“It’s me,” he whispered into her ear. “We’ve got company. Two men, one woman. They have flashlights.” Mark felt her head nod beneath his palm. He helped her to sit up and guided her hand to the butt of the pistol. “You take this. Give me the butcher knife.”
The footfalls of the intruders grew quieter as they moved deeper into the store and away from broken glass. Flashlights bobbed up and down, searching the shelves.
“This place has hardly been touched,” said the woman.
“See? What’d I tell you? A treasure trove of good eats! You can get anything here, from—”
“Can I Taser this asshole again, please?”
Lauryn crouched and watched through the arrow loop. Shapes were all she could see behind the flashlights. That did little to help her assess the threat. She didn’t know how, or if, these people were even armed.
“How do we get this stuff back to the courthouse?” asked not-Skinny Man.
“There’ll be dollies and boxes and whatnot in the back,” said the woman. “Maybe in the freezer or storage room.”
The exchange helped Lauryn identify what voice belonged to which flashlight. The woman stepped toward Fort Catherine and the storage room behind them.
“Hey, what’s this?” her voice said. “Some kinda store within a store?”
Shit.
She turned to Mark, who was kneeling protectively over a still-sleeping Megan. “Turn on the flashlight. They’re coming. We need to short-circuit this if possible while they’re still at range. Hurry!”
Mark shook Megan awake and she groaned.
“Shhhh,” he whispered to her.
“What was that?” demanded the woman’s voice.
“What was what?”
“I heard it too! I think it came from over there by the—”
Mark stood up suddenly and snapped on the flashlight, aiming it at the woman. She squinted, putting one large hand up to shield her eyes.
“Everyone, stop right where you are,” Lauryn said.
All three stopped cold and targeted their flashlights at the voice behind the barrier. The woman’s eyes began to adjust, so she lowered her hand.
Lauryn couldn’t believe it. Oh, no. “Give me that light,” she demanded, and Mark handed it to her. She squinted against the three yellow beams converging on her own face. Lauryn gripped the flashlight and pistol together and aimed at each of the intruders in turn. Oh, no, not them. Not now.
“Officer Hughes?” The woman sounded surprised, grateful, and just a touch fearful, all at the same time.
“It is! Holy crap on a cracker, it’s her!”
“Who’s her?”
There was nothing for it but to play it out, Lauryn knew. “Dora Baine. Raymond Collins. Stick-figure friend.”
“Wait! I know her, too! Ain’t you that bitch killed Georgie in that apart—it is you! Aw, man,” said Cackler, backing away. “How in the hell does this happen to me? I mean, I come fifteen, twenty miles and I find the one place with this bitch pointing a gun at me again, and all I—”
“Caw-caw-caw!”
Cackler shut up and stopped moving.
Juggs returned her attention to Lauryn. “Y’all have a nice little fort back there. All Boy Scouts and shit. Who’s that back there with you? Your hubby?” Juggs waggled the five black fingers of her left hand at him. “Howdy, hubby. Your wife and I … work together, I guess you could say.”
Lauryn stood up straight, so she could see clearly over the barrier. “What happened to your hand, Juggs? Stick your fingers in a light socket?”
Juggs smiled evenly. “I’ll have my fingers in you in a minute. And not in a good way, neither. I’ll be pulling out your fucking intestines.”
Lauryn thumbed back the hammer of the .40-caliber. “It’s either.”
“What?”
“‘And not in a good way either.’ Didn’t you used to be a teacher?”
Cackler snickered.
Juggs’ face became stone. “Smack, Cackler. Lights off.”
“Mom? What’s happening?” Megan’s voice wasn’t the least bit sleepy. It sounded entirely awake. And scared to death.
“Quiet, honey,” said Mark. “Listen to me … get in the storage room. Now. Don’t come out till we tell you, okay?”
“But Dad—”
“Go.”
Shuffling sounds beyond the barrier. Whispers and feet scraping. Lauryn swung the flashlight right and left, catching glimpses of shoe heels and shirttails.
“Was that a kid I heard back there?” asked Smack. Lauryn darted the flashlight toward the sound of his voice. “If I might ask,” he said hungrily, “how old?”
“Fuck you,” said Lauryn.
“No, dearie, fuck you.” Juggs’ voice, too near.
The barrier to her right began to move. Lauryn backed away, nearly falling over Mark as he slammed the storeroom door behind their daughter.
Lauryn swept the light across the shelf as it tipped over. Tops of heads, sundries falling, then the entire shelf crashed to the floor. Someone screamed from beyond the other barrier and she fell for it, swinging the flashlight around. She caught a glimpse of Smack raising a weapon.
Realizing the bait-and-switch too late, Lauryn swung the gun and flashlight around as Cackler barreled into her, pinning her against the wall. “Thanks for killing Georgie before,” he whispered to her like a lover. “Now I got you all to myself.”
Juggs came up behind him, her meaty left hand reaching for Lauryn. Mark half-stood, angled the knife at Cackler and lunged. The thin man shied away, pulling Lauryn off balance with him, and Mark buried the butcher knife in Juggs’ thigh.
The big woman wailed and cursed. Smack reached over the barrier and fired the Taser into Mark, who shot upright and straight, jerking with the current, then fell useless to the ground.
Lauryn slammed the barrel of her pistol across Cackler’s jaw and he went down. Before she could recover, Juggs was up again and reaching for her throat, this time with both hands. Smack leapt to her aid.
Padding sounds. A stream of barking. Smack stopped his end-run around the standing barrier and turned.
Lauryn twisted away and fell over Mark’s prone form. It probably saved her life. Juggs turned to grab her and wrenched the wound in her thigh, filling the store with a guttural scream. Lauryn scrambled over Mark’s moaning body and clutched at the barrier behind him to get to her feet. In that moment, she realized she was all that stood between these psychopaths and her daughter. All that stood between Megan and a fate worse than death itself. Mark’s dream of their apartment-fate coming true on the road after.
Lauryn took a breath and settled into herself, like she was on the gun range. She brought the flashlight and pistol around and identified two targets. Cackler on the floor, shielded by Juggs’ bulk. And Juggs, turning an enraged eye on Lauryn’s light and pushing herself to her feet for a final charge.
Lauryn took aim.
“You ain’t got the stones!” howled Juggs, gathering momentum to leap the six feet between them. “I’m gonna fuck you u—”
The shot popped in the store like an oversized firecracker. In the yellow halo of her flashlight, Lauryn watched a single, perfect black hole appear in the middle of the big woman’s forehead. Juggs jerked backward. Her outstretched left hand went limp at her side as she fell over Cackler, already dead.
Lauryn allowed herself a half-second of relief before swinging the flashlight around, looking for Smack. She found him on the floor just beyond the downed barrier, fending off a dog attack, his Taser lost in the darkness.
“Jasper!”
His fur was matted, with mud or blood she couldn’t tell, but Lauryn recognized their golden retriever. Jasper clamped Smack’s bicep with his vice-like teeth and wouldn’t let go.
“Get off me! Get off me!” he screeched, scrambling backward and frantically pushing the dog away.
She swung her light around and found Cackler preparing to lunge at her. Caught in her sights, his expressio
n fell to cowardice, as it had on what seemed like such a long-ago morning. “I’m gone! I’m gone! I promise you’ll never see me again!” he cried, springing to his feet and running past her. But she didn’t intend to let him go this time. Lauryn tracked him with the barrel, but the barrier came between them before she could line up a clear shot, and he was hunch-running full-out for the front window.
Jasper yelped and Smack heaved him through the air, taking Lauryn’s legs out from under her. More scrambling and fumbling over fallen sundries as Smack followed close on Cackler’s heels. Lauryn got to her feet as quickly as she could. She heard glass crunching again and swept the flashlight toward the front window. But there was only a shadow darting around the corner.
She brought the flashlight and pistol around again on Juggs’ cooling corpse. Just to make sure.
Mark moaned incoherently. Jasper responded sympathetically. Both hardly moved.
First things first. Lauryn stumbled to the storeroom. “Megan, are you okay? Open the door, please, honey.”
The latch clicked.
The door opened.
A terrified teen sought the warmth and protection of her mother’s arms.
“It was my dream!” she cried into her mother’s chest. “It was my dream!”
Lauryn wrapped her arms around her daughter, the pistol in one hand, the flashlight in the other. She cocked one eye at the front window, but the moonlight showed only fractured glass and splintered wood. Then her gaze returned to the putrefying bag of flesh and bones that was all that remained of Dora Baine.
“Yeah, baby, I guess it was. I guess it was.”
Chapter 20. Monday, early morning.
Stavros watched and waited. He sat up the street from the Montgomery County Courthouse, on the second floor of a red brick building shrouded in darkness.
Patience had been his greatest ally since shooting Barcak. Patience and a keen need to know what was making Marsten tick now. And how he, Stavros, could personally wind down the madman’s clock. Somehow undo what he’d done. He fingered the pistol lying next to him. It no longer felt so alien to him, not after Barcak. It made him feel safe to have it nearby.
Stavros was astonished that no police or National Guard had arrived to retake the courthouse. They’d seemed to be trying to reestablish control in Huntsville. At least in pockets of the town, particularly around Sam Houston State. He’d heard the sirens.
But for whatever reason, the law was nowhere to be seen in Conroe. So the crowd of prisoners milled around the front of the courthouse, as it had for hours. The former inmates lay on the steps in their white prison uniforms without a care in the world, like they were loafing on the beach.
In those jumpsuits, they look like spirits lounging around in the dark, thought Stavros. Lazy spirits.
Despite the scene of sloth up the street, the giant speakers of a commandeered public address system blasted out Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party.” Danny Elfman sang about lightning striking him down and then heading to a party for the dead.
When the song finished, it would start right back up again. Its jerky guitar, schizophrenic drums, and hyper horns seemed at war over the rhythm. Over and over it played. The cacophony gnawed at Stavros’ psyche. He was a scientist. When he listened to music at all, he liked beats he could find with his foot. Not noise in the key of chaos.
The prisoners would go into the courthouse in fives and tens, but so many had shown up that a large crowd still waited outside. Once they went in, they never came back out. That seemed strangely appropriate, since Elfman urged partiers to leave their souls behind before entering the revels.
Hours ago, sometime before midnight, Stavros recognized two of his former test subjects, Raymond Collins and Dora Baine, as they left the building and walked up the street. Probably on some mission for Marsten, he figured. He’d considered trailing them, but decided the two of them together were too much for him to handle alone. He was new to this John McClane stuff.
So instead, Stavros hunkered down in the dark and watched and waited. He’d chosen the building for its sightlines, not its aromas. It was home to one of those design agencies that specializes in one-offs: posters, coffee mugs, and Mother’s Day t-shirts. Dyes and inks and whatever chemicals they use to manufacture vain knick-knacks for $9.99 combined to create a noxious mixture of smells. He’d been forced to open several windows for ventilation. He hoped the vapors weren’t toxic.
Stavros decided to let himself slide down into sleep. He picked up Barcak’s crumpled white jumpsuit beside him, wrapped it into a tight ball for his head, and lay down on the floor. An hour or two. That’s all he needed. But no sooner was he horizontal than his hazy brain began thinking again.
A lot can change in a couple of days.
Just a few days ago, he’d been a professor of genetics with an inadequate federal research grant and an endowed chair. CEO of GeneSerene, Inc. His greatest worry? Navigating the politics to becoming assistant dean of the College of Biological Sciences, a fast track to the dean’s position. And Serenity was to have been the crown jewel of his career, the legacy he left the world. The next polio vaccine. The next mother’s little helper.
But yesterday, he’d killed a man. The shocking thing about that was how normal he felt now. Barcak was dead. But better him than me, Stavros thought.
And today, priorities were a little more immediate. Today, he’d needed to blend in with a herd of rapists, murderers, and thieves in order to track down Peter Marsten, his personal creation. Well, if he were being fair, his co-creation with God. Marsten hadn’t exactly started out sane.
“If I co-authored a paper with God on all this,” he said to the ceiling, taking comfort as usual in the sound of his own voice, “I wonder if He’d want first position as co-author? I mean, He’s a generous guy, right? And I’m an up-and-coming sort in the genetics business. Comparatively speaking, of course. How about a little professional courtesy and give me the first position, Lord of All Creation?”
The wind answered him with a whistle through the open window.
Stavros fake-laughed loudly, then stifled it, remembering the street was only twenty feet below. Yesterday and today stirred together in his head like a sweet and sour broth. God, he was tired.
He turned his head to get more comfortable. The cotton of the jumpsuit felt rough under his neck. But it’d certainly come in handy.
Back in Huntsville, he’d faced the challenge of hiding from more threats like Barcak, then decided, why not hide in plain sight? So he’d slipped into the dead man’s party suit, which turned out to be a little snug, and wandered around until he found a large group of escapees. With so many inmates, and not all of them acquainted with one another, he’d had little trouble blending in. He’d hung around the fringes, broken a few windows with them, stolen a few gold watches to establish brotherhood, and been patient. Very, very patient, like a good scientist should be.
Barcak had been right. Everyone was heading south as part of some kind of plan hatched by Marsten before turning his fellow prisoners loose.
Maybe there really is honor among thieves. And rapists. And murderers.
On cue, the wind whoooooooed again through the window over his head.
Special effects by God, he thought. “Yeah, He’d want first position. The bastard.”
A few of the escapees ran their own way. But from the snippets of conversation he overheard here and there, most seemed compelled to join Marsten. It was bizarre. When the cops had finally begun circling downtown Huntsville like sharks, a group of four escapees decided to head south down State Highway 75—considerably less congested than the parking lot of I-45—and hotwired a pickup truck. Stavros bought a spot in the truck’s bed with two cartons of cigarettes, the old currency of prison. Like the torn legging and collar of his white jumpsuit, they’d carried a little blood on them from the corner store. Barcak’s blood.
Yesterday, the dried brown splotches would’ve stood out like a sore thumb. Gauche and dirty. Caus
e for raised eyebrows. Today, they were badges of honor. Street-cred tattoos inked in blood. His ticket, along with the cigarettes, to a free ride south.
A lot can change in a couple of days.
Once they’d reached Conroe, he’d silently slipped away from the ever-increasing crowds of prisoners assembling around the courthouse, drawn there like buzzards to roadkill. In the confusion of new arrivals, he’d found it easy to steal away, shed the jumpsuit, and find a perch to watch from.
More whistling through the windows teamed with his racing thoughts to keep him awake, despite his fatigue. His limbs felt like wet sandbags. God was getting back at him for the bastard comment.
And the screwing with nature thing, maybe? he wondered. Maybe that damned heckler on the blog had been right. He and Parker both.
Man, he needed sleep.
Irritated from that damned song playing over and over, Stavros levered himself up to shut the window, toxic fumes be damned. Two shadows passing below caught his eye.
“—the Maestro,” he heard an approaching male voice say. “That’ll be all she wrote then, boy.”
“That sounds like fun! I’m totally in! You think this Maestro guy will like me? I can make myself pretty damned useful. I mean, you saw me back there. You saw me go right in after that bitch, even before Juggs. God rest her soul, of course. I was the first one in—”
“Jesus, man, shut up. Please.”
“Sorry. Sure. I get excit … Okay, you don’t have to keep pointing that thing at me. One electroshock is enough. I’ll shut up.”
The voices trailed off behind fast-walking footfalls.
Stavros glanced over the sill of the window. Two men, one average height, the other tall and gangly, were quickstepping away around the corner, headed for the courthouse. It was hard to tell in the dark, but the voice and build of the first man reminded him of Raymond. But Raymond had left earlier with Dora.
God rest her soul.
Whoa. Wait a minute. Dora was dead?
Stormbreak (The Serenity Strain Book 1) Page 19