Bone White Page 18

  She decided to head toward the lake, curl back around by the church and maybe search the woods on the other side. That is, if Father wasn’t already home with the boy. Part of her hoped that was the case. A very small part of her. The part of her that had spent too much time cooped up inside the church and wasn’t used to this much physical exercise. Then her miserable little hunting expedition would finally be over.

  The rest of her hoped her father wouldn’t be there. It would be bad for her if he was. Very bad. She had thought it would be worth the risk, if for no other reason than to prove herself to her father. But with her determination fading, taking her confidence with it, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe she should just return home and wait. Pretend she’d never left. Sit in her room, continue reading her mother’s books until the ordeal was over. But, that would mean missing a perfect opportunity to show Father she was ready to help. It might be the only one she’d have. The back and forth was all so confusing.

  A low-lying tree branch grabbed the sweatshirt, ripping the seam along her shoulder. The gift from Becca ruined, she staved off the tears and stopped walking. Glancing around the damp woods that stretched unbroken around her, she questioned if maybe she wasn’t as ready as she thought.

  Chapter 55

  The man smiled at Henry, his grey crooked teeth jutting in all directions like headstones in a forgotten cemetery. It was the kind of smile used for greeting an acquaintance, someone you knew in passing. Not overly friendly, but pleasant enough. The smile seemed even more surreal, like a scene from some dark anime, when the sword-like bolo knife appeared in the man’s raised hand.

  As the knife made its descent, Henry put his arm up to deflect the blow, only to lose it right below his elbow. The motion was swift and the severed limb dropped like a branch lopped from a tree, landing at Henry’s feet with a sloppy thud. But the arm had done its job, and the knife swung wide of its originally intended mark.

  The scream that came from Henry was like something out of a horror movie. Like nothing I’d ever heard. And knowing why and whom it was coming from made it all the more terrible. The guy had wanted to help me, out of sheer goodness. And look what he’d gotten for his compassion.

  I was stunned at the rapid turn of events. But Henry didn’t even hesitate. Before the shock had a chance to settle in, or his assailant had a chance to reload, Henry lowered his good shoulder and rammed the man in the stomach, driving him into the wall just beside the doorway. The old man’s strength was surprising and inspired me to help him somehow. Two against one. We had a chance.

  I swept my hands across the cluttered countertop for something to use as a weapon. A discarded knife would be good. A two-by-four would be better. My eyes came to rest on the broken steel window frame. The pieces weren’t much, but with nothing else around, they were everything. I launched myself toward them, ignoring the protest from my ankle. Gripping the thin piece of metal defiantly in my fist, I turned back around, just in time to see the long bolo knife enter the small of Henry’s back. It sank deep into the meat pillow of Henry’s body. All eighteen inches of honed steel disappeared into the growing balloon of red on the back of Henry’s grey flannel shirt. I watched in horror as the tip of it pushed its way through his abdomen, emerging just below his ribcage. The strength that had been so inspiring only seconds before was instantly sapped. Henry slumped to the dirty linoleum in an agonizing death he didn’t deserve.

  You know those little whirlpools that appear when the last of the water is draining out of the bathtub? A moment before, my tub had been filled to the brim with confidence. But that bolo knife had just pulled the plug as easily as it had sliced through Henry. And the last of my bravery was going down the drain.

  In the seconds that followed, a million thoughts raced in my head. Without Henry, the numbers advantage was gone. And having just witnessed the bolo knife’s capabilities, my piece of window frame, while sharp and pointed at both ends, would be useless in comparison. I downshifted out of fight gear and into escape mode, mentally mapping the layout of the small building. I wanted to drop everything and just run, but with him being so close and it being light out, there was no way I was going to lose this guy in the woods again. Not this time. Especially with my bum ankle.

  Out of nowhere, the image of something I had seen outside popped into my head. A broken flagpole lay alongside the front wall. Where it once proudly flew the American flag on summer holidays, it now lay severed in sections the size of baseball bats. Handy, manageable baseball bats. And that became my plan. Fight back and escape. But, I had to move fast if I was going to get to them before he got to me.

  The man had a foot on the back of Henry’s neck and was effortlessly retrieving his weapon as I dashed around the corner into the hallway where the restrooms were located. I was actually doing more limping than dashing, but I was going as fast as I could. I remembered a third door at the end of the hallway, red with a black ‘Employees Only’ sign posted on it. It must lead to the snack shop’s storage area and I was counting on a rear exit. Hopefully, if I had any luck at all, I wouldn’t have to outrun the man for long, just long enough to get around to the front of the building.

  I passed the blue door to the men’s room, then the women’s door that concealed the animal remains. The caustic smell hadn’t dissipated by much, but I didn’t stick around long enough for it to get to me. Besides that, foul smells had become a staple of this little excursion. The hallway seemed longer than it had moments before, like I was in one of those classic black and white films where the camera stretches out the hallway to three or four times longer than it really is. As I kept going, the red door at the end of this hallway was doing just that, moving away with each step I took

  My left ankle threatened to buckle every time I put weight on it, but I kept moving until my shoulder finally slammed into the red door at the end of the hall. The rusted hinges gave way without hesitation and I tumbled into a storage room. At least, it had been at one time. Now, it was empty. Metal shelves stood bare alongside one another against the far wall. Broken cardboard boxes formed a tiny mountain in one corner, their sides ripped open and their contents long since pirated. Still, the room had exactly what I needed: a back door. Or rather, a back doorway. Just like the front, the door was missing, and nature was making itself welcome.

  Pausing for only a fraction of a second, I skirted my way through a sea of dried orange and red leaves that crunched underfoot. Once I was framed in the doorway, I waited, my chest rising and falling, pulsing with adrenaline, until I could make out the sound of hurried footfalls on linoleum. He was following me down the hallway just as I hoped he would. It was the daring part of my plan. He had assuredly noticed my injured leg as I limped away, increasing his confidence in his ability to catch me. I was counting on that overconfidence to save my life.

  Just through the doorway, something strange caught my eye. Something I hadn’t seen up to this point. In the middle of the woods directly behind the building was a clearing. Small in comparison to the one at the church, a mostly dirt parking lot spread out with an equally overrun road leading from it into the woods. Both had been overtaken by weeds and grass and were barely visible. Both had also turned to mud overnight. I thought of the possibilities. Then almost immediately, I thought of my bum leg and remembered how long Garrett and I had walked along the old road the night before. How sparsely populated the area was. Henry’s truck was a sure thing, but getting there on my bum leg wasn’t. The flagpole was a probability at best, but I was more likely to reach it alive than the other side of the parking lot. I needed to stick with my original plan.

  Footsteps echoed through the doorway, and I turned to the right, forcing my way through dense brush and thicket toward the front of the building. There was no more running. Even if my ankle would allow it, the density of the brush wouldn’t. As I pushed aside a tangle of something that smelled like honeysuckle, a flash of doubt entered my mind. Perhaps I was wrong about the downed flagpole. Maybe I’d conjured it out
of thin air due to the lack of another worthy plan. But, it was too late to worry about that. It had to be there. There was no turning back, and I couldn’t let doubt slow me down.

  It wasn’t until I was rounding the corner to the front of the building that I risked a quick glance behind me. The timing couldn’t have been better. The man had just come through the doorway, and in that instant, he saw me, too. Our eyes met for the first time since I’d escaped the basement. His hatred and desperation hadn’t lessened in the time since he knelt on the floor holding his head. His intentions were apparent as he turned in my direction.

  “For the hour to reap has come!”

  “Bullshit!” I shouted, preparing to head for the corner of the building. The brush barely slowed him down, making me wonder if I’d have time for my plan. But I needed to fight the urge to take off. Going against every voice in my head, I needed to let him get closer.

  “For the harvest of the earth is fully ripe!” he cried, brandishing the bolo knife for me to get a good look at. Then his face twisted in a deranged smile. “I’ve got customers waiting.”

  His words ran cold through my veins as I slipped around the corner. Thankfully, the broken flagpole was right where I’d remembered. I snatched up one of the three foot long pieces of steel tubing and tested the weight of the steel in my hands. I could feel the tables turning. I suddenly felt strong. Powerful. Truly, and finally, able to defend myself in a way I never had before.

  The sound of heavy footfalls drew closer and I took a deep breath. This was it. Now or never. One moment to determine the rest of my life. Gripping the section of flagpole like a baseball bat, I readied myself at the corner of the building, harnessing the adrenalin that was now pumping through me like vapors through a steam engine.

  At the first sight of the man coming around the corner, I inhaled deeply and swung for the fences. Like a pro, I twisted at the waist. Opened my hips. Funneled all my strength down into my lower back and caught the man right below the ribcage.

  The blow separated the oxygen from his lungs in a single, massive eruption. With it came a grunt, low and guttural. As he doubled over, the bolo knife slipped from his hand and landed on the carpet of pine needles. With both arms folded completely across his abdomen, he gasped for air. His knees hit the ground with a dull thud, giving him the posture of someone kneeling in prayer. But his eyes were stretched wide with panic and desperation.

  I stood motionless, unsure what to do next. Was it enough? Was the objective only to buy myself some time, or to make damn sure he would never follow me again? The decision taking less than a second, I raised the pipe high in the air. With all my strength, I brought it down on the back of the man’s head. The base of his skull exploded in a blossom of red mist that sprayed onto my face, warm and tacky. The sound it made was sickening. I was at once repulsed at my viciousness, yet energized by the feel of it coursing through my veins. He fell forward and rolled to the side, curled up as if he were simply a child going to sleep.

  The section of flagpole dropped from my trembling hands as blood leaked from the man’s wound. The puddle of red oxygenated liquid surrounded his ruined head like a halo as it spread out before seeping into the earth. The sounds from his throat ceased.

  And in my mind, there was no doubt. He would never follow me again.

  Chapter 56

  The scream stopped her dead in her tracks. She stood motionless, holding her breath, as her ears strained to detect the origin. Her wariness slowly turned to excitement as her mind worked to process the echo coming through the pines. The scream had come from down by the lake. Not too far from where she was. She rhythmically tapped the butt end of the hatchet against her leg, scouring her brain, trying to think of what might be in that area. Where could the boy have been heading? Had he been hiding somewhere? And when her thoughts eventually led to the old beach, she cursed herself for not thinking of it sooner.

  Of course!

  The beach had been closed for a few years, but she could remember spending time there when she was a little girl. It was one of only two real beaches on the lake, and her mother liked it because it was always less crowded, making it worth the added travel time, she’d say. A smile started to creep across her face when she thought of how they had gone there often. Just one of the many things they did. Before. Sharing blue raspberry Slush Puppies and soggy microwaved pizzas with new friends. Sitting out on the diving board platform in the water, talking about boys and giggling when one would pull himself up out of the water with his butt crack showing. She’d even rolled down the hill and straight into the water, spinning inside a large, black inner tube, doing more bouncing than rolling. If she tried real hard, she could still smell the rubber.

  Then there was the time, more recently, when her father had taken her there. It had already closed down. And he only took her there once. Just after they moved into the church. He’d been on edge. Angry. She remembered how rough he’d been. How much it had hurt. Her first time.

  And just as quickly as it had come on, the smile faded. Not all thoughts of that place were happy ones. She didn’t like thinking bad thoughts about her father. She scolded herself as she snapped out of her daydream, angry for wasting time just standing there. Father would have scolded her, too. And rightly so. This was not the time for reminiscing. Someone had just screamed. Screamed in agony and pain and a want to live. In her experience, that was a good thing. It meant work was being done.

  Chapter 57

  Adrenalin still pulsed through me like a runaway wildfire as I leaned against the concrete building, assessing what I had just done. I’d killed a man. The very thought was both surreal and mind boggling. All of my pondering while in the coffin of whether I could do it seemed distant, like the thoughts of someone else. It was survival, I told myself. Anyone else would have done the same. Anyone else would have chosen to kill over dying. Maybe some would have stopped after the first strike, after they’d bought themselves enough time to get away. But who knows whether it would have?

  I hadn’t had time to debate and explore my options. I’d had to choose, and I chose the course that ensured my safety. It was a decision made out of both selfishness and righteousness. For everything I had seen and been through. For everything that man had done. For Henry. For Becca. There was no telling what atrocities this man had inflicted on people, the pain he caused. I’d killed him to make sure no one else would suffer. And I was merciful in doing so.

  He deserved far worse.

  My short breaths had just started coming at longer intervals when I heard two sharp beeps coming from the vicinity of my shorts. I pulled my forgotten cell phone from my pocket and flipped it open. The battery symbol in the middle of the shattered screen flashed red, and the tiny words below it said I had only two percent charge remaining. I almost chuckled. Like it mattered anymore. But then, reading through the cracks further, I saw something that pissed me off. I had four missed calls. The piece of shit phone hadn’t even rung. My lips pursed and my jaw set tight. Thumbing through the list, three of the calls were from my mother, and the fourth was from Claire, who my mother probably called when she couldn’t get ahold of me or Garrett. I wanted to throw the phone to the ground, smash it further into a million pieces, but another impulse ran through me. I weighed the phone in my hand.

  The splash it made when I chucked the phone into the lake scared off a couple of lounging ducks. They took to the air, wings flapping in unison. And as I watched them fly off, I laughed. For the first time I could remember, I actually laughed.

  “Fuck it,” I said. “Fuck it all.”

  I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with clean, fresh air. The fully risen sun had burned away the mists, leaving the color of the water, the beach, the sky, even the brown pine needles more vivid than they’d ever been. I turned to leave, and head up the trail to the waiting truck Henry had told me about, when my smile faded. I raised my face to the sky and silently thanked Henry for his sacrifice. Thanked him for trying. Thanked him for buying
me time. I let him know that, with his truck waiting, Henry had helped me more than he’d ever know.

  Chapter 58

  She stared down at the body, its vermilion blood spreading across the floor like spilled paint. This was the source of the scream. She didn’t know the old man, had never seen him before. But, she knew her father’s work. She knew what his knives did to the human body and how much blood they brought out. Her father had come this way, and that knowledge grew the seed of excitement in her belly. Excitement, and a little worry over running into him empty handed. Without the boy. She wondered if either of them were nearby.

  The hatchet raised and ready just in case, she moved past what remained of the old man, cautiously side-stepping the blood engorged napkins that surrounded him. They looked like thin sponges, and she could imagine what would happen if she stepped on one. Thought about doing it, just to see, but decided against it. This wasn’t the time for games. She followed the trail of bright red smears and dots that led away from the body, each one smaller in size than the previous. The trail led her around the service counter and down a short hallway where the drips tapered off in front of a pair of restroom doors.

  The smell of rotting flesh greeted her, entering her nostrils. She nodded with a growing recollection. Even smiled a little through what was left of the anger and mounting exhaustion. As she breathed in the scent, basking in it, she savored the knowledge of a job well done. Foul smells were a comfort to her. One of the things she’d come to appreciate about her father’s work. The smell was its own kind of reward. And this one even more rewarding because she’d brought it out herself. All by herself. This was her work.