Slash, p.22
Slash, page 22
Vince turned on him. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Just wondering why you think you need to come to the aid of a pole dancer who killed a kid.”
“She saved my life back there,” Todd said. “She may have accidentally killed that boy, but she’s not a bad person. I mean, remember the last time we saw her when we picked Sheri up at the house? She was doing her homework at the kitchen table and had a Hello Kitty backpack. She was a straight-A student, a total geek. Set your anger aside and remember that girl. That’s who she really is.”
Their flashlights swung in every direction as they were all on the lookout for the Wraith. With the way the man could run, they would have very little warning before he was literally on top of them.
“That’s who she was,” Jerry said. “She’s a murderer now.”
Todd was about to say something but closed his mouth. It was going to be a lost cause. What even Vince didn’t know was that Jerry’s heart had been dragged over a bed of nails by an exotic dancer he’d met in a diner one very late night a year ago. Their relationship had been hot and heavy but brief. Jerry hadn’t told anyone but Todd that she worked the Satin and Lace club over in New Jersey. For Jerry, it was better she worked on that side of the Hudson where dancers had to wear pasties. It helped lessen his jealousy, but not by much. She’d left him for a middle-aged slime ball who just so happened to be her biggest tipper.
Sharon called out, “Hold up.”
“What is it?” Todd asked, edging toward her.
Sharon’s light was locked on something on the ground.
“Oh Jesus!” Todd took a step back, bumping into Jerry.
The severed head of a man stared up at them. His eyes had been hollowed out, rivers of blood drying on his face. His mouth was wide open, and it looked like his tongue had been ripped out. There was very little blood on the ground around the head, which meant he’d been killed elsewhere, the head left on the driveway for them to find.
Jerry was able to get into a half crouch to get a closer look. “You son of a bitch.” He pointed at the ragged flaps of skin on the neck. “You guys see that?”
Vince had turned away. “More than I’ve ever wanted to see.”
“I’m no medical examiner, but I’ll swear that his head wasn’t cut off. It looks like it was ripped right off his neck.”
“How is that even possible?” Todd said. He felt like he was going to throw up. Like Vince, he had to look away.
“You’ve all seen him,” Sharon said. “The Wraith isn’t human. Or not what we consider human.”
No one, not even Jerry, contested it.
Sharon stepped around the man’s head, swinging her flashlight back and forth. “Looks like he’s been busy too.”
Now Todd did empty his stomach.
Before them lay more than a dozen scattered heads. Two of them still wore their fire helmets. Some looked like their noses had been bitten or torn off. Others were missing their lower jaws, front teeth or ears. There were men and women, all presumably first responders. Todd drew in a quick breath when he spotted the head of Officer Landers, the cop with the tattoos. His eyes were gray-white, a splash of black ink visible on the flap of flesh that had been his neck.
Now they knew why the lights and sirens had suddenly stopped.
“What the fuck?” Jerry said, his breath curling into the air.
“Maybe he knows…the end is coming,” Todd said, gasping and spitting up the remnants of his bile.
“If we can’t even slow him down by shooting him, what will he care about some bulldozers knocking the place down?” Sharon asked. Instead of horrified, she sounded even angrier than before.
“Could be he’s tied to this place. If the Wraith is Otto, maybe being buried in the Hayden’s grounds has tethered him here. Without it, he won’t exist.”
“Stop with that Otto shit,” Jerry said.
“Stop being willfully blind to what’s happening,” Todd said, whirling on his friend. “You want to explain how bullets can’t stop him? How he can bust through a boarded window from three stories up, land on his feet and run faster than my car can drive? How he was able to murder all of these people? Christ, we didn’t even hear them scream. Sharon’s right. He’s not human. I don’t think he qualified as a human when he was alive, doing God knows what in a concentration camp. He’s a fucking monster, man. When those workers took justice into their own hands, something happened. Don’t ask me what could bring a man back from the dead. I don’t even care how it happened. He’s here, and he’s fucking with us now.”
There were so many heads in the driveway, they’d have to get off the cracked and pebbled road and wade through the high weeds to circumvent them.
Todd’s stomach couldn’t stop cramping. He’d never seen such carnage. All of those lives lost, just because they were doing their job to stop a fire in a place that should be set ablaze and left to burn to the ground.
Jerry kept his light on each severed head for a few moments, studying them, making angry grunts. “Okay, what’s he trying to get us to do now?”
Todd looked into the darkened sky, wishing for some breaks in the clouds so they’d have some semblance of light. It was as if Otto even had control of nature itself. “He definitely doesn’t want us to keep going forward. I’ll bet he figured we’d be running scared by now.”
“Which we aren’t,” Sharon said.
“Which we aren’t.” Yet, he thought. “We have to keep going, and fast, before he figures out we’re not acting according to plan and makes a course correction.”
Vince stepped into the weeds with Heather, jogging as fast as he could. “Course correction. You mean running into us to kill us.”
“I have an idea. You’ll have to follow me.”
Todd slipped ahead of Vince, along with Sharon. Jerry kept watch at the rear. All Todd wanted to do was sprint as fast as his aching legs would allow. The ground cover was so wild and dead, each footfall crunched loud enough to cause a responding echo. Stealth was not on their side. Unless Otto was deaf, he could easily find them.
They hustled until they could see the front gates up ahead. It was too far to make out any police cars or fire engines. But Todd knew they were up there, dark and silent and, if they had any shred of luck tonight, with keys still in the ignitions.
Todd peeled off to the left of the gates.
“What the hell are you doing?” Vince hissed. He was panting hard, running out of steam. The sight of freedom was the only thing keeping him going, and Todd was taking that away from him.
They traipsed farther from the exit. Todd felt Vince’s bedeviled glare burning into the back of his neck. If Todd was right, Otto would assume by now that the obstacle of severed heads hadn’t deterred them. Their ultimate destination would be those front gates, where the undead Nazi, even with a skull squirming with maggots, would know enough to intercept them. There was a break in the fence about two hundred yards from the front gates. Todd remembered it from his recon. It was right around where the shuffleboard court used to be.
All they needed now was to get to it before Otto.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Todd only realized they were at the shuffleboard courts when his foot smashed into a hidden lip of concrete and went sprawling.
“Todd!” Sharon gasped, reaching out in vain to stop his fall.
He landed on his chest in the grass and frozen earth that was as hard as stone. Grateful he hadn’t heard a rib crack, he rolled with the momentum and picked himself up quickly. “I’m all right.”
He was back running, barely missing a step. They were so close. And so far, there’d been no sign of Otto.
Todd deliberately thought of the killer solely as Otto now. The Wraith had been a mysterious, homicidal man. To think of the maniac as simply that made them weaker. “It should be right there,” he said between hurried breaths, pointing ahead.
“What should be right there?” Sharon asked. She was in full stride, barely breaking a sweat.
“There’s a…there’s a part of the gate we can crawl under.”
“You know all of our cars are in the opposite direction, right?”
“We just need to get the hell out of here. We’ll bang on every door of every house and get some help.”
He heard two heavy thumps and spun around.
Jerry, Vince and Heather were on the ground.
“Godammit, my leg,” Jerry wheezed. He clutched his wounded leg, rocking back and forth. Vince was on his knees, barely able to keep Heather off the ground. “Sorry I hit into you, bro.”
Todd waved them on. “We’re almost there. I just need you to push it a little further.”
“You want us to hide in the trees?” Vince said.
A long cluster of trees had grown along the edge of the property, hiding the fence line.
“We can get out through the fence,” Todd replied. “It’s just past the trees.”
“I don’t think I can get up,” Vince said, struggling to lift his unconscious wife. Todd and Sharon each took a side and lifted him.
“Here,” Sharon said. “I’ll take her.”
Vince’s protest died on his lips as Sharon easily transferred Heather from his arms to hers.
Todd reached down for Jerry.
His friend snapped on his light to inspect his leg. Fresh blood seeped through the bandages. “I’m fucked, man. You guys go. I’ll slow him down if he tries to follow you.”
“You’re fucked if you stay here,” Todd said. “You’re coming with us.”
“My leg is on fire. I stopped feeling my foot about five minutes ago. I couldn’t walk if my ass was on fire.”
Todd almost laughed. “Your ass almost was on fire before. We’ll just have to potato sack it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Come on. We were the potato sack race kings every field day.”
Jerry batted his hand away. “That was grammar school. And we don’t have a potato sack.”
Todd grabbed him by the lapels and lifted him with a measure of strength he didn’t know he still possessed. “You’ll just have to pretend. Now, arm around my shoulder.”
“I still can’t move my leg.”
Todd snapped his fingers at Vince. “Let me have your belt.”
Vince was confused but didn’t hesitate to pull it out of his pants loops.
“You guys wanna hurry up? Heather’s not getting any lighter,” Sharon said.
“One sec,” Todd said. He looped the belt around his leg and Jerry’s damaged leg. “This way, I’ll pull your leg along.”
“Are you insane? He’ll kill the both of us with you tied to me like this.”
Todd squeezed Jerry’s shoulder. “You still have the gun. I’ll take our odds.”
Jerry tilted his head to the ground and snorted. “Fucking Bill.”
“He’d be calling long shots about now.”
“No chalk for us.”
“Nope. No chalk. Come on.”
Walking tied to one another was awkward at first. But after a dozen or so feet, they started to get their rhythm. A hard gust of bitter wind punched them in the chests, nearly stopping them in their tracks. Todd hoped Jerry couldn’t feel his foot because of the cold and not blood loss.
You know you’re in trouble when you pray for frostbite, he thought.
Pulling Jerry along wasn’t easy, and now his own leg was crying out for relief. The wound on his back got wetter from the friction of Jerry holding onto him. He kept swallowing to cut off the coughing fit that threatened to overtake him. There was no way he was going to vocalize his struggle. That would only get Jerry to insist they leave him.
The tree line was just a few feet ahead when a shrill scream erupted.
Sharon dropped to the ground and Vince tumbled over her.
Heather hit the floor and popped back up, frantically batting at the air. She was screaming at the top of her lungs, looking at her husband and friend as if they were out to kill her.
She started to run, though unevenly at first, fear and adrenaline making for an awkward dash into the darkness
“Heather! Stop!” Todd yelled.
With Jerry tied to him, he couldn’t run after her. She bolted toward the trees, then seemed to think better of it, and circled back. She skirted around Sharon and Vince and headed his way.
Vince was quick to get back on his feet. “Heather. It’s me, honey. You’re all right. Calm down.”
Todd took Jerry’s flashlight and turned it on so it shined directly on his face. Heather was about to pivot away from him and Jerry when she paused in her all-out panic to look at him.
“T-T-Todd?”
Vince nearly tackled her from behind, wrapping his arms around her midsection. Sharon stepped in front of Heather, cupping her face in her hands. Heather’s mouth opened to scream once more, but Sharon’s slap across her cheek stopped her.
“Heather!” Sharon barked in her face.
Heather’s eyes softened as clarity settled in.
“Sharon?”
Sharon smiled and kissed Heather on the tip of her nose. “The one and only.”
Heather turned around, saw Vince and started to cry. She slipped her arms around his neck. “I was so scared. I…I didn’t know who you were.”
Vince and Heather swayed as he rubbed her back. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’ve been out for a while. I’m just happy that you’re back. I’m sorry we scared you.”
Heather’s shoulders hitched with sobs.
Todd scanned the emptiness behind them. He felt precious seconds slipping away.
“Heather, you think you’ll be able to walk the rest of the way out of here?” Todd said.
She stepped away from her husband and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She still looked pale as death but being awake and ghostly was a huge improvement. How long it would last was anyone guess. Todd knew her sudden alertness was a result of a chemical rush, and not an actual improvement in her physical state.
“We’re…we’re getting out of here?”
He pointed over her shoulder. “Just through those trees.”
Her eyes flitted around. “Wait, where’s Bill?”
Vince massaged her upper arms. “I’ll tell you along the way. Come.”
She resisted his slight tug. “We’re not leaving him here, are we? Why would we do that?”
Jerry said, “He’s dead, Heath.”
“What do you mean he’s dead?”
“I know it sounds impossible, crazy even, and I know what you’re feeling right now.” Jerry nudged Todd so they could approach her. “We all loved Bill and it hurts like hell to leave him behind, but we have to get out of here now. You understand me?”
Her eyes were glassy with tears. When she nodded, they spilled down her face.
“How?” she asked, taking her first stumbling step toward the trees.
“I’ll tell you everything…later,” Jerry said. “Right now, we have to save ourselves.”
She looked at Todd’s and Jerry’s legs tied together and there were many more questions dancing in her eyes, but the answers would have to wait.
“Bill,” she muttered over and over. Vince kept his arm around her, whispering in her ear. Todd wanted to scream at them to run, but Heather was in too fragile a state. Sharon had to pause every few steps for the rest of them to catch up with her. She stamped her feet as if trying to keep her blood flowing, but Todd thought it was more out of anxious frustration.
“Sorry if I sounded a little harsh there,” Jerry said to Todd, keeping his voice low enough so Heather couldn’t hear him. “I learned long ago it’s better to deliver the news quickly and clearly. If you don’t, it’s like a slow death of a thousand cuts, you know?”
“No, I get it. How many times have you had to break news like that to someone?”
“More times than I would ever want. I’m just glad she didn’t pass out again when I told her. That happens a lot.”
“She’s up and moving and that’s more than I thought I could ask for.”
They limped along after their friend, Jerry with his gun at the ready and constantly checking their backs. The tight space between the trees was blacker than the night and felt alive. It seemed to whisper, “Step inside so I can swallow you whole.” Todd thought of fairy tales and lost babes in the woods and how in the real stories, the endings were never good. Otto could be in there right now, his preternatural senses tracking their every move, waiting for them. There was no way he hadn’t heard Heather’s screams, or their clumsy march to freedom.
It was almost as if the woods of the Hayden were working with Otto, keeping them lost, wearing them down, offering them up to the Nazi.
He was close.
Todd didn’t know how he could be so sure, but he had no doubt that Otto was tracking them, biding his time.
It wasn’t a matter of if.
It was just a matter of when.
Chapter Thirty
Cri-crack!
A heavy branch snapped overhead. Jerry raised his gun, the sudden jerking of his arm unbalancing the connected tandem. Todd flailed his arms, finding a nearby tree trunk to keep from falling. Four flashlight beams danced among the trees like twirling spotlights.
“You see anything?” Sharon said. She had a pipe held high, ready to strike.
The few dead leaves that still clung to the gnarled, twisted branches weren’t enough to provide any cover for Otto. There was nothing they could see, but it was little relief.
“Might have just been a dry branch starting to break,” Vince said.
The second they’d stepped under the trees, it felt as if the temperature had plummeted even further. Todd thought if trees could shiver, they would break apart in the punishing cold. His own joints were aching from the constant shuddering. Like so much that had happened over the past few hours, even the air itself felt imbued with the supernatural. The cold, dead heart of the Hayden was somehow connected to the resurrected killer who cleansed the grounds of the living.
