I glanced at Victor. He was wet and muddy and cold and scared, the same as me. But far bigger than me, over a foot taller with at least a hundred pounds of muscle above my own. If we fought, handcuffed together, he might win. But I wasn't going to wait without checking on my friends.
“If anyone's watching, we'll run,” I whispered. “Or kill them.”
Victor looked into my eyes as a nasty grin cut his murderous face. No doubt the bastard approved of such bloody talk. We crawled through the ditch back to the other deputies, their moonlit badges glowing against the darker stains of mud and blood on their brown uniforms. We checked each body, but they were all dead.
I'd seen the dead many times in my career, but never so many friends. I searched for a weapon or a handcuff key, or a cell phone to call my husband and daughter, but Pastor Jones had been thorough in his search after we surrendered. While the mob had acted as if in a daze – something tied in with that damn trilling they made – Pastor Jones had shown a deadly intensity I'd never before seen in him.
I told Victor we'd head out with the handcuffs on, but he waved me silent. I glanced around the dark field, looking for the danger, but it wasn't danger. It was sound. A gasp. A low cough.
“Over here,” Victor whispered, leading us to Sheriff Granville's body. The sheriff had always been a massive man, as tall as Victor but having long since let his muscle flow to fat. Seeing the sheriff's frozen eyes and face – still set in a look of determination from taunting his executioners – almost broke me to tears.
We heard a low curse. Victor and I grabbed the sheriff's large body and rolled it. Underneath lay Sgt. Glosser, who'd been supporting our wounded boss. Victor and I grabbed Glosser and tried to drag him away but he was still handcuffed to the sheriff, so we pulled both of them out of the ditch and across the field to the nearby woods.
“You okay, Gloss?” I asked. He was covered in blood, but it all seemed to be from the sheriff.
“Bastard like to broke my jaw,” he said.
“What?”
“When they started shooting, the sheriff sucker punched me. Knocked me clean out.”
I explained how the sheriff taunted the mob after the first round of shooting. “He knocked you out to hide you,” I said. “Hid you in the mud under him. Taunted them so they wouldn't notice you.”
Glosser nodded, not saying anything, none of us could, only staring at Sheriff Granville's body. Even though he knew he would die, he'd still fought like hell to save one of his people.
Suddenly a car's headlights flickered over the soybean field. Car doors thumped and several men and women with flashlights stepped out.
“We've got to go,” I whispered to Glosser. “Do you have a handcuff key?”
He patted his uniform pockets and shook his head. While Victor and I could flee handcuffed together, Glosser couldn't run until we freed him from the sheriff's body.
The people from the car walked toward the ditch. I saw shotguns and rifles. One of them trilled “peace” and they shot at the dead bodies over and over.
“Leave me,” Glosser whispered. “Get out of here.”
I turned to Victor, ready to argue with the murderer that we weren't leaving Glosser, but Victor merely raised his hand for me to wait. He sat deep in concentration, quietly gagging.
The trillers had now noticed the bloody drag marks in the field from the sheriff's body. They shone their flashlights along the woodline and began walking toward us. Glosser waved for us to go, but Victor again motioned to wait. He gagged a final time as the tip of a handcuff key parted his lips.
He quickly unlocked the three of us and we fled deeper into the dark woods.
* * *
We called them trillers because of the sound they made while killing. It was easier to call them that than friend and neighbor and lover and family, and to know that people once so close could so easily do this deed.
We stumbled through the night, avoiding other people. We saw several fires in the distance and heard screams and gunshots. Anyone who had embraced violence and aggression before the dream hit – whether as a means to harm others, or seeing violence as occasionally necessary to protect yourself and others – was at risk of being killed. Somehow the trillers sensed immediately who these people were and hunted them down.
Never mind that the trillers were doing far worse than those they killed could have ever done.
When morning came we found a partially burned trailer off a backroad and hid there. A man and woman lay dead in front of the trailer, both shot down by trillers as they'd fled the flames. We left the bodies alone and scrounged food and water inside. The water still flowed from the faucets and I washed out the flesh wound on my leg and bandaged it. The wound hurt, but if I kept it clean it shouldn't give me much trouble. Glosser and I also changed out of our uniforms into some civilian clothes we found. But just in case, we kept our damaged body armor on underneath.
Victor seemed amused when he saw me in bluejeans and a flannel shirt.
“What?” I asked.
“Changes the power dynamic, is all,” he said. “Amazing what a uniform – or the lack of one – does to the mind.”
Glosser eyed Victor warily from the trailer's smoky kitchen. We hadn't found any guns, but Glosser held a machete and handed me a hatchet. Victor glanced around as if to ask where his weapon was before shrugging.
“Interesting trick with that handcuff key,” I said to Victor. “How long did you have it hidden down your throat?”
“I always keep one in my mouth while hunting. Partially swallow it if caught. Bring it back up if needed. Trick I learned a while back.”
I shifted the hatchet in my hand, remembering the body of that young hitchhiker and knowing instantly what Victor meant by hunting. Her torso split from gut to chest in one knife slice. Her breasts sliced off. Her throat gaping so wide I could have slid my hand up to grab her tongue.
It was the worst crime scene I'd ever encountered, even worse than the murder-suicide I'd investigated a few years ago in the abandoned hotel downtown. That had been the work of a drug-crazed man who hadn't fully known what he was doing to his best friend until he came down, at which point – horrified – he killed himself.
But Victor had known exactly what he was doing to that girl.
After I'd arrested him, I'd found a pair of homemade leather gloves in Victor's back pocket, a human tattoo of a heart visible on the sewn palms. The sheriff and I suspected Victor of being a serial killer and bagged the gloves for DNA testing, figured they were a trophy from another grisly murder. But before we could dig deeper, our world dropped into crazy.
Seeing me gazing at him, Victor spit a grin which would have fried fear through most people. “She wasn't my first kill,” he said. “If that's what you're wondering.”
“You're proud, aren't you?” Glosser asked in a shaky voice. He'd always had trouble keeping emotions out of his work. Naturally, Victor picked up on this.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You take my existence as a personal affront, which of course makes me wonder what you're hiding. Maybe you dip into the criminal now and then…or maybe before becoming a cop you did things you aren't proud of.”
I wanted to curse. Not only was Victor dangerous, he was smart – he'd pegged Glosser far too quickly. Before becoming a deputy, Glosser had been involved in a number of breaking and enterings as a teenager, and even one assault. He'd been destined for far worse crimes before Sheriff Granville took him under his wing and refocused Glosser on high school. After Glosser graduated and stayed clean for a few years, the sheriff overlooked Glosser's juvenile crimes and hired him.
Behind me, I heard Glosser step across the burned linoleum, and saw the flash of a machete as he prepared to separate Victor's head from body. I motioned for him to stop.
“Smart,” Victor said. “Right now, you need me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because whatever is causing this is coming after all of us. The sheepdogs and the wolves. An
yone who ever used violence.”
Glosser snorted in disgust, but I knew Victor was right. By sheepdogs and wolves, he meant the police and criminals. And it sure did seem that something was gunning for us.
“Victor's right,” I said. “There's safety in numbers.”
“That's why I'm still with you two,” Victor said. Unspoken was that once he felt safe enough, Victor would leave. I lowered my hatchet and sat down across from Victor at the charred table.
“Why didn't you use the handcuff key earlier?” I asked.
“You never gave me an opportunity to escape.” I smiled grimly at the compliment and handed Victor the hatchet.
* * *
When dark came we left the smoke-gagging trailer and hiked toward town. We kept to the fence-line trees along the back roads, occasionally seeing bodies beside wrecked cars or burned houses. But most houses stood as they always had, giving an odd normalcy to the night. Groups of people also drove by in trucks and cars, looking as if they were going to a cookout or a party.
But they were actually hunting. We saw three cars full of people pull in front of a wood-panel home. The trillers surrounded the house and yelled at the man inside to come out. Instead the homeowner fired a rifle, hitting two of them. But the trillers fired back and one threw a gas bomb. The man inside kept firing until the whole house was ablaze and all you heard were his screams as he burned to death.
After waiting a bit to make sure the man was dead, the trillers climbed back in their cars and drove off. One of the wounded trillers left with them but the other was dead, her body laying where she fell. As soon as their headlights disappeared, we ran from the woods to the dead woman. Her shotgun had been taken, but she had a pistol and a cell phone in her pocket. Glosser handed me the pistol – an almost worthless .32 acp mousegun. Still, it might be better than nothing and I pocketed it as we ran back to the woods.
Glosser immediately called his wife. She answered on the first ring and they both cried. She and the twins were hiding in their attic along with Sheriff Granville's wife, daughter-in-law, and grandkids. When Glosser's wife asked about the sheriff, Glosser didn't say anything. How could he? Glosser's wife knew him well enough to understand.
Glosser promised to reach them soon. “It's almost morning, and we have to hide,” he said. “Hang on until tonight, okay?” I heard his wife whisper her love and his two boys say the same.
Wiping his face, Glosser handed me the phone. I called Barry, praying with each ring for the big lug to pick up, refusing to believe the worst even when the phone clicked into voicemail. I left a message and called back, and again. Nothing. If Barry didn't answer, my daughter should have picked up.
“They might not be able to answer,” Victor said with more sympathy than I'd expect from a serial killer. “Probably holed up somewhere.”
I refused to answer as I slid the phone into my pocket.
* * *
The dream had visited me during a few scant moments of sleep, my head on my desk as I worked on the paperwork from Victor's arrest. Victor sat glumly in the holding cell near me. I shouldn't have drowsed off with him there. But the room felt warm and I felt tired and the next thing I knew I was dreaming.
I sat in a sunny field as a sweet-smelling breeze whistled the grass and daisies around me. Barry sat beside me holding my hand in his giant palm as we watched Lucy practice for her third-grade play. She wore the Little Bo Peep outfit I'd spent far too many hours sewing. But where the outfit I'd actually made for her was barely recognizable as a frock, this dream outfit appeared ripped directly from a high-end nursery rhyme. As if I'd actually had time to make a costume worthy of some damn idealized world's best mom.
Barry looked at me and smiled as Lucy twirled in happiness. The breeze wrapped me tight in its warm embrace. I felt perfectly, absolutely at peace.
But even as I realized this peace the breeze built up and up into a slicing wind, a wind which swirled like a dust devil as it tasted my memories. The wind saw the times I'd had to practice violence. Saw that I'd be perfectly willing to do violence in the future.
“I do wish this could be different,” the wind sighed in a voice sounding exactly like Pastor Jones. “That a hero could, for once, be acceptable to us. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed such choices.”
I tried to defend myself, explaining that sometimes you had to raise your fist to stop people from harming others. But the wind shivered away my words. The field around me vanished. My daughter screamed in panic before she disappeared along with Barry. As the most peaceful moment I'd ever experienced was wrenched away, I felt the dream condemn me – and condemn my husband and daughter for being so close to me.
I screamed and slammed my fist into my desk, only to realize I was still in the sheriff's department. From the holding cell beside me Victor frantically shook the metal bars, his face a mix of pain and loss from losing whatever dream of peace he'd also experienced. As he rattled the bars we heard a trilling rise from outside the department – a slow moaning of “peace” which mocked the dreams we'd both briefly glimpsed.
“This would be a good time to run,” Victor said.
He was right. But I didn't realize how right until we were handcuffed together and falling into that mud and bullet jumping ditch.
* * *
Victor, Glosser, and I wasted an hour trying to find a car to steal, but had no luck. As a result, the sun rose before we made it a dozen blocks into town. The electricity was still on in most houses and we saw a few people holding guns and talking with neighbors. Obviously they were continuing to hunt for us violent people. We needed to hide.
“Buck,” Glosser said.
“What's that?” Victor asked.
“Not what,” I said. “He's the deputy Pastor Jones released before they shot us. His house is a block away.”
Victor shook his head. “We can't trust him. That preacher let him go for a reason.”
My gut told me Victor was right, but Glosser shoved the murderer back, pointing the machete at his throat. “Screw you,” Glosser whispered. “Buck's a cop. We trust him.”
While I'd always been uneasy around Buck – he'd never struck me as top-quality police material – we'd still served together for the last year. So I was with Glosser. We had to trust him.
We reached Buck's back door as the sun lit the neighborhood into a warmer light than it deserved. Several nearby houses were burned and gone, only char and cinder marking their cement foundations. A number of police and firefighters had lived in this neighborhood. I refused to think about what had happened to them and their families.
Glosser tried Buck's door but it was locked. He knocked several times before Buck walked to the window and saw us. But he didn't open the door.
“Son of a bitch,” Glosser grumbled. He banged again – far too loudly for my taste – and I looked around to see if any neighbors were watching. After a few bangs, Buck opened the door.
“You shouldn't be here…” he began, but we'd already pushed past him into his den. Victor closed the door and locked it. All of the shades were drawn and the lights out.
“This is not how you greet friends,” I said.
Buck looked nervously at the carpet. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were here to kill me.”
Victor walked around the house, checking rooms and closets to see if we were alone. Glosser and I stared at Buck, trying to see the rookie we'd spent so long training in the shivering, fearful kid before us.
“I heard the shots,” Buck said. “Anyone else make it?”
We didn't need to answer. “What happened to you?” I asked.
Buck said he hid in the woods until daybreak. As he'd walked back to town, a group of trillers saw him but they merely waved and kept on going. “After that, I figured they wouldn't hurt me.”
Victor was drinking a glass of milk in the kitchen and shaking his head at Buck's words. Not that the kid was lying. But something was…wrong with his story.
I wondered how the trillers kne
w which people were the fighters of the world and which were those they could safely leave alone. No ordinary dream gave people such ability. I remembered Pastor Jones' voice in my dream. Whatever caused this wasn't natural because it involved accessing a person's memories of what they'd done in life – and determining what they might do in the future.
Still, nothing to be done about it now, and we had nowhere to go until sundown. I asked Buck if he had any weapons but he said no, so we made do with my mousegun and the machete and hatchet. “We'll sleep in shifts,” I told the men. “Victor, you and me and Buck sleep first. Gloss keeps watch.”
Glosser nodded. I trusted him and he trusted me.
I slept exhausted. I again dreamed of Lucy in her Little Bo Peep outfit, only this time we weren't in that peaceful field. Instead, we sat in the school auditorium as she chased costumed sheep around the stage. Pastor Jones sat near me and howled with laughter at Lucy's charming performance, clapping and nodding his red-top head to her every memorized line. But instead of the play ending how it had in real life – with me hugging my daughter – Lucy suddenly ran in panic through our neighborhood, chased by Jones and the trillers as “peace, peace” echoed in my mind.
Remembering how in my first dream Pastor Jones' voice had condemned Lucy solely because of my actions, I begged him not to hurt her. He looked at me with a pained expression and said he'd try to help.
* * *
When Glosser woke me for my turn at watch I again tried calling Barry. No answer. My house was only two miles past Glosser's. After we reached his family, we'd get mine.
I sat in the den's easy chair, trying to clean the flesh wound on my leg. The wound hurt more than before, no doubt from all the running I'd done.
Midway through my watch Buck walked in. “I can't sleep anymore,” he said, glancing at my bloody pants leg. “I'll stand watch if you want to shower and dress that wound.”
I hesitated, but what could I say? Buck was a deputy. If I said no, it'd mean I didn't trust him.
“Only a few minutes,” I said.
In the bathroom was an old radio. I tuned through the dial looking for news, but a recorded message from Pastor Jones was on all the local stations. I showered as I listened.
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