The Crippling Terrors (Tracking Ever Nearer Book 1)

by Jeff Vrolyks

HOLLY

  Chapter 20

  The distant warbling of a siren soon became two sirens, then several.

  “I wonder where it’s coming from,” I said, after situating Ali in the truck. Shedding Alison’s weight from my left arm wasn’t as relieving as the weight unburdened from my shoulders when I felt her pulse, regardless of its strength or lack thereof.

  “Couldn’t be far. How did we not smell it inside?”

  “I remember smelling something,” I said. “It wasn’t on my mind, though.” My eyes were burning. The acrid smoke seared my throat and irritated my lungs.

  Holly accompanied Alison in the king-cab; I closed the passenger door. I walked around the front of the truck, noticing the wolves hadn’t left yet, nor lost interest in us. I got behind the wheel and said, “I hope emergency vehicles aren’t going to be a problem.”

  I clicked the headlights on. A gray cloud reflected the light back at me. I wasn’t sure what Holly said under her breath, but I guessed it was an expletive. I made a U-turn. The wolves had spread out evenly before the gate. I slowly pulled forward until I was inches from one of the five. I honked. They wouldn’t budge. Holly thought there had to be a good reason for this, and I grudgingly agreed. I sure as hell couldn’t guess what the reason was. We’d burn alive here. Whether the wolves were impossibly intelligent or exceptionally trained, or both, I wasn’t about to wait around for the fire to catch us. If I had to off-road my way around the gate or run the wolves over, then so be it.

  After backing up a dozen or so yards, I shifted the truck into four-wheel-drive. Scaring the hell out of me was a wolf’s head and front paws against the passenger-side window. Holly was amused, of course. The wolf’s ears were bent forward and her moist snout glazed a trail across the glass between her paws. It appeared as if she was looking for the door lock. She tapped the claws of her right paw on the glass, a door-knock cadence. Then repeated.

  There was something about it, how she looked at the lock, the handle, then me, then the handle, cocked her head quizzically, and then knocked; maybe I should have already concluded these animals were inexplicably genius, maybe amongst the ranks of the chimpanzee, but it took witnessing this simple display of human-like activity to open the closed door of my mind. Maybe they were a gift from God, or maybe it was karma, or maybe it was nothing more than a superb genetic mutation (coincidently mutating an entire pack of wolves), but I don’t think how was as important as why. And if they were beneficial to us—specifically Alison, who needed all the help she could get—I owed it to everyone to utilize this gift to our full advantage.

  “How cute!” Holly crooned. She was less impressed with their intelligence than their supernatural adorableness. I reached my left arm across the cabin, barely able to unlatch the door with a fingertip. The wolf took it from there and opened it, jumped on the seat and struggled with the armrest to pull the door closed. Life without opposable thumbs isn’t simple, my furry friend. Outside the cabin help came, and they pushed the door firmly shut. She sat down facing forward. When the truck remained in park for an unacceptable few seconds, she looked at the two gawking humans and cocked her head and whined.

  “Jesus, they’re like little humans,” I said. “I don’t think I’d ever get use to this.”

  “I hope we get a chance to. I love them. What should we name him?”

  “This is one of the females, I think. She’s slightly smaller.” The wolf nodded once.

  The other four crossed the path of my headlights and continued to a dirt embankment. Our new passenger followed them with her eyes, chuffed at me. According to Holly, beyond the embankment was a trail once used by Kloss and his friends for their dirt bikes. It was this dirt path that the wolves wished to lead us down. I pulled forward, drove over the embankment and followed them on the downhill gradient.

  Holly couldn’t keep her hands off the critter. “She’s so cute and sweet. What should we name her?”

  “Uh, I don’t think we’re keeping her, so don’t get too attached. We aren’t going to keep her, right?” Holly smiled as she petted her. Her tongue protruded from the corner of her mouth. She could’ve passed for a girl in middle school.

  “I’d love to keep her, all of them,” she said, “but I couldn’t do that to a wild animal. They deserve better. I want to name her so we don’t have to call her wolf, silly. Isn’t that a good enough reason? Human?”

  “What do you want to name her?”

  “Jillian Humperdinck, but you can call her Jill.” Holly took less time belting out that horrible name than she did her own name when we met. If I was fortunate enough to have children with her, it would be I who named them.

  “I’m not even going to ask where you came up with that. Hey there Jill, you okay with that name?”

  Jill was transfixed on her friends trotting ahead. The smoke was thickening but I had a clear enough view of the wolves.

  “I had a hamster by that name when I was a kid,” she informed. “I lost her when I was in the eighth grade.”

  “A snake probably found her,” I quipped. “Or do you mean lost as in she died?”

  “Neither.” She began brushing Jill’s coat.

  I was baffled. “What the…? Okay, before I ask you about the brush, what do you mean neither? If she didn’t die and didn’t run away, what else is there?”

  “The animal rapture. Sorry if it’s your brush. I should’ve asked first. It was stuffed in the back of the seat pouch.”

  “I don’t care about the brush, but why brush her? Wait, did you say animal rupture?” Holly continued brushing Jill, who didn’t seem to mind. “What the heck is an animal rupture?”

  “Animal rapture, not rupture,” she said haughtily. “And why not brush her? Dogs like to be brushed. I don’t hear Jill complaining, just you.”

  “Girls,” I said thickly. I felt two sets of stares. “Now what is this animal rapture business?”

  My speedometer stayed between five and seven miles an hour. Any faster and I wouldn’t have felt safe, not with this poor visibility. The narrow rugged trail fluctuated between steep and level, and sometimes disappeared completely for seconds at a time. It had been formed by many hours of recreational off-roading. It snaked down the hillside toward the basin, but the trail would end before arriving there. Perhaps Kloss and his buddies turned around before reaching the bottom more times than not. I hoped it wouldn’t be a problem. An occasional thick pocket of smoke eddied before me, impeding my sight of the wolves.

  “Holly, an animal rapture?”

  “Huh? Oh. Yep, one of several.” She continued her brush strokes.

  “Do I really have to ask?”

  “Haven’t you had pets? Not a pet kind of guy?”

  “I had a cat once. I don’t get it, what are you talking about?”

  “Animals, taken in rapture. Rapture is a biblical thing. It’s when—”

  “I know what rapture means, it’s the animal part I’m lost on.”

  “Kloss knows a lot more about the raptures than I do. It’s been a while since I’ve thought about it. You know how Jesus is supposed to come back to earth one day and take all the good people to Heaven?” I hummed an affirmative. “I haven’t read the bible, so don’t quote me. Kloss has parts memorized. Since all pets go to heaven, Jesus doesn’t wait for our rapture to take them all—you know, because there are so many of them. That’s a lot to take in a single shot, so He takes some of them every now and then. I’ve had a few pets taken but it’s all right, they’re waiting for me. I must have had five, six?” She coughed hoarsely. “It works out for the best, though. God takes them when they’re sick or old.”

  She giggled. “Pet lay-away! God,” she said dreamily, “I forgot about that. I probably haven’t thought about that since I was eleven. That’s how Kloss explained it to me. They go to heaven every now and then and eventually you cash in and get them back. I need to remember to bring it up next time I talk to Kloss, see if he remembers. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of this. I guess yo
u only had one pet, that’s probably why.”

  I waited for the punch line. And kept waiting. “Holly, animal rapture?” I gave her another chance to redeem herself.

  “What! Why do you keep saying that?”

  Wow, she is either a great actor or believes that load of crap. Either way, it was odd behavior (which was the theme of the day, so why should I expect anything less now?). I let it go for now. “Do you know where we are or if we’re getting close?” I hoped for an answer that would instill confidence, to let me know we were on our way to putting this behind us.

  “Uh…” And that wasn’t it. “No idea. It was a few years back when Kloss used to ride dirt bikes down here. I don’t think the trail went this far, though. I could be wrong. I only rode it twice. I don’t remember much. There are some steep parts, some drop-offs. Rock drop-offs. I wouldn’t call them cliffs, though. Watch out for them,” she advised. “That would be bad. Steer clear of them.”

  Great, a chance to plunge to our deaths if I make a wrong turn or too slow in applying the brakes. On the bright side, my visibility had gone from poor to worse. At least I wouldn’t have to watch as we plummeted to our deaths. I was equally concerned with hitting a tree. If I disabled the truck, it would likely seal our fate. Outrunning a fire that has an all-you-can-eat buffet of tall dead grass and wind pushing it hard up my ass, with an unconscious girl over my shoulder in the darkness of night while huffing oxygen-depleted lung-searing smoke until I suffocate nearly to death, being finished off by the inferno at my heels, is a far worse way to die than driving off a cliff.

  “All right, if I see a cliff I’ll stop the truck. I do like that plan.”

  “You’re making fun of me?”

  “No, it was just a little silly. Smoke’s getting bad, huh?”

  “I don’t know how you’re doing it. Can you even see?”

  “Nope.” I coughed. “If I see a drop-off I don’t know if I’ll stop in time.” I rubbed my eyes and regretted it. It was like having a car cigarette lighter pushed in either eye. “The pack is doing a good job leading me. They aren’t going too fast or too slow.”

  “I can’t see them,” she admitted, as she stuck a wadded up fruit roll-up near Jill’s face.

  “Now where’d you get that?”

  “Eat the roll-up, Jill,” she cooed. “It’s red flavored.” Jill turned her maw from it like an infant in a high chair. “Don’t like red? But red is the best.”

  “Any guess as to how much farther until we reach the bottom?”

  “Shouldn’t be far.”

  Occasionally the tails of the pack drifted to the left or right of my truck’s hood. I compensated until their tail or tails were centered once again. It was working swimmingly. Many trees passed by me that I would have otherwise struck. If I drove off a cliff it would be because the pack fell off first.

  “So why didn’t you believe me,” she pursued, “when I said my pets went to heaven? You don’t believe in God? In Jesus?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, then why did you react like I’m a nut job.”

  “Nah, I was just messing around. You aren’t a nut job.”

  Her brother must be a sweet guy. He didn’t want his little sister to find out her pets died. He made up a ludicrous story to spare her pain. It was actually quite clever. Not having parents or close friends, it was probably easy to pull off, too. Especially at the innocent age of eleven. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had believed in Santa Claus until she was sixteen.

  “Oh,” she said. “I thought maybe you didn’t believe in… never mind. How’s your arm feeling?”

  “Worst pain of my… what the hell!”

  Holly now dangled a piece of licorice in front of Jill’s face, and astonishingly she ate it, although I suspect she ate it just to stop being pestered. It didn’t work. Another piece of licorice soon reappeared in front of her mouth.

  “She doesn’t hate red after all,” Holly said enthusiastically. “She’s just not a fruit roll-up kind of wolf. To each their own!” She coughed. “Come on, honey, eat another one. Aren’t you hungry?”

  The tail of the only visible wolf had become nearly invisible (off and on, fluctuating with the eddies of smoke). I slowed down to walking speed. The tail then vanished, reappeared at the edge my hood, prompting me to quickly correct my course. It got to the point that I became excited when the I caught the briefest glimpse of a tail.

  “Where are you getting all this junk food?”

  What I thought was a tail was a jutting branch from a bush, and I smacked it with my grill. I lost all visual contact. Jill tried to communicate something to me, but her barks were meaningless and I didn’t have the luxury of watching her to try to understand. I had been slowing down incrementally and the pack likely pulled ahead. I increased my speed momentarily so I could catch them. Jill barked in protest. “It’s okay, Jill, calm down. I’ll catch them. We’ll be at the bottom before you know it. Sit back and enjoy a tootsie roll or something.”

  At ten miles an hour there was still no sign of them and I couldn’t see shit. Jill became hysterical. I trusted her judgment more than mine, so I decided to slow down and wait for them to find me (a decision better made a few seconds earlier).

  Blindly we drove off a low cliff, rolled to the bottom of the hill.

  Chapter 21

  Louis Rendell hated a full moon. When prowling around a neighborhood, a thief depends on his cover. Tonight he was blessed with a thin crescent moon, and would capitalize on the thickness of night. He sung a hymn under his breath as he drove past Gilligan’s Gas ‘N’ Pass: “It ain’t a crime if you don’t get caught; if you don’t get seen, you don’t get sought.”

  He parked his car behind a vacant pawn shop, which shared a parking lot with a vacant dry-cleaner, and jogged the pitch-black quarter mile of rustic land to a sub-community, a satellite of Davis. Louis eyed his first mark from a fair distance and instinctively crouched and weaved from oak tree to oak tree until he reached the unfenced backyard of the lower-middle-class home.

  “Loot ‘em hard and leave ‘em hurtin’, shiny things pay off for certain.”

  Appreciating the absence of noisy pets and motion-detecting flood lights, he reached the backdoor. Louis laughed (without a sound, of course) as he slipped the simple chain lock from its latch. Within seconds of stepping foot across the door’s threshold and into the dining room, he was stuffing sellable items into his many pockets. The lighting was optimal: a dimmer switch set low. He pocketed his flashlight.

  The kitchen was piled high with dirty dishes and clutter. On the baker’s rack was a purse and keys. The keys were discarded when he remembered what was parked in the driveway. After removing the wallet from the purse and riffling through it, he gracefully made his way to the poorly lighted living room, stuffing cash and credit cards into his cargo-pants pocket.

  The living room appeared larger than it was due to the broad mirror over the fireplace reflecting its twin. The room’s lighting came from three sources: electronics display screens, the kitchen’s incandescent light, which shone partially into the living room, and the reflection from the oversized aforementioned mirror.

  He pocketed the wallet found on the key-rack shelf by the front door and proceeded to the fireplace mantle, where the silhouettes of knick-knacks, frames, and a vase caught his attention. He examined item after item disappointedly, quietly setting them back on the shelf. He made his way down the mantle, palmed a ceramic Lady Mary. He returned the worthless item.

  Even before his peripherals caught the slightest twitch of a shadow behind him through the mirror, the fine hairs of his neck bristled. In the light-starved far corner of the room stood an impossibly black figure discernable only by a pale yellow luster outlining its inscrutable shape. Before Louis could turn around to discount the figure as a mere illusion or shadow, a breath of humid fetid air grazed his neck. Decaying flesh.

  He gagged, spun around. Nothing was there.

  He scanned the room frantically.
The stench left as quickly as it had come. He whispered, “Who’s there? Show yourself, asshole.” He drew the gun tucked in his waist.

  A moment passed. Nothing stirred, sounded, smelled. He tucked the gun back in his waist band. Jumpin’ at shadows, Lou? He checked the mirror: the corner remained vacant. It was just the awkward light reflecting from the mirror. Just an illusion. So why was his heart still racing? He decided to get the hell out of the house after checking one last item.

  At the end of the mantle was something of great interest: an urn. From years of experience he knew that shrines of dead relatives often included heirloom treasures.

  “Take all he has, you know you’re a pro, steal this guy’s shit and baby let’s go.”

  As he had hoped, a diamond ring hung around the tapered neck of the urn by a gold chain. He removed it with a nervous grin and gave the diamond a cursory appraisal.

  Even if what he had perceived in the corner of the room was imaginary, the needle prickling sensation tumbling down his vertebrae like dominoes was not. From the silence came padded footsteps.

  “Ain’t no one there, it’s all in your head. If it’s still in the mirror, baby you’re dead.”

  He blinked up at the mirror.

  It’s not real man, your mind’s gone whacked. It’s just an LSD flashback, a hallucination. Trippin’. What was it, Purple Sunshine? No, Hazy Sunshine! Five years of frying in high school will do it. Lou, stop being a pussy and put that ring in your pocket and let’s blaze this bitch. His heart was pounding. He turned around.

  It was a demonic figure befitting of a nightmare. So monochromatically and hellishly black that its extremities were indistinguishable from its body until they moved. Narrow black horns spiraled up from its black void of a head. Singularly tall, it hunched forward under the ceiling.

  Lord have mercy, this is real.

  Lou lunged away from it. Its black left hand lashed out and grappled Lou’s neck, spinal cord popping off like bubble wrap from skull to coccyx. His legs went limp, weight resting solely in its hand.