by Martin, Indi
“Mm-hmm,” he said, taking a small sip, but his eyes still had that mischievous gleam.
She scowled and peered down the roads.
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Adrenaline surged through his body and it was all he could do not to jump out of the moving car and run. Everything had changed in a split second, and he felt hope rekindling in his chest, coupled with an almost crippling return of anxiety. Marcus had been staring out the window, watching the scenery pass by as had become habit, when he was absolutely certain he saw Detective Harwood and her partner (whatever his name was, he couldn't remember – he was bad with names) sitting in a booth at a corner joint, some fast-food chain restuarant, he thought, but he couldn't be sure; all of his attention had been drawn to the duo inside. What's more, he saw them start, and was almost positive she was looking straight at him before they stood up quickly. His first instinct was to obey his adrenaline; open the door and jump out, come what may. He glanced over at Jake, who was still staring ahead at the road; his eyes looked glazed and unseeing, but his driving appeared unaffected. Marcus shuddered at the creepiness.
The car had already passed the corner, and he fought the urge to crane around to watch for them. Surely they would follow the car. He glanced over again; still no reaction from Jake. He hadn't seen.
Marcus realized his breathing had become fast and shallow, and forced it to sound more normal. He was suddenly very aware that he had to act normal. Jake couldn't know, of that he was sure. He hoped they had enough common sense to stay far enough behind their car to avoid detection; a part of him hoped the opposite, that they would speed up, sirens blazing, and take them both into custody. Marcus didn't care anymore. He just didn't want to know what lie at the end of the journey that Jake had in mind. “You'll see,” Jake had said, with that horrible mask-like face. Marcus didn't want to see. Marcus wanted to go home. And he was almost to the point where doing so without his friend, his brother, was okay with him. Almost, but not quite.
He settled into his normal pose again, elbow on the window frame, staring outward. If he moved his head closer to the window, he realized, he could get a direct view behind them from the side mirror. His mind kept up a constant one-word mantra: Please, please, please, please...
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“Car,” announced Morgan sleepily, but then he sat up stock-straight. “CAR, Gina, it's red, looks like...”
“It's them,” she said breathlessly, eyes wide, sitting up straighter too.
It was almost 4pm; Morgan felt pins and needles rushing up his legs from having sat in pretty much the same position for so long. “Let's go,” he said, shaking out his legs and slipping smoothly out of the booth. He needn't have spoken, however, as she had already grabbed her purse and was three steps ahead of him, moving toward the door.
The Camry edged past them, obeying the molasses-like speed limits in the sleepy town. Morgan ran to their rental, threw open the driver's side car door and launched himself into it, motioning for Harwood to give him the keys. She did so without argument, and the engine roared to life. Morgan pulled out of the parking lot and into the street; the road curved ahead slightly, but the Camry was still easily visible. “Well,” he said, keeping his distance. “What now? Try to apprehend?”
Harwood was leaning forward, brow furrowed. “No, let's follow. See where they go.”
Morgan threw a worried glance in her direction, but followed her orders, maintaining far more distance than he normally would on a chase. The road was clear of other traffic, and painfully straight, so he was concerned they would be too easily visible. The Camry continued on its way without any obvious sign of having noticed the tail: no brake lights, no turn signals, no swerving. No change. Morgan looked back at Harwood and was surprised to see her holding up a pair of binoculars.
“Where the hell did you find binoculars?!” he exclaimed.
“Shhh,” she replied. “I come prepared. Oklahoma plates, it's definitely them.”
He edged the car's speed up slightly to keep the other car in sight. “I don't know how you fit all that in a purse,” he remarked, impressed.
“I don't. These were in my suitcase.”
“Oh.”
Tailing a vehicle was always a stressful activity for Morgan; it was his least favorite part of any surveillance activity. All of the normally subconscious actions performed while driving a car seemed to take conscious effort; it didn't come naturally to him at all. Still, he hadn't wanted Gina driving, ever, if he could help it. He hadn't been burned yet while tailing, he reminded himself. Although he had often lost the vehicles momentarily, due to over-caution on distances.
They drove for almost half an hour, matching the Camry's speed at a fair distance; sometimes falling back, sometimes speeding forward. Finally, the small car turned into a field. Puzzled, Morgan peered towards where it disappeared. That's exactly what it looked like to him - like it just turned directly into a field. Morgan frowned. “What do you think?” he said, easing off the gas a little, but not much.
“Drive past,” she said.
He did just that, and sure enough, there was a tiny trail that cut through an overgrown, apparently abandoned field. It looked barely large enough for the Camry to fit down, and already some of the bushes had obscured most of the car; Morgan could just see taillights down the path.
“Shit,” said Harwood, echoing his sentiments exactly.
Morgan pulled over to the side of the road about a hundred meters past the turn-in. “Well,” he sighed. “We can follow in the car, but then we're probably going to be seen. We can park here, but there's no good way to make us less obvious, especially if the car leaves again.” He looked at her. “Follow on foot?”
She grimaced. “That was a small trail. We're still likely to be seen unless we tramp through the underbrush, but...”
He nodded. “It looked pretty overgrown.”
A few minutes ticked by, each of them considering the options. “We only have about an hour of good light left,” he continued.
“Let's go on foot,” she said softly, looking at him for validation.
He nodded again and turned off the car.
Together, they walked nonchalantly toward where the Camry had disappeared into the overgrowth, and turned in to follow. The taillights were no longer visible, and the trail soon became shadowy and dark from the foliage pressing in on all sides. Fresh tire tracks pointed forward in the mud. He pinched her arm. “Maybe we should try getting off the trail, yeah?” he mouthed. She looked wary, but nodded her assent, and motioned for him to lead on.
Morgan ducked into the brush, but immediately thorny bushes hindered his movements, and he was aware that the rustling of the dried brush was far noisier than the squelch of the open mud. Backing out, he shook his head grimly, and jerked his head toward the trail to communicate that they would have to continue in the open. Each took a side of the trail, where the footing was a little more solid and a little less muddy, and offered some extra shadow to hide their progress. Carefully, Morgan inched forward, foot over foot, trying to minimize his own noise and listening for any unusual sounds. The most unusual sound he had heard so far was virtually absolute silence. No car doors, no car engines, nothing but an occasional buzz of a fly or chirp of a bird – and even they were rare. The loudest sound to his ears was the squish of the mud under his shoes.
He looked over to Harwood and saw her moving forward cautiously, too, frowning and attentive. They'd walked quite a distance, he knew, checking his watch – sixteen minutes since they left the road. Still the trail looked identical as when they'd begun, and there was no sign of the Camry, except the wheel prints below.
The light was beginning to fade, especially beneath such thick plants. Morgan tapped his front breast pocket to verify he had his small metal flashlight – he did, but he wasn't sure using it would be a good idea, even when darkness did fall. He cast another worried glance at Harwood, and she met it this time, baring her teeth and biting her lip.
<
br /> Dogs barking – the sound caused both of their heads to whip up, alert, and freeze in their tracks. They sounded close, and angry. Harwood drew her weapon from the holster, and Morgan followed suit a split second later.
An unmistakably human scream split the silence, and both of them began running forward.
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“Jake, I don't like this,” uttered Marcus, shivering.
His friend's face was slack and unresponsive, but the car continued to move forward slowly.
“JAKE,” Marcus yelled, leaning over and cupping Jake's ear.
Still nothing. Marcus whimpered and decided he'd had enough. He yanked on the door handle and tried to open the door; the branches screeched against the metal and wouldn't allow the door to open more than a few inches. Panicked, he pushed harder, and tried to force his leg out of the moving car; it wouldn't open even that much. He whimpered again and slunk as far down as he could, peering over the dashboard for endless minutes, while the car rolled forward seemingly of its own volition.
The trail opened into a clearing, and Marcus took the opportunity to throw the door open and lunge out of the car, running crouched-over to the nearest bush and rolling himself underneath it. He lay there, covered in mud, panting for breath and watching his friend's car roll forward and stop in front of a large, dilapidated shack of a building. It looked to be about three stories high, but part of the front had collapsed at some point, leaving a gaping hole, a giant mouth of blackness, to the inside. Rubble was strewn across the ground, but the grasses and plants had been hacked back, and were not as overgrown as the trail had been.
The taillights blinked off and the engine finally quieted. Marcus watched, frozen both with the sudden wet-cold of the mud and with fear for his friend – and himself.
Nothing happened. Minutes passed. He could see Jake's silhouette still sitting in the driver's seat, head lolling against the headrest. Part of him wanted to run back to the car and drag Jake out, away, back to town by foot if he had to, but his body was unresponsive. It took momentous concentration just to force himself not to hold his breath.
The sun's light had begun to disappear, which frightened Marcus further; he didn't want either of them stuck out here at night. The area didn't feel abandoned, necessarily. It felt wrong. It felt owned, guarded. Marcus' leg twitched in the mud, landing with a splash that sounded huge to his ears. He heard a high-pitched sound, and realized it was himself, keening through his nose. He stopped breathing for a moment to stop the sound.
The driver's side door opened, and Jake stepped out slowly. He moved as though he were passing through liquid instead of air, every motion fluid and languid. Marcus clamped a hand over his mouth to keep himself from calling out. He watched as Jake walked stiltedly forward, paused for a moment in front of the gaping hole, then he stepped up onto the rubble and disappeared inside the darkness.
Now alone, Marcus rolled onto his back, getting even more covered in the cold, wet mud, but not caring. Tears welled up and streamed down the sides of his face, fiery hot against his pallid skin. Through the gut-wrenching fear, another emotion was bubbling up inside him – shame. Here, he had come this far when he could have run away at any time, and he'd done it to make sure his brother was safe. Instead of completing that mission, though, he'd run away. And now, he was wallowing around in the mud like a pig, and he had lost sight of Jake – the one thing he'd sworn to himself not to do. A choked sob sent a spasm through his body, and he curled up on his side, holding his belly. He thought – no, he knew he should go after his friend.
He couldn't bring himself to do it. He couldn't even bring himself to move out from the mud.
Marcus' wallowing in mud and self-pity was cut short by a sudden and unwelcome sound; he heard chains jangling against one another and froze. Then he heard a distant shout, followed by a solitary howl, then another, then innumerable barks and snarls. 'Wolves!' he thought, wildly, scrambling to crawl further underneath the bushes, then thinking better of it and scrambling to crawl out. The barking was closer now, and he could hear other sounds now too – panting, running, the chains again. His mind blanked out in panic, and he leaped to his feet, only to crack his back against a low-hanging branch and fall back down to his knees. Lightning streaked through his back, a super-heated pain that made his vision blur. Then another heat – the gunmetal fire of teeth sinking into his ankle. He whirled his head around and saw fur and terribly sharp-looking eyes surrounding him. The others were growling but had not yet advanced on him; they just stared at him with black eyes, seeming to smile with razors instead of teeth. The dog on his ankle squeezed down further and seemed to grin up at him. Through the fading light and the shadows of the brush, he saw an arc of blood spray out from his leg.
Marcus screamed.
17
It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the limited light thrown off by the torches burning in the corner. Through a thick mental fog, Jake registered surprise at the leaping fire casting shadows on the far edge of the huge room. The bare concrete floor was swept clean of the debris marking the entrance, and his footfalls echoed off the high walls, into the more absolute darkness in the upper reaches of the building. Then, further surprise that he was still walking forward; he wasn't aware of commanding his legs to move. Dimly, he wondered where Marcus was. He hoped his friend had run away, and quickly.
The terrible voice was blissfully silent. Jake considered this development, and decided it was probably not good.
Golden firelight gleamed against a shiny metal, and as he approached, he could make out the outline of a door. He looked down to see his hand reaching out for the doorknob, an industrial thing, and willed himself to stop. His hand paused for a moment, as if considering his request, but then resumed its slow arc toward the door. Closer, he saw some sort of primitive-looking painting had been made in flaking brown paint on the metal. He was unsurprised to recognize the spiky hourglass shape of his mothers' ill-kept bracelets and the pendant in Detective Harwood's plastic bag.
Jake's hand closed around the knob and turned. The door opened fluidly and without sound.
He stepped into a room he instantly recognized; he had seen this room when he looked into the horribly white eyes of the beast hovering over his father's writhing body. He rocked back on his heels from the smell – the sickly, sweet smell of decay. With great effort, he swiveled his head to survey the room, hearing and feeling his neck creak from the unwanted movement. A line of skulls ('so many!' he thought) stretched out in front of him, their blank eyes staring accusingly back at him, woeful and lost. In places, they were piled three or four high. In the far corner, a few of the skulls still had patches of hair, dark thatches of it, attached to the domes, and brown, papery-looking skin stretched across the bones. Jake forced his gaze away from them with a shudder. The wall ahead of him gleamed, and seemed to undulate in his peripheral vision, though whenever he looked at it directly, it just looked like a wall. It was painted in that same awful brownish, flaking paint on the door, except in a few places where the color was brighter, redder; Jake forced himself to admit that it wasn't “paint,” after all. His mind reeled, and his body, for the moment, seemed under his own control.
He looked to his left and saw a line of people staring at him solemnly. Electricity shot through his body, and his legs took a little jump backwards, towards dubious freedom. He half-crouched, panting with panic, but not one of them moved. Several held torches similar to the two in front of the door, in the other room behind him, and the flickering fire was unkind to their features. They looked dirty, ragged; their eyes were vacant and staring. Their jaws were slack. There were about twenty of them, he guessed, and they didn't look like the organized killing machines he'd envisioned when his father had described the tribe. All that he could see were men, and most of them looked ancient, sickly, malnourished. Some of them were missing things, like eyes, or ears, and all of them appeared to be covered in scabrous purple splotches. They looked like corpses.
That realization was unwelcome, and he took another exploratory half-step backwards.
Still no movement from the assembled crowd, but all pairs of eyes followed him.
The unerring sense of purpose that had led him to this place had fled entirely, and Jake didn't know what he was meant to do. He took a nervous glance back at the gory wall with the human decorations, and then back to the crowd. They looked closer than they had a moment ago, although none of them appeared to have moved. His head spun, and the crackling torches sounded like fireworks in his ear; Jake shook his head, afraid he was going to faint, and crouched down a little further. He felt certain that if he fainted, the crowd would tear him to shreds, maybe eat him, like that black beast in his childhood home. Taking hungry bites out of his father. Tears welled up in his eyes.
“What do you want from me?” he croaked, his voice sounding timid and hopeless. He stood up a little further, mimicking bravado he didn't feel. “What do you want from me?” he asked, louder.
There was a murmur through the crowd, and some of the men looked confused at Jake's unexpected question, but they made no movement further toward him.
Perhaps unwisely, Jake shut his eyes and sank to the floor, choking back a sob. He didn't care if he didn't look fierce to them. He half-hoped they would just make it quick.
He heard baying and barking sounds and cringed, thinking of the bristle-backed wolf-thing in his father's house. Jake had locked eyes with it, and it had grinned, some terrible piece of viscera hanging from its jaw. In it's eyes, he had seen terrible things. Awful things. Things he didn't want to see, or remember? He saw his mother's face, questioning at first but then almost sweetly accepting of her fate. She had seemed to know that her son wasn't really the one ripping off her blouse, and then ripping out her throat. He winced, saw the knife in his own hands, carving letters into the belly that had brought him into this world. Saw him place her hand – so carefully! - on the stainless-steel refrigerator; saw his own maniacal grin reflected in the objectively observing metal.