Dismember (35 page)

He thought of Libby saying the guy might have a crossbow, thought about the way he’d immediately dismissed the idea. There hadn’t been a crossbow, but now here Mike stood facing a ninja’s sword. If that didn’t beat all.

The kidnapper thrusted the weapon out in front of him and charged. Mike managed to get himself out of the way again. He swung his chisel almost reflexively, and it clanged against the broad side of the blade.

The man cut to his right and circled back to his original position. He looked from Mike’s face to his feet, and his smile faded.

“You,” he said. “No. I don’t…I killed you.”

Mike eyed him suspiciously, wondering if this was some kind of ploy, a trick meant to divert his attention so the psycho could run him through. He stood his ground, finger on the drill’s trigger, opposite hand wrapped around the chisel. 

The kidnapper looked back into Mike’s face and said, “I should have known.”

Mike kept moving, shuffled his feet
. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
, Muhammad Ali had said, and Mike didn’t think he’d ever heard a better bit of advice.

When the kidnapper came at him this time, he did so with a low, grunting wail. The man held the sword in both hands and had it pulled back over his shoulder. Mike didn’t sidestep this time but moved forward instead, the cordless drill whirring in front of him and the chisel swinging up from his side and aimed at the man’s face.

The drill hit the kidnapper’s midsection, digging into his abdomen. The chisel bounced harmlessly off his shoulder. The sword hit Mike in much the same place the chisel had hit the other man, only it was sharp and far from harmless.

Mike’s arm went suddenly numb, and the drill died and fell to the ground between the two men’s feet. Mike dropped the chisel, too, and reached up for his shoulder. The kidnapper took a step back and hefted the sword, which dripped fresh blood.

“I can’t let you do it again,” the man said.

Mike dropped to his knees, groaning, trying to make sense of the man’s words, unable to think anything except that his arm was killing him but that the man with the sword would probably kill him faster. He tried to steady himself, ended up on his rump in the dust. His blood poured out of the wound in his shoulder, cold somehow. The stuff running over his fingers might have been ice water instead of blood.

“You should have just let us be this time, old man,” said the kidnapper. He pulled back the sword.

Mike could do nothing but sit and groan and watch the blade advance.

Inside the living room, Libby watched through a dusty window, squinting.

At first, she didn’t believe what she was seeing, thought the thing in the kidnapper’s hands must have only
looked
like a sword but been something else entirely—maybe a pipe or a broom handle. When the weapon slid into Mike’s stomach and re-emerged from his lower back, however, she could no longer pretend.

Mike’s scream was the worst thing she’d ever heard in her life, a sound she was sure she’d remember until the day she died, a wet, gurgling bawl that didn’t seem muffled by the walls or the door or the windows. Libby thought that scream might have gone straight from his mouth to her brain, some strange sort of telepathy.

She sensed Trevor coming to join her at the window and turned immediately to keep him away.

“What was that?” he said.

Libby flipped him around and pushed on his back. “Through the back door,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”

Trevor didn’t want to go at first, but Libby kept pushing. She heard Zach and the dog padding along ahead, heard a strange flapping sound like someone walking through mud.

“The car’s around the side of the house,” she said. “Get in back with the dog and wait for me.”

They found the back door and exited the house. “Hurry to the car,” she said, looking at the back of the boys’ heads. Part of her wanted to follow them, needed to follow them, knew it was the smart thing to do, but Mike might still be all right. She couldn’t leave him there to die. She’d loved him once, maybe loved him a little still. She couldn’t leave him.

When she saw the boys moving in the right direction, she cut around the truck and found the ax in the tree stump. She’d noticed it on the way in, before running in to Trevor. It wasn’t as good as a shotgun, but it was a damn sight better than a hammer. She dropped Mike’s tools in the dirt at the stump’s base and grabbed the ax with both hands.

It didn’t come loose easily. She had to wrench it back and forth five or six times before it finally unstuck.

She thought about Marshall, thought she’d gotten herself out of that situation fairly well, almost entirely unharmed physically despite the mental trauma. Carrying the ax back to the house, she told herself she wasn’t a pushover, that she wasn’t a victim.

Hank jerked backward on the sword, and the man fell onto his back.

Mr. Boots
, he thought, staring at the man’s footwear. He should have expected this sort of thing.

Mr. Boots flailed a little, and Hank stabbed him again, this time higher up on his stomach, closer to his heart. “Guess you thought you’d do it again, huh?” He twisted the sword. “Kill us all off and take the boy for yourself. But it doesn’t work that way.” He leaned on the sword’s handle, listened to Mr. Boots groan. “You never killed me. It was the moose. Everything’s different this time.”

He pulled the sword free again and grinned.

Stupid son of a bitch
, he thought and jabbed the sword into the old man once more.

Trevor helped get the leashed doggy into the back seat but didn’t climb in after him.

“What’s wrong?” Zach asked.

“I have to find my daddy. Wait here.” Trevor turned away from the car and hurried around the front of the house.

Libby burst through the front door. In the yard, the kidnapper hovered over Mike’s slumped body. She charged him.

The ax was heavy, not the kind of plastic-handled thing you bought at Wal-mart, but an old wooden tool with a head that felt like it must have been made of lead.

She was ten feet from her target when Trevor came at her from around the side of the house.

“No,” she said, though she’d meant to scream it. She twisted his way at the last minute, meaning to push him away from the bare-chested stranger, but she was moving awkwardly and ended up tripping over her own feet.

The ax fell on the ground beside her. Trevor approached from one direction, and the man from the other.

Run
, she wanted to say,
get away
. But she couldn’t speak. Something smacked the side of her head, and she had time enough to realize it was the man’s fist before unconsciousness took her and everything was lost.

Hank loaded Lori into the passenger’s seat and strapped her into her belt. He’d gotten the boys in the back where they were still huddled, the dog between them and whimpering again. He’d tied the kids’ hands with their own shoelaces and knotted Manny’s leash to the headrest. Later, if everything went well, he could let them loose. But for now, he had to drive and couldn’t risk any of them trying something stupid.

He ran a hand through Lori’s hair and kissed her softly on the forehead, sorry he’d had to hurt her but knowing he could make up for it later. She was a beautiful woman—a fine wife—and he knew she’d be a good mother to their boys. He closed her door and circled around the front of the car to his own side.

After finding the gearshift and studying the car’s controls for just a moment, he shifted into reverse, backed partway down the driveway, and then turned the car around and drove away from the house.

As they moved, he looked into the rearview mirror and thought,
Goodbye forever
. The house and the body in front of it grew smaller until, finally, they were gone.

T
HIRTY-EIGHT

M
ike had crawled halfway along the front of the house, dragging himself with his good arm and trying to ignore the pain just about everywhere else.

He coughed once and tasted blood sliding over his teeth.

The monster had taken his family, had loaded them into the car and stolen them away.

Mike crawled another foot. There was a truck in the back yard. He’d seen its rear bumper when they arrived. If he could get to it, and if the keys were inside, he could go after them, rescue them.

He coughed again, and something thick flowed across his tongue. Maybe vomit, maybe more blood, or maybe some of his internal organs, cut loose and floating freely through his insides. He didn’t know. He spit out the wad and dragged himself farther.

He’d gotten almost to the corner of the house when everything blurred. He tried to shake his head to clear it but only made the dizziness worse. He closed his eyes, tried taking deep breaths, then coughed and dropped flat to the ground, still at least fifty feet from the truck and the chance to be the hero.