Cold-Blooded Beautiful (23 page)

Lost in a world of irrepressible dread, I prayed to whatever higher power that would listen as my fingers tightly gripped the steering wheel.  The speedometer sat at a steady one hundred miles per hour, yet it still wasn’t fast enough.   Grinding my teeth with tension, I muttered, “The snow and frost should slow down the fire. The trees are too wet to stay ablaze.  Something else must be burning.”

With his hands braced against the dashboard and a harried expression, Dylan turned to look at me, “Kade, keep your eyes on the road.  Don’t look at me when you’re driving this fast.” 

“This isn’t bloody fast ENOUGH!” I roared, pressing my foot further down against the gas pedal.  My truck crept up to one hundred and five and something started clanking under the hood.  I ignored the noise.  “It’s not bloody fast enough,” I repeated in a strained voice.

A small hand touched my shoulder and squeezed with what felt like mirrored sorrow.  Jen sat behind me, leaning forward, her hand stayed fixed there.  A somber and weighty touch.  She cleared her throat before speaking. Then she whispered in a gruff tone, “The dispatchers said there was an explosion. Maybe there was an accident somewhere and this has nothing to do with Samantha.”

“
Or
,” I snapped, locking my eyes on hers through the rearview mirror, “Or, you could shut the bloody hell up!”

“Kade, you have to…”

“Shut.  Up.”

“Kade, mate, Jen is just…”

“SHUT.  UP!”  I hollered.  My head pounded with tension and a heavy knot twisted in my stomach. It was working its way up my chest, ready to wrap its talons around my throat and squeeze the life out of me. 

Mumbles and muttered curses flittered through the truck, until quite suddenly, a heavy silence fell, one filled with intense fear.  Through the next break of the trees, we saw
it
.  The horizon.  It was on
fire
. Bright orange flames licked up into the dark sky, reaching wildly towards the stars with jagged spikes.   Dark gray columns of thick smoke twisted and spiraled up, staining the sky.  White wisps poured over the road.  I couldn’t see the road ahead of us, only the faint blue and red flashes of an emergency vehicle’s lights that bled through the clouds.

I slowed the truck and drove towards the blaze in the sky.  Puffs of thick white clouds rolled across the windshield, obstructing our view, and the strong smell of burning pine drifted in. 

The sight of a police cruiser, cherry top lights flashing with its door slung open in the middle of the road, had me slamming on the brakes and skidding across the blacktop.  My truck lurched to a stop, nearly crashing into the police car.

“What the bloody hell is that?” Dylan asked, in harsh whispers.  “Is this an accident?”

No, there wasn’t any accident.

Accidents
aren’t
done on purpose.

In the surging smoke and wind, a large shadow moved, hovering just off the side of the road.  A gust of wind noisily blew against the windshield, and in the shadows, David Stanton’s face appeared. 

Smiling. 

Smiling. 

Smiling
. A dark motionless shadow of something lay at his feet.  Time stilled and the world muted, hushed completely, except for the sound of my erratic beating heart.  The smoke shifted, flowed left, and on the ground near the police cruiser’s back tire, lay Deputy George Tatum, sluggishly moving as if he were hurt.

Automatically, my fingers wrapped themselves over the coolness of my gun. Unconsciously, my empty hand pushed open my door and my body ejected itself from the driver’s seat.  Kicking the door shut with my foot, I slid across the hood.  The tightness in my chest was overwhelming, and I staggered forward without a care for my safety. 
I needed to see who was lying at David’s feet
.

The acidic smoke stung my eyes, yet I didn’t stop.  The dark unmoving form on the ground was my target. 
I needed to see who was lying there, on the ground, at David’s feet
.

That couldn’t be Samantha
.  No.  No.  Samantha was full of life and smiles. She was not lying still on the cold filthy ground. 

I didn’t want that to be her. 

I didn’t want…

The pounding in my ears became louder and louder, until it was deafening.  My throat burned hotter, the closer I walked.  Wisps of smoke swirled around the small figure that was lying in a fetal position.  Her beautiful ginger hair splayed out over the black tar of the road, coated with blood.  A torn, muddy red skirt clung to her legs, her shirt shredded into thin curled ribbons exposing her bloody beaten torso.  Her face was barely recognizable, yet her eyes…her eyes were open, staring past me. 

“Oh, Mr. Grayson,
the famous Cory Thomas
, it’s nice we finally meet, I was wondering when…” There were no weapons is his hands, and there was no emotion to his voice…

There was no thought at all.

This wasn’t self-defense.

This was cold-blooded, and so well deserved, because he took away my beautiful Sam.

The gun was weightless in my hand.  Flying to a perfect position on its own accord, aimed straight towards David Stanton’s smiling face.  Deputy George, crawled toward my feet, face full of blood and mud, but I
didn’t care
. 

I pulled the fucking trigger.

Dead center. 

Right between Stanton’s eyes.  Dark liquid splashed out of the back of his head, spilling from his mouth, as he collapsed with a thick wet thwack onto the bloodied ice and snow.

Then I emptied my gun on him
, hitting him with EVERY… SINGLE… BULLET. 
This isn’t a movie. He doesn’t get to have a monologue where he could explain all of his bullshit excuses…this was life and his is over.

This doesn’t make me Thomas.

This does NOT make me Thomas.
My knees buckled and crashed against the dirt in front of my Samantha.

My trembling fingers opened. My gun thudded against the muddy ground.

Jen was on top of Samantha, instantly.  “Oh, my God.  Oh, my God.  Oh, my God.  No. No. No.”

That’s not going to help her
.  Empty words.  Empty prayers.  Empty pleas.  I have to help her. 
Only actions will save her
.  I have to help her. 
The flames flickering in the sky above her body made me seriously wonder if God ever cared at all.

Through dirt, mud, and filth, cold, ice and rock, I crawled to her.  It was not over.  I would NOT doubt her again.  I would not give up on her again.

Never
again.

Never
.

“DYLAN!”  I roared.  “Get George!  Get George!”  I shoved Jen off her body and as gently as I could, I gathered her limp broken body to my chest.  “Jen, get in the police cruiser and start it. Don’t forget her aid-pack! Dylan, put George in the front seat and get us to the hospital,
yesterday
.”

I carried her to the cruiser and delicately shifted my body into the backseat, keeping her on my lap.  Jen slid in the backseat, while Dylan dragged George into the front seat and quickly ran around to the driver’s side.

Jen’s hands were on Samantha’s neck, “Pulse! There’s a pulse.  Dylan Drive!”

She didn’t look like my Samantha.  She looked like…I can’t even…her leg, her thigh was spurting blood until Jen yanked out the same kind of tourniquet Sam had saved Dylan’s life with months ago.  But this time, Jen was using it, and her fingers trembled and her tears poured down her face in rivets, blinding her.  I needed to save her.  I grabbed the bandage out of Jen’s hands and wrapped it around the flesh I loved, and pressed the gauze into the fucking hole in her leg. I squeezed and squeezed as tightly as I could, and used the Velcro to strap it down. She was pale,
so pale
, and her entire body trembled and quaked in my arms. 

George was grunting instructions to Dylan and the lights and sirens came on.  Sam’s eyes fluttered, her hands grabbed for me, but they slipped and slid with her blood.  “Don’t move, baby.  It’s me, Sam, I found you.  Don’t move at all. Just feel me.  Just feel me around you, love.  You’re safe now.”

One small squeeze of her fingers was all that she could reply with.  

Jen sat on top of her leg, talking in small whispers, listing everything she saw, just as Sam would do in her head at a trauma.  I lowered my head softly against her chest and listened for her heartbeat. There, in the silence of my mind, was the weakest of pulses. The most beautiful sound I had ever heard. The slow but steady beat of her heart as if under water, and I jumped in, drowning myself in it.

Chapter 18

You want to know, don’t you?

What it was like, during those last moments?

I know that ache you’re feeling. It’s what I would feel for my patients as they were thrust through the emergency doors.  I wanted each and every one of them to live, no matter who they were…no matter what they’d done.  I just wanted to take away people’s pain. I wanted to heal.

Nobody on this earth deserves to endure moments like these,
no one
.  No one deserves to look into the face of a monster and feel pain so intense that they pray for death.

I held my forearms tightly over my face, trying desperately to shield the blows, but David was vicious and unrelenting.  Frantic panic bubbled up through my chest as I tried to kick out my feet and crawl away from the torment.  My boots slipped and slid against the ice and frost, and its brittle crunching sounds cracked under our weight.  It drenched my clothes and skin, until the stinging bitter cold bit into my shoulders and spine with sharp needle-like pinches.

He didn’t stop
.  He just struck and struck, over and over; until I watched the whiffs of twisting smoke around him churn and spin like the waves on the ocean.  Through my blurred vision, David’s eyes looked empty, his face focused and sweaty with effort.  Eyes the color of oily black pools. 

“You.  Pathetic.  Brainless.  Bitch,” his words burst through the sounds of fists hitting flesh.  Each word bit off, chewed up, and spat in my face. Jerking back, he grabbed for something I couldn’t see, and swung it towards me, slamming it hard against my face. A white-hot explosion of gripping pain ripped across my skull and down my spine, as his fist, holding my goddamn rock shattered my right eye socket.  I just prayed for unconsciousness. 

It didn’t come.

I felt it all
.

I shoved at his hands, pushed against his face, and raked my broken ragged nails across his eyes.  The rock flew out of his hands, but it didn’t even cause a moment of pause.  He counterattacked like a statue, hard and cold, and then hit me with muscles, fists, elbows, and palms, with such puissance it felt like he really
was
made of stone.   A colossal mountain towering above me, too steep and impossible to conquer.  An avalanche of crumbling rock pounding and crushing my bones and flesh. 

Breaking his bloodthirsty frenzy, a high-pitched squeal reverberated off the trees, and the pounding of his fists suddenly ceased.  His body moved and shifted into the heavy smoke, and relief crashed against my chest in a wave of hope.  Yet, it was short lived, because I tried to move and claw myself through the wet mud and snow, but my body wasn’t receiving the right signals.  I frantically tried to tear up the earth beneath me, and crawl away, but the moment I reached up to drag myself away, unconsciousness took hold.  Bittersweet numbness.

Darkness.

A loud thunder of short explosions ignited in my head, one after another, after another.  CRACK…pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!

Someone was crying.

I hoped it was David.  I hoped someone, some day, would make him cry,
but right now, I just want to float in this painless existence.

A scorching heat enveloped my body, yet I still trembled with a deep bone-chilling coldness.  I felt the sensations of my body moving, being carried somewhere. 

Warm breath fell against my neck.  A soft tender weight lay delicately against my chest.  Something intense and burning was happening with my leg, but I tried to concentrate on the sweet beautiful warmth that I felt lying against my heart.  I basked in the touch, the heat it offered, and its comfort.  And the smell, God, it smelled like
home
.  I tried to breathe it in deeper, but my chest, just wouldn’t let me.  The pain was too hot, too real.

Suddenly, a
tightening
wrapped around my thigh and a sharp explosion of agony surged through my body.  Someone was trying to put on a tourniquet.  Someone found me.

Someone found me.

That means David was
…

Oh, God, please let the police find him.  Please don’t let him loose on any other human beings. 
Please
.

My hands grabbed and slipped out of someone’s hold.  I fought a war with my eyelids to get them to open.  Lumps of thick saliva caught in the back of my throat, and I coughed, wheezed, and gagged back the metallic taste of blood.