Those Who Follow
Page 13
Javier shielded Casey as the two vehicles collided, then careened off the other side of the highway, coming to a stop in the decimated remains of a creosote bush.
Smoke danced around the wreckage as Javier approached it. The driver’s side door of the battered black car swung open and a pale figure emerged. When his eyes fell on her, he knew who she had to be.
He jogged forward and quickly made his way down to the resting place of the two cars. He lifted his hands to show the frightened young woman that he meant her no harm. Behind her, came a second woman exiting the vehicle from the driver’s side since her door was jammed in the splintered creosote bush.
“Are you ok?” Javier called to them.
He halted when they frantically scrambled. “I’m here to help you,” he said.
“He’s alive!” the young woman who looked like the mirror image of Casey screamed.
The door of the second car flew open. Javier took two steps back, watching as a charred man stepped out. In his hand, he wielded a sledge hammer, raising it to swing at the frightened women as they stumbled away from him.
“Leave them alone!” Javier yelled.
Their attacker stopped and slowly turned around to face Javier. The old man’s skin was bubbled and burnt black across his chest. He snarled, baring his stained teeth, then he swung the hammer. Javier leapt back as it smashed into the side of the car beside him. The sandy soil slid out from under his feet and sent him falling onto his back.
Wheezing and coughing, the old man fought to bring the hammer up once more. Javier rolled over and crawled back towards the embankment. He looked up to see Casey standing there, her eyes wide, searching the scene before her.
“Run!” Javier cried.
“Look out!” Casey screamed and pointed.
Javier knew the old man was coming for a second attack. He rolled, luckily avoiding the blow of the heavy head of the hammer.
“Son of a bitch,” Byron cursed just as something solid hit him in the back of the head, sending him tumbling forward.
Celia and Eighty-two were there with fists full of heavy rocks. Eighty-two launched a second stone that caught the preacher in the back as he tried to push himself back up.
Casey bent down at the shoulder of the highway and retrieved a few more rocks, then came down the small embankment firing them down on the back of the old man’s head.
“Leave my sister alone!” she cried.
Celia looked in the direction of the dark-haired girl and her heart stuttered. It was the girl from her visions of freedom—her true other half. She hobbled slowly over as Javier and Eighty-two continued to bash Byron’s skull with anything they could get their hands on.
“My sister?” she asked.
“Yes,” Casey nodded and smiled through tears. “You’re my sister.”
Celia couldn’t deny the resemblance, the dreams she had of finding herself on the dark highway. She embraced Casey and they continued to cry over the sounds of the old man’s body being broken as he was stoned by the others.
Byron was completely still. Fresh blood trickled down over his burnt flesh. The hammer had torn free in his struggle, taking the meat of his palm with it.
When everything was silent and dawn began to lighten the horizon, Javier helped the three women into his car and they sped off down the desolate highway.
They left the old man there, a feast for the vultures and coyotes, as they made their way for the border.
****
Celia laid her head against her sister’s shoulder and finally closed her eyes. Eighty-two sat in the back seat, her eyes taking in the real world as it passed them outside the station wagon window.
“Where are we gonna go?” Casey asked Javier, stroking her sister’s hair.
“First, we’re gonna get you all cleaned up at a rest stop, then I know a good place that you will find healing and a new life,” he answered. “You’ll all have to learn to speak Spanish, but you have the rest of your lives for that.”
“Will you stay with us?” Casey asked.
“Of course. I owe my grandmother’s brother a great deal for when he saved my life. I want to learn from him and continue his work. It was a promise I made to him long ago.”
She smiled and looked down to Celia. “When she wakes up, I will tell her all about Annemarie.”
“Annemarie?” Eighty-two asked. “That was my sister’s name.”
She sat forward as Casey turned back to her, tears filled Eighty-two’s eyes as realization washed over her.
“We are family,” she whispered.
****
Dawn slowly warmed the black top as he crawled across it. He didn’t care how it bit his skin. There was hardly any of it left. Byron expended the last of his energy making his way on his hands and knees to the doorway before falling through on his face. His lungs felt as if they were constricting. His chest burned. He fell forward into the desert sand. Death was coming for him, there was no way around it.
The scent of the smoldering church comforted him in a way. It had always been more of a home to him than any other place… even the house he shared with Betty.
The highway patrol would find the wreckage and assume that he had wandered into the desert in confusion. Betty would be torn apart by it, but there was no way he could think of getting around his fate.
It was nighttime in the nowhere desert, but it hadn’t occurred to him that the hunters would be scavenging until shadowy hands flipped him over. Its bright eyes gazed down at him as he drew a last deep breath.
He waited for it to plunge its dark fist into his abdomen and use its claws to tear through his charred hide to seek his heart, their favorite morsel. It sniffed and chuffed, tasting the air between them. A thick rope of drool slid from its mouth, but it didn’t strike. It backed away and fled as he felt a surge of some new power rush through him.
Byron lifted a charred hand, and in the darkness he watched it pulling and stretching, long black claws forcing themselves painfully out through his fingertips. He rose to his knees, screaming as he felt like his insides were beginning to boil. Falling forward, he retched as his body contorted.
He climbed to his feet, realizing that his lungs would not fill with breath. His payment for living the life of a monster was being dealt to him tenfold. He would now become one of them, doomed to hunt in the shadows.
He ran for his church, now nothing but ashes and glowing embers, like the skeleton of a burnt creature that had lain down to die in the desert. Placing his deformed hand over his chest where his heart struggled to beat, he felt a hunger filling him, uncontrollable in its ferocity.
The green light of the doorway called to him. He ran for it, knowing somehow that once the painful transformation was complete, he would be trapped in this desert in the middle of nowhere.
He wondered if Betty had dinner waiting for him …if she would be waiting as she always did.
****
The roar of his engine sounded off. She looked out the window to see the black car falter as it met the sidewalk out front. It was dented terribly and smoke roiled from under the hood.
“Byron?” Betty whispered her voice hoarse. “My goodness.”
She could see his bent shadow hobbling up the walkway, so she left the window to open the door for him. She had waited all night, and called every hospital around and his brother seven times, but she hadn’t been able to locate her missing husband.
Opening the front door, she nearly fainted to see him bleeding, filthy, his skin blackened and peeling. Betty pulled him inside and shut the door in hysteria.
“Let me help you lay down then I’m calling the doctor! What happened to you?”
She helped him stumble to his favorite chair then flipped on the lamp beside the coffee table. Her hands shook so badly that she could hardly locate the telephone she always left within reach in case Byron tried to call her.
“Hungry…,” he answered.
“I’ll fix you some food as soon as the doctor sees
you,” she said, lifting the phone to her face and squinting to see the numbers.
She thumbed the call button, but before she could dial 9-1-1, a hand fell on her shoulder. Its fingers were long and twisted, with razor-sharp nails at their tips. She was spun roughly around and the lamp beside the phone tipped over, shining brightly on her injured husband. Illuminated his face, she saw a visage that was changing before her eyes, morphing into something of nightmares.
She tried to scream but his fist was there first, forcing its way down her throat and seeking the beating organ in her chest.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
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