by Ninie Hammon
The victory would go to the last man standing.
Or…to the one who vanished.
The thought crept on little cat feet into Jack’s mind. He had half a minute on Cole now, enough time to simply disappear, hole up in any one of a dozen cracks and crannies. He’d be safe there. Then he could slip out…
What was the point in that? He might elude Cole this time, might even get away entirely, go for help, arrest Cole for kidnapping Theresa, put him away. But Cole would get out on bail before the trial, or overpower some officer or jailer and run. No end to what you can accomplish when you have the strength of ten men and you don’t care whether you live or die. Then he’d show up again—at Theresa’s or Daniel’s, somewhere else, some place where Jack might be even more vulnerable.
No. One way or the other, it ended here, today. Winner takes home all the marbles.
* * * * * *
Daniel gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white and forced himself to focus. The important thing right now was Emily’s safety, not her fidelity.
“Emily, we don’t have time to talk! Just listen. The men I told you about—they’re here. Jack called and told me to get you and Andi and Theresa to safety. He said the two Bad Kids are—”
“Is that it, is that what you called us—the Bad Kids?” said a male voice in his ear and Daniel almost ran the suburban off the road. “I’d tell you what we called you, but it ain’t polite to curse in front of a lady.”
“Who is—?” But Daniel knew who it was. “Where’s Emily?” He was barely able to force the words out through a mouth so suddenly dry his tongue and palate came apart as reluctantly as two strips of Velcro.
“And that ‘safety’ part. You can forget about that. Your family ain’t safe now, and they’re going to get more ‘unsafe’ with every passing minute.”
The voice made a sound like chuckling, but ugly and vulgar, laughter slathered with slime.
“Right now, you’ve got five of them—minutes, I mean—to get here, or I’m going to shoot the missus or the little girl.”
* * * * * * *
Jack had miscalculated, underestimated the strength of the possessed man scrambling behind, clawing at the air, reaching out to grab the back of his shirt. He’d thought the broken mechanical thing he’d turned over in the aisle behind him would slow Cole down more than it did. Jack had no idea what the machine was. Half taken apart, it looked like the autopsy of a robot, but the disabled mechanism was the size of a buffalo and must have weighed more than five hundred pounds. He’d never have been able to topple it if hadn’t been propped up with boxes where a leg had come off. And when it fell, it wedged in between rows of butcher paper spools six feet across—stacked all the way to the wall.
Jack wasn’t sure because he didn’t turn around to look, but apparently Cole had merely picked it up like he’d done the boxes full of paper reams, and pitched it backward. Now he was bearing down on Jack, yelling obscenities and threats.
“…I catch you, nigger, I’m gonna bust both your knees…bend them backwards until I hear them pop.”
He was panting, the words coming from only a few feet behind Jack as he raced down a narrow aisle between packing crates.
Too close!
He had no choice. He knew the layout of this side of the warehouse well. The other side was full of machinery—not the burrows of boxes that kept vagrants warm at night and hid the activities of hormone-driven teenagers. That was the distribution rather than the storage side of the warehouse. He’d only been there once, in the manager’s office. The layout of the rest of that part of the building was completely unknown. But unless he took his chances with a change of direction, Cole would be on him in seconds.
Turning sharply left, Jack burst out into the open area in the middle of the warehouse and raced toward the door leading to the offices of the small staff on the far side of the building. He could hear Cole behind him, panting, making a sound like the engine of a train.
Jack was in better shape. Thinner, a runner. Cole’s massive legs were like tree trunks, but he was stunningly fast. Jack had gained a couple of steps on him when he changed direction and he saw the puddle in time to leap over it. Cole either didn’t see it with his one eye, or couldn’t jump it quick enough, because he hit it at a dead run. Oil, likely from a leak in a forklift engine.
He heard Cole go down hard, so close Jack heard a muffled grunt of pain and a gasp as the wind was knocked out of him.
Jack made it to the front office door before Cole even got to his feet. If the door was locked… It wasn’t. He leapt inside, slammed the door behind him, and snapped the deadbolt—not that it would stop Cole. He pawed the wall for a light switch beside the door. The offices were black as a coal mine with no windows to admit the little light that filtered down from the big windows in the warehouse. He found the switch, and then squinted at the sudden illumination. A chest-high filing cabinet sat next to the door and Jack yanked its drawers open to get the weight out front, and once it was unbalanced, he shoved it from the side until it toppled over, blocking the closed door.
He turned toward the door in the back of the room he thought led to the next office, blowing the dust off the memory of the one time he’d ever been in the office complex. The picture that memory drew in his mind was of inter-connected offices, one leading into the next on the ground floor. In each was a Japanese woman whose vacant smile indicated she probably couldn’t speak English. In the back of the office on the end was a staircase leading to more offices similarly configured on the second floor. He was almost certain he remembered a door on the top floor—beside the manager’s office with its dignified wood paneling, big cherry desk and incongruous portrait of a totally naked Playboy Bunny occupying one whole wall.
That door had to lead back out into the warehouse, didn’t it? Where else could it go? But Jack wasn’t absolutely certain it was even there. If it wasn’t, he was trapped. If it was, it might be locked. If it wasn’t locked, Jack had no idea what lay beyond it.
* * * * * * *
Theresa could hear crashing sounds, like big boxes was falling down out there in the warehouse. Or more likely getting knocked down.
She spoke softly, out loud, didn’t bow her head or anything like that. Wasn’t nowhere in the Bible said you’s supposed to bow your head when you talked to God. And she’d got used to praying out loud all those years ago when her Granny told her that Jesus was her friend and He was always right there next to her, anxious to have a conversation.
She liked to a’talked Jesus’s ear off then, tellin’ him how she heard things—bad, awful things—that couldn’t nobody else hear. And why was that? And that sometimes she smelled things so awful it’d a made you heave up your breakfast if you’s smelling them with your nose.
Jesus always listened. She knew he was listening now.
I know you got this, that ain’t none of what’s happnin’ escaped your notice. And I know you don’t hold much with a body bein’ scared, because that’s telling you I don’t b’lieve you’re big enough to handle my piddly little problems.
She made a humph sound in her throat.
And I also know it ain’t news to you that whether I’m supposed to be or not, I am scared spitless right now, way deep in my soul scared!
I never did ask you why it was you made it so’s I could sense what was there in the “other.” But I’m askin’ now. I know what Jack don’t. I know what kind of thing’s driving Cole, how ugly and mean and evil it is, and it’s that knowin’ that’s so terrifying I feel all hollow and empty inside. Why’d you fix it so’s I know? I don’t want this, never did want this. I’d a whole lot rather be like other folks that don’t see what’s actually goin’ on around them. Why me?
She stopped, a little smile flirted with the corners of her mouth, and she took in a deep shaky breath.
Reckon how many times a day you hear that—why me? I bet if you wasn’t God, you’d be rollin’ your eyes. Ain’t even a proper question,
is it. The real question’s why NOT me?
A rumble came from the warehouse, the sound of a pile of something falling to the floor and Theresa flinched. Cole’s voice was pure hate, carried to her from far down toward the other end of the warehouse.
“…I catch you, nigger, I’m gonna bust both your knees…bend ’em backwards with my bare hands…’till you hear ’em pop.”
* * * * * * *
Jack burst out the door at the end of the upstairs hallway and slapped off the lights behind him. In the interconnected offices downstairs, he’d turned on each office’s lights so he could see, locked the door behind him, then raced across the office to the next door, pulling out office chairs, turning over the water cooler—dumped an aquarium in one office—and filing cabinets into Cole’s path, then turned the lights back off as he left the room.
Apparently, Cole wasn’t bothering to search for the light switches—merely shattered the doors and burst through. He could hear Cole’s obscenities when he ran into the debris Jack’d left in his path.
Jack had expected/hoped! this upstairs door led back out into the warehouse. It didn’t. It opened onto a landing with a staircase leading down in front of it to an internal hallway below that was lit by the bilious glow from a lone florescent bulb flickering in the ceiling. Obviously, this was the storage area for the office complex. Doors opened off the hallway, three on the left side, two small ones close together, and then a set of double doors on the right. The bathrooms were here, too, side by side, the first two doors on the left.
But there was no door at the end of this hallway leading back out into the warehouse. No door at all. Dead end.
Jack could hear Cole crashing through the last of the office doors on the bottom floor, shattering one after another—hollow core office doors, true, but the crashing and ripping sounded like Cole had brought along a wood-chipper.
Knocking down half a dozen doors, one after the other, required enormous strength and endurance.
Unfortunately, that part didn’t matter anymore. Jack was trapped.
When Jack heard Cole on the stairs, he didn’t hesitate on the landing any longer. Cole hit the top of the stairs on the second floor as Jack leapt down the back stairs into the storage hallway where he’d make his last stand. Halfway down the stairs, his feet got tangled up. He grabbed for the rail and stopped the worst part of his fall, but he still ended up at the bottom of the stairs, upside down, with his feet sprawled out on the steps above him.
Then Cole appeared at the top of the stairs and grinned down on him. He looked like a creature out of a horror movie, his features “rearranged” when he’d face-planted on the concrete floor after he hit the sheen of motor oil. His lip was split and bleeding, two bottom teeth were missing and one top tooth was broken into a jagged shape like a vampire fang. His bloody nose was mashed over onto his left cheek, where a deep gash sliced down from the top of his ear to the corner of his mouth. His black eye-patch was gone, revealing the sunken crater of a missing eye, angry red, with infected-looking goo draining down out of it.
All those were superficial wounds, of course. The only serious injury Jack could see was Cole’s right arm. It was broken in a nasty compound fracture. Blood gushed from the hole of torn flesh in his forearm, where the white stick of the radius or the ulna was protruding through the skin. His right hand and wrist dangled as useless below it as a Christmas ornament.
Cole stood with his left hand on the railing surrounding the landing catching his breath.
Then he began to laugh.
* * * * * * *
The sound was faint, but Theresa knew instantly what it was—laughter. Ugly, mean laughter.
As she sat helpless, she’d strained to hear what was going on, listened to more crashes and rumbles. More cursing. But then the sound of crashes had become muted, like maybe they wasn’t outside in the warehouse anymore, but inside, in an office somewhere.
There’d been muffled crashes then, one after another, a whump and then a bam, like somebody was knocking down a wall. They went on and on.
Then the crashes stopped. The silence that followed rang like a Chinese gong inside Theresa’s head. The quiet was far more frightening than the crashes had been. Least then she’d known Jack was still all right because he was still out there running from Cole. But what did the silence mean?
Then she heard laughter. Evil laughter.
Lord, I’m not tryin’ to tell you your bidness, but you got to help Jack! He can’t fight that thing all by his own self. When Cole catches up to him, he’s gonna beat him to within an inch of his life, bring him back here and—
Her voice broke in a strangled sob. She caught herself. Stopped and steadied her breathing before she spoke again.
Sorry. I know what scared does. It whispers in your ear things that ain’t true a’tall. Scared’s a liar! So’s hate. Scared lies and hate lies and evil lies. Ain’t nothin’ but love tells the truth of it. And you is love. You is truth, so I’m comin’ to you now—not with a heart full of fear, but with a heart all full up with grateful for what it is you gone do that don’t nobody expect. Some’m you’ve had planned out all along.
CHAPTER 31
Jack closed his eyes to blot out the sight of Cole gloating on the landing above him and when he opened them again to an upside-down hallway, he was looking right at the box and the telephone pole out of Andi’s vision.
“The box and the telephone pole —the capital T’s— were beside each other,” he heard Daniel say in his head. “They were black and she said the box had small feet.”
Jack pulled himself up on his elbows, righted his vision so he was no longer looking at the world upside down. When he looked back over his shoulder at a right-side-up world, the two black shapes he would never have noticed in the dim, flickering light had turned right side up, too. Now, he knew what they were.
Cole was drenched in sweat, panting, gasping, dragging air into his lungs in huge gulps that cut short his laughter in a strangled bark.
“Trapped,” he gasped. “…rat in a trap…”
He took a step down and brandished his mangled right arm where the hand dangled at such a grotesque angle beneath it Jack felt a wave of nausea.
“…stick you now, nigger…” He heaved in another huge gulp of air. “… stick you good…”
Cole intended to use the jagged broken bone of his own arm as a dagger!
“Poke holes in you…’til you tell me where Becca is.”
Jack slumped back in defeat. Held the pose for a beat, then tensed and pushed off with his feet on the stairs above him. He tucked his head, did a complete backward summersault and came up on his feet facing a surprised Cole.
Then he bolted toward the door beneath the box and the telephone pole, which, right-side-up, formed Japanese characters Jack had learned years ago trying to impress a girl. The characters spelled the word Exit.
He was out the door into the sultry night then, running. Smoke filled the air, much closer now, billowing from the roof of the warehouse to the north, the farm equipment warehouse. Though he couldn’t see the fire, he could hear the roar and feel the heat. There were figures lit by a red-orange glow, people running. The fire was coming this way fast.
Theresa!
Cole was right behind, the engine on a freight train, rumbling at him, remarkably fast. But Jack was a step quicker, straining with every ounce of his own strength to reach the slice of light that cut the darkness like a knife from the propped-open door of the warehouse in front of him. Somebody on the night shift crew—probably trying to get a breath of fresh air on the sultry night—had set a brick there. Kicking it out of the way, Jack lunged inside, turned and pulled the door shut after him all in one motion. It locked automatically. This was no hollow core office door. It was metal, mounted in a steel frame in the wall. Breaking through it would be no easy task, not even for Cole.
* * * * * * *
The voice that had replaced Emily’s on the phone was oily and slid greasy words
into Daniel’s ear.
“You and me, we’re gonna have us a nice, long conversation, Dano—that’s what that nigger Jack called you, didn’t he—Dano?”
Daniel’s hand was shaking so badly he could barely hold onto the phone.
“We’re gonna keep on talking all friendly like.” The ugly voice had a hollow, echoing quality that indicated the phone was on speaker. “Don’t want you getting any ideas about calling the cops. Or stopping on the way, maybe. But you wouldn’t do a thing like that would you, not when your family’s got just…” he paused. “…four more minutes to live.”
Daniel grabbed hold of his emotions and calmed his voice.
“I’m on I-71 passing the stadium,” Daniel said, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. “Where are you, Victor?”
“Your church, in the…sanctuary.” Victor said the word like it tasted bad in his mouth.
“The church! It’s impossible to get from where I am to the church in four minutes!”
“Then you got yourself a big problem, don’t you, Dano?”
“It’s me you want, Victor,” Daniel said. “Let my wife and daughter go…” he paused, “…and I’ll tell you where Becca is.”
“You’d do that, tell me upfront and easy without me having to do any persuading at all?” Victor was mocking him.