The Ancestors

by Brandon Massey

  “God,” his father said.

  Davie opened his eyes to see what the people of Graceville had found.

  The workman climbed to the surface gingerly, cradling a calcified child’s frame. The corpse was curled in rigor mortis, but intact. Muddied bones dangled, but didn’t break. He was small. Maybe the youngest.

  “Little Eddie!” Essie Timmons said, rising to her feet. Two miracles, side by side.

  An old white man wearing a suit and tie walked to the old woman’s wheelchair and leaned close to her ear. She nodded. He put his hand on her shoulder, and she patted it. Then the man walked away, toward a younger man who might be his son.

  Dad kept his camera trained on Essie Timmons for a long time. When the worker brought the bones to her and she wiped away a tear, Davie heard his father suck in his breath.

  It took two more hours to find the other two sets of bones, and they weren’t intact like the smallest child’s had been. Instead, they came up in pieces.

  All Davie ever saw of Issac was his skull, every tooth in place. Smiling, in a horrible way.

  By that time, Davie was almost sorry he’d come. He would rather remember the Timmons boys as living. Running. Trying to save each other.

  Davie’s thigh was killing him. He needed more pills. Besides, he noticed, it was three o’clock. Three was a long way from dusk, but he didn’t want to take any chances. No way did he want to be in these woods anytime even close to dark.

  “I’m ready,” he told his father.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, just tired,” Davie said, but that was a lie. He didn’t know yet if he was okay. That would depend on whether Neema would ever again sleep through the night without screaming and crying. Or if either of them would ever pet a dog. Being okay depended on Dad. Or Mom. Or maybe all of them.

  When he and his father started walking toward Dad’s rental car parked at the edge of the orange Georgia clay road, everyone stopped what they were saying and doing, even the workers. Someone started clapping, and soon everyone was, a few of them hooting. Their applause rose into treetops that had been filled with screams so shortly before. The prettiest girl Davie had ever seen—tall and dark, about thirteen, with a face like a girl from TV—grinned at him as if she had met him in her daydreams. Davie felt his face blush for the first time in his life.

  His heart almost didn’t give a cold shudder when he heard the faraway sound of the yappy dog’s barking. He almost didn’t wonder how he would ever sleep again.

  Enjoy the following excerpt of

  Brandon Massey’s thrilling new novel,

  DON’T EVER TELL,

  on sale now wherever books are sold.

  Prologue

  On the morning of the day he would taste freedom again for the first time in four years, Dexter Bates lay on his bunk in the dimly lit cell, fingers interlaced behind his head, waiting for the arrival of the guards.

  He did not tap his feet, hum a song, or count the cracks in the shadowed cement ceiling to pass the time. He was so still and silent that save for the rhythmic rising and falling of his chest, he might have been dead.

  Incarceration taught a man many lessons, and chief among them was patience. You either learned how to befriend time, or the rambling passage of monotonous days eventually broke your spirit.

  He had long ago vowed that he would not be broken. That he would use time to his advantage. The day ahead promised to reveal the value of his patient efforts.

  Resting peacefully, he thought, as ever, about her. About her supple body, and how easily he bent it to his will. Her soft skin, and how it bruised beneath his fists. Her throaty voice, and how he urged it toward raw screams of terror. . . .

  Pleasant thoughts to dribble away the last grains of time he had left in this hellhole.

  Soon, the metal cell door clanged open. Two correctional officers as tall and wide as NFL linemen entered the cell.

  “Let’s go, Bates,” Steele said, the lead guard. Sandy-haired, with a severe crew cut, he had a wide, boyish face that always appeared sunburned. He had a green parka with a fur-lined hood draped over his arm. “Hurry up or you’ll miss your last ride outta here.”

  Dexter rose off the narrow cot. He was nude—he had stripped out of the prison jumpsuit before their arrival. He spread his long, muscular arms and legs.

  “All right, open that big-assed cum-catcher of yours,” Jackson said. He was a stern-faced black man with a jagged scar on his chin that he tried to hide with a goatee. He clicked on a pen-sized flashlight.

  Dexter opened wide. Jackson panned the flashlight beam inside his mouth, and checked his nostrils and ears, too.

  “Now bend over,” Jackson said.

  “But we hardly know each other,” Dexter said.

  “Don’t test me this morning. I ain’t in the mood for your bullshit.”

  Dexter turned around and bent over from the waist. Jackson shone the light up his rectum.

  “He’s clear,” Jackson said.

  “How about one last blow for the road, Jacky?” Dexter grabbed his length and swung it toward Jackson. “You know I’m gonna miss that sweet tongue action you got.”

  “Fuck you,” Jackson said.

  During Dexter’s first month in the joint, Jackson had tried to bully him. Word of Dexter’s background had spread quickly, and there were a number of guards and inmates who wanted a crack at him. A shot at glory.

  Dexter had repeatedly slammed Jackson’s face against a cinder-block wall, fracturing his jaw and scarring his chin. Although assaulting a guard would normally have resulted in a stint in the hole and additional time tacked onto his ten-year sentence, Jackson had never reported the incident. He had his pride.

  Jackson searched Dexter’s jumpsuit and boots for weapons, found nothing, and then Dexter dressed, shrugging on the parka that Steele gave him. Jackson cuffed his hands in front of him and attached the ankle restraints.

  The guards marched him down the cell block. None of the inmates taunted Dexter, as was typical when an inmate departed. There were a few softly uttered words of support—“Peace, brother,” “Take care of yourself, man”—but mostly, a widespread silence that approached reverence.

  “These guys are really gonna miss you, Bates,” Steele said.

  “They can always write me,” Dexter said.

  They took him to inmate processing, where the final transfer paperwork was completed. He was being sent to Centralia Correctional Center, another medium security prison, to serve out the balance of his sentence. He had put in for the transfer purportedly to take advantage of the inmate work programs offered at that facility, and it had taken almost two years for the approval to come through.

  The administrator, a frizzy haired lady with a wart on her nose, expressed surprise that Dexter was not taking any personal items with him. Most transferring inmates left with boxes of belongings in tow, as if they were kids going away to summer camp. Dexter assured Wart Nose that he would get everything he needed once he was settled in his new home.

  Paperwork complete, they walked Dexter outside to the boarding area, where an idling white van was parked, exhaust fumes billowing from the pipe. “Illinois Department of Corrections” was painted on the side in large black letters. Steel bars protected the frosted windows.

  It was a cold, overcast December morning, a fresh layer of snow covering the flat countryside. An icy gust shrieked across the parking lot and sliced at Dexter’s face.

  He wondered about the weather in Chicago, and felt a warm tingle in his chest.

  Steele slid open the van’s side door, and Dexter climbed in, air pluming from his lips. Two beefy correctional officers from Centralia waited inside, both sitting in the front seat. A wire mesh screen separated the front from the rear bench rows.

  “Sit your ass down so we can get moving,” the guard in the passenger seat said. “It’s cold as fuck out here.”

  Steele lifted the heavy chain off the vehicle’s floor and clamped it to Dexter’s ankle r
estraints. He nodded at Dexter, his blue-eyed gaze communicating a subtle message, and then he slammed the door.

  As in police vehicles, there were no interior door handles. Packed inside and bolted in place, a prisoner bound for another concrete home could only sit still and enjoy the ride.

  “Headed to our home in Centralia, eh?” the driver asked. He glanced in the rearview mirror at Dexter. “Just so you know, brother man, whoever you were outside won’t mean shit there, got it? You’ll be everyone’s bitch, especially ours.”

  “Spoken like a man who’s always wanted to be a cop,” Dexter said. “Did you fail the exam? Or wash out of the academy?”

  “What a piece of work,” the passenger guard said, shaking his head. “You must want deluxe ’commodations in the hole soon as you get there.”

  At the manned booth, a guard waved the van through the tall prison gates. Dexter looked out the window. The snowy plains surrounded them, so vast and featureless they nearly blended into the overcast horizon.

  By design, many state correctional centers had been erected in barren wastelands, to make it almost impossible for an escaping inmate to progress far before recapture. Dexter had heard rumors of inmates who managed to get away being tracked down within three miles of the joint, upon which they were brought back, weeping like babies, to an increased sentence and a long stay in solitary.

  The two-lane road was crusted with dirty slush and riddled with potholes. It wound through nothingness for close to five miles before it fed into a major artery, which eventually intersected the highway.

  At that time of morning, there was no traffic, and there wouldn’t be much at all, anyway. The road dead ended at the prison, a place most normal people preferred to avoid.

  The guards switched on the radio to a country-western station. The singer crooned about seeing his lady again after being away for so long.

  Dexter wasn’t a fan of country western, but he could dig the song’s message.

  “What time is it?” Dexter asked.

  “You got somewhere to be, asshole?” the driver said.

  “I want to make sure we’re on time. I’ve got a hot date with my new warden.”

  “Whatever. It’s a quarter after nine, numb nuts.”

  Nodding to the music, Dexter dug his bound hands into the right front pocket of the parka.

  A key was secreted inside, courtesy of his good man Steele. Correctional officers were even more receptive to bribes than cops, and that was saying something.

  “I’m really feeling this song,” Dexter said. “Turn it up, will you, man?”

  “That’s the smartest thing you’ve said yet,” the passenger guard said, and cranked up the volume.

  Dexter used the key to disengage the handcuffs, the loud music drowning out the tinkle of the chains. Leaning forward slightly, he stretched his long arm downward and unlocked the ankle restraints, too.

  Then he sat back in the seat, and waited. He crooned along with the song, his intentionally bad voice making the guards laugh.

  “You sure ain’t got no future in music,” the driver said. “Jesus Christ, you’re terrible.”

  Dexter shrugged. “A man’s got to know his limitations, I guess.”

  After they had driven for about three miles, they came around a bend. There was a gray Dodge Charger stalled on the shoulder of the road. A blond woman in a shearling coat and jeans was at the trunk, apparently trying to lift out a spare tire. Her long hair flowed from underneath a yellow cap, blowing like a siren’s mane in the chill wind.

  “Would ya lookit that?” The passenger guard leered at the woman. “Pull over, Max. Let’s help her out.”

  A green Chevy Tahoe approached from the opposite direction.

  “You know we’re not supposed to stop, Cade,” Max said.

  “You better not stop,” Dexter said. “You’re going to screw up my schedule.”

  “Shut up,” Cade said. He turned to Max. “Look, it’ll take ten minutes. That young broad can’t change the goddamn tire by herself.”

  “You just wanna get laid,” Max said.

  “Hey, I’m a Good Samaritan. I gotta do my charitable deed for the day.”

  “To get laid,” Max said. But he slowed the van and nosed behind the Dodge. “You got ten minutes. No word of this to anyone.”

  “I’ll snitch on you,” Dexter said.

  “The hell you will,” Cade said. He licked his fingers, patted down his eyebrows, and then climbed out of the van. Strutting like a rooster, he approached the blonde.

  The oncoming Tahoe suddenly slashed across the road, snow spraying from the tires, and blocked off the van. Tinted windows concealed the occupants.

  “Holy shit,” Max said. “What the hell’s this?”

  On the shoulder of the road, the other guard noticed the Tahoe, and froze.

  Dexter dug his hand in the coat’s left front pocket and clutched the grip of the loaded .38, also compliments of Steele.

  A gunman wearing a ski mask and a black jacket sprang out of the Dodge’s trunk. The masked man shot Cade twice in the head with a pistol, and the guard dropped to the pavement like a discarded puppet.

  Cursing, Max fumbled for his radio.

  “Hey, Max,” Dexter said. “Look, buddy, no chains.”

  When Max spun around, Dexter had the gun pressed to the wire mesh screen. He shot the guard at the base of the throat, just below the collar.

  The guard’s eyes widened with surprise, and he slid against the seat, a bloody hole unfurling like a blooming flower in his windpipe.

  The passenger-side door of the Tahoe swung open. A refrigerator-wide black man attired like a correctional officer scrambled out and ran to the driver’s side of the van.

  The ski-masked shooter bounded out of the trunk. The blonde took the ring of keys from Cade’s belt, and unlocked the van’s side door.

  “Morning, Dex.” She smiled brightly.

  “Hey, Christy.”

  Moving fast, Dexter and the ski-masked man lifted the guard’s corpse off the ground and laid it across the floor of the van. In front, the guy dressed like a guard had gotten behind the wheel and was propping up the wounded guard in the seat to look like a passenger if one gave him a casual glance.

  The dying guard was moaning entreaties to God in a blood-choked gurgle.

  “Someone shut him up.” Dexter slammed the side panel door. “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.”

  Opening the passenger door, Dexter shot the guard twice in the chest, permanently dousing the struggling light in the man’s eyes. Except for the splash of blood on his coat, he appeared to be sleeping off a hangover.

  “Good to see you, man,” the new driver said.

  “Same here.” Dexter nodded, closed the door. “Let’s roll out.”

  The ski-masked gunner scrambled behind the wheel of the Dodge, the blonde got in on the passenger side, and Dexter hustled in the back.

  Beside them, the Tahoe backed up and executed a swift U-turn, maneuvering behind the prison van, which had begun to rumble forward.

  Both the SUV and the van were driven by longtime colleagues, upstanding members of the Windy City’s finest.

  “How long?” Dexter asked.

  “Two minutes and fourteen seconds,” Javier, his former partner said. He had peeled away his ski mask. A native of the Dominican Republic who had moved to the States when he was five, Javier was a lean, bronze-skinned man with dark, wavy hair and a pencil-thin mustache.

  Javier flashed a lopsided grin that reminded Dexter of their wild days working together.

  “We kicked ass, Dex.”

  “Like old times,” Dexter said.

  “How’s it feel to be out?” Christy asked. Unlike every other member of the operation, she wasn’t a cop—she was Javier’s wife, and as trustworthy as any brother of the badge.

  “Like being born again,” Dexter said. “Hallelujah.”

  Christy passed him a brown paper bag that contained a bottle of iced tea and two roast beef-an
d-cheddar sandwiches wrapped in plastic. Dexter ate greedily. After four years of bland prison food, the simple meal was like a spread at a four-star restaurant.

  A bag from Target lay on the seat beside him. He opened it, found a pair of overalls and a plaid shirt.

  “The rest of the stuff?” Dexter asked.

  “The duffel with all your things is in the trunk,” Javier said. “But you need to get out of that ape suit pronto, man. Who would I look like giving a prisoner a taxi ride?”

  Dexter peeled out of the prison jumpsuit and dressed in the civilian clothes.

  When they reached the main artery that ran through town, Javier made a turn that would take them to the highway. The prison van, followed by the Tahoe, went in the opposite direction.

  They would drive the van over a hundred miles away and abandon it, and its cargo of dead guards, in a pond. With luck, it would be at least several days before the cops would discover it.

  Dexter settled back in the seat and dozed. He dreamed, as usual, of her. She was weeping, screaming, and pleading for her life.

  It was a good dream.

  When he awoke over two hours later, they were bumping across a long, narrow lane, freshly plowed of snow. Tall pines and oaks lined the road, ice clinging to their boughs.

  Javier turned into a long driveway that led to a small A-frame house surrounded by dense forest.

  “My mother’s crib,” Javier said, and Christy laughed.

  Dexter laughed, too. The house was no more inhabited by Javier’s mother than it was by the Queen of England. Javier had bought it in his mother’s name to conceal his ownership, a ploy that many of them had used at one time or another to hide their connection to various properties and valuables they purchased—things decidedly not paid for with their regular cop salaries.

  A car, covered by a gray tarp, sat beside the house.

  “What’s that?” Dexter asked.