“Fair enough.”
They rolled through the entrance, onto the paved path. Deacon drove slowly, scanning the forestland on both sides of the trail.
One man jogged past. Deeply tanned, he wore a black muscle shirt and shorts, ear buds nested in his ears. He nodded at them as he raced by.
“Christ, it’s deserted back here,” Jim said. “We’d normally have passed a dozen folks by now.”
“Unusual,” Deacon said. An uncomfortable tightness had spread across his gut. It was a familiar feeling; intuition warning him that he was treading into a potentially troublesome situation. As a cop, he had grown intimately familiar with such feelings, as it had been his duty to put himself in harm’s way. Although he was only a security guard and no one really expected him to put his life on the line, his sense of duty still held sway over him.
Protect and serve, he thought. Even when one was only looking for a lost dog.
“You give any more thought to what we talked about the other day?” Jim asked.
“I did.” Deacon nodded, not taking his gaze away from the surrounding woods. “Not interested.”
“You could at least meet the woman. What harm is there in that?”
Jim and his wife, Linda, had been determined to set him up on a date with Linda’s colleague. Both of them were of the mind that a single man over the age of forty needed a woman in his life, a wife, whether he wanted one or not.
But Deacon had done the marriage thing, twice. Once when he was just twenty-four; again when he was an older but apparently not much wiser thirty-six. Neither had lasted longer than two years. He accepted that he had an innate knack for getting involved in relationships that were destined to implode, and his only consolation was that he hadn’t fathered any children that could have been wounded by the collateral damage.
“I don’t need anyone’s help getting dates, Jim,” Deacon said. “All I do is pull up an app on my phone, swipe through a few photos, click which woman I want, and boom, I’ve got a hot date that night.”
Jim chuckled. “Those aren’t dates, those are booty calls. And I don’t believe you actually do that. You’re too old-fashioned.”
“You don’t know what I do, man,” Deacon said.
“Hey, do you want to see a picture of Linda’s friend? Linda sent me one.”
“Nope.”
“Why the hell not? She’s gorgeous.”
“Doesn’t matter what she looks like. She could be Halle Berry’s long-lost identical twin. Still not interested.”
Jim was about to respond when a scream shattered the morning’s stillness. A woman’s scream. It came from somewhere ahead, not far, but beyond their view.
“Oh, shit.” Jim bolted upright, pushed up his glasses.
Deacon had already mashed the accelerator. The golf cart bounced over bumps on the path, and wind buffeted his face and threatened to snatch his cap off his head. Beside him, Jim was speaking into his walkie-talkie, warning the guard on duty at HQ of the potential situation they were approaching.
They careened around a curve in the trail, and that was when they saw it: The St. Bernard. The bearish dog had pinned a struggling young woman to the pavement. The dog was snarling, and Deacon saw the flash of teeth, the spray of blood.
I thought these dogs were supposed to be friendly, Deacon thought. Gentle giants. What’s going on?
Hands tightening on the steering wheel, Deacon brought the golf cart to a stop about thirty feet away. He shifted the gears into Park.
Jim barked into his walkie-talkie that HQ needed to get the police, and paramedics.
The dog continued to maul the woman, so consumed with its attack it didn’t notice their arrival. Flailing, trying uselessly to get from underneath the massive hound, the woman let out short screams of agony, terror.
“Jesus, that fuckin’ dog is huge.” Jim had drawn his Taser, but grimaced. “I could use my old Glock 9mm right about now. Or a rifle.”
Deacon had drawn his Taser, too. He realized he had never used the stun weapon in a live situation, only during training.
His heart slammed. He was supposed to carefully manage his heart rate, per doctor’s orders, but at that moment it felt as if it were knocking two hundred beats per minute.
“What’s the play?” Jim asked.
“I’ll draw his attention,” Deacon said. “I’ll try to lead him away from the woman. You take care of her.”
“Got it.” Jim extended the Taser, gripping it in both hands, as they had been trained.
Deacon blasted the golf cart’s horn, twice, and yelled: “Jake!”
The dog lifted its head and swung in their direction.
Both of its eyes were inflamed, crusted with red sores and oozing a mucous-like substance. Blood dribbled from its snout. A foamy, pinkish mixture of saliva and blood seeped from its mouth.
“Rabies,” Deacon said. “Has to be rabies.”
Jim moved away from the golf cart. Deacon edged to the left. Chest heaving, the St. Bernard looked from one of them, to the other.
“I’m your man, Jake,” Deacon said, and the dog’s attention locked in on him. Deacon stepped off the paved trail, shoes crunching over grass. “You watch me, Jake.”
He hoped using the dog’s name would snap it out of attack mode, would trigger some latent memory of being a friendly house dog, recollections of belly rubs and warm nights in a loving home. He could only imagine how Ms. Beckwith had spoiled the canine. The dog undoubtedly had enjoyed more creature comforts than half the people on the planet, and even in its diseased state of mind, it had to remember something of that charmed life.
“You’re a good dog, Jake,” Deacon said. “I know it, Jake. I know you are, boy.”
The St. Bernard growled. Deacon’s grip tightened on the Taser. He dug his heels into the grass.
“He’s coming for you,” Jim said. “Get ready.”
“Take care of the woman,” Deacon said, though from a quick glance in her direction, the woman wasn’t moving at all.
The dog rushed him.
The animal had to weigh close to two hundred pounds, about as much as Deacon actually weighed, and it was fast. Spittle flying, snarling, the canine thundered toward him. Deacon held his breath, steadied his aim, and when the dog was within a range of ten feet, so close Deacon could smell his hot, rancid breath, he fired the Taser.
The stun gun crackled, compressed nitrogen launching the twin metal probes from the barrel in a silver blur. The probes attached to the dog’s massive neck. Fifty thousand volts of electricity surged through the wires and into the animal.
It should have brought the dog down.
It would have brought virtually anyone down.
But the canine slammed into Deacon with a roar. For Deacon, it was like being hit by a linebacker running at full speed. The Taser flipped out of his grasp. He hit the ground on his back, the impact rattling his teeth. The dog was on his chest, and this close, it seemed even bigger, like a grizzly bear. Foamy saliva sprayed over Deacon’s face, and Deacon brought up his arm to protect his neck, because the animal’s sharp, blood-streaked teeth were going straight for his jugular.
Is this how it ends for me? Deacon thought, dimly.
There was the crackle of another Taser being discharged, Jim’s, and then the dog was suddenly off his chest. Probes attached to its flank, the animal wobbled drunkenly, and smashed into a tree. But like a prize fighter that refused to quit, the dog did not go down.
“This is unbelievable,” Jim muttered, and looked at the stun weapon in his hand as if convinced it must be defective.
By then, Deacon had gotten to his feet. He was woozy, his chest ached, and blood spattered his face, but he had escaped the dog’s bite.
The stumbling canine tore free of the probes. Drooling, it staggered away into the woods.
Both Deacon and Jim hurried to check on the woman. Before they reached her, Deacon knew what they would find.
She was dead.
Deacon lowered h
is head.
“We got here too late,” he said. “It was over by the time we rolled up.”
“That dog.” Shaking his head, Jim wiped away tears. “It looked just like that kid I saw last night, I swear. Those eyes. What the hell is going on?”
Chapter 4
Emily Taylor administered the home pregnancy test for the third time that morning. She re-read the instructions. She Googled it. She watched a YouTube video demonstrating its use. She was a student at Emory Medical School and a former high school valedictorian—she knew she could figure out how to do this properly.
But she received, again, the same result she had gotten from the prior two tests.
It was positive.
She was pregnant.
She dropped the test stick on the edge of the vanity, flipped down the lid of the commode, and collapsed on it. She hugged herself, though the bathroom was warm. She couldn’t stop trembling.
I can’t be pregnant, she thought. That is not part of the plan.
But she had missed her period, and while that had been alarming, she had needed to validate it by giving herself the early pregnancy test. Perhaps it would be wise to visit her gynecologist and have blood drawn and tested, too. Just to be absolutely sure.
Because this revelation was going to totally wreck her parents.
Emily’s father was a plastic surgeon with a thriving practice in Alpharetta. Her mother was an anesthesiologist with offices in Dunwoody. They were both, to put it lightly, overachievers, and they expected only the best from her, their third and youngest child. Her mother’s expectations were particularly high. Her mother, the daughter of a Chinese immigrant, was a so-called “tiger mom.”
For Emily’s entire life, her mother had enforced a strict code of discipline and a relentless focus on achievement. Private tutoring, as preparation for preschool, began when Emily was three. Piano lessons commenced at age five. She had attended an exclusive private academy from kindergarten through high school, and one of her earliest academic memories was bringing home a math test on which she had scored a ninety-eight percent, an accomplishment of which she was proud, and her mother frowning at the paper and remarking, in a voice thick with disappointment, “Why not a one hundred percent? You did not study hard enough. I expect better. Go to your room.”
For her mom, failure was never an option.
And in her mother’s world, getting pregnant while still a med school student was failure of the most reckless kind. She could imagine her mother kicking her out of the house and actually refusing to speak to her again. My daughter? Yes, such a disappointment, a true embarrassment to our family. I haven’t spoken to her in years.
Tears spilled down Emily’s cheeks. She snatched a fistful of tissues out of the container on the vanity, mopped her eyes and face. Rising unsteadily, she used her fingers to comb her dark hair out of her eyes.
She needed to speak to her boyfriend, Zack.
She and Zack had been dating for about a year and a half. He was a grad school student at Georgia Tech, majoring in mathematics; his choice of major was probably the only reason her mother had approved of her dating him at all. They’d had sex, of course (though not as much as Zack wanted), and had always been so careful about using protection, and she was taking birth control, too. She didn’t understand how this could have happened. Had she somehow missed a day or two of taking the pill, in spite of all her precautions?
Zack lived in South Haven, too, with his parents. She sent him a text message on her iPhone, saying they needed to talk, face to face. He didn’t reply immediately, but if she knew him, he was either at home, or at work. During the summers, he worked as a part-time instructor at a math tutoring center located on site in the community, helping those ambitious students who wanted to get ahead when school kicked off again later in the fall.
Another message came through on her phone: it was from her best friend, Megan.
Update, Em?
Megan was the only soul on the planet with whom Emily had shared her situation. They’d been close friends since third grade, and after high school graduation, Megan had gone to Julliard in New York, to study drama. She currently was in-between theatre productions on Broadway, but even in the midst of her most hectic performance schedules, she and Emily managed to connect for a few text messages every day, and Emily looked forward to visiting her in Manhattan before the summer ended.
Emily sighed, responded: Round three: positive.
So sorry. Any chance of false positive?
Don’t think so. I had nausea this morning.
Ugh. Sorry. Proof then.
Yeah. Probably.
Are you going to tell Zack?
He needs to know. This is a face to face chat.
He’s going to shit himself.
We both have plans. This isn’t part of it.
I know. You aren’t telling your mom?
She would disown me.
Sad but true. I’m here for you, Em. Whatever happens.
Emily swiped to see if Zack had replied, and found no response. She would have to go find him, then.
Before leaving, she stuffed all three of the home pregnancy kits deep into a plastic grocery bag, and disposed of the bag in the trash bin standing inside the wooden carrel on the side of their house. It would not do for her mother to stumble across any evidence of what was going on. She could imagine how that would have played out.
Her family lived in an embarrassingly opulent, six-bedroom Tudor-style home on Magnolia Way. It had a detached three-car garage located at the rear of the property, and each slot was occupied; her parents were away on a seven-day vacation in the Greek isles.
She hopped onto her bike and rolled out of the paved driveway, into the adjacent gravel alley. She owned a Honda Civic, but for getting around South Haven she preferred to ride her bicycle. It was a bike-friendly community, one of the big perks of living there. The weather was sunny with a cool breeze, and not yet too humid.
She sucked in deep breaths as she swerved out of the alley and onto the street. She enjoyed the contractions of her pumping muscles, the sizzle of simmering adrenaline, the wind blowing through her hair. Cycling was only of the only activities she pursued simply for the thrill of it, and as she pedaled and swerved, her mind roamed beyond the stressful concerns of the day.
She noted that the roads, however, were curiously vacant. She would have expected to see young mothers out pushing babies in strollers, someone walking a dog, or out cultivating a flower bed. But it looked as if all of the residents were indoors, or simply not home.
Something to do with last night’s murder? She had known that guy, Ryan, sort of. He was a little younger than she was but she had seen him at neighborhood gatherings. He seemed like the studious type, which is why it was so incredible that people were saying he’d been on drugs and had gone psycho on his family.
Zack and his folks lived in a two-story Craftsman-style home painted forest-green, with black trim. She braked to a stop at the end of their faux-cobblestone walkway.
She checked her phone again. He hadn’t yet responded to her text message. She was about to get off her bike and go ring the doorbell when she heard something metallic grinding against pavement.
She looked over shoulder and saw Zack’s neighbor, Mr. Pinto. He was a Latino man, perhaps in his late-sixties, and lived with his wife in the residence across the street. Emily had been seeing him for years during her bike rides through the community, and he always paid her a wave as she zipped past.
Mr. Pinto carried a garden hoe, dragging the business end of the tool along the street as he lumbered toward her.
“Sir?” she asked.
There was something wrong with his face. His eyes were red with inflammation, and the flesh around the sockets appeared to have been cauterized. Dark veins mapped his brown-skinned complexion. Blister-like lesions marked his cheeks and forehead, as if he were leprous. A trickle of blood dribbled from his nose and collected in his thick grey mustache.
<
br /> What the heck is wrong with him?
The budding physician in her wanted to examine, to treat, to help. But the skin at the nape of her neck had tightened.
She balanced her right foot on the bike pedal, her thigh muscles coiling.
Mr. Pinto spoke in a garbled stream of barely intelligible words, spittle spraying from his swollen lips.
“Flowers . . . roses . . . lilies . . . ruined flowers, the boy did . . .”
Drawing closer to Emily, he lifted the garden hoe. Instinct compelled her to act before conscious thought could issue the command. She surged forward on her bike.
Mr. Pinto swung the hoe, the blade whistling through the space she had just vacated.
“Ruined flowers!” he screamed. “Boy ruined them he did!”
Chilled to the core, Emily pedaled away. She risked a look over her shoulder and saw Mr. Pinto running after her, clutching the garden hoe in his hands like a sword. His sneakers were untied, laces flopping. He was fleet-footed for a man of his age, blistered face taut with savage resolve.
“Ruined flowers! Roses! Lilies!”
She couldn’t believe this was happening. A flurry of questions spun through her mind. What had she done to provoke the attack? Had Mr. Pinto gone insane? What was the matter with him?
She pedaled as fast as she could. She was a petite woman, only five-feet-one, but her legs were strong from regular exercise. She lowered her head and forced herself to go faster. When she looked behind her again she saw she had put some distance between herself and Mr. Pinto.
But he was still coming. One of his shoes had flown off, and he kept on after her, limbs swinging as mechanically as a machine, and though she had a good lead she worried that he would outlast her. He had the look of a man who would never tire, who would run and run and run and eventually overtake her as she ran out of gas, and swipe that hoe across her throat—
A large, dark object suddenly clipped her front tire.
“Score!” someone yelled.
Emily swerved, almost lost her balance, but course corrected before she flew over the handlebars. Slowing, she looked around. A boy who looked to be about twelve was outdoors, in the yard of the property on her right. He was bending to pick up one of the stone pavers that lined the large bed of petunias at the front of the house. From the distance, she could see the redness outlining his eyes, the lesions spotting his face.
Frenzied - A Suspense Thriller Page 3