Thirst Part II

by Kae Bell

  Thirst Part II

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 8

  Three bullets raced across the night. The first hit the spotlight shining down the hill, meant o discourage all vehicle traffic. The bullet sliced through the spotlight’s metal casing, shattering the protective glass, and shredding the light filament. The spotlight, which only moments ago had lit the road to safety for Tina and Jamie, went dark.

  The second bullet hit the tall streetlight by the Flint’s house, blasting the glass casing into and knocking out the remaining source of light.

  The darkness was complete.

  Since it did not cause any observable effects or injury, the third bullet went unnoticed for some time.

  But it too had found its mark.

  *******

  Santis had given the order to shoot. His order was followed. But not by his team. Someone, an unidentified party, had shot three bullets into the night. Shot out the light.

  Santis swore at the darkness.

  “Goddammit are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

  The agents standing nearby heard and turned to see him, though everyone was invisible in the dark, eyes still adjusting, pupils widening millimeter by millimeter.

  In the darkness, the shots’ origins were unclear. Logically, they had to be from somewhere below the lights, to take out both the spotlight and the streetlight. But on either side of the dirt road there was forest.

  Had Santis misjudged the convicts? His mind raced. He knew what had reported on TV and in the initial briefing, when the manhunt began. The two escaped men were unpopular in prison, had a reputation for violence. They kept to themselves. But Santis wondered now, had they had outside help with their escape? He’d been certain they were two loners, that all he needed to do was isolate them. Now that there was only one, hiding somewhere on this hilltop, he thought the job would be easy.

  Was he wrong? He already had one agent down. He needed to send a team.

  But he had no light.

  And still there was no sign of the convict. All he had was a rotting corpse

  The moon, hidden by cloud, offered neither light nor solace.

  “Goddammit. God DAMMIT! Hold all fire!” Santis pushed his way through his agents who were grouped together like nervous cattle before a storm. A few agents pulled out cell phones to shine as feeble torches against the dark.

  “Get me a real goddamn light!” Santis yelled. “What the fuck is going on?!”

  People ran to the cars. Two by two, headlights flooded the night.

  *******

  In the initial darkness following the shots, the ScareIt scuttled away, putting distance between it and the FBI agents, who in the darkness had momentarily forgotten about it. It loped across the field, through uncut hay, always keeping the house within reach. It knew from experience that darkness made detection less likely, capture less probable.

  It had also learned that opportunity was often short-lived and required action.

  Still in the field on the far side of the house, the ScareIt moved toward the grassy yard. Its strides were long and slow. Noise from murmuring agents carried across the yard to the ScareIt. It was not concerned. While on the crest of the hill, headlights offered haphazard light, here in the shadows, under the hidden moon, it was cool and quiet. Darkness reigned.

  The ScareIt crept across the field, stepping onto the grass. As it approached the house, it lay its body on the ground and slid, snakelike, across the grass, aiming for the side door.

  At the door, it stood, its white bones luminous even in the darkness. It placed a sharp tine on the door handle and paused, as if listening.

  Earlier in the evening, Sarah and Max had argued about locking the screened-in sleeping porch. Sarah wanted the doors unlocked in case Meg decided to come home. She didn’t want her daughter stuck outside in the dark, terrified, surrounded by armed FBI agents.

  Max had wanted to lock up. Habit. Even if the screens could be pushed in, a locked door was a locked door.

  In the end, they had left unlocked the porch door unlocked. A cheap-after thought during house construction, the wooden porch had windows on three sides that were open most days, to allow a breeze through the flimsy screens. The porch door consisted of a thin metal frame with a Plexiglas window that would not have deterred anyone interested in entering. But the porch was protection enough from persistent mosquitos, chiggers, and the biting gnats. In summers past, the porch offered the family a bug free haven for deer gazing, as the shy animals ventured into the fields to graze in the cooling twilight. Later, after the children were in bed, Sarah and Max would watch the heavy moon rise above the tree line.

  Holding the handle with a razor sharp tine, the ScareIt pulled the door. The door opened on oiled hinges.

  The ScareIt slipped onto the porch.

  *******

  Jason woke feeling guilty. He was sweaty and his heart pounded against his thin rib cage. He’d been dreaming of summer camp. He and Justin paddled a canoe on a smooth lake. Meg was in the canoe and an argument had started about who got to paddle. That’s when Jason had woken, as the fight started. Something had stirred him awake. Lying in his bed, feeling his heart slow, he couldn’t remember what it was.

  A steady knocking sound filtered down the hallway. That’s what it was, he remembered. Knocking. Someone was knocking to be let into the house. In his dream, he’d heard a soft tapping on the canoe. It had distracted him, the boat had gone off course, and that’s why they were fighting.

  Now the sound had started up again, a gentle but insistent sound, as if to signal only the lightest of sleepers.

  Jason waited for the tapping to stop. His heart had slowed and now beat steady. Oddly, the tapping seemed to be twice the rate of his heartbeat.

  Jason figured it was an FBI agent who didn’t want to sleep in his car or needed to use the toilet. Mom and Dad had explained that the FBI agents were outside the house but that they would stay outside. They finish what they were doing and would leave in the morning. Jason knew about the convicts but the parents had not mentioned the manhunt, saying only that there had been an accident in Mister Bank’s field that was under investigation.

  Jason pushed his three pillows into a stack and leaned into the soft mountain against his headboard.

  His glasses were on the night table by his bed. He reached for them and knocked them off the nightstand.

  The knocking continued. Everything was a blur without them. He thought of a word he heard his dad say while driving.

  “Shit.”

  In the dark (it seemed darker than usual), he looked over at Justin, asleep in his bed. Jason could make out the dim outline of his brother, his mouth open, sprawled on his back, a blue coverlet kicked to the bottom of the bed. Soft breathing sounds.

  “Jason,” he whispered as loudly as he could. “Someone is knocking. It might be Megs. Should we get it?”

  No answer. Justin slumbered on. Jason knew Justin would be pissed if he woke him up. Justin was a grumpy sleeper. Too many times Jason had received a punch in the arm when he had tried to wake his brother to ask him something in the night. Justin needed his sleep.

  The tapping again. It sounded like a fingernail on a window. Tap-tap-tap.

  Jason pushed off his covers and got out of bed, stepping over the pile of muddy clothes, from adventures.

  He open the bedroom door a sliver. He peered into the hall, lit by a faint glow of a nightlight. His parent’s bedroom door was closed.

  The tapping continued. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap.

  Glancing back at Justin who was still fast asleep, Jason stepped out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He paused an
d listened.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  He walked down the hall, cautious of the squeakiest floorboards, sidestepping the loudest ones.

  At the end of the hallway, he stopped and peered into the living room. His mother snored softly on the couch, oblivious to the world.

  Without his glasses, Jason could see only fuzzy shapes as he moved down the hall and into the living room. He had the cabin pretty well memorized, since nothing much changed year after year. Still, he was careful not to bump into the chairs or side tables. He didn’t want to knock over a lamp and wake up the whole house. Most of all, he didn’t want to wake up his mother. Meg would be in trouble for sure, for running off and worrying them all.

  No need for the yelling right now. Meg could at least sleep it off before she got into trouble. They would all be grounded for the next week.

  He stepped by the stacks of paperbacks his mom had borrowed from the local library. The model airplane project Jason had brought home from camp. Dad’s briefcase, open on the floor, filled with a pile of legal pads covered in Max’s scribbles, phone calls with clients.

  Jason had nearly reached the door when the tapping stopped. He hesitated, waiting for the tapping to start again. Somehow the sound had been soothing to him, like a beacon. He listened but the tapping did not start. Worried that Meg might have given up, might go back and disappear again into the night, he fumbled with the door lock, bending close to it so that his face was two inches away from the latch. He closed his eyes, as his fingers struggled with the deadbolt. There it was. The metal was old and needed a good shove to release it from position. Jason’s small hands gripped the metal as he slid it aside. Next, the turn piece on the knob. He twisted it.

  “Are you ok, Meggie?” he whispered as he turned the handle and pulled the door open, expecting to see his sister, disheveled, hungry and repentant.

  Through the open door, Jason saw only the dark porch. No one was at the door.

  He took a step forward, through the doorframe and onto the porch. Was she hiding somewhere? It would not be the first time. Two years before, when they were all still friends, the kids had spent the summer playing hide and seek, each night amidst the blinking of the lightning bugs. Jason had almost always been ‘It’. He was not good at hiding. He remembered all those times counting to fifty, as he rested his forehead against the oldest pine tree, his eyes screwed shut so he would not be accused of cheating. He could smell the sap.

  His brother and sister had been very good at hiding. They would climb high into the trees. Hide in the road’s murky ditch. Brave the painful pricker bushes for concealment in the bracken. Anything to evade him.

  And Jason, the younger brother - by only minutes, he would remind Justin - had learned how to seek. How to capture.

  Was Meg playing hide and seek again, now, in the middle of the night?

  “Megs?” he whispered again.

  No one answered. No one was here. Someone had been knocking. That had not been a dream.

  Jason heard car engines starting up, on the road on the other side of the house. All those people were out there in the night. Long shadows appeared from the bright car headlights that flooded the yard as cars turned around.

  With his blurred vision, Jason studied the porch. The clouds had moved on, spurred east by a strong wind. The moon gave away its light. Jason could see the fuzzy outline of the table and chairs, the utility cabinet where Dad kept his tools, the empty gun rack. The couch where Meg had slept.

  The porch was empty. There was no one here.

  Maybe the tapping sound had been a tree branch hitting the window. Or a bird flying in the night. Either way, it had stopped.

  Jason yawned. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find. But now that he knew it was nothing, he was ready to go back to bed. His limbs felt heavy. He would lock the door and go to sleep. Maybe tomorrow, Meg would come back and everything would be better.

  As he shut the porch door and turned to go to his bedroom, he stared directly into the blank face of the ScareIt. In horror, Jason saw it had no eyes, nose, or mouth. A small sound of shock came out of his mouth.

  Inches from his face, the ScareIt grabbed for Jason’s throat. Jason ducked and ran into the center of the living room. The ScareIt turned and raced toward Jason, it’s tines reaching for him.

  Over the couch and across the coffee table, Jason scrambled. He could feel his heart pounding. He knocked a few books off the table and land on his mom’s neat stacks of paperbacks. The ScareIt was looming over him. its boney tines wrapping around the boy’s neck like a snake. Jason’s eyes popped out of his head as he struggled for oxygen. He tried to yell, but did not have enough air left. Only a quiet garbled sound came forth.

  The ScareIt squeezed, lifting Jason by the neck and carrying him as it stepped into the living room. Its head scanned left and right, as the multi-point tines stretching up from its shoulders twitched like bug antennas. Seeking.

  Chapter 9

  The voice urged Kyle forward. He could feel his captor’s breathe on his neck. Kyle stepped forward, feeling the ground ahead with his foot, afraid to look down. Pricker bushes on his left and right grabbed at his trousers and his bare forearms. The road was bright, lit up by a light farther up the hill. Kyle wondered, as he stepped over a dead tree limb, why the light was there.

  “Stop,” the voice hissed, several feet before the road. Kyle felt a hand reach around to him and check him for weapons. Check him like an expert. Then the hand grabbed Kyle’s left arm and wrenched it around his back. Kyle thought to fight back but the pistol was still firmly pointed into his back. He heard the clink of metal-he knew that sound. Handcuffs. The cold metal was a shock on his skin.

  Too late, he decided he preferred to get shot. He tried to whip around but his captor had closed the other cuff around another wrist.

  This time, her own.

  She pushed him again, pointing the gun at him with her left hand.

  “Let’s go meet the welcome party, shall we?” They walked forward, toward the road.

  They stepped over the drainage ditch when the spotlight went out.

  The night went dark.

  This time, Kyle did not hesitate. He slammed his first into the face of his captor, crushing a nose and cracking a cheekbone. His captor collapsed on the ground. Kyle stooped over her, feeling in her jacket pocket for handcuff keys. He found her gun, her flashlight, and car keys, which he hoped would be a good escape car. He sifted through the keys, feeling for a small metal fob. No luck. Kyle felt outside those, all the way down to her ankle. There, in a zip pocket, were two slim metal keys.

  The woman groaned. Kyle shoved the keys into the lock and popped the cuff off his wrist. He slapped the empty cuff around a nearby sapling and chucked the keys deep into the woods. The woman groaned again.

  He was not going back to prison. He hit her once more across the temple. He stepped into the dark road. Up the hill he heard voices again. That must be where the cars were parked. He would go that way.

  *******

  Chapter 10

  Parked behind a row of shrubs at a highway turnaround, a parked police car appeared to monitor traffic. Alert drivers caught sight of the car in their peripheral vision and tapped their brakes. Some drivers were going 65 mph, some 90 mph. They assumed it was a speed trap. As each driver hit his brakes, he hoped he had done so before he was detected on the radar. As the cars sped by, neither the lights nor sirens switched on. The car stayed put. Drivers breathed a sigh of relief. NY speeding violations were a bitch.

  But the car was empty, its hood cold. It had been parked there for three hours.

  Passersby would not have known that its driver was a mile in from the road, hunkered down in a wooded deer blind, fifty feet from the Flints house, aiming a shotgun and smiling.

  ********

  Route 17 stretched east - west across New York State, starting around Newburgh and ending unceremoniously at the state’s intersection with Ohio. The road 17 is surrounded on both sid
es by rolling green hills, desolate rest stops, and convoluted highway interchanges as roads occasionally branch to the north and south. The freeway passes through cities that New Yorkers would never visit. Binghamton, Horseheads, Bath. Corning can draw a crowd, but that’s as far west as most New Yorkers might go. Beyond are cities les well known: Oneonta. Unadilla. Uncasville.

  These villages and hamlets were a parallel New York, where people lived and worked as teachers, lawyers, nurses, bankers, and firemen. The small towns along the emptier stretches of route 17 were places where people knew their neighbors. Folks knew more about their neighbors than anyone cared to admit. Such is village life. People raised families, kids grew. Sometimes they were lured away to the City. But mostly they stayed. There was no rush hour here. There was no rush.

  Officer Danny had stayed in his home town. He liked the easy pace of New York’s rolling hills, the seasons changing right in front of you, the snow drifts deep and quiet in the winter, the corn tall and green in the summer. And then there was hunting season in the fall. He was a hunter, had grown up hunting on family land, with cousins. Hunting was his way, in his blood, all the men in his family hunted.

  Policing too was in his blood. Some little boys grow out of wanting to be a policeman or a fireman. Danny had not. Sure, he’d lost a few years to partying after high school but had gotten back on the road to being a cop.

  His family wasn’t too big, only one brother and one sister - but they were tight. He had followed his brother into the police force, though his brother was a few towns north. His sister had married young, had a few kids and dumped her loser husband for a California tech genius turned vineyard owner over to Keuka Lake. Danny visited now and then for free drinks and a view of the lake on a sunny summer day.

  All else being equal Saturday had not unfolded as he had expected. After he had found the body, he had called it in.

  Events had not unfolded as Officer Danny had hoped. One finding the dead convict, he had followed the correct procedures. He had notified his boss, he had written up a report, he had waited to be commended and sent back to the scene.