As he reached me, I realized to my dismay I still held the bloody scrap to Ashlyn’s pajamas folded in my hand. I did a quick scan of my immediate surroundings before laying it on a dusty shelf next to the door.
Then, steeling myself, I stepped up and carefully took the limp form from Allen’s arms.
“I’ll be careful with him,” I promised, and slowly turned to make my way back to our little fire.
The boy felt heavier than he looked, and I couldn’t keep the words “dead weight” from crossing my mind. He looked asleep, and I could see how his parents could find hope in that, but he also had a stillness to him…an absence…I couldn’t help but notice as well. Studying the unmoving face as I walked, I noticed how one of the eyes had cracked slightly open, staring off into nowhere. And seeing it made me realize how the very hope keeping the Treadwell’s going, also kept them from really looking and seeing what lay right in front of them.
This wasn’t a little boy. Not anymore. This was what remained after that little boy went to play in fields far, far away.
Once back at the fire can, I knelt to lay him down as instructed. I had been gone only a little over a minute, but I still felt obligated to make sure the area remained as clear as we left it, so I checked again for any vermin in need of removal. But as I scanned the area to look for ants or other pests, I noticed something had changed.
Allen’s shotgun no longer leaned against the tower.
Frowning, I looked up to see Darla standing at the gate of the enclosure with the weapon cradled in her arms. She hugged it to her like she didn’t know quite how to hold it, but with all the fervent desperation of a drowning woman clinging to a life buoy.
What the…?
“Darla?” I started to rise to my feet. “What are you doing?”
I never got an answer, because right then something impacted against the back of my head with tremendous force.
And for the second time that night, darkness swallowed me.
###
“Mark! Look at me! How many fingers do you see?!”
Consciousness returned like a nightmare that refused to go away.
Oblivion had been a pretty comfortable place and I didn’t feel terribly excited about coming back…mainly because somebody had substituted my head with a throbbing mass the size of Jupiter, while my stomach felt like it had been out to sea for a week. Now, just to make my misery complete, here came Casey with her game of count the fingers again.
“Fourteen,” I groaned. “Right?”
“Works for me,” she exhaled in relief. “You must have the hardest head in South Texas. C’mon, let’s help you lean up against the tower here.”
I fought the rising gorge in my stomach as we executed her plan. Still badly disoriented, I closed my eyes and tried to focus on bringing myself into the here and now. I figured I would let my ears do the work first, at least until the world stopped spinning and it was safe to look again.
“So what happened this time?” I gasped. “And by the way…Ow!”
The mere act of leaning my head against the tower introduced me to a whole new experience in pain.
“That’s what we were going to ask you,” she replied. “All we know is somebody slammed the door to the shed on us and wedged a board under the knob. We finally had to knock the sheet metal loose from one corner to get out. Do you remember anything? Anything at all? It’s really important, Mark, so try hard.”
I didn’t know what could be so important, but she sounded serious so I reluctantly tried to focus. Honestly, I’m pretty sure even the act of thinking hurt. But the effort yielded results and fragmentary images arose of me carrying the Treadwell boy back to the little fire, then looking up to see Darla.”
“Darla…” I winced in an effort to remember. “I…I saw Darla. I was laying Ethan down and looked up to see her standing at the gate. She had the shotgun. I started to ask her what she was doing but I think that’s when I got clobbered.”
“Damn,” Casey grumbled, “she didn’t waste any time at all, did she. Okay, got it…but Mark, here’s the important question. Was Ethan still okay then?”
“Huh? Define ‘okay’.”
“Alive, Mark. Was he alive?”
“Uhh…yeah, of course.” Then the implication of her question hit me. “Oh, holy shit! You mean he’s not now!?”
I opened my eyes and saw the boy no longer lay where I had placed him. Only Casey and I sat by the fire can. Forgetting my nausea, I sat up to see the two of us were alone.
Nearby, lantern light poured out the partially open door of the shed, as well as from a corner where the sheet metal had been bent back. The sound of soft crying and low voices issued from within.
“Aw shit, Casey, what happened?”
“We’re not sure,” she kept her own voice low, “but once we got out here we discovered Darla and Tommy gone, along with the shotgun and my bag of rags. Your pockets had been turned out so I guess Tommy got his glow stick back, too. You were lying across Ethan’s body.”
“Oh Christ, I must have fell on him. You don’t think…”
“No,” she insisted. “It couldn’t have been because of you. You were lying across his hips and legs, so you weren’t interfering with his breathing.”
“Thank God,” I breathed, “but what happened to him then?”
“There’s no way to know for sure. To tell the truth, Ed thinks it’s just a matter of his body figuring out there was nobody home upstairs and shutting down. He’s doing his best to convince Mr. Treadwell, but I don’t know if Allen is buying it.”
“Not buying it?” I looked from the shed to her with alarm. “He thinks it’s because of me?”
“No, Mark,” she sighed. “He’s got this idea in his head that maybe Tommy killed him.”
“Yeah?” I grimaced while she gently probed my abused cranium. “Well, don’t get me started on the subject of Tommy. He ain’t exactly my favorite person at the moment.”
“Mine either…especially now that he’s playing Igor to Darla’s Frankenbitch…but that don’t mean he killed Ethan. Ed said he could find absolutely no sign of foul play. No bruises, or scratches, or anything to suggest a death by something other than natural causes. But the problem is Mr. Treadwell has changed his mind and now insists on going to the playground.”
Something tickled the back of my mystery writer’s mind, but didn’t manage to latch due to the sudden appearance of Ed and Allen at the shed door.
“I really wish you would rethink this, Allen,” Ed implored the other man.
“Darla wanted to go to the playground. There’s where I’ll find them.”
“Just let them go!”
“I can’t do that.”
“Allen, this isn’t going to…”Ed trailed off as they approached. “Mark! You’re awake?”
“Working on it,” I reported. “What’s going on?”
“We were coming to load you into the wheelbarrow.” He knelt beside me and took over probing the back of my head. “But if you can walk that’s going to change a lot of things.”
“Yeah? Like?”
“Allen has decided to go to the park, and with you down our only choice would have been to load you into the wheelbarrow with Mrs. Treadwell and go there to. But if you can walk, it will give us a lot more flexibility.” Then he grinned apologetically. “No pressure.”
“Right,” I suppressed a whimper at all the poking my head was getting. I would have given real money to be able to simply hand him the thing and everybody could pass it around and poke it to their hearts content.
At least it helped take my mind off of my stomach.
On the other hand, it didn’t make me forget what just happened. Another person had died, and the chips were still falling. Now it behooved me to be diplomatic while my head still rang like Poe’s bells.
“Casey told me what happened, Allen. I am so sorry.”
“Thanks. But I don’t think it was your fault.”
I looked up at his drawn and
sweaty face, feeling helpless. What more do you say to a man who just lost his child? Truthfully, Ethan had already been gone, but as long as he still breathed they had held out hope. Now that hope had died as well.
And to make matters worse, I didn’t share Casey and Ed’s certainty it had been due to “natural causes.” Something smelled wrong about the whole situation. It felt like I had all the clues before me but I hadn’t put them together right. On the other hand, I did know giving voice to that concern wouldn’t help matters.
Fortunately, Ed rescued me from having to carry the conversation further.
“Okay, Mark. You ready to try and stand up?”
“Yeah, sure,” I gulped, “but don’t expect a perky performance like last time. I think Tommy hits harder than the monsters do.”
I slowly pushed myself off the ground, hesitantly, and with infinite care. I moved like an old man, an impression hardly helped by Casey hovering beside me like a nurse at a retirement home. But I finally stood on my own two feet again.
I tottered for a brief second, but recovered without suffering the indignity of forcing Casey to try and catch me. Then it became a simple matter of reeducating myself in the skill of standing.
“You gonna be able to walk?” Allen asked softly.
“I think so,” I replied, slowly testing my balance by shifting my weight. “I need a few minutes to orient myself, but I’ll be okay.”
“Glad to hear it.” He gave a curt nod. “In that case I’ll go start moving Agnes to the wheelbarrow. I imagine this means you guys will want to keep with your original plan. If so, we can stick together till we reach the fork in the jogging path. From there I’ll head for the playground, and the three of you can move right over to the street and continue on.”
He turned without another word and walked stiffly back toward the shed. Watching him go made me ache for the guy.
I could tell he suffered in pretty much every way possible. Physical, mental, emotional…tonight had savaged him right down to his final shreds. He now moved with the mechanical quality of somebody on autopilot. The only thing keeping him going was the simple fact he needed to keep going.
Sometimes that’s all a man has left.
“Mark,” Ed rose to his feet beside me, “Casey and I will go help Allen. You go ahead and lean against the tower and get what little rest you can before we go.”
“Right.”
My equilibrium had started to return, but I didn’t intend to argue.
Ten minutes later I was the last one out the gate.
I pulled it shut behind me and gazed through the chain link fencing at the weather-beaten little shed within. It now served as a crypt containing the small body of Ethan Treadwell. Casey had scratched his name and birthdate on the concrete floor beside him.
Pretty crappy burial arrangements when you think about it, but I suppose it made for a lot better than Ashlyn’s.
I held up the bloody ribbon of cloth I had retrieved from the shed, and examined it one last time. I had originally intended on keeping it as a reminder of the stakes involved and the price of failure. It seemed like I owed her at least that much. Now I realized it would be doing the girl a disservice.
The Ashlyns of the world didn’t carry their failures on their backs. They lived in the world of the possible. They made their mistakes, figured them out, then focused forward again. That’s what had made her who she was. And that’s why, even though she had died, she had been the one to die in the process of giving the rest of us hope.
In the end, I settled for tying the little scrap of cloth to the gate…a small, silent statement that she had passed this way. Then I turned and followed after the others.
If I never see another cell tower again, it will be too soon.
Chapter Thirteen: Decimation
I pushed through the last of the brush to join the others on the dark jogging path.
After the relative openness of the tower enclosure, the brush lined path felt a little claustrophobic. Instead of the leafy caverns of the streets, the path felt more like a passage in an all too inhabited dungeon. There was also the matter of no longer having a tall, chain-link fence between us and the rest of the night. It left us feeling vulnerable and exposed, adding menace to the encroaching foliage.
We were back on the curve a little past the point where the jogging path left the creek, and a little before it would start to parallel Deer Ridge. We had chosen this way because to take the gravel driveway from the cell tower would have put us straight out on Deer Ridge, and visible for blocks in each direction. That would eventually be unavoidable, but we felt it best to put it off as long as possible.
So we moved forward in hushed silence, our ears attuned to each strange noise that sounded like it might be too near. Only the rasp-click of Ed’s prosthetic announced our presence, although I’m not sure what any sharp eared predator would make of it.
With Ed now a little more rested, he had chosen to take the lead with Casey at his side. Allen followed, pushing his wife, while I played the role of rear guard. My head still ached fiercely, and I found it easier to follow than go to the front where I would need to watch for and interpret potential threats as they came along. Besides, we were now a smaller group so front and back weren’t very far apart.
The fact we would soon split and become even fewer increased the sense of gloom hanging over us.
I barely knew the Treadwells, but having them go their separate way still felt like a blow. It felt like defeat. We were not a happy party back there on Darla’s patio but we had at least been a group. I realized now I had taken some small comfort in having those extra people around, althoug we barely constituted a functional band.
Yet the rate at which our numbers had diminished, both through deaths and abandonment, depressed me. It drove home how badly suited to this we were. We were merely a bunch of suburbanite night owls who had unconsciously felt on top of the world…as long as the world stayed safe.
Now that safe world had vanished, and the reality of where it put us on the food chain could not be denied.
And it was while I brooded over our new role as field mice I bumped into Allen’s back and discovered the group had come to a halt.
I looked up to see Ed raising the lantern while Casey leaned forward to peer into the darkness ahead. I realized with alarm we were on the part of the jogging path running alongside Deer Ridge, and I made a mental note to pay more attention now that our left flank stood exposed. Brooding about survival is no substitute for actually taking the necessary measures to survive, and I had been recklessly inattentive.
Fortunately, other eyes and ears had been more focused.
“What do you see, Casey?” Ed whispered
“There’s somebody ahead.” She squinted into the night. “I think he’s at the fork in the trail, but I can’t be sure.”
“It’s a person? What is he doing?”
“Nothing. He’s not moving. He’s just standing there.”
“Is it Tommy? Or Darla? They would have come this way.”
“I don’t think it’s Tommy,” Casey whispered back as she edged forward, “and it’s definitely not Darla. He looks like he’s leaning against a tree, and he’s still not moving.”
“He has to be able to see us,” I muttered, moving up beside her with pole/spear at the ready. I realized as I did I had forgotten to take advantage of our stop at the cell tower to put a point on it. Dammit!
“True,” Ed agreed. “I would call out but I’m not in the mood to let whatever hasn’t seen us yet know we’re here. Let’s ease forward and see what we’ve got.”
Nobody objected, so that’s what we did.
Another few feet forward and the newcomer started to become visible to our older eyes as well. It appeared at first glance to be a man in a torn housecoat. As Casey had previously noted, he leaned with his back against a tree. And he didn’t move.
“Guys,” Casey voice took on an unhappy tone, “I think he’s dead. And I’m not sure h
e’s human either. I think something bad happened here.”
That stopped our approach for a second. By this time we treated anything out of the ordinary as a threat. But staying didn’t count as an option either, so we moved forward again, although at a more cautious pace than before.
As we drew nearer, it became obvious Casey had called it right. He was dead. Very dead. And he wasn’t human.
The thing that wasn’t a man leaned back against a tree, right at the fork of the path, pinned to the trunk by what appeared to be a six-foot spear driven through its throat. Its face looked close enough to human it might have passed as such under the right conditions. The thing had oriental features, although the mouth stretched uncomfortably wide. Any grin by this guy would have immediately warned its witness of something amiss.
But the small pair of horns revealed under its displaced turban truly confirmed its inhuman nature. They were goat like in appearance, but black and more curved. The head garment might have been intended to mask them, or it may have merely been this creature’s idea of high fashion.
What I had initially taken to be a torn bathrobe was some form of kimono type garment that had been slashed in several places and ripped open down the front. From the waist up, the creature could have once again passed for human. But from there on down it became a completely different story. Its groin and legs were covered in dark fur, and the joints arranged in a manner once again reminding me of a goat. The slippers it wore were ridiculously short, hinting at hooves as opposed to human feet.
Overall, it looked like somebody had taken a satyr from Greek mythology and crossed it with a Mongolian warrior. But apparently this creature had been on the losing end of its particular war in a big way.
Its face bore the marks of a severe beating and, not counting the spear through the throat, any number of the stab wounds or slashes on its torso could have been fatal. A large bloody swath of missing skin on its leg revealed exposed muscle. Even in the dim light, the blood visible in the surrounding area unnerved me.
Nightwalk Page 24
