Sticks and Stones (25 page)

The tension rose with every passing day, nights the only blessing. They could go home to the dirty motel and shower and eat and fall asleep as soon as their heads hit the mattress, because just sitting there and watching was
tiring
.

Sandra thought it may have been the most exhausting way they’d lived in years. She felt hollow in the mornings. They all looked sickly, permanent bruises under their eyes with their veins pumping caffeine. Danny had taken up smoking, nicotine stains building up around his index finger. He never tasted of smoke, so she didn’t complain. Except when he reached for one in the car. And then Jack just complained about the interior and how it would smell up the inside. If the car needed a shampoo, Danny was going to pay.

The smokes disappeared a week later. Sandra found a cigarette hole in the sleeve of his only good jacket and figured nearly catching on fire was as good an incentive to quit as any other.

Jack junked the pine air fresheners he’d started hanging inside the room. Sandra was still trying to figure out where Jack had gotten them. Their lives consisted of the hotel room, the car, and the restaurant take-out list they had stuck to the motel wall. He was an idiot if he spent the few hours they had to sleep every night walking to the mini-mart two blocks away.

“Hey,” he said, blue shadows from the television flickering across him, turning his face into some eerie abstract stranger. Danny breathed deep at her side, head buried near her hip from where she sat at the headboard, fingers tangled in his hair. Jack’s hair was getting long, too, starting to look a lot like his brother’s. “Have you thought about what we’re going to do if we see him?” A package crinkled between his hands. He ripped the vending machine chips open and reached over to offer her some. “I thought the whole point of this is that we don’t kill anyone. So how are we gonna stop him? Call the cops again?”

Sandra closed her eyes. On screen, a futuristic space vessel exploded into pieces.

“It’ll be too late for her,” he said.

She’d been trying not to think about that. She was pretty sure none of them had.

The chip bag crackled, Danny pressed firm into her hip and Jack turned the volume up. Warning klaxons followed her into sleep.

On screen, robotic voices droned,
“Kill the humans.”

~

Sandra screamed.

She couldn’t stop. It poured out of her and continued on and on, no room to breathe.

She was covered in blood.

Someone was sobbing and she realized it was her. The room was dark. The drapes were pulled and the lights were off, nothing shining through. It was just dark shapes in a dark space, growing around her like monsters.

She hurt.

Judy Zwidiker hurt.

The screaming went on and on and Sandra wanted it to stop. Please stop. Just stop it. Stop it,
stop
.

This is
a dream
, she told herself.
It’s just a dream
.
This isn’t how it happens.

“Are you sure about that?” The lights blinded her, coming on. Gore clung to Jeremiah’s knife, dripping down the blade and running past to his wrist and forearm, seeping into his spattered shirtsleeve. He moved closer, dripping a trail, and Judy stuttered, gasped, and tried to breathe. A long, piteous sound tore from her throat. Jeremiah chuckled and flung something that looked like flesh from his fingers.

She felt blood between her toes. Judy was in her sleep clothes and she gagged, gasped, flinched when Jeremiah drew close.
This isn’t
real
, she said to herself. It was a dream.

She really wanted to wake up.

The bed was soaked. She couldn’t see herself, couldn’t move, but her chest didn’t resemble any human’s anymore. It was all red, protruding muscle and bone and –
oh my god
– how could she still be alive? Judy moved again, made that thin, piercing wail and Jeremiah leaned closer, carpet squishing underneath his toes. His knife slipped in again. The pain was already so great that she barely noticed, world fading around her.

“Do you like what you did?” Jeremiah Epps asked.

Waking was like surfacing through water. Sandra shuddered and Danny’s sleeping lips were on her throat, dark lashes heavy on his cheeks, hair humid-damp against her skin. His arm was thrown over her chest. She could feel her heart, the rapid rush through her veins that seemed to shake the whole bed. “Danny,” she said, and she was suddenly crying so hard it was a wonder Jack didn’t wake. She couldn’t get air in, couldn’t breathe. A horrible, gasping sound came out of her. Danny came awake with a start, arms tightening around her and saying nonsense things. He rubbed her back until she could talk, until she’d stopped crying. She ran her palms over her eyes, used Danny’s shirt and the bed sheets to wipe all the tears away.

Jack hadn’t woken up, she realized, because he wasn’t there. His bed was a wrinkled mess of cold and lonely linens.

“I need this to be over,” she whispered. Danny’s hand rubbed and rubbed in slow circles on her back. Air stuttered through her lungs, choking her until she could say, “You need to check on Judy.”

Danny left. Jack didn’t return. The night was quiet. Stars shone brightly overhead. There were no clouds and the moon had a halo, fog high up above. Sandra sat on the front walk, knees bent and feet down the half step to the paved lot. Still bare. No blood. Just the cold turning her skin pale and numb. She watched, waited, until Danny came back. The car’s headlights cut a path across the dark, blinded her, and then Danny’s hands were on her arms, pulling her up and pushing her inside the warmth of the room.

“She’s okay,” he said, and Sandra didn’t care how he knew, just that he was back and pressing her back under the covers. He climbed in next to her, cool hands and hot chest. His jeans were puddled on the floor at the foot of the bed and Sandra rolled close, pressed everything together, shivering.

“Please,” she said.

Danny understood. He tangled his fingers in her hair, tangled his tongue in her mouth and fucked her until she cried all over again. His fingers never left her, held her down, held her up, just
held
her.
Thank you
, she thought, lying there afterward, throat still closed tight, but not unbearable, and at least she felt alive.

“We’ll stop it,” he said. This time, he didn’t sound so sure.

Chapter Twenty-Five

He found
her five days later.

They changed shifts, now. Took turns. Time was determined by day and night and sometimes Sandra woke with Danny gone, watching, and Jack gone, she didn’t know where. Time bled together. Days and hours and minutes. Sometimes she walked to Judy Zwidiker’s house. Sometimes she walked to the mini-mart and stocked up on bottled water and plastic-tasting sandwiches and just-as-processed junk food. When Danny’s shifts ended, he came back with stolen money and even deeper circles under his eyes.

Alone in the car, her head was tipped to the side and she stared blindly out the window. The opposite door opened and, startled, she jerked upright, hand reaching for her gun. Then she felt the blade at her throat.

“Hello again,” Jeremiah said.

Sandra thought she saw Judy, staring out her front window, before Jeremiah slammed her head into the steering wheel and everything went black.

~

She woke on a floor. No. That wasn’t right. Her legs were on the floor. Her arms were tied behind her, bound to something cold. Metal. She thought it was a pipe, some sort of water main that stuck up from the dingy cement. Her shoes had been removed. Jeremiah must’ve learned from Jack. There was debris. A dull scattered shine of broken glass. Sandra doubted she could run far, even if she got free. Her hands had gone numb. Her fingers felt like sausages. It was hard to turn her wrists and she could tell he’d used rope – the fibers scratched and burned as she wriggled.

Her head hurt.

There was only one light overhead, big and metal and ugly. Industrial. Shadows stretched along the tall walls and the air smelled damp with grease and mildew. Oil stained the cement around her legs.

She hoped it was oil.

It looked like a warehouse. She couldn’t hear traffic. There were no voices. Just the wind. There was a creak of something swaying farther back in the building, like chains – but the air didn’t smell of old meat and blood like the abandoned meat packing place back in her hometown, with its broken freezers full of hooks and rusty stains.

There was no sign of Jeremiah and she waited with her heart thudding in her chest for him to step out of the shadows. When he didn’t, she began to struggle in earnest.

Her chest felt raw as she twisted against the ropes. Sandra tried until her wrists ached, and then she tried some more.

It was getting darker.

Desperate, she stared at the glass at her feet. Slowly, carefully, she nudged out her legs. A shard the length of her finger was just close enough that she could reach it with her toes. Biting the inside of her mouth, she pressed down. Jagged edges pressed in, then cut, then stung.

She didn’t lift away.

Instead, she dragged her foot toward her, saw the red it left behind. When it was close enough, she let herself relax, let herself breathe. She gathered her feet under her and carefully stood, inching her wrists up the pipe until they snagged on a joint and she couldn’t straighten any further. She was crouched awkwardly but it was enough to drag the glass to the base of the pipe beneath her. She lowered herself back down, gritting her teeth at the burning in her thighs. A moment of air, gasping past the pounding of her head, and then she arched her back to reach the floor with her searching fingers.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” Jeremiah blurred out of the darkness and Sandra jerked still. The shadows twisted around him, merged with the light and broke apart again. Sandra blinked hard.

Sandra twisted her arms again, her skin rubbing raw.

He stepped closer, shoes crunching over glass. Sandra pulled her legs in, hissing as her cuts dragged across the cement. He made a sound and Sandra leaned away, the rope and the metal pipe pressing hard into her back. He was still too close.

“You’ve made yourself bleed,” he observed, glancing down at the streaks on the floor. “Well,” he smiled. “You’ve made yourself bleed more.” His fingers swiped at her forehead and came away red. “I was a little hasty, I admit. I do apologize.” She must’ve made a sound, even if she didn’t hear it, because his hand went to the top of her head, like he was trying to comfort her. Or like she was a pet. Bile gathered at the base of her tongue.

“Don’t,” she grit out, leaning back so that her neck muscles burned. It was hard to talk. Even her gums hurt, like her teeth were going to fall loose. The inside of her mouth was swollen, broken open.

His fingers curled in her hair, held her tight.

“Don’t be rude,” he admonished. “Now, we’re going to sit here and wait quietly.” He smiled, but it looked wrong. He released her hair and tapped her head again, making her scalp sting.

Moving back, he walked into the darkened corner where Sandra couldn’t follow. The darkness there wavered in tempo with her heart, blood thumping behind her eyes.

She could hardly feel her hands at all anymore.

She wiggled her fingers, trying to feel the glass. It had to be there somewhere. She tried to stay calm. There. There. She could feel the sharp edges with her fingers. She cut herself as she fumbled the shard into her grasp.

Metal screeched against the floor and Jeremiah reappeared, dragging a chair behind him. The back half was missing and the stuffing was falling out of the seat, destroyed by time and mildew and the occasional rodent. It didn’t seem like something Jeremiah would let near him, never mind touch, but he sat down without a fuss, just outside her prison of glass shards. There was a spot of blood on his pants. Hers, she supposed.

Sandra carefully manipulated the glass in her hand. It was slick with her blood, and she had to grip it tighter and tighter. She began to saw, trying not the move the rest of her body and hoping she had it resting on the rope and not her skin.

Jeremiah laced his hands, leaned forward and rested his fingers between his knees. “I wasn’t sure you’d show,” he admitted, and Sandra thought that was stupid. He’d brought her here.

“I expected you sooner, I suppose. My fault. I knew you hadn’t mastered it yet. You didn’t catch nearly half of my murders.” He tapped one thumb against the opposite palm in a steady rhythm.

Sandra ground her mouth shut. There were filthy words springing up in her mind. Bitter curses. But she was trapped, trussed up tight, and it seemed particularly foolish to spit vitriol when he had his fists and his insanity and his trusty pointed knife. A smile flickered over Jeremiah’s lips.

“But, I suppose you weren’t really trying. You’d just let the police handle things anyway,” he said. “That’s what you do now.” He cracked one of his knuckles. “You’re such a bore. Do you even realize what kind of fun you could be having?”

This time, Sandra couldn’t mask her snarl.

“Now take Judy for example, that’s one fun girl.”

“Bastard,” she growled. The glass slipped against her wrist and a hot line of blood trickled over her fingers.

“Oh, calm down,” Jeremiah flapped a hand. “She’s not dead. Well … not yet.”

“Danny won’t let you hurt her,” Sandra ground out, trying to swallow the pain.

“Oh my
God
,” Jeremiah threw back his head. “Don’t you get it, yet? What makes you think I’m the one she needs protecting from?”

Sandra’s stomach twisted. Her nausea surged. She had to swallow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, but she did. Oh, she
did
.

Jeremiah laughed. “They’ll do anything for you. They’ll burn the world down just for you.”

“They won’t kill her,” she said.

“You don’t sound very sure.” Jeremiah lifted one foot onto the opposite knee. Stuffing was stuck to the black of his pants. He picked it idly, still staring at her, “She wanted me to kill her, you know. She’s a little,” he waved one hand beside his ear, “wrong in the head. I think it stems from her childhood. Poor girl. It made it so easy. And if you’d taken the time to learn, you’d know that all I had to do was want it badly enough. And then I just sent that want your way. It’s really amazing what people like you and I can do.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” Sandra’s chest felt tight, air all gone to concrete under the idea of it.

“Maybe not for you. But we’re all unique, aren’t we? Besides, have you ever tried. How about right now? Where’s Jack and Daniel? What are they up to?” His eyes gleamed. His smile was sharp.

“
Shut up
.”

“I know how this story
ends.
”

He was lying. He was
lying
. Lying, liar.

“They’ll find me,” she growled. Her whole body shook. She hated like she’d never hated before. And then she felt the ropes begin to part.

“Well, of course they will. That’s the
point.
” His words came out sharp. Jeremiah stood, metal squealing as he rose. He took one step nearer, staring at her hard, eyes gone cold. “They’ll cut the town bloody to reach you. And maybe I’ll die when they get here. Maybe I won’t. But who do you think is going to win this game?”

“It
isn’t
a game.”

Jeremiah ignored her. “Your Daniel and Jack? They’ll go to Judy. I bet you can see it. Right now. She’ll lie. Because I asked her to. And they’ll know. And Judy will keep lying until they’re so angry that Daniel buries his knife into her conniving little body. Or maybe he’ll use his gun. He can go slow. Shoot an arm or a leg. Miss all the major arteries – get all the answers he wants.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” she whispered, but Sandra thought of Fred, and Aaron Anderson, and all the near times that Danny
could’ve
become someone like Jeremiah Epps. To protect her and Jack. To protect their family.

She wanted to believe that Danny was right, that fate wasn’t set, that her boys wouldn’t come to her covered in blood. She wanted to say,
Watch us. See
yourself fail.
But she wasn’t sure he would.

Jeremiah’s eyes flashed, glinting and bright. There was a madness inside of him, tangled with the darkness. “Didn’t you see the future they can make?” His voice was reverent, unhinged. “How many they’ll kill? They’ll burn this world to the ground.” He took another step. “It’s going be beautiful,” he breathed.

Jeremiah moved close, so close, eyes glinting and bright, and Sandra breathed deep, forced her nausea down and tensed her legs. “I won’t let that happen.”

Sandra lashed out with both legs, kicking him in the knee. He went down, twisting, landing on his back in his own sparkling trap. Sandra jerked her wrists apart. She slipped the last of the rope off her wrists, then lunged forward.

She straddled him, glass shard held in her fists like a knife.

She stabbed down, the flash of surprise on his face satisfying. But then he was fighting back. His much larger hands wrapped around her wrists, squeezing hard enough to make something pop. She bit back a scream, glass biting into the points of her knees.

Snarling, Sandra twisted in his grasp, the blood letting her slip free. She stabbed again and buried the shard beneath his ribs. He grunted in surprise and folded inward. And then she saw it, her gun in the waistband of his pants. She curled her fingers around the grip, the warm metal all at once familiar and haunting.

Scrambling back, she lurched to her feet. She held the gun just as Jack had taught her and for a moment she swayed, but then she steadied.

Jeremiah went still. “Do you even know what you’re doing with that?” He held up his hands and slowly sat up.

“Don’t move.”

Grinning, he pushed to his feet. “The safety’s on.”

Sandra pointed the gun past him to the left and fired a shot. The sound boomed into the large space and echoed off distant walls. “I said. Don’t. Move.”

Jeremiah spread his hands. “Don’t tell me you’ve already used that on someone and you’ve just been holding out on me. I guess you’re spoiled goods after all.” He laughed, “That’s so much more fun.”

Sandra felt her arms tremble. Her fingers twitched on the trigger. Jeremiah’s grin grew and grew.

His head cocked to the side. “You’re not going to shoot me, are you?” he said, “You’re afraid. Afraid of what that will turn you into.”

Sandra breathed in deep. She thought of Jack and Danny. She thought of Judy Zwidiker. She thought of Lem.

“I made a promise,” she said.

She pulled the trigger.

Jeremiah Epps hit the ground with a thud. He looked surprised. And then he looked pleased. Blood began to pool. A rasp crawled up his throat. A red bubble popped at the corner of his smile. Sandra swayed forward and pointed the gun at his head.

His dark eyes rolled.

Bang bang
.

Dumping the gun to the side, Sandra crouched so that she could pry the shoes off of Jeremiah’s feet. The sneakers were big, and it hurt to lace them over her left foot, but the laces kept them on, and the glass crunched beneath the soles when she finally managed to stand again. Slowly, she moved over to the warehouse wall.

There was machinery in the dark, and she stumbled against it, tumbling into shapes of cold rubber and steel, until she found the heavy metal door. She leaned her weight against it until it moved aside with a rusty groan. Pale moonlight spilled into the warehouse, illuminating a stack of cherry red gas cans near the door.

Sandra wondered if Jeremiah had dreamed of smoke, too. Smoke and fire. A fitting end.

She picked up the first can. She got some of the gas on her as she poured.

She found herself walking back to Jeremiah’s body. She knelt and felt at his pockets.

He had a pack of cigarettes. And a lighter. She let the pack fall to the ground.

Then she emptied the second can.

“Did you see this?” she asked aloud. “Because I think I did.”

When Sandra rose, she walked toward the large doors and flicked the lighter into the gasoline. It wouldn’t be enough to burn the whole place down. But it was more than enough for her.

Thick smoke filled the air, burned her eyes, filled her throat as it billowed from the building and followed her outside. The yard had been gravel-filled once and was threadbare in places, full of weeds and tall grass. The highway was hard to see, all dark in the evening light, from the squat trees that rested on either side, a small gap letting her see across growing, stretching fields. She couldn’t see any city lights. Jeremiah’s car was there. Sandra didn’t think she’d be able to drive.