The Devil's Country [Kindle in Motion]

by Harry Hunsicker

  The building was no longer in use. Plywood covered the windows, and a ragged chain-link fence encircled the entire property. A sign by the front door read piedra springs high school—home of the fighting bulldogs—2a state champs 1993!

  I wondered where kids went to class now. Did they have to take a two-hour bus ride every day just to attend school?

  There was a hole in the fence by the Bentley, not far from the entrance to the building.

  I debated slashing a tire or two with my new knife, but I didn’t want to take the time. So I crawled through the gap and jogged to the entry.

  The door was open. A sign taped to the glass indicated the building was condemned and a grave danger to anyone who entered.

  I stepped inside anyway.

  The light outdoors was bright compared to the dimness of the interior.

  I was in a long hallway strewn with papers and other trash. Lockers on one side, doors leading to classrooms on the other.

  The air smelled stale, like mildew and dust. Other than the patter of rain from the outside, the place was silent and still.

  I took a couple of steps and then stopped, one foot poised over the floor.

  Water dripped from my shoe onto the dirty tile.

  I squinted at the flooring, trying to scan the surface in the low light. After a moment, my eyes adjusted and I could see footprints, wet impressions in the grime. At least two sets, maybe more, the tread from a pair of sneakers distinct from shoes with slick soles.

  I followed the prints down the hall until they made a left.

  They continued on to a set of double doors marked gymnasium.

  The doors were open.

  I stepped inside.

  The light was better here because there were large windows around the perimeter, about thirty feet up.

  What I saw was a gym filled with boxes stacked between five and six feet high, scattered haphazardly about, effectively forming a maze.

  I stood in the doorway, letting my senses attune.

  My ears picked up heavy breathing at the same instant as an arrow of pain pierced my leg, a sharp blow to the shin just below the knee.

  I fell to the ground, tried not to scream. I looked around frantically, searching for the source of the attack.

  Felix crouched a couple of feet away in the shadows, holding a baseball bat. He was by the door, leaning against a column of cardboard boxes.

  He swung for my head, but I jerked out of reach.

  I thought about standing, but the lower half of my leg felt like it was in a blender full of broken glass and carpet tacks. I crawled away as fast as I could, using three of my four limbs. Then I stopped, wondering why Felix hadn’t come after me.

  I looked back.

  He hadn’t moved. He was still at the door, hidden by the dim light. He swung the bat at me again even though I was out of range.

  That’s when I noticed the spear in his side.

  A javelin, a piece of athletic equipment.

  The Piedra Springs Bulldogs must have had a throwing team at one point—shot put and discus, hammers. Now, the throwing team was gone, as was the high school.

  What remained was a spear used in the javelin competition, the shaft of which protruded from Felix’s side, the tip embedded in the box he was leaning against.

  He swung again with the bat, leaning over to get closer. Evidently this was not a smart move because his eyes went wide as an anguished groan erupted from his throat.

  We stared at each other for a moment, both of us in pain.

  He took several deep breaths like he was mustering energy for something big. He cupped one hand around his mouth, tried to yell: “Silas!”

  His voice was a croak, a shout marred by pain and injury into a ragged whisper.

  No response.

  The expanse of the gym and the stacks of boxes swallowed the noise.

  I crawled toward the end of the spear, keeping out of bat range.

  “Silas.” Louder this time.

  About five feet of javelin protruded from his wounded side. His arm and the bat together equaled roughly the same length.

  I reached the end of the spear. My leg throbbed in agony. I tried not to think about how the rest of my day would play out if a bone had been broken.

  I ignored the pain. Pointed to the spear. “Who did this to you? The boy?”

  Felix glared at me but didn’t speak. After a moment, he nodded.

  “What’s his name?” I said.

  No answer. With his free hand, he extended his middle finger in my direction.

  I reached up, grabbed the end of the javelin, gave it a little shake.

  His face turned white. A mewing sound came from his mouth.

  I let go.

  He swung at me with the bat, but I was out of range, and he could barely move his arms. The bat banged against the floor.

  “What’s the boy’s name?” I said.

  He muttered something, nostrils flaring with each breath.

  I placed my palm on the spear, gave it a tiny shove.

  Panic in his eyes. He held up a hand. “C-Caleb. Caleb.”

  “And the girl. Who is she?”

  He stared at the ceiling and muttered a string of gibberish, what sounded like Hebrew mixed with nonsensical words.

  “Speaking in tongues isn’t going to help you,” I said.

  “Mary,” he said. “Blessed and chaste. A chosen one.”

  “A chosen one? What the hell does that mean?”

  “She is pure.” He glared at me. “Her essence is holy. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me, freako.”

  “The Lord’s bounty.” He had a rapturous look on his face, despite his injury. “It has been bestowed upon her. She is a gift to the flock. A multiplier.”

  I didn’t say anything, repulsed by the implication of his words.

  “You will never find her.” He shook his head. “Because the Lord will smite you down.”

  Anger bubbled in my gut, cold and sour. My shin felt like it had been dipped in lava.

  I gave the javelin a good, hard shake.

  He dropped the bat and shuddered, breath coming in shallow gasps. His head lolled to one side and his shoulders slumped.

  From somewhere across the room came a man’s voice, yelling, “Stop.”

  I looked around. No one was visible. I tried to stand and succeeded, though everything was wobbly. No broken bones, but I wouldn’t be running anytime soon.

  I snatched the bat and used it as a cane, limping through the maze of boxes.

  “Caleb!” Silas’s voice echoed across the gym. “I want to help you, son. Talk to me, please.”

  I headed toward the back of the room, threading my way through the cartons, trying to move as fast and as silently as possible.

  “Where is Mary?” Silas’s voice was louder, plaintive. “You both need to come home.”

  The passageway I was following made a sharp turn. The far wall of the gym was a roll-up door, an exit leading to the athletic fields. The door was open. Up ahead I could see the cloudy sky and damp ground of the outside, thirty or forty feet away.

  “Everything will be all right,” Silas said. “The Apostle will welcome you back.”

  The voice was closer, just ahead.

  I kept limping forward.

  The sound of rain grew louder.

  I reached the end of the maze.

  Sports equipment lay everywhere—footballs and basketballs, helmets, more bats, a half dozen baseball gloves. Another javelin.

  Discarded items, stuff no longer needed when a school closed.

 
Silas McPherson stood in the corner by the open roll-up door and the wall. He was staring at the cartons, holding his injured hand close to his chest.

  When he saw me, he shook his head sadly.

  I limped toward him, the bat in both hands, cocked back, ready to strike.

  “This does not concern you,” he said. “You should leave.”

  I stopped. Shouted: “Caleb! If you can hear me, I want you to run away from this place.”

  Silence.

  “I’m a police officer,” I shouted. “You’ll be safe if you get away from here.”

  “What do you think the word safe means to that boy?” Silas said. “You really think he’s going to trust you?”

  I didn’t say anything, straining to hear movement.

  “You are one of the unclean,” Silas said. “He’s been trained to avoid people like you at all costs.”

  “He was pretty trusting last night when he was trying to get away from your thugs.”

  “Last night. What a mistake that was.” Silas ambled in my direction. “If only you hadn’t interfered. Everything would have been OK.”

  I moved forward, too. My leg almost gave way, but I kept going, staggering closer.

  What was about to happen would be ugly and painful. Silas with four broken fingers, me with a damaged leg. At least I had a bat.

  Silas reached into his waistband with his left hand, his movements awkward. He pulled out a pistol.

  So much for the advantage of the bat.

  “Drop it,” he said. “Put your hands on your head.”

  I didn’t move.

  “I’m warning you.” He aimed at my chest. “I will not hesitate to—”

  Thunk.

  The baseball came out of nowhere. It hit Silas in the temple with a remarkably loud, hollow sound, and he fell to the ground. Dazed, maybe unconscious, maybe not.

  A figure appeared from a passageway in the cardboard boxes.

  The boy, Caleb. If he lived through this ordeal, he could probably score a baseball scholarship somewhere. The kid had an arm on him.

  He was wearing different clothes, and his left arm had been put in a sling.

  “You OK?” I asked.

  He didn’t respond.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said. “We’ll go to the next town. I know where there’s a car we can use.”

  He darted outside and stopped, skittish like a deer in the woods. He turned and looked at me, rain hitting his head.

  “I want to help you,” I said. “You and your sister.”

  We were about ten feet apart. I walked toward him, stopping when he scampered away, keeping out of reach.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He stared at me, his eyes wide.

  “We’ll go to a doctor,” I said. “Get your arm looked at.”

  He tensed, shoulders hunched. Then he turned and sprinted away.

  I ran after him, forgetting about my leg. I made it about two strides before I fell facedown in the mud, my head thumping against a stone the size of a softball.

  A period of time passed, seconds or minutes, it was hard to say.

  After a while, I managed to prop myself up with one hand and stare into the distance, but the boy was gone.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  Nine Months Ago

  The Frisella brothers, the guys who stiffed my father-in-law, Frank, on their bank loan, owned a restaurant by Love Field, a Cajun place stuck between a self-serve car wash and a vape store.

  Pirate Red’s.

  There was a sign on the window that said closed for remodeling, but the front door was unlocked, so I walked in.

  The place was small with low ceilings, a bar on one side and a dining area on the other.

  A salad bar designed to look like a pirate’s schooner divided the two areas. Multicolored Christmas lights were strung from the masts like iridescent riggings. A place for lettuce was amidships, dressings at the stern, croutons and black olives on the bow.

  It was midmorning, the day after my meeting with Frank at his office downtown.

  I wore my regular clothes—a pair of Wranglers and a khaki shirt, a Stetson, and Roper-style boots. The only difference between this and any other day was that I didn’t have a badge pinned to my breast and my pistol was hidden underneath a Carhartt jacket.

  The place appeared empty except for a guy with stringy black hair, wearing a tracksuit. He was sitting at a table on the restaurant side, thumbing currency into different piles. A stack of newspapers was on the opposite side of the table.

  When he saw me, he put one hand in his lap. With the other he grabbed the business section of the paper and covered the money.

  “The Frisellas.” I stopped in front of his table. “Where might I find them?”

  “What do you think this is, Supercuts?” he said. “Drop-ins aren’t welcome.”

  I held up my badge.

  He stared at the ID for a moment. His eyes shifted for a quarter second toward a set of double doors at the rear of the dining area. Then he recovered and gave me a hardened stare.

  “You got a warrant?” he asked.

  “Take your money and get out.” I pointed to the front door.

  “Who the hell do you think you—”

  He stopped talking when I lit the match.

  He frowned when I picked up a different section of the newspaper.

  His mouth dropped open when I held the flame under the newsprint and tossed the burning paper on top of the pile of money covered by the business section.

  He swore and jumped away from the table. Tried to smother the fire with the rest of the newspaper while I headed toward the double doors.

  The kitchen was cockroach nirvana, a health inspector’s nightmare. Dishes with caked-on food in the sink, a browning head of lettuce on the dirty tile floor, the smell of rancid grease in the air.

  The Frisella brothers were fraternal twins who, for some unfathomable reason, had both been named Tommy. One was Tommy Ray, the other Tommy Joe. On the street, the former was called Crazy Tommy because of his drug use and lack of impulse control.

  Both Tommys were sitting at a stainless steel worktable.

  They were dressed like Colombian smugglers on an episode of Miami Vice, identical baby-blue linen sports coats, black silk shirts, and cream-colored jeans. Odd fashion choices for a pair of hillbillies who were as white-bread as bingo night at the VFW hall.

  The Tommy on the left looked like he hadn’t slept since the last time the Cowboys won a Super Bowl. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his skin was paler than his brother’s, the color of spoiled milk, sallow and unhealthy.

  He was snorting a line of cocaine from the surface of the table when I walked in.

  Next to the coke was a human hand in a plastic freezer sack. Bone and gristle stuck out from the wrist end.

  The other Tommy was tapping on a cell. He dropped the phone and pulled a pistol from his waistband.

  “Who are you?” He aimed the gun at me. “Didn’t you see the Employees Only sign?”

  I badged him. “Put down the piece, Tommy Joe. I don’t want to have to shoot you and then fill out all the forms.”

  Crazy Tommy rubbed his nose and growled.

  “Who’s that belong to?” I pointed to the sack.

  “What the hell do you care?” Tommy Joe said. “Did somebody report a missing hand?”

  “Just making conversation. Seemed more appropriate than saying, ‘Hey, howya doing, what about this weather?’”

  “Shoot him,” Crazy Tommy said. His voice was ragged.

  “That’d be a bad play.�
�� I shook my head. “Think about the load of trouble you’d have if you pop a cop.”

  Crazy Tommy did another line, not caring that a Texas Ranger was watching, while his brother stared at me, a frown of concentration on his face. After a moment, Tommy Joe put down the pistol next to the severed hand.

  “See?” I strolled to the gas range on the far wall. “That wasn’t so hard.”

  The range was filthy, covered in dirty utensils and greasy pans. A large stockpot sat on a burner turned to low. The pot was full of what smelled like gumbo.

  “So we’ve made small talk,” Tommy Joe said. “How about you tell me who you are and what the hell you want? You’re here without backup, which means you don’t have a warrant or probable cause.”

  “You owe the bank a lot of money.” I picked up a frying pan. “Did you forget to make the payments on your real-estate loan?”

  “That old idiot, Frank?” Tommy Joe shook his head. “He sent a cop to collect?”

  Crazy Tommy held the sack with the hand, oblivious to both of us. He stared at the severed limb with a look of satisfaction on his face.

  “You tell Frank he’s making a big mistake.” Tommy Joe’s face was a smirk. “Our loan is, whaddayacallit, nonrecourse.”

  I walked back to where the brothers were sitting.

  Crazy Tommy put down the sack. Then he bent over and snorted another line. When he looked up, I hit him in the face with the back of the frying pan.

  The aluminum surface struck him square on the nose. He fell over onto his back, his head bouncing off the tile floor.

  Tommy Joe jumped up. “What the hell?”

  “You’re running underage girls in your clubs,” I said. “Got a steady supply coming in from East Texas.”

  His eyes were wide, mouth agape.

  “Maybe Dallas Vice needs to start paying extra attention to your business.”

  A moment of silence. Then Tommy Joe smiled. After a few seconds, he laughed.

  “Dallas Vice?” he said. “Seriously?”