But they wouldn’t like that. God forbid they ever found out. She’d be branded one of the Lost if she ever succumbed. Then she’d be in his place. No, it had to be like this.
Tanya swung the hammer down and the mallet cracked Rafe’s skull with a sound like melons smashing. He squawked and rolled to his side as she hit him again—this time in the face. His jaw bone broke and dangled loosely in his mouth, held in place by his skin. He sounded off in protest, but could produce only mushy and incomprehensible panic.
She couldn’t stand to see this. Her eyes stung with conflicted tears but there was no time to rub them. She straddled him, fighting his arms with one hand while raining the hammer down on his head with the other. Every blow cracked louder, was wetter than the last, but he wouldn’t stop struggling.
Soon her grief became annoyance. Why couldn’t he give up and die? She needed this to be over for sanity’s sake. Her folks promised that the first time was the toughest, and that if she was lucky, there wouldn’t be another. There were enough of them to go around, but she needed first to prove that she was committed.
And she was.
His groans sounded less human now. Just bubbly gurgles. One more crack to his temple and she forced herself to look. He was already swollen. His forehead was a misshapen mess. One of his eyes had popped from his socket and dangled off his cheek like an earring. He was breathing still, but consciousness was long gone.
The disgusting sight was enough to make her retch.
She rolled off and sucked at the air for several minutes—until the thought of lying beside her victim grew too much to bear. She kicked at him, sliding his body across the raft, desperate to get him away. There was a momentary sense of sadness when one final shove sent him sinking to his final resting place. Then he was gone and she was ready to move on.
Tanya felt hysterical during the return swim, but she’d been expecting it. Instead of dwelling on what she had done, she considered how valuable of an asset she’d proven herself to be.
Thanks to her, the Obviate had a list of all of those in town who disagreed with them—so many Lost to punish. She lamented the lack of a homecoming dance, but that was just kid stuff. There were more important things to worry about—like the end of the world.
She toweled off when she got back to shore and quickly dressed. She was supposed to go back home and report in so that no one would worry. But she was so very close to the caverns where her brothers and sisters went to hear the whispers. No one was allowed down there without an elder, but a quick peak couldn’t hurt.
I earned it.
She wanted to know that tonight meant something. There was only so much you could take on faith.
As she wiggled back into her shorts, her eyes fell on the cabin.
Why not, she thought, and headed for it.
***
Officer Donnelley found the front door ajar as he stepped inside his old boss’ house, weapon drawn.
Neighbors congregated in the middle of the street speaking in garbled confusion.
“Everybody stay back!” he screamed in his most authoritative voice.
A woman’s body was sprawled out on the living room floor and half her head was missing. No way to identify it. Shattered pieces of a cordless telephone were strewn across the floor. He shone his light elsewhere, noticing broken windows all around.
He took careful steps to avoid the mess and moved into the kitchen. The back door dangled off one hinge, swaying back and forth in the evening’s breeze. The thing was sprayed with buckshot.
A second body lay face down in the grass out back—a hundred yards away. He grabbed for the two-way on his collar and called for an ambulance.
His gun at the ready, he headed for it.
In the distance, approaching sirens.
Cavalry, he thought with a sigh of relief.
And then the axe struck him square in the chest.
***
Hoyt buried the axe in the policeman and blood sprayed across his visor in fulfilling splats. He didn’t dare take more than a second to savor the moment. Most of the satisfaction came from watching the face—initial surprise that became vulnerability and horror. He created their final moments, and seeing them realize that they were headed for oblivion was a feeling of power unlike any other.
Unlike the killing of yesterday’s policeman, there was no pressure here.
Only enjoyment.
He wretched the axe free, swinging it over his head in an artful motion as the chest cavity sprayed across his coat. The young officer grimaced and tried raising his gun. He’d been much too slow for that.
The axe broke through his nose and demolished his facial structure with a crack. His eyeballs burst into jellied fluid as the blade cleaved them from existence.
The policeman dropped dead in the grass, his legs tangled like pretzels. The stench of bodily discharge seeped up through the space between his face and the steel visor. His own nose didn’t work so well anymore, but the odor was pungent enough for him to notice.
Wailing sirens disrupted the evening, a reminder that it was time to make an escape.
Cyrus Hoyt turned without an ounce of worry in his step and headed for the trees.
The one he wanted would be coming.
All he had to do was wait for her.
***
Ron Sleighton wished they would get it over with.
His face stung from repeated punches, and his breath was short—most likely because of the hog tie. He was stomach-down and his hands and feet were tied together and stretched high over his back. His ankles and wrists were knotted to prevent him from moving at all.
He had never been bent like this, and his arms and legs were on fire as a result.
This was the only way to get them to leave Trish alone.
“We want to kill you, chief.” The voice was somewhere out of his line of sight. It belonged to an older man, and he thought he recognized it but couldn’t say for certain. “You forced my hand with what you pulled back there.”
Sleighton guessed he was referring to the two psychos he had shot down in self-defense. Sick bastards didn’t get to come after Trish without consequence. She grew up here the same as them. Forest Grove was home to more than just the Obviate and there had always been a truce between them.
Until tonight.
“You want to kill me? Then do it. Just leave Trish be. It’s my fault anyway. I should’ve told her to stay away…you lay that blame at my feet.” It was the only reason he agreed to go quietly. Back at the house, they looked ready to keep coming—unphased by their diminishing ranks.
“Your sacrifice is both noble and fulfilling. We will not harm the girl. She must leave town of her own accord, but not before she is converted. When she goes back to the city, it will be because she has special work to do.”
Sleighton tried to protest but there was no reasoning with his captors. They ignored his fevered pleas and continued on their course. A pole was jimmied between his hands and legs, and a pair of feet came around to the front of his face. He was hoisted off the ground, carried outside, and shoved into the backseat of a car.
“You must move carefully.” A voice gave instructions to another unseen person. “There are police everywhere, and they are already suspicious. Brother Maki was apprehended for what was done at City Hall.”
“A necessary sacrifice. The mayor sought to develop land around the grove for hundreds of future housing developments. We do not need an influx of outsiders who are ignorant to our ways.”
“Make him repent and submit.” Sleighton felt the topic of conversation shift back to him. “For he pays for the sins of his daughter as well.”
And then he knew where they were taking him.
***
The hood of the police cruiser felt cold on Melanie’s legs. She was trembling from the incident at City Hall, and things around the grove were now bigger than Nate.
The sheriff’s officers wouldn’t let her go beyond the police cars. The eveni
ng air was cold and she kicked herself for not getting a change of clothes in addition to that shower.
She’d been waiting for Nate at the police station when he called. He would only say that she needed to drive to Sleighton’s place and give him all the information that she had.
Melanie watched him go inside the house and come out twice. The first time he was as white as a sheet, and her heart raced.
What if it’s Trish in there?
Twenty minutes passed and the state troopers had shown up. Someone called Oviedo lead the charge. Nate came out again and noticed her from across the lawn. He gave her the ‘one minute’ motion with his finger before grabbing Oviedo’s shoulder and exchanging a few words. They disappeared back into the house for half an hour.
Additional troopers arrived and went to work on crowd control.
At last, Nate came out and motioned for the nearest cop to let her through.
“Trish okay?”
“I dunno where she is.” He sounded like he was struggling to maintain his composure. “Got an A.P.B. out…she and her father are missing.”
“I’m sorry...”
“I should’ve seen the signs. He’s involved. Guy was always looking over my shoulder. I couldn’t write a fucking traffic ticket without having to explain myself. He claimed this town had to be transitioned into my control…”
“You couldn’t have known…”
He continued unabated. Apparently, he wasn’t looking for her comfort, nor did he appear to want it. “I figured it was a hard thing for the old guy…moving into the next phase of his life. But he kept me in the dark about…whatever happened in there. And now my wife is missing because of it.”
“He knows something,” she said. And then gave him every last word of Tom Lawson’s account.
Nate took to the oration with a look that settled somewhere between horror and revelation. “They bought the camp so they could carry on down there in secret.”
It was Melanie’s turn to be confused.
“Forget it,” he said and went running for his car. “I know where they are.”
***
Sleighton lifted his head as far as it could go and recoiled from the light. Red and blue flashes lit the interior of the darkened cab.
Up front, the driver and passenger exchanged nervous whispers.
He didn’t hear every word but caught “no matter what” and saw a shotgun fly up from the cushion between them.
Outside the car, the police opened fire.
The bodies twitched and jerked as buckshot smashed through the front and side windows, tearing them to pieces. A blood rain fell on the back seat, pelting him with hunks of brain.
“Get me out of here!”
Two troopers converged, at last prying one of the doors open. They fished him out with careful precision and cut through the hog binds as soon as he was on the pavement.
He took a moment to rub his arms in relief.
“Can you stand, sir?” One of the troopers asked.
Sleighton didn’t know if he could. That binding had been severe, stretching his body in ways he didn’t think possible. He got to his feet but his muscles felt like someone had doused them in gasoline and lit a match.
“We’re stopping everyone going to and coming from town,” the trooper said. “This place is on lockdown until we figure out what’s happening.”
Good luck with that.
The troopers led him back to their blockade. Two cars faced each other diagonally, forming two sides of a triangle. One of them went to the radio and called this in.
What now?
Every cop in the state could be here and it wouldn’t matter to the Obviate. They wanted him dead. He didn’t know how many there were, but he had already seen far more involvement than he ever thought possible.
Things had always been quiet in Forest Grove—until Johnson murdered those college kids. The Obviate could blame whomever they wanted, but this entire mess was on them. They drew attention to themselves with that slaughter, and sought to punish those who did not deserve their wrath.
If by some miracle he survived this, he would have to find a way to make Zohra come clean about who was running the show. She had refused to answer that question all the times he’d asked it over the years, citing loyalty to the church while blaming him for her abduction at least once every visit. But she wasn’t going to be happy to hear that her sect tried killing her daughter.
Ingrates.
He hoped that Trish had been smart enough to stay upstairs. All that mattered was that she got out of the grove. For the first time since Abblon, it wasn’t a safe place to live.
“I need to call my daughter,” he said, but the troopers weren’t having it.
“Why don’t you relax, chief, we’ve got to straighten this out before anything else, okay?”
“There’s no need for this,” Sleighton said, hoping that they might exhibit a little professional camaraderie. “Those people abducted me and I just want to call my girl and make sure she’s okay.”
There was a sound outside the circle of cruiser light, and the troopers drew their riot shotguns toward it.
“Officers.” A teenager came running from the trees. She dropped her hands onto her thighs once she got into the light, bending over and gasping for air while speaking between breaths. “It’s just terrible.”
Sleighton recognized her. Brook Walker. Her father was local real estate and her mom taught elementary over in Warren. Seemed like a good kid but he knew better than to buy that line now.
One of the troopers went forward while the other raised his weapon with caution.
“Miss…”
The girl lifted her head and in the red and blue flashes, Sleighton gasped at her crazed eyes. She lunged for the trooper with some kind of blade, stabbing him square in the stomach.
His partner rushed to his aide, taking her by the arm and throwing her to the ground.
She spilled across the pavement, giggling like a mischievous schoolgirl. “You all are Lost,” she cried, “Repent and submit.”
Then Sleighton saw them.
The two people standing at the forest’s edge.
“Get away from him,” Sleighton called, but the trooper wasn’t listening. He applied pressure to his partner’s stomach in an attempt to keep his guts from spilling. “Look over there, goddammit!”
There were more of them now. Sleighton counted five before noticing a solitary shadow inching out from behind a tree. He turned and caught two bodies moving into the light.
He remembered the shotgun in the car behind them—no way of getting to that now.
His attention snapped back to the trooper who was at last retreating back his way.
Sleighton needed one of those shotguns or this was over. These maniacs were beyond listening to reason. He was among the Lost in their minds, and that meant he needed to be sacrificed.
Shadows closed all around them, while Brook crawled on all fours, laughing as she crossed the pavement.
The shotgun was slick with blood as he hoisted it. The girl was close but she went for the trooper instead, burying her box cutter into his thigh and taking him down.
Sleighton shot her point blank and skull shards rained against the cars like sleet. Her body dropped atop the injured trooper but there was no time to worry about any of that now. The rest were coming.
He ran toward the tree line and hoped they would follow.
***
Melanie couldn’t help but assume the worst for Trish.
She would never say that to Brady, whose only concern right now was for his wife. It reinforced the idea that he was nothing if not a stand-up guy. It made her twitch in spasms of guilt for ever expecting him to drop everything for her.
They sped past the Camp Forest Grove sign that had freaked her less than a week ago. What an overreaction that had been, considering everything that happened since.
Nate’s breathing was so labored that she heard it over the siren.
; “Trish’s mother is alive,” he said for the second or third time, getting used to the idea.
“If she is, maybe Ron is Obviate. And what about Trish?”
“Trish doesn’t know anything about it,” he snapped.
Melanie let it slide but there was no way to know that for sure. “This whole time I thought Cyrus Hoyt was the story…he’s just a byproduct.”
They rounded a bend and the familiar sight of red and blues greeted them.
“Thank Christ,” Brady muttered. And then, a second later, “what the hell?”
The lights were growing larger. Getting closer.
“Brady,” she cried, but he noticed it too. The approaching cruiser was on their side of the road, hurtling forward at matching speed.
Too fast.
Brady eased the gas and cut the wheel to circumvent the oncoming traffic. The driver of the other vehicle seemed to anticipate this, cutting across the yellow line without breaking.
The airbag smashed Melanie’s face as glass exploded all around her.
***
Brady’s eyes were sticky with blood. He wiped them but it kept trickling from somewhere on his face like a faucet.
The car was overturned and the dashboard of equipment was smashed beyond recognition. He dangled upside-down by his seatbelt. The roof had buckled on impact, curving his head inward and offering him a view of his bloodied chest.
To his left, Melanie lie sprawled out on the crumpled ceiling, clutching her stomach and moaning.
Brady was weak and his motions weightless as he fumbled at the buckle. “Hey,” he said, stunned by how faint he sounded. “Are you okay?”
Melanie looked but said nothing. Even with his obscured vision, she looked in bad shape. A vertical gash ran the length of her face. It sliced through her forehead, and continued through her cheek all the way to her chin. Her eyes were distant and unfocused.
At last, he found the seatbelt release button and dropped onto the folded ceiling. The shotgun had to be near, but there was no time to look. They had to get the hell out of here.
Under The Blade Page 25
