by J P Barnett
Jake shut the door and put his hands on the window sill, looking up towards Shandi. “Oh, I’m not worried. Not for you. Maybe for them. Someone is going to get in so much trouble after you’re done with them.”
She smiled. “Damn right. Your appointment is thirty minutes?”
“Thereabouts, yeah. I can text you when I’m done.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
Shandi looked down at the steering column. She had ridden in this truck dozens—if not hundreds—of times, but this would be the first time she had driven it. She quickly figured out how to put it in reverse and did so, her foot still on the brake.
“Good luck,” Jake said.
She tried not to think about the fact that Deirdre waited for him in that building. She tried to focus on the fact that Deirdre and Jake shared only a doctor-patient relationship. She couldn’t be concerning herself with her insecurities, anyway. She had important things to do. She needed all her wits to get to the bottom of the beast mystery.
Without thinking, she put one of her hands over Jake’s.
“Thanks,” she said. “You too.”
Chapter 24
Uncomfortable silence filled the clinic from the moment he stepped through the door. Deirdre seemed nervous, moving more quickly than normal and never meeting his gaze. Nights earlier, he felt like she’d stalked him. That she would pounce on him. The more intense version of Deirdre shared the room with him today, with none of the sexual undertones of that night. His attempts at small talk—even about the beast—were met with icy silence. Jake didn’t know how to process it or what it meant.
Arrowhead had already started renovations on the clinic. None of the equipment that he expected to see filled the room anymore. The built-in counters still lined the wall, but the only furniture in the room consisted of a hospital gurney and the metal folding chair in which he sat. The gurney seemed particularly odd.
At the moment, Deirdre stood at the counter with her back to him. He felt safer when her eyes averted, but her back also gave him a sense of dread, wondering what came next. She didn’t have the clipboard today. The refrigerator that held the serum no longer held a place in the room. On the counter sat two bags—Deirdre’s purse and a backpack.
Without turning, she spoke. “I’m going to need you to get undressed and lay on the gurney, please.”
This seemed like an odd request. She had checked the healing of his scars before, but he had never needed to lay down for that. In fact, lying down seemed like it would be counter to the cause. Jake just wanted it all to be over with, though, so he complied. He stripped down to his boxers and left his clothes on the chair.
Deirdre turned around and looked at him coolly. She wore no makeup today. Jake couldn’t recall seeing her delicate face without makeup since high school. She looked older than he remembered from a few days ago, and she carried a sense of foreboding with her that unsettled him.
“On the gurney, please,” she said.
He froze at the request. His mind swam in an attempt to discern her goal, wondering if she intended some twisted sex thing. Regardless, Jake felt strongly that he should not comply.
“I... I don’t really feel comfortable with that. We can just do it standing up, like always,” he said as confidently as he could, which turned out to not be very confident at all.
Deirdre sighed and turned back to the counter. “Oh, Jake. I don’t want this to be hard for you. Why can’t you just do what I ask?”
She didn’t want what to be hard for him? What did she intend to do to him? His discomfort grew exponentially, as did a cold sense of dread. The situation escalated beyond Deirdre just being weird. Something sinister came for him now.
She turned around and lifted something towards him. With his eyes focused elsewhere, he only saw a glint of something out of the corner of his eye. He threw his hands up once he understood what was happening.
He had never had a gun pointed at him before, and the sheer, adrenal terror of it made him instantly queasy.
“Jesus, Deirdre! What the hell are you doing?”
Jake tried to understand. Had he hurt her feelings? Had texting Shandi that night caused her to go into a jealous rage? It seemed impossible and surreal. This sort of thing happened in movies, but not in real life. Real people just sulked when their feelings got hurt. They didn’t point guns at people.
Deirdre remained remarkably calm. She spoke slowly, as if Jake had just misunderstood her before. “Lay down on the gurney.”
He couldn’t believe that she would shoot him, so he didn’t immediately follow her direction. He could surely talk his way out of this. He had known Deirdre for years.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry about the other night. You’re great. You’re beautiful. It just didn’t work out. It’s nothing personal. It’s me. Last year, I went through a div—”
Deirdre interrupted him with a cold, taunting laugh. Jake realized in that moment that whatever her intentions, they had nothing to do with their “date.”
“Get on the bed. I don’t want to shoot you, Jake, but I will if I have to.” She took a step towards him.
With no other remaining options, Jake climbed onto the gurney, the frame rattling and the wheels screeching across the floor as he got himself situated. He heard Deirdre’s heels click as she approached, the gun still trained on him. Fear stopped him from looking up to watch her. He focused on breathing, still not convinced that she would shoot him, but also too terrified to test her.
She motioned towards the other side of the gurney. “Give me that. The strap.”
He looked towards the side. The gurney had three straps along the side, meant for strapping patients down for transport. She wanted to strap him down. Once she did that, he would have no hope of fighting back. But if he tried to fight back now, she might shoot him.
If someone would have asked Jake how he would have reacted in a situation like this, he would have said that he would fight. That he would die if he had to. Now a gun threatened to end his life, though, and his instinct for survival won out.
He handed her the strap.
She expertly kept the gun on him while she latched the strap to the other side with one hand. She seemed ominously practiced.
Deirdre motioned to the middle strap that would tie around his waist. “Now that one.”
Again, Jake complied. Before she latched it, she commanded him again. “Put your arms down. At your side.”
Jake did not immediately move his arms. Once she bound his hands, he would have no hope of getting away. Still, she hadn’t shot him immediately. That gave him some hope that she didn’t want to kill him. He struggled to understand what she did want to do to him, but if he did what she said, maybe he would walk away from this. He put his arms down.
She tied off the second strap, painfully tight against his body. He lightly tried to pull his arms up and couldn’t. He had no weapons now. She seemed to relax once she had completed this task. She walked a few steps away and put the gun on the counter, immediately returning to Jake. She reached across his body to grab the last strap herself, the scent of her shampoo assaulting Jake’s nose and creating a strange dissonance between the situation at hand and the woman he had known her as before.
All three straps secure, Deirdre returned to her bags. With the gun out of her hand, Jake felt like he had a chance to talk to her. “Dee. If you let me go, I won’t tell anyone. We can just pretend like this never happened.”
She spoke without turning around. “Don’t call me Dee.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. Deirdre. I’m confused. There must be a misunderstanding.” He tried to act calm, despite not being so at all. It still seemed like a bad dream.
“It’s not a misunderstanding, Jake. It’s necessary. I have no choice.” She turned around as she spoke and approached the gurney. When she got there, she leaned over and peered directly into his eyes. “I like you, Jake. You were a good friend.”
“Then let me go.”
�
��This is my fault, Jake. I shouldn’t have done this to you.” She stood up as she spoke, but didn’t leave his side. Her voice cracked. Her beautiful blue eyes moistened.
“Tie me up? Then let me go. You don’t have to do this to me.”
She ignored his pleas. “I just wanted to save you. You have to understand. You would’ve died if I hadn’t done what I did. You were Jake Rollins. No one was ever as devoted to me as you were. You were the most loyal friend I ever had. I couldn’t let you die. Not when I had the means to save you.”
Jake swallowed hard, not knowing how to interpret her words. “But you did save me. I’m here right now. I’m alive. I’m strong. I’m healthy. We can still be friends.”
She sniffled and let out a throaty laugh. “Oh, Jake. We haven’t been friends for twenty years. I haven’t had any friends for twenty years.”
“It’s not too late. We’re both in Rose Valley again.”
She regained some of her composure. “No, Jake. It’s too late for that. This isn’t about friendship. I don’t need friends.”
“Then what do you want? I’ll do anything. Just let me go.”
She walked back to the counter and turned her back to him. He struggled against the straps, taking care to do so as quietly as possible. She didn’t have the gun in her hand, but she would be able to get to it faster than he would. Even if he broke out of the straps, he would be dead in a matter of seconds. He had to wait for her guard to be down. For her to be farther from the gun.
“There’s nothing you can do, Jake. They tried to create an anti-serum. For years. It can’t be done. Better doctors than me have tried. It so irrevocably changes you. It can’t be fixed.”
Jake’s face flushed with frustration, annoyed with the vagueness of her explanations. “What can’t be fixed? I don’t understand, Deirdre. Help me understand.”
“You can’t control it, Jake. You might think you can. You’ll hold it off for a while. The goodness in you might keep it at bay a while longer. But you’ll lose. They all lost. And when you lose, people will die.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The beast, Jake. That’s what they’re calling it, right?”
Jake went limp with shock. He didn’t understand, but on some weird primal level it also made sense. Could it be possible that he shared bodies with the beast? He had never seen it. It had always attacked when he had been alone, maybe even while he had been asleep. Had Deirdre turned him into a monster? No. That couldn’t be right. Jake had seen the video footage. The beast stood taller than him, with muscles far larger than any Jake could even hope to have. It possessed strength greater than any man.
“I’m not the beast, Deirdre. You’re confused.”
She turned around with a syringe in her hand, filled with something. She sighed. “Of course you aren’t the beast, Jake. You’re the seeker. The beast can’t be killed. I tried to do this the other night, but this way will be easier for you.”
So she did mean to kill him. Likely, with the drug in that syringe. The straps on the gurney prevented him from mounting any sort of fight. He couldn’t prevent her from injecting him. For the first time since he had entered the clinic that day, Jake confronted the fact that this would be the last day of his life. With no out, and no weapons left at his disposal, Jake did the only thing he could think of.
He screamed. For help. For anyone. As loudly as he could. He fought against the straps, rocking the gurney back and forth. Shandi wouldn’t be nearby. No one would be nearby. Logically, he knew that screaming could not save him now, but he did it anyway as Deirdre descended upon him.
Deirdre took his hand, the cold of her fingers shooting through Jake’s arm. She turned it over and brushed over the back of his hand to find a vein. His screaming didn’t seem to faze her. She held his hand tight. He stopped rocking. He stopped fighting. Tears started forming at the corners of his eyes. Deirdre looked at him. Tears flowed from her eyes as well.
Through sobbing, he pleaded, “Please, Deirdre. Don’t do this.”
She didn’t answer. She inserted the needle into his hand and pushed the plunger. He felt it a strange cold sensation flow through his veins. He didn’t know what strange concoction worked its way through his system, or how long it would take before he died, but his death was imminent now.
Deirdre removed the needle, set it on the counter, and stroked his hair. She gazed into his eyes. Though she clearly had gone crazy, and even tried to kill him, if the last thing he saw before he died were those eyes, at least he would die beholding beauty...
He thought it strange that he would think that. He wondered if the drug in his veins clouded his thoughts, making him think strange things.
“I’m just putting things back to how they were supposed to be, Jake.”
He wanted to answer, but sleep started to overcome his consciousness. He struggled to remain focused and alert. Deirdre continued stroking his hair. She didn’t say anything. She held his hand as if she had nothing to do with his imminent demise. She sat there as a dear friend coping with the inevitable loss of a loved one. It provided a strange sense of comfort, but he held on to the alarming incongruence of it as well. Could she be right? Would his death save the town?
He didn’t fully understand his relationship to the beast. He didn’t understand how his own death could save the lives of others. But Deirdre’s intellect exceeded that of anyone he had ever known. She would not take a rash action. She would not resort to murder if she could devise another solution.
Jake thought of Shandi. Wondered how she would react. Would she be devastated? He didn’t want her to be unhappy, but he hoped that she would cry for him. Attend his funeral. Dream of a life they never had together. He regretted only just now allowing himself to think of Shandi in that way. As someone he wanted to spend his life with. He loved Shandi. Maybe he always had. Since before an age where he could really even understand love, Jake and Shandi had been bonded. He just wished he could have told Shandi that he loved her. Just one time. She needed to know. He wanted her to know.
He thought it ironic that he would have this moment of clarity just as the world drifted away from him. He would have thought that his imminent death would have brought panic, but he found himself calm. Peaceful. He appreciated that Deirdre spared him pain.
A loud noise echoed through the room, but Jake didn’t have the strength to react. Deirdre moved away quickly. He immediately missed the comfort of her hand.
He vaguely heard voices, but they sounded as if they came from another room far away.
And then... a gunshot, maybe?
He tried to hold on. He tried to make sense of the commotion around him, but he couldn’t.
His breathing slowed, and though it seemed impossible, he felt his heart slowing as well, relinquishing control to the drugs flowing through him. He closed his eyes. He stopped trying to make sense of the world around him. It didn’t matter anymore.
His chest inflated. It fell. It did not rise again.
Chapter 25
The screams pierced the walls of the outbuilding and straight into Shandi’s soul, where she sat in the truck, uncomfortable with the idea of encountering Deirdre. She knew in an instant that they had come from Jake, and before she knew it she was bounding across the parking lot.
Something stopped her at the door, however. She didn’t know what she’d find, but good sense prodded her into making sure someone would be on the way to help. She jerked her phone out of her pocket and called Cam.
“Sheriff Donner here,” his voice said.
“Come quick! To the first outbuilding at Arrowhead!” she rasped in a whisper, louder than she intended.
“What’s going on?” he asked, not as urgently as Shandi preferred.
“I don’t know. But it’s important.” She ended the call and crammed the phone back into her pocket.
Shandi took a deep breath. The screaming had stopped and she worried that she hadn’t acted quickly enough. She jumped the stairs in one
huge step and jerked open the door, instantly buffeted by the scene before her. Jake lay strapped to a gurney with Deirdre beside him, stroking his hair. What the hell was she even looking at?
Once Deirdre registered Shandi’s presence, she moved from Jake’s side and reached for something on the counter. Without consciously knowing what would come next, Shandi sprang to her right as the echo of a gunshot rang in her chest.
Deirdre had shot at her.
Shandi lunged for Dierdre, who steadied her arm and squeezed off another wild round, Shandi easily evading it. The impact of Shandi’s head against Deirdre’s small, bony chest felt like it should be hard enough to break her ribs. Deirdre flew backwards into the counter, her head turning as she bobbled the gun, trying desperately to hold on, but it came lose and clattered across the floor.
Shandi wrapped her arms around Deirdre’s slight waist and dragged her to the ground, causing Deirdre to finally fight, flailing her arms against Shandi’s back. Shandi barely felt it. They tumbled to the ground together and seemed to roll forever before Shandi finally got the upper hand and managed to straddle Deirdre against the floor. Instinctively, Shandi slammed her fist into the side of Deirdre’s face. It felt good.
Sharp pain shot into Shandi’s skull and neck as Dierdre wrenched her hair back. The bitch wasn’t very strong, but those arms were ridiculously long. Shandi punched her again. Deirdre pulled harder and bucked with her hips, causing Shandi to lose her balance and fall to the ground. Deirdre flipped the script and straddled Shandi now, but she didn’t punch. She wrapped her hands around Shandi’s neck and squeezed.
Shandi gasped for air, kicking and reaching for anything that could help her but her arms lacked the reach of Deirdre’s and she felt like a cartoon character being held back by a huge powerful hand. Shandi grabbed Deirdre’s wrists and pulled as hard as she could to pry them away. Her vision started to narrow and her windpipe ached but she channeled the pain into pulling even harder until she could feel the grip loosening, and then Shandi held Deirdre’s wrists apart, with Deirdre unable to push back against the adrenaline-fueled grip of a very angry Shandi Mason.