by Blake Crouch
After searching for a safety that wasn’t there, Max finally aimed through the rear passenger window as the pale-faced man closed in.
He squeezed the trigger and the glass exploded as the .45 bucked in his hand.
The man continued toward him, unscathed.
Max opened the door and scrambled out of the car as the shotgun boomed, glass raining down on him. He crawled to the back of the car, poked his head above the trunk in time to see the shotgun jerk and fire come roaring out the barrel.
Max ducked down, sitting with his back against the tire. Sweat sheeted down his forehead into his eyes but it smelled rusty, and when he wiped it away the back of his hand was bloodsmeared. He touched his head, felt where the pellets of buckshot had scalped three marble-size trenches down to the bone, the steel November afternoon like ice on his skull.
He looked under the car, unable to see the legs of the man who was trying to kill him.
Max peered over the trunk again.
No one there.
He stood.
Glock quivering in his hand.
Three bloodstreaks down his face like warpaint.
Blinked, and there was the barrel of the shotgun, peeking over the other side of the trunk and Max felt the ground beneath him and he was staring through the twisted limbs of those haunted trees at flinders of a fading sky the color of his wife’s name and he tried to say it, tried to call out to her.
A black moon appeared and descended toward him, filling his violet sky with the reek of scorched metal and death.
60
BETH bolted barefoot through the beach grass as the third shotgun report erupted from the thicket of live oaks. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the old man leaning against the rusted pickup truck, hand pressed into his side where she’d cut him with the boning knife.
The adrenaline waned, her own stab wound beginning to throb like the worst cramp she’d ever felt, as though something were trying to burrow out of her stomach.
Another shotgun blast echoed across the water.
She plunged into the thicket north of the house, running like hell, not looking back, tearing through the cooling darkness of the live oaks, the sun at her back, not long for the world.
Beth crossed a patch of sandspurs.
She screamed and fell, dug three organic spikes out of her right foot and ran on, dead leaves clinging to the blood on her left leg.
After two minutes she collapsed, lying in leaves in the swarming cold.
She rolled onto her back, stared up at the fading sky.
She closed her eyes.
Excruciating now to inhale.
She pushed her palm into the wound, felt blood seep between her fingers…
When her eyes opened she could see a solitary planet in the cobalt.
Her breath steamed.
Leaves crunching somewhere in the distance.
She wondered if the man with long black hair would kill her in the woods or take her back to that awful house…
Beth woke colder than she’d ever been, the sky starblown, woods gone quiet, her bleeding stopped. She sat up, staggered to her feet, and limped along through the thicket.
After an hour she broke from the trees into a field of marsh grass, her feet sinking every step in the cold mud. She tramped on, so delirious with exhaustion that she hardly noticed when her eviscerated foot touched the pavement of Highway 12.
Beth stepped bewildered into the middle of the road. To the north it ran into darkness as far as she could see. Southward, it extended toward what could only be the nighttime glow of civilization.
The moon was rising.
Sea shining.
She stumbled along toward the village.
Rufus’s wound was long but shallow. He sat in a chair in the kitchen while, in lieu of stitches, Maxine used a strip of duct tape to close the three-inch slice to the right of his bellybutton.
The left side of her jaw was swollen but the pain was sufferable. There was little she could do about it anyway. They didn’t have much time. People would be coming soon, looking for the men their son had murdered.
While Maxine packed suitcases, Rufus took a lantern down into the basement.
The good news was that the project was nearly finished. He had only to install the power supply and wire it to the chair. He would work all night if he had to.
Flicking on the overhead light bulb, he rolled the generator from the passageway into the death chamber.
Rufus hoped Luther would return soon so they could put the finishing touches on their beautiful chair together.
At midnight Beth came to a dirt road. It branched off to the soundside of Highway 12, crossed a hundred yards of marsh, and terminated on a piece of dry land, upon which sat a modest saltbox, its porchlight beckoning.
The name on the nearby mailbox read Tatum.
She could see the warm glow of the Ocracoke Light in the distance, a comforting presence above the dark trees. The village was less than a half mile down the highway, but everything was sure to be closed at this hour. Besides, the sole of her foot was shredded. She doubted she could stand the pain of walking much farther.
Her wound started to bleed again as she trudged down the dirt road. The closer she got to the house the more lightheaded she became and the deeper the cold bored into her. She wondered how she’d lasted this long, felt a brief tinge of pride.
Live oaks massed behind the saltbox, blocking a view of the sound. But eastward the dunes were just low enough to offer a glimpse of the sea—shinyblack in the strong moonlight.
She neared the house. An old sailboat foundered in weeds on the edge of the marsh, like something washed up after a hurricane, stripped of sails, its hull cracked.
A Dodge Ram gleamed in the yellow porchlight, parked parallel to the garage, "BOATLUV" on the license plate, a fishing rod holder mounted to the front bumper, the rods standing erect in their PVC pipes.
Beth climbed five brick steps to the front door.
Moths loitered above her head, bouncing off the porchlight, over and over like maniacs.
Nausea hit her but there was nothing on her stomach.
Through slits in the blinds, she saw the shadow of a man lying on a couch, blue light flickering on the walls around him.
Beth opened the screen door and knocked.
The man did not move.
She banged on the door, saw him sit up suddenly and rub his eyes.
He staggered to his feet.
She heard his footsteps coming.
The front door opened and a whitebearded man gazed down at her through glassy eyes. He cinched his robe and she smelled gin when he said, "Do you have any idea what time…"
He rubbed his eyes again, blinked several times, and squinted at her, Beth crying now, the warmth of his home flowing out onto the porch, reminding her what safety felt like. The man saw the blood pooling at her feet, traced it to the hole in her stained and ragged lingerie.
She heard audience laughter on the television.
Cold blood trailed down her leg.
"Help me," she whispered.
Her knees quit and she fell forward.
He caught her, lifted her off her feet, and carried her inside.
61
RUFUS pushed the Generac Wheelhouse into a corner of the death chamber, fired up the soldering gun, and proceeded to fuse the no. 4 copper wire to the copper plating on the chair’s front legs, the room filling with the sweet sappy odor of the melted alloy.
When the soldering was done, he took the hacksaw he’d found in a corridor near the alcove, and cut two four-foot lengths of no. 4 copper wire from the dwindling coil. With a hammer, he beat out the ends of the wire until they were flattened enough to fit into the two legs of the generator’s 220 volt outlet.
Behind the toolbox he found Maxine’s contribution to the project—a homemade skullcap. She’d taken a North Carolina Tarheels baseball cap, cut up one of her thin leather belts, and sewn the pieces into the sides so the buckle co
uld be tightened under the condemned’s chin.
Maxine had drilled a hole through a square-inch of copper plating and put a brass screw through it. She’d then superglued a square-inch piece of sponge to the copper plate, removed the button from the top of the baseball cap, and bolted the electrode to the inside so it would rest flush against the condemned’s head.
Rufus grabbed one of the four-foot copper wires and hammered its other end so that it had enough surface area to accept a screw. He drilled a hole through it, then took both the wire and the skullcap and sat down in the chair.
Unscrewing the bolt that fastened the electrode to the cap, he slipped the copper wire onto the brass screw, tightened the bolt back into place, and grinned.
He now had his own personal electric chair, and though he had doubts about whether it could actually deliver a lethal jolt, it would certainly be fun to try.
Rufus came to his feet.
His side was hurting again.
He walked upstairs to tell Maxine that everything was ready and see if Luther had come home.
Charlie Tatum was sobering up fast. He set the broken creature down on the soft leather sofa where he’d been drifting in and out of sleep for the last two hours, and called out to his wife down the dark hallway:
"Margaret! Come out here!"
The woman was still unconscious.
Charlie knelt down on the carpet and straightened the lingerie so her nipples didn’t show. He lifted her satin chemise to see where all the blood was coming from.
The wound was located just above her hipbone, like a small black mouth, open with surprise, blood oozing from its corner, down the woman’s side, and onto the leather sofa.
"What in the world are you yelling about, baby?"
Margaret emerged from the hallway and stood in her flannel nightgown, a woman with heft, her dyed red hair in turmoil, sleeplines down the right side of her face.
"Are you drunk?" she asked, pointing at the empty tumbler and the half-empty bottle of Tanqueray sitting on the driftwood coffee table between the sofa and the television.
"Just put your glasses on, Mag," he said.
Margaret pulled a pair of thick-lensed frames from the patch pocket on her nightgown, slipped them on, and gasped.
"My God. What in the world happened to her?"
"You tell me. She just knocked on the door. When I opened it she said ‘help me’ and fainted right into my arms."
Margaret moved a step closer across the carpet. She turned on a stained glass lamp sitting on an end table.
"Is that blood?" she asked.
"Yeah. She’s got a bad cut right here. And her arms and legs are all torn up."
"I’ll call nine-one-one. Or should we just take her to the medical center? I’ll drive."
Charlie lay his ear against the woman’s heart, her mouth.
"No, she’s breathing. Just tell them to send an ambulance."
While Margaret called 911 from the adjacent kitchen, Charlie leaned in close to the woman on his sofa and spoke in a low and calming voice into her ear.
"You’re safe now. An ambulance is coming and they’re gonna take good care of you." Charlie felt her burning forehead, then held her swollen shattered hand. "Just hang in there, okay? Everything’s gonna be fine now. You came to the right house."
Margaret walked in from the kitchen, sat down on the end of the sofa.
"Ambulance is on the way and they’re also sending a police car since I told them she might’ve been attacked. What do you think happened to her?"
Charlie shook his head.
He stared at the television for a moment, then reached for the remote control and turned it off.
The woman stirred.
Eyes opening.
Wide with fear.
"Remember me?" Charlie asked.
A nod.
"You’re safe now. The ambulance is coming."
There was a knock at the front door.
"That was fast," Margaret said, rising from the sofa.
"See, there they are," Charlie whispered. "Lightning quick."
As Margaret reached to open the front door she said, "Wonder why they didn’t use the siren or the lights?"
Charlie was staring into the woman’s glazed eyes when Margaret opened the door.
He said, "We’ll come see you in the hospital tomorrow, maybe bring you some—"
Margaret emitted a strange gurgling sound.
Charlie glanced over his shoulder at his wife.
She turned slowly.
Faced him.
Standing in the open doorway, stunned, face gone pale as sand, sheets of blood flooding out of the long dark smile under her chin.
"Mag!" Charlie shrieked, coming to his feet, leaping awkwardly over the coffee table as his wife went to her knees and fell prostrate across the carpet.
A man with long black hair stepped into the lowlit living room as the sound of distant sirens grew audible.
Charlie lunged at the intruder who simply held fast to the ivory-hilted bowie, letting the old drunken sailor impale himself with his own inertia, the carbon blade turning, riving its quiet devastation inside him.
Charlie tumbled backward and fell dying onto his dead wife.
Luther drew the blade between his thumb and forefinger, flung blood onto the walls, and turned his attention to the leather sofa.
Beth was gone and the sirens were approaching.
62
THE inside of the wicker clothes hamper smelled of fishguts and mildew. Beth had burrowed down into the laundry, covering herself in underwear and panties and damp jeans and a blanket that stunk of gasoline.
The old man was no longer keening and above the distant moan of sirens she could hear hallway doors opening and closing.
Having managed to put the lid on the hamper from inside, her only view of the master bedroom was through a gap in the wicker. But there was little to see. A blue nightlight by the doorway provided the sole illumination.
Footsteps stopped behind the door.
Doorknob turning.
Sirens closing in.
Stay alive one more minute and you get to live, see your children again. He can’t stay once the police are here.
The bedroom door swung open.
"Elizabeth."
A voice without a shard of emotion.
Through the wicker she could see his legs in the electricblue glow of the nightlight.
"We don’t have much time. Come on."
The flashing lights of the ambulance passed through the bedroom’s only window, bursts of vermilion streaking across the walls. She could hear the rocks crunching under its tires as it sped down the dirt road toward the saltbox.
"I’m just gonna cut your throat and leave. You’ll be dead in a minute tops. I think that’s very reasonable."
Beth watched him walk past the hamper, kneel down, and glance under the bed. He rose, moved toward the adjoining bathroom, disappeared inside.
Her heart banging.
Sirens blistering the frozen November night outside.
Reaching out of the clothes, hands on the wicker lid, she heard him rip the shower curtain from its rings.
Go now. Climb out. Go.
A cabinet under the sink opened and closed.
She started to lift the lid when his footsteps reentered the bedroom.
Walk past. Please just go. Leave. Run away. They’ll catch you.
The ambulance parked in front of the house. She could hear its engine, doors opening, slamming.
The man sighed and rushed past the hamper to the doorway.
Oh yes thank you God thank
He stopped abruptly in the threshold.
Paramedics pounding on the front door.
"Almost," he said. "Almost."
And he spun around and moved toward the hamper, Beth peering up through the stench of strangers’ laundry as the lid disappeared.
The man with long black hair gazed down at her and smiled, flashing lights rouging his pa
le and bloodless face.