The Devil Next Door

61

Louis was running.

Maybe from the town and maybe from himself, but mostly from the clan coming after him. He was running and running, trying not to think of what had just happened back there. Trying not to think of anything else but the clan hunting him down. Trying not to see Michelle and that look in her eyes or to remember that it was her, really, that had put the clan on him.

He couldn’t think about that.

Because the only reason he’d stayed in this goddamn town was because of her and now she was a stranger, a sadistic queen wasp with her very own hive. If he hadn’t stayed, then he would not be a player in this nightmare and Macy would be with him. Not out there. Not dead or raped or worse… just like them.

Not now, though, not now.

He couldn’t worry about any of that now.

Already his lungs were aching and his feet were getting sore, his clothes drenched with sweat. Jesus, he was too old for this shit. Just way too old. He needed a hiding place, but everything he saw—house, alley, or hedgerow—just looked alive with threat. Dark places where gnarled hands could find him, bring him down and do the most awful things.

He rounded a turn on Main Street and paused. He could keep going and maybe run right out of town… if he could keep this up for another mile or so. Or he could find a car or a building, some place to hide. There simply wasn’t the time to check every single parked car for a set of keys. If he started that, they’d be all over him.

He looked down Main, looked down the side streets and interconnecting avenues. He stood there, hands on his knees, panting and panting. Jesus, he just couldn’t go on like this. If he didn’t find a safe place or a car to get out of town with, then this would go on until dawn, maybe even longer than that. The clan would run him right to death like dogs running a stag.

Main Street twisted and turned like the back of a snake, lots of sharp corners and tall buildings and leafy trees to obscure things, little rolling hills. There were so many places to hide. He imagined that most of the stores and buildings on Main would be locked. One or two might be open, but again, he just did not have the time to be checking doors. His instinct was telling him just to go home. But if Michelle wanted him dead, then she would no doubt direct the clan there.

If she remembered where home was.

Louis looked behind him and, yes, they were coming. He saw them crest a hill behind him, maybe a dozen of them washed down by the moonlight. He could hear their pattering feet and their shouting voices. Why the hell didn’t they just give up? Why didn’t they go after someone else?

Maybe there isn’t anyone else, Louis. Maybe you’re the last one.

Christ, that was unthinkable. If it were true, if there were thousands of them out there… he’d never make it. He just couldn’t make it.

He took off running, getting a second wind now. His body was aching and he was just glad that he had not smoked in like seven or eight years. He’d picked up jogging about three years back, but that hadn’t lasted. He wished now that he’d kept up with it.

More of them now.

The fast ones had come over the hill first. The young and fit ones, the middle-aged people lagging behind. But now they were all coming down the hill.

Louis put forth a burst of speed, coming around one of those sharp corners and sprinting through shadows thrown by a row of buildings. He darted down an alley, came out the other side and jogged down an avenue, cutting through yards and the parking lot of a gas station. He paused, trying to catch his breath. He could still hear them.

He ran down a narrow side street until he linked up with Providence, which itself ran south to north right through the middle of town. He crossed the Providence Street Bridge which spanned the Green River and the sounds of his pursuers faded into the distance. He kept going, trying to put as much distance between himself and them as possible. If he followed Providence Street for about six or seven blocks, 7^th Avenue would cut across it and then it was just a short hop to Rush Street. If he wanted to do that, of course. And he was thinking he did. Because he knew that neighborhood and though people were crazy there, too, he knew where quite a few of them kept the keys to their cars.

Providence was one of those streets that was partially commercial and partially residential. You’d pass two blocks of private homes, hit a couple bars, maybe a furniture outlet or a truck depot, pass some more houses and there was a beer distributor and a little hole in the wall hamburger stand or a fried chicken joint. Lots of little shops and taverns, their storefronts changing all the time as an archery supplier went out and an upholstery place came in. Lots of the storekeepers lived right above their businesses as their parents and grandparents had.

Louis had grown up just off Providence on Middleton Street. Though his parents were long gone as were most of his relatives, the house he grew up in still stood, though the second story had been taken off following a fire fifteen years before. But he had grown up on south Providence Street and he knew every nook and cranny, every courtyard and cul-de-sac. Every old empty shed and tucked away warehouse. When he was a kid there’d been a big red barn on the corner of 5^th Avenue and Providence with a large fenced in yard where they used to play. Years ago it had been a livery stable, but that was long before his time as were the old street cars that used to run up and down Providence. The tracks were still there, he was told, under the present street, along with the remains of the brick road that had housed them.

He came to 4^th Avenue and collapsed under a row of spreading oak trees, just panting and gasping. He knew these trees. As a kid he’d climbed them. You could shimmy out onto the branches that overhung Providence and watch cars and trucks pass beneath you. He knew his initials and those of his friends were still carved up there on the tree above him. Just down the block was the Sloden Mortuary, a looming gray concrete edifice flanking the town cemetery, and across the street from that there was a creamery on the corner—Fretzen Brothers—and lots of old houses pressed in tightly together.

Sure, it hadn’t really changed much.

Except they weren’t really houses anymore, just block upon block of cages. Each one filled with one or more slavering things that used to be human. In fact

They were coming.

It didn’t seem possible, but they were. He started to wonder if they were not only a pack in appearance, but in reality. If maybe, somehow, they had his scent or were going to run him to ground. He’d taken a pretty circuitous route and still they’d found him, casting around for his scent like true dogs.

Louis didn’t think he could run anymore.

They were still a long way off. He looked up at the moonlight dappled tree above him. It rose a good thirty feet above Providence, if not forty. Looking around, he checked the trunk which was so wide that two men could not have put their arms around it. Some of the old footholds had been broken off by storms or children. But there was enough there. He reached up and grabbed a limb above his head, getting his foot on one of the old knobs. He started up, straining and cursing under his breath. Definitely feeling his age. His foot slipped once and he dangled there by the limb, but finally he pulled himself up, breaking spiderwebs with his face. Stout limbs came out from the trunk like spokes. He ducked under some and climbed up others until he was a good fifteen feet up. He sat on a branch and hugged the trunk and just waited, sweat dripping off the end of his nose.

He could hear them.

When he caught his breath, he climbed higher like a frightened monkey.

They were getting closer…