by Dan Padavona
Ricky thought about Viper’s warning. So what happens when someone bigger than Ricky comes along…? Ricky shook his head.
“I dealt with the issue. But if I hadn’t been here to help you…” Lupan let the image of the man with the knife hang in the air. “I think you could be useful, Ricky. And because I think you could be useful, you might say I have a stake in your well being.”
“Useful?”
“I like your attitude, crude as it may be. With some refinement, you might reach your full potential. Tell me, Ricky, were you happier before Saturday when the world was choked with people who wanted to push you around and tell you what to do?”
“No.”
“Good. You don’t ever have to live in a world like that one again. But there are some who would bring that world back. Like your friends Viper and that hick from South Carolina.”
“They ain’t my friends. Hell, no. They knocked me out and left me for dead. But I fixed that one bastard’s little hick town. I showed ‘em. I showed ‘em good.”
Lupan smiled. “Yes. You most certainly did. Quite impressive, I must say.”
“Burned ‘em down like one of them Korean barbecues.” Ricky wore a grin. He started to feel pretty good about himself.
“And if I pointed you toward where your friends were headed—”
“I’d deal with ‘em. I’d fix ‘em just like I fixed ole Mayberry.”
“Good. Our relationship is off to very good start. There are perks to working with me, Ricky. Allow me to begin our relationship with a special gift from me to you.” Lupan reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a key. “So you no longer need to resort to such crude means to start this wonderful car of yours.”
The key shimmered in the moonlight, swinging back and forth like a hypnotist’s locket. As Ricky watched, the key changed. The key was a finger bone, then a key, then a bone again, then a key.
But that was just a trick of light and shadow. That was just—
Lupan placed the key in Ricky’s hand. The key felt cold, as cold as Lupan’s grip.
“How did you get the right key for my car?”
“I have my ways.”
Ricky stared at the key as though he held a scorpion.
“Accept this gift as a token of our new friendship. You are free to go wherever you choose and to live however you wish to live. But when I call upon you, I expect you will come to my aid.”
“How will you know how to find me?”
Lupan laughed. “Don’t worry about that. Do we have an agreement?”
Lupan extended his hand once more. Ricky looked upon the hand with apprehension. He believed if he shook Lupan’s hand again, he would descend into the fiery pits of hell. A grin spread across Lupan’s face. A grin like a vampire’s.
Ricky shook Lupan’s cold hand.
“Wonderful.” As Lupan climbed out of the car, he said, “Your first task is to drive south. ”
“But I was just down south—”
“You will stop at the third exit along interstate 95 after you cross into North Carolina. Two men wait for you at the exit. They will accompany you back to South Carolina, where there is a task I need you to accomplish for me.”
“A task?”
“Yes. Two people—one boy and one girl—will arrive tomorrow morning at an abandoned carnival seven miles inside the South Carolina border.”
“You mean Grogan’s Wonder World?”
“Yes. Do you know this place, Ricky?”
“Hell, yes, Ricky knows Grogan’s Wonder World. Ricky loves Grogan’s Wonder World. But how do you know this boy and girl will—”
“I know a great many things, Ricky. I knew how to find you, didn’t I?”
The hairs stood on the back of Ricky’s neck. “What do I do if I find them?”
“Use your imagination, young man.”
Lupan snapped his finger and a black form rose up over the grille. Ricky had almost forgotten about the animal. When the beast padded into the moonlight to sit beside Lupan, Ricky’s breath caught in his throat. At first, he thought the animal was a wolf. Despite its similar appearance, the beast looked too big to be a wolf. The beast growled, revealing a row of hooked teeth.
“Easy, boy. He’s a friend.” The beast went silent, but its eyes remained locked on Ricky.
Ricky averted his eyes. He inserted the key into the ignition and was not surprised to find it fit. He turned the key, and the engine sputtered.
Shit. I forgot to fill the gas tank.
When he looked up, Lupan and the beast were gone. Expecting to see Lupan watching him through the rear windshield, Ricky looked over his shoulder. The intersection was empty.
As goosebumps crawled across his flesh, he climbed out of the car. While he filled the tank, his head turned from side-to-side, searching for Lupan and the strange animal.
Twilight retreated to the west. Darkness closed in on the car. Ricky threw the gas can in the trunk and drove onto the highway entrance ramp. Two gallons of gas would be enough for now. He never wanted to see Richmond again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Man with the Baseball Bat
In the blackest hour of night, when it seemed the sun would never rise again, the man with the baseball bat crept out of the meadow, cloaked in the darkness of a moonless sky. A humid breeze bled down from the clouds and fanned through the wet tall grass, which crept along the terrain into the rich flats of the meadow like the rain-soaked fur of a wolf.
He stood watching the old farmhouse from a distant hillock, slapping the barrel of the aluminum bat into his palm. He didn’t remember his name was Brad Eggers or that he had once been a City of Atlanta police officer. The timeline to his life seemed to be missing prior to Saturday afternoon.
The farmhouse windows slumbered in darkness. As the waterlogged terrain squished under his feet, Eggers tried to remember why he was in the Georgia countryside. Yesterday morning in Atlanta, there had been a building—a hotel, he thought—and inside that building there had been two women, one white, one black. Trying to remember specifics was like reaching his hand into murky waters in search of a tiny gemstone. He had searched every floor of the hotel and not found anyone, though he was certain two women had been hiding within its confines the previous night. He had seen them watching him from an upper-floor room, and there had been fear in their eyes. Fear for Eggers, the man with the baseball bat.
Like an eye opening, one of the farmhouse windows on the lower floor flooded with light. Anger stirred within Eggers. Are the two women hiding within the farmhouse? He believed they were. They must be, for the image of the farmhouse had appeared to him in a dream.
Eggers shivered. Since Victor Lupan had found him wandering through the shadowy alleyways of Atlanta on Saturday night, images and thoughts often appeared in Eggers’ head. Lupan, eyes as black as midnight, wanted the two women found and killed, and when Lupan’s eyes looked into his, Eggers felt paralyzed. Eggers didn’t know who Lupan was, where he was from, or whether Victor Lupan was really his name. But he knew Lupan was a dangerous man. Lupan knew things that a normal man couldn’t know—where the various factions of people were located within the city; the names of the women who had been living inside the hotel; grid sectors where the power had not yet failed prior to Monday afternoon.
Somehow Lupan had known the women fled into the countryside.
With the continuous images that flooded into Eggers’ head from Lupan came a boundless anger. He didn’t crave to watch things burn, and the thought of a bullet traveling through another human seemed too disconnected and antiseptic. The bat, obtained from a sporting goods store on Atlanta’s east side, felt right in his hands. The bat was an extension of Eggers and his rage, and when things broke under the force of his bat, he felt momentary relief from his murky insanity.
His anger roiled anew and burned away the icy chill of remembering Lupan.
Just as Eggers started toward the farmhouse, the grass rustled behind him. Something growled under the
cover of darkness. Eggers’ fingers tightened around the bat handle, and the creature hissed.
Out of the world of shadow stalked the creature. It crept low to the ground, moving closer, sniffing the air.
When it crawled to within twenty yards of him, he recognized the animal—a bobcat as big as a medium-sized dog. The bobcat circled around him and stopped. It flicked its tail and emitted a low growl.
Clutching the bat, Eggers approached the bobcat. Once he encroached on the bobcat’s space, the animal snarled in warning and reared back. Eggers kept coming.
The bobcat leaped at him. In a split second, its jaws opened wide and sought the meaty flesh of Eggers’ arm. The bat whistled through the night air and clipped the animal on the side of its head. The animal crumbled to the earth, temporarily paralyzed and groggy.
Eggers raised the bat. He slammed the barrel into the bobcat’s torso. It screamed. Its legs twitched as though electrocuted.
He heard it crying in the darkest hours of predawn, as it writhed in the wet grass.
The bat struck the bobcat’s shoulder and made a sound like twigs crunching under heavy work boots. Again he swung the bat. Blood caked the animal’s snout and mouth. Its raspy breathing became labored, mixed with the shriek of a cruel wind blowing across the meadow.
His face contorted with madness, Eggers beat the bobcat repeatedly until its bleating ceased and its trembling body lay still. The barrel was matted with blood and fur, appearing as a medieval mace when he raised it toward the sky.
When he turned back toward the farmhouse, a shadow drifted across the lighted window. Eggers grinned.
The man with the bloody baseball bat descended the hillside.
The wall clock read 4:06 AM. The black beast of night pressed against the farmhouse windows. Outside, the wind gusted, and the old walls of the farmhouse moaned.
Bo groaned and lay down at Grady’s feet.
“You let them girls sleep, ya hear? They need their rest, and they don’t need you runnin’ up the stairs, jumpin’ all over them and lickin’ their faces.” The Irish setter stood up and padded toward the kitchen, his tail wagging behind. “All right, all right. I’ll make your breakfast. Sometimes I wonder who the master and servant are in this relationship.”
Grady followed Bo into the kitchen, his slippers swishing along the worn hardwood floors. His eyes passed over the kitchen table, and a pang of sadness touched his heart. His parents, grandparents, and wife once shared this space, and now he was alone in its sudden vastness. Laura had been unable to bear children, so Grady had accepted long ago that his family’s legacy of living in the farmhouse would end with him. But then Laura was taken from him, too.
As he poured dog food into Bo’s dish, Bo’s tail thumped happily on the kitchen floor.
“I reckon those two girls will be on their way before lunchtime. Then it will be just the two of us again.” Bo whined between bites. “I know how you feel. Oh, I’ll ask ‘em to stay, and they’re welcome to stay as long as they like, but the young ones like to keep moving, even when there ain’t much use in doing so. I guess moving keeps the years from catching up to them too fast.”
Grady shrugged his shoulders while Bo crunched away at his dog food.
“You don’t understand a damn thing I say, do you?” Bo lifted his snout from the dish and cocked his head at Grady. “Well, maybe you do.”
Grady swished across the kitchen, and when he reached the refrigerator, Bo growled behind him.
He turned and found the Irish setter stiff as a board with his ears pinned back, his teeth bared at the meadow-side wall.
“Easy, boy. It’s just the wind pushing against the house. Nothing to be—”
Something bumped against the side of the house.
“Shh.”
As commanded, Bo went silent. The dog rushed past him into the living room where it took a guard position in front of the window that looked out upon the meadow. Bo’s fangs still showed, and a low grumble emanated from his chest. In the thickening silence, the tick of the wall clock seemed to grow louder.
Grady peered sheepishly into the window, seeing his ghostly reflection peer back at him.
“Who’s out there?”
Bo’s snarl grew louder.
His Winchester rifle was in the hallway closet. He knew the smart thing to do was to go get the gun, but he couldn’t pry himself away from the dark sky brushing up against the window.
“Bo, maybe you’d better go wake them girls.” But Bo didn’t budge. The dog bared his teeth at the blackness beyond the window.
Something tap-tap-tapped upon the glass. Grady’s heart skipped a beat. No longer was there any doubt that someone was outside the window. Bo went into hysterics, half-snarling, half-whining, jumping back and forth as if he couldn’t decide whether to flee or attack. Grady saw the silhouetted-form of a man.
While the dog barked frantically, the stairs creaked behind Grady. He turned his head to see Amy and Keeshana descending the stairs, eyes groggy and crusted over with sleep.
“What’s all the commotion?” Keeshana’s question barely left her mouth before the glass imploded. Grady ducked and turned his head away from the flying glass. Through the window, an aluminum baseball bat extended into the room like the tentacle of some alien monster. Amy came to a halt in the middle of the living room floor when she saw the bat. The oddity of the aluminum bat seemed vaguely familiar to her, and before she connected the bat with the maniac in Atlanta, Brad Eggers’ crazed-face came into the light.
Amy remembered the man. But what was he doing at the farmhouse?
Eggers hoisted himself up through the frame and extended his leg into the room. Bo lunged for Eggers’ leg, and the man kicked him back.
“Get back, Bo!” Grady placed himself between Eggers and the women, wishing he’d grabbed the Winchester before the madness had started.
The dog slid on his paws, spun around, and raced for Eggers. But now Eggers was fully through the window, hoisting the bat like a medieval cudgel, leering at them with unfocused, bloodshot eyes. Bo leaped at the intruder as Eggers brought the bat down toward the dog’s skull. Keeshana hurled her shoulder into Eggers, the force of her impact enough to deflect the bat’s path. Aluminum cracked against the wood floor, splintering the floorboards.
Grady struck Eggers in his face, but the man didn’t flinch. Eggers leaned backward and head-butted Grady. As Grady stumbled back on his heels, blood pouring from his nose, Eggers threw Keeshana across the living room into a china cabinet. Her shoulder struck glass, and then the cabinet bounced off the wall and toppled over onto her.
Bo bit into Eggers’ shin and latched on to the man’s leg. The intruder cried out in pain. But Eggers still held the bat. He raised the weapon above his head, staring down at the dog’s unprotected spine.
In the time it took Eggers to raise the baseball bat and swing, Amy hoisted the loaded Winchester. Grady had retrieved the weapon, but his eyes had been unable to focus after Eggers’ attack. Amy, who had been taught from an early age by Hank how to shoot, centered her aim on Eggers’ chest.
The bat swung down at Bo’s back.
The Winchester fired, and within the closed confines of the living room, it sounded as if a bomb had exploded.
The bullet blasted through Eggers’ right shoulder. The bat missed its target, clipping the Irish setter in the shoulder. Bo yelped and fell back.
As the dog reared back to attack again, a second gunshot rang out. The bullet tore through Eggers’ chest, and the intruder flew backward, striking his head against the wall. He crumpled to the floor, sitting upright with his legs splayed apart like a child’s doll. Blood pooled out of two holes in his shirt.
While Amy stood with the rifle fixed on Eggers, waiting for the man to move, Grady rushed to Keeshana. With a pained grunt, he lifted the cabinet off of her, and Keeshana rolled out from under with her hands clutched to her lacerated shoulder.
Grady dropped the cabinet to the floor. The explosive sound jarred
Eggers, whose eyes darted across the living room as though he had no idea where he was or how he had gotten here. A moan came from deep within his throat, and when he tried to speak, a stream of blood trickled down from his lips.
Amy loaded two more bullets into the rifle and stepped toward Eggers. Grady put his hand out in front of her to bring her to a halt. When Bo began to snarl at the intruder again, Grady shushed him, and the dog sat down, whimpering at Eggers.
Grady knelt down in front of Eggers, far enough away to prevent the man from grabbing him. “Who are you?”
Eggers looked around the room, and there was no recognition of the house or any of its occupants in the man’s eyes. It seemed he had just woken from a dream and found himself in a nightmare world. When his mouth opened to speak, his body went into seizure. He leaned his neck back, and they saw the whites of his eyes.
Eggers went still.
For a long time, they remained frozen like ice sculptures—Amy with the Winchester fixed on Eggers’ head, Grady wondering who the man was and why he wanted to kill them, Keeshana clutching a broken shard of cabinet glass that cut into her fingers.
The old wall clock ticked away the final seconds before dawn. Eggers was dead.
Grady turned his head toward Amy and Keeshana. “Does anyone know who this man is?”
“Yes,” Keeshana said. “He’s the man with the baseball bat.”
In the war-torn silence of the old farmhouse, Grady accepted Keeshana’s explanation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
What Have I Done?
Thursday morning, the Honda Civic motored down I-95 into the deep south, under a fitful sky that wasn’t sure if it wanted to clear or cloud over.
“Why won’t you talk about it?”
“Because there is nothing to say.”
Tori looked away from Blake as their car crossed into South Carolina. She wasn’t going to get any answers from him. Since Tuesday night she had prodded him over his premonition that the Pennsylvania travel center had been dangerous and how he had located Mickey’s house so quickly.
