The Siege (55 page)

Hocker started to speak, but before he did, he rolled down the window and spit out into the night as the cruiser headed back toward town. He cleared his throat, but the next words were simple; he said, “Oh-ooh.”

“What?” Dale asked, glancing again in the rear view mirror. What he saw reflected there was answer enough. A single yellow headlight like a sinister, evil eye was speeding toward them out of the darkness.

“Endings and Partings”

I

T
here was darkness all around her… darkness ringed with flameless heat that came in long, steady pulses.
There should be some kind of light
, she thought…
how can there be such heat without light?

—
Is the house on fire?...

—Am I on fire?...

She knew who she was, at least; and that was a start, but she wasn’t even sure if she still had her body. It didn’t feel like she did. All she felt was a curious, floating sensation, as if she were drifting in a hot darkness, like the womb.

—
“
Am I dead?
”

Did I speak those words aloud, or were they words without sound, like the heat without light?
she wondered.

Her thoughts swam in her mind like fish in a midnight ocean. There was no up or down, no left or right, no center… there were hints and sensations of who she was… or at least who she had been, but she couldn’t drag herself onto the shore, as it were; she couldn’t even conceive of the shore. Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t even positive she was breathing!

—”Am I
dead
?”

The words came to her again with a sharp-edged brilliance:
Yes! Brilliance! Here, sounds have light!

“…
Am
…”

Yes! That is my voice
. The single word glowed with a deep violet just on the edge of perception; it came out of the darkness and quickly fell back into it, a memory tracer spinning crazily, like a sky rocket spiraling into the dark ocean.

“…
I
…”

Brighter, stronger purple light this time. It blossomed from the darkness like a flower, exploding outward from the center.
What center?
she thought.
How can no up or down, no left or right have a center?

“
…dead…?
”

This word quickly throbbed into life, changing for a fraction of a second into a deep blue… the blue of the evening sky in winter once the sun has dropped. Memory stirred like a sleeping beast.

And that third word brought something more than light; it brought a sense of heaviness of her drifting, floating, and then suddenly being pierced by tiny hooks that sank into her flesh and started drawing her downward.

—
There can’t be a downward in a darkness with no center!

—“
Do I still have my body?
”

“No, you’re not dead,” said a voice close to her ear. The voice was not her own.

“Do I still have my body?” she said. Each word began as pulses of light, rapidly shifting from purple to blue, through the spectrum to green then yellow and orange and, finally, to red, until the last word was no color at all; it was all sound!

“You’re in the hospital, Mrs. Appleby,” the voice said gently. “You were brought here early this morning by police Chief Bates, from Dyer. Do you recognize the name?”

She thought for a moment. Her thoughts, as her words once had once been, were colored lights, not voices in her mind. They twisted and tangled like swirls of oil in a puddle, shimmering and bright like insect eyes. They could be seen only if she took the time to notice them.

“Yes,” she said. “Sure I know who you mean.”

“Mrs. Appleby,” another voice said, this one male. “I’m glad to see you’re awake.”

She moved her eyelids allowing only the thinnest sliver of yellow light to strike her eyes. It felt like a splash of acid, making her eyes water. But the relief she felt, that her eyes
could
water, made her want to shout with joy.

“Don’t try to sit up or even open your eyes,” said the woman. There was a gentle downward push on her shoulder.

“You’ve got a fractured skull. It’s quite a serious fracture,” the man’s voice said. “I’m afraid you’ll be here for a while.”

“And Lisa…?” Mrs. Appleby said. Again, she wanted to sit up in the bed. She knew now she was in a hospital bed. “Is Lisa all right?”

“Your granddaughter is doing just fine,” the woman’s voice said. “Her friend has been sitting up with her all night, and she’s feeling just fine.”

“Funny,” Mrs. Appleby said, letting herself sink back into the coolness of the pillow. “Isn’t it funny how, within a day, we both ended up in the hospital with head injuries.”

“There was nothing funny about how I found you this morning,” the man’s voice said. “What can you tell me about what happened once you got home last night and early this morning?”

For an instant, she wondered as the timeless, directionless darkness started sweeping back over her.

“They called me at the office as soon as they told me you were coming around,” the man said. “Do you recognize my voice? This is Police Chief Bates.”

“I don’t remember much,” she, said. Trying to push her memory back only intensified the darkness, and she didn’t want to go back there!

“I have a quite serious problem on my hands, Mrs. Appleby,” Bates said. “Due to the incident with your granddaughter, I have one policeman out of commission with a serious arm wound. Another man failed to report for duty this morning, leaving me short-handed. Now Officer Brooks has informed me that yesterday a man and a woman came to the station looking for Officer Winfield. It turns out this man has been rooming at your house and is the father of the girl who is staying with your granddaughter. After I was notified of the incident at the police station, I decided I had to ask you a few questions. When I arrived at your house, early this morning, I found you unconscious on the floor in your entryway.”

“What day is it?” Mrs. Appleby asked. She made no motion to sit up, but her eyes slitted open a bit more, and she could just barely distinguish him: a hazy blur, leaning over her, big as a mountain.

“It’s Tuesday evening,” Bates said. “You were brought here early this morning. It was right after you left here from visiting your granddaughter.”

“You said Lisa is fine,” Mrs. Appleby said. “Were you telling the truth?”

“She’s doing just fine,” Bates replied, shifting his gaze to the nurse by the bed. “What I need to know is, who came to your door, either late last night or early this morning?”

“I…” she said, and that was all she could say. Her eyes slid shut, and the darkness started to return and embrace her in its warmth. She tried to ignore it was happening, but when she had spoken the word “I,” she had seen it in her mind as a burst of violet light.

“You might be pushing her too hard,” the nurse said softly. Mrs. Appleby could feel someone tucking the sheet up under her chin.

“No,” Mrs. Appleby said. It took great effort not to cry out when the word pulsed a blue light in her mind. “I remember.” Blue light exploded like lightning at the word “I.” A flash of green like a handful of emeralds tossed into the air accompanied the word “remember.”

“Who was it?” Bates said. He knew he was pushing, but he had to find out what the hell was going on. Her boarder, this Mr. Dale Harmon, shows up at the station, looking for Jeff, and then first thing next morning, Jeff Winfield is missing, no sign of him or his cruiser anywhere! In all his years of service, Jeff had never been late or missed a shift without notifying the station.

“His eye,” she said, feeling a sudden chill when the word
eye
glowed a pale blue exactly the color of the eye! “I remember his eye.”

“Whose eye?” Bates said. “I want you to tell me. Whose?”

“And the
pupil
,” Mrs. Appleby said, suddenly clenched with a bottomless terror. That black pupil, like the heated darkness swelling to embrace her, wanted to embrace her… to
smother
her!

There was a sudden high-pitched beep. For the sheerest instant, Mrs. Appleby thought the sound originated in her head, that perhaps a blood vessel had suddenly burst from the effort of speaking, and she was dying. But as the sound got louder, she managed to get a direction on it. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.

“Excuse me a moment,” Bates said, switching off his pager. “I have a call. Can I get an outside line on this phone?”

“Just dial nine and then the number if it’s local,” the nurse said.

Mrs. Appleby let herself settle back into the pillow, grateful for its coolness, an escape from that hot blackness, while Bates hurriedly dialed. He cupped his hand up close to his mouth and mumbled into the receiver for a few seconds, then hung up.

“It never rains but it pours,” he said as he turned back to Mrs. Appleby. “That was a call from the station. You remember I said that yesterday a man and a
woman
were asking for Officer Winfield? The man was your boarder, and the woman was Donna LaPierre. Well, it seems as though the old LaPierre homestead is going up in flames even as we speak.”

“Rodgers!” Mrs. Appleby suddenly said in a barking shout. Pure reflex made her snap open her eyes and try o sit upright in the bed, but she just didn’t have the strength. She groaned with pain and closing her eyes gain, collapsed back onto the bed.

“What?” Bates said. He was already at the door, ready to leave.

“This morning,” Mrs. Appleby said softly. “The man who came to my house this morning… was Franklin Rodgers. And he had… Stephen Wayne with him.”

“Thank you very much,” Bates said. Within a few minutes, he pulled out of the hospital parking lot and, blue lights flashing and siren wailing, sped down Route 2-A toward Dyer.

II

“W
e’re fucked,” Tasha said as she leaned over the back seat, staring like Donna and Hocker at the pursuing car. There was no doubt who was chasing them; the only question was, could Winfield’s cruiser, smashed and dented as it was, keep the distance? Dale was thankful that Hocker had only smashed one of the headlights, otherwise he’d be driving stone blind. The slide windows were nothing more than a mass of spiderwebbed cracks. Chilly wind whistled through them.

“Can’t you call for help on the radio?” Donna asked from the back seat.

In answer, Dale held up the shattered plastic of the microphone. His eyes flickered between the road ahead and the rapidly approaching headlight behind them. The cruiser held the road with a firm grip, and Dale found something else to be thankful for: Hocker hadn’t slashed the tires.

“We’ve got some simple chores,” Dale said grimly as the cruiser shot down Mayall Road toward town. “I say we stop and kill the bastard,” Hocker said. He raised his revolver up in front of his face and cocked back the hammer. In the glow of the dashboard lights, Dale saw Hocker’s crazed expression. The wind ruffled his hair wildly, and Hocker’s face, leaning toward him out of the darkness, sent a ripple of chills through him.

“We can either stop in town at the police station, or we can try to out-race him.”

As soon as he stopped speaking, Dale felt a cold touch on the back of his neck. He looked in the rear view mirror, and saw Hocker leaning close to him. The cold touch on his neck was the muzzle of Hocker’s gun.

“You ain’t stoppin’ at no fuckin’ cop station,” Hocker hissed close to his ear. “So I guess the decision’s just been made. You’re gonna have to outrun the bastard.”

“Hocker! For Christ’s sake! What the hell are you doing?” Tasha said.

“I ain’t going to no goddamned cop station, that’s all,” Hocker said, glaring at her.

Donna cringed back in the seat, wondering if she would even dare to try to stop this crazy man before he did something
really
crazy. Then again, she wondered which one of them wasn’t going to end up in the funny farm after what they had been through in the last twenty-four hours.

Up ahead, Dale saw the stop sign at the intersection of Mayall Road and Main Street. With just the slightest bit of pressure on the brake pedal, he looked to the left, prayed that it was clear, and, tires squealing like an animal in pain, swung onto Main Street. The yellow headlight behind him shifted around the curve just seconds after him. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will see us and call the cops,” Donna said. Her voice was tense, and she couldn’t take her eyes off the gun brushing against Dale’s neck.

What, if we hit a bump and the gun accidentally goes off?
she wondered, feeling sweat break out on her forehead.

“We’ll just get us a good stretch of road and dust this bastard,” Hocker said, his voice low and leering. “Won’t we?” The revolver’s muzzle pressed harder against his neck. “These cop cars can out-do anyone!”

“Whatever you say,” Dale said, setting his jaw firmly as he sped toward town. When he shot past Mrs. Appleby’s house, he couldn’t help but look up to see if anything had happened up there. He saw that no lights were on and felt a wave of chills much worse than those he got from the gun at this head.
If Angie’s not all right
, Dale thought,
let Hocker pull the trigger now!

In a flash they raced down Main Street. The few people they passed on the street barely had time to look up and register what they were seeing: a smashed-to-pieces police cruiser being pursued by a sleek, black limousine. In seconds, they were out of town, heading south on Route 2-A. Before Dale could even think to respond, the police station and all help was behind him. If he was going to get all of their asses out of this, he was going to have to do it alone!