The Devil Next Door

63

Getting down out of the tree was not quite as simple as getting up it, Louis found out. After the clan had gone away and he had a chance to breathe, he waited a time and then began his descent. He went slowly because he was no kid anymore and a drop out of a tree might mean a broken limb. And something like that tonight in Greenlawn was deadly. So he climbed down slowly. Then about eight feet from the ground his foot slipped off a limb and he nearly fell right onto the pavement. A lucky grab saved his bacon. His hand hooked around a limb and he lowered himself to safety.

And then he ran.

Like a hunted animal he ran home.

When he finally made it to his house on Rush Street, he was panting and sore and drenched with sweat. He collapsed in his front yard and just breathed. He looked up at the stars through the tree branches and was amazed that they were still the same. Shouldn’t they have changed, too?

Finally, he sat up.

It wasn’t safe to be lounging around like this and he knew it.

His brain kept telling him he needed a plan, a mode of survival… but there was nothing. What could he do? Where could he hide? The world had fallen to barbarism and the wild things were everywhere.

He looked down Rush Street.

The streetlights were still on, moths and insects circling them. All the houses were dark as tombs. The Merchant’s next door. The Maub’s, the Soderberg’s, the Loveman’s. Even the Gould’s. There was only a dead silence coming from the Starling’s and Kenning’s across the street. Nothing but shadows, the breeze stirring tree limbs. Usually at night like this you could hear a few cars in the distance, the distant rumble of trucks out on the highway. But tonight… nothing.

He heard a dog howl in the distance.

A shouting voice from several streets away.

He smelled smoke on the breeze from burning neighborhoods and firepits.

Nothing else.

Just the steady sighing respiration of the night world. Probably, he imagined, exactly how summer nights had sounded during the Pleistocene after the retreat of the glaciers.

He got to his feet and walked across the yard and there, stopped dead. Two of his windows had been shattered. The front door was standing wide open. Within was the blackness of plundered crypts. There. Now what? Did he run off or did he dare go in there and face what had done this, what might still be waiting inside?

A weapon.

He would need a weapon. He still had his lockblade knife in his pocket, but he wanted something bigger that he could strike from a distance with.

His mind frantically searched for something. There were plenty of things in the garage. But his keys were still in the Dodge on Main. He remembered there was a rake in the backyard. Better than nothing. Carefully, staying in the shadows, he scouted his way back there, expecting long-armed, hollow-eyed slavering things to leap out at him at any moment.

There was the rake right where he’d left it two weeks before after cleaning up the weeds in the garden. He could hear Michelle’s voice bitching at him to put it in the garage before it rusted.

Michelle, Michelle, Michelle… Good God.

But he couldn’t think about that, he couldn’t—

The door to the garage was wide open.

Dick Starling had escaped.

Now the night seemed more dangerous than ever. But he knew he had to look, to find out. He crept over there. It looked like the door had been kicked in. Dick Starling had been rescued by one of them. It was quiet inside. Raising the rake with one hand, Louis groped in the darkness, found the switch, clicked it on. The light would be like a beacon to them, but he had to take the chance.

Dick Starling was gone, of course.

Louis had a crazy, demented hope that one of them slipped in here and killed him… but no. He was just gone. The duct tape had been cut free of his wrists. It was all over the floor like shed snakeskin. The chain and Masterlock were nowhere to be seen.

Get moving.

He set aside the rake and grabbed a hammer. Then he shut off the light and tip-toed across the yard. He went in the back. Creeping up the back stairs into the kitchen. Silence. He waited, waited some more. He moved down the hallway, sweat running down his face. His heart was pounding so hard he was certain someone would hear if they were there.

He smelled blood.

In the living room, he clicked on the light. There was a body sprawled on the carpet. A woman. Naked, pale. Blood was splattered up the walls, soaking into the carpet. She had been gutted like a steer, her entrails stretched across the room like dead snakes.

He turned away.

Bonnie Maub. It was Bonnie Maub from a few houses away. She had come here, maybe looking for help and… well, they had gotten here. Maybe Dick Starling. Maybe the ones that had set him free. His stomach in his throat, Louis looked at her a little closer. Other than her abdomen being ripped open, there didn’t appear to be any other damage. He was no anatomist. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like whoever had killed her had taken some of her guts with them. She looked awfully… hollow.

Enough.

He was going to the Soderberg’s. Mike Soderberg had guns. Back outside then, hammer gripped tightly, waiting for death to come for him. He slipped past the Merchant house, moving quietly down the sidewalk to the Soderberg’s. It was dark. He crouched by the rose bushes, his head rioting with their perfume. He could see no outward damage. Maybe the savages had overlooked it.

Cautiously, his heart in his throat, he crept up to the house…