He let go of the blind, went to the bed, lifted Item #4 and took it around to the side of Moloch’s world. Moloch watched him. He stripped the hood off it, men opened the door, unslung the struggling thing from his shoulder and dumped it in. He fetched Loretta from the bed and threw her in, too. Then he slammed the cage door shut and locked it with the key he kept hanging on a nail by the cage and dropped the key down the toilet and flushed it
Finally, he got his .44 magnum from under the bed, opened the front door, locked it behind him before slamming it, then he slipped around to the side of the guest unit, up the fire ladder he’d installed there for just such an occasion, onto the roof and into the dark sturdy branches of the sycamore tree through which he climbed onto the rose fancier’s roof, then down to the lowest part of it before he dropped to the ground and began weaving through the backyards of the houses over fences and hedges with the dogs barking but it didn’t matter, he was light afoot and armored in his fresh skin, in possession of a lethal fang, not so much immune to the night as a part of it.
Let them try to find me.
We jumped the wall at 8:02 P.M. There was a light on in the guest house. One of the deputies shone his flashlight beam against the door as I ran up the stairs onto the porch, took three short steps and lowered my shoulder. It took one more charge to break the thing open and I flew through its unresisting swing, rolling to the floor and up with my .45 out front and my finger finding the trigger, Johnny and Frances beside me in a heartbeat, all three of us screaming and my nerves fried.
When I burst into the back room I could hardly believe what I saw. A glass cage took up the whole wall. There was a snake in it almost as big around as a man, too long to even guess at. Part of it was looped around and over a dollhouse. The other part was spilled out to the cage bottom and coiled around a little girl. Her head and neck and shoulders stuck out from the rolls of muscle at a strange angle, like she was rigid. A hand protruded from between two massive coils. Her mouth was taped shut but she looked through the glass at me with huge dark eyes. Her face was pale purple. I couldn’t tell if she was alive. The snake had its mouth over her shoes and ankles, about halfway to her knees.
“God in heaven,” said Frances.
“Mother of Jesus,” said Johnny.
The girl blinked.
“You bastard!” screamed Frances. She knelt and emptied her 9 mm into the glass. All the bullets did was punch little holes through it and knock puffs of dust off the drywall behind it.
“Door’s fucking locked.!” yelled Johnny.
I zipped up my jacket halfway, held the left side over my head and jumped through the glass. I think I bounced off the tree inside. I landed in gravel, on my back, my legs up. I righted myself and stripped the jacket back. The snake had already disgorged the girl’s feet and his head was about two feet off the ground, his tongue loping out ahead of him as he moved toward me. I shot him between the eyes. His head dipped like someone had slapped it. Then he rose up palebellied above me and I could see the jagged exit hole in his jaw. I shot him twice more, up through the bottom of his head. He writhed higher, coils loosening on the girl and his green body twisting to expose the plated yellow stomach. His mouth gaped. I stepped under the head and tugged on the girl, with the pistol still ready in my right hand. The huge reptile body rolled away from her—green revolving into yellow, then into green again—and I lifted the girl up and out and hugged her against me. Something small and brown fell to the ground but I couldn’t see what. I looked to Frances, waiting just outside the shard-toothed hole I’d made, her arms reaching through.
“Give her to me, Terry. Here!”
I’m not sure why I didn’t. Why I couldn’t. It was like I wasn’t supposed to, like she was mine and there wasn’t anywhere in the world she could be safer than in my arms. And though I’d had that thought before in my life and been wrong, some things are born into a man and you can overrule them but you can never make them go away.
“Terry! Give her over!”
I stood there for just a moment in the ocean of twisting scales, with the girl held tight to my chest, then I passed her into Frances’s waiting arms. She was light, and loose as a beach towel.
Johnny helped me through to the other side. I looked back and saw a small dog scratching up against the glass, trying to reach the hole I’d made. Johnny reached in and scooped it out.
Two paramedics rushed through the doorway, then ran to Frances. One of the deputies charged in right behind them with his shotgun lowered and I thought for a second he was going to blow everyone there to smithereens. “House is empty, sir. Grounds, too. There’s nobody here but us.”
“He’s in the neighborhood,” I said. “Everybody door to door.”
“You’re bleeding,” said Johnny, and when I looked down at myself I could see the slick red soaking my shirt and pants. I felt like I’d been punched in the ribs. In fact, I felt great because I knew I’d just done a good thing, whether the girl made it through or not. I felt lucky.
Louis pushed his way past the uniform and held up his radio. “Terry, he’s down in the flood canal behind the street. Stansbury was strafing south with the light—guy wearing something shiny was hauling ass north. Suspect stopped under the bridge and hasn’t come out.”
I heard a gasp, then a gentle male expletive from the other side of the room. Frances looked up at me from the paramedics. “She’s breathing.”
I approached and looked down at her, a skinny little girl wrapped in a blanket. Her eyes were terrified, but she was drawing breath deep and fast. Someone had gotten the tape off her mouth. I took a flashlight from one of the uniforms.
“Let’s go get him.”
The flood control channel ran behind Hurst Street. Louis kept up radio contact as he led us through a backyard and over a cinder-block wall. The lights in the houses were coming on and I could hear dogs barking from the yards on either side of us. A quarter mile south I saw the chopper hovering and a bright cone of light flaring down to earth. We climbed the chain link and landed heavily on the other side.
In the dim moonlight I could see the ditch was deep, with high, sloping, concrete walls and a flat bottom to carry the floodwaters out to the Pacific. Stansbury held the helo low over the street, a few hundred yards away. It looked like the bird was held up by the stanchion of its own white light. I heard Stansbury’s voice rasp over Louis’s radio: “still under the bridge here, haven’t seen him move in over a minute … I’d get on him if I were you flatfoots …”
“Johnny—can you make it down, then up the other side?”
“Done.”
“I’ll take the center. Louis, take this bank.”
In an instant Johnny was down to the bottom, through the slick of water, then scuttling back up the far side. The last twenty feet of embankment was dirt, not cement, and for a moment he was tearing at it with all fours but sliding down at the same time, going nowhere. Then he found a foothold, got himself moving and made the top. He righted himself, flicked his flashlight beam once and drew his gun. I slid down the dirt on the soles of my shoes, and when I hit the rough cement I leaned back further and rode it down. When I hit bottom I was moving fast but kept my feet under me, ran up the other side a few steps to slow down, then started trotting through the brackish stream toward the chopper. I wedged the flashlight under my left arm, brought out my .45 and reached it around to my left hand, chambering the first round.
The middle of the channel was slick with mud and algae, so I tried to stay left or right. The bridge came at me out ahead, illuminated by Stansbury’s fierce spotlight, and I could see the shining sides of cars parked on the overpass behind the fence. The pale concrete of the channel narrowed, then lowered in perspective, disappearing into the darkness under the bridge.
I stopped about thirty feet short of the entrance. Even from there I could hear the sounds from inside: the lazy chime of running water; the clear and surprisingly loud doink, doink … doink, doink of a drip that must have had its
source high up; and the strange, metallic whomp of the chopper condensed in the tunnel then echoing out at me in odd angles from the darkness. Louis stood to my left, above me, and looked down. Turning the other way, I could see Johnny in a crouch, waiting for me to call the play. I wasn’t sure. It looked like a good way to get shot, if he was armed. I wanted him. I wanted him for myself, almost as bad as I’d ever wanted anything in my life. He was mine and I was going to take him. I looked in front of me to the dark yawning mouth of the overpass, moved to the far left side so my gun hand would be free, turned on my flashlight and looked in. As soon as I put my head into the opening, the echoes of the rotors hit me not only from both sides, but from ahead and behind, too. It was like having four ears. But I could navigate the invisible world of sounds by the steady doink and the minor sibilance of the running water.
The shiny little creek meandered along the bottom. There were large concrete blocks set in the floor of the culvert, just a few feet apart, to keep the large storm debris from going further downstream. Each one was almost a yard high and a yard wide—just big enough to hide a man. Three rows of three. I ran the light around them: branches caught lengthwise, mud and trash, a car tire. I held the beam just over each block and looked for shadows on the water. For movement. For a shape. For anything not quite right. Nothing. Nothing but the thump of the helo above.
I stepped back out of the tunnel and waved Johnny to go across the street, then back down again. He nodded and sprung onto the fence. Less than a minute later I saw the beam of his flashlight coming toward me from the other end of the tunnel. I waited until he was near the opening, then started in. Three steps. Four. I remembered something that Joe Reilly had once told me—always look up. So I aimed my beam to the ceiling and followed it up with my eyes. Ruststained concrete walls. Steel girders supporting the street from below. Bird nests and the dusty remains of spider webs long tattered and unused. I ran the beam down the wall to my left. It was sheer and clean except for the runoff tunnel that slanted up gently through the wall toward the street. The opening was about four feet off the floor of the channel and just big enough for a man to crawl into. There was another runoff line opening on the same side, about twenty yards further down toward Johnny. On the wall to my right I could see the black openings of two more, directly opposite.
Hypok lay in the cool barrel of the runoff line, feet slanted above him in the gentle uphill rise, both arms extended with the .44 firmly in grasp, barrel resting in a pile of debris through which he could easily see, elbows braced, his face recessed within the tunnel but his line of sight quite clear and unfettered. The nice wad of pine needles, leaves and trash not only hid him from flashlight view but gave him a steady brace for the gun.
His sores burned beneath the fresh skin. But he could scrunch backward into the deeper darkness of his hole, or forward toward the opening rather easily, using his elbows, knees and toes. He was tubed. It was like being born. Or like hunting if you were a snake, deeply penetrating the space of your prey, stealthy and silent, cunning and deadly. He rested his chin on the cold concrete and gazed down the length of his fine-scaled arms luminous in the near dark, to his pearlescent hands wrapped devoutly around the fat grips of the .44, then down at the shiny blued barrel waiting in the loose barrier of detritus. He could see the white post of the front sight and the generous rear notch into which you must center the post before you place it upon the target, pull the trigger and blow a hole the size of a softball out of any living thing on earth. He’d gotten the cop killer ammo, of course, Glaser Blues with the compressed #12 shot and the plastic, round-nose design. Guaranteed full knockdown on any hit or your money back.
The flood control channel was a great place to hide, he thought, unless it was raining. He’d found it months ago on one of his evening prowls. If the chopper hadn’t surprised him, bearing down low, spotlight igniting the ground around him like napalm and he just fifty yards from the protection of the bridge, he might have hidden down here for days. Then used the change of clothing, cash and ID he’d stashed in the runoff line across the ditch, and gotten himself to an airport or bus station. Now he was basically fucked, he told himself, though the idea was far less distressing now than he had imagined it would be during his many years doing the things he’d done, knowing that someday it would come to this. California had the death penalty, but they also had good lawyers and lenient juries. No, it wasn’t time to give up yet. If he could get himself out of the tunnel, back up the channel and into the cover of suburban backyards, he might be able to lose the chopper long enough to break into a house, fade a homeowner or two and get their car. Maybe they’d have an Item for him to take.
Through the loose wall of flotsam in which the barrel of his revolver lay, he could clearly see the main channel down in front of him. He could clearly see the white post of the front sight. To his right, a light came into view, playing along the creek bottom, then sweeping back and forth. They have no idea where I am, he thought. He wondered if it was the cop he helped pull the trick on, Naughton, the little hothead weirdo on Donna Mason’s show. Mal. Hopefully. Cops were all basically the same, though. The light became brighter, tapering back to its source. He could hear the slosh of feet in water, very quiet, but still audible, magnified by the hard concrete tunnel. Slishhh …
Then the beam veered away to the far wall. He watched it focus on the mouth of the runoff line across from his. A dress rehearsal, he thought. He watched the cop. He couldn’t tell if it was Naughton or not. The cop got right up close to the wall. His flashlight was in his left hand. He spread his legs and lowered himself into an amusing, ready-for-anything stance. Hypok could see the gleam of a firearm in his right hand. Then the cop leaned forward and aimed his beam up the opening. He didn’t look in. Hypok watched as the tunnel filled with light, saw the stained brown walls of concrete, the loose archipelago of flotsam and jetsam scattered inside. But the cop still hadn’t put his snout into the hole for a good honest whiff of things. Then he knelt down, quickly, some commando move he’d learned in school. His head was just under the opening and the light went off. In the darkness Hypok couldn’t see what he was doing, but he guessed the man was having a lights-out preview. Ten seconds. Then the tunnel went bright again and the beam had moved to about a yard inside it and Hypok could see the dark silhouette of a head looking in. What a sight. It was a lot like one of those paper targets at the indoor range, but no shoulders, only head, a perfect silhouette. He got the white post of his front sight settled into the notch of the back one and held it steady in the middle of the target. It was easy to do with the barrel on the bed of debris he’d built. A brain shot. Maximum stopping power. Guaranteed knockdown with any hit. The light raked the walls, held steady for a long while, then went out.
The next thing he knew, Hypok was looking across the channel at the flashlight aimed directly at him, weaving a little bit, but coming his way.
The cop veered to Hypok’s left, out of sight. Who wouldn’t? But Hypok could see his light and hear the gentle footfall of shoes on concrete, then the slishhh … slishhh of the dead man crossing the water, then the sucky sound of wet soles on dry cement again. Silence. Hypok imagined: he gets the light in his left hand and shines it in. And it happened. Next, he shines it around in here, but he doesn’t look in yet. That happened too. Bright. Hypok closed his eyes. Then, the cop turns off the light for ten seconds while he looks up here and tries to see me in the dark. The light, in fact, went out, and in the next eight seconds Hypok watched the scarcely visible outline of a human head not six feet away from him, not four feet from the muzzle of his revolver, becoming more distinct with every thunderous beat of his heart.
The shot was almost unbelievably loud. The echo bounced around the canal at me. I flattened myself against the wall and looked back toward Johnny, offing my light. I heard something land in the water. “John!”
Then I heard the sound of a body against the concrete, doing what, I couldn’t say.
“Okay, Naughton! Cr
eep down!”
“Hold there, Johnny! Hold!”
“Holding! Holding!”
John’s voice? He rarely called me Naughton.
His light went on, shining my way. I turned on my own and held the beam down in front of me to light the ground. But I felt wrong, something felt wrong and when I looked up to Johnny’s light I saw it hadn’t moved, it wasn’t moving at all—why wasn’t it on our man?—so I veered out of its path and ran down the middle through the water toward it.
When I got there, the flashlight lay in one of the runoff openings, held in place with a rock. Below the opening was Johnny. Johnny, on his back with his head in the mud, his widow’s peak collapsed over his eyes and smoke rising from his mouth. Far ahead of me now, moving along the bottom of the channel was a figure faintly opalescent in the moonlight, vanishing fast. I brushed Johnny’s cheek with my fingers, then moved out
Louis had already slid down into the channel bottom to give chase. A uniform came jangling down from the other side, skied the last ten yards on his boot soles and fell in behind Louis. I caught them quickly, muttered something about nailing the fucker once and for all and shot past both of them. I am light boned and quite fast, and have much more stamina than a man of my personal habits deserves. But if I had been fifty years old and thirty pounds overweight it wouldn’t have mattered, because I could still see Johnny’s gone face back there in the ugly little stream and I would have willingly run myself to death to avenge him.
I couldn’t outrun the chopper. Stansbury roared past me overhead, raking The Horridus in his light, then banked and tried to stay over him. In the brief moment that the beam caught my prey I saw a scintillant flash of blue silver, like a marlin breaking water in the Sea of Cortez. I raised my knees and ran.
Out ahead, crisscrossing his way across the ditch, trying to avoid the beam above him, The Horridus was a glimmering phantom gliding from darkness to light then back to darkness. He was blue, then opalescent, then violet, then almost invisible in the night. He was fast, but he wasn’t as fast as me. His hundred-yard head start shrank to eighty. I was flying over that channel bottom like a hawk over a city street.
Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) Page 41