The Siege (43 page)

“Just our guests knocking around. Probably lookin’ for their breakfast.” He chuckled and spit onto the floor.

He had been wondering most of the night what he should do about them. He couldn’t leave them there in the cellar when he torched the barn! If the sparks drifted over and started the house on fire, they’d be trapped. He sure as hell didn’t want to be a murderer!

Those guys in the woods don’t count
, Hocker thought.
They attacked us, so they deserved what they got!

But he couldn’t let them go, either, even if one of them wasn’t a cop. They had seen him and could easily identify him. He had to make sure they didn’t get free until he was safely across the border. Of course, that wasn’t difficult, because the Canadian border was only a few miles from Dyer. He decided not to worry about it; he’d figure out what to do when the time came.

“No,” Tasha said, her face creased with worry. “It sounded like a car pulled up outside.”

Hocker put his half-empty cup down on the counter and hurried into the living room. Tasha followed two steps behind him, and they saw that she was right. There was a long, black limousine idling at the top of the driveway, squarely facing the house. The limo was missing one headlight, and the front and sides looked as though the car had tried to wrap itself around a tree. A man, dressed in a long, gray coat, and wearing a hat to shade his face from the morning sun, stood by the opened driver’s door. One gloved hand rested on the top of the car door as he looked at the house, squinting into the morning sun; the other hand rested on the open door.

“Oh, shit,” Tasha said. She slid one hand protectively up onto Hocker’s shoulder.
This guy sure doesn’t look like a cop, she thought, but who is he, and what does he want?

“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and he’ll just go away,” Hocker said. He was clenching and unclenching his fists, and Tasha was thinking Hocker looked like he wanted this man to come up to the house, so he could add him to the collection downstairs.

“It looks like there’s some other guys in the car with him,” Tasha said, whispering close to Hocker’s ear.

It was true. Behind the dark screen of the tinted windows, they could see silhouettes of a number of men. Hocker figured the limo could probably hold ten or more people comfortably.

“I’ll bet this is the asshole who was out here last night, trying to ram down the front porch,” Hocker said. The man was staring steadily at the house, and Hocker couldn’t shake the odd feeling that this man could somehow see him and Tasha right through the wood.

Maybe
, he thought,
it’s the way the sunlight makes his eye glow so strangely
.

For several tense seconds, everyone stood stock still: the man staring at the house, and Hocker and Tasha staring back. Finally, the man took one step away from the door and, cupping his hands to his mouth, shouted, “I know you’re still in there, Mr. Harmon.”

His voice was clear and strong, but it reverberated with an odd distortion in the early morning stillness. Tasha thought she heard the door window rattle from the force of his voice.

“Yup,” Hocker said, nodding his head slowly. “It’s those jerks down in the cellar he wants.”

“Let’s just send them out to him,” Tasha said. “Maybe he’s a cop or something and is after them. We might be able to get away from here while he deals with them.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Hocker hissed between his teeth. “I’m thinking.”

Tasha refrained from saying, “I haven’t got that long.” Instead, she took a deep breath and backed up toward the kitchen.

Hocker glanced at her and yelled, “You just make sure that back door is locked. I’ll take care of this!” Tasha did what she was told, then hurried back into the living room.

The man beside the limousine seemed to chuckle to himself and, shaking his head as though sadly concluding he had to scold a misbehaving child, he reached behind himself and opened the limo door. Two men, dressed in tattered work clothes, blinking fiercely in the glare of sunlight, stepped out onto the driveway. The man leaned close to them, then glanced back at the house.

“Mr. Harmon! Miss LaPierre! I think you must realize the futility of pretending you can’t hear me. I know you didn’t leave the house last night. If you don’t come out right now, things could get very unpleasant.”

Hocker smacked his fist into his open hand. It made a wet sound. “Just come on,” he whispered harshly. “Send your goons up here. I’ll show ’em!” He eased Winfield’s revolver from his belt and spun the chamber, making sure it was fully loaded.

“Come on, Hock!” Tasha said, backing away. “You can’t just keep on killing people.”

“I ain’t gonna kill ’em ’less I have too,” he said, smiling wickedly. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and see if there’s any more rope in the kitchen or somewhere?”

Tasha left him by the window, wondering how easily she could simply slip away out the back door. But she didn’t; she went into the kitchen and rummaged through the closet until she was certain there was no rope in there. When she rejoined Hocker in the living room and looked out at the driveway, her heart nearly stopped. The man was pointing at the house, and the two shabby men, walking as though their limbs were stiff with age, started up the walkway to the house. “You’ve had your chance,” the man by the limo shouted. The smile on his face was broad, eerily lifeless and chilling as though he was going to enjoy what would happen next.

Hocker gripped the revolver tightly, raising it up in front of his face as he watched the men slowly approach the house. He, too, had noticed the peculiar way the men walked. He was thinking, since they were so damned stiff, they wouldn’t be any problem to take out of the picture.

When the two men were halfway up the walkway, Hocker swung open the door and stepped onto the porch. He pointed the revolver at them. Tasha saw an expression of genuine surprise on the man’s face when he saw someone he wasn’t expecting. He opened his mouth to call out but then apparently thought better of it.

“If you fellas don’t stop right there, I’m gonna fill you so full of lead you’ll be able to use your dicks for a pencil!” Hocker shouted, his breath puffing a thin cloud of steam in the morning chill.

The men continued walking toward him as though they hadn’t heard him. If they did hear him, they didn’t care. Their eyes were fixed vacantly on the house door, and Hocker, standing there, waving a gun, didn’t seem to bother them in the least.

These guys look like those old coots I wasted in the woods
, Hocker thought. A cold dash of fear gripped his stomach, and he thought, for a flickering second, that these were two of the men he had killed! A line of sweat sprang out on his forehead as he listened to the
crunch-crunch
of the men’s boots on the gravel walkway.

“I mean it!” Hocker shouted, brandishing the revolver. Tasha was watching from inside the house, and she thought she heard a serious waver in Hocker’s voice. She was thinking if those guys got past Hocker, she could probably outrun them in the woods, at least.

“One more step!” Hocker yelled. His voice rebounded from the hill, sounding thin and pale.

The man next to the limo was watching with the sunlight catching a wicked gleam in his eye. He had taken a few short steps forward and now stood at the foot of the walkway with both hands in his coat pockets.

“
I fucking-A mean it!
” Hocker shouted, and now, before his voice had a chance to echo back, there was the loud snap of the gun… once—twice—three times.

The revolver kicked back solidly in Hocker’s hand, sending a small measure of reassurance to his brain, but that reassurance quickly died when he saw the two men continue toward him without flinching.

“What the fuck?” Hocker said, turning the revolver over in his hand and looking at it. A thin wisp of smoke drifted from the muzzle and stung his nose. Was the damned gun loaded with blanks?

Tasha came forward and leaned on the open door, preparing to slam it shut as soon as the men reached the porch steps.

Hocker raised the revolver and pointed it at them again, this time sighting carefully along the bead at the head of the man on the right. He held his breath just as he’d been taught to shoot, and
carefully
squeezed the trigger. The gun kicked twice, and Hocker knew there was no way he could possibly have missed; the dirt slope behind the man kicked up twice as the bullets tore into the ground. But the man who had been his target paused for no more than a second, snapped his head to the side quickly twice, and then continued walking toward the porch.

Hocker knew there was only one bullet left before he would have to reload. He wanted to beat a retreat, but as he stood there, looking dumbly at the useless revolver in his hand, the porch steps creaked under the weight of the men as they started up them.

Frantically, Hocker fired one last time, point-blank at one of the men’s faces.

Yes!
his mind suddenly screamed when he saw the waxy skin and dull gleam in their eyes.
These are the two guys we killed in the woods!

And then they lurched forward. Their bony hands made a surprisingly quick grab at him. Yellow fingernails snagged the side of his shirt as he dodged to one side. One of the men, the one who had taken most of his bullets, made a deep-bellied grunt, as though moving with any speed was an immense effort. Hocker saw that he hadn’t been firing blanks; there were three dark holes in the man; two in his face and one in his neck just about his shirt collar. The holes were as clean as if he had shot the bullets through rotten wood. No blood, no ripped flesh, just three clean holes, dry and as black as the night. He could have easily put two fingers inside each hole.

Impossible!
Hocker’s mind shrieked as he lurched to one side just as the men grabbed at him. The revolver was empty, but a dim corner of his mind told him shooting would be useless even if the gun had been loaded!

Both men, now, were moaning as they came at him, their arms stretched out as though to embrace Hocker. Hocker backed up, but accidentally tripped on a piece of the fallen porch. He fell, sprawling onto the porch floor. His arms and legs clawed wildly, trying to get him up and away, but then something grabbed his foot and held on tightly.

“Oh, Jesus! Oh,
shit
!” Hocker wailed as he turned and saw both men looming over him. Their jaws were crunching up and down, and their yellowed and cracked teeth, smeared with dirt, made harsh, grating sounds.

The hand holding his leg was as unrelenting as a bear trap. The fingernails pierced Hocker’s thick denim pants and dug into his skin. All sensation in Hocker’s foot was gone, and he was wondering if he could get up and run with a dead leg, if he could break the hold on him.

He looked frantically at the house and was stunned to see that Tasha had slammed the door shut. She was gone! He’d been deserted! Left alone with…
them
!

The two men leaned over Hocker, fixing him with their empty stares as they brought their open mouths closer and closer.

Hocker rolled onto his back and, bracing himself with both arms spread wide, placed his foot onto the chest of one of them. With a great effort, Hocker pushed back as hard as he could. The man’s chest caved in to the pressure of Hocker’s foot, as if the thin shell of flesh and ribs was about to break, before he stumbled backward, his arms waving wildly for balance. He backed into the railing, hit it above the backs of his knees, and cartwheeled into the shrubbery.

Hocker quickly twisted around and planted his foot on the other man’s chest. He could hear the heavy grunting of the first man as he scrambled to get back onto the porch. Fear and revulsion charged him as he cocked back his leg and kicked the other man several times viciously in the chest. Each time his foot landed, the man made a horrible grunt as air was forced out his lungs. It washed over Hocker in sickening, sour waves. Never in his life had Hocker smelled something so foul or rank coming from a human being. It reminded him of the time his grandmother had her septic system pumped. The heavy aroma of human waste had lingered in his nose for days, it had seemed, and the same smell now emanated from the open mouth of this man.

Each time Hocker kicked, the man sagged back. But a mindless determination drove him on, like a bone-dumb football player, intent on pushing and pushing until all resistance gave. Hocker couldn’t shake the impression that the man wanted to take a bite out of him, wanted to
eat
him!

One wild kick caught the man a glancing blow on the side, and his tattered shirt suddenly split open, revealing the man’s pale, thin chest. With the next kick, his boot heel hit the man in the ribs, just below his left nipple. The white skin, as sickly white as the belly of a dead frog, split open with a loud tearing sound. Again, just like when he had shot them, there was no blood! The man’s chest pulled open as easily as the flannel of his age-rotted shirt. An oval gash more than a foot long opened like a wide, toothless grin. Hocker got a horrifyingly clear view of dark strands of muscles and blackened rib bones, sticking out like wheel spokes.

“Jesus Christ!” Hocker wailed. His brain was still trying to reject the reality of what he was seeing.

The man still gripped Hocker’s other leg, and in a sudden, blinding panic, Hocker drove his foot at the leering face. His boot heel caught the lower edge of the man’s chin, smashing his teeth together. The next time the man opened his mouth, a shower of teeth fell out, rattling like pellets onto Hocker’s chest.