Stitches (Insatiable Series Book 5)

by Patrick Logan

  “Some of the bikers must have gotten out of line,” he grumbled.

  He was still looking around, wondering why he had had such a compulsion to enter, when a voice from behind him stopped him cold. It was gruff, hoarse even, like a forever smoker, but it was undeniably female.

  “I killed your fucking son. I fucking killed Kent and I loved it.”

  Chapter 26

  “You really want to go in there? Really? In there?”

  Coggins stared at the skinny man that stood before him. He was even thinner than he remembered from that day during the storm when he helped plow the way. Way back when this nightmare was just beginning.

  Back when Alice was still… here.

  “Just open the fucking sewer grate, Johnny.”

  The man swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple jiggling in his throat.

  “You got it.”

  He slid the crowbar into the slot in the manhole cover, and grunted as he tried to prop it open. His thin arms bent, but the manhole cover didn’t even budge. Sheriff White put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder and then he stepped aside.

  “Everything all set?” he asked the crew, his eyes moving from Coggins first, then to Reggie, and finally to Williams. Without taking his eyes off of his men, he leaned on the specially-designed crowbar. There was an audible hiss, and then with a shrug, Sheriff White sent the metal disk scraping across the pavement.

  Hot mist came out of the orifice in the earth, which drew all of their eyes.

  A second later, Coggins nodded and then he instinctively adjusted the strap holding the shotgun to his chest.

  “We’re set.”

  “Good,” Paul replied with a nod. He did his own mental inventory, checking that he had his two pistols, the light clipped to the pocket on his shirt and the flashlight on his belt. Both flashed brightly when he turned them on. Satisfied, he asked for the other men to do a check of their own equipment. As they did, Johnny spoke up.

  “You sure you don’t want me to send some rope lights down with you? You could string it—”

  “No. We need to be able to turn them on and off from down there—and we can’t be lighting up the tunnel like the Fourth of July.”

  Off?

  Coggins’s eyes drifted to the tunnel again. The idea of turning the lights off while down there, leaving them in complete darkness… the memory of the Crackers wasn’t so far gone to have numbed completely.

  And if what they said about the Crab was true, then the crackers themselves weren’t all gone, either.

  “Just in case,” Paul said, his eyes drifting to Coggins.

  “What about you?” Williams asked as he fitted a helmet they had procured from Maselo’s complete with a headlamp on his head. Coggins did the same before helping Reggie, whose head was too big for the damn thing.

  Sheriff White stood stoic and with the two guns on his hips he looked like an actor in an old spaghetti western. The only thing that didn’t fit the image was the backpack slung over one shoulder.

  Backpack? Why does he have a backpack?

  But before Coggins could ask the question, Paul spoke up.

  “All set,” he replied quickly.

  “No,” Williams said, “I mean do you want a helmet?”

  For some reason, the Sheriff didn’t answer right away, a pause that drew Coggins’s gaze.

  This version of Paul White wasn’t the same as the man that he had needled day in and day out in the station, the man who used to get worked up at a friendly game of poker that Coggins always won. No, this man was different; he was hardened, broken.

  Coggins forced the tears away.

  Sheriff White cleared his throat and then adjusted a small light on the front of his khaki shirt.

  “I’ll be fine with this.”

  He took out his radio next.

  “There’ll be no cell coverage in the sewers, but the radios should work.” He turned to Johnny. “They will work down there, won’t they?”

  Johnny nodded vigorously.

  “Yes, but not long range. Only about a square mile, maybe less. Listen, Sheriff, you gonna tell me anything about where you’re going down there? I mean, there were rats in the sewers a long time ago, but now there isn’t much but old—”

  For the third time since they had met outside the sewer pipe near the edge of town, Paul silenced him. This time, however, he offered no response.

  “I mean, if you are going east, then the sewer leaves Askeran and heads into—”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Your help has been greatly appreciated, Johnny. But now I think it’s best if you get into your pickup—” Sheriff White hooked a thumb at the battered red truck parked by the side of the road, —”and go home. Stay inside. Forget about this whole thing. In the morning, when you wake up, Askergan is going to be a much different place.”

  Johnny swallowed hard and then he slowly started to back away. For a moment, his eyes met Coggins’s before they darted back to the opening in the ground.

  Short of scratching his neck like Shifty Leon back in the store, it was obvious that Johnny was either using again, or desperate to use. And at Maselo’s, Shifty hadn’t responded favorably to the idea of Askergan running dry. Coggins wondered if Johnny felt the same, and if so, what were his motivations for helping them?

  This whole thing wasn’t sitting right with Coggins, but before he could raise alarm, Sheriff White spoke up.

  “You guys ready?” Sheriff White asked.

  Coggins cleared his throat and took a step forward.

  “Let’s get this shit over with—let’s get the girls back, Sheriff.”

  Askergan had gone to shit. And they were the cleanup crew.

  Chapter 27

  Seth couldn’t get the damn voice out of his head.

  Bring the girl… you have been chosen.

  He was sitting alone in the room again, having since delivered the girl’s leg to the cops as the Crab had instructed. But as soon as he left Sabra’s estate, he started hearing the voice again, the one that he had started hearing all those years ago in the storm.

  Getting the girl from the long-term care facility had silenced it, but slowly but surely it had started to creep back in, like a draft covered in tape that had started to lose its stickiness.

  Staring at his own reflection with his one good eye, Seth was startled at how much his appearance had changed. No longer was he the waifish man turning tricks on men with pleated khakis outside the club for cash. The left side of his face was still a horribly disfigured mess, the worst being his eye that was pushed back further than the other, the lids permanently closed.

  But beneath the bruising, he saw a flicker of something else. Of something dark and leathery, of something almost reptilian in nature.

  Bring the girl to me.

  Seth closed his good eye and swallowed hard. When he had first heard the voice he had been certain that it had been Walter Wandry calling to him, somehow using the cracker that infected his system to reach out.

  It was because my mind was infiltrated once before, during the storm.

  But now he wasn’t so sure. And if it wasn’t Walter, then he was afraid to consider what it might be.

  A shudder racked his thin frame, and when he focused on his reflection again, the hideous leathery thing was gone.

  But not from his head.

  Get the girl, bring her to me. Beneath the city.

  Seth stood, his movements robotic in nature, and then made his way toward the door. This time, there were no guards to greet him. And yet he hesitated; he hadn’t eaten in so long that he felt weak, his legs detached, his stomach retracted to the point that his belly button nearly met his spine.

  The hall was oddly quiet, but Seth paid this no mind.

  Bring the girl to me.

  The voice was deep, like a speaker with the bass turned up, the treble nearly completely eliminated. It was the same voice that had compelled him to put the pillow over little Henrietta’s face, the one that had mad
e him think that his dad was screaming at him, calling him a faget, telling him that real men don’t suck dick.

  That voice had sounded like his father, but it wasn’t him.

  The voice belonged to the thing, the hideous evil that compelled his legs forward, even when the only thing Seth wanted to do was lie down and sleep. Maybe even dream of his sunny times down in Florida, of anything but being here, with it.

  A biker walked by him, a man with a long, greasy ponytail and an equally greasy goatee.

  “You aight?” the man asked.

  Seth ignored him and shuffled past. He had only one objective now: he was going to get the girl.

  He walked to the room in the center of the house, the one that he had first collapsed in with Alice draped across his arms. There was a man standing guard outside, and he was about to turn back when the voice urged him forward with increased fervor.

  Get her, bring her. You must be quick. Beneath the city.

  The man with the cleft lip, the one that Seth knew in the back of his mind was named Carl, was so high that he seemed to be floating.

  Seth went right up to him.

  “I need to see the girl,” he said softly. Carl’s eyes rolled forward and a moment of lucidity crossed over them.

  “Can’t go in,” Carl replied. His words were so slurred that they came out like cang’in. “Crab’s orders.”

  Crabsordahs.

  The man sniffed, but the act did nothing to keep a thin trail of blood from dripping down, turning the scar from his cleft lip a deep scarlet. The man’s tongue darted out and probed at the spot.

  “I need to see the girl,” he repeated as the words in his head grew even stronger. He felt like he had back at the longterm care facility as he stared at the woman at the desk before driving the pen into her smooth flap of a neck.

  He had written Alice Dehaust on that piece of paper, a name that he had never heard of before.

  “Carl, open the door.”

  The man’s eyes rolled back again, and Seth didn’t know if he shook his head or if he was just grooving to his own, imaginary soundtrack.

  Seth too closed his eyes for a moment, trying to gather all of what little strength he had left. Carl had at least forty pounds on him and three inches, but Seth had something the intoxicated man didn’t.

  He had someone else in his head.

  He had Oot’-Keban.

  Seth sucked in a deep breath and opened his eyes.

  “Let me in,” he hissed in a voice not quite his own.

  Carl’s eyes again flipped forward, and Seth saw his hand snake toward the machine gun on his shoulder.

  “I told you already, I—”

  But a shout from inside the room cut him off.

  “Fuck!” Carl shouted as he turned toward the door. He started to fumble for the large, gold key on his belt, but despite his fear, he was so fucked up that he was having a hard time getting it to stick in the lock.

  “Mother—”

  Seth pounced, reaching up with his right hand and gripping the back of the man’s head. Carl cried out, but Seth shoved hard with a strength he didn’t know he possessed, and drove the man’s face into the hardwood door.

  There was an audible crack, which was followed by a low groan. Seth stepped backward as Carl fell forward, pushing the door that he had just unlocked open as he fell into the room.

  His face left a bloody smear speckled with shattered teeth, as it slipped down the door and than whacked against the floor.

  For a second, the voice abated and Seth took a deep breath. Then he stepped over Carl’s body and entered the room.

  Chapter 28

  Donnie should have never taken the bait. The worst part was that the entire time, he knew he was being baited.

  But Corina’s words stung him deep.

  “He cried like a fucking baby—like a little pussy, just like his father.”

  “Fuck you,” Donnie spat, his eyes still locked on the horrible skins that were knitted together above them.

  “He was a fucking pussy, through and through. You should have seen his face, the way his—”

  Donnie lost it. He whipped around and stared at the one-legged whore that hung from the ceiling. His mouth twisted into a sneer.

  “Shut up!” he yelled, tears streaming down his face. “Just shut the fuck up!”

  But Corina wouldn’t shut up.

  She squinted so that her eyes became narrow slits. She made a croaking sound with her throat, like a bullfrog with emphysema.

  The fucking bitch was imitating Kent.

  “Shut up!”

  Corina went on making the same croaking noise even while Donnie strode over to her. She was slung by her arms, but only hung a few inches off the ground. Tall as he was, Donnie had to stare down at her to meet her eyes.

  “Stop it,” he said, almost begging now. And, for the briefest of moments, she did stop.

  But then she snarled, tilted her chin down to him, and spat a thick glob of spit directly into his left eye. Without thinking, and instead of wiping the spit away from his face, he drew his fist back and then launched it forward, driving his knuckles into Corina’s soft stomach.

  More spit speckled his face as the air was forced out of her lungs, her diaphragm paralyzed. And then, ironically, she stopped making the noise and instead transitioned into something that was even more real, something that really did sound like someone struggling to breathe.

  As Corina gasped for air, Donnie stared down at her face again. She was attractive, he supposed, with a round face, a small nose and heart-shaped lips. And she had a body that she had clearly, the missing leg notwithstanding, taken care of before he had grabbed her and the Crab had sunk his teeth in.

  And this only seemed to heighten the anger he felt in the pit of his stomach.

  Kent had been a good looking boy, if a few years younger. And Corina had taken him away, taken him from this earth. No matter what happened, what Donnie had done since Kent had died, that was the only thing that mattered.

  Donnie drove his fist into Corina’s abdomen again, this time with such force that he sent her body rocking on the chain that held her strung up by her arms. Then he punched her again, and again, not hearing her ragged breathing anymore.

  On his fourth or fifth punch, Corina swung back nearly two feet. As he waited, eyes blazing, for Corina’s body to come back, he readied himself to deliver another punch to his organic punching back. But instead of coming back naturally, Corina unexpectedly bucked her hips and thrust her lower half toward him.

  “What the—”

  Donnie was caught unawares, and Corina’s stump struck him in the shoulder. It wasn’t a particularly hard blow, but it was sufficient to spin him around.

  And that’s when he felt her other leg, the full one, hoist up and snake around his neck from behind.

  All those years of limping on one side, of trying to make her gait look natural, had made that leg strong. With her thigh across his throat, she clamped it over her stump. Under normal circumstances, this modified triangle choke would have never worked. But the way she was hanging allowed her to sit back into the choke, putting additional pressure on Donnie’s throat.

  His hands immediately went to pull the leg away, but Corina responded by squeezing even tighter. Donnie’s breath started to come in ragged gasps, and he reached up to claw at her bare skin. Only her grip was impossibly tight, like a vice, squeezing and squeezing.

  Blood started to rush in his ears, and he started to see dark spots squirt across his vision.

  And then the door to the room burst open, and a body fell inside.

  Chapter 29

  Sheriff White had instructed Dirk to watch from a distance, to make sure that the cartels arrived and drew the Skull Krushers out of the estate as planned. To make sure that residents nearby stayed inside, out of harm’s way.

  But he couldn’t do that; he had other motivations.

  And yet, for the first forty minutes after confirming with Micke
y that the girls were being held in the great room, Dirk did just that: lay in the tall grass and waited.

  The sun had long since bowed its glowing head in rest, and the night that followed was surprisingly quiet. Aside from the occasional hoot from the men that congregated just inside the iron gates and the throttle of a motorcycle, the air was still and oddly serene.

  From his vantage point, Dirk had a decent view of the other houses in the neighborhood—three or four estates that rivaled Sabra’s with respect to size and opulence—and they too were silent. Their stone and brick structures stood looming, appearing as obelisk shadows that were at once trying to remain oblivious and ignored. To Dirk, the situation reminded him of a story he had heard long ago, of low flying US jets coasting over Hiroshima, littering the streets with pamphlets warning residents of the impending destruction. He doubted that Sheriff White would have gone as far as to hand out fliers—the element of surprise was perhaps their only advantage—perhaps it wouldn’t take something so overt to send the residents scattering.

  Back when he had been a regular beat cop, even before he had gone undercover, Dirk had used a basic trick for getting perps who had skipped out on bail or fled when a warrant was issued to come to him. It was simple, really: he would go to a nearby dealership, preferably one that the perp had used previously, and get the swarthy salesman to place a call for them. They would tell the perp that they had won a free car, a month’s lease, or something, anything that Dirk thought would tickle their fancy. Sometimes it took a day, occasionally even week, but eventually their greed and curiosity won out; they all came into the dealership. But instead of being greeted by a brand new fire-engine red Ford Mustang, they were met by Dirk, a wide grin on his face, handcuffs at the ready.

  Dirk surmised that perhaps something like that happened here, but instead of cars—the Porches and Teslas parked in the residents’ driveways all looked like this or the previous years’ model—the Sheriff could have sent out free movie coupons, or invited them to a private screening.