Katie’s ears rung from the blast and she knew he was dead immediately. Through tear-blurred eyes she watched Dawson stalk towards the body, stopping a few feet short.
“See what you made me do, kid!” he screamed down at the boy, not willing to go any closer to his own handiwork. He moved from foot to foot for a minute, before looking back at Katie.
“Shit!”
He ran across the road to his next-door neighbor’s and wheeled their trash can out onto the road, pulling it to a stop beside the body of the boy. Katie closed her eyes, she didn’t want to watch. The sound of the body falling into the bin with a light thud and the familiar drummy ‘neighborhood’ sound as it was wheeled back across the road, were bad enough.
She opened her eyes when Dawson returned after cleaning up his dirty deed. He didn’t look at her as he put the shotgun back in the bag. He was pale, and his eyes had a wild look to them.
Katie was in shock and didn’t have long to think about what had just happened before her eyes. As soon as he had the bag zipped up, Dawson stood and threw her over his shoulder again before picking up the bag. She didn’t have the strength to struggle this time. She had just witnessed the cold-blooded murder of a boy and knew that her fate was now in the hands of a psychopath.
Dawson was too big, too well armed and too crazy to be stopped by anything she could do. When Jack returned, she hoped he was smart enough to work that out.
Maybe it’s better Jack doesn’t come back? She thought as Dawson unlocked his front door and carried her over the threshold. Her situation was dire, and she just prayed that it would be quick.
✽✽✽
Unfortunately, Katie was wrong. Now that she was in his clutches, Larry Dawson had no intention of killing her. She was his for keeps... and nothing he had in mind would be quick or easy.
9
Jack turned onto his street two and a half hours after he had set out for Danny’s. Nothing appeared amiss in the cul-de-sac until he was about to turn into his driveway.
“What’s that?” asked Danny, pointing at a dark patch on the road about ten feet beyond the driveway.
Jack opened the driver’s window and stuck his head out to look as he slowly turned into the driveway.
“Not sure,” he said, pulling his head back in and parking the car. “I’ll have a look.”
He got out and pocketed the keys as he walked across the yard and out onto the road. Danny followed just behind.
“That’s not good,” said Danny, as they looked down at the bloody mess.
There was a sticky puddle of blood surrounded by a fine spray pattern of red. Jack felt his breakfast begin to churn in his stomach as his friend squatted and put the tip of his finger into the blood.
“Don’t touch…”
“This is pretty recent,” he said, looking curiously at the film of red on his finger. “It hasn’t started congealing.”
“What do you think happened?” asked Jack.
Danny looked at him, his face a few shades paler than it had been before they pulled up.
“Pretty sure someone was blown away.”
Jack’s vision darkened at the edges. Katie! He turned without another word and sprinted for the front door, rummaging in his pocket for the keys as he went.
“Jack wait!” Danny called – if something had happened to Katie, it would be best if he saw first.
Jack didn’t wait though. He plunged the key into the door and ran into the house and up the stairs with Danny hot on his heels.
“Katie!” screamed Jack, bursting through the door and skidding to a halt in front of her empty bed.
Danny stopped behind him. The bed was disheveled, the sheets pulled off and bunched on the floor.
“Jesus,” said Jack.
“Let’s search the rest of the house,” said Danny. “She may be hiding.”
✽✽✽
They spent ten minutes searching the house, only stopping when Jack found the splintered wood around the back-door handle. By then it was clear she was no longer in the house.
“They took her,” he said, in a quiet voice as they headed back into the kitchen.
“Who do you think it was?” Danny asked. “Have you seen anyone hanging around?”
Jack collapsed into a chair at the dining table.
“No, it’s been like a ghost town here. It was mainly older people in this street, I haven’t seen anyone but… Mr. Dawson!”
“Who?”
“The guy across the road,” said Jack, looking at Danny, horror slowly enveloping him. “He didn’t get sick… and… oh shit, I asked him to keep an eye out on our place when I went to get you. I basically told him Katie was on her own.”
“Do you know if he had a shotgun?”
“Don’t know. He doesn’t look the type, but I guess it’s possible. You don’t think she’s…”
“No, I don’t think she’s dead. And I don’t know who got shot out there, but I don’t think it’s Katie.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well I can’t be, not 100 percent anyway, but it seems our only suspect is Mr. Dawson – so, if it was him, why would he drag Katie out onto the road and shoot her?”
Jack shook his head.
“Okay, if it’s someone else’s blood, that means Katie is still missing. Why would he come and take her?”
“Because he’s a filthy pervert,” spat Jack.
Danny nodded.
“So, if he is a pervert, he’s not going to waste her right? He wouldn’t want to hurt her. Not yet anyway. First he would want to…”
“Yeah, I got it,” said Jack, standing up and holding out his hand. “Give me your gun.”
Danny held up his hands placatingly.
“I will but let’s think this through. This guy’s not stupid right?”
“No,” said Jack with his hand still held out. “And?”
Danny stood up and pushed his friend’s hand down.
“He’s going to expect you to work it out and run over there all guns blazing. If he’s waiting for that, then he’s not bothering Katie right now. I say we go out and make a show of searching for Katie. We’ll knock on his door, but calmly without accusations and ask if he knows what happened.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’ll make a show of leaving later this afternoon, before sundown.”
Jack shook his head, but Danny ignored him.
“Then,” he said firmly. “We come back under cover of darkness and break into his place. When we find Katie and get her out, you can go all Rambo on his ass.”
Jack’s jaw was clenched as he processed Danny’s plan. Laid out before him like that, it made perfect sense.
Finally, he nodded.
10
After carrying Katie like a sack of potatoes down into his basement, Dawson had placed her on what she could only think of as a slab with handcuffs attached to each corner. She looked around the basement with big eyes. It was dark and dank, with cobwebs on the exposed timber of the ceiling.
It was straight out of a horror movie. A deep, cold fear began to creep into her bones.
“Sorry if that’s uncomfortable,” he said, referring to the table or whatever it was she was lying on. “I’ll bring you a pillow down later.”
Those were the first words he’d spoken to her since killing the kid. She almost told him to go and fuck himself but stopped herself in the hope she might yet find a way out of this mess or at least bide some time for Jack to find her.
“Thanks.”
The word felt like ashes on her tongue and he seemed surprised at her submission. He didn’t speak for a few seconds before nodding.
“Sorry, I have to do this.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a black bandana, placing it over her eyes and tying it quickly and efficiently. Her fear level went up a notch. She opened her mouth to begin the spiel she’d heard dozens of actresses say in horror movies over the years – You don’t want to do this, it’s not
too late to let me go – but found something spongy and round pushed rudely into her mouth.
She struggled to turn away, but he grabbed her by the hair and shoved it in, mashing her lip painfully against her teeth in the process. She tasted blood in her mouth. Katie stopped struggling, shocked by the sudden violence.
“That’s better,” he said, loosening his grip on her hair before raising her head and securing the straps of the gag. “Don’t fight me and you won’t get hurt.”
She felt his nasty hands on her and exhaled slowly when all he did was cut the zip ties securing her hands. She rubbed her wrists to get the blood flowing again and he seemed content to let her do this but, as soon as she had relaxed, he grasped her left wrist and pulled it up to the top corner of the slab. He clicked the handcuff closed. Katie tried to resist as he gripped her other hand, but he was too strong.
Dawson freed her ankles of the zip tie next. Ignoring his warning, Katie kicked and lashed out with her feet, managing to score a direct hit to his belly with one blind kick. She heard the breath whoosh out of his lungs. He paused and stepped away from the table as he got his breath back. After a minute, he got back to wrangling her, this time a little more cautiously.
By the time he had secured both of her legs, they were both puffing with exertion. She heard footsteps come up beside her then felt his warm breath on her ear. She tensed.
One, two, three seconds, then his finger touched her cheek. She pulled away and turned her face, but it found her again, this time trailing down her cheek, under her chin and then onto her throat where it lingered before working its way a half-inch under the collar of her t-shirt. Katie shuddered in revulsion and it disappeared.
Suddenly he gripped her chin painfully.
“I’ll give you a free pass on that kick because I know you’re frightened, but that’s your final warning. Now, I must go upstairs – I’m expecting a visitor – so don’t go anywhere. Tonight, is going to be something, something real special.”
She heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs to the kitchen followed by a door slamming and a bolt sliding home. She was alone – that was good. She was restrained and locked in a psychopath’s basement – that was bad.
And who is the visitor he was referring to? The emphasis he put on the word told her it wasn’t going to be an invited guest. Then it dawned on her that he meant Jack.
No!
She pulled at the restraints. They had some slack, but the cuffs were securely anchored. She couldn’t move any of her limbs more than a couple of inches. Jack was in danger. He would almost certainly come over to Mr. Dawson’s when he found her missing, even if he didn’t suspect it was him. Where else would a teenage boy go but to the (for all they knew) only surviving adult in their suburb, possibly the whole city. Tears of rage spilled from her eyes as she struggled, and the raw anger started to melt some of her icy fear.
Jack was all she had left and if the bastard touched a hair on his head, she would kill him….
11
Jack and Danny made a show of searching for Katie in the street. They started with the house next door and went along the cul-de-sac peering in windows and calling through doors. All the while, Jack surreptitiously watched Dawson’s home. There was nothing. Not even the flicker of a curtain.
This, if anything, reinforced Jack’s conviction that he was guilty, and that Katie was in his house at that very moment. With each passing minute, he became angrier and more frantic. After he bashed at the door of his neighbor four doors down and waited the prerequisite thirty seconds with no answer, he turned and stormed off the porch.
“This is pointless,” he said to Danny. “I’m ending it now!”
Danny, resigned to a pre-emptive strike, said okay, okay, and jogged to catch up to Jack, only catching him halfway across the road. That was when he noticed that Dawson’s neighbor’s trash bin was standing askew to the other one. It struck him as odd because everything else about the yard was neat and tidy, the lawns, the gardens, in fact it was an immaculately presented suburban home.
“Jack, wait – let me check this out before we go storming up to his doorstep.”
He jogged over to the bin but slowed when he saw a smear of brown on the lid and edge. He realized immediately that it was blood. Danny looked back over his shoulder and realized his mistake immediately; Jack had seen the look on his face and began walking across.
“Shit,” breathed Danny. If Katie was somehow squashed into that bin there was no way he could allow Jack to see her.
With his pulse beating in his ear, he stepped up to the bin and lifted the lid. It took a moment for his eyes to register what he was seeing and then he let out a yelp of shock and let the lid drop. Jack reached him as he fell to his knees and retched up the contents of his stomach.
“What is it…?” asked Jack, on the verge of tears. “It’s Katie, isn’t it?”
Danny, on his knees, wiped his mouth and shook his head, before heaving again, this time failing to bring up anything.
“No, it’s not… you don’t want to look though…”
Jack ignored his friend and lifted the lid. What he saw sent a jolt of disconnect through his brains. The blood smeared face of a young boy, his eyes wide in shock, rested against the side of his terrible, blood smeared coffin. He had been placed feet first in the bin, his body settling awkwardly in an almost fetal position. Jack had buried his own parents barely twenty-four hours before, but the shocking sight of a kid in the trash bin jarred his senses and brought home the reality of his situation.
He closed the lid and rested his hand on it, almost tenderly, as Danny climbed to his feet beside him.
“Are you okay?” Jack asked, his face grim.
Danny nodded.
“It had to be him, right?”
“Yeah,” said Jack.
“That means he’s armed. We shouldn’t – I mean, we better not try...”
“You don’t have to. She’s my sister, wait here. Wait here.”
Jack turned and went around the Juniper trees that formed a barrier between Dawson’s house and his neighbor’s front yard. It was only when Danny heard him banging on the front door that he realized he still had the pistol in his pocket.
“Shit!” Danny went to the end tree and watched with the gun now in hand. He would run to Jack’s aid if he needed help.
Jack banged on the door again. There were no glass panels in the door or set into the frame around it, and it felt rock solid, barely trembling in the frame when he hit it.
“Dawson!”
He thought he heard a noise behind the door. He hadn’t really thought about the possibility that Dawson might try and blow a hole in him through the door, but he was pretty sure if he tried, the door would soak up most of the damage.
“Mr. Dawson?”
Nothing. He glanced back at Danny who was watching from the edge of the road, his hand behind his back, clearly, he had now taken out his gun. His friend shrugged.
Jack decided to change tack.
“Mr. Dawson! Have you seen Katie? She’s missing.”
Still nothing. Jack banged the door with the heel of his hand in frustration. He wanted to kick the door in but knew it would be suicide. He turned from the door and went back out to Danny.
“He’s in there. I heard him.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No, he was just waiting, like a spider in the dark.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to break in there and kill his ass, but I know he’ll be waiting for that. Even if we go around and try and break in the back way. I guess we go back to the original plan and do what you said, but we have to keep him interested so he stays away from Katie in the meantime.”
Danny nodded, thankful that Jack had tempered his eagerness and hoping that Katie was alright. The body in the bin had driven home to him that this was no game and that Jack’s sister and they themselves were in imminent danger. He hoped that even waiting until dark would give them en
ough time to rescue Katie.
He didn’t verbalize this to Jack of course.
“Okay, let’s do it,” he said. “Why don’t we make a show of going up and down the street again. This time we’ll go into each house and break in some doors or windows to keep him interested.”
“Well then, why don’t we take the car too? If we’re breaking in, we may as well grab canned food or shelf stable milk and stuff. Who knows, we might even find weapons or tools we can take too.”
They did just that. Over the next few hours they broke into the houses of Jack’s former neighbors, gathered supplies they could take with them when they left for the Eldorado Forest. Katie was a constant, nagging worry in the back of his mind and he made sure to yell strongly for her every ten minutes or so. Not only for the benefit of Mr. Dawson, but also in the hopes that Katie would hear him and know he hadn’t given up on her.
They only saw one dead body during their searches, a man that Jack only knew as Sam, three doors down from their house. He sat in his living room in front of a black TV screen, staring at the ceiling, the skin on his face parchment gray and a good portion of it crusted with dried snot.
Danny threw a blanket over his head. While it wasn’t pleasant to see, the body of Sam was nothing compared to the horror in the bin and they both went about their business without being too affected.
Jack did call out hello a few times as he did in every house. He assumed that Sam’s wife Beth was somewhere in the house, probably upstairs, but there was no way he was going up to check.
After searching five houses and three and a half hours later, they had packed the rear of the SUV full of non-perishable food and drink and had also managed to gather an arsenal of items that could be used as weapons if the need arose. A baseball bat, assorted knives, a decorative samurai sword that Danny insisted could be sharpened, a BB gun and a slingshot.
Lone Wolf: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (America Falls - Occupied Territory Book 1) Page 4