Copyright © 2012 David Searls
All rights reserved — a Samhain Publishing, Ltd. publication
The frozen-limbed mannequins still creeped Doyle out as he groped his way to the employees’ exit, this time alone. He made it safely and turned to search the shadows for the on-duty manager who was supposed to lock up after him.
Doyle saw and heard no one, but he’d been told to leave, so he shrugged and stepped partially out of the doorway and peered at the parking lot. It stood nearly empty in the foggy yellow glow of a pair of tall sodium vapor lights. Past the lot, on Main View, traffic moved fairly steadily. It was a few minutes after nine, and dark.
“I want to get home before dark.”
Now what the hell had the fool girl meant by that? Doyle pushed his way out and clanged the metal door closed behind him. His ears perked for even the smallest sounds. Habit, most likely, from the Badlands. He took a sharp right onto the pavement in front of the three-story building, then another onto the sidewalk of well-lit Main View Drive.
It was like day out here, people of all ages but mostly older, strolling and eating ice cream cones and walking dogs and gazing into lit store windows displaying shoes, hardware, rugs, books, banking and dry cleaning services, jewelry, food and coffee.
Nothing like his neighborhood, where folks really did need to get home before dark.
A car horn sounded and someone on the sidewalk playfully yelled at the driver.
Both sides of the street were lined with birch and maple saplings tethered to tree lawns to form skimpy green arches in front of the brick and wood-frame storefronts.
“…home before dark.”
Funny, a young girl like that, afraid of walking alone with all these folks out on the streets.
“What a night.”
The voice chilled him, nearly stopping him in his tracks. An old lady passed, dragging a yellow poodle that walked as though its feet hurt. Not her. The voice was young, insolent and male.
The blond-haired man came from nowhere to sidle up to Doyle. Said nothing now. Just smiled brightly in the streetlight.
He fell in and matched Doyle's pace. They wound their way through outdoor tables filled with ice-cream eaters and coffee sippers.
The street looked less well-lit the next block down.
The blond man snickered. He slowed, fell behind until Doyle couldn’t see him without a glance over his shoulder. Jason Penney, in his early twenties, couldn’t have gone more than one-fifty sopping wet. Doyle could take him easy if he had to—but where were Purcell and the others? He had to know.
An extended family out for a stroll made room for Doyle and the trailing Penney in front of a tire store still open for business. With the incandescent light leaking from a display window fully illuminating the scene for brief seconds, Doyle saw what looked to be four or five generations of a family, one member more wizened and slow-moving than the one before. Their lively chatter died as the two groups passed.
Penney laughed like he’d been expecting that reaction. “Finally some respect from this goddamn town,” he said. He had a high, tight voice that would have seemed insolent just commenting on the weather.
Doyle said nothing. He watched a white-eyed figure on a painted bench. As he got closer, it became a slender, raven-haired young woman with a cigarette dangling between her lips. She caught his gaze.
“There you are,” she said.
Huh?
She drew the cigarette from her lips, tapped out the ash on the ground and grinned as Doyle hurried on.
Another shadow, smaller than the girl, disengaged itself from a tree larger than the saplings in the previous block, and a boy in his early teens made Doyle veer. The boy snorted.
Footfalls. More pairs of feet than just Penney's following him like echoes. He forced himself to maintain a steady pace and not look back. He was nearly to Third Street. Half a block away, four elderly people sipped cool drinks at a café table set up in front of a bookstore. Three younger men drew around the seated figures and the four hurriedly rose and finished their drinks.
“Stay awhile, Grandma,” one of the newcomers called out and the others hooted.
His deep rumble identified him immediately as the notorious Purcell.
Doyle had seen him with the cop, McConlon, on other nights. Just hanging, the two of them with heads together. Purcell's rigid face was now blue with stubble.
“How ya doing, Doyle?” Purcell said, eyes locked in on him as the old folks scuttled away.
Doyle wouldn’t have even guessed that Purcell knew his name. Bro; that's all he'd heard from them before now.
“Hey, Duane, don’t he look like the dude on TV?”
Coarse laughter. Lots of it.
Doyle whirled to see too many young men. They came closer, clustered around him in a claustrophobic circle. No, not just men. There was the slender dark-haired girl with the cigarette, and the younger boy. And still others coming at him from out of the darkness.
“You mean the comedian dude?” said Purcell. Then to Doyle: “Say something funny, bruthuh.”
Doyle jerked backwards as something touched his foot. He looked down in disgust as he felt the rat’s cold belly and sorry-assed tail slithering across his shoe and touching up against one bare ankle. He stepped back quickly as the thing ambled into the night.
“Jesus,” he said.
The town was full of the things.
More wild laughter. Keep walking, he told himself. They wouldn’t do anything with all these town folks out. Doyle had been stopped just out of the business district, and most of the strolling townspeople seemed to have found other placed to be, but he still saw the occasional car on the street out front and hand-holding couples quickly squeezing past the crowd on the sidewalk. It was too busy out here for him to be in any real danger.
Besides, The Sundown was just a couple more blocks to the east. Not far at all in a car. Course, he was on foot. And currently surrounded by eight or ten townies who didn’t look like they were there to safeguard his way back.
Purcell broke from the circle and sat at the outdoor table the two elderly couples had hurriedly vacated. He made a quick hand motion and someone from the back of the cluster dropped something heavy onto the tabletop. He grunted at the effort and the glass-topped table shuddered.
Doyle swallowed to wet the cement that had formed in his throat. “Okay, a suitcase,” he said, trying to keep it light.
Yeah, a scuffed leather suitcase that—
“Hey,” he said in the next moment. “That’s mine!”
Something squealed as more fat, long-tailed bodies rolled across his feet. Doyle tried to back up, but he’d run out of space. He could feel hot breath huffing down his neck, and smelled the strong scent of rancid meat.
“What the hell?” he snapped, anger momentarily overruling fear.
He moved in to snatch the suitcase—his luggage—but Purcell swatted it off the table. It fell heavily and someone scooped it up and made it disappear in the crowd.
Something about the feeble streetlight out front made Purcell’s eyes shine white-hot.
“How did you…?”
Doyle’s anger had already started to turn to leaden dread as he considered what it meant that Purcell had his things. First, that they’d broken into his room at The Sundown, and had obviously packed his bag. Where was Carl during all this? Had they hurt him?
He could hear the sound of a zipper unzipping, and then the slender-haired girl said, “Check this out.”
She’d opened his suitcase and now held up a pair of his wildly patterned undershorts, drawing hoots of laughter.
Catching quick peeks at the street, Doyle could see a few cars cruising by without slowing to investigate the sidewalk mob. Maybe even speeding up.
“So now you’re all packed up with nowhere to go,” said Purcell, still seated.
“You broke into my place.”
“Not me,” said Purcell. “Friend of mine, this afternoon. And he didn’t break in. He used a key. Left the place looking as neat and tidy as he found it.”
Doyle’s fury got him moving. He wheeled and headed straight for the nearest body, determined to steamroll through it if he had to. But he didn’t. The crowd unexpectedly parted. That’s all they wanted to do, just tease him. Freak him out, scare the scary black man away.
Their plan had worked to perfection. He wouldn't even go through the motions of filing a police report. Let them keep his underwear and toothbrush and ragged suitcase. Small price to pay. He’d be out of there by morning. Carl could tag along if he wanted. Or stay. That was fine, too.
It took a few seconds for Doyle to realize he was leading a crowd. He heard Penney giggling behind him and a few others muttering, but they kept their distance. Kept it until they drew even with a parking lot fronting a florist shop with three customers chatting away on the other side of an inviting expanse of warmly lit display glass.
As they closed in, Doyle threw his elbow back and connected with Jason Penney’s throat. He enjoyed the hell out of hearing the townie gagging and puking, but everything went very bad very quickly after that.
As they fell on him, Doyle’s first thought was that this was going to be the worst beating of his life. But that was interrupted by other thoughts, much darker ones, when the first set of teeth nestled deep into his groin.
View Cart
Checkout
