The Devil Next Door

53

When Louis stepped out of Shelly’s Café, the streets were empty.

Oh, they were out there, somewhere, but he could not see them. He could feel them, though, gathered thickly in the spreading shadows like locusts in a farmer’s field. Just as destructive, just as lethal, just as patient. He thought he could even smell them—their sweaty bodies and sour breath and bloody hands, the ripe stink of death hovering over them.

As he stepped out into the fading sunlight, the precarious uneven illumination of twilight, he could certainly feel their eyes on him. It was very unsettling. Like being some beast of the field ringed in by the hungry eyes of predators. They were watching him, gauging him, seeing what kind of defense he could put up and how easy they could take him down. He felt like a suckling pig in a pen surrounded by ravenous wolves. He actually thought he could smell their hot breath and drool.

Doris was behind him and she felt it, too. She kept the shotgun in both fists. She would kill anything that moved. There was no doubt of it. “We better find somewhere safe. And fast. I don’t think we have much time.”

Louis was terrified.

There was no way around that.

He was utterly terrified and instinct told him to run, to get the hell out, but he wasn’t going to do that. He knew he was in terrible danger. But what worried him most was Macy. So he would not run. As he stepped out onto the sidewalk, the cop’s 9mm in his hand, he did everything he could to look calm and in charge, even if he was lights years beyond these things. He was a man and he was going to act like one. Maybe they’d kill him, but he wouldn’t make it easy. He wouldn’t give them the pleasure of his fear.

Confidence.

Just a word any other time, but suddenly Louis seemed to understand what it meant. How it was a tool you used. If you panicked and bolted, those people out there would come running and howling, smelling his fear like wild dogs and sensing an easy kill. But if he was confident, they’d be cautious. They were playing mind games on him and now he would play the same game.

But it isn’t just mindless, murderous strangers out there, he reminded himself. Michelle is out there. Michelle is with them. If she attacks… can you kill her? Can you point the gun at her and put a bullet in her if it means saving Macy?

Louis couldn’t think about that.

He loved Michelle completely. He would have done anything for her. But now things were different. Yesterday, he would have rather put a bullet into his own head than harm her… but now? If she was some savage, blood-maddened beast? He did not know. He did not want to know.

He stepped off the curb, wanting to give himself some distance from the buildings, the alleys, the cellar stairways cut down into the sidewalk. Too many places to spring an ambush from. And although he had never actually used a 9mm automatic before, he knew enough about the weapon to know that its magazine carried enough rounds to do some serious killing.

Okay.

“You’re not going to find your girl,” Doris said. “Be sensible. You’ll get us both killed.”

Louis ignored her.

He moved down the street. He was very aware of how long his shadow was growing. Darkness was coming fast and he had a pretty good idea that they wanted it to come, that reduced to what they were now, they would probably be much better in it than he. He could see the Dodge parked up the street from the police station, the shadowy hulks of bodies scattered around it. The driver’s and passenger’s side doors were wide open. The windows were shattered. He preyed it was still drivable.

He wondered if Michelle was out there. Maybe she had taken Macy.

Oh, not her, not Michelle, not my wife.

Louis walked on very slowly for ten or fifteen feet, then paused.

Doris nearly bumped into him.

He thought he heard that childish giggling again. His flesh crawled anew. Wasn’t it amazing that one of the sweetest sounds in the world, the delightful laughter of a child, was also one of the most foul and obscene? And particularly in a ghost town. He breathed in and out, readying himself for it, whatever it was, because it was coming. It was building around him and he could feel it. Like a frightened animal, he could sense the waiting teeth out there, the claws and hunger. Tensed like a spring ready to explode, sweat running down his face, he remembered driving up Main with Macy, how dead the town was, how he’d speculated earlier that maybe everyone was dead. But it had all been a ruse, of course. Macy and he had been watched from the moment they pulled down the street. These people were organized, then. They had laid a trap and waited for him to step into it. And, boy, he’d bested their greatest expectations, hadn’t he? Leaving Macy alone in the car even when, deep inside, he’d known it was a mistake.

Sacrifice.

He’d offered her up for sacrifice.

“No,” he said under his breath.

“What?” Doris asked him.

“Nothing.”

He went across the street, stepped up onto the sidewalk. They could have had her anywhere. Or blocks away for that matter. It was hopeless, but he couldn’t give in, couldn’t crumble. He walked over to Indiana Video. He pushed his way through the glass doors. It was silent in there. There was a light on behind the counter, another near the back of the store. Enough light to see by.

“Macy?” he said.

There was a moaning sound.

His heart leaping with possibility, Louis charged over by the children’s movies. A young girl, maybe eight or ten, was squatted on the floor, entirely naked. Arms wrapped around herself, she rocked back and forth.

She was a redhead.

Not Macy at all.

“Honey?” Louis said, still fearful. “Are you all right?”

The girl looked up at him. Her face was dark with ground-in dirt, her hair greasy and stuck with leaves. There were bruises and contusions all over her. Louis held a hand out to her, afraid she might bite it, but the humanity in him demanding that he try.

Doris kept the shotgun on the kid. “Jesus Christ, Louis… are you fucking blind as well as stupid? Look at her. That’s not a girl. It’s one of them. Can’t you see that?”

But he couldn’t be convinced of that. The girl was sobbing, shaking. One of them wouldn’t do that… would they? After a moment the girl took his hand and stood up, breaking into a wail of tears. She pressed herself against him, shuddering. She smelled bad. Like blood and decay and dirt. Her flesh was hot, moist. He could feel her heart thudding.

“They dragged me through the streets,” the girl said. “They… they… they…”

But she couldn’t go on; she shook, whimpered.

“All right,” Louis said. “You’re going to be safe now. My car is outside. We’re driving away from here.”

Doris didn’t move. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Not with that thing.”

“Stop it!’ Louis told her.

“You’re an idiot. You’ll get us all killed.”

He turned towards the door, the shadows thicker and more tangled out there than nesting cobras now. Death waited out there. In every shadow, in every doorway, and behind every tree. Death. The girl shook in his arms. And then she tightened against him. He could feel the flex of her muscles, the heat of her skin. It was nearly feverish. He tried to pry her away so he could walk, but she circled her arms around him, jumped up and swung her legs around his hip.

“Honey,” he said, “listen now…”

She looked up at him from beneath strands of filthy copper-colored hair.

She was grinning.

Her eyes were filled with a stark malevolence that was beyond mere insanity. The tips of her teeth were filed into points.

Louis felt something sink inside him, he felt her repellent flesh against his own. Darting her head, she buried her teeth into his shoulder, breaking through his shirt and puncturing skin.

He screamed with pain.

He heard Doris cry out as the other savages rushed in.

A trap, it had all been a fucking trap…