Wicked Awake

by Merrill David

  Jake dropped his Glock to the ground, then used his left hand again to remove his large Navy Seal SOG knife with partially serrated 7-inch blade from the sheath on the inside of his left pants leg. Jake stabbed IT in the forehead repeatedly until IT was moving no longer.

  Jake picked his Glock and Taser up off the front lawn grass and returned inside the house of horrors. He released baby Carson from his highchair restraints. Jake took hold of his exhausted nephew and carried him out to the awaiting DPD Tahoe. Jake opened the driver’s door and climbed up into the seat, his large muscular left forearm pressing Carson snuggly against him, his strong lefthand supporting Carson’s small head and neck.

  Roscoe jumped back into the vehicle via the still-open back driver side door. Roscoe laid down on his specially customized doggy seat as Jake slowly drove away. Jake turned his head to look back at the house, still in amazement of the events that had just transpired.

  Jake began to drive back toward his house, where he knew Amanda would be able to care for the newly orphaned one-year-old. The rattled sergeant used his cellphone to call his best friend and peer Officer Mack McElroy to tell him about the incident.

  “Mack -dude! Are you at work? I need you to get over to Rich and Holly’s place now!” Mack responded, “Sure, what’s going on? Is Rich beating on Holly again?” “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.” Jake said. “Just get over there quick and secure

  everything until I can get back there. First,I gotta take Carson home to Mandy, where he’ll be safe.” Jake clutched his nephew close to his chest as he sped the ten miles straight to the house he shared with Amanda. Jake parked in his driveway, ran into the house with Carson, and handed the baby off to his unsuspecting lady.

  “What’s going on babe?” Amanda asked.

  “I wish I knew, Mandy, but I don’t even have an explanation for what’s going on. Please just take the baby and care for him. He has no one else now. I’ve got to go back there. I’ll fill you in later. Love you!” Jake began to return to Rich and Holly’s house, and he called Mack’s cellphone while he was driving. “Hey, man, are you out there yet?” Jake asked. “Yeah, I got here fast, but the FBI beat me to it. How the hell does that happen? You didn’t even call this in on the radio, so they couldn’t have picked up on it over their scanner. I made it inside the house, and there were agents crawling all over the place.

  “Jake, they were scurrying about like ants. They were moving items around, covering stuff up withtarps. As soon as they saw me, they told me they didn’t care whose jurisdiction this was, they were taking over the investigation. They kicked me out. Jake, where is Holly? Is she with you? What the hell happened out here?”

  “I need to meet you somewhere, tell you what happened. I’ll be behind the closed down factory on Industrial Ave in five minutes.”

  Just as Jake ended that call with Mack, an incoming call on Jake’s cellphone caught his attention. Jake did not recognize the number on his display, but he answered the call, nonetheless. “Hello?”

  “Jake, it’s Chief Snippet.” The Dallas Chief of Police sat comfortably reclined in a brown leather-bound chair, his cowhide boots resting upon the desk as his beady bald head was covered by his white ten-gallon cowboy hat.

  “Hey, boy. I hear you got yourself in a jam back there. Why don’t you come in and tell me what happened?”

  “Chief, I don’t know what the hell happened to those people, my brother and sister-in-law. They weren’t themselves. I had no choice.”

  “I know, son, no one here thinks you did anything wrong. You know I always take care of my own. Come on into the station, we will makethis all right for you, okay?”

  Although he had heard other officers refer to the chief as a snake in the grass, Jake never learned the reasons why. He had never encountered any negative experiences on his own, so he had no reason to not trust the old man now. Jake somewhat reluctantly agreed to meet with his chief, and he began to respond back to Central Headquarters.

  Jake arrived within twenty minutes and parked his police SUV outside the main entrance. Before he could even remove his key from the ignition, the vehicle was surrounded by jet-black Tahoes with red and blue wig wag low-profile LED lighting systems activated in full. Suddenly, dark-sunglass-wearing field agents began to pour out of the SUVs like jesters from a clown car underneath the big tent.

  “Sgt. Hathaway?” one of the suits demanded.

  “Yeah, that’s me…”

  “We need to talk to you about what went down at your brother’s house.” “Sure, follow me inside to the chief’s office and I’ll tell you the best I can, but I really don’t

  understand much of it myself…” Suit One responded with, “Your Chief doesn’t give a shit what you have to say. He told us he would get you here and then we could cuff you and stuff you and throw away the fucking key. Unquote.”

  The agents escorted the police sergeant over to their waiting pursuit-rated police package Tahoes with heavily tinted glass, where they promptly grabbed Jake’s arms and hands before advising him that he was under arrest for the murders of Rich and Holly Hathaway.

  Jake was disarmed, handcuffed, and thrown into one of the Fed’s SUVs. The driver of that vehicle promptly sped off to transport Jake in a short ride to the Dallas County Jail. Jake was subsequently booked in on capital murder charges and spent the night in an isolated holding cell.

  What the fuck is going on here? How can they not possibly comprehend what happened back there? Jake thought to himself.

  He was trying to make some sense of the madness that had prevailed as he found himself surrounded amidst the caged chaos existing within the Lew Sterrett jailhouse walls.

  Dallas County Jail, Downtown Dallas (Present Day) Jake had been kept in solitary confinement since his arrival in the Dallas County Jail. This was partially to assure the safety of the onetime cop to safeguard him from being attacked by anyone who was not so fond of his kind.

  But the confinement was also assuredly meant to keep Jake from talking about his case and spreading the word about the odd sequel of events that had occurred at the birthday incident. The good thing about this alone time meant the wrongly convicted Sgt. Hathaway had plenty of time to think, plan, and strategize. Sitting alone in the confines and solitude of his cold, lonely concrete square, Jake began to feel as one with the darkness.

  Although he was devastated to be completely detached from the love of his life, Amanda, he was beginning to feel somehow as if his other human emotions and qualities were beginning to escape him.

  Where the solitude, darkness, and cold of his surroundings would make some men break, Jake could feel himself changing slowly. Or had this begun long before the ' Birthday Incident’? Was it his current predicament that had him changing mentally within? Or was something physically occurring within his body after having sustained that vicious bite from the Holly / creature? He had not been eating nearly as much as he had prior to his incarceration, yet he was not feeling hungry like before.

  His strength suspiciously was not waning, although he was eating less and not working out as he did when that was part of his daily regimen. Jake could tell that something was just not right about him, but only time would unlock the mystery.

  Chapter Twelve - Dead Giveaway

  I 45 South, Buffalo, Texas The aged grey Bluebird bus, Dallas County Jail’s prisoner transfer vehicle, motored its way south on Interstate 45. This was a major thoroughfare running north and south through central Texas. This would be a long, lethargic pilgrimage to Huntsville. To be more specific, the Allan B. Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections. This was the facility where male death row inmates are housed until the day of their execution.

  The bus had now traveled about two-thirds of this three-and-a-half-hour journey. It was now traveling through Buffalo, Texas, where the highway narrows to two lanes in each direction. The driver, named Bob, was a weathered, salt-and-pepper-haired and bearded Dallas County deputy. He had two other similarly uniformed
individuals seated behind him, one on the driver’s side of the center aisle named Grover and one on the passenger side of the aisle named Pete.

  These two were armed with .40-caliber Glock pistols and 12-gauge shotguns. They were strategically perched in seats that positioned them facing the opposite sides of the bus from where they sat. With a half turn of their heads in either direction, they could observe either the sixteen prisoners at the rear of the bus or the steaming black asphalt Texas roadway in front of them.

  The prisoners were all adorned in steel silver wrist and ankle bracelets. These were attached to heavy chains that ran through a large eye bolt. The eye bolt was welded to and extruded upward from the vehicle’s floorboard near each of the prisoner’s feet.

  A large galvanized steel cage surrounded the prisoners, and a large thrice-padlocked door separated them from the ‘first-class section.’ That was where the deputies sat at the front of the large bus.

  The sixteen prisoners consisted of two women and fourteen men, one of whom was former Dallas Police Sergeant Jake Hathaway. Jake was not receiving any special privileges or treatment. He was being treated the same as every other convict. However, even the transport deputies did their best to keep Jake’s identity secret from other prisoners. They realized that many of these convicts would jump at the opportunity to “welcome” a former cop.

  The deputies remained ever watchful of their surroundings while also multitasking and listening to the bus’s AM radio. A national news syndication was reporting the multiple reported sightings of large black insect masses over the last few weeks. These were spotted particularly in the warmer climate regions of the southern ends of both coasts.

  Government scientists confirmed these insects were flies but claimed to be baffled as to what species they belonged to. There were many theories being floated around as to where they came from and why they had become so prevalent recently.

  Jake had his eyes closed for much of this long trip. He wasn’t napping. H e was still trying to sort through the details that led to his being here. Suddenly he felt a nudge as the prisoner to his left was elbowing the left side of Jake’s rib cage. Jake opened his eyes and turned to his left to see the striped guy gesture with his head and eyes toward the front.

  Without turning his head, Jake shifted his eyes to the right. He observed the two guards both concentrating their attention on an older model flat black Dodge Ram crew cab. It had dark tinted glass and no license plates and had just raced past the bus.

  The 4X4 truck had a lift kit, large knobby off-road tires, and a matching black push bumper and grill guard. It swerved directly in front of the bus and was slowing down with its red brake lights illuminating brightly. The bus driver slammed on the brakes, slowing the bus’ speed from 60 mph to 40 quickly to avoid striking the pickup.

  The Ram cut back into the lane to the left of the transport vehicle and slowed greatly to find itself lined up parallel with the bus. The guards appeared tense, squeezing their shotguns and preparing for the unknown.

  Deputy driver Bob became distracted by the Ram as well, failing to notice a person dressed in a black ski mask, black T-shirt and black tactical BDU pants that had just come out of the woods. The woodsman tossed a spike strip across the roadway in front of the massive Bluebird. The tires rolled over the sharply spiked device as the rubber in the bus’s front tires ruptured. The sounds of two mini explosions were followed by the audible rush of hot air from each front tire.

  The bus driver jerked the steering wheel to the left, hoping to avoid the back tires running over the spike strip as well. However, the old steel vessel was not agile enough to make this maneuver and flipped over on its right side. This motion threw the un- seatbelt-fastened guard, Pete, down against the side of the bus that was in contact with the freeway.

  Pete’s head went out the nearest open side window and was promptly grated into the highway asphalt. Soon the roadway was littered with bus debris and brain matter as the aged metal behemoth slid about 120 feet before coming to a halt.

  The bus lay still, lying across the highway and blocking both southbound lanes. The black Ram’s white back-up lights appeared as the dark truck was thrown into reverse, squealing tires and burning rubber in the process. It then stopped just south of the bus, intentionally stopped sideways with the passenger side of the Ram facing the front of the fallen transport vehicle.

  The salty old driver Deputy Bob, who was hanging sideways by his seatbelt, was also unconscious either from a concussion suffered in the vehicle roll or maybe from a heart attack. Grover, the guard who kept his head, began to crawl toward the open bus door when gunfire erupted from the Ram.

  AK rifle-fired bullets careened through the open bus door. Grover returned fire with his Glock pistol, then reached across to Pete’s headless torso to take two extra magazines full of .40- caliber bullets from Pete’s duty belt. Pete wouldn’t need them anymore. But Grover would.

  Unbeknownst to Grover, a dark blue Chevy Express van with limo window tint had just pulled up. It was behind, and on the north side of, the prison vehicle. Three individuals dressed head to toe in SWAT gear with full facial masks and helmets carried assault rifles as they exited the van. They walked in separate directions and rounded the downed prison bus vehicle, walking towards the bus door.

  The leader of the tactically dressed unit approached the Bluebird’s accordion style door with an entry shield. He instantly began to take rounds from Grover’s pistol. The rounds ricocheted off the shield and were effective in slowing the renegade threesome’s approach. But then Grover’s weapon ran dry. Grover thumbed the magazine release button to drop the empty magazine as he had done so many times during combat firearms drills during training.

  Holding a full Glock mag in his left hand, Grover began to insert the mag into the weapon. He then was struck in the head by the team leader’s shield. The magazine didn’t sit properly in his weapon, and as Grover attempted to fire the weapon again the top bullet didn’t feed properly into the chamber. The gun jammed. The Glock did not fire, and it was rendered temporarily useless until it could be properly cleared.

  Knowing he did not have the time to correct the malfunction, Deputy Grover threw the weapon down, and dove behind Pete’s body. Grover began to remove the firearm from Pete’s duty belt when the team leader placed the red dot from his AR14’s laser sights between Grover’s eyes. “Unless you want to die now, stand up and go unlock that fuckin’ convict cage.”

  Grover stood up, limped over to the cage, and removed a keychain from one of the keepers on his belt. He then unlocked the three padlocks with three separate keys.

  Then he was told, “now release that white cocksucker there the one that used to be a cop.”

  Jake could sense the eyes of the fifteen other inmates all looking around, wondering who among them used to be ‘Johnny Law’ - their enemy. Deputy Grover used yet another key to unlock t he Peerless cuffs from convict Hathaway’s wrists and ankles. Jake remained seated. He was unsure of what was happening and what these SWAT-looking guys had planned for him.

  The renegade leader said,“Thank you for all of your help, deputy” and promptly fired the AR14 at Grover’s forehead.

  The helmeted commander then pointed the rifle at Jake’s head and thundered, “GET THE FUCK UP!” Jake complied and was ordered into the back of the Chevy Express. As Jake climbed into the back of the van at gunpoint, he was struck in the back of the head with a blunt object. This knocked Jake unconscious. His body slammed face first onto the solid steel floor of the back of the van.

  Blue Elbow Swamp at Old Hwy 90, just east of the Texas / Louisiana Border Jake awoke to feel his face pressed against the cold, damp earth just east of the Texas/Louisiana border and south of Old Highway 90. He was also on the edge of the Blue Elbow Swamp, not that there were any signs posted or landmarks around. Jake had no clue as to exactly where he had been dumped, much like a box full of unwanted newborn tabby kittens.

  Jake sat up and looked down at his own bo
dy to notice he was still wearing the striped Dallas County Jail jumpsuit. Beside him was the clear zip lock property bag which contained his wallet with his flat DPD Sergeant badge inside.

  His head was throbbing from the thump he had been dealt to his cranium. Jake was now sporting a huge goose egg on the back of his head. A dried blood trail connected Jake’s w ound to a path of grass flattened by a heavy vehicle with large knobby tires. Jake followed this flat-grass path for quite some time, while wondering who the hell had sprung him free from the prison bus. Was it friend or foe?

  Seems like a friend would understand that Jake was wrongly convicted and have set him free to buy Jake some time. With that time, he could search for the proof necessary for a retrial. Either that, or he could just stay in hiding to avoid being executed.

  But an ally would not have crushed him in the back of the skull before throwing him into the Arkansas woods either. An enemy would have enjoyed causing the head trauma to Jake, but why would such an adversary set him free?

  Although he had been shed from his prison cell and shackles, Jake knew he would not be able to communicate with Mack or anyone else without compromising his location. In this modern day of cell phone pinging, smartphone mapping and so on and so forth, tracking a person was just too easy. The desperado contemplated what his loved ones and friends were thinking about his situation, his guilty verdict.

  Do they believe the prosecution and Feds? How could they? They know me better than anyone else does. Surely, they can see that something is seriously wrong here and that I was unjustly accused and sentenced for murders that were clearly self-defense? Will anyone be willing to sacrifice their lives and freedom to help me regain mine? And even if I could ask them to do so, I would feel so friggin’ guilty if the same were to come upon one of the people who mean the most to me….