Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters (24 page)

Carol’s words caught in her throat as she saw Officer Hillyard stride out of the high scho
ol. He pressed his radio into his face like he was trying to eat it.

Carol turned without another word and dropped into the Jeep’s driver seat. She started the vehicle, put it in drive, and stomped the accelerator. The rumble of thunder eclipsed both the engine’s roar and the surprised cries of her children.

At least, Carol hoped it was thunder she heard.

~

Carol Blevins ignored countless red lights and blaring horns as she sped through downtown Heartland. Local shops and businesses bled into one another on the other side of her windshield. The mountains beyond the town became a single, undulating black snake.

Carol’s son and daughter sat behind her, buckled into the backseat of the Jeep. Luke had lost all interest in his video game. “What are you doing, Mom?”

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Her daughter Janie’s voice. Her husband’s words.

The sound of distant sirens filled the car. Carol realized she’d forgotten to turn on the police radio strapped to the duty belt lying in the back of the Jeep. There hadn’t been time.

“Is this another one of your breakdowns?”

Carol glanced in the rearview mirror to see Janie scowling, her arms folded across her chest.

“I swear to God, Dad should’ve left you the first time you went into the hospital.”

Blue lights joined Janie in the rearview mirror.

“They drew your name, Janie.”

Janie’s scowl fell away. Her blue eyes became twin robin’s eggs in their sockets. “What?”

The din of police sirens gained volume inside the Jeep. There was just one cruiser giving chase, but it would soon be joined by others.

Thunder rumbled.

God, I want that Zoloft in my purse.
Carol sucked in a large breath of air. “The church elders. They drew your name. I’m sorry, honey.”

They reached the edge of Heartland and continued on. The town fell away as Main Street became Route 72. Carol intended to take the James Clayton Bridge and cross over the Tennessee River, escaping into the neighboring community of New Hope. There were miles upon miles of back country roads there. Hundreds of places where she might lose the cops. But when the Jeep crested the hill leading out of town, the bridge wasn’t there.

All that remained in its place were a few severed steel supports jutting from concrete on either side of the river. In between lay open air.

“Old Flathead,” Luke w
hispered. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”

“Everything’s going to be okay, Luke.” Lies. Carol knew she had to do a better job of selling them. “You two hear me? Everything’s going to be okay. I’m your mother, and I’m going to get you out of this. No one messes with my family. No one and no
thing
!”

Carol yanked the steering wheel to the left and the wheels on the Jeep’s right side went airborne for a moment as she veered into the neighborhood of government subsidized homes nestled at the foot of Colburn Town Mountain. The lone police cruiser on their tail
followed. Carol had no idea where the rest of Heartland’s police force was, but she was grateful for their absence.

Her gratitude was a general thing, an emotion experienced out of habit, and not directed at any spiritual deity or supernatural force. Her days of giving thanks and offering prayers in Heartland were over.

Carol left the neighborhood to zigzag up the mountainside, the police cruiser on her bumper. The road narrowed, the wall of foliage and rock on the Jeep’s left pressing the vehicle ever closer to the drop-off on its right.

Thunder clapped and their heads snapped forward as the police cruiser rammed the back of the Jeep.

“No,” Carol mumbled. “He shouldn’t be doing that.” The hysteria Carol heard in her voice terrified her as much as anything. If she’d dared let go of the wheel, she would’ve downed the entire bottle of pills in her purse.

More thunder. Another strike from the cruiser.

“Janie’s in the car. Doesn’t he know that if he wrecks us, he might—”

More thunder.

Only this time, it wasn’t.

Carol’s already fast-beating heart became a jackhammer inside her chest.

“No,” Luke said. “No. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.”

The police cruiser struck again, and Carol lost control of the Jeep. The guardrail rushed up at them, and then the world fell away. There was the sound of rending metal. Then a feeling of weightlessness accompanied by the sound of the engine revving. The unimpeded spin of tires.

Then blackness.

When Carol awoke, the smell of wood smoke was strong in her nostrils, and the pops and cracks of a fire were in her ears, cymbal crashes to the
sound of drumming rain.

I must still be asleep.

She’d been dreaming of a parallel universe—one where she, Joe, and the kids had actually gone on that camping trip to Fall Creek Falls. They’d been roasting marshmallows like one big, happy family. Better still, in her dream, Joe had never been unfaithful, she’d never set foot inside a mental institution, and their lives in Heartland were normal. They’d existed in a world like that of their great grandparents—a world where evil had yet to come lumbering out of the ocean or burrowing up through the ground—a world as the Earth was before the Japanese remembered the old ways and showed humanity what had to be done in order to appease such evil.

“Mom?”

Carol winced at the sound of Luke’s voice. She knew she was going to have to open her eyes and let the dream—
Janie!

Carol’s eyes popped open. She jerked upright and the world spun around her. She pressed her palm to her forehead, trying to gain her bearings.

She needed her pills.

“Easy, Carol.” A man’s voice. One full of age and kindness. Rough hands gripped her shoulders, steadying her. “Janie’s fine. So is Luke.

“You, on the other hand, have seen better days.”

Carol lowered her hand from her head and blinked, her surroundings coming into focus.

Fred Connor sat beside her on the edge of a couch almost as old as he was. His face was full of wrinkles and concern. The sleeves of his flannel shirt were rolled up to his elbows, revealing arms covered in gray hair and wiry muscle.

Luke and Janie stood behind him, peering down at her over his shoulders. They had several nasty scratches and bruises, but were otherwise okay.

Fred’s wife, Vera Connor, was on the room’s other side, giving them her jacketed back as she tended the fire behind Carol’s dream facsimile. It burned inside the black iron cook stove supplying heat to the one-room cabin housing them. The stove was an antique even among the cuckoo clocks, hunting rifles, and out-of-date calendars adorning the cabin’s wood-paneled walls.

Rain sluiced down the cabin’s two windows. Carol saw that a storm blew in the night beyond.

“The policeman?” Carol asked.

Fred nodded. “Followed you over the edge.

“Didn’t fair half as well.

“I found you
—or rather, Luke found me, and helped me bring you and Janie back here, to the cabin Vera and I use during deer season.

“
Janie regained consciousness shortly before you did, thank goodness.”

“Uh, thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Connor.” Carol swung her feet over the edge of the couch, letting them touch floor. “But we better be getting on our
—” Carol stood, and the room reverted to its liquid state.

Fred caught her before she
could fall and lowered her onto the couch.

“It’s all right, Carol. Luke told me everything. No one knows you’re here.”

Carol stared up at Fred. She knew the Connors, of course—waved to them if they passed in the Piggly Wiggly or bumped into each other at a ballgame. This was Heartland, after all. Everyone knew everyone else. But her relationship with the Connors had never been anything beyond the typical small town niceties.

“Why are you helping us?”

Fred cleared his throat. Carol watched his Adam’s Apple bob beneath the thin, leathery skin of his neck.

“They drew my Rose’s name back in ’92, and I let them take her. I stood by and watched without lifting a
Goddamn finger as those assholes took my baby. That’s what we were supposed to do, after all. As God-fearing members of the church.”

A single tear swelled in Fred’s eye
and rolled down his cheek.

“I’ve seen them take countless girls since, but still it’s my Rose’s face I see, each and every time.”

Fred stood and turned to look at Janie. “They ain’t taking you, Janie. Not if I have any say in it.”

A block of wood thudded into the stove, startling Carol and her children.

Vera Connor turned to face them. Her colorless hair was pulled back into a single braid that ran the length of her back. Liver spots were visible at her temples, and dark bags of skin hung beneath her dull green eyes.

She clapped her hands together, dusting them off. “Fire needs more wood.” Wind and rain blew inside as she vanished through the cabin’s sole door.

Janie moved to her mother’s side and flung herself into Carol’s arms. It was something Janie hadn’t done in years. Since she was a little girl. Carol squeezed her daughter to her, reveling in their embrace. In the moment.

Thunder boomed outside, and the moment ended.

Janie pulled away from her mother. Wiped her eyes. “Mom, I know you and Mr. Connor are trying to help me, but this is wrong.”

“Janie, honey
—”

“It’s an honor to be chosen.”

Carol shook her head. Tears began to leak from her eyes. “Baby, no. You don’t under—”

A megaphone-amplified voice ripped through the night and its storm.

“This is the Heartland Police. We have you surrounded.”

Light flooded the rain-spattered windows.

“Vera.” Fred shook his head. “Must have called earlier from her mobile. Goddamn that woman.”

~

“Carol, honey.” It was Joe on the megaphone, now. “Just send Janie out to us, and we’ll leave. No one has to get hurt.”

Carol Blevins felt her cheeks go hot with anger.
No one but Janie, that is.

Carol sat against the wall beneath one of the cabin’s two windows, an arm draped across her daughter’s shoulders.

Joe’s amplified voice cut through wind, rain, and night to fill the room. “We’ll leave and do what we’ve got to do, tonight. There’s still time. The sheriff’s promised to request leniency for you and Mr. Connor. It shouldn’t be a problem considering his age and your...
past
.

“And of course, Luke’s just a minor. The church elders won’t blame him.”

Joe stopped talking. Thunder, wind, and rain filled the silence. Then the shriek of megaphone feedback echoed through the night once again.

“Carol, honey, if there was any other way, you know I’d be the first to take it. But this is how it is
—how we hold the end times at bay. Try to see this clearly. It’s Janie’s destiny. Just think of all the lives she’ll be saving.”

Lightning flashed, illuminating the night outside, allowing Carol to see the Heartland Police and the shotguns they held.

“It’s time to decide if you’re one of the faithful, K-bear. We’ll give you five minutes, then we’re coming in.”

Fred Connor cursed. “To hell with this.” He duck-walked to a small wooden chest resting in the one-room cabin’s corner. Opened it. Took out a snub-nosed .38. Began loading rounds into the cylinder.

“What are you doing?” Luke asked. The boy hid behind the black iron stove. He shivered in spite of the heat radiating from it.

The .38 loaded, Fred reached up and snatched a .30-06 Springfield rifle from the wall. “Our one advantage is we have who they want—Janie.” Fred stuffed the pistol into the back of his pants. He moved over to Carol and her daughter. “They can threaten all they want, but so long as we hold on to her, they can’t risk storming the place and her getting hurt.”

Janie shook her head. “Uh-uh. This is wrong. I’m not
—”

“Quiet, Janie!” Carol hugged her daughter closer, then looked to Fred. “We can’t stay here forever.”

Fred tipped his chin at the cuckoo clocks hanging on the cabin walls. Eleven o’clock was only minutes away. “We can’t stay here at all. Midnight’s coming fast. If Janie’s still here, then, cops or no cops, Old Flathead will find us.”

The wind howled. Thunder boomed.

Carol swallowed hard. “So where does that leave us?”

“You’re not going to like it, Carol, but it’s what has to be done.”

Yet another man telling me what has to be done where my daughter is concerned.

“Three minutes, Carol.” The sheriff was back on the horn, now. “Save everyone the trouble, and send Janie on out.”

A thin stream of air pressed its way through Carol’s lips. “What’s your plan, Fred?”

“Like I said, it’s Janie they want. They can’t risk her safety, but we can’t keep her here, either. So we’ve got to get her out of Heartland. Someone has to take Janie to my truck
—at gunpoint.”