Stitches (Insatiable Series Book 5)

by Patrick Logan

Twelve. Twelve shotgun shells against an army of bikers.

  The odds weren’t so much stacked against him, as they were towering above his ant-like body.

  The explosion out front had drawn out most of the bikers, and now that five minutes had passed since the estate had been rocked, the commotion seemed to have died down. They had either disposed of the Mexicans, or the sirens that seemed to get louder every seconds had driven them off.

  Which meant that Coggins didn’t have much time. The Crab might have Alice with him now, or he might have instructed the bikers to take her with them when they left.

  Either way, he had to act soon.

  Twelve shells and a plastic bag.

  He swallowed hard.

  Even though Coggins knew what was in the bag, when he untwisted the neck and peered inside, revulsion hit him like rising surf.

  He instinctively flung it across the room, where it landed with a sound like a handful of wooden jax.

  His breathing was coming in short bursts.

  “Fucking hell,” he grumbled, remembering what his friend had told him.

  …the pathologist said that she could reanimate the crackers, that they responded to stimulants somehow.

  As far as Coggins was concerned, the fuckers could all stay dead.

  A rumbling sound from the hallway—a deep, hollow, thud—drew him back to reality.

  But they weren’t all dead; at least not if the rumors were true. There was one that was still alive, one that the Crab held hostage somehow, or maybe even the other way around.

  There was no way to know which.

  Coggins shook his head, trying to force flashes of the white shells, pink frothing fluid, oscillating teeth, and torn flesh from his mind.

  Alice, I need to find Alice.

  Another thundering sound came from the hallway, only it wasn’t like the first such sound; this one was closer, and somehow more visceral.

  The resulting reverberations caused his molars to rattle.

  A biker shouted from somewhere close to the half open door, the frame now peppered with bullet holes, but then there was a crunch and the sound was abruptly cut short.

  That sound…

  The depth of the rumble reminded Coggins of an earlier time. Of being trapped in a closet, willing, begging, pleading, for Oxford to inject the thing that loomed over him brandishing those silver nails.

  Coggins swallowed hard, and scampered across the floor to the bag that he had just thrown.

  Paul was right; it might be good to have as a last resort.

  The black plastic had opened slightly, and a pale white leg jutted out. His breath coming in terse bursts now, Coggins grabbed the bag and yanked it away like a magician pulling a table cloth.

  The Cracker clattered out of the bag. It was cold hard, and completely utterly dead.

  Coggins leaned forward to take a better look, but as he did, he realized that something else had fallen out of the bag as well. A small baggie of heroin.

  The sight of that teener almost made him laugh.

  There was at least ten times as much on the desk that he had hid behind moments ago, and he bet a thousand or million times as much elsewhere in the estate.

  The crackers can be reanimated…

  Coggins went to the Cracker next, just as another series of depressions from the hallway rattled his teeth again.

  He stared at it for a moment, fear and strange fascination coursing through him.

  It was hard, articulated, and just plain awful. It lay on its back, its legs pointed upward almost comically. Between these knotted spires, Coggins spotted it’s anus-like orifice. He turned his head sideways in consideration.

  When the things had been alive, the teeth oscillated as if they were on some sort of reciprocating chain, and they had been menacing. But now, dead and silent as it was, they didn’t look so bad.

  They sort of looked like a child’s teeth, if said toddler had filed them to points.

  Coggins realized that despite having killed dozens and maybe hundreds of the things with Jared at his side, he didn’t think that he had ever inspected one so closely as this.

  There were dark blue and purple lines, like tortuous vessels leading from—

  Coooooooooome

  The word flooded Coggins’s mind like the bullet that Paul had used to kill Donnie Wandry.

  His hands started trembling, and his entire body felt dipped in ice.

  “No,” he moaned. “No, it can’t be.”

  The deep depressions increased, and he slowly shifted to the other side of the cracker. Any of the interest he had felt a few moments ago was gone; his eyes were firmly fixed on the door now.

  “Please,” he begged.

  He knew that the thing, that Oot’-keban, had laid the eggs that had spawned the Crackers.

  But Oot’-keban was dead—he had killed it, fucking filled the side of Sheriff Dana Drew’s head with buckshot.

  Coggins still remembered the hot, stinking fluid that had soaked him, threatened to drown him, he remembered it regurgitating Oxford’s half-digested, skinless body, sliding out of the stretched, black lips like a greasy sausage squeezed from its casing.

  The depressions were right outside the door now, and Coggins felt his vision start to swirl.

  Cooooome

  Coooooooome

  Horrible, deep, brooding laughter followed. It was so deep that it made Coggins’s heart palpitate in his chest.

  A flash of color, of faded denim, suddenly filled the doorway and Coggins almost fired. But his trigger finger, like the rest of him, was frozen in fear.

  A biker backed into the room, his frame blocking the view of the hallway.

  “Good fucking God. Walter? What in—”

  But something suddenly grabbed him from the front and yanked him from the room. The man was pulled forward so violently that he became airborne, with his legs, arms, and neck trailing behind him.

  He screamed as he disappeared into the hallway, just out of sight, but that, like the previous cry, was cut short.

  There was a sickening crunch, followed by a geyser of blood that shot across the hall, filling the bullet holes in the door and frame like tiny pools.

  And then, without realizing, Coggins lowered the gun to his lap. With one hand, he grabbed the baggie of heroin, and with the other he gripped two of the cracker’s hard, spindly legs.

  They were cold, and yet slightly moist.

  Or maybe that was just the sweat on his palm.

  A figure, thick through the middle with an even wider base, suddenly appeared in the doorway. Its presence was preceded by the depressions, and for a minute Coggins’s vision blurred and went dark.

  Blind, he could only swallow as he waited for the thing to stop moving and for his eyesight to return.

  When it did, he was shocked to see Alice standing before him. Only it wasn’t Alice as she had been in the longterm care facility. This was Alice from before.

  A cross between a groan and a cry slipped from his mouth.

  “Alice, you’re—”

  But Alice interrupted him.

  “Bradley, why didn’t you save me? Why did you give me the clonny?” Her mouth was a tight line and she was shaking her head reprehensibly.“You know I can’t have any drugs. You know about my problem, Brad.”

  Coggins started to sob. The tears made the scene before him waver, but it didn’t change the reality that it was Alice standing before him. It was her cute, round face, her dark brown hair.

  After all these years, she had finally awoken. Whatever Walter had done to her didn’t matter now.

  The only thing that mattered was that Alice was here, awake, alive.

  He tried to stand, but his legs felt numb and he crashed back down into a seated position.

  “I’m so sorry, Alice. I tried… I tried to—”

  Her disapproving expressions suddenly became one filled with rage.

  “You let him come and take me away! You let him get me! Bradley, you were suppose
d to be watching over me! Looking out for me!”

  “What? Alice, I tried, I tri—”

  “You failed me!” the voice continued to transition into something guttural, deep, inhuman. “You failed me Cogginsssssssssss!” The voice was almost inarticulate now, reduced to the bass line of a track Coggins knew only too well. Cooomme, Bradley! Coooooommme! Coooooommme! Cooooooommme!”

  Coggins shook his head, trying to clear his mind. But no matter what he did, his thoughts just re-scrambled, like a bag of random Scrabble letters tossed in the air.

  Nothing made sense.

  The figure moved forward again, and the mirage split, then faded.

  The thing standing in front of him wasn’t Alice. It wasn’t even Walter Wandry; not anymore.

  It was something far, far worse.

  Something ancient.

  Something borne of pure evil.

  Coooooooooooome

  Chapter 45

  Father Carter Duke was confused and disoriented, and the blood that continuously dripped into his left eye wasn’t helping him catch his bearings.

  He wiped it away for what seemed like the thousandth time, and then gently prodded the deep cut on his forehead. The skin separated at the simple touch, and the stream of blood from the wound flowed more easily.

  “Fuck,” he swore, his voice hoarse. Carter could still feel the man’s fingers on either side of his throat, their phantom grip crushing his trachea. His side ached and his left ankle was sprained, if not broken. That psychopath Dirk, the one who had pretended to be a cop, a biker, a fucking hitman for Tony, had done a number on him.

  Him and Pike.

  A man hell bent on revenge… for what?

  Carter had fucked over so many people over the years, that it was hard for him to keep track. Yes, his time with Yori and Tony had been the beginning, had been the impetus that had eventually driven him here to Askergan after many years, but that man? The man with the missing fingers?

  Carter didn’t know him… didn’t know him at all.

  Back at Riot 7 he had sold out that prick Yori; he had shouted at Tony that he had a man working for him that was an undercover agent.

  Thing is, Carter couldn’t actually remember mentioning the man’s name at all. At the time, it seemed that Tony already knew who he was talking about.

  Had he suspected Yori or this man, Dirk?

  Father Carter shook his head.

  What did it matter? Yori was dead, killed in the battle at Riot 7, the one from which he and Pike had barely escaped alive. And now Dirk was dead, too. Upon further contemplation, Carter realized that this was probably a good thing, something that put further separation between him and that time, that life.

  Pike had advised against coming back here, given what had happened in the locker room of Tony’s gym. But they had been swindled out of their cash, and the only leverage they had left was the tape.

  The tape of Father Peter Stevens and the children.

  And now, after Pike had put an end to Dirk, they had one less connection to that past. Even the two Mexicans that they had struck a deal with so long ago were now dead, once again by Pike’s hand.

  This was his time now, his time to make a change.

  Father Carter was moving more quickly, fueled by the sirens and lights that illuminated the night sky. As he neared the door, a man stumbled out of the estate, his eyes so wide that Carter thought they might roll right out of his head.

  “Father,” he said softly. Had his eyes not been so open as they were, they might have widened in surprise. “You don’t want to go in there.”

  The biker glanced over Carter’s shoulder at the Mercedes which was almost completely engulfed in flames now, and then at the blood dripping down Carter’s face.

  “Jesus, Father, you okay? Do you need help?”

  Carter took a deep breath.

  The Mexican gangbangers were dead, and by all accounts the bikers, what with their bodies littering the road outside and the long driveway, had taken heavy losses. Which meant that if Sheriff White and his men were inside with the girls, and cleaning up the garbage that was Walter Wandry, then everything had gone off with only—he thumbed the cut over his eye again and cringed—a moderate hitch.

  It was a deep gash, but it would heal.

  “I’m fine,” he grumbled, and then ignored the man’s warning and moved to the door.

  A police siren suddenly squealed, and Carter whipped his head around to face the sound. A sharp pain ran from his neck down to his elbow, and he hissed loudly.

  A Pekinish police car had pulled up next to the Mercedes, and a green looking officer jumped out even before it was stopped, gun drawn.

  “Fuck,” he whispered. He turned back to the large open doors and limped even faster.

  The injuries he had sustained were bad, but getting arrested by Pekinish PD during a gang war between the bikers and cartels would be worse.

  Much worse.

  “I’m getting the fuck out of here,” the biker shouted, making a b-line for the fence. “You should do that same, Father!”

  “Hey! You! Hey, stop!” the officer shouted, his voice barely audible above the sound of the sirens.

  Father Carter used the biker as a distraction and crouched down as low as his wounded ankle would allow and continued forward.

  He made it to the entrance of the estate, and despite his eagerness, he hesitated before entering.

  It was the smell; a ghastly odor, thick and pungent, emanated from the open doors. The scent that Father Carter could only compare to decomposing flesh, even though that wasn’t quite right, this smell was much worse, coated the insides of his nostrils and his throat, and he found himself expending considerable energy keeping his last meal in his stomach.

  You don’t want to go in there.

  Another shout from his rear, which was followed quickly by a single gun report, drove him inside.

  The interior of the estate was as opulent as he might have expected given what he had heard about Sabra’s poor taste, but someone had shattered several of the chandelier lights above, sparing him the worst of the gold accents and ornate frames containing oil paintings of what looked like transvestite soldiers in full regalia.

  He was in a large foyer, that much he could tell in the dim light, constructed of huge slabs of marble tiles beneath his feet that ran to the nearest wall and continued all the way to the ceiling.

  Another police car, followed by a third, could be heard pulling up to the estate, and Carter spent little time observing the estate’s interior design.

  He limped onward. A few more steps and he realized there was a strange thickness to the air, something that he couldn’t solely attribute to the stench.

  The smell was bad, surely, but there was something beneath the smell that was somehow worse.

  And Carter found himself being drawn toward it.

  He had just turned down a narrow hallway to the left of the foyer when a biker came toward him, running full tilt. Carter twisted at the last second, pressing his back against the wall to avoid being bowled over.

  When the man, a doughy fellow with dark eyes and a shaved head, was even with Carter, he stopped suddenly and then turned to face the priest.

  The biker was breathing heavily, and there was a sticky white substance clinging to the corners of his lips. The man’s eyes darted to Carter’s white collar, which was spotted with his blood, and then he grabbed him by the arms.

  Carter cringed, thinking that this man was going to headbutt him or throw him to the ground.

  But he did neither. Instead, the biker leaned in close until their eyes were only about an inch apart.

  The biker wasn’t going to hurt him, Carter realized. He was too terrified to hurt him.

  “There is evil in this place, father,” he hissed, inundating Carter with his sickly sweet breath. “Terrible, horrible things. Dead things.”

  Carter somehow managed to wrangle himself from the biker’s grip, and yet despite his efforts, t
he man, eyes unblinking, kept his face close.

  “Get the fuck off me,” Carter grumbled and tried to move away. The man held his gaze.

  “Pure, fucking evil, Father. Evil that needs to be exorcised.”

  Carter broke the spell by placing his hands on the man’s chest and giving him a hard shove. The biker stumbled, and Carter quickly resumed his path down the hallway toward the origin of the smell.

  “Exorcise the evil, Father! Get rid of the evil! The evil! Water boarding won’t cut it this time!” the biker’s voice that followed Carter was shrill. “Mater est, matrem omnium! Mother is here! Leland is here! Ann Laforet is here! The Goat is here!”

  Carter shook his head, trying to rid himself of the weight of the strange words.

  Less than a minute later, he came to another biker, only this man was clearly dead. Lying across the hallway, his face had been completely caved in. Part of his nose, a swatch of skin from his cheek, and the runny contents of one of his eyes were still stuck to the wall above the body like horrible graffiti.

  Carter cringed.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, wondering if the big black Sheriff had finally lost his mind.

  Get in, get the girls, get out.

  That was the plan; that was all they were supposed to do. His eyes flicked to the man’s pulp of a face.

  They weren’t supposed to do this.

  Did the cartel come inside? He wondered briefly, before banishing the idea.

  No, they wouldn’t do that; Pike gave them explicit instructions.

  And besides, he had seen their bodies on the street outside. Even if there were other cartel members involved, when there was money to be made, lots of money, a shit ton of money, they would stick to the plan, he was sure of it.

  The stench thickened as he continued down the hallway until it became so pungent that his eyes started to water and he was forced to cover his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his black robe.

  The next body he came across was in an even worse shape than the first. A man was sitting with his back against the wall, his hands folded in his lap, palms up.

  He looked almost peaceful.

  It was from his neck up that things went wrong; it looked as if his head hadn’t so much been crushed as it had been popped. Blood and brains and fragments of skull sprayed upward from the man’s ragged neck, coating the wall above like chunky oatmeal.