Authors: Jonathan Maberry
The figure bent forward and scooped the cat up, pulled him to his chest, buried its mouth and nose against the cat’s head, and began to cry.
The other cats watched for a while, and then they, too, came closer and took the strange-yet-familiar scent. Muddy Whiskers let himself be held, and he didn’t even struggle as Mike Sweeney began rocking back and forth as he wept.
Crow peered into the oversized duffel bags the detectives laid out on a table in the lab Weinstock had ordered set aside for their use. “Gee, you think you brought enough guns?”
“If it has fangs we want it dead,” Ferro said, “not just pissed off.”
“Works for me.”
There were two short-barreled Remington 870s with pistol grips and folding stocks of the kind favored by some of the more hard-core narcotics units; a Mossberg Bullpup with a twenty-inch barrel and an eight-shot clip; a venerable old Winchester Defender with a standard stock and a Parkerized finish; an Ithaca Deerslayer; and one monster of a ten-gauge shotgun that LaMastra fondled with familiarity. This was an Ithaca Mag-10 Roadblocker with an augmented clip that allowed him to carry seven shells instead of the usual three. It was a bull of a gun useful only in the hands of a bullish man.
Ferro had somehow procured a thousand rounds of 12-gauge and two hundred for the Roadblocker, and over the last few hours they had worked in teams to doctor them up by injecting pure garlic oil into the casings, sealing the needle holes by melting the plastic with a lab burner. Ferro, LaMastra, and Val handled that job, marking each shell with a felt-tip pen to indicate the ones that were enhanced. Crow worked on the five hundred 9mm pistol bullets Ferro had brought. The concave mouths of the dum-dums needed only a small drop to fill, and Crow sealed in the oil with a drop of hot wax, blew on the wax, and smoothed the tips to make them round and even. When they had doctored six hundred shells and three hundred bullets, Ferro called a halt to it. They all gathered around the autopsy table, staring in fascination at the weapons and the ammunition that they hoped would help them survive the coming war.
“Okay,” Ferro said as if instructing a class, “the plain red shells are standard twelve-gauge double-ought buckshot. The ones marked with the black arrows are filled with deer slugs. If we have do concentrate on head shots, that’ll do’er.”
“What about those?” Crow asked, touching a shell marked with thick black bands.
“Shok-Lock rounds,” Ferro said. “Inside is a kind of ceramic minishell that explodes on impact and discharges bits of metal.”
LaMastra nodded. During the hours of work he’d shaken off some of his funk and had started talking again, though his eyes were still spooked. “Fire one at a lock and
poof!—
no lock. Fire one at a head, and all you have is a lingering cloud of pink mist.”
Crow winced. “Thanks, that image is going to stay with me.”
“The rest are for Vince’s Roadblocker.”
“Standard double-ought,” said LaMastra with a grin, “but at ten-gauge it’s a real crowd-pleaser.”
They loaded all six of the shotguns. Crow selected the Bullpup, liking its weight; Ferro took a Remington. They stowed their shotguns in one of the duffel bags, along with Crow’s Japanese sword and a collection of knives. LaMastra opened one of the bags of garlic bulbs and poured several dozen into a plastic bag and stowed this in the duffel.
Ferro finished the last of his cold coffee, “Does anyone know when sunset is today?”
“6:47,” said Val. “I checked the paper.”
“Then let’s go,” said Ferro.
Val told them to wait and quickly searched the cabinets until she found some small plastic specimen vials with pop-off lids. She filled a half dozen of them with garlic oil and gave two to each of them. “You never know,” she said, and they nodded their thanks.
Ferro and LaMastra stepped out into the hallway, leaving Crow and Val alone in the morgue. Crow wrapped her in his arms and kissed her.
“I know this will tarnish my Captain Avenger image,” he said, “but I’ve never been this scared before.”
“Me, too.”
“We could leave, you know. Pack up my car…just go. You, me, and the baby.”
“Sounds great. I hear Jamaica’s great this time of year.”
They smiled at each other, letting the lie make the moment bearable. They kissed very tenderly. Val leaned back and searched his face for a long time. “Crow, I’m not going to make any more speeches, okay? Just promise me that you’ll come back. Give me your word and I’ll be able to let you go. Otherwise—I think I’ll just go crazy.”
Very seriously he said, “Val, you know that poem I like, “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes? The one Loreena McKennitt did a song about? Remember what the hero says to his love?
‘I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way
.’ That’s me, baby. Mr. Hero Guy. Nothing’s going to stop me.”
She pulled his face close to hers. “Swear to me, swear you’ll come back.”
“I swear,” he whispered.
“Swear on our baby.”
“I swear.”
“Swear,” she said again and again, and each time he swore, and each time he kissed her face, tasting tears. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too.” Then she pushed him back and turned away and walked across the room where she leaned with both hands on the edge of a counter. He understood and didn’t say anything else. As he pulled the door closed behind him he heard the first of her deep, terrible sobs.
The cops saw his face and didn’t comment.
Crow nodded and he and the cops headed out to assault Dark Hollow.
(1)
The three ATVs stood in a row in the clearing at the top of Dark Hollow, the gray light of dawn brightened by the intense yellow paint jobs. “Nice,” LaMastra said, nodding approval as he ran his hands over the controls; Ferro eyed the machines dubiously.
“They’re gassed and ready to go,” Crow said. He strapped the sprayer units to the back of each vehicle. Crow took his
katana
from his duffel, drew it from its sheath, fished a vial of garlic oil from his pocket, and smeared it all over the blade.
“Will that hurt the sword?” Ferro asked.
Crow shrugged. “At this point, who cares?”
Finished with the sword, Crow poured more of the oil into his palm and rubbed it all over his throat, wrists, and face. “Eau-de-stinko,” he said, holding up the vial and wiggling it in Ferro’s direction. “It’s what everybody’s wearing these days. Besides, I’m under orders from Val to come back alive.”
“Good idea,” Ferro said, taking it.
Crow went through the particulars of the ATV with Ferro; LaMastra needed no instruction, having owned motorcycles all through high school and college. They mounted, fired up the bikes, and tested them out by driving in and out of the parking lot for a few minutes; then they lined up behind Crow.
“Let’s kick some undead ass!” Crow yelled and gunned his engine. He went over the edge of the pitch, feeding it gas, zigzagging to keep ahead of the pull of gravity. The others followed, engines shattering the stillness of the morning. It was steep enough to terrify Ferro, and the path was littered with stones and potholes, but the big low-pressure tires of the ATVs seemed indifferent to the terrain. One by one they swept down the hill, speeding through the morning light toward the veil of shadows that marked the boundary of Dark Hollow.
At the top of the hill, a lonely figure stood and watched them go, his black funeral clothes flapping in the breeze.
“You go get them sonsabitches, Little Scarecrow!” he shouted, screaming it with all his might, yelling in a desperate voice; but only the crows in the nearby trees could hear him. The cry was stretched out onto the breeze and blown into silent fragments. “God keep you boys safe.”
(2)
Val wandered around the hospital for an hour, too nervous to just sit and watch Weinstock sleep. She went down to the cafeteria for a plate of eggs but ate less than half of them. Morning sickness wasn’t a severe problem for her, but it was there. Newton called on her cell. “Hey…how are you?” she asked.
“We spent the night throwing up,” the reporter said with a bitter laugh. “How about you?”
“Pretty much the same,” Val said, though she noted Newton’s use of “we.” “How’s Jonatha? I imagine she’s heading back to Philly after what happened.”
“Actually,” Newton said, “she’s not. She wants to stay and help me document this. Which is reporter geek-speak for saying that we both want to help, but not in any storming the castle sort of way. We can do research, help with intel, as they say in the military.”
“Were you in the military?” Val asked hopefully.
“No…I watch
24
and
The Unit
. Heading over to the hospital now. Jonatha’s getting dressed and we should be there in a few.”
“I don’t know what to say except…thanks. I know this must be terribly hard for you both. It’s not your fight—”
“We talked about that, Val, and we both pretty much agreed that it is our fight. It’s everyone’s fight.”
“Thanks, Newt. I’m sorry I was so hard on you before.”
“As it turns out, you had every right to be. See you soon.”
She bought a paper and a big decaf in a go-cup and carried it back up to Weinstock’s room and frowned when she saw that the door was ajar; she’d definitely closed it when she left and the nurse wasn’t due for her rounds until seven. Val hurried over and opened the door quietly to see a small, mud-splattered and disheveled figure standing over the sleeping doctor. Even though his back was to her, Val recognized him at once.
“Mike…?” she said.
(3)
Crow crouched above the seat as the ATV slammed into unseen potholes and jerked over unavoidable rocks. Far behind him he could hear Ferro cursing and yelping as his body thumped painfully over and over again onto the saddle.
At the base of the long hill Crow braked to a stop to let the others catch up. LaMastra was right behind him the whole way, but it took Ferro an additional couple of minutes to pick his way laboriously down the hill toward them. He looked exhausted and miserable and his crotch and tailbone hurt like hell from the bumpy ride. Crow suggested that he try standing up off the seat next time and Ferro told him what he could do with his belated suggestions.
Crow pointed. “See that path there, where the trees form a kind of archway? That’s where we’re going. Be prepared, because when Newt and I were here we got a really bad feeling as soon as we entered it.”
“Can’t be as bad as the way I felt when we crossed over from sunlight to shadows on that hill,” LaMastra said.
“He’s right,” Ferro agreed, “if I wasn’t already a believer that would have done it. It was stepping out of who I am and into being a frightened five-year-old kid. Very…basic emotions, a primitive fear. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, that says it.” Crow nodded along the path. “Down there…it gets worse.” He gunned his engine and took off.
LaMastra looked gloomily at Ferro. “Great pep talk.”
They followed, and as each of them motored down the path an identical feeling of unease and claustrophobia clutched at their hearts. Ferro found himself reaching back to touch his slung shotgun over and over again; LaMastra kept murmuring prayers to the Virgin Mary that he learned in Sunday school. The path was so narrow that dry branches whipped at them and plucked at their sleeves with skeletal fingers, but this eventually emptied out into a wide clearing and Crow stopped again. The others drew alongside, flanking him as he examined the terrain ahead.
“Holy Jesus,” gasped LaMastra, staring at the expanse of twisted and diseased trees and hairy vines that hung like loops of intestine from every branch. Leprous toadstools were littered across the mossy floor of the swamp, and the whole place smelled like rotten eggs and spoiled meat. The stench was overpowering. Gagging, Crow opened up his second vial of garlic extract and rubbed some on his upper lip. He passed the vial to Ferro and LaMastra, who copied this trick.
“What’s wrong with this place?” LaMastra asked, unknowingly repeating the question that Newton had asked two weeks before. Crow shook his head.
“Everything,” he said.
They rode on through the twisted woods for another half an hour and then suddenly the side of the old farmhouse loomed up before them, rising out of the shadows in tangles of diseased ivy. Crow felt his gut tighten at the sight of it. They all slowed as they emerged from the forest into the overgrown side yard and then stopped in a patch of sunlight in the front yard about eighty feet from the porch. They turned off their engines and the silence was immediate and enormous.
“Doesn’t look like much,” said LaMastra, examining the house through narrowed eyes.
Crow snorted, “It grows on you.”
The pile of debris on the porch made the house look deceptively frail and shabby, but Crow knew that the place was a near fortress of sturdy stones and seasoned timbers.
Ferro nodded. “I expected something a lot more rustic, you know? Older, deader, more like a haunted house from a scary movie.”
“You think this place doesn’t look haunted?” Crow asked, surprised.
“It’s not that…I expected it to be a dead old house. This place feels…
alive.”
“Thanks,” LaMastra muttered, “’cause I wasn’t nearly scared enough before.”
He and Crow got off their ATVs, but Ferro lingered. “It’s a lot bigger than I expected, too. I’d guess fifteen, eighteen rooms.” Somewhere behind them a dozen crows sent up a cawing chatter. Ferro dismounted and unslung his shotgun. “We’re burning daylight, gentlemen. Let’s be about our business.”
They unstrapped one of the sprayer units and Ferro volunteered to carry it. “You two can provide cover.”
LaMastra raised his big shotgun and jacked the first round into the breech. The sound was startlingly loud. “Let’s get it done.”
With a grim smile, Crow bent to the duffel bag and removed the two pinch bars he’d brought along for just this purpose. He handed one to Vince. “Before we go in there, I’m for letting the sun shine in.”
“So am I,” agreed Ferro, “or I would be if there was any sun.” Above the clouds which had been gradually forming since late morning had coalesced into a gray-white ceiling. The small patch of daylight that shone down on their parked vehicles grew gradually fainter as the clouds draped the sun in gauzy layers.
“It doesn’t have to be actual sunlight, though, right?” LaMastra asked. “I mean…it’s still daytime, so these assholes are going to be sleeping. Right?”
Crow didn’t meet his gaze. “Yeah, well, Jonatha was a bit hazy on that point.”
“Terrific,” LaMastra said.
Crow stalked toward the porch, shotgun in one hand and pinch bar in the other. As he climbed the steps he carefully examined the debris, staring at every dark spot to see if it scuttled or moved, but there were no signs of cockroaches. Ferro stood on the top step of the porch and shined his flashlight into crevices and under shingles, following the light with the nozzle of the sprayer. Nothing moved.
“No creepy crawlies,” he said.
Crow braced his feet and drove the heavy claw of the pinch bar between plywood and brick wall and threw his weight against it; LaMastra went around to the left side of the house and attacked that panel. Soon the air was torn by the squeals of protesting nails and percussive grunts and curses as they pried the gleaming sixteen-penny nails out of the sheet of plywood; then suddenly there was a splintering crack and Crow’s panel slid straight down the wail, nail heads skittering on the brick like fingernails on a blackboard. It came down at an angle, struck the porch floor on one corner, stood on end for a moment, and then toppled backward onto the debris as Crow danced out of the way.
Crow threw down the pinch bar. “Well, kiss my ass!”
“What’s wrong?” LaMastra called, racing around the corner.
The window frame was splintered and devoid of glass, but they couldn’t see into the house because the entire frame was securely blocked by neat rows of new red bricks. Crow reached up and touched the cement, and though it looked recent it was cold and hard. He shook his head. “This son of a bitch thought of everything.”
“Yeah?” asked LaMastra. “I’ll bet he didn’t think of this.” With that he took Ferro’s shotgun, fed in a Shok-Lock round, aimed the weapon at the length of shiny steel-welded chain and pulled the trigger. The chain leapt like a scalded snake, spitting sparks and metal splinters, then the weight of the lock on the inside of the door yanked the ends through the holes and they heard the chain slither into a heap behind the door.
Crow nodded his appreciation. “Wow. That gives a whole new slant to breaking and entering.”
LaMastra handed the Remington back to Ferro and picked up his ten-gauge. “Shame I can’t get them for Bessie here.” He stood four-square in front of the door, shotgun leveled. “You guys ready?”
Crow jacked a fresh round into the breech and Ferro drew his Glock. They stood on either side of LaMastra, and Ferro said simply: “Kick it.”
LaMastra slammed his heel against it and the door flew inward, swinging all the way around to smash against the inner walls, sending the chain skittering across the floor of the entrance foyer. LaMastra stepped forward and fired a shot into the doorway, pumped, fired again, jacked in another round, and crouched to fire again. “Who has light?”
Ferro moved to LaMastra’s side and aimed a flashlight beam inside. LaMastra moved inside cautiously, with Crow closed behind. The living room was big, intensely dark, and totally empty, without furniture or carpet, nothing but darkness and dust. Ferro held the light above their heads and fanned the beam slowly back and forth; wherever the light went, two shotgun barrels and the sprayer followed. It was a big living room with a high ceiling and a hardwood floor. The flashlight showed the brickwork that denied entry through the windows. Some old wiring drooped through the torn plaster of the ceiling, and there was a piece of new plywood nailed to the ceiling, ostensibly to cover a hole. The repair job on the ceiling had been the first really bad bit of carpentry they’d seen because the tips of the dozens of nails used to affix it from the second floor had come poking through the wood and stood out in little tufts of wood splinters.
Crow exchanged a look with LaMastra, who nodded, and the two of them moved through the living room toward the doorway to the adjoining room, careful where they stepped in case the floor was rotten, listening intently for any sound. Their hearts hammered in their chests. Ferro lingered by the front door and directed his light in front of them as Crow and LaMastra inched toward the doorway to the next room. There were French doors connecting the two rooms, and all of the little panes of glass were painted flat black. Crow reached for the handle and turned it. The handle turned easily, but as he pulled there was a springy resistance.
“It’s not locked, but feels like it’s caught on something.”
“Give it a good yank,” said LaMastra. “If that doesn’t work knock out a pane and reach through.”
“Be careful,” Ferro said from the doorway. “I don’t like this.”
“Wait,” said Crow, “I think I have it.” He gave the handle a sharp pull and it abruptly gave, sending him staggering back a step. LaMastra caught him and almost as an aftereffect they heard the snap of strong twine. The sound was followed by a brief rumble that shook the house and then a rasping sound from overhead. They looked up in horror to see the sheet of plywood that was nailed to the ceiling detach itself at one end and swing down with a high-pitched squeal of hinges and pulleys.