Allison

by Strand, Jeff

  Forrest lay dead on the floor, right where Daxton had left him. Jerry, a short guy who’d cut off some dude’s fingers with Daxton a couple of years ago, fired another shot then quickly ducked back out of the doorway. Another man stood behind him. His bearded face was bright red, the skin peeling.

  “Don’t shoot!” Daxton shouted.

  “Fuck you!” Jerry shouted back. He leaned toward the kitchen doorway again.

  Daxton shot him in the head.

  The bullet struck the side of his skull, right above the ear, and the spray of bone, brains, and blood made it clear that Jerry would not be getting back up as he fell to the floor.

  The bearded man ran into the kitchen.

  Daxton didn’t want to pursue him. Allison was in there. Maybe she already had three corpses piled at her feet, and maybe the other guys still had a chance, but Daxton was getting the hell out of here, gunshots or not.

  Allison held up a knife, trying to look as threatening as possible as a bearded man with a scalded face stepped over the first of the soon-to-be-dead men.

  She had a pretty good idea of what had happened out there. The guy with the gun had retreated to safety after taking a shot at her, then she heard Daxton tell him not to shoot, and then he took a bullet to the head. So Daxton really didn’t want her dead, if he was willing to murder his own partners to keep them from killing her.

  That was a point in her favor, but the bearded guy was looking pretty homicidal.

  “Don’t come any closer,” she told him, waving the knife.

  He came closer.

  Allison threw the knife at him.

  He moved out of the way.

  She picked up another knife.

  He reached under his shirt and pulled out a revolver.

  “You’re not supposed to shoot me,” she said.

  “You think I give a shit about that?”

  “I bet the dead guy behind you wishes he’d given a shit about it.”

  As they spoke, she tried to make him bleed. But it wasn’t working. When she’d killed the first intruder, it was as if her subconscious mind had taken over. Trying to make a man bleed from his ears, nose, and eyes on purpose was having no effect.

  But he hadn’t shot her yet.

  “Put the knife down,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Put it down or I’ll shoot you in the throat.”

  “Shoot me and you’ll be punished.”

  The man laughed and scratched at his face, peeling off a piece of skin. “With the body count you’ve racked up, you think I care about getting in trouble? I’ll take pictures of the bodies all over your floor. I’m pretty sure my boss will understand. Put the knife down.”

  If this turned into a duel, the lady with the knife had no chance against the man with the gun. And though he hadn’t fired, she was pretty sure he would if she didn’t comply. So she placed the knife down on the counter.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now you’re going to walk outside with me, nice and calm. There’s no reason anybody else has to get hurt.”

  That didn’t sound like a good outcome. If Allison wanted to leave with the man, she could’ve just let the first guy press his wet rag into her face and saved herself the cost of a new carpet.

  She had to make her ability work.

  She had to summon all of the fury and terror that she was feeling right now.

  Lose control. Go completely feral.

  Allison squeezed her eyes shut, threw back her head, and screamed as loud as she could.

  She shrieked until she had no breath left.

  Before she opened her eyes, she heard a thump. It sounded very much like a gun falling onto the tile floor.

  When she opened them, the bearded man was still standing. His beard was drenched with the blood that was gushing from his mouth. His left eye dangled from its socket. His right eye was still in its proper location, but bugged out like a cartoon character.

  He said something she couldn’t understand. It sounded like a plea for help.

  “Just fucking fall,” she told him.

  The man started to drop to the floor, but braced himself against the counter in time.

  Allison picked up the knife and stabbed him in the face.

  He fell.

  At some point very soon Allison was going to have to have a nervous breakdown over what had just happened, complete with twitching in the fetal position, but for now she was going to focus on her survival.

  She went around the counter, then bent down and picked up the man’s gun. The handle was slick with blood.

  She glanced at the other bodies on the floor. None of them looked even remotely threatening to her anymore, but she’d watched her share of slasher flicks where the heroine failed to ensure that the killer was sufficiently dead and paid the price.

  After pulling the knife out of the bearded man’s face, she stabbed the fallen men in the throats, three times each. They would not be getting back up.

  She left the knife buried in the last man’s throat, then walked into the living room with the gun. Daxton wasn’t there.

  She caught a glimpse of him outside, running away from the house.

  Allison climbed out the window and went after him.

  14

  Daxton nearly shit his pants as the gunshot rang out and he realized that Allison was shooting at him. Five reinforcements had broken into her home, and now he was fleeing for his life. This was insane.

  He didn’t like his chances of not getting shot before he reached his car.

  He took out his gun—a challenge while running—then spun around.

  Allison, who was standing right outside her house, shot at him again. They were about two hundred feet apart, and he couldn’t tell how close she came to hitting him.

  He couldn’t just let her shoot him. Maybe he could hit her in the leg.

  He took quick aim and fired.

  The shot shattered some glass in the already broken living room window. She fired back, and though Daxton couldn’t quite feel the swish of wind as the bullet sailed past his head, she’d come unnervingly close to hitting him.

  She let out a shriek.

  Daxton’s knees buckled and he immediately got a headache as bad as his occasional migraines. He dropped the gun. He stumbled forward a couple of steps, dizzy.

  No. He couldn’t meet Forrest’s fate. He had to flee.

  He forced himself to turn around and run. He almost collapsed but maintained his footing and hurried toward the edge of her yard. Allison continued screaming, but he wasn’t bleeding and none of his teeth had fallen out. His headache quickly began to fade as he made it toward the road and ran for his car.

  She stopped screaming and resumed shooting.

  Two shots, one right after another. Neither of them hit him.

  Daxton didn’t care how angry Winlaw was after this. He just needed to get away from her.

  He made it to his car. Got into the driver’s seat. Fumbled to get his keys out of his pocket.

  A shot fired through the rear windshield, sailed past his head, and put a hole in the front windshield.

  Daxton yelped in surprise and ducked down.

  More shots. The car sunk down a bit. She was shooting his fucking tires!

  Daxton opened the car door again and got out, keeping himself low. He bobbed his head up and peeked through the window just long enough to see Allison walking toward him with the gun extended. That bitch was moving with purpose.

  She kept walking as she let out another shriek.

  Daxton took off running. This scream seemed to have had no impact on him.

  It was probably because she was chasing after the chickenshit and shooting up his car, so she wasn’t as scared or panicked as she needed to be for her powers to work.

  She’d simply have to keep using the gun.

  As he ran down the road, she took another shot at him.

  Missed.

  Dammit. This was her first time firing a gun, and s
he was obviously terrible at it, though it would help if she didn’t have a moving target.

  She didn’t know how many bullets were in the gun. It wasn’t a six-shooter—she’d already shot more than that. She might be out of ammunition. Best to try to run him down and save her next shot for when she was much closer.

  If only she was in better shape. She did a lot of walking. Not much sprinting. If she was pursuing him during a vigorous hike through the woods, he’d be a goner, but in a race like this, he was pulling ahead.

  Did it matter if he got away?

  Yeah, it did. She didn’t want him coming back with even more men. This time they’d know that “break her front window and charge into the kitchen” was a poor tactical approach. She had to hunt Daxton down and make this problem go away.

  Daxton ran past the van that had brought the other morons here. He didn’t have the keys, so there was no reason to try to get inside.

  Five men should’ve been able to catch her. This wasn’t on him. He’d warned Winlaw that Allison was dangerous. He should’ve sent better men, or more men. He should have listened. This wasn’t his fault. Not his fault.

  He veered off the road into the woods.

  It was uneven terrain but he didn’t dare to slow down. If he took a fall...well, he was dead. He’d just have to hope not to take a fall.

  The worst part was that she’d offered to pay the fucking medical bills. If he’d come back alone to continue the scam, instead of bringing that psychopath Forrest along, he’d be on his way home with a check right now.

  He tripped. Lurched forward. Bashed into a tree.

  Shook it off and kept going.

  When Daxton ran into the woods, Allison decided not to pursue him.

  There was too much opportunity for something to go wrong. She could trip. He could hide and surprise her. She could lose him completely and then waste time running around the woods that could be spent grabbing her bug out bag from home and getting the hell out of town.

  And though she didn’t have any close neighbors, it wasn’t as if there were no homes for miles around. Somebody could’ve heard the gunfire and called the police. If the cops showed up, running through the woods with a gun like a crazy woman wouldn’t be a good look for her.

  She returned to her home.

  She climbed in through the broken front window. The dark pool around the first dead man didn’t seem to have expanded since she left, so maybe he’d finally bled out. The man Daxton had shot in the head was still bleeding.

  She looked into the kitchen. All three men in there were motionless and presumably dead.

  Allison turned away and vomited.

  Everything hit her at once. She’d murdered all of these men! In self-defense, yes, but she’d stabbed a man in the face! She’d chased after Daxton with every intention of killing him!

  Survival instinct or not, she was a monster.

  What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t call Cody over here to help her get rid of a half-dozen corpses. He wouldn’t agree to help her, and even if he did, somebody who would help a woman he’d just met dispose of a bunch of dead bodies was not a good person to have in your life.

  Allison staggered away from the mess and collapsed onto the couch. She sat there for a few moments, trying to catch her breath, trying not to start sobbing and convulsing and having a complete mental breakdown.

  Hopefully she could stop the mental breakdown, but she couldn’t stop the sobbing and convulsing. Though she needed to get out of there, she couldn’t force herself off the couch.

  Maybe she should call the police.

  She was allowed to defend herself from home intruders, right?

  I don’t know what happened to that guy, she could say, as investigators questioned the fact that all of his teeth had fallen out. What were they going to do, accuse her of killing him with her mind?

  If she took credit for the boiling water and the knives, and claimed to have, say, bashed the toothless guy in the face with a pot, would it make a difference if forensics concluded that not everything matched up? “I knocked out his teeth with a metal pot.” “Is that so? Our examination shows that his teeth fell out on their own.” “Fine. His teeth coincidentally just happened to fall out right before I hit him with the pot. Are you happy?”

  How would she explain the guy whose eyeball was dangling from its stalk?

  Did it matter?

  If she said that the men broke into her house and she killed all of them, was it a problem if there were unexplained elements? Maybe she hit him so hard with the pot that his eye popped out. Professional examiners were not going to conclude that there were supernatural powers at work. If she wasn’t lying about killing them, and if she told the truth about everything except for the unexplainable stuff, would she be in trouble?

  She’d killed people before and the police let her go.

  Of course, she’d been ten years old.

  She definitely didn’t want the celebrity that would come from violently slaughtering six men. There’d be reporters everywhere. She’d be frantic. Bad things could happen.

  Bad things could happen if the police interrogated her.

  Fuck! Calling the cops seemed like the right choice, but if a detective started gushing blood from his eyes while on camera asking her questions, who knew what might happen to her? She couldn’t be around people during stressful situations. That was the whole goddamn problem in her life.

  What was she going to say? “Hey, there are mangled bodies all over my house, but please don’t take me out of my happy place when you ask about them. Nothing but softball questions, please.”

  How could she report this to the authorities without putting innocent people at risk?

  Daxton twisted his ankle, pitched forward, and slammed into the ground.

  As he lay there, utterly miserable, he didn’t hear any footsteps.

  He’d been running for a few minutes, and there was no evidence that Allison was still following him. Maybe she’d given up. Maybe he was safe.

  “Safe,” of course, was a relative term now.

  The last thing in the world he wanted to do right now was report the incident to Winlaw, but the sooner he did, the more likely it was that his boss would absolve him from responsibility. He stood up and started walking, not bothering to brush the dirt and leaves off his clothes. He took out his phone and made the call.

  “Is it done?” asked Winlaw.

  “They’re all dead,” said Daxton. “Every one of them.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “All five of them are dead. Forrest is dead. Everybody’s fucking dead.”

  “What are you trying to pull here, Daxton?”

  “I’m being completely honest with you. Call them. None of them will answer. They’re all dead. You want to come out here and see for yourself?”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m in the woods. I barely got away. Look, sir, I tried to do something great for you, but you didn’t send enough men. I asked for a dozen. A dozen men could’ve caught her. This isn’t my fault.”

  “I don’t have a dozen men at my immediate disposal.”

  “Well, that’s not on me. If you don’t have the resources to get the job done it’s not my fault. You can’t blame me for this.”

  “I’m sorry, Daxton, but you don’t get to decide where I place my blame. The way I see it, you’re worthless to me. At this point I might as well cut my losses and watch you and your girlfriend die ghastly deaths. Our business relationship is now over.”

  “No, please, sir, let’s—”

  “Discuss it? Okay. Turn yourself in. Right now. Be here in thirty minutes, accept the fate that’s in store for you, and I’ll let Maggie live. Sacrifice yourself for your unborn child. Otherwise, I’ll catch you, and I’ll be in an even worse mood when I inflict the suffering. Goodbye.”

  “No! No! Mr. Winlaw—” Too late. He’d already hung up.

  Spiral!

  Allison got up off the co
uch and hurried over to her bedroom door. As far as she knew her abilities didn’t work on animals, but she’d never tried the “shriek” approach before.

  She opened the door. Spiral lay on the bed.

  He looked asleep.

  She petted his head and he looked up, annoyed to have been awakened. He was okay.

  She left him on the bed and returned to the living room.

  Something was buzzing.

  A cell phone.

  It was in the pocket of the man who Daxton had shot. She slid it out and looked at the display, which said “Boss Man.” She accepted the call but said nothing.

  “Hello?” asked a man on the other end.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  “Who is this?”

  Allison said nothing.

  “Is this Allison?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Is it true that you killed six of my employees?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I completely fucked them up. They’re all dead on my floor. Do you want pictures? I’ll send pictures.” Without waiting for him to answer, she switched to the camera and took quick photographs of each of the dead men. She texted them to Boss Man. “Do you believe me, asshole?”

  “I do.”

  “That’ll happen to you and anybody else you send after me. Do you understand? Leave me the fuck alone, whoever you are.”

  The man on the other end chuckled. “Noted. So, Allison, let’s talk.”

  15

  Maggie didn’t answer her phone. Daxton texted her to call him back immediately, then called again. She practically had that cell phone surgically grafted to her right hand, but now she wasn’t going to answer?

  She answered. “Hi.”

  “Why didn’t you pick up the first time?”

  “I’m on the toilet. I thought it could wait.”

  “It can’t. Get out of the apartment. Go somewhere. It doesn’t matter where. Not with your family—not anyplace anybody would think to look.”

  “What did you do to us?” Maggie asked.