these thoughts—any thoughts—from her head, she turned on the radio and tried to drown out her ever-wandering mind with the latest Top 40 hits, but the crappy, static-ridden music only served to annoy her further. Twice she rang Deputy Coggins, but both times it went straight to his voicemail.
In the end, Alice gave up her weak efforts and fell victim to her thoughts. While she hadn’t lied to Brad about not remembering last night, she hadn’t exactly offered the whole truth, either. Ever since she had escaped from the horrible bearded man with the erect penis, glimpses of the previous evening had come back to her like early morning light through a stained-glass window. She remembered heading into the city for—what? Shopping?—some reason after work, and she also remembered heading to a restaurant when the street lamps had come on. That was when things went fuzzy, and her memories skipped ahead like a song on a scratched CD. The next thing she could remember was talking to a lean man from Askergan—what were the odds?—about, well, nothing really. The conversation had quickly evolved, however, into one about everything, and she remembered spilling her guts about her life and her addiction. The details of this conversation were a muddy blur, but she assumed it followed the same course as the one she had recounted to her therapist.
“Tell me about yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“About you; your likes, dislikes.”
“You mean about my addiction.”
Pause.
“Well ‘my likes’ include getting high. Dislikes include not being high.”
Pause.
“I don’t know if this is going to work.”
Pause.
Sigh. “I like to paint. I also like to go running when the weather is nice and I’m not high.”
“So you do enjoy things other than getting high.”
Yeah, Alice could picture the conversation going just like that.
“When you were younger—”
“No, I was not abused or anything like that. In fact, I love my parents and they have been great to me—even through this. Sometimes, though...”
Pause.
Both parties had scrunched faces now.
“Sometimes, though, I kinda wish I had been abused. At least then I would have an excuse.”
Alice shook her head.
Jesus, did I really say that? Did I really say that I wish I had been abused? Horrible...
But she thought she might have. The odd thing was, although she could remember very little about the man that she had met at dinner, other than the fact that he most definitely was not the one who had emerged from the bathroom when she had awoken, she thought that he too had been an addict. Or maybe she was just projecting.
Did I sleep with him?
Her eyes drifted downward as if that would provide the answer; as if she might still have the condom in her lap, or worse, as if it were still hanging out of her.
Her stomach rolled at the thought, and she fought the urge to vomit. The graphic imagery, the drugs clearing her system, and her body desperately wanting more were all a toxic combination.
A gust of wind smashed against the passenger side of the car and was powerful enough to push her into a minor fishtail despite the fact that she couldn’t have been going more than fifteen miles an hour.
Christ.
The snow was so thick—blowing and falling were indistinguishable now—that Alice could no longer tell if there were other cars on the road with her.
She pulled her foot completely off the gas and the car slowed to the point of nearly imperceptible movement.
Who was he?
It wasn’t the pervert from the apartment that she was thinking about, but the other one, the addict. This made her feel guilty again, so Alice forced herself to think of Brad instead, and how nice he had been—
No, not had been, she scolded herself, is! He doesn’t know about—
—but of course, she didn’t even know his name.
Brad does not know about him. Maybe he wouldn’t be so nice if he found out.
But Brad was nice to her, always had been. Even after finding her there, in the goddamn police station of all places, in a comatose-like state high on so many drugs that her tox screen had sounded like the ingredients on the back of a box of Party Mix. And even when their relationship had transitioned from professional, to personal, to intimate, he had never judged her.
Brad wasn’t the only source of her guilt, either. It was the sheriff; he had literally picked her up off her feet and had even gotten her a job—a job at the police station, no less. And what did she do to return the favor? Break his trust again and again; use and abuse, as the saying goes.
Use and abuse.
Alice suddenly wished the heat in the car had another notch—another level. Scalding, perhaps.
Poor Bradley Coggins, with his goofy grin and rail-thin body. Poor Bradley fucking Coggins.
She hated herself then, irrespective of whether she had slept with the strange addict from the bar, and knew as distinctly as she knew it was snowing outside that if she’d had drugs—Where’s my H! You fucking cunt, come back with my H!—she would use them right now. It didn’t matter if the drugs were that pervert’s heroin, some cocaine, clonazepam, or Demerol, she would have taken it—all of it, and all at once.
Fuck it, she resigned. I’ll go see Brad, even if he is with the Sheriff.
Alice Dehaust allowed the toe of her loafer to depress the gas pedal just a fraction of an inch—just enough to cause her body to lurch and her stomach to protest.
2.
“Jareeed... Jarrrrrrreeeeed.”
Jared rolled onto his side and sighed in his sleep.
“Jared!”
His eyes snapped open, and his breath caught in his throat.
What the fuck was that?
Heart racing, Jared listened closely, sure he had heard someone say his name; a voice, moaning his name—a voice he knew well.
“Dad?” he whispered.
Jared swallowed hard.
Nothing; he heard nothing.
Somewhere in the room next to his and Seth’s, Henrietta started to cry again.
Jared managed a staggered breath, his neck relaxing and his head falling back into his pillow.
What’s going on?
He had had a hard time falling asleep; in fact, he had lain there for so long in the icy da
rkness that he hadn’t even realized that he had finally drifted off. It wasn’t just the cold or the two pairs of pants that had kept him awake, it was also the weight of their situation. There couldn’t be more than a half-gallon of gas left in the generator, and despite what Cody said to placate his wife and ease his children, the roads would not be drivable tomorrow. Or the next day. And probably not for a few more after that. Still, he figured keeping the gas can with some gas left in it was a good idea, in case somehow they were able to get the cars—a car—moving.
Jarrreeeed.
He could have sworn he heard his name being whispered. Again he shook his head.
Get it together, Jared.
Slowly and inevitably, Jared’s thoughts turned to Corina and her brutally broken leg. He had tried to remove the bark and pieces of her tights that had been wedged into the wound, but he hadn’t done a great job; the poor girl—not even a teenager yet—was in too much pain for him to do any more rooting in her skin and bone, even hopped up on whatever Oxford had fed her.
Jared was no doctor, but the wound had been hot and red when he had set the primitive dressing, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before the infection got serious. And soon thereafter, poor Corina’s current ambivalent and numb demeanor would become intractable. No, something had to be done—and soon.
He lay in the dark for a moment, unmoving, wondering if perhaps Seth had said his name in his sleep, or maybe a dream had turned the beeping fire alarm, warning them that the power had once again gone out, into his name. He listened closely, and this time he actually did hear something, although he wasn’t entirely sure what it was. It sounded like several wet, bubbly pops, like someone kneading a wet ball of dough, followed by prolonged silence. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying hard to pick up more of the strange noise. There was Seth’s soft snoring and—and something else.
The wind struck the house then, and the cardboard window covering flapped loudly.
Come
And there it was, not the wet bubble noise, but the ominous wind that sounded as if it were beckoning to him, calling him, and—
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 10
