Authors: Chris Philbrook
“Tommy, where is your mother? Did she leave the car?” Brian asked quietly.
Tommy looked in the front seat of the SUV and Brian could see the moment of confusion as his boy realized his mommy was missing. Brian watched his boy’s eyes puff up with tears. He shook his head and replied back to his dad, “I dunno dad. I don’t ‘member what happened.” He had no idea. Brian thought he might’ve been knocked out by the head on collision. He looked around in the truck and saw the contents of his wife’s purse strewn all about the front seat. The back trunk area of the SUV had bags and bags of food that she must’ve just bought at the madhouse grocery store Brian just drove by. He suddenly felt guilty for asking her to brave that store.
Brian debated what to do next and undid the straps on Tommy’s car seat. He picked Tommy up and carried him back towards the cruiser. He got maybe five feet away from the car when he heard a loud thunking noise from the wreck behind him. In one fluid motion he spun and drew his Glock, aiming at the intersection of the two crushed vehicles and putting his body between the noise and his boy.
He regretted turning immediately. Sitting, pinned from the looks of it in the front seat of the big green truck was the driver. His face and neck had been torn apart in the collision and he was silently clawing at the shattered windshield at the two of them. Brian leveled the green dot on his gun’s front sight at the chest of the man until he realized he needed medical attention.
“Hold on man, I’ll be right there!” Brian hollered. He put the Glock away and started back towards his patrol car. His mother got out of the backseat as he approached and reached up to take little Tommy from him.
“Ma, Stacey’s not in the car. She must’ve gotten out and walked home, or walked away. The driver needs help in the truck too. I’m gonna go help him as best I can, and then grab the groceries she bought. Stay in the car.” He handed Tommy to her as he spoke, and she nodded in agreement. The grandmother and grandson got into the backseat again and the door shut. Brian popped the trunk of his car and grabbed one of the bright red paramedic bags. He jogged back around his wife’s truck on the passenger side and came directly at the driver.
He stopped when he reached the two smashed hoods. Brian could see something was very, very wrong with the man. His skin was an ashen blue color, as if all the life had drained out of him. The few homicides and deaths he’d experienced immediately jumped to mind. He was brought back to the look of Carl, the firemen he’d just killed. He thought also of the little boy at his father’s shop that had died, and somehow reanimated after, attacking his father.
The driver of the truck was dead. There could be no mistaking it. His throat was missing. Brian could see the torn open trachea and sundered muscles, arteries and veins. No more blood ran down his shirt, and if he was alive, he should’ve been spurting it across the windshield. Brian switched the paramedic bag to his left hand and pulled out his pistol again. In the back of his mind he had a dim realization that he’d drawn his weapon more times in the last few hours than he had in his entire tenure as Chief. Possibly more times than in his entire police career.
As he circled the dead driver’s door he noticed bloody hand prints on the frame of the door. They were about chest height, and were clearly red handprints belonging to a woman. He looked carefully at the crimson smudges and pieced it together. A woman, obviously bloodied, had grabbed the door of the truck and pulled it open. Maybe it was Stacey trying to help the man? Maybe Stacey had died and killed this man? Maybe she was bitten by this guy as she tried to help? Brian was just a cop though, not a psychic. He couldn’t be bothered to solve this crime right now; he had bigger fish to fry. As he stared at the blood evidence the driver continued to wave his arms maniacally at him, clawing and gnashing his teeth in a silent rage.
He watched the man passively, and assessed his condition. Professionally, Brian decided this man was fucked. Completely fucked. His face, throat and chest were destroyed. The truck’s dashboard was oppressively crushing both his legs. Poking out the bottom of the doorframe Brian could see a mangled, twisted leg with the foot dangling off it. The man couldn’t escape the car, which was comforting. Brian stood there watching the dead driver try to get at him. Ripping and tearing at the air between them repeatedly. Eventually Brian raised his gun and put the green dot on the driver’s chest, right where the heart was. He gave the pistol’s trigger a gentle squeeze and sent one round into the man’s chest. A fine puff of blood jumped out the hole the bullet punched in the man. His dead body flung backwards into the bench seat of the truck, and he went motionless for a moment. However, another moment later he swiveled himself upright again, and turned back towards Brian. He resumed his relentless scratching and clawing immediately. The shot had no lethal effect. Only head shots counted now.
Without even realizing it, Brian re-aimed the Glock and squeezed out one more round, sending the second heavy .45 slug barreling into the destroyed face of the driver. His skull imploded as the lead missile tore its way through the head. This time the driver flung sideways and stayed that way. Brian stared at the dead body for a long minute, eventually turning to look at the crash scene as a whole. Absently he holstered the pistol. Two items caught his attention suddenly.
First he noticed bloody footprints on the pavement that led off in the direction of his house, up Hill Street. They were small prints, one with a shoe, one without a shoe. They obviously were female. As he turned to walk back to his cruiser he noticed the second thing. The truck had clearly crossed into his wife’s lane, causing the accident.
Brian suddenly felt very good about killing the driver. Even if he was already dead.
*****
Brian pulled the cruiser past the car wreck after he loaded all the groceries into the now packed trunk of his car. In the backseat his little boy Tommy was sandwiched between Sarah and Brian’s mother. By now there was no hiding the anguish on his mother’s face. She looked out the window at the passing trees and houses with a quivering chin. She held strong against the tears, but he could tell it was killing her on the inside.
Brian was relieved that he now had his two precious children with him. Now his worry was reserved for his wife. He made the turn onto Hill Street and idled the cruiser up the street at barely 10 miles an hour. Hill Street was a reasonably affluent neighborhood in town, and the houses there reflected it. Each was set back in a perfectly manicured lawn, with perfectly manicured hedges, and driveways edged with perfectly symmetrical artistic bricks. He hated this neighborhood with a passion, but it had good resale value, and it was safe for his kids.
He looked side to side at the houses as he passed them. Most of the houses had no visible activity. That made sense to him after all, most of the people who could afford these homes commuted into the city to their jobs, and they were likely stuck in traffic coming back from there, or dead already. He couldn’t even imagine how bad the city was by now. He had a nightmare on his hands with just 8,000 people, let alone 150,000.
He leaned forward in his seat and tried to pick up the trail of bloody footprints on the pavement. After perhaps 50 feet the trail disappeared. No more blood on the feet to leave behind. He frowned and continued down the road slowly, eventually coming to a stop when he saw two bodies laying half on the sidewalk, and half on one of the manicured lawns. The house they were in front of was a massive white colonial much like his own, and from memory he recalled it belonged to a couple retired college professors. He thought their name was Douglas. Or the Dougles. Brian didn’t know most of the people who obeyed the laws in his town. He did however know all the assholes firsthand. The two bodies in the road were clearly the residents of the house, whatever their last names were. Both were wearing bathrobes, and both were spilling out unacceptably large pools of blood.
Brian stopped the cruiser 20 odd feet from them and got out. He looked back at his mother and nodded at her to wait. She clutched the two kids close to her and nodded back. Brian shut the door and drew the Glock yet again. He’d gotten no more than five steps when the elderly male sat straight up with a jerk. He stared at Brian with a strange, vacant intensity. It looked almost as if he’d been possessed by pure hatred. The old man was scratched deeply and had bite wounds all over his arms and shoulders. He almost looked polka dotted from the blood soaking through his yellow bathrobe.
The old balding man got to his feet on stiff legs. Brian could see the entire back of the yellow bathrobe was soaked dark red from blood. His wrinkly skin slid across his bones and revealed the true depth of the wounds on his shoulders. Tendons, muscles, sinews and bone were all visible in various deep bite wounds. They were small bite wounds as well. Brian realized he was in a trance himself as the old man shuffled across the street at him, dragging his feet and raising his arms as if preparing to choke Brian. He raised the gun and squeezed off a couple rounds at his head, sending the man back to the hard concrete sidewalk, killing him permanently.
No sooner had the old man stopped twitching his wife began to roll around, trying to get to her feet the same as her husband. She was much worse off than her husband, and Brian was starting to lose his mind.
“What the fuck is going on?!” Brian screamed at the sky, pleading for some divine response explaining why everything had gone to shit. There was no reply from above, just bright blue sky and a few clouds floating obliviously by. His rage started to boil and he stomped across the street and emptied the pistol into his neighbor’s dead body. She tossed around the sidewalk to and fro as the heavy pistol slugs tore their way through her. Eventually one of the rounds destroyed her brain and Brian’s finger clicked back an empty trigger. He screamed in frustration once more and stormed back to the cruiser, replacing his empty magazine as he went.
He made eye contact with his mother and her expression scared him. She was afraid of him. His rage had struck a chord with her. All his color drained away and he stopped dead in the street, suddenly realizing he’d lost control. His mother’s eyes let loose another barrage of tears and she looked away, ashamed and frightened of her son. Brian’s heart broke as he came to grips with what he’d just done. He was a man of the law, not a raging, gun toting lunatic. A few deep breaths later he put the pistol away and got back in the car. Everyone sat in awkward silence as Brian gathered his thoughts a bit more. After a minute he put the car in drive and pulled out, heading towards his house.
He only had a few houses to go before he pulled into his own driveway. Stacey and he owned a big colonial with a two car garage attached. They’d gotten a great deal on it years ago when the economy started to tank and he’d been promoted to Chief. Stacey had a small inheritance from her grandparents and they’d been saving for a very long time. The mortgage was a little tough on them at first, but the house was amazing. It also helped that his dad knew just about everyone in town, so when something broke, they always got a five finger discount on getting it fixed. Being Chief of Police in a small town has some benefits Brian supposed.
He stopped the cruiser in his inclined driveway just short of the garage doors and put it in park. It took him a few more seconds to build up the nerve to talk again.
“Mom, I’m thinking Stacey came home after the accident. She might be hurt, so I’m gonna go see if she’s here. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Stay in the car.” He spoke in a hushed monotone, trying to not get his kids riled up or scared. His mother mumbled a fearful, quiet “okay” and he got out.
For no reason he could tell he dropped his magazine out of the pistol and made sure it was full. His mind started to race and his guts started to turn as he walked across his yard on the brick walkway towards his big front door. His three front steps were more bricks arranged in a half circle. The masonry people did a wonderful job on the steps and every time he came home he marveled at how symmetrical the steps were. They were perfectly radial, level and exactly as he wanted. Brian noticed the bloody scuff marks on his brick steps.
He stopped short and examined the door. All over the front of the white oak were long streaks of blood. Full hand prints were all over the frame and door handle as well. It looked like someone had tried to beat their way in and busted their hands open in the process. The door was still shut though, and Brian noticed a few bloody swathes on his own perfectly trimmed green hedges. They looked to be heading around the garage and towards the back.
Brian followed the bloody marks on the bushes until they disappeared. He walked in front of his cruiser and glanced at it, checking again to see if everything inside was still fine. The kids looked nervous, and his mother the same, but they were fine. He gritted his teeth and scanned the street for danger. It was odd to him how quiet it was. There should’ve been at least a few kids riding bikes or playing in the street. But now, there was nothing. Dead silence. Even the birds seemed to be gone.
Brian swallowed hard and took the corner of the garage, heading down the narrow space between his thick hedges and the garage’s siding. It was much cooler in the shade there, and he suddenly realized how warm it had been all day. He wiped away the sweat he hadn’t noticed earlier with his free hand and slowly walked out into the backyard. His above ground pool filter chugged away, circulating the blue summer salvation inside itself. He had a sudden urge to dive over the side of the pool to cool himself but fought it off. The tall hedges were about his height and surrounded the perimeter of his property. His white shed sat in the far back right corner of his yard, and he walked towards that to check on his dog Scotty.
Brian suddenly realized his dog wasn’t barking. Fuck, he thought. He started moving much faster towards the dog run in the back of the yard. The dog house was just around the edge of the shed he thought. He came wide and saw his precious beagle torn limb from limb. Scotty the dog was on his side, tongue hanging out of his jaw on the dirt near his doghouse. Brian dropped down to his knees as the tears started streaming down his face. His stomach convulsed with silent sobs as he tried desperately to contain his emotions over his canine buddy. He wiped the tears away and tried to find his dog’s missing front legs, but they were nowhere to be found. For some reason this infuriated him, not being able to find the legs.