Anika judged the officer to be only six feet or so away now and approaching. “Ma’am, relax. It’s okay. No one is going to hurt you. I promise. I’m just going to do a quick search of your person. Please don’t move.”
The woman stopped and was now standing above Anika, her feet straddling Anika’s body at the waist. She squatted and placed her hands at the small of Anika’s back, mechanically patting her waist before shifting her palms down to Anika’s buttocks and legs, slipping her fingers forward until they were between the pavement and Anika’s thighs.
The touch of the officer’s fingers sent shivers of ecstasy through Anika, and she began to recite a prayer of strength in her head, desperate to summon the god she’d worshipped at church most of her life, but whom she’d never quite believed in. If he was real, she needed him now; this was the moment to emerge and set Anika on her path to redemption.
The thought of god and the afterlife abruptly set forth a wave of peace within Anika, and although the scents and sounds of the woman were still producing a fire inside of her, her new focus on something higher was keeping the blaze contained. She nearly began laughing as the feeling of calm took hold, assuring Anika that she was capable of making it through this moment, and that this young woman with sixty years ahead of her would live beyond today. To see her mother and father again. To one day become a wife and mother and grandmother.
Anika smiled when the woman removed her hands and then stood tall. She was done with the search.
“I’m almost done here,” the officer said, “I just need to check your torso.”
Anika’s panic resurfaced. “I’ve nothing on me,” she pleaded, squeezing her eyes tightly, trying to harness every last feeling of god and spirituality.
Anika felt the officer lean forward, her crotch now on Anika’s thighs. Her mouth was only inches from Anika’s ear when she said, “Please remain still.”
The soft wind of the officer’s whisper exploded on Anika’s ear, and all of the hairs on her body seemed to rise at once. Anika opened her mouth and licked her two front teeth, tasting the breath of the officer that still lingered in the air.
Anika’s thoughts of god turned black, and, in an instant, she snapped her head to the left towards the officer’s neck. The accuracy of the strike was acute, as was the silence that instantly befell the Interways. In a second, Anika had the woman’s throat in the clutch of her mouth, her oversized canines pierced deeply into the officer’s windpipe. She bit down with the force of a vise until she felt the tube of cartilage snap in her jaws.
Anika sat up slowly and scanned the area around her, perusing the road for any cars that might be approaching, or perhaps some other witness, an unlikely pedestrian who had decided to make the dreadful decision to walk the Interways this morning.
But Anika saw only the staring leaves of the red maples and douglas firs that blanketed the landscape, and quickly got to her feet, lifting the officer’s dying body with her as she rose, drinking in the sensations of blood and skin and hair, as well as the sounds of the last gasping chokes of innocence. The officer’s corpse dangled in Anika’s bite, the toes of her boots barely scraping the gravel below as Anika stood trancelike, her jaws still clenched reflexively, unwilling to let up for even a moment until the last twitch of the young woman was a memory.
Anika finally let the body fall to the ground and stared at it blankly. She could feel the sting of regret build within her, slowly replacing the unstoppable ferocity that had momentarily besieged her. But the kill couldn’t go to waste, and before Anika’s guilt rendered her impotent, she grabbed the woman’s hair at the crown of her head, gathering the thick brown tress in her fingers, and dragged the officer’s body into the woods, continuing to walk until she was well off the shoulder of the Interways.
As she fed on the body, replenishing her energy for what she hoped would be the final time, she cried, her salty tears mixing with the bloody meat of her victim.
She was just beginning on the liver when the sound of an approaching siren wailed in the distance, and for a moment, Anika considered a default surrender. She could simply continue feeding on the officer until the System men came, and once they reached her, they would shoot her on sight. Even if they offered Anika the chance to surrender, she could rush them, not too fast, just fast enough that they could get their shots off.
Instead, Anika turned back in the direction of Pavel Delov’s cabin and began walking, looking back over her shoulder one last time at the fresh kill behind her, silently praying the officers would find the body while it was still fresh.
Chapter 8
PETR PULLED THE TRUCK up to his rental house just before midnight, noting the absence of any other car on the street out front. His roommate was still out for the evening, damning his tomorrow through an infernal combination of alcohol and sleeplessness. Petr was relieved at the empty sight though, knowing he could now avoid the required tell-all conversation with Gil and immediately get to work.
The group project was due on Thursday, and Petr’s portion of the assignment—a comparison of plants grown with nitrogen fertilizer versus those grown without it—had begun in earnest since before the school year was even underway. And he had maintained a strict schedule thus far; with the exception of yesterday, he had never allowed a day to pass without at least touching the assignment in some way.
But there was still a lot to do. He hadn’t finished writing the final analysis of the overall experiment, and his final presentation, for which he would have to demonstrate and explain the outcome of the experiment to the group at large, still needed a lot of attention.
The group collaboration was almost half of the final Freshman Biology grade, and, not foreseeing that his lover and best friend would be abandoning him for the Old World just days before it was due, Petr had committed himself fully to his partners and the project.
But Petr also knew that any work he began at this hour would be done as much to distract his thoughts from Gretel as for preparation. He could still feel the puncture of her words, even so many hours later, and though he trusted her promise that they would see each other again, that didn’t mean it would be any time soon.
Petr opened the front door and walked in slowly, taking his usual notice of the dark quiet that resonated throughout the house. He never assumed he was safe anymore, anywhere, even when entering his own home; the comfort and complacency most people settled into over the course of a day, he rarely found in his life. It was a symptom of Marlene’s poison, of course. It was the thing he had tried to explain to Gretel.
Petr toggled the kitchen light on and, as if on cue, his stomach groused. The only thing he’d eaten since breakfast was a few bites of the orchard pear, and he was starving. Mrs. Klahr normally sent him home with a month’s supply of rations, but this most recent visit had been a whirlwind, and under very different circumstances. Thus, Petr had returned home empty-handed.
He opened the refrigerator and stared lid-eyed at the paltry display: an unwrapped stick of butter, a nearly empty glass bowl that was coated with something resembling mayonnaise, and two separate mystery items that had been wrapped tightly in thick pieces of foil. The latter items weren’t Petr’s, and he suspected that whatever lurked within was well beyond the days of being edible. Using the fridge as an indicator, he didn’t even bother with the pantry.
Petr sighed and walked to the living room, and then sat with a thud on the sofa that he and Gil had somehow managed to squeeze into the small cove that acted as their living room.
Petr was exhausted, and the thought of walking across campus to the all-night commissary was overwhelming. He gauged his hunger objectively, and soon reached the conclusion that food could wait until breakfast. As long as he could fall asleep within the next half hour, which, he thought, was about twenty-five more minutes than he would need, he could wait until morning to eat.
Petr’s eyes closed once and then shot open instantly, but drifted down again just a second later, this time maintaining th
eir shut position. He let his head fall back to the stiff cushion behind him, and then turned to his side, grabbing a stray blanket that had been left on the floor at the foot of the couch. He was asleep in less than a minute.
Thoughts of Gretel entered his dreams almost immediately, and for a moment, he relived their last moment together, her body pressed between Petr’s legs as her lips brushed his. The kiss in his dream stretched longer than in reality, and Petr’s sexual desire steadily rose as he slept.
And then the phone rang.
Petr sat up immediately, inhaling and holding his breath as he searched the room, not quite sure where he was for an instant. He quickly got his bearings and rose from the sofa like a bullet, turning and walking to the phone, hesitating before picking up the receiver.
“Yes,” Petr croaked and then cleared his throat. “Yes,” he repeated, this time speaking with affirmative clarity as he searched the room for a clock, having no idea of the time.
The caller gave no response, but it was obvious to Petr the line was live based on the ambient sounds in the caller’s background.
“Hello?” Petr said, prodding.
There was a pause of several seconds and then, just as Petr was taking the receiver from his ear to hang up, a voice said, “Petr.” It wasn’t a question.
Petr became fully awake now, and he began to shake with fear. The feeling of hunger in his stomach was now replaced by dread, and his body began to quiver. He instinctively brought his second hand to the phone’s receiver, steadying it against his mouth and ear.
“Who is this?”
“Help me, Petr.”
The voice was a raspy whisper, slow and breathy, and Petr immediately envisioned Marlene as the speaker, standing bloody and wet in a swamp somewhere, holding the head of some young girl in one hand and the phone in the other; or perhaps in the basement of Gretel’s house, the bodies of Hansel and Gretel and Mrs. Klahr shredded and strewn about the floor.
“Who is this?” Petr repeated, willing himself to hide his panic and sound angry.
“Help me, Petr!” the voice screamed, and then erupted into a fit of hysterical wailing.
Petr squinted at the volume and pulled the phone away from his ear, his fear suddenly turning to alarm for the woman, recognizing the sincerity of her distress.
“Where are you calling from?” he asked now, changing the focus of his question, figuring that if he simply continued asking who it was, it wouldn’t get him any further in the conversation.
The crying on the other end of the line continued, now at a steady volume and pace.
“Miss, tell me where you are and I’ll send someone to help you.”
The crying stopped suddenly. “They’re already coming. But not to help me. I need you, Petr.”
“Anika?” The name escaped Petr’s mouth before he could stop it, knowing the impossibility of what he’d just suggested. Certainly it couldn’t be her, but something familiar in the way the woman on the phone had just said his name sparked a memory. It was the day at the Morgan cabin when Petr had asked about Anika’s necklace, the one made from Marlene’s teeth. She had made it, she told him, to memorialize the terror that had befallen them and as a way to never forget. That was the last time he’d had a real conversation with the woman, and Petr remembered now the desperation in her explanation of why she had kept the teeth. The way Anika had said his name that day seemed to be a plea for help, and Petr heard the same tenor on the phone just now.
Petr waited for a response, affirmation or denial from the woman on the phone, but instead he heard another voice, low and distant, as if it were coming from somewhere distant in the room from which she was calling.
“I’ve nothing here. What do you want?”
The voice was certainly masculine, and he was obviously distressed, as the words came out labored and dire.
Petr made the decision to simply stay quiet, to listen for any clues that could tell him what exactly was happening on the other end. There were sounds of a scuffle—thuds and such—and then a scream. Petr couldn’t tell for sure whether it was from the man or woman, but based on the clues he’d already gathered, he assumed the man.
And then the line clicked dead.
Petr held the phone to his ear for a few more seconds, but didn’t bother with the perfunctory “Hello” that normally followed this type of disconnection.
The caller was gone.
Petr placed the phone gently on the cradle and thought for a moment, and the blurred image of the human figure he thought he saw on Gretel’s back porch came to his mind. He ignored it for the moment, and instead searched his mind for the steps to take next, reluctantly deciding he had to go for help. From whom he wasn’t sure, but he had to do something; simply going back to sleep wasn’t an option. There were people in trouble. Who or what the nature of the trouble was he didn’t know, but some kind of action was required.
Petr walked quickly to the front door and pulled it towards him, and then raced in the direction of his truck, prepared to head off into the night to a place not yet determined. But before he was two paces onto the porch, and well before his eyes had time to adjust to the unlit night beyond the threshold, he ran head first into an approaching body, sending it sprawling out in front of him.
Petr knew the collision was with a man, both by the exclamation of the voice and the feel of his body, but as he bowled him to the ground, Petr caught the glimpse of another figure—female—in his periphery to the right.
“Pete!” the man said from his position on the ground, which was now several feet from Petr, nearly to the edge of the porch’s top step. “What the hell?”
It was Gil, coming home for the night. Beside him was a small, brown grocery bag that he’d dropped upon impact. It was still intact, however, having been rolled tightly from the top to the level of its contents.
Petr, who had kept his balance after the crash and was still standing, opened the front door again and reached his hand in to flick on the porch light. “Gil?”
“Welcome back, buddy. Did you set the place on fire already?” Gil was on his elbows now, smiling back at Petr.
Petr quickly stepped toward his fallen roommate, stooping over and extending his hand to help him to his feet.
Petr stood back and looked Gil over, assessing if he’d caused any injuries, and then looked toward the girl. Petr had never seen her before, and she was no doubt Gil’s prize for the night. He looked back to Gil. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
Gil laughed. “It’s okay, buddy. I’m fine. What’s happening in there anyway?” He looked at the girl beside him and smiled. “Oh, sorry, this is Jenna.”
The girl was tall and thin with a wild head of red hair. Her eyes were beautiful, though slightly unfocused at the moment. And her crooked teeth, Petr noted, somehow made her more attractive.
“Jana,” the girl corrected, not seeming the least bit irritated by the mistake.
Gil winced and shrugged. “Jana. Sorry.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Petr said. “I’m sorry Gil, I have to go.”
“Go? What are you talking about? You can’t have been home for what, three or four hours at the most?”
“More like fifteen minutes.”
Gil looked bemused, and then shivered his head, priming Petr for the explanation.
“I just got a phone call.”
“Home for fifteen minutes and the whip is already cracking. My goodness. Gretel can’t get enough, hey buddy?”
“It’s not Gretel.”
Gil raised an eyebrow and grinned.
Petr frowned. “I don’t know who it was. It was very strange. I just have to—”
“Was it that woman with the shitty voice?”
Petr’s eyes bugged.
“Yeah, she’s been calling all day today. I told her I didn’t think you’d be home until tomorrow. I asked for her name but she wouldn’t tell me. Just gave these heavy breaths. But not, like, sexy. Like it pained her that you weren’t here. Damn
crazy. And I told her fifty times you probably wouldn’t be home until tomorrow. I can’t believe she called again. And this late. Though I guess now is technically tomorrow.”
“What did she sound like?” Petr tried to stay calm, though he wasn’t quite sure why; the bruises his roommate would be displaying tomorrow from Petr’s frantic dash to his truck would be proof to the contrary.
“I don’t know. Shitty. Like I said.”
“Yes, but you said she sounded upset that I wasn’t here. Did she sound in distress?”
“Distress? I don’t know. Not really, I guess. Well, not at first anyway. But by the third or fourth call, now that you mention it, I guess she did sound a little harried. But she hung up almost immediately the last time I told her you weren’t here. Yeah, though, it did get a little worse each time she called.” Gil was measured now, momentarily sobered, intrigued by the story. “Who the hell is it?”
Jana was slowly becoming uncomfortable with their position on the porch and, Petr imagined, embarrassed by being there at all. Her body language indicated she was reconsidering the whole evening. Petr had clearly lingered too long and was now on the brink of short-circuiting the girl’s decision, which was probably a good thing, since she was destined to rue it come morning.
“I don’t know who it is. Look Gil, I didn’t mean to interrupt you two. I’m sorry, I’ll—”
“Don’t know? Well then where are you going? If you don’t know who’s calling, why are you running off like a murder of crows is on your ass?”
“I...I don’t know.”
And Petr didn’t know. The only women he really knew at all, besides Gretel, who was barely a woman, were Anika and Mrs. Klahr. Anika was, ostensibly, dead, and whoever was on the other end of the phone call he’d just received was decades younger than Mrs. Klahr. She may have had a shitty voice, but there wasn’t the aged croak and cadence of Amanda Klahr.
So where was he going? He’d probably just end up back in the Back Country. And what then? Find Gretel and resume his pleas for her to stay?
Anika Rising (Gretel Book 4) Page 9