So much for hiding among the teddy bears.
I took off toward the front of the store, staying low, because all I could imagine was Roger seeing my silhouette through whatever light filtered in from the front windows. In the darkness, I saw the outline of the rubber ball display where I left Dorcas, and headed that way. When I got there, Dorcas was gone.
Oh, no—she was on the move, too.
If Roger ran into her before he ran into me, she was a goner for sure. Well, I suppose we were both goners in the end. This wasn’t a video game. If he stuck one of us with that jackknife of his, no little message was going to pop up saying, ‘Game Over. Do you want to play again?’
I stood there, my fingers clutching the large metal basket filled with rubber balls, my breath ragged and shallow, when I got an idea. The balls—I could use them. I pushed over the metal display, purposefully making sure it made a huge crash.
“Up here, stupid,” I screamed, then wound up my lucky soccer foot and started kicking the balls around the store. I could hear the twangy, rubber sound they made as they connected with my sneaker and sailed into the air.
“Damn you,” he bellowed. He wasn’t close but he wasn’t far either. Before he had a chance to hoof it up to me, I took a gamble and ran all the way over to the left-hand side of the pharmacy and crouched down low next to a newspaper rack. It probably had papers on it from Springfield and Worcester, and maybe even a local rag like the Guilford Gazette. The headlines would have been from last Friday night. Maybe they would be talking about the Emmys because, you know, it was Emmy season. Or maybe they would be talking about how bad this year’s apple crop was turning out. I didn’t care about headlines. All I could think about was how much paper there was and how useful it could be for frying poxers. A little could go a long way with even the most ignorant, backwater, misspelled bit of news.
“You leave him alone, Roger,” I heard Dorcas scream from somewhere on the other side of the store. She sounded like she was near the back.
“No, you leave her alone,” I yelled out into the blackness. I could picture Roger in my mind, whipping his head from left to right, not knowing which way to go first. Hopefully we were addling his already addled brain, because this dude was seriously whacked and we needed all the leverage we could get.
I heard movement down the aisle I was in. I figured Roger was on the move again and a lot less blind then we were in this maze. Then I heard the clank and scratch of his blade along the metal shelving. Now that was definitely goosebump-worthy.
“I’m coming to get you, kid,” he whispered in a low, raspy snarl. His psycho voice sent shivers down my spine.
Blind with fear, I forced myself to get back up and run across the front of the store. Was this how my life was really going to end—scared to death by the living instead of the dead?
Somewhere around the middle of the store, I got turned around and ran head-on into a display of Halloween masks. They glowed in the dark, just a little. As I hit the ground hard, horrible faces of clowns and skeletons rained down around me. Their stupid, hollowed out eye-sockets and evil grins fueled my fear like gas on an open flame.
The next thing I knew I was crawling on all fours down one of the aisles. I could still hear the scratch of Roger’s blade somewhere in the store. Maybe he even laughed a little in that demonic way that meant he had completely gone nuts. I desperately felt in front of me, my palms and knees aching as I scrambled as quickly and quietly as I could.
Finally, one of my hands landed on something soft and squishy. I almost yelped, but I shoved whatever noise that threatened to come out of my mouth, down into the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t going to give in to this—no way. No freaking way.
It was a stuffed animal. Another one was next to it, and then a third. I was back in aisle six where I had cleared a space for me to hide. I reached out blindly, groping in the darkness until I found the empty cubby I had excavated for myself. With a deep breath, I folded myself into it with both my hands holding on to the metal edge of the shelf just in case I had to leap out in a hurry.
“Roger’s coming,” I heard him twitter in a maniacal sing-song voice. Okay, I’d pick the covered bridge and the poxers in the ambulance over this any day.
My heart was beating a mile a minute and my throat went dry. Huddled on that bottom shelf, I could actually feel the blood racing through my veins, and it occurred to me that this whole situation was absolutely crazy. A week ago, about the only thing that made blood race through my veins were the online videos that I wasn’t supposed to watch but did anyway.
Now I was hiding in the dark, in a place called Jolly’s Pharmacy, in the butthole of Massachusetts, being chased by a homicidal senior citizen bent on slicing me up and feeding me raw to his dead wife.
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up.
Squeezed in among the stuffed animals, I couldn’t help but think about everyone we left behind. What was happening there? Were they dead or dying? Did they . . . I couldn’t even think it . . . mutate into poxers? What if they had? If I died at the hands of Roger Ludlow, Trina would just have to pick up the pieces and take out Mom and the rest without me. How would she ever be able to live with herself? How would Dad ever be able to look at her again?
What a mess. What a nightmare.
I heard a noise in the back of the store. I’m not sure, but it sounded like the door. Did Dorcas make it out? What about me? Was she going to leave me here at the mercy of Roger and his sharp little toy?
I wanted to scream ‘Hey, I’m the immune one. Don’t leave me here with Roger the Ripper’, but I could barely breathe. Dorcas wouldn’t really leave me, would she? Could she? I shriveled into myself, dark thoughts taking over and making me realize that there was no one I could trust—absolutely no one. If eighty-two-year-old Dorcas Duke was determined to ring every last second of smoke-filled life out of her sorry existence, was she going to do so at my expense?
I was her sacrifice—a kid with total immunity, a kid who had his whole life ahead of him, a kid who never even got past first base with Prianka Patel.
What a bitch. Not Prianka—Dorcas.
The darkness was shattered by a piercing howl. “AAAARRRRGHHHHH,” Roger screamed in utter futility. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. You did this to yourselves. You came in. No one asked you to come in but you came in just the same.”
He was at the top of aisle six.
“I was fine. I was just fine,” Roger bellowed. “Me and my Millie, we were fine.” If he was so fine, then why did he answer the S.O.S.? Oh yeah, his Millie was getting hungry and we were meat on the hoof.
I heard his slow and steady footsteps coming down the aisle. The sharpened blade of the knife scratched against the metal shelving like fingernails on a chalkboard. It was like the sound of death.
He was ten steps away.
He was five steps away.
When he was right in front of me he stopped. I don’t know what made him do it. I don’t know if I stank of fear, or my heartbeat sounded like a timpani, or what. I stopped breathing as he stood there. I could imagine the sweat dripping through his fingers as he held on to that little blade, its metal edge waiting to cut deep into my throat.
All of a sudden, his old-man hands shot out and dug deep into my scalp, and it was my turn to scream. Roger dragged me out of my hidey-hole, laughing like a banshee the whole time.
That’s when Dorcas shot him.
She used the handgun I left in the ambulance. Somehow she managed to get herself out the back door and into the ambulance to find what I had stupidly left behind. Still, she came back for me.
She came back.
She did.
I cried and cried until I thought I would never stop.
23
ROGER WASN’T DEAD. I didn’t know how Dorcas was able to aim so well in the dark, but she shot him in the leg, right in the meaty part of his calf.
“Shut up, you pansy ass,” she spat at him as he blubbered and bled all ove
r the floor of Jolly’s Pharmacy. “Suck it up.”
If I wasn’t crying so hard myself, I might have laughed. Thankfully, Dorcas ignored my tears.
Roger’s knife had flown out of his hand when the bullet hit him, and skittered away like a crab. He fell to the floor, tearing out a clump of my hair as he went. I heard the ripping sound, but I think I was too scared to register the pain, or the sticky wetness that dripped down my forehead.
He couldn’t get up. He sat there bleeding on a pile of stuffed animals and crying for his Millie—always his Millie.
Well poo-poo for you, you homicidal maniac. Millie and her friends were going to have to go hungry—unless, of course, you wanted to offer them your own sorry ass.
What a freak show. What a weird-ass freak show.
Dorcas didn’t say a word as she patiently waited for me to wring out every last tear. I have to admit, that was pretty cool of her.
With Roger’s flashlight, we saw that we were in a little toy section of Jolly’s Pharmacy. This was where all the eighteen-year-old single mothers with tattoos on their arms probably came to buy cheapo toys for their kids. I found a jump rope with daisies decorating the handles. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to bind Roger’s hands together, although I think if he really tried, he probably could have gotten out of the knotted mess I made.
He didn’t struggle. He just wept. When I was reasonably sure his hands were secure, Dorcas and I grabbed him by the jacket collar and I dragged him to the back of the store to the pharmacy. Even in the dark, I knew his ruined leg was probably leaving a streak of blood along the carpet, but I didn’t care. No one was going to send for a professional cleaner. No one was going to look at the floor of Jolly’s Pharmacy ever again.
“This idiot lost us precious time, Tripp,” Dorcas snapped as we deposited him in front of the vitamin display. “We have to find whatever your father needs and get out of here.”
I nodded. It occurred to me that Dorcas actually called me by my real name instead of just ‘kid’. I suppose going through what we just did with Roger had softened her crusty edges a little, but I doubt they would stay soft for long. It wasn’t in her nature to be soft, and right then, I was thankful that she was a tough old lady—like leather tough.
Once we were sure that Roger was about as dangerous as a bowl of pudding, we focused on what we came for. Illuminated by the flickering plastic jack-o-lanterns and our flashlights, I was able to find a cabinet with a lock on it just like my dad described. Luckily, the key was sticking out of the keyhole. All I had to do was turn it to get at all the scary drugs inside.
Dorcas took a ‘Hello Kitty’ girls’ back-pack from a nearby display and stuffed it full of bottles and tubes of medicine, along with anything else she could get her hands on. Meanwhile, I filled a cardboard box with bandages and cotton and more drugs.
Roger Ludlow just sobbed. I didn’t think his tears were because of his leg. He kept calling out in the darkness for his Millie. He wouldn’t shut up, and after a bit we heard banging on a door somewhere in the far back of the pharmacy, near the exit. That was probably where the basement was. At the same time, some of the poxers out front started open-palming the big plate window. I guess it was only a matter of time before either the basement door or the glass was going to give way, and I didn’t want to be there for either.
Before we left, Dorcas bent down in front of Roger. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes. “We’ll take you with us,” she said to him.
“Your nuts,” I told her, but she completely ignored me.
Roger just shook his head—the sign of a man who had completely given up. Roger Ludlow, the homicidal maniac, was no more. In his place was a wounded old man who was ready to cash in his chips, bite the big one, keel—you catch my drift.
He didn’t have fight in him anymore, misguided or otherwise. Besides, I think he was completely ashamed of his utter insanity. Even thought my head still pounded from where he pulled a handful of hair from my scalp, I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. Considering the past week, I’d say anyone was entitled at least one little mental breakdown. It’s just that Roger’s wasn’t little. He dove over the edge without looking back, and now he wanted nothing more than to pay for it and move on.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “You leave me and you leave my Millie. You hear me? You leave us rest in peace.”
Dorcas didn’t ask a second time. Instead, she pulled a bottle of medicine out of her pocket and pressed it into his hand. “Use these,” she said to him. “All of them. It will take away the pain.” Roger pursed his lips together and nodded just once. I knew Dorcas wasn’t talking about bullet wound pain. She was talking about something else—something that could never be fixed.
Then we left him there.
We quietly slipped out the back with our bounty, climbed into the ambulance and locked the doors behind us. Although it was dark out, I could still see that none of the poxers had figured out that we were behind the building. That was good for us but probably bad for Roger.
As we sat there in the dark, Dorcas said, “I just lost a little bit of my humanity.” Her words wafted into the silence that hung between us. She was talking about the bottle of pills. I wondered how strong they were and exactly what might happen if he swallowed all of them.
I really didn’t have to wonder. I knew.
“No you didn’t,” I said after a while. My head still ached. I would eventually have to look in a mirror to check out the damage, but not now. Now, I felt like I should let my scalp bleed and wash away all the horror we had just endured. “The way I see it, you just did one of the most humane things that someone can do.”
She reached in her pocked, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it in her cupped hands. “How so?” she said as smoke assaulted her lungs for like the millionth time.
“You gave him a way out with dignity,” I said. “He could have come with us. My dad could have patched his leg, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to make his own choice. I have to respect him for that.”
She wiped her face. I’m thinking she was glad we were sitting in the dark. “That doesn’t make me feel any better,” she muttered.
“That’s okay,” I said. “It’s not always about how we feel, anyway.” God, I was getting old, or wise, or maybe even mature. The simple truth was that Roger had to be free to make up his own mind. Dorcas allowed him to do just that.
She started the ambulance.
“Dorcas?” I said.
“Yeah, kid?”
“Can I have a cigarette?”
“You don’t want one,” she said without missing a beat.
“I think I do.”
As she pulled the ambulance down along the back of the building and away from Jolly’s Pharmacy, she said, “You’re our future, Tripp, and I hope to God our future has no room for the likes of cigarettes.”
She rolled down the window, and for a second I thought she was going to throw her butt out. Instead she just blew smoke into the wind. It rebounded on her and blew back into her face.
Yeah, I suppose I didn’t want one after all. There were plenty of other ways to die, and I wasn’t anxious to run across any of them soon.
24
MY WATCH SAID 10:45. We’d only been gone about three hours, but it seemed like days, and I felt eyes in the sky again.
Driving down the dark and twisty roads creeped me out beyond belief. Every once in a while we saw a poxer stumbling alongside the dense foliage, and with the ambulance headlights carving out a slice of light in the darkness, I once again felt as though we had a target painted on our roof.
Any moment now, Cheryl The It was going to bungee jump out of a helicopter, land on the hood of the ambulance toting a machine gun, take out Dorcas, and plop me into a giant-sized petri dish for safe keeping.
Maybe that’s why Dorcas was smoking up a storm.
She drove with both hands on the wheel, gripping them with her spotty, wrinkled hands, a cigarette stuck permanently
between her index and middle fingers.
When we finally got to the covered bridge, Dorcas pulled over to the side of the road to let me out of the ambulance so I could grab the minivan. We decided I’d be driving without my headlights on because two sets of lights on the road were exactly two too many beacons in a sea of darkness. One was bad enough.
“Follow my break lights,” she said, like I wasn’t planning on doing just that. I gave her two thumbs up and walked back to the van. We had left it there next to Sporto’s little jet-setter. Dorcas didn’t say anything about the sports car. I suppose she knew all along that she wasn’t going to be able to take it back with us. Still, if we weren’t in such a rush, I bet she wouldn’t have minded taking it for a spin.
Hell, I wouldn’t have minded taking it out on the road either—just once—but that would have to be for another time. I mentally wrote it down on a list, then added going to the movies, eating pizza, playing video games, and watching bad stuff on the Internet underneath it. All of those would have to be for another time—if ever.
Dorcas took the ambulance through the bridge and I followed her. On the other side, I saw Witch Hazel’s stretcher pushed up against the woods. I turned the other way and tried to blot out the image of the little poxer baby and its mom.
Still, their faces were burned in my memory, and burns don’t ever heal. They only scar.
We were a few miles further down the road when I heard the steady drone of helicopter blades. My forehead broke out in a cold sweat. I quickly flashed my lights a couple of times—just a second or two—until Dorcas realized there was something wrong. She pulled over to the side of the road and I pulled up behind her.
I got out of the minivan and nervously jogged up to the driver’s side of the ambulance.
“Turn off your lights,” I hissed.
“Why?”
“You hear that?”
“Hear what?” she said through a haze of smoke, but at least she still had the sense to know that if I said I heard something, then I heard something. The lights on the ambulance went dark.
The Dead (a Lot) Trilogy (Book 2): Wicked Dead Page 10
