The Siege (44 page)

No matter what Hocker did to the man, he never showed any change of expression. His face was immobile, as inert as if he were having his fingernails clipped.

How can he not feel the pain?
Hocker wondered.

But he didn’t take too long to think about it now. He was filled with fear for his life and for his own sanity if he did not get away from this
thing
!

The man’s toothless mouth, still gnawing mindlessly and dropping splinters of teeth, pressed closer to Hocker’s face. The eyes seemed to drain the will from Hocker, and he knew he would be dead shortly if he didn’t get this guy off him. From the side, he could see motion as the man who had fallen finally made it back onto the porch.

With one last effort, knowing this was it—he would either break free or die within a second or two—Hocker swung his hand with the revolver down as hard as he could on the back of the man’s head. The impact sent a jolt of pain up his arm: he had no doubt he had cracked the man’s skull. In his mind, he pictured the revolver butt smashing an old, clay vase. Again and again, he slammed the revolver into the man’s head, and each blow did little more than force a shallow grunt from the man. Finally, though, as Hocker twisted beneath the man’s weight, he broke the hold on his leg and rolled free.

Scrambling quickly to his feet, Hocker glanced at the second assailant, who was standing up with slow, stiff movements. With a quick turn, Hocker drove the toe of his boot into the fallen man’s chest, satisfied by the sharp breaking sound he heard on impact. Then, turning quickly, he ran to the front door and hit it hard with his shoulder. The door didn’t budge when he twisted the knob and leaned heavily against it. It was locked from the inside!

Hocker looked behind him as both men struggled to regain their feet.
They should both be dead!
his mind screamed, but the one whose teeth he had kicked out didn’t even look stunned as he lurched from side to side, trying to catch his balance. The other one moved slowly and deliberately toward him, his hands stiffly flexing and unflexing.

“Tasha! You goddamned
bitch
! Why’d you lock the fucking door!” he shouted as he slammed his fist repeatedly on the door. “Goddamn Tasha! Where the fuck are you?”

Can I break it down, or will it hold?
he wondered.
If I was safely inside, would the door stop them or would these bloodless things tear through the door as if it were paper?

A hailstorm of fists pounded the door as Hocker shouted until his throat was raw. He heard footsteps behind him and knew he was dead unless he tried something else. Spinning on his heel, and counting on his speed to save him, he dashed down the length of the porch, hoping to Christ the kitchen door wasn’t locked.
These assholes may be tough
, he thought,
but I hope to Christ they’re slow!

III

T
asha surprised herself; she did exactly what she had told herself she would do. As soon as the first man’s foot touched the first step, she swung the front door shut and ran into the kitchen. For only a second or two, she hesitated, her eyes darting back and forth between the front door and the back door.

She knew she could unlock the door and run like a son-of-a-bitch for the woods; once she was clear, she could find a phone and call home collect. Her father could easily arrange for someone to pick her up before the sun set that evening.

The man out there by the limo had called out for “Harmon,” not the cop she had kicked in the balls. Maybe the “limo man” was a cop, too, and he and Winfield were both after this guy Harmon. And maybe she should trust this cop, when he tells her he’ll help get her out of any trouble she might be in. He may not know about that old duffer Hocker knocked out cold, or the truck they had stolen, or the three men in the woods…

Oh, God
, she thought as fear rippled her insides like an earthquake.
I killed one of them, too! I’m in it just as deep as Hocker is!

From the front of the house, she heard the blast of gunshots and then sounds of scrambling as Hocker fought on the porch with the two men. A part of her told her she had to go out there and help him, she couldn’t let them hurt Hocker who, in spite of his craziness and everything he had done, had taken care of her along the road. She couldn’t very well leave him out there alone to face those men!

But what good would I be?
she wondered, feeling a sharp stinging in her eyes as tears welled up and overflowed.
What goddamned good am I to anyone?
She was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, rocking back and forth on the tips of her toes. Her eyes were fastened on the back door.
Escape
, her mind whispered.
Freedom!

But the sounds coming from the front of the house were too loud to ignore. Her hands tightening into fisted balls, Tasha took several steps back toward the front door, but then something caught her eye and brought her up to an abrupt stop. The cellar door was open a crack, and through the narrow opening, she could see a sliver of sunlight slashing across the floor.

In a flash, a single word filled Tasha’s mind:
Help!

There were two men down there and one of them was a cop! Any help was better than none at this point, she decided. She quickly went over to the door and raced down the stairs. The two men and the woman looked up at her with surprise in their eyes. They, too, had heard the gunshots, and the question of what was happening above them hung between them, unspoken.

“Which shoe has the key?” Tasha snapped, her voice jittery as she knelt down in front of Winfield.

“The left,” he said, turning slightly so she could reach it easily.

Tasha hurriedly untied the lace and shook the shoe until a small, silver key fell out into her hand. Winfield twisted around so she could get at his hands cuffed behind his back.

“What’s happening?” Winfield said, making a conscious effort to keep his voice steady. He could tell something had her all worked up, and if what agitated her would get them set free, he didn’t want to jeopardize it.

“There’s some men out there,” Tasha said with a gasp. “Two of them are fighting with Hocker.”

Dale and Winfield exchanged knowing glances, but it was Donna who said what all three of them immediately thought.

“Rodgers!”

“And company,” Dale added.

Tasha’s hands were shaking so badly, she couldn’t get the key into the small hole. She huffed with frustration, barely noticing her blurred vision as tears filled her eyes. Finally, she got the key into the lock and gave it a twist. With a small clink, the cuffs fell to the dirt floor, and Winfield immediately jerked forward and began working to free his legs.

“Get them,” he snapped when Tasha tried to help him.

“Do you know what that man wants?” Tasha asked as she worked on the ropes holding Dale’s hands behind his back.

“Yeah,” he said, grateful as he felt the bounds on his hands loosening. “He wants to make sure no one else finds out what we’ve found out about him.”

The rope slackened enough so Dale could pull his hands free. As he worked to get his feet untied, Tasha moved over and started on Donna’s ropes. By the time Dale had his feet free, Winfield had put his shoe back on and was standing up, shaking his hands and bouncing from one foot to the other to restore his circulation.

“This guy Hocker took my gun,” Winfield said when Dale stood up.

Dale was about to reply, but the suddenly flow of blood to his cramped legs drained his head of blood, and a wave of dizziness seized him. Bright pinpoints of light squiggled across his field of vision, and darkness started to close in from the edges. He sagged back against the cellar wall, wishing frantically that the sensation would pass.
Wouldn’t that be funny?
he thought,
to drop dead here of a heart attack, and wake up on one of Rodgers’ marble slabs!

By the time Donna was free and trying her damnest to get the feeling back in her arms and legs, the dizziness had passed from Dale. Taking a deep breath of the damp cellar air, he joined Winfield, who was over in the far side of the cellar, searching through a pile of rusted junk for anything that could function as a weapon.

Through the cellar floor, they heard the sudden clomping of footsteps as someone raced the length of the porch. This was followed by the steady
clomp-clomp
of heavy boots on the porch.

“This’ll do,” Winfield said, grabbing the splintery shaft of an old shovel. The blade was coated with brick-red rust, and it looked like it just might cut through butter, if the butter had been left in the sun on an August afternoon.

Dale could find nothing better than the rotted leg of an old sawhorse, but with that in hand he quickly followed Winfield up the stairs to the kitchen. Donna and Tasha were close behind them.

Through the kitchen window, they saw someone flash by the window, and then Hocker was at the back door, his eyes rounded with fright as he banged his fist on the door window and shouted, “Unlock the goddamned door! Jesus Christ! They’re after me!”

Winfield moved quickly to the door, flipped the lock, and swung the door inward. Just as he did, though, the man rounded the side of the house. One of them slammed like an express train into Hocker, pitching both of them onto the kitchen floor. In the wild scramble of fists and knees, Winfield couldn’t tell, at first, who was who. All he could see was a blur of action.

Dale, though, knew exactly who—or what—had tackled Hocker, and he moved swiftly forward, raised his sawhorse leg over his head, and brought it down swiftly onto the head of the attacker.

There was a loud crack, and Dale wasn’t sure if what broke was the piece of wood in his hand or the attacker’s skull. The blow seemed to get the man’s attention, and when he rolled over and looked up at Dale, Donna, who was standing right behind him, let out a piercing scream.

“Mother of God!” Dale said, his voice sounding like a rasp on metal.

The man’s eyes looked as though he should already be dead. There was a milky glaze over the pupils, and the eyeballs protruded from his skull as if his eyelids were gone!
He couldn’t blink his eyes if he wanted to!
But the round, dead ivory balls that glared up at her weren’t what made her scream. It was something worse.

“Jesus Christ!” Dale sputtered as he staggered backward, letting the board drop to the floor. “Jesus! It’s
Larry
!”

Winfield, too, recognized Larry Cole. In spite of the hollow cheeks and pasty complexion, there was no doubt that this was Larry Cole, the same man who, just last Friday night, he had pulled from the crumpled wreck of his car,
dead
! Winfield stood there, stunned by what he was seeing, as if this were a nightmare and if he could somehow push it away from his mind, it would go away.

A wide smile split Larry’s face, but there wasn’t the slightest flicker of recognition in his eyes as he scrambled to get onto his hands and knees. He moved slowly and deliberately as he shifted his weight forward, treating the fallen Hocker as nothing more than a rug he had tripped over. As Larry struggled to stand, his mouth dropped open, and with a sudden, reflexive muscle spasm, clamped shut again with a hard, chomping sound.

Winfield was frozen where he stood. Everything Dale and Donna had told him during their night of captivity came flooding back into his mind. Everything was a jumbled mess of thoughts, voices, and ideas; but one thing rang in his mind stronger and louder.
It’s all true!
his mind chattered, and he was afraid those words would suddenly spiral upward, higher and higher, louder and louder until they were nothing more than an insane buzz.

It’s all true!

IT’S ALL TRUE!

Dale, however, didn’t freeze. In Rodgers’ Funeral Home, he had already confronted the idea that Larry could still be alive, which, in a manner of speaking, he was. Dale wrenched the shovel from Winfield’s suddenly slack grasp and, cocking his arms back as though about to launch a harpoon, he drove the spade tip as hard as he could into the smiling face of his “dead” best friend.

There was a sickening crunch as the rusted blade caught Larry’s throat just under the chin, severing the windpipe and biting downward into the spine. The rotten flesh tore open with a hiss, but no blood flowed. Larry’s head sagged to one side, but the crazy glow remained in his eyes, and the wide smile remained on his face. His teeth kept clacking together hungrily, and all Dale could think was,
He wants to take a bite out of me!

Larry managed to get up and, sitting back on his heels, slowly raise his hands. Whether it was to protect himself or make a grab for him, Dale didn’t know, but he didn’t bother to wait to find out. He pulled the shovel back, tensed his shoulder muscles, and then swung again, aiming for the same area of Larry’s neck.

Dale was only vaguely aware of what was going on around him in the kitchen. He had a sense that Winfield was still standing there, numbly staring at the impossible thing that was happening. Someone was screaming. It was a high-pitched wail that cut Dale’s nerves like a dentist’s drill. Hocker was still trying to extricate himself from the weight of the man on top of him. He was fighting a panic he had never thought was possible for him to feel.