Frankenstorm

by Ray Garton

  “Something like that,” Miguel said. “Scared the hell out of me. I thought one of the trees had fallen.”

  “Sounded like a bomb,” Marcus added as he came into the room and sat down on the broad armrest at the end of the couch.

  “Then you don’t know anything about the dead body, Giff?” von Pohle said.

  “Body?”

  “In your front yard.”

  “You were serious? There’s a body?”

  The deputy’s grin got a little bigger as he firmly shook his head and wagged a rigid forefinger back and forth in the air, saying, “Ah-ah-ah, I never joke about dead bodies. Not on duty, anyway. You’re also gonna tell me you don’t know anything about the bullet holes in your front door, I suppose.”

  “Bullet holes?” Giff said.

  As he laughed, von Pohle turned to the man and boy who had come in with him and gave them a look that said Can you believe this shit? Then his head snapped around and his smile turned into an O for a moment. “Oh, I’m sorry, these are a couple friends I’m giving a ride to, is all. This is Andy and his son, Donny. They’re not with me in any kind of official way, not at all, I’m just giving ’em a lift. But I figured since we’re, y’know, in the middle of a fuckin’ hurricane, they should come inside with me. I knew you wouldn’t mind. If you’d like, they can go wait in some other part of the house. Maybe they could sit in the kitchen? You know, I think we could all use some coffee.” He turned to the man, who looked deeply worried, and said, “You want some coffee, Andy?”

  “Sure,” Andy said. “Coffee would be good.” He bent toward the boy and said, “Do you want anything to drink, Donny? Some water, maybe?”

  Donny nodded, then said, “I’m real hungry, too.”

  Andy put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze.

  Latrice watched the boy. A handsome young fellow with the same lustrous black hair as his father, big nervous eyes.

  Donny made her think of Robert and Tamara. Especially Robert and his poor arm and leg. She had to get home to them.

  “Do you have some coffee?” von Pohle asked Giff.

  “I’ll go make some right now,” Giff said.

  Latrice said, “There’s already coffee made out there. Should still be hot.”

  The deputy hadn’t noticed her before and now, as he turned to her, his face lit up. “Well, look at you!” he said. “Perfect! Why don’t you get the coffee for us!” He seemed quite happy about it.

  “I’ll get it,” Giff said, smiling as he headed for the doorway.

  “No, really,” von Pohle said, “I think I’d kind of enjoy being served coffee by your friend, here.” He turned to Latrice again.

  Latrice realized she was clenching her teeth and relaxed her jaw. This cop was pissing her off. She saw what he was doing. He thought he was being funny. She was surprised he hadn’t already called her Mammy or Beulah. But she felt too sick to say or do anything about it.

  “I’m not feeling so good,” she said. “You should let Giff get the coffee.”

  “Coming up,” Giff said as he left the room.

  The deputy took a few steps toward her. “You’re sick. What’s the matter?”

  She shrugged. “I’m feeling fluish. You might want to stay away. I may be contagious.”

  “Oh, the flu bug doesn’t like me. I never get it. Don’t even get the shots. I’m tough as nails. Are you, Latrice?”

  She hoped she didn’t look as shocked as she felt.

  Before she could reply, he said, “Dispatch said a Latrice had called. Was it you?”

  Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  Say something say something say something! she thought.

  Finally, she simply nodded.

  “What’s the story? What’s going on here? Something about a crazy old man and shooting?”

  Once again, she could not find her voice. Even when she tried to speak, nothing came out. And once again, she nodded.

  “That SUV out there have anything to do with it? The one that crashed into the house?”

  Another nod.

  “Why won’t you talk? Are you afraid?” He came closer and bent forward, leaning his hands on his thighs. “Are you in some kind of trouble here? Are these people hurting you? Do you—Jesus, you’re sweating.”

  She already didn’t like him, and she already felt angry, but when he leaned toward her like that, as if he were bending down to talk to a child, speaking so condescendingly, Latrice felt something hot rise up in her chest. She was suddenly so angry that she wanted nothing more than to drag her fingernails through his face from top to bottom, side to side.

  There was a loud crash in the kitchen, followed by the shattering of glass. The sounds startled nearly everyone in the room.

  “Hey, Marcus!” Giff called from the kitchen. “Could you come give me a hand?”

  Marcus shot up off the couch and hurried out of the room.

  The deputy stood up straight and frowned as he turned and watched Marcus go. Then he stared for a moment at the doorway leading into the hallway and, across the hall, into the kitchen.

  There was another crash, this time something metallic hitting the floor, like a baking tray, or something. Hushed but urgent voices came from the kitchen, sibilant and hissed.

  “The hell’s goin’ on in there, anyway?” von Pohle shouted.

  “Everything’s fine!” Giff called. “Just clumsy. Coffee coming up.”

  The deputy stared at the doorway, clearly suspicious. Then he started across the room, heading directly for it.

  No one moved or made a sound, but the air in the room seemed to tense.

  If the deputy went into the kitchen and found those two dead bodies lying in that bloody mess, the shit would hit the fan and fly in all directions. Latrice wondered how fast she could get out of that chair and run out of the house to her car. Her muscles ached and she felt weak, but she could not stick around for what was coming. She had to get home to her babies.

  Latrice’s head hurt so bad, she squinted as she watched von Pohle continue across the room, obviously on his way to the kitchen.

  Miguel closed his eyes for a moment.

  Latrice watched von Pohle pass through that doorway. She was tempted to dash out of the chair immediately, but she wanted to make sure he wasn’t coming right back.

  A moment later, von Pohle’s laugh bellowed out of the kitchen. “Well, what the fuck have we got here?” he said happily.

  Latrice’s aching muscles tensed painfully as she pushed herself out of the chair. She resisted the urge to run as she crossed the room. She was afraid that if she ran, somebody might try to stop her. But the second the front door was in sight, she broke into a run and grabbed her coat as she passed the coat tree. When she opened the door, it was almost blown out of her grip. She slipped around its edge and through the opening, then pulled it closed.

  Every muscle in her body cried out in pain as she put her coat on while hurrying down the steps. The wind was like a giant fist that just kept punching again and again, threatening to knock Latrice on her ass. Rain pelted her face and stung her eyes, but she put the steps behind her and reached into her coat pocket for her keys as she made her way between a couple of cars to the spot where she’d parked and—

  —she wanted to scream.

  The deputy’s patrol car was parked directly behind her Highlander. She could not get out.

  41

  One day, Sheriff Mitchell Kaufman would retire and finally devote some time to trying to get his cop stories published, maybe in a collection, stories he’d been writing and rewriting and polishing for years, and he might even start work on a novel. He’d never shown his stories to anyone, not even his wife, but he thought they would be ready when he retired. He knew that this story—the story of what was happening to him at that moment—was going to be a standout. It would be the story people remembered. He didn’t even know what the hell was going on yet, and already he could tell it would be memorable.


  After driving into the guardhouse, Kaufman sat stunned at the wheel, staring out the windshield. He wasn’t hurt, just momentarily flabbergasted.

  There’d been a lot of chatter on the radio, and normally he would be tuned to every word that came over that damned thing, but he hadn’t heard any of it as words or language, only as garbled background noise. He was too focused on his situation. But he needed that radio and he had to shake the fog out of his head and use it. The radio, the radio, he focused his attention on the radio.

  Dispatch was calling him.

  The homeless shelter was on fire in Old Town.

  A looter had been shot by a civilian, who was now in custody.

  Dispatch called him again.

  He needed that mike.

  Kaufman gave his head a good, hard shake back and forth a few times and rubbed his eyes.

  The person who had been on his roof when Kaufman crashed into the corner of the guardhouse had tumbled through the air, slammed into the guardhouse wall, and dropped to the ground like a rock.

  Now he was up, and he was shouting and gesticulating wildly as he looked around for a target for all that shouting and gesticulating, and his eyes fell on Kaufman through the windshield and side window.

  Getting a firm grip on the handle, Kaufman popped the door open against the blasting of the wind, then pushed it until there was a big enough opening along the bottom to quickly pull the microphone back into the car. But before he could pull the door closed—

  “You motherfucker who the fuck do you think you are you mean no-good son of a bitch—”

  The enraged and senseless screaming went on and on as two hands pulled on the top of the door. Kaufman saw the fingers curled over the edge, pulling hard. He dropped his gun on the passenger seat and reached his right hand over, grabbed the door handle with both hands and heaved back on it.

  He pulled the door closed.

  The hands had not let go.

  The angry cursing was replaced by a long, ululating cry of pain as the crazy man outside the car stood with eight fingers trapped in the top of the closed door, arms outstretched, elbows out and up at the sides, pale face elongated as the scream went on.

  For a moment, Kaufman was paralyzed by the scream and the sight of the man’s white face from below and he just sat there, unable to move. It went on for what seemed a long time, and Kaufman finally coaxed his right hand to inch over to the passenger seat and search blindly for his gun, fingers feeling around, fluttering over the upholstery until they found the cold metal.

  The man jerked his hands upward, pulling his fingers out of the door, and he staggered backwards. He was still screaming and because he was unsteady on his feet, the wind slammed him to the gravel. He rolled around on the ground in the rain and wind, wailing in pain, holding his hands to his chest and kicking his bare legs like a lunatic.

  Then he was on hands and knees facing Kaufman. Glaring up at him with teeth bared, like an animal on four legs. He got up on his feet, but did not stand up straight. Instead, he squatted low to the ground, pointed a finger at Kaufman, and ranted some kind of gibberish before charging forward like a bull with a loud battle cry, head down, straight for the car.

  Kaufman watched in horror as the man slammed his head into the door of the patrol car. Already rocking under the force of the wind, the car jolted with the impact and the man dropped to the ground again. But he didn’t stay there.

  Still gibbering, the man crawled over the ground away from the car, then got up again, hunkered down, let out another hoarse cry and charged the car again. But this time, he didn’t crash his head into the door. It hit the window.

  “Oh, shit,” Kaufman said as several cracks appeared in a sunburst formation branching out from the point of impact.

  The car’s engine was still running and Kaufman shifted to reverse. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw the black man who’d crossed the road in front of the car earlier. Now he was staggering toward the rear of the car, having trouble remaining upright under the storm’s assault, holding something in both hands, something long and heavy. It was a large tree branch. If Kaufman backed up, he’d run over the guy, and he didn’t want to do that again. He backed up just enough to disengage the front of his car with the corner of the guardhouse, then put it in park.

  Meanwhile, the other man was preparing to charge the car a third time. He’d crawled away again and now he was bending over once more, a look of determination on his face. His forehead now had dark stripes where blood was running down to his face from the wound on top of his head.

  “What the hell am I doing?” Kaufman muttered when he realized he had the radio mike in his lap and was just sitting there staring dumbly like a cow in a field. He picked it up and depressed the button with his thumb, but before he could speak—

  —the crack of a gunshot broke through the sound of the storm.

  The man charging toward the car went down heavily and lay sprawled and unmoving on the ground.

  Something heavy struck the back of the car with a loud bang once, then again, and Kaufman looked in the rearview. The black man was beating the trunk of the patrol car with the fat tree branch. Then he hit the left rear fender and started working his way up that side of the car, pounding the rear door, then the driver’s door. He clubbed the side mirror twice until it was dangling from the side of the car, and he would have finished the job, but there was another gunshot. That distracted him and he looked in the direction of the sound. The next gunshot put him down.

  As Kaufman looked around for the shooter, squinting to find a figure in the darkness that surrounded him, he lifted the mike to his mouth and said, “This is one-oh-one, one-oh-one.” He was surprised how winded and frantic he sounded and stopped to take a steadying breath. His heart was hammering rapidly in his chest. “I need backup immediately at the old Springmeier mental hospital in Batten. Shots fired, two people have been shot. I’m in my car at the rear of the building. Do not go to the front gate, it’s closed. Go farther east and turn left on Ogden Pass. It’s closed, but I removed the barrier earlier. About a quarter of a mile in there’s a new gravel road on the left that’s been cut through the woods. Take that road, it’ll bring you right to me.”

  He spotted unusual movement beyond the crashed gate. A dark shape was moving in the darkness toward him. It wore a black mask and black clothes. It carried something in the right hand that looked like it might be a gun.

  “The shooter’s approaching my car,” Kaufman said. “I see one, but there may be more. He’s wearing a black mask, like a ski mask.”

  The dark man kept coming.

  Kaufman reached down with his right hand, the hand holding his gun, and flicked a switch. When he spoke into the mike, his voice echoed outside the car from the speaker.

  “Stop! Do not come any closer! Put the gun down!”

  The figure stopped advancing, but he made no move to put down the gun. He simply stood there and stared at Kaufman.

  Beyond that dark shape, another emerged from the blackness. Then another. They all looked the same—black masks, black clothes—but something hung from the right shoulder of the second figure.

  “Son of a bitch,” Kaufman said as he flipped the switch. “This is one-oh-one. There are several people here approaching my car and they’re all wearing black masks. One of these guys looks like he’s got an Uzi.”

  “Backup’s on the way, one-oh-one.”

  The storm was growing worse. There was a sudden increase in the severity of the car’s rocking motions as branches and bits of debris clattered against it in a constant barrage.

  “In a hurricane?” he muttered to himself. “They’re not getting here anytime soon.”

  He was on his own and he was going to have to make the best of it. He put the mike on its hook, then tightened his grip on the gun as he reached for the handle to open the door.

  The cracked window in the door exploded inward and the howling wind drove the broken bits of glass into his cheeks and chin and
lips and eyes.

  The endless roar of the storm swallowed up Sheriff Kaufman’s cry of pain.

  42

  When Emilio looked at Fara’s face, he knew she wasn’t going to help Ollie and his men kill anyone. She turned to him, her features sagging with exhaustion and disgust, and said, “I can’t. I just can’t, I’m sorry.”

  Emilio said, “I think we’re gonna hole up in the office, Ollie.”

  “I need to know exactly how many infected people we’re talking about here,” Ollie said. He turned to Fara and said, “Can you give me a number?”

  “Dr. Corcoran could.”

  “And where is he?”

  “He was in my office when we left.”

  Ollie turned to one of his men, pointed down the side corridor in the direction of Fara’s office and said, “Go fetch the good doctor, will you? Fourth door on the right.” The man hurried away. He turned to Fara again and asked, “Is he going to cooperate?”

  “He doesn’t like confrontation,” she said. “If he doesn’t want to cooperate, I’m sure you can change his mind quickly with a little yelling and threatening.”

  Ollie nodded once. “Happy to do it.”

  She turned to Emilio and said, “I’m starving all of a sudden. I’ve got food in the office. Let’s go.”

  As they headed toward Fara’s office, one of the headlamps approached them through the dark.

  “He’s not there,” the figure said. It was the man Ollie had sent to get Corcoran.

  “He’s not in the office?” Fara said.

  “There’s nobody in the office.”

  Emilio asked Fara, “Where would he go?”

  “I have no idea. I’m amazed he would leave the office at all knowing what’s out here in the dark.”

  “What’s the deal?” Ollie said, approaching them.

  A voice shouted urgently from down the main corridor: “Hey! Hey! They’ve gotten out! You hear me? They got out down here and they’re loose! Outside!”