“It’s all right.” Bill got down on one knee next to her. “Alison and Arch are with them right now, don’t you worry. They’re safe as houses.”
Hendricks eyed the house next to them. There were about ten bullet holes in the back that he could see, just little pockmarks where Erin’s gunfire had gone straight through. “Not sure I’d say it that way,” Hendricks muttered.
“Clear!” came a voice from within the house. There was another noise of someone moaning in pain, but it sounded a little deeper, like it might be a guy. Hendricks realized it was Duncan that had called clear, and he figured that was good enough. The gunfire from Erin had stopped, too, so he got to his feet and straightened his hat. It was cool out, but he’d been sweating through this whole gunfight.
The neighborhood was quiet except for Brenda’s stifled moans. The guy inside had shut up, maybe trying to keep a stiff upper lip about his pain. That left Hendricks free to hear Erin say, “Situation resolved,” and get a short burst of radio static afterward. Everybody would know it was over now. At least for a little while.
*
Lauren was trying to do her best to align Reeve’s busted ribs together when the call came in. “Situation resolved,” Erin Harris’s voice crackled through the radio in front of Brian Longholt. “Everyone’s fine.”
Brian was looking like he’d swallowed a lemon slice sideways. “What … what do I even say?”
“Who gives a shit?” Reeve’s reply came out about in line with where Lauren figured his pain was on the scale. “Just say we hear you, whatever.” She couldn’t tell if he was relieved at all under his agony, but she caught a flash of what Addison Longholt was thinking, and it was plainly, Oh, thank God.
*
Arch could barely believe it, standing where he was, body positioned between Alison and the kids and the sound of the shooting all those blocks away. They were all crouching, figuring that was the best move given that the sound of gunfire sometimes preceded bullets winging in one’s direction.
“Thank God,” Alison said, clutching baby Charlie right against her. She looked strained, and not just from trying to keep care of three kids.
“Thank Him, indeed,” Arch said, and pulled at his mic. “Should we bring the kids over?”
There was a pause before Erin answered. “I think …” Someone shouted in the background, and it sounded a little Hendricks. “Yeah, go ahead. Duncan says the house is clear and Hendricks and Bill are out back with Brenda.”
“Shame on her, leaving these precious babies alone like that,” Lucy Prater said. Arch had to look back, he’d forgotten the woman was even there. She was just standing, apparently oblivious to any danger, her arms folded and her lips pursed primly.
“I reckon she had a compelling reason,” Arch said, “probably did it under duress given what just happened.” In spite of Hendricks’s constant ribbing, Arch did try his best not to be judgmental. Sometimes it was easier than others, such as now, because if he looked inside and was real honest with himself, he had formed a very definite judgment about Lucy Prater, and it was distinctly un-Christian of him, what he was thinking.
“It’s a disgrace,” Lucy Prater said. “There’s just no excuse.”
“Well,” Alison said, and Arch could feel the quiet, sarcastic wrath about to descend before she even got more than that word out, “I expect that in twenty years these children will be more likely to talk to their mothers than your kids will be to talk to you.” Arch blanched and blew out a little air; Lucy Prater’s kids had grown up and moved away, and even Arch had heard the rumors about a family rift. He wouldn’t have said anything, though, and that was a difference between him and Alison.
“Well, I never!” Lucy Prater huffed off back toward her house.
“I agree, you never should have opened your mouth,” Alison tossed after her. Lucy Prater didn’t turn around; she just sped up.
“Not sure that was needed,” Arch said, watching her go.
“She’s a mean old bitch,” Alison said then put a hand over her mouth. “Biddy, I mean. Biddy.”
“What’s a bitch?” One of the older kids asked, eyes full of innocent wonder.
“Dang,” Arch said, looking at his wife in time to catch her guilty expression. Hopefully like the rest of this experience, that little word would fade right into the recesses of their memories.
*
Hendricks went through the house again with Duncan after he’d called it clear, and what he’d seen—other than the teenage boy that Duncan had applied his baton to, evacuating demons and giving the kid what was bound to be a lovely bump on the head and maybe a concussion—concerned him. He’d seen demons go through a house or two in his time, and they tended to go about it like the dumbest of criminals, driven entirely by id. You’d find snack wrappers on the floor, broken glass everywhere from them turning over TVs and chucking plates, and empty bags of chips like the pantry had been sacked by a stoned-out college student.
This place had clearly been turned over, but it hadn’t been done in a careless way. The only signs it had been done at all were open cupboards with spaces in the pantry where food had clearly been. In the upstairs bedroom, some stuff had been obviously removed from some of the closets. Not clothes, but suitcases or travel bags, and something from the top shelf of the closet that suggested to Hendricks it might be firearms of some sort.
Yeah, this house had been pillaged pretty good, and it had been done by someone who knew where everything was, knew exactly where to look, and who hadn’t been driven one iota by their id. It was a robbery of calculation and care, and the stuff taken suggested that whoever had done the deed, they were looking to supply up for something.
Something bad, Hendricks figured.
“What the hell happened in here?” Erin asked, finally coming in the back door as Hendricks and Duncan were coming back down the stairs.
“Nothing good,” Duncan said, glancing into the dining room, where the demons had been firing their weapons. There were shell casings everywhere on the floor, brass mostly but a few red shotgun empties for color and variety.
“Looks like this possession demon made off with enough shit to keep them fed for a while,” Hendricks said, not looking at Erin.
“How do you know that?” Erin asked, holstering her gun. “I thought we got ’em.”
“We got a couple of them,” Duncan agreed.
“What were the names of the ladies that went missing from the park?” Hendricks asked, looking at the front door, which Duncan had apparently smashed off its hinges at some point between the time they approached and the time the confrontation had ended. Hendricks remembered it being open when they came up, which meant at some point they must have closed it, because it was damned sure opened by force, and not the human sort.
“Brenda Matthew and Evelyn Creek,” Erin said, frowning. “Why?”
“Because Brenda is the only one here,” Hendricks said. “Where’d that teenage boy go?”
“He’s out back with Brenda and Bill,” Erin said, and her frown was only deepening. “You’re saying …”
“The original guy we fought it out with, the leaper,” Hendricks said, “he’s not here. And your other missing mommy isn’t, either. That suggests—”
“They got away,” Erin said, running a dirty, powder-blackened hand up over her brow, leaving traces of grey on her skin and in her hair. “Fuck.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Hendricks said. He nudged the busted door and it cracked loudly, the weight all resting on the bottom hinge. It split loose and came smashing down next to him, causing a hell of a noise through the house. It caused his ears to ring, but not loudly enough to blot out Erin’s exclamation of, “Goddammit!”
He opened his mouth a few times, trying to clear the noise like he would a clog in his Eustachian tubes. It sorta worked, and he caught a little of Erin’s heated anger being poured at him. It was funnier when he couldn’t hear her, but he took it with an air of indifference even when he could. “�
�You really have to do that?” Hendricks just shrugged, and she sighed. “Well, what the hell do we do now?” Erin asked, apparently moving on.
“Probably ought to check nearby houses,” Duncan said, his voice still a little drowned out by the ringing in Hendricks’s ears. “Especially the one belonging to the other missing lady.”
“I think they took whatever supplies they stole out the back,” Hendricks said, pointing out toward the kitchen door where Bill was waiting with the survivors. “There’s a spot on the grass that looks like they put some heavy shit there. Probably used their demon strength to hoof it out the rear while those two were keeping us in fear for our lives.” He looked at Duncan. “By the way, what was your deal during all that? Because I doubt it was you fearing for your life.”
Duncan looked like he’d gotten pinched. “They kept shooting me.”
“That’s not supposed to kill you, though, I thought?” Erin had enough alarm on her face that when she raised her voice to turn her statement into a question at the end, Hendricks wasn’t surprised.
“No, it doesn’t kill me, my shell’s too thick for that,” Duncan agreed. “But nailing me squarely in the shell with a rifle causes my essence to slosh around inside. Kinda like if you get hit in the head, it can cause a concussion?”
“Are you concussed?” Hendricks asked, being a real dick, even by his reckoning. “Should we have the doctor put on a glove and give you an exam up the rear?”
“Unlike you, she wouldn’t find a lot of luck there with me,” Duncan said, taking his shot in stride. “No, I’m not concussed. But when I take repeated hits to the shell, the world does spin and I have a hard time moving. It’s like up becomes down and vice versa.”
“You get vertigo?” Erin asked.
Duncan looked like he wanted to answer that, but after a thought he just shrugged. “Close enough. Makes it hard to charge the enemy when you can’t figure out which direction you’re supposed to go.”
“I’d been wondering why a gun stuns demons,” Erin said.
“Handguns don’t produce quite that much effect, but a rifle fired repeatedly will.” Duncan moved his body in a snakelike way. “The aftereffects … are also unpleasant.”
“What do you mean, aftereffects?” Erin asked.
“Well, you know how I eat sometimes?” Duncan asked. Hendricks took a step back, suspecting what might be coming.
“No, but I’ll take your word for it that you do,” Erin said, edging away a little herself, like she caught on to him moving back. “Is it … is it gonna come back up?”
“Oh, no,” Duncan said, shaking his head. “I mean, not yet. I’ve got it under control. But it will come out eventually, and it will make Gideon’s byproducts look like a gentle spring rain by comparison.” He made a noise. “Ungh. Food gets broken down by my essence, and when it gets disturbed in the process, it creates—”
“Yeah, I don’t need to know about this, either,” Hendricks said, wishing he’d saved kicking the door off its hinge for now, or that his ears were still ringing like hell. Instead he just wandered out the front door right about the moment that Arch and Alison were coming up, three kids in tow. They looked almost like a family, except Arch had a bearing about him, all stiff-necked and shit, that made him look like he’d never been around a kid in his life. “Well, that’s a hell of a thing.”
“How you doing, Hendricks?” Alison called from down the sidewalk. She was carrying one of the kids, a hell of a lot smaller than Jacob from last night, lucky for her back, he suspected.
“Well, I’m not as burdened as you,” he said. “I’d worry more about Arch and how that stick up his—uhhhh,” he caught himself before he said “up his ass,” in front of the kids, “his, you know, is going to end up broken.” The kids were all looking at him, and he felt mightily uncomfortable. “And stuff,” he finished lamely, not even sure why he was saying it.
Alison rolled her eyes, making her way up the walk past the sheriff’s car on the lawn. The baby in her arms pointed at it as they went past, googoo-ing out something as they went by. “Arch,” Alison said, stopping next to Hendricks, “take these kids to Brenda, will you?”
“They’re out back,” Hendricks said. “Might want to go around that way.” He pointed to indicate the way that was free of broken glass, past the police cruiser sitting like a pink flamingo in the middle of the lawn.
Arch’s eyes got big as the sun. “Uhhhh …” He plainly didn’t intend to argue with his wife, so he dutifully stuck out his hands and received the baby, which he clutched awkwardly to his chest. “Okay.” He looked down at the other two, who seemed a little red in the face to Hendricks. “Come on, then.” They followed after him, though one of them lingered behind, casting looks at Alison as Arch took them around the house.
When Arch had disappeared, Hendricks looked back in the door. Erin and Duncan were gone, probably to check with the survivors in the rear. He glanced at Alison, wondering what was going on with her, but she was just staring at the cruiser in front of them like it was holding a deep secret of the universe or something.
“You all right?” Hendricks asked, not really sure what else he could say.
Alison blinked a few times, like she was coming back to herself, and then refocused on him. The corner of her mouth twitched, and she pushed long blond hairs out of her eyes. “Tell me a joke,” she said, dead serious.
“Uhm.” Hendricks just stared at her, trying to figure out if she was pulling one on him right now, asking for this out of the blue. “What?”
“Just tell me a joke,” she said, toneless. “I know you got some.”
“Any joke in particular?” Hendricks asked.
“Anything,” she said.
“Well,” he said, put right on the spot and watching his memory for every joke he’d ever heard just recede into the sunset like early morning clouds evaporated under the break of day, “I, uhh … well, I just thought of one, but it’s pretty tasteless and crass.”
“So tell it,” she said, with the air of patient expectation.
“Okay,” he said, reddening a little as he started, “this guy decides to go bear hunting, so he heads back in the woods and sits there, next to a tree, waiting, until a bear comes wandering through. He raises his rifle, takes a shot, and when the smoke clears—”
“What is this, black powder season?” Alison asked, making a face.
“It’s just a joke, follow along,” Hendricks said. “When he goes to check, he can’t find the bear. Suddenly he feels a tap on his shoulder, and turns around to find the bear right there, pissed as hell. And the bear says—”
“Oh, it’s one of these type of jokes, with talking bears.”
“Yeah, it’s like the cartoons of our youth,” Hendricks said. “This would go a lot easier if you weren’t constantly interrupting—”
“Fine, go on.”
“So the bear says, ‘I’m so fucking sick of you hunters shooting at me. I’m going to teach you a lesson. Either blow me right now, or I’m gonna maul you so hard that when you piss it’s gonna spray out like one of those lawn sprinklers with the rings—”
“How does a bear know about lawn sprinklers?”
“Did you want a joke or not?”
“… Okay. Proceed.”
“So what can the hunter do? He gets down on his knees and does as told, then leaves afterwards—”
“Doesn’t even get breakfast. What a disgrace.”
“—and he goes and buys a more expensive gun, with better optics, and he goes back to the woods to the same spot the next week. And he sits there for a little while, and sure enough, here comes the bear again. So he raises his gun and he shoots, and when the smoke clears or whatever, he goes looking and there’s no carcass. He feels this tap on his shoulder—”
“Oh, boy.”
“—and the bear is just staring down at him again, pissed as hell. ‘You know what to do,’ he says, and points down. The hunter looks at the bear’s claws and he knows there’s no
way he’d get the gun up in time. So he drops and makes it happen again—”
“I bet he was spitting out hairs for a week.”
Hendricks stopped and made a disgusted face before going on. “Anyway, he goes and buys an even more expensive gun, top-flight optics, and he’s fucking ready for revenge. So he goes out to the woods again, same spot, and he’s sitting there, and sure as shit, here comes the bear again. So he steadies the gun and aims so carefully, not even taking a breath, and he fires, and when he goes to check where he thinks the corpse has fallen, there’s nothing. And then there’s a tap on his shoulder, and he hears a voice—‘You’re not in this for the hunting, are you?’”
Hendricks finished and waited, watching Alison’s face to see what she thought. She was a hard read sometimes, but she had a real thoughtful look on her face, and finally she spoke. “I thought you said this was a crass and tasteless joke.”
Hendricks blinked. “Uh … most people would say so.”
“Really?” She didn’t look impressed. “I’d say it’s got a very distinctive flavor.” She smiled impishly. “Kinda salty and chalky—”
“Gross,” Hendricks said, closing his eyes as he laughed a little.
“Oh,” she said, with a taunting air, “he can give it but he can’t take it, folks … except up the ass.”
“The hell?” Hendricks stared at her. “Were you in the Corps at some point? Because you talk like a Marine, and I like it.”
She just kinda laughed that off. “Thanks. That wasn’t bad.”
“Hey, I’m good for a few things,” Hendricks said, and they fell into silence for a second. “Thank you, by the way.”
She cocked her head as she looked at him. “For what?”
He stared hard at the shot-up police cruiser in front of them. “For not treating me different since … for not acting like I’m broken glass or a bomb about to go off.”
Legion (Southern Watch Book 5) Page 21
