“Ah, help!” the sheriff screamed.
Parker pulled back, taking a chunk of flesh from the sheriff’s throat. He scampered to his feet and dashed between the cars blocking the road, leaving the sheriff with his hand pressed to his life-leaking throat.
“Shoot the son-of-a-bitch!” Sheriff Warren ordered, “What in God’s name are you waiting for?”
Parker ran down the road, then ducked into a hedgerow on the side and out into the rain-soaked field toward Sand Creek.
The officers seemed too stunned to react immediately but soon ran after him.
After the first few steps, Parker lost his shoes as the rich black mud sucked them from his feet. He stayed close to the hedgerow, hoping it would provide at least some cover. Then, after fifty yards, the guns reported.
Bullets snapped by his head, some snipping off limbs. The officers were bogged down with their own mud-balled shoes. He had a good head start, but he knew they’d be on him soon.
After two hundred yards, the hedgerow ended, and Parker ran out and into the yard of the first house. He recognized the Bumfield’s place ahead and ran to the front door.
It was unlocked, and he swung it wildly, then rushed into the front hall. A body caught his foot, and he stumbled to one knee and hand. There was no way of knowing for sure that it was Mrs. Bumfield’s, but the shredded, bloody white blouse and ripped blue jeans clued him. The dogs had been savage. He stood and stepped over her body, then staggered into the living room.
Light from the streetlight outside left shadows in the room. In the dull glow, there was another body. Mr. Bumfield lay on his back near the kitchen doorway, his arm stretched out toward a gun rack on the wall.
Parker felt painful convulsions as he looked over the horror. His throat, his chest. It felt like a monster raved inside, trying to get out, like one of Nick’s “ill-a-jitmut aliens” about to rip through his body. He couldn’t control his saliva, and it drooled from his mouth.
He looked around the room with his hand clenched tightly on the front of his shirt, reacting to the pain in his chest. Behind him was the large tapestry. The dogs playing poker. Having a party. Having a good time.
Parker growled out, grabbing it by one side, and tore it from the tacks holding it to the wall. He threw it, picture first, over Mr. Bumfield’s body and stared down at it.
What about the Bumfield’s granddaughter, the cute little girl staying with them? Where was she? Could she have survived?
“Tricia!” Parker called, his voice now very hoarse as he ran frantically through the house, “Tricia!”
She wasn’t downstairs. He looked at the stairway, then bounded up the steps. A doll lay at the top, and he picked it up slowly. It was familiar. It was the same doll Tricia had carried with her when he had been there before. Its head hung by a small piece of cloth. White cotton stuffing pushed out, and it felt wet and sticky from slobber and blood. Parker looked down at the doll as if it were the ravaged little girl. He moved its little arms gently and tried to put its head back into place.
“Tricia. Tricia,” he said softly in a gravelly low tone as clear mucus flowed from his nostrils, tears streamed down his face and saliva frothed from his lips and dripped onto the doll.
He screamed out a deep guttural yell and yanked the doll’s head from its body. His arms stretched out with its body in one hand and head in the other as he stood, reaching, looking to the ceiling. To heaven. To God.
The twisting convulsions inside his torso grew stronger. His lungs and heart were tying in knots inside his chest, and he cringed down into a ball. He coughed painfully.
A noise.
Parker stilled himself, no longer paying attention to the hurt. A whimpering came from down the hall. He stood slowly, but his neck and shoulders were too painful to straighten, and he moved in a stooped position toward the sound. It came from a bedroom at the end of the hall. He stumbled. His feet were lead weights as he stomped each clumsy step, the pieces of doll still gripped tightly in his hands.
The demon, rabies, was in him, now, trying to gain control. But he would not submit, not until he had done all he could.
He stopped at the door and saw that the bottom panel had been ripped apart as if attacked by a lunatic with a chainsaw. He opened the door and flipped the light switch. His bloodshot eyes shifted about the room, his lips parted, tongue protruding slightly, and saliva still dripping down the front of his shirt. He saw nothing that could be making the noise.
The whimpering started again. It came from the closet. The door was torn open, just as the first, with countless, deep groves in the wood. The dogs had gotten in there also. Parker stomped slowly to the door, wondering what he would find inside. Was it Tricia making the noise or an injured dog? If it was Tricia, would she look like Jack had in his last moments, life flowing from her in crimson streams? He turned the doorknob with the doll body hanging in the same hand.
CHAPTER 59
The light from the room swept the dark closet as the door opened. Tricia’s scream was like the frantic squeal of a rabbit being butchered. Parker thought of how repulsive his face must look. She huddled defensively against the back of the closet with her knees up to her cheeks and jabbed toward him with a blood-covered wire coat hanger in her injured right hand, breathing from her open mouth, jaw trembling. Her red and white gingham dress was shredded on one side and blood spotted her ankle-length white socks and white canvas sneakers.
Parker knelt. “Tricia,” he said in his gruff, low voice as he reached for her.
She looked at the outstretched hands and her ripped apart doll, then looked up to Parker’s eyes.
She squinted. The fear drained from her face, leaving it blank and emotionless. It looked as though she recognized a good friend dressed in a hideous Halloween costume. Her lips quivered into a familiar tight grin. She dropped her weapon and shot up and grabbed Parker around the neck, hugging him firmly. “I knew you’d come, I knew it!” she cried.
Parker dropped the doll and walked out of the room with her, holding her just as tightly. He walked down the steps and, taking care to shield her from the bloody scene in the living room, out the front door.
An ambulance pulled up across the road and another approached along with several highway patrol and sheriff’s patrol cars, all with lights flashing. Parker walked swiftly. It seemed the monster trying to control him had been temporarily tranquilized by the relief he felt when finding Tricia. But he knew it would return soon. This time, the rabies would not release him. It had just been playing with him like a cat toying with a mouse. The last episode was so overpowering, so traumatic. The next time, he would not be able to fight it. He knew he would succumb. But there was still one thing he must do, one last thing he had to find out before he gave in to the raving disease inside.
“It’s all right, now,” Parker tried to assure Tricia as he handed her to the young man and woman attendants running up to meet them. They helped by prying her arms from around his neck, and the young woman took his place with her arms wrapped around the girl. “You’ll be okay,” he said.
A familiar sound came from behind. Parker stood still and listened, then looked up into the tree in the Bumfield’s front yard. The tree was shadowed in stripes by its own limbs from the many bright lights of the gathering vehicles.
He heard the cry for help again, a faint mewing, then spotted the little gray kitten, looking down from a large branch.
“Someone take care of the kitten,” he shouted in his gravelly voice to the EMTs, pointing with bent finger into the tree.
The officers were pulling up now, and they’d be after him. He had to escape. Parker ran behind the Bumfield’s house, then around their neighbor’s backyard fence and behind the hedge trees. He ran along the row and past the sheriff’s car, still parked in the same spot on the road. Sheriff Warren leaned with his back against his patrol car, his hand still pressed to his neck. Two officers assisted him as an ambulance pulled up nearby, and an attendant rushed over. They could
n’t see Parker in the darkness, and he passed by with only the trees separating them.
A highway-patrol chopper suddenly roared overhead, its searchlight beam wagging along the ground. Parker hunkered down against a hedge tree, avoiding its brightness, and something caught his eye in the ditch just six feet away. It was Jack’s gun. He crawled out quickly, snatched it up and ran up to the road to where his truck was parked. He slipped in quietly, easing the door shut.
With all the yelling and other noise, no one heard or noticed Parker’s truck engine start. He drove slowly, with lights off. When he made it to the intersection an eighth of a mile down, he could speed away. Parker watched in the rearview mirror as he crept along. After only a few yards, the sheriff looked up and waved his free arm.
“There he goes! There he goes, get him,” he ordered. Several officers appeared from the darkness, some ran to their cars, others ran down the road after Parker’s truck with firearms drawn.
Parker put his foot in it and his truck fishtailed as he accelerated. But within a hundred feet from the intersection, he began to feel faint and suddenly blacked out, succumbing to the demon inside. His face smacked into the steering wheel. The truck slipped into the muddy ditch but swerved halfway out and stopped, perpendicular to the road.
Parker came to as the windshield shattered. Bullets struck the truck as the officers found their target. Cracks, snaps, and zips filled the air as the bullets flew around and through the truck. A bullet struck the rearview mirror, and it fell from the fractured windshield and into his lap. Another bullet glanced off the windshield wiper and ricocheted across Parker’s left shoulder, laying his shirt open and leaving a bloody line three inches long.
Parker cranked the steering wheel and floored the accelerator. The truck swerved away, tires throwing gravel violently as he sped for safety.
The pain was back full force. The end was very near, and the tremendous hurt and confusion made him want to give in; after all, death was inevitable. Still, there was one thing he must do.
CHAPTER 60
The phone was a scream of terror, and Julie woke, startled, in Nick’s small bed. She slipped out, taking care not to disturb the kids, and ran to the phone in the master bedroom. She caught it after the third ring and looked at the clock radio beside the waterbed. It was five thirty-five a.m.
“Hello.”
“Is this Mrs. Parker?” the voice asked.
“Yes, who’s this?” Julie asked, knowing the call would be concerning Tony.
“This is Tyrone, down at the dispatcher’s office, Mrs. Parker. Sorry to bother you in the middle of the night.”
“That’s all right, Tyrone, what’s wrong? Is it Tony?” Julie remembered Tony had talked to Tyrone just before leaving.
“Well, yes. So he must not be there, huh?
“No, Tyrone. I haven’t seen him since he left after talking to you.”
“Everyone’s looking for him. There’s some people with anxious trigger fingers, too.”
“What happened?”
“They claim that he’s got—rabies.”
Julie bit her knuckle. She knew it had to be true. It made sense. That was why he’d been acting so strangely. It was that skunk bite.
“According to the sheriff’s office, he attacked several officers and drove away in his truck. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, or where he would go, would you?”
Julie thought a minute. Tyrone was silent.
“Maybe. Maybe, I do,” she said.
“Where?”
“I don’t think I should say. Tell everyone to back off. I’ll bring Tony into the hospital, but everyone has to back off!”
“Okay, Mrs. Parker, but be careful. In the state they say he’s in, he may not recognize you.”
Julie hung up and slipped into some jeans and a shirt. She gathered up the kids and loaded them into the minivan without waking them. There was no place to take them at this hour. Surely, he wouldn’t be violent. He would recognize his own children.
* * *
Only a handful of stars still sparkled above the riverbank, yet to be extinguished by the orange dome birthing on the eastern horizon.
A dark, filthy figure rested on its haunches among the spirea bushes, mulberry trees and sapling cottonwoods beneath the forty-four foot copper sculpture of an Indian. It was a human form, a man, or at least resembled what once had been. He breathed from his mouth, heavy and labored. His half-open eyes blinked, wincing from an occasional dewdrop that found its way through the thick branches. Clear, syrup-like mucus oozed from his nostrils down the whisker stubble of his top lip. His tongue, swollen and thick, stuck out past his lips. Saliva foamed from the corners of his mouth, then dripped in strings down his ragged blue shirt. His clothes were ripped and stained as if tie-died in dark crimson. A plastic badge hung from a torn piece of his shirt. It was scratched, chipped and spotted with blood. T. PARKER, it read in large white letters engraved on a black background.
The pitiful figure clenched his teeth hard. It felt as though his skull was cracking open, exploding as it throbbed. A large demonic rat nested inside. Its name was rabies. It raked its sharp, thin teeth across the tissue of his brain. With each gouging bite, he winced. The rabies monster tortured him—the disease, the demon. It would eat away at his brain until he would have none left. He would have no more thoughts. His skull would be empty, except for the rabies.
The pain subsided, leaving only a tingling numbness. He tried to remember what had taken place, but it made his brain throb with the intensity of a gong. Was it a dream, or was the terrible carnage that flashed through his mind real? Was he a murderer?
A boy played in his memory, a boy that called him daddy. With the boy was a woman with high cheekbones and a big smile. She held a baby with golden curls and large, happy, blue eyes.
The hurt returned, spears piercing his entire body. He drew his head to his chest, held his eyes closed tight and coughed out a pain-ridden groan.
Now, he remembered blood and ribbons of flesh—the woman’s throat exploding with blood, flesh ripped away. Now, the boy’s. And now, the baby’s.
The pain subsided again, and his mind went blank. He opened his eyes part way and sat for a moment in a lethargic stupor. He focused on his bloodstained clothes. His mind reactivated, but he knew the pain would return soon. He saw the injury on his wrist: the deep punctures and torn skin. It meant nothing, as if it weren’t a part of him. He picked at the wound with clumsy fingers, dried blood packed under his nails, until finally pulling away a four-inch strip of his own flesh. He raised it to his mouth. Blood raced into the gap left in his forearm and dripped to the ground, but no pain ensued. With his tongue too swollen to allow enough room, he soon fingered the unlikely morsel from his mouth.
The blood. He remembered blood, a lot of blood. Bodies soaking in it: men, women and children. Was he responsible?
The torture struck again, racking him.
There had been guns. He remembered pulling the trigger. Shooting. Policemen screaming in pain. Bullets snapping by his ears. An old Indian man, smiling. A round Indian woman. “Tony, oh Tony,” she’d said, smiling wide. Now he remembered her severed head in his lap. It was a dream. It must be!
His mind blanked, and he fell back into the numbness. A few seconds passed, and his eyes focused once again. He stared down at his groin. He had an erection. The monster, rabies, did this. This was only one of the things it did when it took over a man’s body. He pushed it down with his fingers, and it throbbed back in unimaginable pain.
An involuntary scream pushed out from his constricting throat, and his face wrenched with hurt.
He remembered a woman, young and beautiful. Blonde hair. Firm body. He had taken her. He had grabbed her breasts and bitten into her tender skin. She’d screamed. He remembered her lying before him, bloody, flesh ripped.
He groaned in response to the memory, then brought his fist down twice to the offending member in his blue jeans.
The expected p
ain didn’t come, only numbness.
Shuffling came from the dirt path along the riverbank. It was a muffled, irritating noise echoing inside his head. Someone was out there. Were they looking for him? Had they come to hurt him?
T. Parker watched through heavy eyelids. A man stumbled and staggered—a drunken man, a wino. He wore a dirty red stocking cap and had a scraggly beard. The wino stopped and looked out at the river while fumbling with something in front of him. A tinkling, leaking, water-being-poured noise came. The annoying sound clawed at
T. Parker’s brain. He held his palms over his ears, pushing hard, but it did no good. The noise intensified inside his head. It seemed to go on and on. Would it ever end?
He could take no more. He rose to his feet, body throbbing, every joint stiff and aching. This irritating noise causes my pain!
T. Parker edged toward the drunkard, and the man turned, eyes
widening. “No! No, please, my God, no!” the wino pleaded.
Parker leaped.
He grabbed the man by his open fly and shirt collar, raised him without pause above his head as urine streamed down his arm, then screamed out in a hideous laugh.
“No, please, don’t kill me,” the drunk begged once again. “I ain’t got no money. I ain’t got nothin’!”
He didn’t consider the man’s plea. The words were only meaningless, abrasive sounds. He thought of how he had done this before; how he had raised a body over his head, then brought it down across his knee, breaking its backbone.
He looked out over the river, and it distracted him. The water bothered and frightened him. His throat convulsed. The pain was razor blades, honing out his neck. His thirst became unbearable and demanding, but he knew he couldn’t drink. It would be impossible to swallow, torturous to try.
He brought the man down to his head, then heaved him at the river, the horrible, pain-inducing water.
“Glaaau-hau-hauuu!” he howled in a wild, raging keen as the wino splashed into the water and began swimming the seventy-five yards to the opposite bank.
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