Doyle’s face went from surprise to confusion to understanding in a second, then it twisted with rage and he began to barrel towards her.
Kat shrieked, her weight still mostly supported by the tree. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t escape. If he wanted to take her, he could. But, if he’d abandoned his plans and now just sought revenge....
He’d crush her against the tree.
21
Alex limped around the corner of the house, just as Doyle began to charge forward. His hand gripped the handgun. The luggage piece had still been there. The suitcase and clothes had been burned, and the pistol looked dirty and charred, but it was still intact. He didn’t trust it to fire, but it might enable him to bluff his way to the end of this nightmare. He leveled it at Doyle’s back and yelled, “Doyle, stop!”
He stopped, the dust rolling up from around his mud-stained tennis shoes in little drifting clouds. He continued facing away from Alex, his shoulders heaving up and down in time with his breaths. Past him, Alex could see Kat, leaning against a tree trunk. Her shirt was missing, and blood had run past her bra strap and down her side, but she was still alive.
“Doyle, drop the knife, or I’ll shoot.”
Now Doyle turned, slowly spinning to face Alex. Alex felt the urge to recoil as their eyes met. Doyle’s eyes were mad still, a crazed and barely-controlled intensity in them. But his face, fair skinned before, was beginning to transition from pale to a colorless gray.
“Kat is coming with me,” he said. “Leave now, and I’ll let you live, for her sake.”
Alex adjusted his grip on the charred pistol, trying to assume a commanding air and posture with his broken leg. He hardened his face and said, “No. Drop the knife, Doyle, or I’ll shoot.”
Doyle’s fingers flexed over the knife’s handle, twitching for a second.
Alex could feel his heart thumping up in his temples as he watched those twitching fingers, waiting for them to relax. There was no way for Doyle to know that the handgun probably didn’t work. For all he knew, Alex had just gotten it from the car while Doyle had been distracted by Kat, or maybe even earlier. He wouldn’t call his bluff. It would be suicide, regardless how short the distance between them was.
Doyle’s fingers snapped firmly closed on the handle, and he charged.
For a precious second, Alex hesitated. A thought raced through his brain, freezing his finger over the trigger. What if the pistol blows up in your face?
He pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell with a deafening click.
Then Doyle was on him. With his free hand, Alex grabbed Doyle’s forearm to hold back the falling knife. His other hand, still holding the pistol, tried to pull the trigger again, but to no effect. Doyle, who hadn’t stopped moving forward yet, crashed against Alex, bowling him over and following him to the ground. Doyle landed atop Alex with the knife still barely held back by Alex’s trembling hand.
Their faces were close now. Doyle’s mad eyes were twitching and jerking, his face strained but no longer sweating. The knife point inched closer to Alex’s throat, the weight of the man’s body too much for Alex to resist. He dropped the handgun, abandoning it to throw his other hand up against Doyle’s descending weight. It was crushing. Alex strained, puffing breath through his lips, his face turning red, his vision darkening. Still, the knife quivered just inches from his skin.
Doyle twisted atop him, his knee grinding against Alex’s cracked femur. Alex screamed in pain, and the knife slipped even closer, its tip now flicking against his jaw. Any second now, his arms would give out. Any second now....
22
The pain and fear had briefly consumed her. Now, Kat could think again.
Alex. Alex was pinned to the ground, screaming. Doyle still had that knife—that awful, bloodied knife in his awful, bloodied hands. Kat couldn’t see through the kicking legs, but she knew that Alex was the one screaming, and that Doyle was the one on top. She only hoped that the knife hadn’t had more blood to drink.
She had to do something. No slipping fingers. There wasn’t time for that. Doyle was distracted, and it was now or never. Do or die.
Kat jammed her fingers back into the incision beneath her armpit, sinking against the tree trunk at the pain. She didn’t have any more tears to spend on her agony. She didn’t even have much in the way of screaming left. It was a resigned, pain-filled moan. The kind that rises low from the gut when an animal is dying—when the wolves have the cow, and the cow has no fight left, but still has the desire to live, and moans in lament for its lost strength and losing life.
But Kat did have some strength left, hidden beneath the pain and just beyond the reach of her lost blood. Just enough strength, she hoped.
Her fingers fished in until they found her sister’s body. She pinched it hard, working her fingers through the tissues until they had gripped behind it. Then, with a wretched moan squeezing out between her clenched teeth, she yanked.
With a horrendous stab of pain, the ball ripped free, then slipped from her fingers to roll away from her across the dirt.
23
Alex could feel the blood running down the sides of his throat, but he knew it wasn’t that bad. Maybe it was. Perhaps sheer adrenaline kept him from knowing that his throat had been cut wide open. But he didn’t think so. Through the haze of primal terror, he believed that it was his chin alone that had been crisscrossed with a few shallow cuts from the shaking knife. Maybe some on his jaw. But his throat, as yet, was unscathed.
Doyle’s face trembled still, the gray skin quaking and shivering around the rage-filled eyes. Then, in an instant, doubt flashed across them, cutting through the rage to shine out with shock from the struggling face.
It was the break Alex needed. He pushed the knife to the side, and the blade bit into the dirt beside his neck. At the same instant, he brought his left hand up in a weak hook to Doyle’s jaw. His right hand, freed from fending off the knife, latched onto Doyle’s face and wrenched it to the side, prepared to rip the skin off if Doyle’s head would not follow. His head did follow, and then his shoulders, too. Alex got his left knee up as well, yelling hoarsely through the pain it caused.
But it worked. Doyle’s massive weight shifted off of him, and Doyle rolled onto his back, Alex now over him and ready to continue the fight.
Much faster than Alex expected, Doyle raised a fist and punched out at Alex, catching him in the face. Stars exploded before his eyes, and his head and shoulders rocked back, nearly toppling him off Doyle and onto his own back again. Alex managed to latch onto Doyle’s collar and pull himself back forward, swinging his other hand down in a punch to Doyle’s left eye.
Doyle hardly seemed affected. Already, he was cocking a fist back for another swing at Alex, while his other hand fished about for the knife.
Alex didn’t wait for Doyle’s blind fingers to find the knife’s handle. He leaned down, curling his neck so that his face would not be exposed to Doyle’s next blow. Then he reached out and grabbed the knife. As he pulled it back, Doyle’s beefy hand closed around his wrist. As Alex tried to jerk his hand free, his sweaty grip on the knife slipped, and it skittered across the ground behind them, out of reach for either of them.
Then Doyle’s fist connected with Alex’s head again.
24
Kat’s vision blurred, then cleared, then blurred again, and she realized that her seconds of wakeful consciousness were numbered.
Just ahead of her, fuzzing in and out of clarity, lay the tiny ball—all that her sister’s body had ever amounted to, now flecked with dust and sticking to some dead grass. Beyond that, past where her eyes could truly focus, a tangle of arms and legs flailed and beat upon one another. Alex, her own dear husband, fighting for his life—fighting for their lives, against Doyle’s body and the disembodied spirit of a raging madman.
Kat sank to her knees, her strength giving out and her legs failing her. She hit the ground heavily, then rolled forward. The bandages were close by. She’d seen them fa
ll into the dirt. She had to do something to staunch the blood that once more ran freely from her side and into the earth.
For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
She couldn’t fathom why that thought came to her now. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d opened a Bible.
Maybe, it was her soul preparing itself, getting ready for....
For what came next.
She just felt so tired. The sweat, the tears, the blood. The fear, the pain, the worry. They could all just slip away. The entire world could just slip away. Muffle itself into silence, like the sounds of Alex and Doyle’s fight were doing. The earth could blur itself into nothingness, like her view of the burnt cabin and forest was doing.
But first she had something to do. She couldn’t see Alex and Doyle—not anymore, not lying on her stomach like she was. But they’d been fighting. Even after she’d ripped her sister from her body, they’d still been fighting, trading blows until exhaustion or death ended the match.
But perhaps ripping out her sister hadn’t quite been enough.
Dirt snapped away from her nose as Kat exerted herself one last time, driven from her face by her grunting breath. She latched onto a rock, her pale hand closing around it and lifting it carefully, purposefully into the air.
She held it over her sister for a second, trying to focus her eyes on the small, deformed body. Then she brought the rock crashing, crushing, and grinding down atop it.
25
Things had become unclear. Doyle had plowed his fist against Alex so many times, everything had become dark and jumbled. Which way was up, if he still had Doyle pinned, if his own blows were connecting—he couldn’t be sure. He struggled to tell if his eyes were even open or not, everything was such a fury of confusion and violence.
Alex brought a fist down again, this time certain that he’d connected with Doyle’s face. The next moment, Doyle’s beefy palm flew up and slammed into the side of Alex’s head, cuffing his ear. The popping sound blasted through his mind, and what semblance of balance Alex had left was shattered.
Apparently, he had still been on top of Doyle, because now he fell to the side, his shoulder landing painfully atop something much harder than the soil.
Doyle twisted, trying to wriggle over and pin Alex, his hands already clawing towards his throat. He gave an enormous jolt as he reached for him, snapping back almost like a rubber band that has stretched too far.
Alex seized the initiative from him, taking advantage of the way Doyle had suddenly tightened up. Alex redirected his hands, moving them from warding off Doyle’s grasp to instead grabbing at the object under his shoulder, hoping it would make for an improvised cudgel.
His hand closed over something smooth and cold: the barrel of his forgotten pistol.
He pulled it out and, in a fluid motion, brought the pistol butt cracking against the side of Doyle’s head, just above his ear.
There was no jerk this time. No great last motion or movement. Doyle simply fell onto his face and lay still, the fight in him turned out as suddenly as a light switching off, and a quiet breath escaped his lungs, forced out by the weight of his own chest.
Alex coughed, then brought his free hand up to feel at his own neck.
It stung as his hands touched it, and the skin was slicked by blood, but his throat was fine. He didn’t have to worry about that.
He tried to roll over, but pain seized him in a vice-like grip across his thigh, reminding him of the broken bone. Wincing, he scooted away from Doyle on his elbows, watching for any sign of movement from the man.
He didn’t see any. The panting, the shaking, the madness in his eyes—they were all gone. The only thing that moved on him was a crimson bead of blood that trickled slowly out from his ear and ran across his cheek towards his nostrils.
Alex pushed himself up, then, while still holding the pistol in his left hand, stuck the fingers of his right hand into the flesh of Doyle’s neck, feeling for a pulse. There was none. Not only that, but Alex was surprised at how cool the man felt already. He wouldn’t have guessed that he’d been alive and kicking—literally—half a minute ago.
It could’ve been him.
It almost was him, he reminded himself.
If he hadn’t fought—for himself and for Kat—they might be....
Kat!
He turned his head too quickly, initiating another jolt of pain through his body. But he saw her, laying on her stomach in the grass. A few bits of bark clung to her pale back, pressed there around her bra strap from when she’d leaned so heavily against the tree.
He crawled towards her, shaking. Her side had run red with her own blood, and her pants....
There was just so much of it.
But then her back rose up in the air as she took in a breath, and he felt the first wave of relief wash over him, hurrying him to her side.
Before he rolled her over, he checked her side. A three-inch incision had been made into her skin, angled to go up beside her armpit and towards her shoulder joint; but the cut looked as if it had maybe stopped bleeding entirely. Her right hand clutched a stone with blood-stained fingers. Carefully, he rolled her onto her back.
She was terribly pale, so little blood remained in her.
He tried to remember any of his meager first aid knowledge.
He whispered a curse. Nothing was coming. All he could think to do was hold her. Hold her and talk to her.
He wrapped a hand carefully around her head, so that it rested on his palm instead of the packed soil. Then he whispered her name.
26
“Kat.”
She didn’t want to open her eyes, even if she could have.
“Kat.”
The voice drew her back. Not back from a dream. Not back from a pleasant scene or from sleep. Back from the edge. She’d walked along it, subconsciously. She’d ran her bare toes along its lip and pondered the precipice, considered the fall into the swirling void, the unknown, the end, or the new beginning. But then he spoke to her, and she remembered that she needed to stay. They had their lives to finish out together and a little boy to raise. She couldn’t step over now. She would need to kiss that little boy’s cheeks a million times before she’d be ready to take that path, and even then....
“Alex?”
“Kat, you’re going to be okay.”
She smiled, her eyes still closed. Of course they were going to be okay. She’d turned away from that cliff, that great crossing.
They’d done it together. Alex was holding her. That meant that she’d been fast enough. She would’ve kicked herself if she’d had the strength. She should’ve been faster—so much faster. But she’d been afraid. Scared. Terrified. And it hurt quite badly, too. But she’d done it. And, now that it was over, she realized that she’d been right to be terrified, for it had been terrible. What had been left of Chris had nearly killed them at the end.
Maybe, if she’d acted sooner....
But how could she have? When you suspect your thoughts are crazy, they’re that much harder to act upon.
Crazy.
She’d almost gone crazy herself. Maybe that was the only reason she had been able to act upon them. She needed to get halfway to Looneyville before she could fight her way back to sanity.
She realized that Alex was still talking, his voice tight with worry. He was trying to reassure her. The smile that had faded reappeared, weak, but only because she was so tired.
“Alex,” she whispered, “the phone.”
“I don’t have a phone, Kat, I lost it. You’re going to be okay, but— Oh, God, Kat, I don’t—” He was crying. She could understand that. She might be, as well, if she didn’t feel so relieved and weak. If she hadn’t already cried all her tears from pain and fear.
“Doyle’s phone,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Doyle’s phone.”
The thought had come through to her clearly, more clearly than she’d been able to think in a long time.
Alex lay her head gently back onto the dirt, then she heard the rustle of his clothing as he crawled back towards Doyle to fish for his phone. A short while later, she could hear him speaking to the emergency responders.
It was the second time he’d done so in just a few days, she realized.
It would be a great story to tell the grandkids.
And then, she knew, that there would be grandkids. They’d be there for them, together. And, whether they believed the story or not, she’d tell it to them. Maybe in October, around Halloween. Maybe some other time. Perhaps at the family reunions.
It wouldn’t matter when. She’d be there to tell it to them, and Alex would be there, too.
And with that much happier realization, Kat let herself slip off into a deep, natural, care-free sleep.
EPILOGUE
Kat rested her head on Alex’s shoulder. If she was being perfectly honest, it wasn’t a very comfortable shoulder. But sometimes—at times like these, in particular—that didn’t matter too much to her.
The television ran in front of them, casting its garish light into the dim room. Kat barely even noticed what show was on. She was thinking.
She twisted her head to look up at Alex. “I think I’m just going to send it in.”
“Your article?”
“Yeah. It’s good enough, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “You know what I think. But, if you mean that the writing and everything is good, then yes: it’s great. But probably that society of super freaks will be more interested in the content than in the writing.”
“Great. It’s ready then.” She rolled off the couch and walked into the kitchen, where her laptop sat on the table. She pulled the charger out and returned to her place on the couch. “You know, I’m one of those super freaks now.”
Cleaving Souls Page 16