Predatory Animals

by Gabriel Beyers

  Casper adjusted his rearview mirror.

  “This isn’t good,” he muttered. He wasn’t positive, but he thought he spotted the black SUV hiding beside an abandoned convenience store. He checked his mirrors, but the bends in the road blinded him.

  * * *

  Nan noticed Wicket and McTreaty approaching the nurse’s station, so she doubled over as if crying and slipped on her sunglasses. Though she was well known around town, it was mostly by name. Most people weren’t acquainted enough with her to recognize her in public, so for the most part she felt very comfortable moving through the hospital disguised as a red head.

  But Patrick McTreaty wasn’t most people. What were those idiots doing here? Were they following her? Did they suspect a hit on Felton? Nan ground her teeth. Those bastards had ruined everything. Somehow they had managed to poison her every step. And here they were again.

  Her hatred toward Wicket and McTreaty rose like a spurt of acid in her mouth and for the briefest of moments she was unable to remove the scowl from her face. She watched them talking to the same nurse she had spoken to. They were here to see Felton, there was no doubt. Those obtrusive, meddling pricks.

  It was going to be such fun to watch them burn for all the trouble they had caused and all the secrets that they were guarding. Her only regret was that she wouldn’t get to skin them alive, force the truth from their blood-choked throats, and listen as they begged for death.

  The stupid bitch nurse looked between them at her, said something that piqued their interest and they both turned as if startled. Nan pressed the button for the second floor. As the doors slid shut she couldn’t help but smile. Before exiting the elevator she pressed all the other buttons then turned toward room 214.

  Sylvester Felton lay in his stark white bed with his eyes closed. His mouth and nose were covered by an oxygen mask, and an IV tube was taped to his left arm. His face was lined with several tiny scratches that were scabbed over and a large purple bruise stood out brightly on his pasty white complexion. The machines surrounding him conversed in a language of beeps and clicks, annoying enough to merit a mercy-killing all on their own.

  Sly sensed someone in the room; his eyes rolled beneath their lids and finally popped open. He glanced about the room in a weary unfocused way. When his eyes settled on Nan, recognition flashed across his face and he flinched in terror.

  “Hello, Sylvester.” Nan smiled. “If you know where Bobby Bastion is, now would be a good time for confession.” He tried to lift his arms but was too weak to move. “No? It’s just as well. We are short on time.”

  Nan reached into her purse. Her fingers stretched past the cold metal of her gun, searching for the syringe. She held the long needle up for Sly to see. The hopelessness in his eyes brought a giggle to her lips.

  A clamor of footsteps sounded in the hall and the door burst open. Wicket rushed into the room like a mad beast, stumbling and panting. He started around the bed for her, while reaching for his gun. Nan dropped the syringe, reached into her purse, grabbed her own gun and fired two shots without bothering to remove it.

  Both shots found their mark in his chest. Wicket tripped, but his forward momentum carried him into her, knocking her off of her feet. As they tumbled to the floor entwined, a third shot rang out. Nan’s head bounced off of the tile and stars filled her vision. For some reason it was difficult to breathe, and a fiery pain grew in her chest.

  Triplet Infernos

  Casper made another circuit around the house peering out the windows. He did so in quick glances as to not make himself an easy target. The summer sun had settled behind the trees, and the blanket of night would soon impede his vision. The back yard was free of threats as far as he could see, so he moved on to the next window.

  He stopped for a moment in the kitchen, pulled out his cell phone and sent another round of texts to Dale and Patrick. Once again no one responded. His stomach slithered into a ball of writhing serpents while his throat knotted to the point where it hurt to swallow. He had separated with Dale and Patrick over three hours ago. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his soul.

  He had spilled the entire story to Maggie when he had returned home, and though she listened intently, he could tell she believed very little of it. She simply said, “When Dale and Patrick get here, we’ll all sit down to talk.” Then she moved into the living room with the children.

  He no longer worried about Maggie divorcing him. Much more of this and she’d have him committed.

  Casper paced the floor, obsessively checking his cell’s signal strength. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t dare leave Maggie and the kids alone, and there was no way he was going to take them with him.

  He never thought he would feel this way, but he missed the dogs. He was a man trapped in his own home, cut off from the world, with the overwhelming responsibility of protecting his family from an unseen foe. He wasn’t sure how the dogs’ presence would ease his fears—he just knew it would.

  Casper’s bladder warned him not to make another lap around the house, so he stepped into the bathroom, still clutching his cell. He placed his cane against the closed door, raised the lid of the toilet, and began unfastening his belt with one hand. Just as he was starting to undo his pants, his cell chimed. Earlier he had turned the ringer to full volume, and the loud tones echoed off the bathroom walls. He jumped and his cell phone slipped from his hand like a wriggling fish. In one of those nightmarish slow motion moments, Casper reached for his falling phone, over compensated the thrust of his hand and ended up spiking it into the toilet.

  Casper fished his phone from the toilet and shook it dry. He tried, without luck, to turn it on. He removed the battery, dried it on the hand towel then tried again. It was no use. The phone was fried.

  His face flushed hot and he stifled an urge to smash the phone on the floor. How could he have been so stupid? He was worse than a jittery old man. Dale and Patrick would never let him live it down. He sat the phone on the back of the toilet, relieved his bladder then went back into the kitchen.

  He couldn’t believe how silly he was being. Parts of his life had turned so strange that he assumed that the lump sum had been tainted. He had lost sight of the fact that sometimes people are late or that it seems like you are being followed, even though you are not. He was going to have to apologize to the children for making them sit together in the interior of the house, away from the windows. They probably thought he was crazy. Maggie for sure did. The Fourth of July was closing in fast, which meant summer would be gone before they blinked twice. To waste a beautiful day like this stuck at home with your paranoid father was every child’s nightmare. He would make it up to them tomorrow.

  Maggie walked into the kitchen and Casper could see right away from her eyes that something was wrong. “What is it?”

  “I was watching the news,” she said, her voice a raspy whisper. “There’s been a shooting at the hospital.”

  Casper stood for a moment unable to speak. “Who was it?” he asked when he finally found his voice. “Is anyone hurt?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  “Can you call the hospital and find out what’s going on?”

  “I’ll try,” Maggie said.

  Casper’s skin burned hot, but his insides felt cold. He tried to tell himself that Dale and Patrick weren’t involved with the shooting. But in his heart, he knew it was a lie.

  Maggie walked over to the phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen, put the receiver to her ear, but quickly pulled it away. She pressed the buttons, held it to her ear once again, then placed it back in its cradle. “The line is dead,” she said.

  Panic pricked Casper’s soul, but his mind warned him not to go back down that alley. He walked into the living room, where the children were watching TV, and checked the phone sitting on the side table. There were only two landlines in the house and he had hoped that this one had been knocked off the hook somehow, but it was secure in its cradle.

  He walked over to the
window, pulled back the drapes and looked out. The orange glow of sunset was now just a memory and the sky was ripening from a deep purple to black. A roll of light spilled across the grass and he recognized it as the headlights of a car pulling up the driveway. He had a sudden urge to shepherd Maggie and the children into his office.

  Instead, he went and looked out the front windows. The car in the driveway was a taxi and he recognized Patrick’s hulking frame in the back seat. His heart sank. Where was Dale?

  Maggie stepped into the hallway as Casper opened the front door. Patrick stepped inside and Casper could tell from the giant’s tear-reddened eyes that the news was grim.

  “What’s wrong?” Casper asked Patrick. “Where’s Dale?”

  Patrick’s normally jovial persona was drowned in the shadow of his eyes. He seemed diminished somehow, worn down and shaken. As they walked to the kitchen, he looked from Casper to Maggie to the children sitting in the living room and a wave of relief washed over him.

  “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” he asked. “I tried to call you. When you didn’t answer, I thought something was wrong. I got so scared.”

  Casper felt a bit dizzy. “I dropped my cell in the toilet. It stopped working. What’s going on? Where is Dale?”

  Patrick opened his mouth, but it took a moment before he could conjure any sound. “Nanette Pummel tried to kill Sly Felton. Dale got there just in time.”

  A dull buzzing settled into Casper’s ears and the world seemed to lose its color. He could read Patrick’s face well enough to know, but still he had to ask. “Is he dead?” His voice sounded so hollow in his own hearing that he wasn’t sure he had spoken out loud.

  Patrick swallowed hard. “Yes. She shot him twice.” Tears rolled down the giant’s cheeks. “Nan Pummel is dead, too. Dale got off one shot. Nicked her heart. She bled out right in front of me.”

  Casper wanted to say Good and may the bitch burn but his voice had fled. His mind stumbled about and once again he felt as if he was back in Rogers River. Too much was happening too fast and the current was pulling him under. Maggie clutched him tight, sobbing.

  The children came into the kitchen to investigate the commotion. Casper wondered what he should tell them. The truth? He doubted they would believe him. Perhaps if he trotted them out to the pole barn and showed them the dead abomination . . . but did he want to submit his children to that? He had spent the better part of a decade swearing there were no real monsters roaming the earth, and up until today he thought he had been right.

  Casper started to answer, but his voice was drowned out by the sudden thunderous clamor of gunfire and breaking glass.

  Casper shoved Maggie and Lucy to the floor and jumped over top of them. Tad, Beth and Patrick dropped to their stomachs just as a hailstorm of glass from the kitchen window rained down over them. The gunfire ceased and through the ringing in his ears Casper heard his children crying out in terror.

  “Stay down!” His screams sounded muffled in his own ears.

  No more shots were fired. Casper expected to see someone storm through the ruined French doors any moment, but instead a flame shot past the opening and landed out of view. There was a pop and a whoosh and then the dining room walls were alive with dancing shadows.

  “Crawl to me!”

  Tad and Beth obeyed without question, as did Patrick. A second explosion filled the living room and moments later one came from inside the garage. Lucy clutched her mother, screaming in hysterics. Casper grabbed his cane and used it to sweep away the broken glass.

  “Follow me and stay low.”

  Casper crawled through the hallways, dragging his injured leg behind him. Maggie and the kids followed behind with Patrick bringing up the rear. He led them into his office. Patrick started for the window, but Casper grabbed his ankle.

  “They’ll be watching the windows. We can’t go that way.”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than one of the office windows shattered. A storm of bullets shredded the sheetrock and sent clouds of drywall dust raining down on them. The overhead light exploded and hung sparking in the dark.

  “We’re trapped,” Patrick yelled. “They’re gonna burn us alive.”

  Maggie grasped her children. “Cas, what are we going to do?”

  Casper crawled to the three bookshelves against the back wall and pulled himself to his feet. He stood in front of the middle section and placed both hands on the third shelf from the top. He kicked at the ornate wooden tiles set at the bottom of the left and right dividers, and much to everyone’s surprise they popped inward. Casper pushed up and the shelf rose a mere inch. Then the center section of bookshelves rolled back on hinges, revealing a small hidden room behind.

  Casper stepped into the room. “Get in here fast.”

  Maggie ran in, the children clinging to her, with Patrick close on their tails. Casper grasped the bookshelf, pulled it and just before it closed a flaming bottle soar in through the window and explode against the wall.

  They were covered in a darkness inhabited by fear. The children cried. Maggie shuffled about. Patrick, feeling his way in the pitch, bumped into Casper’s bad leg and set it ablaze.

  “Quiet everyone. Stand still.” Casper reached over, groping along the wall until he found the light switch. The fluorescent bulb flickered to life and they all stood shielding their eyes.

  The room was no bigger than a closet with walls of unpainted drywall. Casper squeezed past his children, who reached for him seeking an ease to their terror, to the back corner of the room. He bent down, grabbed a handle fastened to the floor and yanked up a square of the plywood decking.

  Hidden beneath the floor was a concrete tube three feet in diameter with the steal rungs of a ladder set into the side.

  “Climb down. Hurry.” He waited for everyone to descend to the bottom before he eased his way down.

  The ladder led them down into a large concrete corridor resting fifteen feet below the house. The ceiling was just high enough for Patrick to stand straight, only occasionally having to duck beneath the string of basket-lights that illuminated their path, but narrow to the point that they had to walk single file. The corridor went straight for three hundred yards then opened up into a square room about double the size of the hidden closet, though a good section was taken up by a work bench and cabinets.

  Casper pointed to another ladder that ascended to a square opening covered by a metal door.

  “We’re under the pole barn,” Tad said, amazed yet trembling. He pointed to the metal door in the ceiling. “That’s the steel plate, isn’t it?”

  Casper nodded. “We’re going to climb up and out.”

  “But the people shooting at us are still up there,” Beth said in a near squeak. Her arms were wrapped around Maggie’s waist, and she looked as though she might climb straight up her mother and perch on her head. “Can’t we just hide until they are gone?”

  “No, we have to get out of here.”

  “Why?” Beth’s voice quivered with desperation.

  Casper pointed back down the concrete hall. Inky black tendrils groped down the vertical tube like the tentacles of an ancient kraken seeking prey. The far basket light was smothered in a plume of smoke. Dark phantoms danced listlessly around each other, waving their soot-lined cloaks, as they advanced up the hall. Black hands, thin as death, took hold of the next light and buried its brilliance as they watched.

  “If we stay here we’ll choke to death,” Casper said. “We have to make a run for it.” He went to the cabinet and opened the doors. Sitting inside were four tall canvass carriers and a large metal box.

  Maggie walked over and looked inside. “I thought you said you put the rest of your guns in storage.”

  Casper glanced over his shoulder. “Did I?”

  “You are one paranoid boy scout,” Patrick said with a nervous laugh, “and I love you for it. How did you build this tunnel without anyone finding out?”

  “I didn’t.” Casper opened the metal box a
nd pulled out a Glock 9mm. “Whoever built this house did. I found the door in the bookshelf a couple weeks after we moved in. I doubt our realtor even knew about it. This house is old.” Was old, he thought. Thanks to the Pummels and their hungry fire. “I just figured it was some remnant of the Underground Railroad.”

  “And just when were you planning on telling me about this place?” Maggie asked.

  Casper popped a full clip into the Glock, chambered a round then grabbed three more clips and shoved them into his back pocket. “I was saving it for our anniversary.”

  “You Marines and your secrets.”

  Maggie reached into the box and grabbed a Beretta 9mm. Though her face was painted with fear, her voice held the whimsical humor he had fallen in love with. She slid her soft hand behind his neck and pulled his face down for a kiss. “Once an asshole, always an asshole.”

  “Semper Fi, do or die.” Casper turned to Patrick. “Do you want a gun? I have a 357 revolver or you can take one of the rifles.”

  Patrick waved his massive hands and shook his head. His gentle face was drenched in sweat and his eyes were filled with a deep terror. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ve never even held a gun, let alone fired one. I might shoot the wrong person.”

  Casper nodded. “Keep the kids close to you then, and stay behind Maggie. She’s a crack shot.” He unzipped one of the canvas carriers and took out a Winchester 30.06 with a large scope mounted to the top. He loaded the clip then hung it over his back by the shoulder strap. “All right, up we go.”

  The living miasma of black smoke had invaded three-quarters of the hall and the acrid stench burned their noses. Though he didn’t want to, Casper laid his cane on the work bench before starting up the ladder. At the top he disengaged the locks and slid the metal door along its track. It rose and spun silently on a swivel hinge. Casper poked his head up and made a quick scan of the area.

  The pole barn was dark, lit only by the firelight shining through the windows. Casper saw no movement other than the dancing shadows so he climbed out onto the concrete floor. He waited for everyone to follow then moved to the window. The house was consumed by fire, turning night to near day. He counted five armed men moving about the grounds like angry wasps, but it was hard to tell if this was an accurate count. Unfortunately, both the large garage door and the regular door faced toward the house. If they were to escape, it needed to be now while Pummel’s assassins were distracted.