He needn’t have worried on either count. There was a clear path to where the vault stood against a wall, and both doors were wide open. His powerful flashlight beam revealed multiple shelves running top to bottom on each side, and resting on every one of those shelves were stacks of tightly-bundled bills wrapped in colored, paper bands.
“Jesus,” he whispered, walking slowly towards it. The flashlight moved up and down, side to side, revealing that the vault was deep, and every shelf was packed to the back with bundles. He stopped in front of it – the vault was taller than he was – tucked the flashlight under an armpit and took down a stack, riffling through it. Hundreds. The band read $10,000.00. And there were hundreds of them. Thousands. How much was here? Had to be millions, all in untraceable cash.
Cesar grinned broadly, then his mind started clicking. First off, the pathetic armload of pillow cases wouldn’t be close to enough. He’d have to find luggage – plenty of that up here – and start loading. He would stage the cases near the attic door, then make trips downstairs. The mansion had a mini-van to be used for emergencies or light errands, and Cesar had the key. He would back the van to the kitchen door and start loading. How many trips? Didn’t matter, he had all night. He’d try to be quiet so as not to wake the old woman, but if he did, what did that matter either? He could smother her easily, leave her in the bed, let the doctors wonder if she had simply died in her sleep. As for Cesar? They’d think he got scared when she died and took off, maybe try to charge him with negligence or car theft, but it wouldn’t make any difference. It was only Tuesday, and she wouldn’t be missed until Saturday. By then he’d have dumped the van and would be in South America, rich as a Latin dictator.
“Thanks, Jevon,” he whispered, chuckling, and then noticed the ladder. It was small, too small for a child, something for a doll’s bunk bed maybe, leaning up against the open shelving of the vault. The shelf it reached looked more depleted of stacks than the others. Was that the shelf where Rosie got her money? He pointed the flashlight in there and saw a stack of business envelopes. She could get to the attic? That was a lot of stairs, but he supposed she could, he had seen her walking virtually unassisted outdoors. But why the ladder? The shelf would only come to her waist, there’d be no need for it, and she probably couldn’t climb it anyway.
Something bit deeply into his right ankle, and Cesar screamed, spinning, dropping the flashlight. It rolled to the base of the vault and stopped, the beam at floor level. A stuffed animal, a bear with patches of fur missing, was attached to his ankle, biting – biting? – deep into his flesh. He tried to kick it free but it hung on, small paws raking red furrows in his shin as it clawed for a better hold. Cesar shook his leg wildly, his breath coming fast, and then there was a metallic squeak and a new pain, this one sharper, his other ankle, a deep slice into the tendon. He screamed and had a moment to see a small figure beside him, something a foot tall and wearing a black cone for a hat, closing a long, gleaming pair of sewing scissors. Then his severed tendon took him to the floor.
“Eeeeeeee!” A high-pitched screaming came from all around as small shapes leaped upon him from atop boxes and furniture, landing and sinking nails and teeth into his hands and thighs and cheeks. He kicked out, hitting the flashlight and making it roll, and in the crazy white light he saw dolls and puppets and more stuffed animals, all old and worn from long-ago use. They were stitched and patched, missing eyes and limbs, but the eyes they did have blazed with a silvery light, and their mouths were filled with tiny, sharp teeth. They shrieked and squealed as they covered him, biting and biting.
The scissors plunged into his left thigh, and Cesar screamed again, arching his back like a wrestler on the wooden floor, the toys hanging on like obscene cowboys in a hellish rodeo. Cesar saw the thing with the scissors, a doll twelve inches high with a black cone hat, tiny black beads for eyes. It was grinning with evil little teeth. He recognized it, the toy which Rosie had been playing with as a child in the photo.
This is me with Pumpkin.
Pumpkin yanked out the bloody scissors with two hands, then drove them in over his head like a whaler with a harpoon, burying them to the handles in Cesar’s belly just above his left hip. He gasped, eyes snapping wide as it pierced flesh and then organs. A dark jet of liquid spurted onto the vault door, spattering the grinning doll. It looked into his face with its silvery eyes and snickered.
Cesar tore the creatures off his face, and they took away bites of his flesh as they went. He pounded his fists at them, forcing them off, but they came right back, biting anew. He thrashed, his impressive strength sending toys flying, crushing several, ripping others apart with his hands. He was screaming nonstop now, his wails rising and falling, and he flipped to his stomach and started crawling. They leaped upon him, and he felt the scissors stab into one butt cheek, missing his scrotum by an inch. His only thought now was survival, safety. He saw a huge steamer trunk standing open in the gloom not far away, big enough for a man, big enough for him. He fast-crawled to it, leaving a bloody trail, then turned and began slapping and pulling madly at the dozens of toy creatures still biting at him. He threw them, he twisted off their heads, he pounded them with his big fists. With a last kick at a china doll with a fractured face, he heaved himself into the trunk and pulled it closed with a thump, landing in a thin layer of old dresses that smelled of mothballs. His searching hands found a pair of garment straps set in the interior of the lid, and he pulled down on them, hanging on to keep the trunk closed.
“Eeeeeeeee!” A chorus of tiny shrieks from outside the trunk as dozens of little fists began pounding the walls in fury.
Cesar realized he was screaming, and forced himself to shut up. His breathing was ragged, his body afire with pain, and the deepest wound of all, the one in his side, was pulsing. That was a bad one, and it would kill him if he didn’t get medical help soon. He pressed a palm against it, feeling blood sliding through his fingers.
And then it got quiet, the pounding and unholy screeching stopping suddenly. Silence except for Cesar’s harsh breath.
A moment later he heard the soft shushing noise of rubberized hospital socks on a wooden floor. “What’s this? What’s this?” Rosie’s dry voice floated through the trunk. The lid moved, someone trying to lift it, and Cesar held it down with both hands.
“Lyle? Are you in there, dear?”
He let go of the strap with a gasp of relief, and the old woman slowly lifted it open. In the muted glare of the flashlight she looked down at the shivering, bloody man curled in the bottom of the trunk. “Oh, my!”
“Rosie,” Cesar gasped, tears in his eyes, “thank God you…”
“Oh, my, he’s still alive.” Rosie shook her head, as Pumpkin leaped into the trunk with a shrill little cry, scissors raised. Cesar screamed and held up his hands as the old woman let the lid drop back into place.
She was slumped in her chair in a doze, the morning sun beaming through lace curtains and warming the parlor. She snored lightly, and drooled into her afghan. A sound brought her around, and she lifted her head, focusing runny eyes on the small figure before her, standing a few feet away beneath a coffee table, hugging one of the legs. It had black bead eyes and a black cone for a hat.
“Hello, Pumpkin,” she said, smiling.
The doll hid its face shyly behind the table leg, then peeked out again.
“I’ll have the agency send over another one right away.”
Pumpkin smiled with sharp little teeth.
“Would you like a cookie, dear?”
BARRINGER ROAD
Cheap carpet was making her nose itch, rubbing a slow burn across the side of her face as the van bumped and swayed. Zip ties at her ankles and wrists cut her skin, and the duct tape across her mouth reeked of the man who put it there. Cassie tried desperately to slow her racing heart as her mother’s words came back to her.
“Predators hunt the Silver River Mall.”
She should have listened a long time ago.
Terr
ence Cobb tried to focus on the road, but the twelve-year-old in back kept pulling his attention, the excitement giving him dry mouth. The snatch had been easy, the girl standing alone at the end of the sidewalk just down from the movie theatre, far from security lights. She’d been so surprised that she didn’t even have a chance to put up a fight. Terrence watched his headlights sweep across the empty blacktop and endless trees, checking his mirrors, seeing they were clear. Focus, he told himself. He could relive it all later.
Barringer Road was a body dump. Terrence had used it three times before, but he wasn’t the only one. People settling old scores, ending marriages with a shovel blade, even others like him had been leaving their problems out here for years. An eleven mile stretch of two lane asphalt tracing lazy curves through deep woods, Barringer Road cut across from US 14 to County Road 107 without a single inhabitant to disrupt the solitude. Dozens of turn-outs, deserted camp sites and dead end logging roads ensured the privacy Terrence craved, and its distance from population made it impractical for the law to patrol with any regularity.
He had scouted his spot weeks earlier, an overgrown pair of ruts that dead-ended a mile in at a cluster of old stumps, long unused and out of screaming distance. Terrence had placed a yellowing deer skull on the shoulder near the turn-off to mark it. Now the headlights picked it out in the darkness ahead, lifeless sockets staring into the night like a harbinger of what was to come.
Cassie felt the van slow and turn, now lurching over a rougher surface, branches cracking under the tires. She was sweating, and her dark hair hung across her face in wet strands, her heart speeding. The zip ties were cranked down tightly. The man was strong, had thrown her effortlessly into the van.
Within minutes they reached the dead end, and Terrence shut off the headlights. He preferred moonlight for this part of it, the cold whiteness washing away all color. His hands trembled as he moved to the side door, patting his pants pocket for the reassuring weight of the big folding knife, his old companion.
He wiped the back of his hand across his lips and rolled open the door, gazing at the girl lying on her side. Her dark eyes were wide and watching him over the silver tape, her shallow chest heaving.
“Almost home, sweetheart,” he said, smiling.
And then the girl arched her back and snapped the zip ties like they were paper instead of hard plastic. Her body contorted, enlarging with a ripple of muscle and an explosion of coarse hair, hands curling to talons, her face extending into a snapping muzzle.
Terrence stumbled backwards and started to scream, but the adolescent werewolf was on him in a second, bearing him to the ground, pulling his ribcage open and tearing into his throat with a violent thrash of her snout. Hot liquid sprayed across the side of the van, black in the starlight.
He died staring at the moon.
Later, her belly full and satisfied, Cassie loped through the forest on all fours, heading home. She couldn’t wait to tell the pack about her first solo kill, and to hug her Mom, thank her for her good advice.
Real predators hunted the Silver River Mall.
TEXAS RISING
Hurricane Sophie, a Category-5 nightmare, swept in off the Gulf on September 16th, devastating the coastal regions. Everyone had seen the giant coming, swift and terrible, but despite widespread evacuations she savaged all she came in contact with, flinging her destructive arms wide. Corpus Christi vanished, and pieces of obliterated oil platforms as well as entire tankers were cast ten miles inland.
She tore north across the Hill Country, into the Big Country, and failed to drop to a Cat-3 as predicted by the time she reached Leesville, population 18,000, located in a county which averaged only seventeen people per square mile. Along with her merciless winds, Sophie brought rain. Lots of rain.
Everyone expected flooding. Central Texas was known as Flash Flood Alley, and every fire department was trained and equipped for swift water rescue. Most flooding deaths were the result of people trying to cross moving water, underestimating the force and weight of the currents, and every year the news ran footage of some fool standing on the roof of his pickup amid white water, waving his arms while people worked to save him. For the most part, this was the type of rescue firemen in rural Texas were trained for. Helicopter crewmen were similarly trained to descend on cables to pluck folks from rooftops and trees.
No one expected Sophie to come this far, with such force.
No one imagined what was approaching, and by the time her full fury was realized, it was too late.
Dell McCall straddled the peak of his roof as if he was riding one of his horses, facing his family. They were straddling too, all in a line like half-drowned crows. Above them the sky was a boiling mix of black and charcoal, clouds tumbling over one another as rain slashed down in dark curtains. Water poured down their faces, and they tried to wipe it from their eyes and hold onto the roof at the same time. The wind was a woman’s scream.
Arlene, Dell’s wife of twenty-two years, hugged their two-year-old Dylan to her chest as she looked at her other two children. Their seventeen-year-old was closest to her, and Ricky, eleven, rode the roof behind her.
“Bailey, I want you to climb over your brother and sit so you’re facing me again.”
“I’ll fall!”
“You won’t fall. I’ve seen you ride in the rain plenty of times. You just hold on tight, you can do it.” Arlene said something else, but it was lost in the wind. When her voice came back it was firm. “Go on, now.” Bailey nodded but stayed put.
“Once you’re set, you’re going to scooch backwards all the way to the chimney, put your back hard against it. You understand me?”
Bailey nodded again, wiping a clump of hair from her eyes. She was trembling. Dell wasn’t sure she would move at first, thought she might freeze up, but then she started to her feet. She held onto her brother as she edged past him, her sneakers sliding over the wet shingles. Her legs were shaking and she began to whimper, gripping Ricky’s shoulders hard while he in turn clung to the roof.
“Mama…”
Her right foot shot away and she went down with a scream, banging her chin, losing her grip on Ricky, and for one terrible moment Dell saw her sliding, sliding, falling and swept away. But one hand caught the roofline and the other snagged on Ricky’s jeans.
“Mama!”
“Pull yourself up!”
“I’m falling!”
“You pull yourself up, Bailey McCall!”
The girl’s sobs were torn away by the wind as she obeyed her mother’s voice, clawing her way back to the roofline and throwing a leg over, hugging her brother’s back and burying her face in his wet shirt.
“Now you get to scooching,” Arlene commanded.
Bailey shook her head, hiding her face.
“Do it right now, girl!”
She pulled her face out of hiding. “I hate you!” she screamed, but did as she was told, easing her butt backwards six inches at a time, holding the roofline with both hands while Arlene cooed a steady stream of encouragement. “That’s it, baby, you can do it, you’re doing fine, honey, keep going…” Five endless minutes later she pressed her back against the bricks of the chimney.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she cried, wiping at her eyes.
“It’s okay, baby, Mama knows. I’m so proud of you.”
Dell gave his daughter a smile, and she managed a weak one in return. His wife’s voice cut through the wind again. “Ricky, your turn, just like your sister.”
The eleven-year-old needed no encouragement. He scooted backwards with the fearless agility of boys and crossed the distance in seconds, into Bailey’s waiting arms. Arlene was murmuring to Dylan, keeping his face shielded from the biting rain as the toddler shivered close against her and cried. Dell looked away, at what had become of the world.
The McCall ranch sat twelve miles outside Leesville proper, the house and a cluster of outbuildings and trees alone on the flats of Gonzales County, not another structure in sight. It was sheep coun
try, wide open and green, dotted in places with clumps of Texas oaks. Now, however, they might as well have been at sea, for eight feet of brown, turning water was moving across the flats like an ocean in every direction, endless, hammering at the gutters of their one story house. The white roof of Arlene’s Durango could still be seen a quarter mile off as the SUV was carried away, and the wheels of Dell’s Chevy poked just above the surface where the overturned pickup had floated to rest against the tree in what had been their front yard.
The water around them was fast and unforgiving.
Just beyond the house were the rooftops of the sheep shed and the second story of the barn. None of the smaller buildings could be seen. They were already underwater.
Arlene looked back into the wind and rain at her husband. “Together?”
He nodded, and they began to scoot forward across the space separating them from their children, slowly, carefully. Dylan was starting to squirm, and Arlene clamped him tight against her while she used the other hand to stay balanced and pull herself along. Dell kept close, prepared to grab them both if she should tip over one side or the other, not thinking or caring that he would most likely be pulled over with them if they went.
They stopped once, Dylan’s squalling competing with the driving wind, and Arlene used both hands to rock and soothe him. Then they were off again, the rough shingles grating beneath them, knees gripping the wet roof like the withers of a bareback horse. Lightning split the sky, followed close by sharp, rippling cracks as they reached the far end, Arlene’s knees touching Ricky’s. They rested for a moment, his wife’s forehead pressed against the toddler, Dell’s against his wife’s shoulder. A surge of wind rocked them and the rain fell harder, coming in sideways for a moment, both conspiring to send them off the roof. They hung on.
In The Falling Light Page 3
