Dismember (36 page)
When he heard the siren, his eyes opened, and he didn’t know how long he’d been out. He hadn’t died, though he thought he must be only a few breaths away. The man standing over him wasn’t Deputy Willis, nor was it the thinner man who’d been with him at the house.
Mike tried to gesture to him, point in the direction the Honda had gone, but he could move only his pinky finger. Still, he did what he could, pointed with the tip off his littlest digit and blinked at the looming lawman.
“—try to stay still,” the man said, and Mike found that pretty funny.
Against the man’s ridiculous suggestion, he used the last of his strength to lift his hand and point after the missing car.
The deputy grabbed Mike’s hand like he thought he wanted to shake. “Hold on, buddy. We’ve got paramedics on the way.”
But Mike couldn’t hold on. He felt the breath coming out of him like air from a punctured tire. He tried to suck in a little more but didn’t think it got much farther than the back of his mouth.
Family
, he tried to say, but it came out as a soft groan. It was the best he could do. He dropped his head to the ground but let the deputy hold on to his hand. It felt good to be touched. He didn’t want to die alone.
Deputy Ben Moore leaned close to the bloody man and let go of his hand. He touched the man’s neck. Nothing.
He wasn’t sure if this was the guy they were looking for or another one of his victims, hadn’t actually been sure they were at the right house until he stumbled across the crawling mess of a guy and the trail of blood behind him. He shone a flashlight back along the streaked gore and found a sword lying in the grass beside the house’s foundation.
I’ll be hanged
, he thought. He didn’t guess he’d ever seen a sword like that before. Not in real life.
He moved away from the body and back to the patrol car, where Hollis Breckmore was yakking into the radio. He opened the door and said, “We’re looking at a DB here. Better call in for some backup. I’m gonna take a look around.”
Breckmore nodded, and Moore shut the door. He’d made it halfway around the house, hand on his holstered pistol, when the patrol car’s headlights shut off and he heard the passenger’s door slam. He looked back. Breckmore hustled after him, his flashlight and his gut both bobbing.
Breckmore paused at the corner of the house to have a look at the corpse before hurrying to catch up with his partner.
“That’s a mess,” Breckmore said.
Moore nodded and told him it sure was, and then the two of them walked around the back of the house together.
E
PILOGUE
T
HE
R
OCKY
M
OUNTAINS
, C
OLORADO
2005
O
n the first night of the rest of his life, Hank Abbott drove out of the mountains in a silence broken only by the sound of gravel ricocheting off the undercarriage of the Honda and the occasional groans and bursts of rustling from his newfound family. Lori sat slumped in the passenger’s seat with her cheek flattened against the window, her lips parted, her breath frosting the glass. George and Davy sat tangled around the dog in the back seat, looking scared though Hank knew what they really felt was relief.
The clock on the dashboard went from 11:59 to 12:00, and Hank realized it was no longer his birthday. But that was all right—he’d gotten everything he wanted.
Their trip out of the mountains had been twenty-three years in the making, but late was better than never at all. Hank watched the sides of the road carefully, looking for glowing eyes or dark-brown blurs. He couldn’t make the same mistake twice. This was his family, after all, and he loved them.
He piloted the car around a sharp curve and thought to himself that this had been one hell of a vacation. As the road straightened out ahead, Hank guessed he didn’t care if he never saw the mountains again.
A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE
I
was fourteen years old when I wrote my first novel,
The Reaper
(a shoddy book about a body-jumping entity and its slew of bloody victims). After
Reaper
, I wrote five more novels. Some of those five were readable, but none saw print—or really deserved to—until now. Although I’ve worked hard to get where I am, I can’t take all the credit; over the years, I’ve had a lot of help from many people. I’d like to take a minute to thank some of them.
Thanks to Mom and Dad for influencing, nurturing, and encouraging me. Thank you to my wife, Amy, whose faith that I would reach my goal never wavered, and my daughters, Dakota and Katelyn, who join their mommy in putting up with me on a daily basis. To my brothers and sister, Samuel, Krista, Andy, and Enoch, who are my readers and supporters. To my teachers, Karen Poulson, Diane Dickey, Alisa Boyd, Roland Merullo, Catherine Newman, Corinne Demas, Helen von Schmidt, and Justin Kimball, who each pushed me in the right direction, sometimes more than once. To my friends, Paul Reschke, Jon Lhost, and Leigh Borum, for being my family away from family. To everyone at the Amherst College post office. To Paul McCartney and Collective Soul for the music I listened to most often while writing not just this book but also the ones leading up to it. To Jonathan Maberry, who offered me advice and encouragement when I needed it most.
And, of course, to you, my readers. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoyed the book.
DP
A
LSO BY
D
ANIEL
P
YLE
N
OVELETTE
A
NTHOLOGY
E
DITED
(C
OMING
2011)
Daniel Pyle lives in Springfield, Missouri, with his wife and two daughters. For more information, visit
www.danielpyle.com
.
P
RAISE FOR
D
ANIEL
P
YLE
D
ISMEMBER
Dismember’s
a fast-paced grindhouse-movie of a book with plenty of unexpected twists and turns and a fresh new crazy for a villain. The late Richard Laymon would have been grinning ear to ear.
—Jack Ketchum
With
Dismember
, Daniel Pyle joins the select group of authors who can provide real chills and genuine surprises. Taut, weird, and intriguing.
—Jonathan Maberry, multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author of
The Dragon Factory
and
The Wolfman
The tourniquet-tight plot and constant suspense keeps the pages flying. A solid, suspenseful thriller that enables readers to envision the movie it could become.
—
Publishers Weekly
D
OWN THE
D
RAIN
Pyle's tight little monster tale packs a nasty wallop.
—Michael Louis Calvillo, author of
I Will Rise
and
As Fate Would Have It
Horror should be fun. Scary, of course…but above all, it should be fun. Too many people seem to have forgotten that. Well, Daniel Pyle has not forgotten. With his novella,
Down the Drain
, Pyle has crafted a tale that evokes all the eye-popping strangeness and excitement that got me into horror in the first place. I loved it, and I can guarantee you’ll never look at your bathtub the same again.
—Joe McKinney, author of
Dead City
and
Apocalypse of the Dead
Dismember
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Daniel Pyle
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechinical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Blood Brothers Publishing
www.bloodbrotherspublishing.com
ISBN: 978-0-9828691-2-3
Printed in the United States of America
Cover Artwork Copyright © 2010 by Enoch Pyle
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First published by Wild Child Publishing in 2009
