Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted

by Robert J. Crane

  “Really?” There was a hint of earnestness in her answer, and he could tell he’d broken through the first brick of that wall of cynicism she carried for her own defense.

  “Yeah,” Mick said, like it was nothing. It was nothing to him; he didn’t care. But for however long it took her to answer, he was going to pretend it was the most interesting damned thing in the world to him.

  “It was … a normal day,” Molly said, a little less guarded this time. “We only have six classes a day, see, and I start with algebra …”

  Mick nodded as she went, trying to follow along. Sure, it was boring as shit, but it would be worth it if he could just get through that wall that surrounded her—and into her damned panties.

  ***

  Hendricks felt like he was taking forever getting down the hall. In rough terms, he probably was taking forever. He could feel himself dragging, the material of his coat scuffing against the white-painted wall. Alison stood off a few inches from him, hovering, ready to try and catch him if he fell. It was a laughable idea in his mind, since he weighed far, far too much for her to help without toppling over.

  “Ali?” came a smooth voice from ahead of them. The hallway looked like it was extending, growing as he shuffled down it. Hadn’t it only been twenty feet earlier? Now it looked like a hundred. Two hundred. Shit, it was still growing.

  “Right here, Daddy,” Alison said, and Hendricks watched her take her eyes off of him. He tried even harder not to stumble at that moment. As though she weren’t hovering enough as it was, he sensed that if he keeled over now she’d never let him go unwatched. He just needed to get to Spellman, post-haste, get this pain and these wounds taken care of. He shifted his neck to look at her and the demon bite screamed at him, hard enough to make him fall against the wall an inch or so. It didn’t quite light his ribs afire again, but close. It took him a minute to control his breathing.

  There were pictures on the wall that rattled as he shifted against it, his arm knocking against a wooden frame. “Urgh,” Hendricks murmured, keeping it down.

  “Is your friend all right?” came that voice again—smooth, like an announcer on the radio. A voice you could trust to sell you a used car or a water filter.

  “I’m fine,” Hendricks managed to get out before Alison could answer for him.

  “All appearances to the contrary, son,” the voice came again, and Hendricks managed to get his head up enough to see the guy this time. He was tall, powerful-looking, looked to be in his sixties. Not a guy Hendricks would have cared to get into a scrape with, if he could have avoided it. “You look like you could use a doctor. Or a drink.”

  “I need something, that’s for sure,” Hendricks said and tried to straighten up. It didn’t go so well, and he found himself still against the wall a few seconds later, no better off than before. “You might be right. I should get to the car. That’ll … I need to …”

  “To get to the doctor, yes,” Alison said. “Daddy, can you help him?”

  “Certainly,” Alison’s father said, shuffling closer to him. He was damned big; not quite Arch’s size, Hendricks thought, but maybe close. Hard to tell at this distance and without Arch here for comparison. “What happened?” he asked as he placed Hendricks’s good side of undamaged ribs against his, wrapping Hendricks’s left arm around his shoulder.

  “Bar fight,” Hendricks lied. It wasn’t so far off; he had been in a bar fight a few days earlier.

  “Huh,” the man said. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Lafayette Hendricks, sir,” Hendricks replied.

  “Well, Lafayette Hendricks, I’m Bill Longholt.” He could feel the scrutiny. “Army?”

  “Heh,” Hendricks said, feeling a little lightheaded. “No. Marine.”

  “Oh, you’re one of those,” Longholt said. “I was Army.”

  “I’m sorry for you,” Hendricks said, unable to avoid the needle jab. “You know what Army stands for? Ain’t Ready for Marines Yet.” He felt a sudden, sharp pain as Longholt readjusted his position, causing his side to jar, just a little, pressing his wrecked ribs together.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Marine,” Longholt said, not sounding contrite at all. “Thought I was losing my grip on you there for a second. You know what Marine stands for? My Ass Really Is Navy Equipment.”

  The hallway swam around Hendricks, and he could see a white door up ahead. “Lordy.”

  “Say, is that a bite on your neck?” Longholt asked him.

  “My girlfriend got a little rough last night,” Hendricks said, vision swimming. Did that even make sense?

  “Daddy, he needs a doctor,” Alison said from somewhere in the periphery of his vision. It was dark in the hall, and growing darker by the second, swirling motes of blackness crawling around in his eyes.

  “Right you are, dear,” Longholt said, and Hendricks felt his legs drag forward in motion. “Bar fights and a girlfriend who bites you so hard, your hicky bleeds. That does sound about like the Marines I knew.”

  There was sound and motion in the corner of Hendricks’s eye, and suddenly there was a newcomer there. All Hendricks could tell about him was that he was a white guy with dark hair, and he was shorter than Hendricks, even in his crumpled-up state.

  “What the hell happened to the dimestore cowboy?” the guy asked.

  “Fuck off, Brian,” Alison said, stronger than Hendricks had ever heard her speak before, and they just kept on going, out the door.

  ***

  The waitress at the Surrey Diner had gotten miraculously friendlier when Molly showed up. The “huns” and “sugars” made a sudden return, and the coffee refills came a lot quicker. The owner’s glare softened, too.

  The boring fucking stories portion of the evening had commenced as well, but there was a price for everything, right? A tradeoff, Mick figured.

  It’d be worth it.

  ***

  Lauren didn’t panic in crisis situations. She had that detached part of her brain, the part that saw everything from a distance, that evaluated coldly and without emotion, and that part always worked overtime during these moments. It was training, beaten into her head through long practice just as sure as if it were a nail hammered into a board through repetition. She’d had a moment when she was a kid—before she’d had a kid of her own—when she’d seen a friend damned near lose a toe in a bike chain. Panic had taken over, and she’d tried to help her friend yank it out. Hysterics, crying, screaming—from both of them—and an emergency room visit later, she’d been stuck in the waiting room feeling like an impotent failure. That was probably the catalyst moment for her, looking back. She never wanted to feel that panicked and out of control again.

  And she hadn’t, except for when she’d fallen in love with Molly’s father. But that was panic and loss of control of a different kind, when she’d realized she couldn’t hold on to the sonofabitch. Now she realized that there wasn’t much worth holding onto in him, but her teenage self had seen it differently and always would.

  She did what she had to do. Stabilized the pulse, got the deputy breathing again. The beeping of the heart rate in the background was steady, repetitive, maddening. Like it should be.

  Lauren sat back, took a breath. “Don’t check out on me yet, Deputy,” she said, staring down at the face of Erin Harris, the massive bruises on the girl’s cheekbones just starting to appear. This was going to be some surgery, she suspected, and she was glad—not for the first time—that it wasn’t her specialty. The ambulance bumped, the sirens still blaring as the shot down the interstate toward Red Cedar. Pretty soon they’d get her there, get her triaged. That’s where Lauren’s responsibility would end, and it couldn’t come soon enough for her.

  ***

  “Turn here,” Hendricks said as they reached an old, overgrown driveway. There were gravel tracks that perfectly mirrored tire placement, and a big wedge of green in the middle of the path where grass stood tall. It made the place look like no one had driven up to it in a while, though Hendricks was pretty
sure that was all illusion and bullshit.

  He was sitting in the passenger seat, just about ready to pull a bullet out of his .45 so he could bite down on it to stifle the pain. He’d never tried it, but the thought of chomping down on something seemed like a nice idea at the moment. Anything, if it might help ease the pain. He would have sworn something in him was about to break if he wasn’t already sure something had.

  “That was your brother, right?” he asked, trusting the words would make their way out of his mouth and find Alison wherever she was sitting—in the driver’s seat, probably, about two thousand miles or an arm’s length away. Same difference at this point, since he didn’t want to move his arm. Or anything else.

  “Yeah,” she said tersely, and Hendricks wrote off that line of inquiry for later. Family was a touchy topic for lots of folks; he couldn’t see it being much of an issue for Alison, though. For crying out loud, her dad had offered to accompany them to the hospital. Seemed like a nice guy, got along with his daughter.

  There was a farmhouse ahead, and the sight of it jolted Hendricks back to the here and now. It looked like any other farmhouse to Hendricks’s eyes. His attention was a little scattered at the moment, just enough to give Alison the directions he’d had in his mind but not enough to pay attention to every detail along the way. Or even most of the details. She was from here, he figured, she could pay attention. Or that was how he justified it to himself as he squinted his eyes shut through ninety percent of the trip and focused mostly on not whimpering.

  He opened his eyes and tried to take a harder look at the farmhouse. Didn’t happen. He’d bitten his own tongue at some point during the journey, blood filling his mouth, and frankly, it was the least of his hurts. He was sunk down in the leather seat.

  “We’re here,” Alison said, like he hadn’t noticed the car bump to a stop. It was the bump that did it, sent him wailing in his own head. He’d gotten off the bed somehow, but dammit, a car ride on an uneven country road had just about fucking done him in. How did that happen?

  Hendricks tried to open the door and failed on his first attempt. Just couldn’t get it pushed open, and it closed back. Not completely, though, that little annoying click telling him the door was still partially open. He tried again and failed, not able to use his strength to throw it open and not able to lean far enough to get it clear of the fucking latching mechanism.

  This was pathetic, even by his somewhat weakened estimation.

  “Wait just a second,” Alison said, and he heard her get out.

  Fuck waiting. He wasn’t going to be that much of a pussy. He pushed hard and nearly tumbled out. When he opened his eyes, the car door was still only open about six inches. But at least he hadn’t hurt himself in the process. Victory.

  Then Alison tugged at the door and he felt a thundering agony run down his side as she pulled at him in a way that his body DID NOT FUCKING LIKE AT ALL and he spent the next thirty seconds—or maybe ten years—trying to keep from cursing at her in every possible way, starting with the words that were least polite, then moving to the ones that were most polite. If there was such a cunt motherfucking sonofabitch ass hell damn thing.

  “Maybe you should let me go in and talk to this Spellman,” Alison said as he sat there, eyes rolling back in his head from the feeling oh sonofafuck the feeling.

  “Just help me up,” Hendricks said, but he was not sure he meant it wholeheartedly.

  ***

  “Arch, why don’t you get on out of here?” Reeve said. Said, not asked. It had sounded like asking, but Arch knew it wasn’t, could tell it from fifty paces. They’d finished winching up the sheriff’s car now, the tow truck driver—Sam Allen, Arch could see from here—about to take it down the mountain and to his body shop. Arch had his doubts there’d be much they could do to fix it, but if anyone could, Sam could.

  “Sure thing,” Arch answered, light on the enthusiasm. “Anywhere you want me to go in particular?”

  Reeve just stared at him, bald head catching the reflection of the flashing red lights of his patrol car. “Why don’t you just head on home for now?” And then he got back into his car, not a word of explanation further.

  ***

  Hendricks burst into the farmhouse barely supported by Alison, ignoring the room to his immediate left. Alison partially blocked his view, anyway, which was good, because he could smell the fetid scent of animal and human waste from the creatures in cages. He could almost taste it, like something had crawled up his nose before it lost the fight for life, leaving behind nothing more than a rotting corpse, with all the waste and shit that came out after.

  He’d never really been in a place like this, but he knew what a deal with the devil looked like, and when you were ready to make one it was best to avoid looking right in the fucker’s eyes.

  “Well, well,” said a man in a Han jacket with a full head of hair that was grey around the edges. He had a relaxed bearing, holding his fingers together in a sort of steeple configuration as he stared down the hallway at Hendricks and Alison. Dark floorboards shone with fresh wax, and the Pine-Sol scent almost—almost—covered up the smell from the room to their left. “If it isn’t Corporal Hendricks. And Alison Longholt Stan.” The man bowed. “Such a pleasure to have you both here in my humble shop.”

  “This is a farmhouse,” Alison said with aplomb, but sounding to Hendricks’s ears like she really believed it.

  “Well, the outside certainly is,” Spellman said with a little bow.

  “I’m not a corporal anymore,” Hendricks said, unable to hold himself upright and not even fucking bothering. “Nice touch, though, knowing that.”

  “Indeed,” Spellman said. “As you know, I’m in a customer service business, and the more you know about your customers, the better you can service them. I pride myself on being in tune with my clientele and knowing their needs.”

  Hendricks looked at the empty bastard with one eye. He missed his hat; it was always more effective to survey someone from underneath it, because the brim did a great job framing the face. “What is your customer-centric focus telling you about what I need?”

  A line of wrinkles folded on Spellman’s forehead. “I have just the thing for what ails you.” From out of the sleeve of his jacket came a vial. “What do you get for the man who has it all? Well, everything except ribs that are intact, and skin that’s not seeping blood from a vembra’nonn bite, anyway.” He pointed, keeping the vial safely in his other hand, in view but not in reach. “Those bites can cause some complications, by the way. I’d clean it out when you get a chance. In fact, if you’d like, I have a medical kit I’d be willing to throw in for—”

  “Spare me,” Hendricks said. “How much for the drink?”

  “Well, as you know, the first one was free,” Spellman said with a little twinkle. “But this one won’t cost you much.”

  “Cost us much what?” Alison asked. “Gold? Silver?”

  “I deal in the coin of the realm, whatever realm I’m in,” Spellman said. “That said, my IRA is not in tangible assets at present, so I’ll just take cash. U.S. Dollars,” he amended. “Say … two hundred.”

  “Cheaper than a hospital stay,” Hendricks muttered and fumbled in his coat, causing Alison to sway with his motion and damned near lose him.

  “Come, have a seat,” Spellman said, beckoning them forward. “I’ll have a look at that neck while you drink up.” He waited, and as Hendricks staggered his way forward, the man slipped the vial in his palm. “You’ll probably have an easier time reaching your wallet once you’ve had a sip or two.”

  “No cow bladder this time?” Hendricks felt just a little bit of the burn of pride as he looked at the man—no, this wasn’t a man. He looked into the eyes, looked right into them, and he could see only a little something there. That didn’t stop him from pulling the stopper on the vial and chugging it back.

  10.

  Arch followed the wrecker back into town, providing an unasked-for police escort the whole way. He h
ad his reasons, but Sam Allen didn’t need to know them, not straightaway. Darkness had fallen on Midian, maybe not just metaphorically, either. He tried to sift through things in his head, making the mental rounds on all the things that had happened and everything they’d learned. Erin was out of commission, Lerner was waylaid—he still wasn’t clear on how that had happened—Hendricks looked like he’d gotten put out of the fight for a while.

  That left him, Duncan and maybe Alison on defense, all versus a whole mess of bicyclists for whom the Tour de France looked like an easy win. No blood doping needed, unless it involved drinking said blood. He put a vision of Hendricks’s neck, dripping scarlet, out of his mind. Vampires on bikes.

  Unprompted thumps and clacks from the Explorer entered his consciousness every now and again. They were not normal sounds but something produced when the vehicle had run over those accursed bicyclists. He suspected he’d need to get it checked out at some point, but this was not the moment.

  Sam guided the tow truck through the gate of his yard and Arch followed, the Explorer’s undercarriage protesting as he bumped up over the curb and left the paved road behind. Glowing yellow lights every hundred feet or so illuminated a corrugated metal building that looked like it was at least fifty percent rust. And that might have been optimistic. The yellow lights cast cone-shaped illumination on a few entry portals—garage doors and a standard one for people to walk through—shedding the kind of light that told Arch that Sam Allen hadn’t made way in his budget for those newfangled CFLs just yet.

  Sam stopped the wrecker and backed it up. Mountains of flattened and beat-up cars littered the yard. It truly was a junkyard, and he had a maze of the wrecks out back, Arch knew. He’d come to Sam’s a few times to pull salvage off destroyed vehicles. It was cheaper getting a hubcap from Sam than ordering it through one of the auto shops in town, and everyone knew it. Alison might not have known it, come to think of it, but then he’d had to get the hubcap for her, so she was covered, he supposed.