by Lukens, Mark
David knew it, too.
They braced themselves as Frank answered Cole.
“He wants you to kill the boy.”
They were all silent, not sure how to react. Cole and Jose both looked behind them at Stella and David. It was just a brief glance from both of them, but Frank’s voice turned them back around.
“Kill the boy and leave his body on the front porch. Then all of this will be over.”
Cole shook his head no. This was too much. He had helped carve out his friend’s eyeballs earlier today, and this was going way too far now. How much more could he do? Where was the line? He couldn’t kill a little kid.
“No,” Cole said loudly as his breath plumed up in front of his mouth from the cold.
No reaction yet from Jose, Stella, or David.
No reaction from Frank.
“We can’t do that!” Cole yelled out to Frank.
Frank still didn’t answer. He began to glide back towards the trees, his legs didn’t move, it was like some invisible string was pulling him back to the dark mass of trees, or like he was on some kind of conveyer belt hidden underneath the snow. But he wasn’t answering Cole. He wasn’t arguing with Cole. He wasn’t threatening Cole. He didn’t need to. It didn’t need to. They all knew what it could do.
“We can’t do that!!” Cole yelled louder, and he stepped to the edge of the porch.
Jose stepped away from Cole and turned around and looked at Stella and David, keeping an eye on them as they stood near the front door. He spoke to Cole, but he kept his eyes on Stella and David, making sure that they weren’t going to dart back inside and try to lock them out here. “Cole, listen to me for a second.”
Cole turned and looked at Jose. “Jose, no …”
“Just think about it for a second,” Jose continued in a very calm tone, his voice soft and reasonable. “It’s asking for one life to spare the rest of us. One life for three, and then we can leave.”
“You think that thing’s going to let us leave?” Cole asked Jose.
“It doesn’t matter!” Jose snapped. His reasonable voice was suddenly gone now. “We have to do what it wants! I’m not going to end up like Frank. Or Trevor!”
Hearing his brother’s name stung Cole for a moment, he looked away, his defenses down and Jose pulled out his pistol from his coat pocket and aimed it at Cole, but his eyes kept darting back to Stella and David.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Cole asked Jose.
“Stay right there,” Jose warned. He looked at Stella and David. “You two don’t move.”
“Let’s think about this, Jose,” Cole begged.
“Put your hands up,” Jose told Cole.
“Jose, we can’t do this.”
“We’ll just put a bullet in that kid’s head,” Jose said. “That’s all. He’ll never feel a thing. He’ll never see it coming.”
“We can’t do that.”
Jose held his gun steady on Cole even though he’d drank a lot of whiskey earlier. His eyes kept darting back to Stella and David. But then he looked at Cole when he said his next words.
“You might as well tell Stella the truth,” Jose told Cole.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“Tell her the truth!” Jose repeated to Cole.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Stella watched Cole and Jose. She was ready to bolt inside with David, but she couldn’t take a chance on Jose shooting at them; they’d never make it inside – she had to wait for the right time.
“Jose, why don’t you put the gun down?” Cole said. “We can discuss this.”
“There’s nothing to discuss!” Jose spat out. He looked at Stella and David. “We were going to kill you two anyway,” Jose said. “That’s the truth. We couldn’t leave two witnesses alive.”
“That’s a lie!” Cole said. “We never discussed anything like that.”
“Nobody discussed anything with you, Cole. You weren’t part of the team anymore. You just did this job to help your brother, to get him out of debt with Frank. Nobody trusted you anymore. Me and Frank didn’t trust either one of you anymore.”
“That’s a fucking lie!” Cole said, but there wasn’t as much force in his words now. He was beginning to see what may have really been going on. Frank and Jose were discussing things behind their backs. Were they going to kill him and Trevor after they killed Stella and David? Split the money up between the three of them? Or maybe they were going to kill Needles, too. There was a lot of money at stake this time, and perhaps they had been ready to kill for it.
Jose looked at Stella again, and he gave her his best smile, what he thought was his most reassuring smile in the near darkness. “But listen, Stella,” he said. He was calling her by her name now. “We don’t have to kill you now. We just have to kill David.”
“We’re not killing that kid,” Cole said. “We have to think of another way.” Cole’s mind was spinning as he realized that Frank and Jose had been planning on killing everyone involved.
“There is no other way!” Jose snapped.
Cole noticed Jose’s body swaying just a bit, just a little unsteady on his feet. His hand holding the gun was beginning to tremble. This is my only chance, Cole thought. Jose isn’t going to wait much longer out here in the cold before he shoots David. Or all three of us.
“Just listen to me for a second, Jose,” Cole said, trying to stall for time, trying to wait for exactly the right time to charge.
Jose was about to explode with rage again – he was only a few seconds away from shooting, Cole was sure of that. But then Jose’s attention was distracted for a second by David opening the front door of the cabin.
Jose turned his gun on David.
Stella stepped in front of David, ready to take a bullet for him.
But Jose didn’t care – he’d shoot through Stella to get to that kid if he had to.
Stella squeezed her eyes shut.
This was Cole’s only chance. He rushed at Jose and tackled him just as Jose’s finger pulled the trigger. The gun fired, but Cole had knocked Jose’s arm away just enough and the bullet whizzed past Stella and struck the cabin wall.
Cole slammed Jose into the side of the cabin, and he heard a grunt as the breath left Jose’s lungs for a moment.
“Get inside!” Cole yelled at Stella and David.
Stella grabbed David and pushed at him to get inside, but David was already a step ahead of her. They hurried inside and slammed the door shut. Stella looked down at the door handle. She looked at the lock on the door handle. At the deadbolt. She couldn’t take a chance. She locked the door.
Outside on the porch, Cole and Jose wrestled. Cole had a grip on Jose’s wrist, keeping the gun pointed down at the floorboards of the front porch. They wrestled on their feet for a moment, but with one violent twist of his body, Cole swung Jose over him in a Judo flip and they both landed on the floorboards of the front porch with Cole on top of Jose.
The gun went off.
The shot was loud in the eerie silence of the dark night all around the cabin. It echoed across the snowy fields.
Inside the cabin, Stella and David watched the door. They had heard the gunshot. Who was shot? Was it Cole? Jose? Both of them?
*
Cole got up off of Jose and his hands went to his own abdomen, afraid he’d been shot and didn’t feel it yet. But his bare hands came away dry. No blood on him. He looked down at Jose who wasn’t moving. Even in the darkness, Cole could see the darker stain spreading across Jose’s shirt underneath his open coat. Cole didn’t even remember shooting; he wasn’t even sure how it had happened.
It had happened so fast.
Cole picked up Jose’s gun from the porch and he aimed it down at Jose.
Jose stared up at Cole with wide eyes, he was afraid, he knew what had happened. He opened his mouth to speak and he coughed up a chunk of pulpy blood and then gasped for air.
Cole backed away from Jose, he moved closer to the front door of the cabin.
&n
bsp; Jose’s body trembled as he sat up and scooted across the floorboards to the log wall of the cabin. He pushed himself up into a sitting position with his back against the cabin wall. He gritted his teeth and moaned in pain; his hands shot to his abdomen, holding on to it, trying in vain to stop the flow of blood.
Cole turned and looked out at the snowy field. “We left you a bonus!!” he screamed out at the woods. Then he turned to walk to the front door and Jose’s hand grabbed Cole’s pants leg, stopping him for a second.
Jose stared up at Cole with wide, terrified eyes. “Please, Cole. Don’t leave me out here for that thing.”
Cole stared down at Jose for a moment, and then he ripped his pants leg out of Jose’s grasp and he walked to the front door of the cabin. He twisted the door handle but it wouldn’t open – it was locked.
He beat on the door. “Let me in!” He screamed at the door. “Stella, it’s me, Cole! Jose is shot! He’s not coming inside with me!”
No answer from inside.
Cole could hear Jose chuckling from the darkness. That chuckle turned into a laugh. “Now who’s been double crossed?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Cole said.
“We’ll just both have to wait out here now,” Jose said. “We’ll both have to see what comes for us out of the darkness.”
There was a sound from the dark woods at the edge of the snowy field, a loud sound, like something very big was crashing through the trees. Cole turned and stared at the darkness, nearly all the light from the setting sun was gone now, and the world around them was blanketed in almost pure darkness. And there was something in the woods, coming closer.
Cole turned back to the door and pounded on it. “Let me in! There’s something in the woods, I can hear it!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Stella and David stared at the front door. They could hear Cole beating on the door and demanding to be let in. Cole said it was only him and that Jose had been shot. But could she believe him?
David touched Stella’s hand. He nodded his head yes.
Stella nodded back at David, and she took a deep breath. She moved close to the door and talked through it. “It’s only you, Cole?” she asked.
“Yes,” Cole answered, and there was panic in his voice. “You have to hurry. I can hear something out in the trees. It’s something big.”
Stella looked back at David one more time, making sure. Then she opened the door and Cole rushed inside.
Stella closed and locked the door. She twisted the knob for the deadbolt. Then she backed away from the door and stared at Cole.
Cole stood only a few feet away from Stella, closer to the kitchen. He looked very cold even though he was only outside for a few minutes, but he didn’t have his coat, hat, or gloves. He stood very still and stared at her.
Stella began to wonder if she’d made the wrong decision letting him in.
“You were going to leave me out there?” Cole asked Stella in a strangely calm voice. “Leave me out there in the cold? Out there with that thing?”
“I … I had to be sure,” she told him.
“I just killed another friend of mine to save you and David. How is that not enough?”
“You’ve seen now what that thing can do,” Stella answered quickly, a sudden anger in her voice. “I had to be sure it was really you.”
Cole walked away from Stella and let out a long breath. He inhaled deeply, trying to calm himself down, trying to think rationally. But he’d been through so much in the last few days, seen things he never thought were possible, hadn’t had much sleep or food, and now thinking rationally was a little more difficult than it used to be.
He grabbed the bottle of whiskey and took a sip, letting the fiery liquid relax him a little. He turned and looked at Stella who stood in the same spot in the living room, staring at him. He had frightened her, but at least she was trying to trust him.
She had trusted him enough to let him back inside, and he needed to trust her. “This is what it’s been leading up to the whole time, isn’t it?” he asked Stella.
She nodded yes.
“This is the same thing that it led up to at the dig site, isn’t it?”
Stella glanced at David, and then she looked back at Cole. She sighed heavily and nodded. “Yes.”
“Why does it want us to kill David? He’s just a kid. Why doesn’t it just come in here and do it?”
Stella hesitated for a moment, staring at Cole. “I don’t think it can,” she finally answered him. “I think it’s afraid of David for some reason. I don’t think it’s able to kill David so it needs others to do it. It tries to scare others so badly that they will do anything it wants – even kill a little boy.”
There was a pounding on the front door.
They all jumped.
From the other side of the door, they heard Jose’s voice. “Cole, let me in! I’m not dead yet!”
They all stood very still and stared at the door.
“I need help,” Jose continued from out on the porch. He beat on the door again. “Please, I’m bleeding bad, man. Please don’t leave me out here!” They could hear that Jose was beginning to cry. “Please don’t leave me out here with this thing!”
Cole took a step towards the door; he rested his hand on top of the butt of his gun that stuck up from the waistband of his pants.
“I won’t hurt David,” Jose said from behind the door. “I promise. Just let me in.”
Cole took another step closer to the door, he stared at it. It couldn’t be Jose, Cole thought to himself. Jose had to be dead by now. Or taken by that thing out there.
“We’ll think of another way,” Jose said from the other side of the door. “Like you said, we’ll think of something else. We won’t kill David.”
As Cole stared at the door, he took another step towards it. David jumped off the couch and ran across the floor to Cole. He grabbed Cole’s hand and took it in his own hand, like a son would grab his father’s hand. Cole looked down at David who stared up at him.
“It’s not him anymore,” David told Cole in a soft voice.
Cole nodded down at David. “I know,” he told him.
There was a sudden flurry of poundings on the door. Jose screamed at them from the other side of the door, and his voice was no longer pleading; now it was angry. “You’re going to be very sorry, Cole! It will get you just like it got me! It won’t let you die. You just go on and on. Just like Frank! Just like Trevor!”
Jose’s voice turned deeper as he continued shouting, his voice became more guttural, more demonic. “Kill the boy, or it’s going to be bad. So bad. Worse than you can possibly imagine!”
There was a rush of wind from outside and the door shook and rattled in its frame.
And then everything was deathly quiet.
Cole looked down at David who still held his hand and stared up at him with his dark eyes.
Cole knelt down and got on the same eye level as David. “Don’t worry, David. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re not going to give you to that thing outside. We’ll find a way out of here. I promise.”
David stared at Cole for a moment, then he jumped at Cole and hugged him, squeezing him tightly, his eyes shut, a few tears slipping out of his eyes.
Cole was a little shocked by David’s sudden hug. He glanced over at Stella who watched them. She wiped away a stray tear from her eye.
David let Cole go and he ran back to the couch.
Cole got back up to his feet and he looked at Stella. “We have to try and run,” he told her.
Stella just stared at him.
“But we can’t run at night,” Cole went on. “We need to get through this night and leave in the morning.” Cole pulled Jose’s gun out of the waistband of his pants from under the back of his shirt. He held it by the barrel and walked over to Stella. He handed it to her.
Stella took Jose’s gun.
“Do you know how to use one of these?” Cole asked her.
Stella looked down at the
gun in her hand, and then in a blur of motion, she expertly checked the clip for bullets, then popped the clip back in. She racked a bullet into the chamber, and then checked to make sure the safety was on.
Cole stared at her in amazement.
Stella gave Cole a small smile. “I taught myself how to use guns a few years ago. A girl by herself at remote dig sites can be a little unnerving.”
Cole smiled. “You’re full of surprises.”
He looked at the front door. “Since we’re going to be stuck here for the night, I think it’s a good idea to barricade the front door and windows.”
CHAPTER FORTY
The night was eerily quiet and calm. There was no winter wind whistling in the eaves around the cabin. There were no sounds of Frank or Jose calling out to them from out in the snow. No sounds of footsteps on the front porch. Everything was just … quiet.
Earlier in the night Cole barricaded the front windows and doors as best as he could. He managed to tear apart the dining room table and chairs so he could use the wood for the barricades. He used the hammer and various nails he’d found earlier in the cabinet underneath the sink. He used slats from underneath the beds and nailed the pieces of wood over the back door and the windows that looked out onto the front porch. They shoved Needles’ recliner against the front door; it wasn’t much of a barricade, but they didn’t want to use the couch as a barricade because none of them wanted to sit in the chair that Needles had occupied for so much of the time he was in the cabin. They upended the dining room table and shoved it against the entrance to the hallway. It closed off the bathroom to them, but they would just have to make do.
None of them wanted to go into the bathroom anyway after what happened to Trevor.
It was late, nearly two o’clock in the morning. David fell asleep on the couch. Cole and Stella sat on the floor in front of the couch, like they were guarding David.
Stella had Jose’s gun beside her on the floor. She stifled a yawn, trying to stay awake.
Cole looked at her. “I just wanted you to know that this was supposed to be my last bank job.”
Stella stared at him for a moment. “You guys seemed like an experienced group.”
