Don't Leave Me

by James Scott Bell

  “It’s okay. Go back to sleep now.”

  “No Chuck! The wolf man was after me and he almost got me this time because you weren’t there. You weren’t coming!” In the dreams, Chuck had always been a presence that kept the wolf man from getting Stan. Sometimes, Stan had reported, Chuck just showed up and the wolf man ran away. Sometimes Chuck threatened him with a silver sword. Once Chuck had even flown through the air like Superman.

  “It’s just your dream, Stan.”

  “I’m scared!” Stan started crying, one of his fire hydrant cries Chuck called them. They burst out like water from a busted hydrant, and Stan jammed his head into Chuck’s chest, bawling into it. When he did that, as a kid, Chuck would just have to hold him tight until he calmed down.

  Chuck held him tight. “Okay, okay, okay,” Chuck said.

  Another thump on the wall, and another warning.

  “It’s okay now, Stan, you hear me?”

  “You . . . gotta . . . be there, Chuck. If they . . . get you in a . . . dream . . . you die.”

  “No you don’t––”

  “You wake up and you’re dead!”

  Chuck squeezed his brother harder, patted the back of his head, let the rhythm of his breathing calm his brother down.

  Stan wriggled free, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “This time . . . it was real, Chuck! Like it’s . . . gonna happen.”

  “Werewolves don’t happen, Stan. It’s—”

  “Yes they do!”

  The guy next door hit the wall again.

  Chuck jumped over to the wall and hit it with his fist. Again. And again. “Why don’t you shut up now, huh?” he screamed. Pound pound pound.

  “Don’t, Chuck,” Stan said.

  “Stop telling me what to do!”

  “Chuck, you’re mad—”

  “Do I look mad?”

  “Yes!”

  “Good call!” Chuck grabbed the nearest thing, a pillow, and threw it as hard as he could against the window. It plopped harmlessly to the floor.

  Stan giggled. “You didn’t break the window, Chuck.”

  “Want me to? Want me to dive right through it for you?”

  “No, Chuck.”

  “How about a chair? Huh?”

  “No, Chuck.”

  “Listen to me, Stan. Remember what I told you once? Werewolves are myths. You remember what a myth is?”

  “A story,” Stan said quietly.

  “Yeah, a story. But in myths there’s a hero, see? The heroes have to leave the castle and go into the dark forest.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why! Because they have to rescue somebody, or go shopping.”

  Stan giggled again. “Shopping?”

  “Sure! Maybe they need to go check the specials.”

  “You’re being funny now, Chuck.”

  “But in the forest, see, there’s werewolves. And the hero has to fight 'em. But he gets help. He has a teacher or a good wizard or somebody like that, who gives him a magic sword or silver bullet.”

  “Okay, that’s cool,” Stan said.

  “Yeah, and that’s what he uses to kill the werewolf. Now the point of the myth, see, is to tell us we can kill the monsters.”

  “Really?”

  Really? Did he actually believe this himself? After what he’d seen in Afghanistan? After that guy with the knife? He would have killed me, and maybe Stan, if he’d wanted to. He was big enough, he looked amoral enough.

  Was there anything one guy could do to stop bad things? When he’d been cut in captivity—he wished he could see who did it, at least see him, but his mind kept crushing that picture into dust—was he able to do anything about it? No, he had to be rescued. But what if there’s no one to rescue you? What then?

  But Stan had asked. Really?

  He had to get Stan to believe it, even if he himself did not. That was the only way to get Stan through the night, and maybe his entire life.

  Chuck said, “When the time comes, you’ll be brave. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m telling you to, that’s why. And you always do what I tell you, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So now I’m telling you to go back to sleep. Okay?”

  “Okay, Chuck. But what if I have the dream again?”

  Chuck was drained. “Just tell yourself to be brave.”

  “I want you to be in the dream, Chuck.”

  “I’ll be there,” Chuck said. “As long as I’m not busy in some other dream.”

  “What other dream?”

  “The one where I go shopping in the forest,” Chuck said. “And I’m looking for DiGiorno’s pizza because my brother’s hungry and—”

  A knock on the door stopped him. Chuck sighed. The complainer was upping the ante. “Just be quiet now, Stan. I have to tell this guy we’re sorry.”

  Chuck went to the door. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s all right now.”

  “No it isn’t,” the voice said, and knocked again.

  Feeling with his left hand Chuck made sure the chain lock was in place, then opened the door a crack. The muted illumination of night light––mainly the amber glow from the motel parking lot—backlit the inquirer. “Look,” Chuck said, “it won’t happen again—”

  The door slammed into Chuck’s shoulder. He heard the crack of splintering wood as he fell back. Stan screamed again, this time in fear of something very real in the room.

  Two men, not one. And definitely not a disgruntled neighbor.

  Chuck rolled to his knees and got up.

  Stan issued a rat-a-tat of shrieks.

  A voice said, “Shut him up!” The voice was tinged with accent. Serbian . . .

  “Chuck!” Stan cried.

  In the dimness Chuck saw the other man rushing the bed.

  Chuck charged him. He got hold of the man’s shirt and felt back muscles underneath as hard as bowling balls. Chuck pulled hard, tore fabric.

  Then a snapping noise.

  Something punched his kidneys.

  And his entire body filled with electric shock.

  Chapter 41

  There is something in the air this night, Sandy Epperson thought.

  In LA, the evenings beat with vibrations of death. Everyone knew that. Especially cops. But every now and then there seemed to be more in the ether, the incipient anticipation of deep layers of evil.

  Sandy believed in evil. She’d seen too much of it not to.

  This was the city for violent, conscienceless acts. And there were seasons for it. Sometimes the evil came in waves, and you could feel it coming, like a surfer senses the swells.

  As she moved through her kitchen in the little house in Tarzana, the one she’d managed to buy at just the right time, she left the radio on to 1070, the all-news station, and poured herself another cup of chamomile tea.

  Outside her kitchen window, the darkness itself seemed to move, as if it were a sentient being.

  The news had just reported a hit-and-run near USC. A nineteen-year-old student named Rachelle Anderson, a sophomore from Scottsdale, Arizona, was killed as she walked across Jefferson Avenue at Hoover Street with a male companion.

  A witness said a black sedan hit the two in a crosswalk. Anderson was thrown to the side and died at the scene. The man stayed on the windshield for five hundred feet, the witness said, until the car stopped and a passenger got out and threw the man off the hood. Then the car drove on.

  It was the passenger tossing the man to the street that got to Sandy. Like they were clearing off a bird turd. Just that fast, and they left two human beings to die.

  There just seemed to be more of that kind of cold, calculated malice lingering out there in the city this night.

  But that wasn’t all that troubled her.

  The Chuck Samson thing was buggy in her mind, pulling at her from different directions. Not the least of which was the hit-and-run on his wife. Something stank there.

  And something els
e didn’t smell quite right––her partner’s consuming interest in getting Chuck Samson nailed any which way he could. What was up with that?

  Or was she just imagining things, hoping she could weave a scenario that would prove to the big boys just how good she was? Was that still it? Her consuming passion was to make her former captain, and all the suits downtown, eat their collective shorts for what they’d done to her.

  It had started with Captain Ford Elias at North Hollywood station, a little over six months after the Twin Towers went down on 9/11.

  Sandy was still in uniform and on patrol duty. Her watch almost over at 7:30 one night, she was finishing up narratives on her reports when the call for backup came in. A black and white at the Ford dealership on Lankershim needed help.

  Sandy and her patrol partner, Jeff Simms, rolled Code 3, lights and sirens. On the computer screen Sandy saw comments on the call: Vapor/mist seen coming out of ventilation system. 3 people down. FD at scene.

  FD was fire department, and the vapor in a building meant possible terrorism.

  When she and Simms arrived, Captain Elias put Sandy on traffic control. She immediately set up a two-block perimeter each way, and directed other cops to establish the cordon.

  She’d just completed a WMD course at the Academy, and was on top of it. And knew something else––her captain had made a mistake.

  Elias had set up the command post in a black Yukon, right across the street from the contaminated building. Downwind.

  She ran to the CP and found Elias, marking the whiteboard, talking to his assistant. “Sir,” she said, “you’re downwind, and the CP should be at least a hundred yards away.”

  He snapped a glare at her. He was fifty-five, short gray hair, close-set brown eyes. He always looked suspicious about something. “We know what we’re doing, officer.”

  “Then we need to move this perimeter to the next major, sir. People are vulnerable.”

  “Too much of a hassle,” Elias said, turning back to the board. “Stay as is.”

  “This is protocol––”

  “Get out there. Now.”

  Fine! Let people get sick on his watch. Sandy wanted to pick up the whiteboard and knock him over the head with it. Now that would do wonders for her career.

  Fortunately, DOT—the Department of Transportation team—arrived and took over traffic control.

  That left Sandy at the disposal of Elias, who ordered her and Simms to go inside the building and secure it as a crime scene.

  “But it’s a hot zone,” Sandy said.

  “You’re assuming,” Elias said.

  “I’m not going in without a HAZMAT suit.”

  “I’m ordering you to.”

  “And I’m refusing, until FD gives the okay.”

  Simms nodded. “I agree, Captain.”

  “Then this is down as a refused order,” Elias said. “For both of you.”

  An hour later, FD in HAZMAT suits went into the building and came out, reporting garlic powder and cayenne pepper in the vents.

  Someone had played a practical joke. There was no danger at all.

  But who could have known that going in? And who knew the departmental hell that would follow Sandy a few short years later, because of this one incident? How the administration would side with Elias on everything. How they made her feel like hazardous material for the department.

  Sandy shook her head, dislodging the memory. She didn’t want to sit here and go through it again, beat by beat, as she sometimes did.

  It was so hard, having a mind that wouldn’t shut off.

  And now that mind snapped back to Chuck Samson and, again, Mark Mooney.

  Why did she keep thinking of Mark?

  Sandy changed the radio to smooth jazz. She had to get calm. Get some sleep. Get away from the thought that there was something in the air this night. Something in the air . . .

  Chapter 42

  Stun gunned.

  Chuck knew that’s what had just happened to him. As a boy he’d touched a live spark plug once, on a lawn mower, and it zapped and numbed his hand. That was how his whole body felt now, muscles cramping, and strangely, as his juiced brain normalized, it was like coming off a high.

  But he was not high. He was low, in a dark motel room, on the floor, looking up.

  Stan. Where was Stan?

  Chuck was aware of the bed moving. He willed his arms to move, tried to get up from the floor.

  Something slammed his chest and forced him back down. A foot.

  “Don’t move,” a voice said. He knew the voice. The guy with the knife. Mad Russian. No, Mad Serb. A white spark crackled in the night. From the spark’s location Chuck concluded it was an electroshock baton in the Serb’s hands, and he was showing off his weapon.

  Chuck heard a muffled moan. Stan. The other guy must’ve had something over Stan’s mouth. His brother would be scared to death. Chuck tried to move again, but the foot slammed him back to the carpet.

  “Where is it?” The Serb asked.

  “Where is what?” Chuck said, his voice thick in his mouth.

  “Where. Is. It?”

  Chuck shook his head, then wondered if the guy could even see that motion in the dark.

  “You maybe like another jolt?”

  The weapon sparked and snapped again. And half a dozen thoughts banged against each other in Chuck’s mind. The Serb obviously thought Chuck had information about something, and Chuck was supposed to know what that was. He wasn’t dead, so the Serb and his ally weren’t sure where to find whatever this thing was. They were also stupid. Breaking into a motel room to do their interrogation. Too many chances somebody would hear.

  He sized up the Serb as being reckless and foolish. But he was a fool with a stun gun. And a knife. Chuck remembered the knife at the scene of the rear ender. This current scene would have to be played delicately.

  “Sit me up,” Chuck said. “Then we can talk.”

  The Serb kept his foot on Chuck’s chest and snapped the electric prod again. “No, no, my friend. You will talk when I tell you to and stay where I put you. If you want to leave this room with all your fingers and toes, you will not play games.”

  Stan moaned again. Definitely a pillow was over his mouth.

  Chuck said, “Let my brother go, he has nothing to do with anything.”

  “Ah,” the Serb said. “You want your brother to be all right, yes?”

  “Just let him go.”

  “Don’t be stupid with me, huh? Just tell me where it is, and you know of what I’m talking.”

  “You got the wrong guy.”

  “Samson. Chuck Samson. I don’t like the name Chuck. It is a stupid name. You are stupid––”

  “Key word is stupid, I get it––”

  The baton came down on his leg and zapped.

  A fusillade of hot nails ripped up his body. Once in a pickup basketball game a jerk had thrown the ball as hard as he could at Chuck. It smacked him directly in the family jewels and doubled him over, creating pain just like this.

  “Don’t make me do that again,” the Serb said.

  Another voice, accented, said, “How long we got to keep this going?”

  “You hear that, Chuck?” the Serb said. “We don’t have all night.”

  Night. His motel neighbor, trying to sleep.

  Chuck yelled in full voice, “THANK YOU SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER!”

  A moment of silence.

  He yelled again. “THANK YOU SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER!”

  “Shut up,” the Serb said.

  And then it came. The pounding on the wall. The voice of his neighbor screaming invective and threat.

  “We got to get out,” the other one said.

  Hesitation. The Serb was unsure. In the gloom, Chuck saw him looking back and forth, his hair flying like water spray.

  “THANK YOU SIR!”

  “Stuff his mouth!” the Serb said.

  Chuck grabbed the Serb’s ankle with his left hand, pulled, and fisted him
in the balls.

  Now it was the Serb who cried out.

  Flailing in the dark, Chuck had momentary freedom. He rolled left, away from the Serb’s body, which fell toward the window. Chuck got to the foot of the bed, stomach down, and pushed himself up.

  And saw a big mass of humanity pressing down on Stan.

  Chuck jumped onto the bed, took one bouncing step and threw himself on the back of the big man. He got his left arm around the guy’s enormous head, then slid it down to the neck. It was a tree trunk. But Chuck managed a choke hold and pulled for all he was worth. Which wasn’t much at the moment.

  The big man stood up straight and turned around, like a dog getting ready to lie down. Chuck held fast to the throat but knew this was only a temporary solution. Mad Serb was no doubt recovering, and he was the one with the baton.

  “Stan! Get out!” Chuck yelled.

  He sensed but did not see his brother getting out of the bed. A moment later the door flew open, and that Chuck did see. The lights from the liquor store sign on the other side of the motel seeped in, yellow and red.

  The hulk spun around again and chugged his legs backward, crashing Chuck into the wall. Tiny sparklers gave a little Fourth of July party behind Chuck’s eyes.

  But he saw a blur run outside, unmistakably Stan. And then he heard Stan’s startled scream.

  Because there was someone else at the door now, shouting, “What the hell are you doing in here?”

  The neighbor?

  The Serb pounced at him, his baton crackling.

  Chuck let go of the big one and ran to the door, not quick enough to keep his neighbor from getting lit up. His body hit the walkway at the same time Chuck smashed into the Serb with his shoulder.

  The Serb grunted and jammed waist first into the iron rail. Chuck sent an open palm smack to his right ear, a blow causing disequilibrium when delivered right.

  From the hollow thwacking sound, Chuck knew he’d delivered right.

  Mad Serb fell to his knees.

  The walkway, up on the second story as it was, shook. Chuck knew in a flash it wasn’t because of the fallen Serb. It was his thug partner, loping toward the door.

  Instinctively, Chuck jumped to the right, his back to the room. And the big guy flew into the rail at the exact same spot the Serb had gone down.