The Siege (39 page)

“We could go into the house,” Dale said softly, stiff staring at the headlight as he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I think we’ve got to wait until dawn before we make a break for it. How close is the nearest house?”

Donna shrugged. “More than a mile to the Larsen’s.”

“How fast could you run it?” Dale asked.

“With
that
on my ass?” she asked, nodding toward the idling limo. “I could probably make it in about thirty seconds.”

“Right,” Dale said. He edged over to the smashed-in front door, inspecting the damage in the halo of light from the car. His heart was hammering hard in his chest, and in spite of the cold night air, his face glistened with sweat. He pushed on the broken door, and it gave way enough for them to get easily inside.

And then what?
Dale wondered. Would Rodgers wait out there all night? Or would he leave, maybe to come back with some of his
creatures
to finish them off?

“Come on,” Dale said, waving Donna over to him. “We can keep an eye on him from inside the house. I don’t think he’s going to get that car any further up onto the porch tonight.”

Donna peered into the dark opening of the door. She was filled with a rush of memories as the old, familiar smell inside the house reached out to her. She could hardly believe that this is how it would all end at the old home. She had always assumed she and Barbara would eventually sell the place, split the money, and that would be an end to it. But not
this
! Not to be held at bay by a madman who was threatening to kill them. It was too insane!

“How do we know he’s even in the car?” Donna asked. Her eyes glowed like a frightened animal in the light from the headlight.

As if in answer, though, the car’s engine revved up. Suddenly darting forward, the limo scattered a shower of dirt behind it as it started a third time toward the house. Dale tensed, expecting that Rodgers was going to make one last attempt to nail them, now that they were standing in the wreckage in front. But then the car turned sharply to the left. The tires churned large clots of the lawn as it raced around the side of the house. After a few seconds, it reappeared from around the other side of the house, still speeding and swerving crazily.

Dale didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh hysterically or shout with anger. All he knew was that Rodgers was toying with them, as if he had them under his complete control and would dispense with them when he felt like it. He suddenly knew what a mouse felt like, trapped beneath a cat’s playful paws.

“One on one!” Dale shouted, shaking his fists in the air as the car passed by close to the fallen porch.

After another circuit of the house, the limo cut back across the lawn. It must have been moving at least fifty miles an hour by the time it shot down the driveway and, without even a flicker of brake lights, onto Mayall Road, heading back toward town. Dale and Donna both let out long sighs of relief as they listened to the sound of the engine, rapidly fading into the night. The quiet of the darkness settled over them like a heavy blanket.

“You okay?” Dale asked. He took hold of her by the shoulders and looked at her squarely. In the darkness, her face wasn’t much more than an indistinct blur, but she smiled and nodded.

“I think so,” she said huskily. “And you?”

Dale grunted, still holding onto her.

“I thought you were losing it for a while there,” Donna said. “When you started laughing like that.”

Again, Dale snorted. “Well, you’ve got to admit this has been one hell of a night!”

Donna suddenly leaned forward, collapsing into his arms. Dale ran his hands up and down her back, trying to quiet the subtle trembling he felt in her shoulders.

“Where do you think Rodgers is going?” Donna asked after a moment lost in the comfort of his embrace. She pulled back and looked up at Dale. “Do you think it’d be safe for us to try to get back to town?”

Dale shrugged. Looking out at his wrecked car, he said, “Well, we certainly aren’t going to drive. I don’t know about… holy shit!”

“What?”

“What the Christ is
wrong
with me?” Dale said, his voice threatening to break. “All this time, and I haven’t even thought about Angie! What if that’s where he’s going?”

Donna’s stomach did a quick flip, and the tension she felt was made worse by the thought that if that was where Rodgers was heading, they were helpless to stop him.

“No,” Donna said, her voice tight with fear. “I mean, he may have seen her with you at the funeral today. But he doesn’t know where you’re staying. She’ll be all right.”

“You think where I’m is some kind of secret? Come on, Donna, this is your hometown. You know damned well he knows where I’m staying.” If Winfield was in cahoots with Rodgers, Dale realized, Angie was as good as dead already!

Dale looked out at the dusty light of the moon brushing the lawn with a cool blue. The sound of the limo had long since faded, leaving nothing but the hissing quiet of the night. The driveway and road unwound like a smoky ribbon, leading to town.
And to what horrors?
he wondered.
What horrors did Rodgers and possibly Winfield—have in store for this little town?

“There isn’t a chance the phone’s still connected in the house, is there?” Dale asked.

Donna shook her head quickly.

“I didn’t think so,” he said, pressing his fist to his mouth. Worry and fear were gnawing at his gut like tiny, hungry animals.
If that bastard does
anything
to hurt Angie…

“So…?” Donna said. She took a step toward the broken door but tripped on something in the dark and almost fell. Dale reached out and steadied her. His features were lost in the shadows under the porch, but she could tell his face was creased with worry about his daughter.

“I really want to get back to town, to make sure Angie’s all right,” Dale said tightly. “But I just don’t think we should try it in the dark. I know he’ll be out looking for us. At least here we have some protection.”

“Not if he returns with some of his… Jesus, even trying to say it sounds so goddamned stupid!”

“His
zombies
! What, you still can’t admit the truth? You saw one of them,” Dale said evenly. “Just tonight, you saw what Rodgers did to my best friend.” His voice broke at the memory of Larry’s cold, death-glazed eyes staring at him as he lumbered, stiff-limbed, after them, his hands flexing to tear the life from them.

“So you think we should wait here until dawn, huh?” Donna said. “And what if he knows we’re staying here? He wrecked your car. He knows we won’t chance the woods in the dark. If he comes back here with any of those
things
, we’re as good as dead.”

“I know, I know,” Dale said. “We’re stuck between the proverbial ‘rock and hard place.’ ”

“I guess you’re right, though,” Donna said, sighing as she looked again at the smashed-in front door. The whole night still seemed like a bad dream she hoped would end soon.

“I’ve got a flashlight in the car,” Dale said. “Wait here.”

He leaped over the tangle of splintered wood and ran down to his demolished car. The driver’s door was hammered in so badly the door handle was flat against the panel. He couldn’t even get his fingertip under the door trigger. Both front and back wheels on the driver’s side stuck out at sharp angles from the wheel wells. The axles were bent way out of shape, and he was positive this car would never see road service again!

On the passenger’s side, though, he could open door. The dome light didn’t come on when he opened the door, but that was no surprise. After fishing around blindly on the floor for a few seconds, he found the little penlight he kept for reading maps at night.

As he started back up to the house, he looked at the damage the limo had done to the front lawn. Everywhere, there were deep trenches and skid marks. Moonlight cast them in black shadows, making them look deeper than they really were. The front of the house, Dale thought, looked as though a bomb had gone off. Behind a large section of fallen roof, there was a gaping black hole where once the front door had been.

“Come on,” Donna said, her voice coming from the blackness under the fallen porch, seemingly disembodied. “Hurry it up.”

Dale ran up the walkway and, once back beside Donna, snapped on his penlight. The beam was weak and threw a feeble circle of light onto the caved-in door.

“That’s it?” Donna said, watching with a trace of amusement as the little yellow oval darted over the smashed wood.

Dale grunted. “ ’Fraid so,” he said. “Come on, let’s get inside. Maybe we can get some wood from the barn and brace the door back up. At least we won’t be stumbling around in the dark all night.”

He held the light so it shined into the opening, and stood back as Donna entered the house. He followed her in, taking one last look out onto the silent, cold night. That Rodgers would return, he had no doubt, the only real question was
when
? Dale was determined that, when he did, Rodgers wouldn’t catch them off their guard. Not ever again!

II

M
rs. Appleby and Angie left for the hospital in Houlton seconds after the call that Lisa and a police officer had been taken there by ambulance. They left a note on the kitchen table, telling Dale where they had gone and not to worry, that everything was under control.

In the ambulance on the drive to the hospital, Officer Brooks had regained consciousness and identified Lisa. He had gotten increasingly agitated about being anywhere near her, and had gotten so upset, one of the Medcu crew had to give him a shot to sedate him. They were both unconscious when they were wheeled into the emergency room.

Lisa was still asleep when her grandmother and Angie entered her room. She had been washed up, and her blood-soaked pajamas had been exchanged for a fresh hospital johnny. She was hooked up to an intravenous tube, but the on-duty nurse repeatedly assured Mrs. Appleby that, so far as they could tell, Lisa was just fine. There were no signs of any internal or external injury at all except for the large bruise on her forehead.

Mrs. Appleby went to speak with the nurse at Admissions, and there she gave the full details of Lisa’s bicycle accident and what Stephen Wayne had done for her when he came out to the house.

Angie, meanwhile, sat in the most comfortable chair in the room and watched as her friend slept peacefully. She couldn’t get out of her mind the expression she had seen on Lisa’s face when she had swung at them and then run downstairs and out the door. In some odd way, she felt Lisa’s pale face and bugging eyes were somehow connected to those strange men they had encountered out at Lisa’s “secret place.” She had seemed to be filled with the same fury that seemed to possess the man who had smashed his fist through the trap door and had grabbed at her. Lisa seemed to have been driven by the same strength and frenzy.

As the minutes stretched out and the hospital room got warmer, a gentle weariness came over Angie. She tried to keep her eyes open, but the stress of everything that had happened weighed down on her like lead. Her eyelids fluttered, and the dim light of the room wavered as she sank down deeper into the soft chair. She kicked off her shoes and put her stockinged feet on the edge of Lisa’s bed. Within minutes she was asleep, breathing heavily.

One of the night-shift nurses had called in sick that evening, so her replacement, who had been on duty the previous shift, grabbed a quick nap at the nurses’ station. No one noticed when Lisa’s eyes snapped open. For just a moment, she lay there, staring up at the hospital ceiling. Her eyes blinked rapidly as she tried unsuccessfully to figure out where she was.

“Grammy…?” she called, sitting up stiffly in bed to look around. “Grammy? I’m
hungry
.”

She finally realized that she was in the hospital, but that didn’t surprise her. Since that spill off her bike, though, she had been having some pretty strange dreams. When did her grandmother bring her here? How long had she been here? What the heck time was it? The only certainty she had was that her stomach felt like she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

She swung her legs out from under the covers, careful not to wake up Angie, and put her feet to the floor. A chill raced up the backs of her legs, but looking down, she saw a pair of cheap, paper hospital slippers. She leaned forward and slipped them onto her feet and, with a low groan and stretch, stood up. The IV impeded her for only a second. She ripped the adhesive tape off and pulled the needle out, then walked unfettered to the door.

She wasn’t exactly sure where she was going as she opened the door and peered out into the deserted corridor. All she knew was that she was hungry…
really
hungry.

“Where d’yah get food around this place?” she asked herself silently as she started down the hallway.

The lights in the ceiling glowed with a strange brilliance.
 
The plastic rectangles covering the bulbs were dim, but the glow all around them was vibrating with green and blue spikes. In the corner of her eye, she could see bright colors, swirling and spinning on the walls, but she could never see them directly when she turned to look; the sparkles always shifted away from her as she turned her head back and forth.