Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2 (13 page)

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Nicole was at the vertical blinds now, about to pull them aside so she could open the door for the person who was knocking.

Nora lunged for the cordless phone on the wall in the kitchen. She grabbed the phone and it nearly slipped out of her hand. She pushed the TALK button with a trembling finger. She was going to call the sheriff’s office and tell them to get out here right now.

There was no dial tone.

She tried all the numbers on the phone, jabbing at them furiously.

Nothing.

The phone had just been working a few moments ago.

They had cut the phone lines.

Then another thought occurred to Nora. Had she locked the sliding glass door when they had come back inside? She hadn’t heeded Deputy Burnette’s advice on the phone earlier and locked all the windows and doors, but maybe she had locked the sliding glass door … but she was pretty sure she’d left it unlocked.

Nora plucked the biggest kitchen knife out of the wood block on the counter and she ran into the dining room.

“Don’t open that door!” Nora screamed at her daughter, finally finding her voice.

Nicole seemed to be ignoring her—almost like she was in a trance. She slid the vertical blinds to the side and then she stood there, paralyzed for a moment as she stared at the person on the other side of the glass. She seemed frightened but also confused, like she was trying to figure out exactly what she was looking at.

Nora wished Travis was still here. He would know what to do.

“Nora,” a voice said from outside the glass door, a voice that seemed to somehow float into the house through the glass, a voice that sounded so clear to her.

Her heart stopped in her chest for a moment. The person standing outside knew her name. Maybe it was a neighbor or someone from town checking on them. But then again, why wouldn’t they have come to the front door and rang the bell? And why would Nicole be so frightened and shocked by who was on the other side of the glass?

“Nora …” the man said again. The voice was louder. Her name sounded garbled in the man’s mouth, like he was having difficulty speaking, like he might be injured.

There was something familiar about the man’s voice, something familiar in the way he said her name. She knew this man’s voice from somewhere; she could feel it in her bones.

“Nora … I’m home. I’ve come back home.”

Nora knew who it was now … but it couldn’t be. She bolted from the end of the dining room towards the sliding glass door with the knife clenched in her hand.

Nicole was already sliding the door open for their visitor, her face shiny with tears as she stared at the man in the doorway.

“Don’t open that door!!” Nora screamed at her daughter.

But it was too late now.

Nora stopped in her tracks a few feet away from the door as Nicole backed up to let the visitor inside. Now Nora could clearly see who was on the other side of the sliding glass door. She froze in shock and fear just like Nicole had done, her mind trying to understand what she was seeing. The knife slipped out of her fingers and dropped down to the floor with a thud.

The sound of heavy footsteps thumped through the house as the man entered their home from the deck.

“Daddy?” Nicole said as she backed up away from the dead man standing just inside the sliding glass door. His skin was gray and mottled. The suit he’d been buried in was nearly shredded with rot. Clumps of dirt hung in his hair. More dirt was smeared all over his clothes and exposed skin.

“Yessss …” he whispered. “Daddy’s home.”

Destin, Colorado

G
eorge Joekel was the snowplow driver for the town of Destin, Colorado. He’d been very busy these last two nights plowing the streets of the city and the roads of the suburban neighborhoods. He was a private contractor and he used a heavy-duty plow hooked up to the front of his massive Ford F350 that was equipped with giant snow tires. He was nowhere near done with the work of plowing the streets of Destin, and he’d only managed to catch about six hours of sleep in the last two days, but Sheriff Hadley had called him and told him to stop what he was doing and get on up to Route 217; he wanted him to start plowing south from Destin to an address he’d given to him—the address of a man named Tom Gordon. The sheriff also wanted George to plow the man’s driveway so emergency vehicles could get to a house fire.

George was on it.

He turned his F350 around and headed east towards Route 217, a county road that led down to the town of Cody’s Pass—the same town where the bank robbery had taken place. People had stayed indoors because of these massive storms, but also because of the news that these criminals were still on the run. And with how severe the weather had been in the last few days, it wasn’t that far-fetched to think that those criminals might still be here in the area, maybe holed up inside someone’s home and holding them hostage.

Maybe they were even at this Tom Gordon fella’s place that Sheriff Hadley wanted plowed so suddenly.

Route 217 was a winding pass through mountainous terrain—a strip of two lane road that stretched through the never-ending forest, and now it was completely covered with two and a half feet of snow. George hadn’t seen a snowstorm like this in decades.

It’s all because of this damn global warming, George liked to grumble to the other patrons at the bar, but his worn-out joke didn’t seem to amuse anyone anymore.

George made his living as a landscaper (among many other odd jobs) through the spring and summer, and he had a small crew of helpers. But when the first snows hit, his guys took unemployment from the state for the next few months and George went to work with his truck and plow. He was a one-man operation and he worked very hard to keep it that way. Keeping up with the demand always worried him; he felt sure that the county would eventually elect to hire a plow service from one of the neighboring counties, but he would try to hold on to this gig for as long as possible.

So that meant when Sheriff Hadley wanted a particular job done, George was on it. He still had three quarters of a tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, a thermos of black coffee, and the radio was blasting rock n’ roll.

By the time he had plowed a decent path down the winding, remote road, he saw flashing lights in the misty white distance behind him. The cop cars and emergency vehicles planned on following him right to the source of this emergency.

And now he could see the spiral of smoke rising up above the trees ahead of him. George was betting the fire had started from either a Christmas tree or a space heater. He muttered a quick prayer that no one had been caught in the fire.

He slowed down as his older Garmin GPS unit that was stuck to his windshield with a suction cup told him he was approaching Tom Gordon’s driveway.

The driveway was much narrower than the county road and the tree branches scraped at the sides of his truck in some places as he pushed the snow to the sides of the driveway with his plow. The powerful motor in his truck growled and smoke poured out of the dual exhaust, clouding up behind him.

The driveway plowed just as easily as the road … no rocks or large tree branches in the way, thank God. Fallen tree branches snapping off from the wind or weight of the snow were pretty common in his line of work. He emerged out of the woods into a field that had to be at least ten acres … and there was the cabin in the middle of the field. It was still on fire. The front porch was partially collapsed and part of the roof was caved in near the back of the cabin. A free-standing garage with a pickup truck parked in front of it was far enough away to have escaped the flames, but much of the snow on the garage and nearly all of the snow on the pickup truck had melted away from the heat of the fire.

George didn’t expect to see a young man sitting on a snowmobile in front of the garage waiting for them. But what surprised him even more were the burnt bodies on the front porch—two on the floorboards, and one in the doorway to the home.

But he kept on with his job; he kept plowing a path for the sheriff’s car and the fire truck and the ambulance, creating a large area so the vehicles could park, even getting as close to the front of the cabin as he could so the fire truck could pull right up in front of it.

The emergency vehicles pulled up in front of the cabin as George continued making pass after pass, creating an impromptu parking lot for them in the front field.

When he was done, he pulled up near the sheriff’s car. The sheriff was already rolling down his window.

“You need me to plow some more here?” George asked him.

“No, I think that’s good for now, George.”

“You want me to keep on plowing down Route 217 to Cody’s Pass? I mean I can do that, but I still got a lot of neighborhoods in town to do.”

“I know. Don’t worry about the rest of 217. Freddie’s got some guys plowing the streets in Cody’s Pass. I’m sure they’ll get on up here eventually. Go ahead and get back to town. Make sure you make the pass wider on the way back so these vehicles have an easier time getting back to town.”

“You got it, Sheriff.”

The sheriff got out of his car but George hadn’t pulled away just yet, hesitating for a moment. He was still leaning out of his truck window, the motor of his truck rumbling. “Are those bodies on the front porch?” he asked. “I thought I saw—”

“I haven’t had a chance to look at things yet,” the sheriff said. “I’m sure you got a lot of work to do.”

George knew when he was being brushed off. He rolled up his window and turned his truck around and headed back for the driveway.

Tom Gordon’s Cabin

S
heriff Hadley watched George leave. He was sure the man would be spinning some yarns at the bar tonight for sure.

The firefighters already had their hoses out and they were blasting the flames with water. The sheriff decided to stay out of their way for now and he headed over to the kid who waited patiently on his snowmobile by the open door of the garage. The walking was pretty smooth across the “parking area” that George had created for them, but he had to step over mounds of snow at the edge of the cleared area and then trudge through the knee-high snow to get to the kid who had gotten off his snowmobile to meet him halfway.

“Travis Conrad,” the kid said like he could see the sheriff was struggling to recall his name. “I played football with your son in high school.”

The sheriff nodded. “You called this in?”

“My mom did. She saw the smoke in the sky and I came down here to check it out in case someone needed help.”

“I appreciate that,” the sheriff said as he glanced over at the firefighters blasting the burning logs with the fire hoses. It already looked like they were getting a lot of the fire under control.

Deputy Ann Burnette who had followed the sheriff up here walked up to them from her squad car. She stood a few feet behind the sheriff, just listening.

“There are some dead bodies on the front porch,” Travis said, turning the sheriff’s attention back to him.

“I saw them when I drove in,” the sheriff said.

Travis nodded. “It was easier to see them before more of that porch roof collapsed. I saw three bodies. Maybe even four.”

While you were trampling around the crime scene, Sheriff Hadley thought as he looked at the obvious foot traffic through the snow in front of the garage and down the side of the house through the snow.

Travis followed the sheriff’s eyes. “I wanted to make sure nobody was around,” he explained. “I checked the garage. Checked the back of the cabin. There’s a vehicle back there. It was on fire but I …” He hesitated like he didn’t want to incriminate himself.

“It’s okay, son. Tell me what you did.”

“I found a fire extinguisher in the garage and I put the fire out. Shoveled some snow on it, too. But I tried to stay clear of the cabin. I didn’t want to mess up any of the other tracks.”

“There were other tracks in the snow when you got here?”

“Oh yeah. All over the place.”

The sheriff looked back at the massive parking lot George had created and was now regretting that he had okayed it. He and Deputy Burnette glanced at each other for a moment.

“There were all kinds of footprints all around the house,” Travis continued. “And someone drove a snowmobile out of here.”

This snapped the sheriff’s attention back to Travis.

“I checked the garage,” Travis continued. “You could tell there was a snowmobile in there. There’s a tarp crumpled up on the floor.”

“You saw the tracks the snowmobile made?” Sheriff Hadley asked. The tracks in the driveway would be wiped out now from the plow and all of their vehicles.

“Yes, sir,” Travis answered.

“You saw them beyond the driveway?”

“Yes, sir. They go south.”

The sheriff thought about that for a moment.

“And that vehicle around back, I don’t think it’s Mr. Gordon’s truck. If it is, he must’ve just bought it. It’s an SUV. A Chevy Suburban. White. I can tell because the front of it didn’t get burnt yet. There’s a New Mexico plate on the front.”

The sheriff turned to his deputy. “I need you to get on the horn. Get Ronnie up here with a truck and his snowmobile.”

“Right away, Sheriff,” she said and hurried back to her car.

The road down to Cody’s Pass was too bad to follow the snowmobile tracks in his car. He thought about turning George Joekel around, but he would wipe out the snowmobile tracks with his plow. No, he would wait for Ronnie to get up here with the snowmobile so he could follow the tracks down to Cody’s Pass. When she came back, he would tell Deputy Burnette to call Freddie down in Cody’s Pass and make sure he and his men kept an eye out for possible suspects on a snowmobile.

The sheriff turned back to Travis. “The snowmobile tracks on 217 … you didn’t drive over them on your way here, did you?”

“No, of course not.” Travis managed to look a little offended at the sheriff’s question and possible assumption.

Sheriff Hadley sighed. “Okay. Let’s go see this truck around back that you’re talking about.”