One rainy night, p.29
One Rainy Night, page 29
John stuffed his left hand into his pocket, clutched as many cartridges as he could, and threw them at the fire. They spread apart in the air. Some dropped into the flames, while others bounced off the body and rolled away on the hardwood floor.
A crazy yelled, ‘Hey!’
‘Dumb fuck!’ shouted another.
Others looked surprised, others scared, some angry. A few whirled away and fled.
Cassy suddenly hurled her cleaver. It tumbled end over end, sliced off a man’s ear and chopped into the chin of a woman behind him.
‘Let’s get ’em!’ a man yelled.
Now she’s done it, John thought.
Nobody charged, but the remaining ten or so crazies started moving in.
‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ John snapped.
Cassy threw her knife at the nearest man. He twisted away and ducked. The handle of the knife struck his side. The knife fell to the floor. He grinned.
Now Cassy had no weapon.
Had she lost her mind?
John was sure of it when she peeled the big, loose T-shirt over her head. The males among the crazies gaped at her.
‘Cassy!’ he shouted.
She rushed to the fire and threw her shirt into the flames. Then Lynn was beside her. Lynn yanked the nightgown up her body, and off, and flung it onto the fire.
As the flames surged high, devouring the clothes, the crazies attacked. Ignoring John’s gun. Ignoring John. Apparently no longer caring about the bullets as they charged toward Lynn and Cassy.
‘Run!’ John yelled.
He lunged sideways. The nearest man dived for Cassy. John’s kick caught him in the hip, turning him in midair. The guy dropped back-first onto the pyre and screamed. John drove his elbow into the face of a giggling lunatic. He pivoted and crashed his revolver against the forehead of an old woman.
He was hit hard in the back. Lynn shrieked and hurled herself onto someone behind him. He spun around in time to see her throw a skinny little guy to the floor. She landed on top. She pounded her knife into the guy’s chest. A woman rushed in from the side, hatchet raised. She started to swing it down at Lynn’s head. John’s kick flung her backward.
Off to the side, two men had Cassy down. One pinned her arms to the floor. The other was sitting on her legs. She squirmed and writhed, twisted and bucked. But they had her. John saw the guy on her legs pull a screwdriver from between his teeth.
Gotta help her!
A woman dropped to her knees beside Lynn and bit the back of her thigh.
‘No!’ John yelled.
Before he could move to help either woman, arms grabbed him around the legs. Someone jumped on his back. He staggered, trying to stay up. An arm came down from the front, driving a knife toward his chest. He caught the wrist of the knife-hand. As he fought to hold the knife back, a blast crashed in his ears.
Blood flew from the head of the man sitting on Cassy’s legs. His screwdriver was already speeding down. Its blade dented the skin below her left breast. Then the handle popped up from the man’s fist. The screwdriver tilted and started to fall. He flopped down on top of her.
Another round of ammunition exploded in the fire. Then another. Something zipped past John’s face.
He twisted the wrist. The knife fell from his assailant’s hand. He shot his elbow backward, connected and heard a grunt through the ringing in his ears.
Then the rain came down.
Cold rain, pouring onto his head.
A woman with a hammer sprang at him from the front. His knuckles caved in her throat. Her weight struck him. He stumbled back, falling onto the one holding his legs and the one clinging to his back. He blinked water from his eyes.
Above him, a ceiling sprinkler cast down its cold spray.
The fire, he thought. Jesus, the fire did it.
Cassy hadn’t lost her mind, after all.
22
Denise and Tom raced over the wet grass, side by side, cutting diagonally across the front lawn, heading for the sidewalk at the end of the hedge.
And Denise suddenly wondered where Kara was. The girl had been right behind them when they’d come around the corner of the house. She heard no one back there, now. She looked over her shoulder.
Kara was gone.
She slid to a stop and whirled around.
At first, she didn’t see Kara. Her stomach sank. Then she spotted the girl among the bushes near the front stoop.
‘Kara!’ she shouted.
Buddy and Lou came around the corner of the house, running slowly, heads turning.
They’re gonna get her!
‘Guys!’she yelled.
They sprinted toward Denise and Tom.
And didn’t notice Kara there in the shrubbery. They ran right past her. Buddy had a spear in one hand. Lou waved some kind of long fork overhead and let out a whoop.
‘Denny!’ Tom gasped.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t run off and leave Kara.
The boys dashed closer and closer.
Water suddenly shot up from the ground. Geysers of it, sprouting everywhere. Denise flinched as cold spray from a nearby nozzle seeped through her warmup suit.
Kara had turned on the lawn sprinklers?
Lou cried out as if he were being scalded. Buddy, laughing, leaped one of the showers. He stopped laughing when he slipped. He landed flat on his back.
Tom took hold of Denise’s arm. He looked at her. In the moonlight, she saw him smile and shake his head.
‘It’ll be all right,’ she said.
‘That kid’s amazing.’
‘Yeah, isn’t she?’
But Lou didn’t stop and throw away his fork. He kept running toward them through the fountains of cold, clear water. And Buddy was already scurrying to his feet, lifting his spear.
Why aren’t they quitting?
Maybe they haven’t been washed clean enough yet.
Lou, bare to the waist, looked pale under the moonlight. Buddy’s hair was blond again, his face white.
But the two guys acted the same as when they’d been black.
Buddy, still running, threw his spear. Tom shoved Denise aside. She stumbled, trying to stay up. Her foot struck a sprinkler head. Crying out, she fell sprawling. As she slid to a halt, she rolled onto her side and saw Tom running from Buddy. He only took a few strides before Buddy leaped and tackled him.
Then Lou walked out of the spray beyond Denise’s feet. He had the fork in his right hand. His left hand was tugging at the belt of his pants.
‘Leave me alone!’ she gasped. ‘It’s over! Lou, it’s over!’
‘Huh-uh.’
She squirmed away from him, shoving herself over the grass with her heels and elbows. Lou unfastened the button at his waist. He started to pull his zipper down and Kara jumped onto his back. Denise jerked the baton up from her side. She rammed it upward with both hands. Lou fell, his belly striking the end of the metal tube, driving the baton down. She yelled as the weight of Lou and Kara pounded the baton’s rubber knob against her ribs.
Lou shrieked as the pipe punched into him.
Denise bucked and squirmed. The weight shifted. Lou and Kara tumbled to the left. They hit the grass. Denise saw the baton jutting out of Lou. He had dropped his fork. He grabbed the baton with both hands and pulled. Inches of it slid out of him. The end made a hollow sucking pop when it came free. Blood poured from a hole the size of a nickel.
Kara, behind his back, got to her knees. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah.’ Denise sat up. ‘Thanks. You . . .’ She saw the spear come flying out of the spray too late to warn Kara.
The girl yelped with surprise when it hit her.
The knife ripped through the nightgown glued to her body, ripped through her skin, glanced off, and struck Lou’s back with a heavy thunk. Kara grabbed her slashed thigh. She turned to look over her shoulder.
Buddy rushed in through the moonlit, silvery shower.
‘No!’ Denise cried out. She jerked the baton from Lou’s limp hands. As Buddy grabbed Kara from behind and hoisted her overhead, Denise scurried over Lou.
He clutched the front of her jacket. ‘Gotcha.’
Her knee rammed the bleeding hole in his belly.
Someone said, ‘Put the girl down easy, you bastard.’
23
Buddy turned around, holding the little girl high over his head as if she were a barbell.
‘Put her down,’ Maureen said.
‘Where the fuck did you come from?’
Maureen stood shivering in the cold spray. The lust for killing was gone. But not the need. ‘You raped me, mister.’
‘Guess what? I’m about to do it again.’
Behind him and just off to the side, a girl crawled over Lou’s twitching body, scampered to her feet and rushed forward. She tossed away a shiny weapon of some kind.
‘All you’re gonna do is die,’ Maureen said.
The girl leaped, reaching up, grabbing the kid and pulling.
Buddy yelled, ‘Hey!’ He tried to hold onto her, and stumbled backward a step as the kid was yanked from his hands and fell into the arms of the girl. He looked over his shoulder to see what had happened.
Maureen thrust the tire tool into his belly. His breath huffed out. He doubled over. Maureen swung with all her strength. The steel bar crashed through his cheekbone, snapped his head sideway. He hit the grass and rolled, his back cutting off the spray of a sprinkler.
Maureen straddled his chest. She raised the bar over her head and swung it down with both hands, caving in the top of his skull.
Aftermath
1
Tom was sitting up when Denise and Kara got to him. ‘Are you OK?’ Denise asked.
He nodded and winced. His face looked battered and puffy. Blood no sooner spilled from the split skin above his eye than it was washed away by the spray.
‘Buddy sort of punched my lights out,’ he said.
Denise gripped one of Tom’s arms. Kara took the other. They helped him up. The three of them walked over to the woman. She was sprawled on the grass beside Buddy, knees up, arms spread out, a tire iron resting across her belly. The bar went up and down, wobbling as she gasped for air. She squinted up at them through the rain of a nearby sprinkler.
‘Hi,’ Kara said. ‘Thanks for helping us.’
‘Glad to.’
‘Would you like to come into the house?’
‘I think so. Yeah.’ She pushed herself up. The tire tool rolled down to her lap. She grabbed it, and got slowly to her feet.
Tom crouched down over Buddy. ‘Jeez. What happened to him?’
‘Me,’ the woman said.
‘Good going,’ Tom told her.
‘Where’d you come from?’ Kara asked.
She pointed down the block. ‘I’d just come out of the house over there. I saw what was happening.’
‘Thank God,’ Denise muttered. She stepped over to Lou and pulled the spear from his back. Looking around at the others, she said, ‘We’d better keep some stuff, just in case.’
‘And let’s leave the sprinklers on,’ Kara said. ‘If anybody comes on the lawn, it’ll make them good again.’
‘It didn’t make Buddy and Lou good,’ Denise told her.
The woman made a funny sound. It was sort of a laugh, almost a sob. ‘With them,’ she said, ‘I don’t think it was just the rain. Where’s the other one?’
‘In the house,’ Denise said. ‘I stabbed him.’
‘So that’s it, then,’ the woman said.
‘Unless someone else shows up. Come on, let’s get inside.’
2
With a towel wrapped around his waist, Trev stepped through the steamy bathroom. He stopped at the door. His hand hesitated on its knob.
They’re still black, he thought. What if they try to nail me?
They won’t.
Sandy has it ‘reined in.’ I hope.
He opened the door. Sandy stood in the corridor, leaning back against the wall, holding Rhonda by the shoulders. The girl was slumped against her, head resting between her breasts.
‘You save some water for us, pal?’
‘It’s all yours.’
He stepped past them, and watched as Sandy pushed away from the wall and guided the girl into the bathroom. The door swung shut.
Trev hurried down the hallway. He averted his eyes from the closed door of the room where grandpa Chidi had worked his terrible magic.
In the master bedroom, he rid himself of the towel. He stepped into a pair of soft, dry corduroy pants belonging to the father. He put on socks and a pair of Reebok shoes that were slightly too large, then slipped into a flannel shirt.
He remembered that the woman in the kitchen was about Maureen’s size. Maureen’s clothes had been too small for Sandy. But the father’s things should be about the right size. He gathered another pair of corduroy pants, a sweatshirt and socks. The man had a set of snake-skin cowboy boots in his closet. A smile worked its way across Trev’s face as he picked them up.
They ought to suit Sandy just fine.
He carried his load through the hallway, and put it down by the bathroom door.
In another room, he found clothes for Rhonda: a pleated skirt, a white sweater, socks and white tennis shoes. He put them beside the garments he’d picked for Sandy.
He went to the living room. The father and the teenaged girl still slept.
Whatever grandpa had used to drug them, Trev hoped it kept on working. He didn’t want to be here when they woke up.
He entered the kitchen. In a cupboard near the sink, he found the family’s liquor supply. He took out a bottle of Irish whiskey, carried it to the table, and sat down across from the woman.
Auburn hair. Just like Maureen’s.
He twisted the cap off the bottle. ‘I’m sorry for your troubles, lady,’ he said. And then he drank.
3
‘Uh-oh,’ Tom said. He turned away from the picture window. ‘A car’s stopping out front.’
A sick feeling made Denise’s stomach sink. She went ahead and pressed the bandage across the twin punctures on her right buttock, then pulled up her soggy pants. She winced as the elastic waistband was dragged over the torn skin of her hip.
Kara rushed toward the window. She had the fireplace poker in one hand while her other hand pressed a washcloth to her lacerated thigh.
Denise picked up the spear she’d taken from Lou’s back.
Maureen, with her tire iron, hobbled toward the window on her bandaged feet.
Kara got to it first. She pressed her face against the glass. ‘I think it’s Mom and Dad!’ She dropped her poker and rushed to the front door.
‘Wait!’ Denise snapped.
‘Someone’s getting out,’ Tom said.
The girl unlocked the door, threw it open and left the house.
Denise ran after her. She found Kara standing just outside the door, eyes on the big, dark shape of a man dashing through the sprinklers with a knife.
She raised her spear.
‘Dad!’ Kara cried out.
‘Honey!’ He ran closer.
Denise recognized him. John Foxworth, all right. And he didn’t look black.
‘I think it’s OK,’ she said as Tom and Maureen came out.
John threw away his knife. He opened his arms. Kara leaped from the top of the stoop. Somehow, he managed to stay on his feet when he caught her. She wrapped her arms and legs around him.
While they embraced, Denise saw a woman hurrying across the lawn. She recognized the dress first. It was the slinky, one-armed gown with the slit up its side. The dress that Lynn had felt so uncertain about wearing.
The woman rushed closer, and Denise recognized her face.
Lynn went to her husband and daughter. She wrapped her arms around both of them.
Tom put a hand on Denise’s back. She leaned against him and sighed.
Then another woman came striding through the sprinklers. She wore a skirt and a dark blazer. The blazer was buttoned at her waist. She didn’t seem to be wearing a thing underneath it. She suddenly smiled. ‘Maureen? Is that you?’
‘Cassy?’
Maureen trotted down the stairs. Moments later, those two were embracing.
‘I guess they know each other,’ Tom said.
‘Guess so.’
‘Everybody’s hugging but us.’
‘Looks that way.’ Denise dropped her spear. She turned to Tom, slipped her arms around him, and squeezed him hard.
4
In spite of the sun’s warmth, Maureen felt a chill spread over her skin when she saw a splintery gap in the front door of her house.
‘I’ll go in first,’ said the CHP officer. One of a virtual army that poured through the streets of Bixby soon after the rain had stopped. He’d come to the Foxworth house a few hours after dawn.
His name was Jack Conroy. He’d already taken Cassy back to her apartment, and gone inside to make sure there were no lurking crazies. Then he’d driven Tom and Denise to Tom’s home. He’d stayed with them, but hadn’t needed to go inside because they were met on the porch by Tom’s family.
Now, he drew his revolver. With his left hand, he threw the door open. He rushed into the house, crouching. ‘Freeze!’ he shouted.
Maureen went in behind him.
On the living room sofa, hands in the air, sat Trevor Hudson. When he saw Maureen, he clamped his lower lip between his teeth and looked as if he might be about to cry.
‘It’s all right, Jack,’ she said.
‘I guess he looks clean.’
‘I’m clean,’ Trevor said, his voice trembling.
‘Do you know this man?’ Jack asked.
‘Yeah. He’s a friend. An old friend of the family.’
‘So, it’s OK to leave?’
Maureen nodded. ‘Thanks for the ride.’
‘Glad to help. Take care.’
He left.
Trevor got to his feet. ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming in like this.’
‘It’s nice to see you.’
‘It’s nice to see you, too. God. It was a bad night.’
‘No kidding.’
‘But you made it. I’m so damn glad you made it.’
