by Byron Starr
Clara running at him screaming.
The beast.
He fired two rapid shots into her chest when she was within less than a foot from the end of his barrel. The hollow points reversed Clara’s forward momentum, sending her reeling backwards before she collapsed. Unmoving, she lay sprawled on her back in the middle of the hallway.
Up ahead Chad heard what sounded like more struggling coming from the dispatcher’s office. It began to sink that he had just shot Clara McClellan. He gazed down at Clara. Two bloody spots between her breasts marred her yellow sunflower blouse. Blood was pooling onto the floor from the unseen exit wounds in her back. Her mouth seemed to move once, then she was still, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling.
My God, what have I done?
A gasp, then a sob escaped from his lips. “Oh, no.”
Three shots rang out from the dispatcher’s office and Chad realized he had to pull himself together. The beast was still in the building. He advanced on down the hall, both hands gripping his pistol. His confidence shattered, his hands were now trembling furiously.
As he rounded the hall, he could see Bill in the far corner, laying on the floor with his back propped against the door leading to the booking room. Blood was all over the wall behind him and the floor below him, but his chest was moving. Bill was still alive. Sam was about halfway down the hallway, also slumped against the wall, his head to one side. Although Sam’s head was the other direction, but Chad could still see blood all over his face, and down the front of his uniform. Chad couldn’t determine if Sam was breathing or not.
Straight ahead Chad saw the second security door, which had been cracked open, slowly shut. He aimed at the door expecting it to swing open at any time.
“Who’s there!” Chad yelled
“Chad, is that you?” a voice, muffled from the multiple layers of steel came from the other side of the door.
“Yeah, come on out, slowly!” Chad said, advancing down the hall with his gun leveled at the door. He knew this probably wouldn’t work because the beast had proven itself to be far from stupid, and if Emilio or James was back there, they would more than likely think he was the beast, just as he had with Clara.
As he got halfway down the hall, he saw Bill’s arm slowly rise. Bill pointed at Sam.
Before Chad had time to realize what Bill was trying to tell him, a clawed hand ripped across his belly. Chad screamed and doubled over in pain. He looked down and saw his own guts hanging out of the horrible wound across his abdomen. The Sam-thing sprang up with remarkable agility. Still doubled over and still screaming, he spun on his heels and lurched for the door.
But the beast was on him before he made more than two steps. It landed on his back, sinking its teeth deep into the back of his neck. Chad quickly slipped into an unconscious state from which he would never awake.
* * *
The first thing James saw when he drifted to sleep was the front door of the Sheriff’s Department. The beast walked through the door, waved at Bill, and passed through the first security door.
Oh, God! Wake up!
It strolled down the hall toward the door to the dispatcher’s office and the second security door.
Wake up!
It reached for the doorknob to the dispatcher’s office.
James woke up. “It’s here,” he said, his voice drearily hushed as he came out of his sleep. He followed this weak statement with a loud cry, “It’s here!”
He got up and fumbled around in the dark for his pistol. The lights inside the cells were controlled from the dispatcher’s office. They kept the hall lights on and the cell lights off at night, so the only way for the current residents to control the amount of light in their rooms was how far open they kept the doors. And James’ door was shut. Only a minimal amount of light was peeking through the window set into the door.
James finally gave up his blind search and ran to the door, opening it for more light. Down the hall Emilio was also standing in the door to his cell. He was propped on the door’s edge without his crutches.
“What’s goin’ on?” Emilio asked
“That thing is here.”
Two gunshots suddenly rang out from somewhere in the building. It sounded as if the shots had come from just the other side of the unlocked security door that separated the cells from the rest of the building. Forgetting all about his pistol, he ran for the unlocked security door. Emilio limped along right behind him. James started to open the door, but Emilio stopped him
“Where’s your gun?” Emilio asked.
“It’s in my room.”
“Go back and get it. I’ll hold the door if that thing tries to get in.”
“Where’s your gun?”
“In the squad room. I left it in my desk,” Emilio said, leaning against the door.
James hesitated. “What if someone tries to get back here to get away from it?”
Emilio shook his head. “We can’t take that chance. Hurry and get your gun.”
The security doors only locked and unlocked in the dispatcher’s office. Emilio doubted he would be able to hold it for long against the beast should it decide to come through. James had to be quick.
Just as James disappeared into his cell, three more shots rang out. These shots sounded closer.
“Hurry!” Emilio yelled down the hall toward James’ room as he pushed the heavy security door shut.
“Who’s there?” a muffled voice asked from other side of the door.
It didn’t sound like Sam or Bill, so Emilio assumed it must be Chad. Or the beast pretending to be Chad. “Chad, is that you?” Emilio called out.
“Yeah, now come on out, slowly!” the voice answered.
“Yeah, right,” Emilio muttered to himself.
He waited a few seconds and was about to call out to see what was taking James so long, when a scream came from the other side of the door. “Oh, shit! Hurry!” Emilio yelled down the hall.
Just then James came running out of his cell, pistol in hand.
“What the hell kept you?” Emilio asked, but before he could get an answer an unexpected force slammed into the door, almost knocking him to the ground. Emilio placed his shoulder back against the door. James added his weight just as the second blow landed. Even though it was expected, it still almost knocked the door open. They prepared again for a third blow and weren’t denied. This time the blow landed and the force didn’t let up, as the beast on the other side of the door lowered its shoulder and began pushing. Little by little the door opened, until the beast was able to reach its right arm through the crack in the door and claw at the other side.
The hand slapped the inside of the door just inches from Emilio’s face. It looked like Sam’s thick fingered hand with its chewed-short fingernails, but when it pulled back from Emilio it made a scraping sound, not unlike fingernails on a chalkboard, as the unseen claws raked across the metal door, removing the sickly blue paint in thin strips that curled as they were peeled away.
The hand withdrew and struck out again, this time barely missing Emilio’s face.
James had his back to the door and was leaning into it with all his strength and all his weight. He saw how close the beast came to removing Emilio’s face and knew he had to act or the next swing might not miss. James lifted the gun in his right hand until it was above Emilio’s head and pointing the barrel down at the beast’s hand.
He pulled the trigger. The solitary gunshot echoed loudly in the hollow halls of the jail. The bullet passed through the beast’s already injured right hand long ways. The pain startled the beast into releasing its pressure as it withdrew its hand through the door, almost causing the heavy metal door, with the added weight of James and Emilio, to slam onto its already twice injured hand.
Emilio and James kept leaning on the door for some time, unwilling to take the chance of the beast coming back and surprising them.
Chapter 24
The One Who Kills
Ironically, it was Darren
Woolford and Tom Weatherford who were first on the scene. They had been patrolling just west of Newton when Darren radioed in and received no response. Assuming something was wrong with his radio, Darren tried to reach the jailhouse with his cell phone. Still no reply. Although the last thing Darren would have imagined was that the beast had attacked headquarters, he decided they should drive by and check in. They drove up and started to the front door of the Newton County Hilton, still not expecting anything out of the ordinary.
Then a dark shape bolted out of the door and dashed across the street on four legs. Darren recognized the beast and managed to draw his pistol but not until the beast was almost a hundred yards away. Still, Darren fired a couple of shots, but they didn’t have a prayer of finding their mark.
While Darren was calling for backup, Thomas saw a shape lying on the ground near the front of the car. He pointed it out to Darren. Darren, with his gun still in his right hand, took his flashlight out and shined it in that direction and found the two dead DPS officers.
Less than two minutes later another DPS cruiser roared into the drive, followed seconds later by another.
* * *
It took the better part of fifteen minutes for James and Emilio on one side of the heavy security door and over a dozen officers on the other to convince each other that the beast was not on the opposite side of the door. By the time they did, Carl, who was now temporarily in charge, had arrived.
And so had the media. The story that something big had happened at the Sheriff’s Department spread like wildfire. The circus had begun, and this time there was no Captain Sam Jones to play ringleader. It was still several hours before sunrise, but the reporters and cameramen, along with the concerned and curious citizens of Newton began to converge on the Newton County jail. It was all the law enforcement officials could do to keep them out of the building, much less enforce the curfew. Soon, live feeds of patrol cars and ambulances parked in front of the Newton County Sheriff’s Department were being sent to all the major networks across the nation.
Pandemonium gripped the city of Newton.
Both Bill and Chad had been unconscious but alive when the paramedics arrived, but Chad coded as the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance and they were unable to bring him back.
As they were loading Bill, Carl asked one of the paramedics if Bill was going to be okay. The paramedic replied that he gave Bill a fifty-fifty chance.
“Then he’ll make it,” Carl said as the paramedic hoped into the ambulance’s passenger side. “He’s a tough old bastard.”
The paramedic paused and turned back to Carl. With a grim expression on his face, he said, “I’ve known Bill Oates since I was a boy. I know he’s a fighter. That’s the only reason I’m giving him that much of a chance.”
Now Carl Price was sitting behind Bill’s messy desk. He felt uncomfortable sitting in Bill’s chair, but it wasn’t the disarray of the desk that bothered him — he just didn’t feel it was appropriate that he sat here, it was like he was committing some form of desecration to a sacred relic. He had wanted to talk to James and Emilio in the squad room from behind his own much neater, if slightly smaller, desk, but he found the squad room was too busy this morning for a private meeting.
James and Emilio sat silently across from him.
Emilio was dressed in a motley outfit. He was wearing his beige game warden shirt, but he was still wearing the only pants he had been able to find that slipped easily on and off on his thickly bandaged and slightly swollen leg - the Orange jumpsuit bottoms usually worn by the inmates. Emilio was constantly digging in one ear or the other. Apparently neither of his ears had popped since the discharge of James’ gun right above his head; the ringing was obviously driving him crazy.
James was wearing his old jeans and a plain white t-shirt. There was a haunted, blank expression on his face — but hadn’t that expression been there all along? The changes hadn’t taken place overnight. Anyone who had been around him for the last month would have noticed the gradual metamorphosis, but they probably wouldn’t have imagined how drastic the change had been. His cheeks looked hollow from lack of proper nutrition; in fact, James had weighed around one-sixty-five when Angie was killed; now he weighed barely over one-twenty. The last six or so weeks of getting only two or three hours of sleep at a time had given him permanent dark circles under his eyes. Even his normally tanned complexion had paled, giving him a sickly look.
Of all the changes, his eyes seemed to have changed the most. Lack of sleep gave them a permanent bloodshot look – almost like that of a career drunk. His eye-color even seemed to have changed; what used to have been non-descript brown eyes seemed to be a sickly combination of grey and brown. James now tended to avoid eye-to-eye contact unless he was talking directly with someone, but if someone did look in his eyes, and he returned their gaze, they would see a window into a mind that was not entirely stable anymore. They would see a touch of madness — not a wild, lunatic madness — but a cold calculating madness.
“What happened?” Carl said, breaking what had been five full minutes of uninterrupted silence.
There was another brief silence before Emilio answered, in a slightly louder than normal voice. “You know as much as we do, Carl.”
Carl nodded. Emilio was right. Carl had already been thoroughly briefed. The question Carl had asked wasn’t really the question that he had wanted to ask. What he wanted to ask was, What do we do now? Carl briefly wondered why he hadn’t been told about everything until just six days ago, and why he hadn’t been in on all the meetings with these two, Bill, and Sam. But he knew the answer. He was a good chief deputy: he was efficient, he was reliable, and he knew his way around the computer. But once things got out of hand, Carl had always called for Bill. Sheriff Bill Oates, Texas Ranger Sam Jones, and even Game Warden Emilio Rodriguez didn’t need anyone to call on. They seemed to be born for handling emergency situations.
And as for James, Carl kept trying to tell himself the only reason James was part of those private meetings was because of his visions, but Carl knew he was fooling himself. He wondered if he had been in James’ shoes earlier in the night if he would have thought and acted quickly enough to shoot the beast’s hand, or would he have leaned against the door, panicking, until the beast had enough of his arm through the door to take off Emilio’s face. Probably the latter.
“What started all this?” Carl asked in a curious conversational tone.
James sat staring blankly at the wall behind Carl.
Emilio stopped digging in his ear. “Huh?”
“What started all this?” Carl said in a slightly louder voice; then he continued, “I mean, where did this damn thing come from?”
“Damned if I know,” Emilio said, finally giving up his digging and giving his ear a rest.
“Was it something like the drought we had this summer, last summer’s record heat wave, or was it that freeze we had three years ago, or what? Why us? Why here?” Carl asked, as if to himself.
There was a pause of about five seconds, then James spoke quietly, without taking his eyes from the wall behind Carl. “It doesn’t matter.”
Emilio turned to James. “What?”
“It doesn’t matter,” James said, without changing his volume, tone, or moving his fixed eyes.
Emilio turned to him, “James, you’re going to have to speak up. I can’t hear a thing.”
“I said, it doesn’t matter!” James said in much louder voice, practically shouting. “It doesn’t matter where the damn thing came from. All that matters is it’s here.”
Emilio reached out to touch James on the shoulder, to comfort him, but James raised his hand in a don’t touch me gesture.
There was another ten seconds of silence, then James spoke again. This time his voice was even and deceptively calm. “I’m so stupid. I should have seen it.”
Carl started to say something like, You couldn’t help it. The thing came on so fast, but all he got out was “You cou ... ” before Jame
s interrupted.
“I’m not talkin’ about tonight’s attack.”
Emilio and Carl exchanged puzzled glances.
James sighed and let them in on what he had just figured out. “During the night I see through its eyes. During the day, when it sleeps, it sees through my eyes. How do you think it knew where to find my house, when Greg would be checking on my house, and where to find the dogs? Hell, how do you think it managed to escape just in time when we almost had it with the dogs and when we cornered it at the church. I was there both times. It saw us coming through my eyes. I can sometimes force myself to wake up during my dreams. Why can’t it do the same? It even knew that me and Emilio were staying here; that’s why it came tonight.” A strange smile creased James’ lips that didn’t exactly seem at home there. “I think it really hates me and Emilio. Especially Emilio.”
“I’m flattered,” Emilio said.
“I think it even knows that I see its movements when I sleep, that’s why it attacked so early in the night. It probably made sure it was in town long before I went bed.”
“What do we do now?” Carl finally asked. He almost winced when he said it, expecting the answer to be, Don’t ask us, you’re the sheriff.
James turned his eyes from the blank spot on the wall he had been staring at ever since they came into the room. He looked straight into Carl’s eyes. “I think I can kill it.”
“How?” Carl asked.
“Do y’all trust me?”
“Sure,” Emilio answered immediately, but Carl didn’t say a word.
