False Prey: A Wildfire Novella (Wildfire Saga) (13 page)

“Jesus,” Danny whispered. He took another step back, but couldn’t take his eyes away from the man lying on the floor.

“I don’t want to die,” the motel owner said in a ragged voice. He closed his eyes and coughed again, hacking up a glob of nastiness that he spit on the floor. “
God
, that hurts,” he said. His eyes fluttered open, the red-rimmed eyes bored into Danny. “You’re a reporter,” he muttered.

“Yes,” Danny stammered.

“Good,” said the motel owner. His body was wracked again by another powerful cough. “Then promise me…print this whole nasty story when I’m gone. Spread the truth about this town. What they did to that poor man,” he said. He closed his eyes again and sighed, a ragged stuttering sound. “I want everyone to know I had nothing to do with this.”

“But you told me that you gave them the key to my room?” prodded Danny.
 
He felt uncomfortable questioning a dying man, but part of him had to find the truth—had to ask while there was still time.

“The only reason I let them have the key was because I knew they would kick the door down anyway. That poor man didn’t stand a chance. When Mosby showed up with all his goons, and then the cops showed up, I knew there was no way out for him.
 
I never wanted anyone to get hurt…”

Righteous indignation flared in Danny’s stomach. The handkerchief dropped away from his mouth for a moment. “So he didn’t commit suicide?”

The motel owner laughed, a sickening sound interrupted by wet coughs and another seizure fit. “Are you serious?
They hogtied that boy then cut him open like a Sunday buck.” The man was seized by another strong seizure, gasping for breath all the while. After a long moment, he was finally able to draw a ragged breath. His eyes fluttered open and Danny could see now that it was clear the skin around the man’s ears was definitely darker.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Danny stammered. “It’s…it’s just that… Well, your ears seem to be a little dark. Like the skin is changing color.” Danny quickly put the handkerchief back over his mouth.

“Told you it was the damn Blue Flu, didn’t I?” The dying man’s rough laugh was interrupted by coughs and shaking. His head dropped to the cold floor and his eyes fluttered open again. He rolled onto his back and his shoulders flopped into the sticky vomit on the floor. He took a deep sigh and stared at the ceiling. “Won’t be long now,” he said.
 

“I can feel it eating away at my lungs,” he whispered. “Kinda tickles.”
 
He lifted his right hand slightly off the floor and pointed at Danny.
 
The fingers quivered. “You make sure and spread the word that this town is doomed.
 
Tell the world what they did to that poor man.
 
I know he wasn’t a spy.
 
Hell, everybody else did too. It’s just that fool Mosby enjoyed getting everyone all riled up—just like old times. And Billy Perkins, he just let him get away with it. They’ve always watched out for each other...”

“They’re friends?”
 

“More like brothers.
 
Always getting into trouble together.
 
Mostly drinking or girls.
 
Both played football in high school, but Billy never went to college.”
 
He coughed again, one hand gripping his chest, the other covering his mouth.
 
Danny could see the man’s fingertips were starting to change from pink to light blue.
 
“Mosby went off to school somewhere up north and never came back…”

Danny stuffed the handkerchief into his back pocket. He pulled out his notebook and pen and tried to record the words of the dying man.
I can’t believe he’s getting this bad so fast.
 
This thing is like the Blue Flu but it’s moving a lot faster.
 
Hell, I’ve probably already caught it being so close to this guy.
 
May as well get my job done while I’m at it. This is just the kind of angle I need to take this story to the major networks.

“You sure…you sure you’re getting this all down?” wheezed the motel owner.

Danny nodded without taking his eyes off the notebook. His pencil flew across the scraps of paper.

“Good,” whispered the dying man. He closed his eyes and seemed to be focusing more on breathing than anything else. As Danny finished writing, the man spoke one more time. “Don’t let the sons of bitches get away with it.
 
I want no part of his death. I’m…” He started coughing again and Danny saw the telltale pink frothy foam emerge from his mouth. “Won’t be long now…”

Danny stood there dumbly, staring at the dying man holding his pencil at the ready in case he could say anything else.
 
He wasn’t sure what to do.
 
But he had to do something.
 
“Did you see Mosby or Officer Perkins hurt Mr. Sang?”

“No…”

“Did you see anyone hurt him?”

The motel owner shook his head.
 
“I was outside—but I heard your friend scream.
 
Saw a lot of commotion.
 
Too many people in front of me…”

“Did you see Mosby or Officer Perkins enter the room, then?”

“Yeah…both of ‘em.
 
Billy Perkins shoved me out of the way…”
 
He started coughing again and curled up tighter into
 
a ball of misery on the vomit-covered floor.
 
At last, he lifted his shaking hand once more. “Go on,” he gasped. “Get out of here before you catch it too. If it makes you feel better…clears your conscience…go find me an ambulance, too.” He tried to laugh again but was interrupted by another coughing fit. “But it won’t do me any good now…”

“I’m sorry,” said Danny. He took another step back and removed his handkerchief from his pocket. “I’ll go see if I can get help. Do you need anything?” He didn’t get a response. For a second he thought the man had already died, but then he saw the slow halting rise and fall of his chest. Danny quickly turned and made his way out to the parking lot.

Of course, the cops were gone now. Precisely when they were needed most. He paused at the front desk, and picked up the landline phone to dial 9-1-1. After explaining the situation to a very rude dispatcher, he hung up. He leaned around the open door, carefully keeping the handkerchief over his mouth, and said “Okay, an ambulance is on its way. Just try not to move or do anything that would make you start coughing again.”
 
The man was still breathing, but was not responding anymore.
 

“Poor bastard,” Danny said to himself. “What the hell am I going to do now?”
 
The sudden urge to breathe fresh air overpowered him. He practically ran out of the lobby, throwing the door open in front of him and stepped onto the gravel parking lot.
 
He leaned back against the building and slapped at his pockets looking for his smokes.
 
He held that first puff for a moment then slowly exhaled, trying to calm his nerves. He had been sure, after watching all of the preparations the city managers, the police, the mayor, even the local citizens, had taken to ensure that the flu would not penetrate their town… He had been so sure that this place was safe.

The loud wail of an approaching ambulance broke his thoughts. Danny waved the ambulance driver over, and quickly explained to the EMTs what he witnessed and where the motel owner was located. As the two grim faced paramedics rushed into the run-down lobby carrying their gear, Danny stood around in the parking lot and finished his cigarette as he watched clouds roll across the sky.

He was sure that the poor man would be dead in a matter of hours from the mystery flu. He glanced over at the police tape crisscrossing the door to his room. Thomas’ room.
 
Danny casually strolled across the parking lot, his shoes crunching on the gravel as he went.
 
The sound was loud and made him want to look over his shoulder.
 

He looked down at the sad scene through the open door.
 
Dried blood stained the carpet dark. The same stains splattered across the closest bed, the chair next to the table, and the table itself.
 
Danny cocked his head and looked inside the room.
 
It looked more like a scene out of
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
than a suicide.
 
He knew now that Thomas Sang had been murdered.
 
And now he had eyewitness statements to prove it.
 
On top of that, he had evidence that implicated a local cop—it was journalistic gold.

He was about to turn when he saw something out of the corner of his eye.
 
He looked closer into the gloom. Just below the lower hinge on the open bathroom door appeared to be a bright, shiny object wedged between the door and the wall. Danny quickly took another look around the parking lot to make sure no cops had come back, then ripped down one of the yellow crime scene tapes and ducked inside.

He stepped over as much blood as he could and made his way quickly to the back of the room.
 
Kneeling at the bathroom door, he saw that the object he’d spotted was Thomas’ cell phone. He remembered its cracked screen.
 

Trying to push aside thoughts of all the crimes he was committing, he reached a finger under the hinge and tipped the phone into his hand.
 
He quickly stuffed it in his pocket and carefully backtracked out of the room and returned to his car.
 

Once safely in the driver’s seat, he tried to calm his breathing and slow his heart rate. He peered out the windows and checked his mirrors, trying to scan the parking lot as innocently as possible.
 
He simply could not shake the feeling that he was being watched.

He looked on with calm detachment as the EMTs emerged from the motel carrying the owner on a stretcher. They quickly and efficiently loaded the man into the back of the ambulance and waved at Danny. In a matter of seconds the ambulance sped off with sirens blaring, heading back towards town.

As he watched the ambulance disappear around the bend, Danny pulled out Thomas’ cell phone and turned it on. The cracked screen glowed as it came to life.
 
Thomas had apparently tried to call a number before he had dropped the phone.
 
The number was still displayed on the patiently waiting screen.
 
It was a speed dial entry, and not a number that he recognized. The area code was wrong for Brikston, that much he knew.

Danny rubbed his chin as he leaned an elbow on the door to the car. “Who the hell were you trying to call, Thomas?”
 
Danny made a mental note to look up Cincinnati’s area code.
 
Maybe he was trying to call his wife one last time?
 
He could well imagine the scene: the door about to break open, the angry mob outside.
 

Danny figured his own last thought would probably be to call Nikki… He looked down again at the cell phone realized that the phone had three bars of signal strength. He fished out his own
 
phone and examined its screen. The
no service
light blinked angrily.

“What the hell kind of phone is this?”

Curiosity got the better of him, and he pressed the call button. The phone beeped and the screen went black as the phone began to dial the number. Danny held the phone up to his ear and listened. There was a series of soft clicks and before Danny could speak, the line went dead. Danny looked at the phone. The cracked screen glowed again, awaiting the next command. Frustrated, he shook his head and tossed the phone into the passenger seat. “Whatever…”

He lit another cigarette, put the car in drive, and decided to head back to his own room at the Holiday Inn by the interstate on the north side of town.
 
He needed a shower, he needed food, and he needed to decompress. He also needed to figure out what the hell he was going to do about this potentially explosive story. Things were shifting rapidly.
 

At first, he had thought it would be a straightforward piece on the self-quarantine in Brikston.
 
But as he turned onto Main Street and headed north, he began to realize that the flu was only going to be the backdrop of his article. How the flu, despite all of the preparations the town had made, still managed to get inside and spread paled compared to a cop involved in the murder of an innocent man.
 

He noticed in a detached sort of way that his was the only car on the street. There were no people walking around on the sidewalks. There were no open shops. For all intents and purposes, Brikston was a ghost town. The urge to speed up intensified with each passing minute. He wanted to reach the safety of his hotel room. This place was getting creepy.

It was also getting infected, he realized. He wondered idly if the motel owner was indeed dying. A nagging little doubt popped up in the back of his mind, questioning whether Thomas was actually telling him the truth or not. If he really had been a spy, wouldn’t there be a lot more infected people by now? Or perhaps, the motel owner was just the first person to be exposed?
 

Jesus.
 
If Thomas really was a spy and somehow got the owner sick…that means I’ve been exposed, too…

Movement out of the corner of his eye caused him to glance in his mirror. Far back in the distance was a squad car. Danny’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He took the first left he could and drove down the street where a stop sign halted his progress. He checked up and down the cross street. Still no pedestrian traffic, no cars on the road. The only thing moving was a piece of trash gently drifting down the street on the breeze. He waited, his car idling at the stop sign.
 

One, two, three, four…
 

The seconds ticked by as he listened to the rumble of his own engine. He stared at the mirror. Just as he was about to chalk it up to nervousness, the squad car turned the corner behind him and slowly approached. Danny turned to the right and moved down the street. He came to the next intersection and turned right again, onto the parallel street heading back toward Main Street itself.
 
At the next stop sign he paused again. He watched the mirror, waiting for the squad car to turn, and willing it to go straight.