by Hunt, Jack
“I can’t believe we left Devin out there,” Tyron said glancing at him.
“Get used to it. Burying the dead is a waste of energy.”
“You want to tell us what the plan is?” Sawyer said as he stoked the fire.
“Plan?”
“Well I hope Devin didn’t die for nothing.”
“The plan hasn’t changed.”
Magnus scoffed dropping down on the sofa and pulled out a pack of smokes. He banged it against his hand and placed one between his lips. “Yeah, come on, Cole, tell us your grand plan. We’re all just sitting on the edge of our seats. It’s gotta be good if you were in such a hurry to race back. Or perhaps that was fear I smelled in the forest.”
Magnus was pushing his buttons. If it weren’t for the fact that they were down one man, he would have put a bullet in his head. He was sick of his shit.
“It hasn’t changed. We’re just going to tweak it a little.” Cole looked at the girl. She was sitting against the wall staring at them while gripping her shoulder. He walked over to her and crouched down. “How about you tell us what kind of setup you have back in Lake Placid, and if you know anything about the death of my friend’s cousins? It might work in your benefit to tell us now.”
She spat in his face, and Magnus laughed.
“She’s a feisty one. A woman like that only understands one thing and I think you’re lacking in that department,” he said before laughing again. Cole glared at him then turned back to the girl. He wiped the spit from his face with the back of his sleeve and looked at her.
“Looks like that dressing of yours needs replacing.”
“It’s fine,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Then you won’t mind me taking a look.”
She shook her head. He grabbed her wrist and dug his fingernails into her skin until she cried out and released her grip on the bandage.
“Um. That does not look good. But you know what, I think I have just the thing for it. Stay right here.”
He got up and the other three eyed him as he walked into the kitchen and started digging around in the cupboard for a tool he’d seen earlier that day.
“There it is!”
When he returned, he was holding a kitchen blowtorch that was used to create that crunchy sugar on the top of crème brûlée. He released the safety switch on the back and as soon as she saw it she cowered back. “No. No!”
“It’s okay, it’s going to hurt like a bitch but it’s better than bleeding out.” He stooped down and pushed his hand against her chest to keep her against the wall. She flailed around trying to prevent him from getting near her. “Sawyer, Tyron. Hold her down.”
As they came over she went berserk and fought back but it was pointless. Within seconds they had her on the floor and Cole was sitting on her stomach. He hit the ignition switch on the back and a large blue flame burst forth.
“Hold her still.”
She thrashed around screaming at the top of her voice and that was without even getting the flame near her. Cole removed the bandages and brought the flame down and began cauterizing the wound. Her screams echoed and then within seconds she blacked out from the pain. He pulled back and placed it on the counter and then gave Sawyer a hand lifting her onto the sofa.
“You know that wasn’t helpful,” Magnus said sitting there with his feet up and gazing at his half-smoked cigarette. He rolled it between his fingers then glanced at Cole.
“And you would know because?”
“It’s basic 101 medical care.”
Cole snorted. “Says the expert.”
“No, my mother was a nurse for ten years.”
“Worked in the past,” Sawyer said.
“Yeah until they figured out it can lead to infection.”
“Like you care,” Cole said.
“I don’t, I’m just saying.”
“Well don’t. Keep your trap shut.”
Cole looked at the girl one more time before heading into the back to snort a line of coke. He was losing his grip on the group and they were beginning to see that. If he didn’t take action and demonstrate that he was still in control, they would soon lose confidence, if they hadn’t already.
* * *
Both of them were shivering like crazy when they made it onto Irish Hill Road. Damon’s thighs were burning from jogging. They’d stopped a couple of times on the way but only for five minutes to catch their breath and then continued on. Time was ticking and it would soon be morning. Once daylight arrived, Cole would reevaluate the situation. Although he wouldn’t tell Jesse, he knew the chances of Maggie staying alive were slim.
His foster father was living in a used twenty-seven-foot Airstream trailer that was parked on a large lot of land belonging to a friend of his. After losing his wife to cancer he’d sold their three-bedroom home and most of his belongings and downsized and purchased the trailer. He’d wanted to get off the grid and live a minimalist lifestyle and he’d done that to some degree.
“Is he even here?”
“Only one way to find out.”
When they arrived at the two-story home belonging to his father’s friend, Amos Jones, they circled around back and saw a yellow light on inside the trailer’s windows, and a solar generator churning away. The trailer itself sat back in the yard on top of bricks as one of the tires was flat. There was a dense forest that pressed up against it. He stopped about forty yards away and took a deep breath to prepare himself for his father’s bullshit.
“You okay?” Jesse asked.
Damon swallowed hard and took a second to gather his thoughts. His mind was flooded with the final argument. Would he still remember that? It wasn’t all bad times. He’d taken him hunting when he was a kid, taught him a lot about life and standing on his own two feet. Even though they hadn’t seen eye to eye. It had been so many years since they’d met face to face. He fully expected him to not open the door. Reluctantly he approached and rapped his knuckles against the steel. He saw a shadow inside move to the window; a blind was pulled down then he heard him approach. The door swung wide and Damon stepped back.
“Hey Dad.”
Chapter 15
Foster Goodman learned about the screw-up over the radio. Since seven that morning, he’d been a bag of nerves. He crushed the cigarette under his boot before heading into the medical center. No one from the department had shown up at his door which led him to believe the sole survivor hadn’t said anything yet.
It had to stay that way.
After killing Chief Wayland he’d been horrified by what he’d done and paranoid of being caught but as the days passed, he began to relax. The fact was the cops didn’t have the means or the resources to throw at a murder investigation.
It got him thinking about all the ways that he could use the country’s situation to his advantage. At first it was small things like taking items from homes that were meant to be brought back to the Olympic Center for storage and distribution. From there he stepped up to stealing pills in order to pay drug addicts to do a few tasks. But that wasn’t enough. As long as someone was in charge of who got what and who did what, he’d remain at the bottom of the totem pole. The only way to change that was to cut the head off the snake and he assumed once Chief Wayland was gone the others would fall in line. That was his mistake. Seeing Ted Murphy standing there spouting bullshit to the residents with a smug expression made him sick. He was just like Wayland, a man on a power trip. He knew that the moment he’d stepped up to the podium and introduced himself as the current chief of police things wouldn’t change. Killing one wasn’t enough.
Foster passed the officer inside the entranceway of the medical center. He noted several nurses darting from one patient to the next. It was a chaotic scene and foolish at the same time. The nurses were so preoccupied and overwhelmed by the need they didn’t even acknowledge him. He felt like a ghost walking those hallways searching for Keith Wendell. In many ways he was, nothing more than a shell of a man. When Foster located Keith he was
propped up in a bed with his eyes closed. He entered the room, shut the door behind him, and then closed the blinds.
The noise woke him.
“Foster?”
“How are you, Keith?”
“It was those damn cops. I don’t know how they found us.”
“Um, I have an idea.”
Using drug addicts to set the wheels in motion on what he had planned for the town wasn’t his first choice, but their desperation was just too hard to pass up. Foster pulled out of his pocket a container of OxyContin. “Thought you could use these? You know, for all the trouble you went through.”
Keith’s eyes widened, he swallowed and then got this wide grin on his face. Foster unscrewed the cap and shook out a couple into his hand but as he went to give the pills to him he closed his hand. Keith looked perplexed.
“First, I need to know something. Did you say anything to the cops?”
“No, Foster. They asked, but I didn’t say anything.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I swear on my mother’s life.”
What a lowlife, Foster thought.
“And the others?”
“Dead. They never had a chance, those bastards shot them. I was lucky to survive.”
“And Jackson?”
“He didn’t know what hit him. Actually they brought him in here.”
“Where?”
He shrugged and kept eyeing his hand like a dog wanting its treat. “I don’t know. You think I can have those?”
Foster looked at the tube going into his arm. “They got you on morphine?”
“Yeah. But not enough.” He made a gesture to the pills.
“So you’re in a lot of pain?”
“Yeah, yeah, can I get those?”
“Well then maybe you need more than two. You want more?”
“Yeah just leave the bottle.”
“Sure, I’ll leave it on the side table. Hey, let me get you a drink of water.”
He turned toward a cabinet on the far side of the room that had several unopened bottles of water. Foster scooped one up. He unscrewed the top then placed it by his bedside table. Next he took out the bottle of pills, shaking out everything that was inside.
“Open up.”
Keith frowned. “I just need two.”
“That’s fine. Open up.”
Confused but driven by his need for the drugs he opened his mouth. Foster clamped his full hand over the top of his mouth, then squeezed his cheeks and with the other hand grabbed the water and poured it down his throat. He struggled to get Foster’s hand off him but Foster just kept slapping his hands away. His heart rate monitor started speeding up. He knew he only had minutes before a nurse would be in, so he pulled out the pillow from under his head and brought it down over his face and held it there as Keith flailed like a fish. His hands clawed at Foster’s chest. Foster kept moving to avoid him. When the unit started beeping, he pulled the plug on it with his other hand and kept the pillow on his face until he stopped moving. Then, calmly he placed the pillow back under his head and crossed to the door. He glanced out but there was no security, no nurses rushing to his aid. Why? They were overwhelmed. Swamped. There were far more patients than emergency staff.
Foster strolled out and began heading down the hallway. When he reached the end he was about to turn when he spotted Officer Westin and Elliot Wilson heading his way. He shot back from the corner and entered the first room on his right. He closed the door just slightly and waited for them to turn and go back. Behind him an older woman in her late eighties was lying in bed with a mask over her face.
He squinted and a flash of memories came back to him of his own mother.
Right then and there a wave of guilt washed over him. He pushed it from his mind as he watched them go by. He waited a few more seconds and then darted out and hurried away.
* * *
Elliot had finally convinced Gary to go with him to speak with Keith. All night he’d been tossing and turning, thinking about what he’d heard on the way into the home. Someone had put them up to it and he was determined to find out.
“And so he told me last night he wants to see me this morning, something about a list that he’s put together. You know, men and women in town that he wants to be officers.” He sighed. “And get this, he says the first order of business will be to remove anyone in the town that isn’t a local.”
“He just wants to throw them to the curb?”
“That’s about it.”
“And what did you say?” Elliot asked, as they got closer to room 212.
“I told him he was out of his mind. It’s not like they’ve got anywhere to go.” He shook his head. “I tell you, Elliot, having Wayland die was the worst thing that could happen.”
“You don’t think Ted’s behind his death, do you?”
Gary made a pfft sound. “I know it sounds bad but I wouldn’t put it past him. Even when Wayland was alive Murphy thought he was the chief.”
Gary pushed through the door and entered Keith’s room.
“What the hell?” He hurried over and placed his fingers on the side of his neck. Elliot saw all the pills spilling out his mouth along with vomit. Gary turned his head on the side and scraped out the pills with his fingers, then started shouting for a nurse. Elliot assisted by doing chest compressions.
Even though Gary was bellowing loudly, no nurses arrived. He left the room while Elliot continued to give compressions. Slowly he stopped and stepped back as Gary returned. “What are you doing?”
“He’s gone, Gary.”
Gary didn’t believe him. He hurried over and continued as a doctor and a nurse came into the room and took over. Elliot headed out of the room and waited outside. He wandered down the corridor to a window at the far end that looked out over Lake Placid. The sun was still climbing in the sky over the jagged peaks. He closed his eyes trying to block the noise of those he’d lost in Iraq. Since returning to Lake Placid he’d found writing about his experiences in the army therapeutic. Early in the morning, late at night as the memories flooded in, he would write them down instead of blocking them out. Something about having them on paper allowed him to cope. Before he had pushed them down, carried them into the day and chewed them over as his head hit the pillow. Now he had an outlet, and it was working.
“Elliot. ELLIOT!” Gary said snapping him out of his dazed state. He turned.
“Yeah?”
He shook his head to indicate that Keith was dead. Gary seemed more disturbed by it than him. He didn’t like the idea of a man that had kidnapped a police officer and attempted to kill them hogging medical resources.
“Well I guess we won’t get our answer,” Elliot said moving past him.
“Is that all you have to say?”
“What do you want me to say, Gary? You want me to mourn for this asshole?”
“I want you to act like a human.”
Elliot scoffed. “I’m afraid I lost my humanity in Iraq.”
“Bullshit. I was there too, Elliot.”
“Oorah!” Elliot said in a mocking tone.
He didn’t expand on that but pressed on down the hallway to check in with Officer Jackson.
* * *
Damon awoke that morning to the smell of coffee and toast. For a second he forgot the power had gone out until he pried open his eyes and saw his father holding a piece of bread over a Coleman stove. He and Jesse had slept in the living area while his father had the bed at the far end of the travel trailer. It was surprisingly big inside. He glanced at Jesse who was still sleeping soundly. Damon removed the thick cover and sat up.
“Coffee?” his father asked.
“Yeah. Sure. That sounds good.” He pawed at his eyes and slipped his feet back into his boots. Instantly he curled his toes. They were still wet from yesterday. Memories piled on top of one another. Sara alive, dead, the shallow grave, shooting Devin and then almost freezing to death on the way back to Keene.
He gazed around as his father bro
ught over a cup of coffee in a steel mug. “Sorry, there is no milk.”
“That’s fine.”
His father was about five foot nine, medium build and he had a round face. His blond hair was buzzed tight at the side and he had a scar on the right side of his cheek from an ATV crash he’d had when he was a teen. Those in town referred to him by his nickname, Buddy. But he’d always called him Dad.
His father studied him for a second before returning to toasting what looked like moldy bread. Damon stood up and gazed around the trailer. He slipped into the dinette booth and placed his cup on the fold-out table. There were several old newspapers piled up and a to-do list that was partly checked off. His father had always been a stickler for lists. He was organized, something that had come from his years in the army. Unlike Elliot, his father had only given eight years to the military and then left to raise a family. Still all the training and years working for Uncle Sam had left an impression on him.
“So you’re in trouble?” his father asked.
“Not exactly.”
“Heard you did time.”
“From who?”
“Sara. She’s a good girl.”
“That she was.”
He glanced at him. Damon still hadn’t told him that she was dead. When they arrived late last night, both of them were frozen and shivering. He’d spent the first few hours just getting them dry and warmed up. Beyond a few tidbits, conversation mainly revolved around small talk, that was until they both passed out from exhaustion.
“She’s dead, Dad.”
“What?”
“Magnus shot her.”
He stopped toasting bread and dropped it on a plate and brought it over. He slipped into the other side of the dinette and tapped his fingers. “How?”
Over the course of the next twenty minutes he brought him up to speed on what had happened after being released from Rikers, his arrival in Lake Placid, and his confrontation with Cole. When he was done Buddy leaned back and tilted his head.
