by Anthony Izzo
“Drop that. Drop it or I’ll shoot,” the soldier said, voice cracking.
“Afraid I can’t do that.”
Now his voice came in harsher tones, “Drop it! Damn it! Drop it!”
Jenny slipped the stone into Frank’s good hand. Palm open, the Light glowed, faintly at first, growing brighter and whiter. Frank stuck his arm into the air (hoping it wouldn’t get shot off), and a mass of white light filled the field and surrounded him and Jenny. He heard the soldiers gasp and imagined they would be shielding their faces from the glow. He heard the helicopter engine whine and hoped it would back off, but also hoped it wouldn’t crash, either.
Together, they started toward the black wall. Frank hooked his arm around Jenny’s so they wouldn’t be separated.
He heard rifle fire and actually felt a few bullets thud against the ground. Hopefully the shooters wouldn’t get lucky.
The outer edges of the beam cut into the mist. Frank and Jenny were surrounded in a bubble of light. The mist parted in front of them as Frank and Jenny moved steadily up the hill. Around them, through the barrier of Light, he saw the faces, twisted, deformed, swirling in the mist. They pressed against the Light, then turned away, their shrieks muffled and distant. Engel’s demons. So that’s where they go during daylight.
After what seemed like an hour, but was likely five or six minutes, they passed through the other side of the mist and stepped clear of it. Frank extinguished the Light and placed it back in his pocket.
It had been sunny and clear on the other side. In here, the air took on a dull gray quality, the same way it got right before a thunderstorm. They were near a two-story brick motel that bore a red-and-white sign reading EXIT 53 MOTOR LODGE. A yellow Volkswagen was the lone car in the lot. There were two bodies on the ground near the motel’s wall. They looked like a man and woman, both in blood-soaked pajamas.
“What now?”
“We find transportation,” Frank said. “Then we look for Charles and David.”
They approached the hotel’s doors, which bore a large, jagged crack across the glass. Frank opened the door and stepped into the small lobby, which was furnished with a gray carpet and wicker furniture. He moved straight ahead to the counter. There was no clerk in sight, only a stack of brochures with the Motor Lodge’s picture on the front. He reached his hand out to ring a desk bell for service when someone popped up from behind the counter. It was a stringy-haired woman in a faded flowered dress. There were scratches across her forehead and nose. In her left hand she held an aluminum baseball bat. Eyes wide and looking for a fight, she said, “What’re you doing here, huh?”
“We were wondering if you had a phone book.”
She looked at him as if he had just requested a block of Limburger cheese. “Phone book? I ain’t got a phone book, just this bat, keeps things away. Keeps the crazy things away, things that came last night.”
She waved the bat around as if warming up for batting practice.
Jenny said, “Can you put the bat down? We won’t hurt you.”
“No, no, no. They’ll come again. I need this. You got that, you bitch of a bitch? Need,” she said, and twisted her mouth into a toothy yellow grin.
He peered around her and on a table behind the counter he spotted a phone book. “Can I just use the phone book?”
“I told you I ain’t got no damned phone book!” she said, and slammed the bat down on the counter. The brochures toppled over the side and landed on the floor. She lifted the bat over her shoulder. Breathing heavily, she eyed Frank and Jenny as if they might be her next targets.
Frank didn’t have the time or inclination to battle the woman over a phone book. He had hoped to call for a cab, but given the state the city was in, one might not show up. The cell phone circuits might all be jammed up, anyway. “Okay, we don’t want your phone book. We’re just going to leave.”
“I should split your heads,” she said, eyes narrowed.
“What about the phone book?” Jenny asked.
“We’ll find another way.”
They backed out of the hotel, and the woman slunk back below the counter like some demented jack-in-the-box waiting to surprise the next visitor. He didn’t know whether she had been touched in the head already or if yesterday’s events pushed her over the edge.
They started past a Wilson Farms convenience store. It was dim inside and no clerk stood at the register near the window. Frank’s hand still bled, so they stopped in the store and helped themselves to some tape and gauze. Outside the abandoned store Jenny bandaged his hand and he tucked the roll of tape and extra pads in his pocket. Then they started back down the road.
Frank had been to Buffalo numerous times and was trying to navigate in his head the way to Charles’s house. They went a little farther up the road, past a lot filled with semitrucks, and he spotted the van maybe fifty yards ahead, pulled at an angle onto the sidewalk. “That could be our ticket.”
“Hopefully there’s no crazy bitch with a bat waiting in the passenger seat for us,” Jenny said.
They approached the white van. The rear bumper bore a sticker proclaiming, PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR STUDENT AT EAST AURORA HIGH SCHOOL. There was a bloody palm print across the sticker. Frank wondered what fate had befallen the honor student and the parent.
He walked around the driver’s side and found the door open. There was more blood on the tan interior of the door. He poked his head in the van and found it unoccupied. A car seat in the rear. A soccer ball on the floor. A half bottle of Diet Pepsi in the cupholder. It appeared to be the standard vehicle of the suburban family. He leaned on the seat and checked the ignition. Bingo. A set of keys.
“Good news,” Frank said. “We got wheels. They must’ve abandoned ship.”
“If it starts.”
“What do you mean?”
“That door’s been open. Hopefully the interior lights being on didn’t kill the battery.”
“Let’s try.”
Frank got in the driver’s seat and Jenny went around and sat shotgun. He turned the key and was rewarded with the engine coming to life. He shut the door and maneuvered the van back on the road.
They pulled up in front of Charles’s Tudor home a short time later. Frank already didn’t like what he saw. The Children’s Hospital was across the street and a group of staff dressed in scrubs had gathered on the sidewalk. Most of them were crying. He saw one woman whose hands shook as she pointed to the building, explaining something to another staff member.
Frank and Jenny got out of the car. He hadn’t noticed at first, but there were lumps covered with sheets on the sidewalk. Maybe a dozen of them.
“That can’t be good,” Jenny said.
“Hey! What happened here?” Frank called to the group.
A black nurse in a flowered scrub top said, “They got in the hospital. Bastards starting throwing patients out the windows. Look,” she said, and pointed up.
Frank looked up at the ten-story building. Several windows were smashed out. His mind finally made the connection. The sheet-covered corpses were small. It was a children’s hospital. He suddenly felt sick. Everything had gone wrong in the world. The innocent were not spared death. You had only to look no further than the television news to know that. Children abducted, raped, molested, beaten by parents, forced to live in filth. Death didn’t discriminate when it came to age, and he knew that, but it still appalled him. How could this go on? How could his God allow it? And would God be angry with him for asking that question?
“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Some of those are babies, Frank. Babies.”
“Let’s get inside. I can’t look anymore.”
Charles’s kitchen was a wreck. The refrigerator door was open and the odor of spoiled food drifted through the room. The large island that dominated the room had its marble top cracked by something. The cabinets had been gouged and hacked. Broken dishes lay on the floor in front of opened cupboard doors. The rest of the house was in much of the same co
ndition, upstairs and down. And they didn’t find Charles.
Jenny leaned on the island. “Any idea where he could be?”
“I’m afraid the worst happened.”
“They came for him.”
“The lawn had been trampled when we came in. Did you notice? I’m guessing it wasn’t the welcome-to-the-neighborhood committee.”
“Do we know for sure it was the Dark Ones?”
“The cabinets bear their handiwork. Those were made by their swords, axes. It’s unlikely that a roving gang broke down his door and trashed the house.”
“You think Engel sent for him?”
“It’s possible.”
“Do you think David came here?”
He hoped they didn’t have David, as well. “No way of knowing.”
Jenny straightened herself up. “Charles’s daughter might know where he is. Maybe we’ll find David, too.”
“Hard to know that.”
“I’m just worried.”
Frank nodded. He found his way into a room lined with cherry bookshelves. A massive desk in the same dark wood took up a corner of the room. After going through a few of the drawers, he found what he was looking for in the bottom one: the phone book.
He flipped through it and found Laura Pennington’s address on Delaware Avenue, in the Park Apartments.
CHAPTER 26
“I still say we go downtown, hole up in a tall building,” Mike said. He was pacing again, a gun in each hand.
Milo rolled his eyes. O’Donnell was certainly stubborn. “Again, trapped.”
“Think about it. Those fucks would have to climb twenty, thirty flights of stairs to get us. I doubt they know about elevators. And most of the buildings are probably empty, anyway. The attack hit after business hours, right? So they’re not going to be looking for people in there.”
“We get trapped on the top floor, is someone going to send a chopper?” Milo asked.
“Dad, Mike’s got a point,” Debbie said. She was perched on the edge of the couch at Agnes’s side. “We can’t stay here.”
“It looks like they didn’t come down here last night,” Milo said.
“And if they do tonight?” Debbie asked.
Milo sighed. They couldn’t leave the city and staying here would leave them vulnerable to attack. “Okay, where then?”
“The HSBC building’s the tallest in the city. Something like thirty-five floors,” Mike said. “And they have an underground garage. The truck would be safer down there.”
“Good enough, I guess. We should start rounding up supplies.”
“Let’s—”
Mike was cut off in midsentence by voices coming from outside. It was a female and multiple male voices, and it sounded like tempers were getting hot. Milo went to the front window and saw a blond woman pointing toward the scrap yard and yelling. A tattooed man in a white tank top was flanked by two others who wore bandannas over their mouths and noses. She could be in trouble.
Mike joined him at the window, nudging Milo with his elbow. “Look at this.”
“That piece of crap, going after a woman like that,” Mike said. “Fucking Parrish.”
“You know him?”
“Him and his boys are in a gang, call themselves the Seneca Crew. They ain’t much. Just good for harassing locals.”
They were doing a pretty good job of it from what Milo could see. “We need to help her.”
But Mike had already passed him and was heading out the front door, a .45 in hand like some old-time gunslinger. Milo yelled for Debbie to wait inside and then followed Mike out the front door. The air hit him, brisk and chilly. He wished for a sweater.
He heard the woman saying something about taking her eye off her, then the tattooed guy saying he’d find her, then the woman saying if that piece of crap hurt the girl, she would kill all of them.
Mike led the way, Milo following.
Mike said, “Parrish, what’s happening?”
“Stay out of this, O’Donnell.”
“You okay, lady?” Mike asked.
The woman, who in Milo’s opinion was good-looking enough to be a movie star, maybe not A-list, but close, turned and gave them a fierce look.
“One of them took my daughter in there,” she said, pointing to the scrap yard. “I’m trying to stop her from getting raped.”
“Who was it?” Mike asked.
Parrish raised his hands. “Not your fight, O’Donnell, okay? Go back and play nurse maid to your mother.”
Milo noticed the guns in Mike’s hands. He had been holding them at his sides, barrels to the ground. But now he raised them slowly and aimed at Parrish.
“Apologize.”
The other two gang members, who were unarmed, glanced nervously at one another. Milo could only see their eyes over the bandannas, but they looked back and forth several times, twitchy looks.
“You’re writing a check your ass can’t cash,” Parrish said.
“Say you’re sorry,” Mike said. “Then tell me who took the girl. It was Tim C, wasn’t it?”
Milo considered putting a hand on Mike’s shoulder, but thought it might set him off. Instead he said, “Put the guns down, okay, Mike?”
“Stay out of this. It was Tim, wasn’t it?”
“Go inside.”
The woman said, “It was someone named Tim.”
“That’s what I thought,” Mike said. “I’ll help you find her. And if I find Tim, too, even better.”
Parrish said, “Remember you have to come back out this way, O’Donnell.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Mike said, then turned to Milo and said, “You coming?”
Parrish said, “You really don’t want to hang around here.”
“I’ll go.”
The woman looked at Parrish and said, “So you’re not going to help? Don’t you care? That girl is in trouble in there.”
Parrish shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t control him,” he said, a grin spreading across his face.
The woman went ahead, saying, “If you’re coming, let’s go.”
As Milo and Mike started for the scrap yard, Parrish called out, “Good luck,” and broke into wild, high-pitched laughter.
They slipped through the gates and after they were inside made quick introductions. The woman’s name was Laura. Milo felt dwarfed by the rows of rusted cars and piles of twisted steel that seemed to go on for miles. The ground was covered with crushed stone and it made crunching noises as they went forward. Milo guessed the place took up maybe a hundred acres. It was big. You got a sense of its size looking at it when driving on the 190. An expanse of rust, concrete, and gray-brown pathways zigzagged through the scrap.
Mike nudged him, handed him a gun. “You know how to use one of these?”
Hopefully he wouldn’t have to use it. He’d killed two NVA soldiers during his tour in Vietnam. It was at a distance of a couple hundred yards. He couldn’t imagine killing up close. “It’s been awhile, but yeah.”
“We’ll find the girl and then get back to Mom and your daughter. They’ll be fine. Parrish just hates my guts.”
“After pointing a gun at him, why would you think that?”
Laura was stalking ahead of them. She stopped and turned. “You two waiting for a bus or something?”
Tim had hustled her down the first row of junked cars, gripping her arm and tugging. Sara had to fight to keep her balance, once falling to her knee. With one arm he dragged her along and with the other he held the gun on her.
They rounded the corner and for the first time she got a sense of the size of the place. Piles of scrap metal, some twenty or thirty feet high, carried on toward a distant elevated highway. There was a tall red crane in the distance and a track excavator with a shearlike attachment. Even if she were able to escape, the chances of finding the Everlight in all this were slim.
Now he wrapped his arm around her throat. The gun was pressed at her temple. His breathing was ragged through the handkerchief, and he stank of
sweat and stale weed. He continued to drag her along and she figured the farther they got into the complex, the less chance she had to survive.
“This could be fun, you cooperate.”
“Fuck off,” she said.
He gave a twist on her neck and she grunted in pain.
“Quit fighting it.”
“You’re a piece of garbage.”
They came to a pile of twisted I-beams and he dragged her around it and then shoved her. She flew forward and, arms out, braced herself before smacking the ground. Her palms stung. She rolled on the ground and got up on her knees.
He was pointing the gun at her. “Give me any more shit, I’ll shoot your knees out, do you right here.”
She felt hot, anger boiling up into her face. She could use the Light. But would it work on a person? And what effect would it have? It could mean burning someone horribly. She wasn’t sure even someone like this deserved that fate, but if she could blind him, that might work.
“Get up. We’re going farther in.”
She began to stand, finding that she didn’t have to conjure an image of warmth or light. The tingling sensation was in her fingers and she started to flick her hand, but he was quicker and leapt forward, pushing her over. She fell backward and he was standing over her and pulling on her shirt, forcing her to her feet. He stood Sara up and again wrapped his arm around her throat, this time squeezing hard. “I told you to move.”
She found herself being dragged along again, deeper into the yard.
They neared the big red crane. For a moment she thought she heard voices in the distance. Tim must have heard them, too. “Move faster.”
Near the crane stood a narrow corrugated outbuilding marked STORAGE. Tim corralled her toward the building. She tried prying his arm away from her throat, but his grip was viselike. He pressed the gun against her head again. “Stop struggling.”
She couldn’t use the Light right now. She had nowhere to aim, for he was behind her. But if she had the chance, she would. Just needed to get loose for a moment.
