Dark Road (10 page)

That’s when it hit him, literally…and then nothing.

Then there were three deafening blasts in rapid succession.

Marissa, Bekah, Jessie!

Dan dragged himself back to consciousness and off the floor. His flashlight was still on and only a foot or two away from his hand, but his pistol was nowhere to be seen.
Damn! STUPID!

“Marissa!” He called.

“Just stay down if you are ok.” She said.

“How about if I’m not sure,” he said.

Marissa growled. “How about checking the rest of the bathroom?”

“That I can at least try to do…I think.” Dan got to his knees and turned around. His assailant was against the wall with both legs tucked up against his chest, one arm wrapped around his legs, and one arm over his head.

“Where’s my gun?” Dan asked.

He didn’t move.

Marissa stepped forward and the man whimpered.

“I will ask you one more time and then we will shoot you dead so we don’t have to worry about watching our backs. Where…is…my…gun?” Dan asked.

“Behind me,” the man said. “Waistband.”

“I’m getting it now.” Dan told the man. “If he moves, shoot him,” he said to Marissa, “even if it means hitting me. I’m serious.”

“I know you’re serious, but at this range I won’t hit anything but him and he knows it.” Marissa said.

The man nodded, even though it wasn’t necessary.

Dan retrieved his pistol and checked the stalls in a matter of a few seconds.

“Marissa, go to the girls.” Dan said.

Marissa didn’t say anything as she was now aching to do just that, but had been torn between them and Dan from the moment she’d seen Dan laying on the floor. She turned and walked out, leaving Dan to deal with whoever this was.

Dan shined the light directly on his attacker’s head, where his face would be should he look up as he walked backwards, slowly, through the door. He held the flashlight in his left hand and out away from his body, like he’d seen in some police shows, to throw off any attack, and said, “Get up.”

The man slowly got up.

“You’re going to help me clear the men’s restroom. You get to be my shield.” Dan said.

“There’s nobody in there. I’m here alone.” He said.

“That’s very comforting to know and I appreciate you telling me that.” Dan said. “I can’t trust you as far as I can hit you with this beam of light, though, so move. Open the door all the way to the wall but don’t make it bounce. I don’t want to scare my wife.”

With the men’s room door open, Dan prodded the other man further into the restroom and held the door open with his own foot. “I can see there’s nothing from here to the stall, check the stall.”

The other man walked to the stall and opened the door and went in. Dan squatted down to look under the partition again, but with his back to the wall this time.

“Ok, now walk to the toilet and lift and drop the lid.” Dan said.

“What?” The man said.

“Dan pointed the 9mm at him and said, “Lift the lid and drop it. Now.”

The man did it and then came back to the stall doorway.

“So, what was that all about?” He asked.

“If someone was hiding in there they would have most likely been standing on the toilet. Dropping the lid proved you lifted it. Lifting it proved someone wasn’t standing on it. I still may shoot you and come check myself…or put three rounds through the divider just to be sure.” Dan was putting on an act and hoped this new guy couldn’t tell.

“Hey, waste the ammo if you want but like I said, it’d be a waste.” The man said. “Me, I don’t really want you to shoot me but I’ve got nothing left to live for, so if that’s what you choose just make it a clean shot. Please don’t make me suffer. That’s why I didn’t want to get hit by the shotgun. If it doesn’t take you right away you’re going to linger and I really don’t want to go that way.”

“Fair enough. I’m backing out now and I’m going to hope like hell we don’t have company from the Community Center from the gunshots before.” Dan said.

“Oh, we won’t. They don’t care about anyone else. You could be on fire on the front lawn and they wouldn’t piss on you to get rid of the stink. As long as you don’t try to get into the little community that they’ve taken over, you’ll be golden.”

“Good to know.”

…

Marissa stopped just long enough at the backpack by the bike to get three replacement shells for the shotgun and was loading them while she walked towards the dining room. There was broken glass everywhere and she was having second thoughts about her instructions to Bekah to hide with Jessie. Bekah was smart enough not to try to hide under a table on top of broken glass, though, so it took less than a half a minute to scan the booths and tables and head into the kitchen.

“Bekah, honey?” Marissa said. “It’s ok. Come on out. Macaroni and Cheese with hotdogs.”

From the other side of the prep area she heard the sound of a metal sliding door opening. Having worked fast food in college she was at least a little familiar with the kitchen area and realized that the girls must have hidden in one of the cabinets that still had a door.

“I’m coming around, girls, and it’s just me, ok?”

“Ok, mom.”

Careful not to rush them, since the girls were still spooked, Marissa came around the food preparation island as the girls were climbing out of the cupboard. Marissa engaged the safety, set the shotgun on the counter, and held out her arms. Once the girls couldn’t see the shotgun anymore it was like a floodgate opened, quite literally, and the tears started for all three of them. Bekah and Jessie ran the few steps to their mother as she leaned down to hug them.

“I tried to keep Jessie quiet,” Bekah said between sobs. “But she kept whimpering. It sounded so loud inside the, the, the…”

“The cupboard,” Marissa finished for her.

“WHATEVER! The BOX!” Bekah wailed. “I don’t ever want to be in a box again!”

“Me too, I mean, either.” Jessie agreed, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“I don’t want you to be in a box ever again, either.” Marissa hugged both of the girls and then held them at arm’s length and pulled the flashlight back so they could see each other’s faces. “Everybody is ok, though. You are ok, I’m ok, and Daddy is ok and that’s what matters.”

Both of the girls nodded and the crying slowed to sniffles.

“We aren’t alone, though. Someone was in the girl’s bathroom and that was why you had to run and hide.” Marissa said. “Mommy and Daddy are going to have to figure out what to do, but you two are going to have to get some sleep while we do that. Can you promise to get some sleep while Mommy and Daddy deal with this if we promise no more guns? If we promise no more guns if we can help it?”

They both nodded again and this time Bekah yawned.

“Ok, let’s get back to Daddy,” and Marissa retrieved the shotgun. “Bekah, stay right beside me and hold your sister’s hand, ok?”

“Ok, Mom.” Bekah said and yawned again.

“Jessie, stay right by your sister, ok?”

“Yes, Mom.” Jessie was almost asleep on her feet already.

What are we doing?
Marissa thought to herself.
Talk about unprepared, we really need to think the next several steps through and hash this out before we leave this restaurant.

Chapter Eleven

Marissa and the girls were coming out of the kitchen and into the main dining area when Marissa heard the sound she’d been dreading. It was the sound of three rounds from Dan’s pistol.

“Stay!” Marissa said to the girls, who’d already frozen in their tracks.

Marissa already had a round in the chamber of the shotgun and took a dozen quick steps to the corner where the smaller hallway dining area was that led to the restrooms.

“Dan?” She yelled.

She heard retching.

“I’m going to give you a second to clear your mouth, just in case, but you better answer with the right phrase this time!” She shouted around the corner.

“As you wish.” Came back, slightly muffled, but obviously in Dan’s voice.

“Come here girls, but stay right…by…me. Do NOT go any further than me and when I tell you to sit, you sit where I tell you and don’t move. Understood?” Marissa said to the girls back at the counter.

“Yes, Mommy,” both girls said in unison. They were both well beyond shock at this point.

They rounded the corner together and Marissa sat them down in the first booth.

…

The men’s room was clear, of that Dan was fairly sure, but he had a really bad feeling about this guy. Like the universe screaming at him to run away, but of course he couldn’t. Obviously he was sensitive to the fact he’d been clocked in the back of the head by him, but there was more to it than that. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up; his mouth was dry; he could almost hear alarm bells going off, and no, it wasn’t that his ears were ringing from getting hit.

His fight or flight instinct was in high gear, and not just from the adrenaline. This guy was giving off some bad vibes in a major way, regardless of what he said.

“I’m going to leave the restroom first. I’m backing out because I don’t want you passing that close to me.” The guy was starting to approach Dan even though he hadn’t started backing up towards the door yet.
This isn’t going to go well.
Dan thought.

“Just stop and wait until I get out of the restroom.” Dan said.

The guy didn’t stop but he didn’t walk any faster either. Then Dan remembered what he’d said before. “I’ve got nothing left to live for” he’d said.
Crap.
Dan started sidestepping to the doorway and then the guy started moving faster.

Dan had never fired a gun in his life. The first two times he’d pulled the trigger had been less than twenty minutes ago in the dark, up the road. He was already pointing the gun at his previous, and now present, assailant—whose name he didn’t, and probably now would never, know.

His hands were sweaty but he was holding the small 9mm plenty tight and dropping it was not going to be a problem. A second dose of adrenaline dumped into his system and he prepared to have to fight hand to hand if the gun was taken from him, or he somehow managed to miss with every bullet in the gun.

If you’ve done any shooting at all it’s hard to miss at eleven feet, you have to
try
to miss at that distance. If you’ve never shot before and conditions are perfect, it’s pretty hard to miss at that distance too. If you’ve never shot before, and your life is in danger, and it’s dark, and the target is moving, and your hands are shaking, however, it’s pretty easy to miss at eleven feet. Dan missed.

Dan was in the clutches of an adrenaline rush, though, and his trigger finger had a mind of its own. It was instinct to bring the gun back down after the recoil and Dan didn’t miss at nine feet—he hit his attacker in the right side of the chest. He was already squeezing the trigger for a third time as the gun came back down, and the shot hit in the left side of the neck at five feet as his attacker had started to spin and was falling forward.

He was dead when he hit the floor. Three months of living on next to nothing and hollow-point 9mm rounds had been a sufficiently lethal combination in this case.

Dan collapsed to his knees in the doorway, vaguely conscious of the slowly spreading pool of blood inching its way across the floor.
What am I doing? I don’t think I can do this over and over and over,
he thought.

“Dan?” He heard Marissa yell from the end of the smaller dining area.

Then he threw up.

…

“You did what you had to do.” Marissa said.

“It doesn’t change the fact that I…” Dan was spiraling out of control.

Marissa put a hand on both sides of his face and forced him to look at her. “Dan!” She said in a stage whisper, the kind of voice you use when you want to mock yell to get someone’s attention without yelling, because you are right next to them. “Look at me, focus on me for a minute.”

Dan put his hands on her wrists, not to take her hands away but because he needed the additional contact. Dan was a healer, he was a fixer, he was a giver. What he had just done was unforgivable regardless of the reason!

He closed his eyes and took a breath, held it for a second and let it out.

Marissa didn’t flinch at the smell because he hadn’t had a chance to rinse his mouth out yet. It’d been worse after binges in college and he’d been there for morning sickness—she could deal.

“I need you right now, the girls need you. You can’t check out on us.” She said. “If you pulled the trigger, and you did pretty quickly there from the sounds of it, it was fight or flight time and you
truly
had to do it. I know, in my heart of hearts, that you wouldn’t have done it if your life didn’t depend on it.”

Dan nodded his head and a single tear leaked from his left eye. More because he knew his wife understood than for any other reason.

“You can get through this, we can get through this, but right now we need to take care of the girls and part of that is they can’t see
that
,” and she indicated the body with her chin.

Dan knew what she meant even though he didn’t look over his shoulder. He nodded again, took a deep breath, and then got up. “Stay with the girls.” He said and went into the kitchen area where the storage closets were.

A minute later he came back with a box of napkins and a container of the absorbent janitorial powder they have to clean up…messes…and cover smells. Dan used the entire container of pencil-shaving looking powder on his own sick and the growing pool of blood. He then dragged the body into the stall.
Well, at least I
know
the stall is empty.
Dan was close to a fit of the giggles which he was
positive
were a result of nerves, adrenaline, and exhaustion. He was also sure his family would think he was nuts and bit his tongue until it bled to keep them at bay.

After the body was moved he made a paper-napkin dam inside the door that would keep the pool of blood from seeping out. Hopefully, the girls wouldn’t see any more of tonight’s horror story than absolutely necessary.