Bug Out! Part 8: RV Park Terror (16 page)

“Hi, girl, how are you?” Dobie said, squatting down and petting her head.

“I thought you had the dogs tied up,” Kurt said.

“I let Princess be on patrol. She knows not to run off or go attacking anybody outside,” Dobie said. “Wouldn’t do that with the others.”

“What a beautiful dog,” Jake said.

Princess sat down next to Dobie as he had another sip of his drink, but she looked around nervously. She got up and started walking around the room, sniffing. She ended up over on the rug, where she stopped, growled softly, and stared down at the floor. The men noticed, and watched silently.

“That where the other trap door is?” Dobie asked.

“Yep,” the Sheriff replied.

“Maybe there
are
bad spirits down there,” Jake said.

“Think Princess smells
body parts down there?” Charlie asked Dobie, as he was walking over next to the dog.

“Well, she’s not trained as a cadaver dog,” Dobie said. “Her best talent is sensing evil intent in humans…but there’s no humans down there.”

“Spirits,” Jake said, feeling the Jameson now.

Jasmine and Jane came down the stairs.

“I can’t believe you guys are partying down here,” Jasmine said. She noticed Princess’s interest in the floor.

“Yeah, she found it right away,” Dobie said to her.

“Can we go down there and take a look?” Jane asked. “I need some clues. Not having any luck linking Chet to the person on the tow truck registration.”

“The name wasn’t Chet or his son?” Dobie asked, taking a good sip of his whiskey.

“No, it was Earl Wilson,” Jane said. Dobie almost spit out his whiskey, and started coughing.

“Bingo,” Jake said, laughing.

“What’s wrong?” Jasmine asked.

“Earl Wilson. Do you guys know who he was?” Dobie asked, wiping his mouth, as he was walking back to the bar. “Better pour me another, Jake.”

“Coming right up,” Jake said, starting to slur a little. Dobie looked over at Gabe.

“He’s had a couple in between,” Gabe said, quietly. “It’s his daughter’s wedding day. I’ll watch out for him.”

Jake poured one for everybody, including Jasmine and Jane.

“Get over here, girls,” Jake said. “A toast!”

Jane and Jasmine looked at each other and smiled.

“Oh, what the hell,” Jasmine said. “C’mon, Jane.”

They walked over and picked up their glasses. Everybody held them up.

“To grandkids, which I hope Trish and Terry are working on as we speak!” Jake slurred, smiling, tears in his eyes.

Everybody took a drink.

“He misses his wife,” Dobie whispered to Jane and Jasmine. They nodded to him.

“I can let you in there,” the Sheriff said quietly, “but it’s pretty grim. I’d keep your hands at your side, or put gloves on.”

Jane pulled a wad of rubber gloves out of her pocket far enough for the Sheriff to see them.

“Okay, you two, let’s go,” the Sheriff said. “Somebody want to give me a hand with this trap door?” It’s heavy.”

“I’m on it,” Jerry said.

“Me too,” Dobie said. “I’d actually like to check it out.”

The Sheriff rolled back the carpet, and unlocked the padlock. Then he pulled up the door, with the help of Dobie and Jerry.

“Phew, that stinks,” Gabe said. “Something died down there.”

“Not something. Somebody,” Charlie said, a solemn look on his face. “Actually, quite a few somebodies. People’s daughters.”

The three men got the trap door open, and the Sheriff climbed down and pulled the light chain. He came back up.

“There’s some more lights over that workbench. Good place to look for clues, I’d imagine. There’s pictures and newspaper clippings on the bulletin board over there.”

“You’re not staying down there?” Jasmine asked.

“No, honey,” the Sheriff said. “I’ve seen enough of this crap over the years. It sticks with me too long.”

Jasmine went slowly down the steps, followed by Jane and Dobie. They walked over to the workbench. Jane saw the chain for the light, and pulled it. The faces came into view. So many of them. Some had things pinned next to them…newspaper clippings, jewelry, scraps of clothing, locks of hair.

“This is a trophy case,” Jane said, looking closely. She put her iPhone up in front of her face and started taking pictures. It took quite a few to cover everything.

“Why’d you react so strongly when you heard about Earl Wilson being on the tow truck registration?” Jasmine asked.

Dobie looked at her, thinking things through, formulating how he was going to respond. Just then he heard Princess whine from up above. He turned towards the trap door. “Don’t worry, Princess, I’ll be up soon.”

“Talk about timing,” Jane said.

“Princess is very sensitive,” Dobie said. “She’s imprinted to me. When I get emotional, she gets worried.”

“So what’s the deal?” Jasmine asked.

“There’s a whole sub-culture of these monsters,” Dobie said. “Earl was a pivotal character. He bridged a couple of factions…the folks that surrounded Red Dagger, and the folks that surrounded Jason Beckler. You heard of those guys?”

“Yeah, we were talking about it earlier,” Jane said, “and it’s all over the searches we did.”

“A lot of these guys are still around,” Dobie said. “They’d be very interested in this find.”

“You think some of them might come here and mess with us?” Jasmine asked, looking concerned all of a sudden.

“After we tell the authorities about this, we want to be gone,” Dobie said. “There’re some people who hunt these creeps that we need to worry about too.”

“Like Malcom Davis?” Jane asked. She watched Dobie’s reaction. He looked scared. “Yeah, like Malcolm Davis and his sidekick.”

“How do you know so much about this?” Jane asked.

“The police Chief that I was working with before I moved back home,” Dobie said. “He was into all of this stuff big time. Malcolm Davis was his hero, but he said he wouldn’t trust him in a dark alley.”

“He
is
a good guy, though, right?” Jasmine asked, “and besides, he’s nowhere near this place. He’s in California. He probably can’t even get out of there.”

“You girls been doing a lot of internet searches on this stuff?” Dobie asked.

“Yeah, all morning,” Jane said. “Why?”

“If he’s paying attention, he might have noticed,” Dobie said. “If he did, he’ll get here somehow to check it out.”

Jane looked white as a sheet. “We should be scared, then?”

“I don’t know,” Dobie said. “Probably. Maybe. People around this guy seem to turn up dead pretty often, even innocent bystanders. In some ways I like this guy, though. He takes out the trash.”

“You think he’d kill us? Why?” Jasmine asked.

“No, I doubt if he’d have any interest in that,” Dobie said. “I’m more worried about the folks that are interested in him. Red Dagger had other friends. So did Jason Beckler.”

Back on the road from California, Malcolm and George were making good time. George’s connections got them out of California. They went over the border in the Tahoe area.

“There aren’t very good roads to the north,” Heidi said, looking at her iPhone. “You sure we can’t just go through Utah? We’d be up near Salt Lake City. All the problems seem to be way south of there.”

“We’ve got to stop off for gas pretty soon,” George said. “Let’s chat with Malcolm about it.”

“Okay,” she replied. “Got pretty noisy climbing the Sierras. Maybe Malcolm’s right about the upgrade.”

“Let’s check that out after we finish this trip,” George said, looking over at her and smiling.

“When you look at me like that, I still feel like everything’s going to be okay, George.”

“I’m sorry about all of this.”

“What?” she asked.

“The world I’ve pulled you into,” he said. “I know you don’t like it.”

She looked back at him and sighed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. If I could get away from this, I would, but I don’t think I could leave you. At least we aren’t doing it that often.”

“True,” George said. “I’ll be too old in a few years, you know.”

“I’m counting on it,” she said. “You don’t look like you’re enjoying this one. You look scared.”

“Do I?” he asked. “Didn’t know it showed.”

“Why? What’s bothering you?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to run into some of the characters from my service days,” George said. “I’m still a little messed up over that.”

“Are you afraid of them?”

“No, I’m afraid of myself,” George said. “When I let emotion get into my work, I become a danger. That’s why I tried to talk you into staying home.”

“I figured that,” Heidi said. “Didn’t it ever dawn on you that I’m coming because of that?”

He looked over at her silently. She had tears coming down her cheeks. He felt choked up.

“Look what I’ve done to you,” he said.

“You didn’t do anything to me,” Heidi said, forcing a smile through. “Remember how we started? You had no intention of dragging me into this, or getting back into it yourself, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“When you became yourself again, you saved me,” she said. “We both know there are things I don’t like about our life. Don’t dwell only on that. I could have left, you know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“You know,” she said, smiling through her tears.

George’s phone rang. He picked it up. It was Malcolm.

“What’s up, Malcolm?”

“Just heard back from Ted Crowley, George. He checked out the new owners of that RV Park for me.”

“Really. That was fast. What’re we looking at?” asked George.

“These guys aren’t part of the community,” Malcolm said. “We need to be very careful.”

“We don’t have to kill a bunch of folks there, I hope.”

“No, no, it’s not that at all,” Malcolm said. “These guys are part of the resistance. They’ve given the enemy a lot of trouble.
We can’t hurt these guys
. Period. If anything, we should help them if we can.”

“Really? What if others join the party?”

“Then we protect these folks,” Malcolm said. “Ted couldn’t find out why they’re in the system. They must either have some capability or some knowledge that the army wants to protect. He had a hard time getting this info, and it’s just surface stuff. There’s no indication of where these guys are out there. If it wasn’t for their Nighthawk find and those internet searches, we wouldn’t know anything about them.”

“So what you’re telling me is that the enemy won’t have any idea where these folks are, but people in the community might?”

“Yeah,” Malcolm said.

“Who?”

“The son.”

Back in Kansas, Frank was pushing himself. There weren’t any easy holes to walk through on the enemy system, but at least he’d found it. The clock was ticking, and he was getting really nervous, so he turned to getting the apps ready to include the new data, even though he didn’t have the name links yet. He was just finishing the re-programming when Jerry came in.

“How’s it going, Frank?” Jerry asked.

Frank looked up at him. “Been drinking?”

“Yeah, we were having toasts with Jake down in the lounge.”

“Jane down there?”

“Yeah, and Jasmine too, and several of the others. Jane, Jasmine, and Dobie are all in the dungeon.”

“Oh,” Frank said. He felt a little concern about that, and it showed.

“What’s wrong?” Jerry asked.

“I just don’t want Jane to see too much bad stuff, that’s all. It bothers her a lot.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. The girls did a lot of research. You wouldn’t believe what they found.”

“Serial killer stuff, I suspect.”

“Yeah. I’ll tell you all about it later,” Jerry said. “You get into the enemy system?”

“No, they’ve got layers and layers of protection. My Belgian friend’s stamp is all over this.”

“So what’re you doing?”

“Oh, I’ll keep at it, but I decided to go ahead and get the app programming work done, so we can take advantage of what we do know.”

“Like that rank number, and the country code?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “That might get us close enough to what we need to know. We need to take out as many folks ranked 1 and 2 as we can, before these apps get released.”

“When will you be done with the programming?”

“I was just finishing it when you came in. It needs to be debugged. That’ll take me an hour or so. I’ll call you, if you want, and we’ll test the PC version. Then I’ll side load it onto a couple of phones and test.”

“Sounds good. Just let me know, and I’ll come running,” Jerry said. “I won’t drink anymore, but I think I’ll go back to the lounge.”

Trish and Terry were in their trailer, laying on their backs, next to each other, still breathing hard, coming down.

“Oh, my God,” Trish said, sounding short of breath. She looked over at Terry and giggled. “I think I picked the right guy.”

Terry just looked over at her and smiled, then reached for her, turning on his side. He kissed her cheek lightly. He pushed her hair out of her eyes, and looked at her, feeling the comfort of her love flow over him.

“You aren’t going to say anything?” Trish asked him.

“Do I need to?” he asked softly. “I’ve never felt like this with a woman, ever. Not even close.”

“Really?” she asked, focused on his eyes. “I’ve never been like that before.”

“Like what,” he asked, teasing her. She got an embarrassed look on her face.

“Don’t make me talk about it.”

“Why not?” Terry asked, pulling her closer to himself, kissing the side of her face more. He caressed her, and she sighed.

“I was out of control,” she whispered. “There was only you and me.”

He moved against her closer, caressing her softly, kissing his way to her mouth. Her brow furrowed, and her breath quickened.

“You’re not done yet, are you?” she asked.

He didn’t answer her.

Back in the dungeon, Jane, Jasmine, and Dobie continued to carefully look around by the work bench. They found the drawer full of teeth, which nearly caused Jasmine to vomit. The drawer below that was empty, but they already knew that the driver’s licenses were in there. The next drawer had a collection of small plastic bags with locks of hair. There were more than twenty two of them. The real prize was in the bottom drawer. There was an illustrated diary, starting all the way back in the early 1960s. There were descriptions of each victim, how the abduction was done, what torture was used, and how the victim died. Most of the entries had crude drawings. Some of them also had names and addresses of other family members. They were printed on small strips of paper and taped in the margins, or under the entries. Jane looked closely at these.