Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted

by Robert J. Crane

  “We move out into the country,” Arch said, “find a place where they won’t look for us. Embrace the wide open spaces of rural American life.” He felt his grip on the wheel tighten. “Then we start taking this war to the demons and doing it a lot harder than we have up to this point.”

  Hendricks just listened, composing his reply when his train of thought got derailed from the back seat.

  “Fuck, yeah,” Duncan said. “When do we start?”

  ***

  “Are you all right?” Lauren asked. They were riding in the car, shaken, stirred, fucked up, really. Molly was taking it better than Lauren had thought she would. Maybe.

  “No,” Molly said, shaking her head. “And yes. Kinda? Sorta? I don’t know?”

  Lauren listened to her, and when she stopped speaking, gave her a nod. “All right answers.”

  “I know, in the abstract, that a lot of guys are assholes with a one-track mind,” Molly said, and there was no hiding the raw edge of pain in her voice, “but Jesus. I thought I knew him better than that. I guess it was all lies.”

  “Some men are demons,” Lauren said, realizing that there was more truth to that than she’d ever thought of before.

  “You stabbed him with a sword,” Molly said carefully.

  “I did,” Lauren said.

  “And he went poof,” Molly said. “Like a product of my imagination.”

  “You didn’t imagine that particular asshole,” Lauren said, keeping the wheel even in her hands. Ten and two, and for some reason the wheel looked like a Ferris wheel to her for a second. “He really did go up in a puff of smoke.”

  “I’m no doctor,” Molly said with a healthy dose of sarcasm, “but isn’t that supposed to be impossible?”

  “Yep,” Lauren said.

  “So what’s the scientific explanation for that?”

  Lauren made as expressive a shrug as she could without moving her hands off the wheel. “I don’t know. What’s the scientific explanation for Jarrett Barnes spontaneously combusting?”

  Molly sat in silence for a minute. “Some men are demons.”

  “Yep.”

  They rode the rest of the way home in silence.

  ***

  Her daddy dropped her off a block away and Alison ran, ran all the way to the apartment. They’d talked it over and decided this was for the best; it would keep him out of the obvious scrutiny that was coming. He’d probably still get some of it, but if he stayed mostly out of sight during the exodus, he’d at least be able to help some rather than be forced to flee with them.

  And fleeing with them—that was something Alison hadn’t exactly been planning for at the outset of the day.

  The Explorer was not in the apartment building’s lot, and she figured for sure that he had not made it back yet. It sent a flutter of worry through her belly, primal concern that rooted there and crept up toward her heart.

  She made her way down the side of the building to the apartment. The outside lights cast long shadows on the pavement, and she watched her own slip past smoothly, like a snake, or a slick of oil rolling down a river.

  She tried the handle and found it turned without unlocking. Hesitant, she pushed the door open, heard the squeak of the hinges, and felt for the pistol she’d kept under her t-shirt.

  Then she saw a shadow cross in the living room and froze, just long enough to realize it was Arch, and she went to him in a rush.

  She fell into his arms with a sudden bleeding of tension that was astonishing in its quickness. She felt like jelly against him, all form lost in the moment of contact. He returned the pressure of her embrace, firmer than he had been lately, and kissed her in return.

  “Oh, Arch,” she said, looking up at him. Her eyes were dry; his were not, surprisingly. “I didn’t think you were here.”

  “I let Duncan and Hendricks take the Explorer,” he said. “We’re meeting ’em out at the MacGruder place. We’ll ditch the sheriff’s car there and make for our destination.”

  “Why there?” Alison asked.

  “Because we’re going across the county,” Arch said, “over by Culver. By the time Reeve gets all his ducks in a row, his crime scene at the festival contained, we’ll be hunkered down—for now.”

  “Okay,” she said, still staring in his dark eyes. She could almost touch the pain there, right at the top, it was so obvious to her. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Pack a bag,” Arch said, nodding once. “Clothes. Toiletries. All the stuff you’ll need.”

  “For what?” Alison asked.

  “For living,” Arch said.

  She shook her head. “Not what I meant. What kind of living? City living? Camping?”

  Arch didn’t think about it for more than a second. “War. Pack like you’re going to war.”

  Alison felt a mask of steely calm descend over her. “Okay.” And she got to work.

  ***

  Duncan had taken seconds—like maybe thirty, total—to cram about fifteen fugly suits into his suitcase and carry it out the door, tossing it in the back of the Explorer while Hendricks watched, waiting to slam it shut as soon as the OOC was in. It was an amazing bit of efficiency in his view. And while he had been standing there, waiting for the demon, he’d found the case in the back of the Explorer and opened it up, making a mental note to make sure to bring that with them. It was like he’d run into an old friend, really.

  Hendricks had taken slightly more time at his hotel room, but he was out of there in less than three minutes. That was the blessing of being the kind of guy who traveled light; he was only ever a few seconds from being ready to go.

  Now he was driving down the back roads toward the rendezvous point, watching the curves and enjoying the silence with Duncan at his side.

  Well, maybe “enjoying” was too strong a word.

  “You hear that?” Duncan stiffened in the passenger seat.

  Hendricks cocked his ears like a dog. Or imagined he did. Probably just tilted his head a little. Still like a dog. All he heard was the sound of the road, the sound of the wheel well, the sound of—

  Buzzing.

  Mechanical fucking buzzing.

  He stomped the brakes and listened to the screech of tires as the Explorer fishtailed just a little on the back road. He peered through the windshield at the long, straight stretch of road ahead of him. “I’m not imagining it, am I?”

  “Nope,” Duncan said with a tightly wound coil of rage all his own. Hendricks could sympathize.

  Hendricks opened the door and hit the pavement with boots a clackin’. He heard Duncan get out on the other side, the Explorer slightly fishtailed to expose the passenger side of the car—still dented and fucked up from the battle on the mountain—to the side of the road the noise was coming from. “Got a plan?” Duncan called as he came around to meet Hendricks at the lift gate.

  “Yep,” Hendricks said. He just opened the gate and pushed Duncan’s suitcase aside to reveal his new best friend.

  “You’re gonna beat ’em to death with a plastic case,” Duncan said. “Should be fun, if not terribly productive.”

  Hendricks didn’t reply to the sarcastic dig. He just flipped the case open.

  Duncan let out a low whistle. “You know how to use that thing?”

  Hendricks just smiled. “You’re goddamned right I do.” He hefted the AR-15 by the handle and checked the mag—again. It was full up, with a spare already prepared. Sixty rounds of mayhem at his fingertips.

  It was like coming home, the feel of it in his hands. The actions were reflex—pulling the charging rod, battering the switch with his palm to jerk the bolt forward—he’d done this a thousand times since he'd pinned his EGA, and as he came around the car to give himself a rest on the hood, he reflected that he couldn’t have planned a better spot to do this if he’d had to.

  “You unleash hell, and we’ll wade in together to wipe out the stragglers with sword and baton,” Duncan said. “Fair enough?”

  “Works for me,” Hendr
icks said and fiddled with the red dot sight. The last time he’d used one of these, the range was so close he’d just aimed down the side of the barrel.

  He could see them now, emerging from the dark—the peloton, the bicyclists, the Night Riders, if they wanted to call themselves that fucking pitiful-ass name. He fired his first shot and watched the soft-shelled bitch riding at the front of the pack disappear in a cloud of black as his bike fell underneath him. The tightly packed group struggled to swerve. Some failed. Some didn’t. Hendricks didn’t give a fuck. He had a full mag and a sword at his side to cap it all off if need be. He fired another shot, and another. Watched the chaos break, watched the demons panic. He filled the air with lead, a small, satisfied smile working its way out onto his face.

  Bikes fell.

  Demons screamed.

  Black flames writhed.

  Lafayette Jackson Hendricks clutched the AR-15 tight against his shoulder through both magazines, and by the time he was done, the handful of the demons that remained were all heaped in piles, trapped under bikes, disoriented.

  He didn’t even get the chance to finish them off. Duncan—that sadistic, magnificent bastard—had run forward like a lion heading for a carcass. Hendricks lost count of how many times the baton rose and fell. Kinda like the number of shots he’d fired.

  All he knew was that once it was done, there wasn’t a single demon left alive.

  They packed up without another word, tossed their stuff in the back and headed on down the road a little late. Hendricks couldn’t pull far enough off the road to keep from scratching the Explorer’s undercarriage with broken bicycles.

  They went in silence for a little longer, and Hendricks figured he’d just confirm—just for himself—that he was one hundred percent right in what he was picking up off of Duncan. “Wanna talk?” he asked, throwing it out there.

  “Nope,” Duncan said. Simple as that.

  Hendricks just shrugged. “Works for me.”

  ***

  Lauren couldn’t get rid of that nagging feeling. It was on her ass like an overbearing attending physician on an intern, like naivety on a med student. Molly was fine, Molly was coping—as fine as could be under the circumstances, surprisingly okay for what had happened. She’d gotten her home, gotten her inside, handed her off to her mom with a flimsy explanation, one that left out some crucial details. She hadn’t know what to say; her mom had given her the concerned look, the soft one that glossed over the problematic details in favor of motherly empathy—for now.

  But answers were gonna be needed.

  And that got Lauren in the car a little after midnight, after making just one call. Because she needed to know.

  ***

  Arch turned Alison’s car onto the dirt lane and took ’em down a half mile before making another turn onto a driveway. There was no mailbox on the stand, just a weatherworn place where it looked like one might have been a long time ago.

  Duncan and Hendricks were in the back, apparently in a war to see who could say the least. Arch didn’t mind that; they’d been silent as stones since MacGruder’s farm, since they’d tossed their things in the back. Duncan’s suitcase and Hendricks’s duffel had joined Arch’s and Alison’s bags in her old car. Plus the AR case Hendricks had brought. Arch had pretty well forgotten it in the hubbub.

  The car was made for city driving, not dirt roads, but it managed. It kicked up the gravel, rocks dinging on the undercarriage and in the wheel wells. It hugged the ground but chugged along, up the winding driveway.

  Night had descended; the light holding it at bay around the festival was far distant. Arch’s mind felt the pull of the gloom, felt the desperation of the moment.

  This was the valley of the shadow of death, but he would fear no evil. He had no rod or staff, just a demon with a baton, a cowboy with a sword, a wife with a massive rifle, and a switchblade of his own to guard the flock.

  That’d do.

  It’d have to.

  He stopped the car in front of the old house. It didn’t look too bad, the exterior a little unkempt, the lawn overgrown by a few months. Shabby, but not post-apocalyptic.

  Yet.

  “Where the fuck are we?” Hendricks broke his silence with a doozy, finding a way to sprinkle his favorite word into the sentence. The man could squeeze it into a prayer, Arch figured. If he’d prayed.

  “This is an old farmhouse,” Arch replied. He glanced over the top of the house and saw Alison get out the passenger side. She gave him a reassuring smile. “Been here since 1892. It was owned last by the McCullough family, but now it’s the property of Bank of America.” He looked back at Hendricks. “Served the foreclosure papers myself.”

  “So we’re uh … squatting?” Hendricks asked.

  “Why not?” Arch looked up at the two-story house. “They’re gonna come after us for a lot more than that if they can.”

  “You really think they’re gonna be able to prove anything?” Hendricks asked. “No bodies, no witnesses that can put together a cogent explanation of what they saw, nothing but a lot of bullets fired, mayhem caused, and demons slain. They ain’t got shit.”

  “Oh, they’ve got bodies,” Arch said, taking in the lines of the house. The siding didn’t look bad at all. He let his gaze drift to the main reason he’d chosen this place; there was a manual pump in the yard, no electricity needed. “No bodies we caused, but they’ve got bodies. And a whole town of people looking for someone to blame.”

  “And your sheriff’s gonna make us the scapegoats,” Hendricks said. “Lovely.”

  “We’re the most convenient targets,” Alison said. “It’s not like we have a reasonable explanation for what we’ve done.”

  Hendricks gave her a sidelong glance that Arch caught. “‘We,’ huh?”

  Alison did not look back at him, her gaze instead transfixed on the house. Her finger came up to point at the porch. “We.”

  Arch followed the line of her finger and found the shape waiting for them under the eaves, in the shadows. The pale skin slipped out into the moonlight just as the car’s lights hit their automatic shut off. He saw the dusky eyes, somehow, in the dark, and the red hair still seemed to glow, like a fire burned within each strand.

  “Somehow,” Hendricks said, “I’m not surprised to find her waiting here.”

  “Feels like you should be,” Duncan said, “since none of the rest of us knew we were coming here until just now.”

  “Arch knew,” Hendricks said, but low, like he was trying to keep her from hearing it. “How’d you know where to find us, Starling?”

  “You were always destined to be here,” Starling said, bare feet slipping down the squeaking, warped wooden stairs as she stepped out to greet them, with as close to an approachable look as Arch had ever seen on her forbidding face. “Welcome home.” He had a sense there was more to it than that, and she beckoned them forward toward the door.

  Hendricks went first, coaxed by her, then Alison. Arch followed next, with only a single backward glance for Duncan, whose face—usually so carefully neutral—now burned with some rage barely concealed beneath the surface. He followed, too, last in line, and they went, one by one, into the farmhouse, following the redhead's lead.

  ***

  “Erin.”

  The words pushed into her mind, into her ear, like something sharp against spandex. It was rude, it was not pleasant, and she wanted to resist.

  “Erin, wake up.”

  Erin Harris most assuredly did not care for that suggestion, not even as gently as it was worded, not with sugar on top, pretty please, not at all.

  “Erin, I need you to wake up.”

  Erin had been awake and had not cared for it; she’d awakened earlier in the evening, seen her family—mom, pop, three brothers—the whole family, wagons circled for this special crisis occasion. She was dimly aware of that. But visiting hours had ended, and that lovely narcotic drowse that had been calling her name? She’d willingly, happily succumbed to it, running back into the d
arkness with arms (and more) spread, ready to hump that motherfucker all night.

  “Erin.”

  One eye cracked open. The world was a blur, Vaseline smeared on the lens of the camera.

  “Erin … can you hear me?”

  “Mmmm … awaaaaaake.” Her own words were slurred, dragged, drawled, dropped on their heads as babies.

  “Good. Can you open both eyes for me?”

  Erin did and didn’t like that, either. Because then the goddamned bitch shined a spotlight in her eyes. The world was a cold, lonely, and evil place. Fuck it. She closed her eyes again.

  “Your pupils are reactive and undilated. That’s a good sign.”

  You know what else was a good sign? Slippery when wet. That one always made Erin chuckle.

  “Erin.”

  She opened her eyes again. No bright light this time. No signs, though. Just a face. Framed by dark hair. Long, dark hair. Feminine. Pretty, really. Enough that Erin felt a trace of envy. Doctor … What was her name? Dr. Dolittle. No.

  Dr. Darlington.

  Yes.

  That was it.

  “Dr. Darlington.” Erin’s mouth felt heavy, swabbed with cotton and someone left it in there when they were done. Now it was all dried out and icky, and no matter how much she smacked her lips together, it didn’t help.

  “Very good, Erin. You’ve had some painkillers, so I know you’re probably feeling a little—”

  “Fuck yeaaaaah, awesome.” Slurred. Just a little.

  “That’s good.” The doctor’s face came into view. She looked good. Rosy cheeks. Really rosy. Like she probably ran or something. Good circulation. That was what made rosy cheeks, right? Or angel kisses? Was that bullshit or the real deal? “Erin, I need you to tell me something.”

  “What’s up, Doc?” She blinked her eyes, and the doctor’s face swam into view. Serious. Earnest. Erin blinked again, and she was still there. The world felt sharp but draggy, and Erin didn’t mind. Like she was drunk, but better, because she hadn’t had to consume approximately OH MY GOD, MY WALLET IS EMPTY, WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT? beers to get there.