Authors: Jeff Gunhus
Getting onto the fire escape had been a challenge. Only after four attempts and two banged up knees was Jack able to use the wall for leverage to reach the lowest metal rung. Lonetree made enough noise for a small army in front of the hospital. The gunshots echoed through the valley until it sounded like the forest around Midland General Hospital was reprising its role as a Civil War battlefield.
One hundred and thirty six Union and Confederate dead
, proclaimed the granite monument in the town square. Jack just hoped Lonetree was making sure the body count was slightly lower than that tonight.
He also hoped Lonetree was right, and that the guard on the third floor had left his post when the shots started. He tried to not think about what he would do if some young cop pulled a gun on him. Instead, he focused on not falling and killing himself on the fire escape.
The old metal walkways groaned under his weight and shifted uncomfortably as he pulled himself up. The window that opened onto the second floor was framed by the weathered painted words, “ESCAPE ROUTE. DO NOT BLOCK.” He tried the window. Locked.
Not a good sign. Lonetree said that both the first and second story windows were unlocked last time. If the third floor was locked too, he would have to break the glass and attract unwanted attention to himself.
Deciding to deal with it when he got there, Jack climbed the ladder to the next landing. The metal was rough and flaky, the whole apparatus a giant piece of rust, likely to collapse at any minute and send him crashing to the ground in a twisting tangle of metal shards.
He shook his head to clear the image. The ladder did sway slightly under his weight but it felt secure enough. He kept climbing and reached the third floor landing.
The window was open.
Not just unlocked, but wide open.
Jack ducked into the shadows. There was no reason for the window to be open. It was a freezing night and the hospital controlled its temperature precisely. He twisted back and forth to look into each dark shadow on the fire escape, sure that he would find someone lying in wait for him. There was no sign of the deputy.
Wanting to be sure, Jack craned his neck to look up to the roofline. Nothing. Maybe the cop had opened the window when he heard the first gunshots, trying to gauge where they were coming from. Then, realizing he was out of the action, had gone downstairs so he wouldn’t miss out. After all, as a deputy in Midland, what were the chances of another shootout? Jack figured the scenario seemed plausible enough. He prayed it was true.
Jack tentatively stuck his head through the window and looked down the hall. Every muscle in his body was tense. If a cop or a nurse saw him, he would have only a few seconds to jump back down the fire escape -- and lose his chance to kill Huckley -- or climb through the window and somehow subdue whoever he saw.
Subdue. It was the word Lonetree had used. Jack wasn’t sure if a nurse on her rounds would be someone he could bring himself to subdue or not. Pushing the doubts out of his mind, he climbed through the window and into the third floor hallway.
There was no question what room he was looking for. The number had been burned in his mind the day Sarah wrote it a thousand times with her crayons. The thought of Huckley taking control of Sarah’s little body, of imposing his will on her, strengthened Jack’s resolve to take action.
He jogged down the hall, his eyes darting back and forth looking for any movement. His hand slid under his shirt and pulled out Lonetree’s .357 Magnum.
Anything smaller might just make him angry
, was Lonetree’s explanation for the large caliber gun.
“Oh my God!” a woman called out from behind him. “Is that you, Mr. Tremont?”
Jack stopped breathing. He recognized the voice. He could picture the nurse’s face but couldn’t remember her name. He turned, careful to move the gun behind his back as he did so.
The nurse closed the door to the patient’s room she had been in “Thank God you’re here. Dr. Tremont has been so worried. She..she…” The nurse’s voice trailed off and a puzzled expression replaced her joy of discovering him. Jack noticed her eyes darting down to where he held his hand behind his back. He was trying to stash the gun in his beltline but it kept getting snagged on his sweater.
“Yes, yes,” he stammered, “I got here as fast I could. I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
The nurse didn’t move forward, her uncertainty was clear as she shuffled her feet in place. “Lucy Brookes. We’ve only met a couple of times,” she said.
“That’s right. I’m sorry. I’m terrible with names. I--” He lost his grip on the gun and it fell onto the linoleum floor with a dull thud. Both he and the nurse stared at the gun. And then at each other. The color drained out of the nurse’s face and she started to shuffle back down the hall. There was more gunfire outside and the nurse looked down the hall as if just then recognizing what the sounds meant. Jack reached down, grabbed the gun and walked toward her with open arms, the gun pointing down at the floor.
“Listen, I can explain. It’s not what you think.” He checked behind the nurse to make sure his memory served him right. There was no stairwell at the end of this hall. Only five more rooms and then the window leading out to the fire escape.
“I don’t think nothin’,” Nurse Brookes promised, her eyes full of tears.
“I want you to go into this room right here and just wait in there. Will you do that?”
“What are up to? Are you after Dr. Tremont?”
“No, Lucy,” Jack said in the most soothing voice he could muster. “I’m not going to hurt her. Please believe me.”
The nurse had stopped moving. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re doing in my hospital with that gun.”
Jack decided he’d been too calm. He raised the gun and barked, “I don’t have time for this, Lucy. Either get in the room or I’m going to shoot you in the Goddamn leg. Now what’s it going to be?”
He knew he could never shoot her, but he counted on the nurse not knowing this fact. The threat and the sight of the barrel of a gun was enough to convince Lucy to give up her standoff.
With a shriek, she ducked into a room and slammed the door behind her. Jack went to the door to see if he could lock or wedge it closed somehow. As he approached the door he heard Lucy talking excitedly to someone. At first he thought there might be a deputy in the room but then he realized his mistake.
“Stupid. Stupid,” he cursed out loud to the empty hallway. Each room had a phone. The nurse had already let them know he was there.
The window to the fire escape was only feet away from him. He could easily escape in time. Even if they thought to send someone over to the fire escape, Lonetree had them pinned down inside. But then Huckley would still be alive.
Jack made the decision in a matter of seconds. He had to finish what he started.
He turned and ran down the hall, making sure that the safety was off the gun. He reached room 320 and threw open the door.
The room was dark, illuminated only by the orange glow of life-support monitors. He didn’t bother with the light. He didn’t have time. Without pausing, without thinking, he ran up to the bed and pulled the trigger.
The explosion of the .357 Magnum jerked the handgun back in his hand. He steadied it and fired again. Each shot so loud in the small room that he thought he might go deaf.
The entire bed bucked when each slug slammed into it. Pieces of shredded cloth flew into the air. Sparks poured from the electrical equipment hit by shrapnel and threw bizarre shadows over the carnage.
Jack fired all six shots into the bed. He screamed through it all. A release of the tension and the frustration of the last days welling up inside him and coming out as a primal yell.
Then silence. Out of bullets and out of emotion, Jack simply stared at the scene in front of him.
“Hello, Jack.”
When he turned, he felt like his brain turned in on itself.
There, standing in a row against the back wall, were Janney, Lauren and Nate Huckley. Huckley wasn’t in the bed. He was fully awake and dressed.
“Surprised to see me?” Huckley cracked.
Lauren pointed at him and shouted a warning. Too late, he realized she was pointing behind him. A flash of pain exploded in the back of his head. He felt himself falling. Then nothing.
“Wake up! WAKE UP!”
The words seemed to have solid form and beat against his brain like sonic chunks of concrete. The shouting was accompanied by a drum roll of dull metallic thuds. It wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he could place the sound. A police baton being dragged across metal bars. The fuzzy outline of a face drifted on the other side of the jail cell. Slowly it materialized into a smiling Deputy Sorenson.
“Hello, Mr. Tremont. I thought we might get to see each other again.”
Jack sat upright and groaned from the sudden movement. He swayed in place as he waited for the blood rush to pass so he could reclaim his equilibrium. The world slowed its orbit around him and he was able to focus enough to wish bad things on the deputy harassing him from the other side of the bars. An unexpected grunt behind him made him twist around to see who he was sharing the cell with. His worse fears were confirmed as he watched Joseph Lonetree roll over on the bunk in the corner.
Jack crawled over to Lonetree and poked him in the ribs. “Wake up,” Jack said, surveying the many cuts and bruises on his face. “Jesus, you look how I feel.”
Lonetree squinted and looked around the cell. “Is this the best room they have?”
“Great plan. We didn’t accomplish anything and now…now look at us.”
“Tell me you at least got Huckley.”
Jack quickly explained what had happened. When he was done, Lonetree shook his head. “I knew I should have done it myself.”
“Hey, looks like you’re in this jail cell with me, buddy. How did
you
get caught by some small town cops?”
Lonetree shrugged. “Must be getting old.” He pointed to Deputy Sorenson standing outside their cell. “That piece of shit got the drop in me from behind. Not much you can do when you have a gun pointing at your head.”
“This guy is the one who roughed you up like this?”
“That was when his buddies showed up. I guess they were a little bent out of shape from me shooting at them. They hit like pansies though,” Lonetree laughed and pointed to Deputy Sorenson. “Especially you, shit head. Complete pansy.”
Sorenson started digging in his pockets for the keys, “You son-of-a-”
“Sorenson!” Janney shouted as he entered the cell block. “What the hell are you doing?”
The deputy, looking like a whipped dog, stuttered, “N-N-Nothing…I was just…”
“Just about to open that door, get your ass kicked, and let these prisoners escape.”
“I---”
“Get out of here,” Janney growled, wrinkling his nose as if the deputy’s incompetence were something he could smell. He waited for him to sulk out the door before turning his attention to Jack and Lonetree. “So hard to find good help these days,” he grinned as he walked up to the cell. “What are we going to do with the two of you?”
Jack tried to contain the emotion in his voice, but still it came out trembling. “Where is Sarah? What have you done with her?”
Janney smiled. “Attempted murder. Assault against a police officer. Illegal firearms. Aggravated assault. So many charges, so little time.” He leaned in close to the bars, “But we’ll worry about that later. I brought a special visitor for you.”
Jack looked to the door, expecting to see Lauren. Instead, he saw a man dressed in jeans and a white dress shirt, with skin so pale that his neck and shirt seemed to run together. Blue eyes stood out from the white flesh of his face and two blood-red thin lines sufficed for a mouth. These two lines were twisted together in a wicked smirk as Nate Huckley strode into the cell block.
“Hello there. Good to see you again,” Huckley said, draping one hand over the crossbar that ran across the center of the cell wall and waving the other through the air in an accentuated gesture. He looked over to Lonetree. “We haven’t met. But I knew your brother well. He was…fascinating. I’ve never met a man with such endurance for pain.”
Jack turned to Lonetree, expecting the man to run at the bars, maybe even tear through them and rip Huckley’s throat out. But he stayed where he was. His chest heaved and his hands clenched at his sides, but he seemed to know that a lunge would be futile, probably even pleasing to his tormentor.
“Smarter than your brother. Not as hot headed,” Huckley said. “Surprising. I would have thought the opposite, you being the family grunt and all.” He turned his gaze on Jack. “And you. You’ve made your wife very unhappy. Don’t you know it’s extremely bad taste to kidnap your own daughter and then try to murder one of your wife’s patients? I don’t think she’ll be visiting you any time soon.”
”Where’s Sarah?” Jack demanded. “What did you do with her?”
“Ummm, little Sarah. You know, she really is quite an interesting little girl. Not much to look at when you first see her, but when you get in here,” he tapped the side of his head, “my, my, my. Now that is a different story.”
Jack charged up to the bars, “If you hurt her, if you touch her in any way, I’ll--”
“You’ll what?” Huckley laughed, waving his hands at the jail cell. “If I were you, I wouldn’t spend the little time I had left to live making idle threats and fantasizing about saving my daughter. I suggest you take responsibility for your sins and ask for forgiveness before you die.”
“Sins? What are you talking about?”
Huckley stared open mouthed. He looked over to Janney who took the cue to shake his head in disgust. “What sin
?
You can’t be serious. You
trespassed
against me. You almost caused me to die.” He reached for his throat as if the word alone caused him pain. “You sinned against me. And sinners must be punished.”
“You’re insane,” Jack whispered. “What do you think you are? A god?”
Huckley laughed. “Think? No, Jack. I don’t think I’m a god. I know it.”
Movement behind Huckley caught Jack’s attention. He looked at Janney just in time to catch a facial expression that he hadn’t expected. His lips were curled back in unmistakable scorn at what Huckley said. Leaving one hand still wrapped around the cell bars, Huckley glanced over his shoulder to follow Jack’s line of sight. The second he turned, Lonetree made his move.
Going from a standstill to full speed in one step, Lonetree jumped through the air, his right leg outstretched in a martial arts kick. The heel of his boot slammed into Huckley’s knuckles, mashing the bones and flesh into the metal bars.
Huckley howled in pain. He raised his mangled hand in front of his face, looking at the shafts of bone sticking out from the skin. What was a hand was now reduced to an unrecognizable claw.
Lonetree was back on his feet, admiring his work. “Now you’re a one-handed god, you sick son-of-a-bitch.”
Deputies clamored outside the door to the cell block, shouting questions through. Janney, unable to suppress a grin at Huckley’s wailing, crossed over to the door and called through it, “Everything’s all right. Don’t worry.” Then to Huckley, “Keep it down will you?”
Huckley snarled at the command, for a moment more animal than man. But then he seemed to catch himself. He straightened, still cradling his destroyed hand against his stomach. Jack noticed the bleeding had already stopped. “Maybe you’ll die with a little more dignity than your brother.” He reached his good hand out. “Janney, give me your gun.”
“No way. You’re not doing it here.” He nodded to the door that led out of the cell block. “Too many Midland cops here. Not possible.”
Huckley closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He whispered, “You’re right. You’re right.” It was quiet. Huckley stood with his eyes closed as if listening to soft music that only he could hear. When he opened his eyes a wide smile spread across his face. “Little Sarah is ready,” he said, slowly turning to face Jack. “Love to stay and talk, but there’s work to be done.”
Jack was desperate. “Wait. What is it about Sarah? You need a life, take mine. Trade her for me.”
“You have no power to bargain. If I wanted your pitiful life, I’d just take it. I have the control here. You don’t have a clue about your little girl, do you? What her true value is.”
Jack fell to his knees in front of Huckley. “I’ll do anything. Just don’t hurt her.”
Lonetree gripped his shoulder. “He’s not going to change his mind. Don’t make this better for him.”
“Don’t listen to your Indian friend here. I encourage begging. It’s so much like prayer. Still, he’s right about one thing. I’m not going to change my mind. Your daughter is one in a million. I don’t know, maybe she’s entirely unique. I didn’t understand why the Source wanted her so badly at first. In fact, it’s still somewhat a mystery. I’ll tell you this much though. After the accident I woke up in a dream world as black as any cave. I was terrified, but then I saw your daughter. I saw her as the Source must see her. Sarah blazes with light. She’s like a forest fire among candles. Psychic energy like I’ve never seen before. When she is put through the Taking ritual it will be unlike anything we’ve ever done. It will be magnificent.” Huckley stared off into the distance. “I’ll be free from all limits. I will be a god.”
Jack felt the blood drain from his face. “She’s just a little girl.”
“Yes, a little girl that will change things forever. I can only imagine the kind of power I will get from her. Even people like you will not be able to deny my divinity.”
Lonetree shouted to the sheriff. “You don’t believe this bullshit, do you Janney? You think Huckley here is a god?”
Huckley held up the hand Lonetree had mangled. The injury had already completely healed. “Nothing can hurt me,” Huckley said. “Nothing.” Then he turned to Janney. “I need to go. Everyone knows to be there?”
“Everything is set up.” Then in a lower voice he added, “Are you sure this can’t wait? There are a lot of outsiders around. If we just--”
Huckley held up his hand. “The Boss gave the order. This happens tonight.”
Jack leaned forward to hear Janney’s reply. “It’s not worth the risk.”
Huckley patted the sheriff on the cheek, a little harder than necessary. “Janney, how would you know? Besides, you’re to follow orders. Let us do the worrying, all right?” He motioned back to Jack and Lonetree. “And Janney…”
“Yes?”
“Make sure they suffer before they die.”
This comment seemed to brighten Janney’s mood. “Not a problem.”
They left the room together leaving Jack and Lonetree behind to guess at their fates.