Down the Road: The Fall of Austin (3 page)

Derek gazed at the quivering boy in an
ecstatic daze.

Mike used this time to run to the girl, who
was now crouched and crying in the corner of the living room. Her
hands, caked in blood, were covering her face. Mike saw a large
section of her forearm had been removed by what appeared to be a
bite. For a brief moment he pictured a big beef burrito supreme
from Taco Bell with a bite missing as it lay on its tacky aqua blue
tray, dripping soupy beans and red sauce onto the paper liner. He
gagged at the random thought, but pulled himself together to call
to command.

“864 to dispatch. At least one severely
injured white female. Possible bite—”

(Big Beef Burrito Supreme.)

“—Need an ambulance. Over.” Mike unclicked
the CB and reached for his safety gloves. “Miss, everything’s going
to be all right.” He looked at her arm again.

(Big Beef Burrito Supreme.)

Chaos was blessing the house with its
discordant song.

Derek yelled at the subdued boy on the floor,
“Put your hands behind your head, now!”

Mike spoke to the girl. “Is there anyone else
in the house?”

Behind her hands, she nodded in the
affirmative.

Dispatch buzzed near his ear as Derek was
yelling his command again. “Dispatch to 864. Ambulance en route.
Over.”

Derek was still trying to control his
suspect, who was starting to recover from the punishing electric
onslaught.

“Put your hands behind your head!” Derek
yelled once more. The boy instead began to rise again. “On your
back, son!” Derek zapped the boy again. With a sadistic smile, he
stated, “I can do this all day, boy.”

Mike tried to get more information from the
girl over the crackling tazer and groaning boy. “There’s someone
else in the house? Where?”

The girl did not remove her hands, but
whimpered, “Down the hall.”

Mike wanted to salve her wounds, soothe her
in this time of traumatic horror, stop her tears. She couldn’t be
more than fifteen, and was in intense shock. But he had to check
the other rooms.

Before he could get to the rooms, however,
another distraction was presented by the mischievous spirit of
chaos.

“That’s fuckin’ bullshit, you asshole
motherfuckers!” yelled a random apartment tenant who had gathered
with others at the open front door. They were watching with a
combination of contempt and fascination.

Derek let up on the tazer long enough to give
the man an earful. “Get the fuck out of here, asshole, or I’ll
arrest you for obstruction of justice!”

“Fuck you, bitch!” came the defiant and angry
response. “I ain’t afraid of a pussy that tazers a twelve year old
kid!”

“Get away, now!” Derek was tempted to pull
his gun, and wished he had another tazer. He would have hooked the
guy at that very moment. He imagined wielding both weapons and
subduing both men like a fictional justice machine.

“Fuck you, bitch! You can’t even keep the kid
down! Pussy-ass bitch motherfucker!” The guy was a master of
stringing colorful metaphors together, that was for sure. He was
also unintentionally informative, as he pointed toward Derek,
indicating something behind the officer.

Derek turned to see the boy had risen yet
again and was reaching out to grab him. Another simple pull of the
tazer trigger, the embrace of two doomed lovers, sent the boy to
the floor again, convulsing and breaking wind before soiling his
pants with excrement.

Mike took the moment to run to the
hallway.

Every other door was open except for the one
at the end of the hallway. The white door was closed and stained
with bloody handprints, as if someone had tried to claw their way
in. Small puddles of blood were setting in the hallway carpet. This
was clearly the room the girl had indicated.

Before Mike entered the room, he informally
secured the remaining rooms before advancing on the door. It was
then, standing in front of the red-streaked door, that fear nudged
his heart. It appeared to make him realize his mortality. It was
reminding him that blood equaled death, and his own demise might be
waiting just beyond the door. The bloody handprints seemed to form
a kind of face, a face that was mocking him, tainting him with
fear.

Taking a deep gulp, Mike walked to the door
and called out, “Who’s in this room?!”

A moment passed before he heard a soft cry
above the harsh words Derek and the tenant were still sharing.
“
Help
.”

Was it a trap? Was someone waiting with a
gun? Was it a madman waiting to slice him up when he opened the
door?

Mike recalled the slasher films from the
eighties. Opening a door after hearing a suspicious noise often
meant that a cat was going to jump on you—or that nothing would be
behind the door at all. But just after you expelled a sigh of
relief, a masked killer would jump from one of the side rooms or a
dead body would fall from the ceiling. Fear was dictating to Mike
that nothing good would come of opening the door, that he should
just turn around and leave, determined to make a coward out of
him.

Regardless, Mike stood back and kicked open
the door.

No bodies.

No cat.

No masked slasher. Yet.

The lights were off and the shades were
drawn, casting a dark pall across the room. A human form was
crouched in the corner.

Shit! The masked slasher!

Mike wanted to go for his gun, but chose
first to turn on the light. He flicked the light switch to no
avail.

Still darkness.

Mike pointed his gun at the shadowy figure.
“Identify yourself, please.” No response.

Keeping the gun trained on the shadow, he
moved to the blinds and gently twisted the rod that allowed the
soft sunlight to infiltrate the room. Long lines of dust floated in
the soft rays of the solar magnificence.

The figure was revealed.

An older woman was holding a baby in her
arms. Her arm was bloody—clearly from a bite wound.

“Help us,” she whispered. Her face was pale
and her eyes were sunken. She was sweating profusely. She had been
using a shirt to wipe the blood off of her arm, and now it sat near
her on the floor like a white and red cat curled up and
sleeping.

The tazer crackled and cackled again in the
living room.

The baby, an angel unknowingly resting in a
pit of hell, was sound asleep in the woman’s arms.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” Mike
assured her. “Help is on the way.”

“Please, take my baby girl,” she whispered,
nearly breathless and without energy.

In that moment, Mike’s eyes met with hers. He
never felt so much sadness. The windows to her soul revealed a
depth of grief he had never felt before. There were no tears on her
face. They seemed to have dried up long ago, or had been wiped
away. There was only utter sorrow. The fear that was once molesting
his soul was now replaced by a cosmic love, a universal
understanding of a mother’s eternal devotion to her child, and the
angst of knowing she would be stepping away from her charge decades
too early. Mike’s heartbeat was now not being pumped by the blood
in his veins anymore, but by her own soul. Pounding on his heart
with hammer fists like an angry teenager banging his fists against
a wall, he could almost hear her asking
why
, begging for an
answer she would never get. Not in this world anyway.

The woman gazed into Mike’s eyes. Mike
returned the gaze, helpless. As her soul bathed his heart with
tears, submitting to the truth, she let out a long, sustained
breath, then closed her eyes.

“Ma’am?!” Mike blurted in a panic.

The shoulder CB shouted in Mike’s ear, “826
to 864. What apartment number? Over.”

The baby seemed comfortable in the arms of
the now deceased mother, so Mike reached for the CB and tried to
relax.

“864 to 826. Building H. You can’t miss it.
Over.”

The body of the mother twitched. Mike
grimaced in confusion. The perpetual shouting from the living room
continued and the tazer was embraced to life once again.

Mike was reaching for the baby when 826
called back: “826 to 864.

Building Adam or building Henry. Over.”

The woman’s eyes slowly opened and Mike
breathed a sigh of relief. But something was seriously wrong. The
woman’s eyes were cloudy. Stricken. They were clearly like the eyes
of the boy in the living room. The same boy that would not stay
down after being tazed multiple times.

Her grip on the child changed as well. The
baby began to fall from her arms before she took notice. The woman
looked at the sleeping child, and she somehow instinctually gripped
the child in her cradling arms again. But her gaze on the child was
different, almost sinister. There was a different intent as the
mother looked at her child. Something else was motivating her.
Something cruel and malevolent.

Mike immediately made a confused connection
between the boy and the bite in both the girl and the woman. The
bite the boy clearly gave them. The bite the woman seemed ready to
give to her child. It was as if the woman was taking in the warmth
of the child’s flesh, or perhaps smelling its aroma.

(Big Beef Burrito Supreme.)

Sensing imminent and fatal danger, Mike made
a choice. He reached for the baby and snatched it from the arms of
the rising woman. He stumbled backwards, cradling the child and
cushioning the fall. The baby wiggled in annoyance, trying to
regain the previous comfort and making a face as if saying,
could you sit still already?

The CB buzzed to life again. “826 to 864. You
there? Over?”

Mike panicked. “H as in Henry! Get over here
now!”

The woman was now on her feet and stomping
toward Mike. He lifted his right leg and chambered it before
sending a front kick to her belly. She flew into the closet’s
sliding door, knocking down the doors along with various children’s
clothes hanging inside. Somewhere in the wreckage, a child’s music
box sprang to life, chiming the familiar tune
London
Bridge
.

Mike pulled out his tazer, but knew from the
repeated on and off cycles of the tazer in the living room that
something was extremely wrong.

As the dulcet tones of
London Bridge
sang from the closet, the woman rose again. Mike looked her in the
eyes. They were cloudy. Vacant. Sad. Nothing was revealed through
the windows anymore. Nothing was there to torment his heart. It was
a dark vacuum, a cloudy void of soulless abomination reaching out
not for Mike, but for the baby.

Mike could not let her get any closer. He
pulled the trigger and released the barbs. In an instant, the hooks
connected themselves to their prey, and Mike released the
diabolical electric power of the tazer. The woman shook helplessly
for a moment, stumbled, then fell to the floor. Mike felt the power
in his hands, the power rattling the body on the floor, the body of
the child in his arms.

He let loose on the trigger, knowing that he
would have to unleash it again and again if the action in the
living room was any indication.

In his arms, the baby nuzzled up against him
as if seeking a breast to suckle. Finding a pacifier nearby, he
placed it in the baby’s mouth. Though it was not providing
nutrients, it was still very comforting.

But comfort was not what Mike was feeling.
Peace was nowhere near his heart. Another force was banging its
fists against the walls inside him, punching away with hate and
anger, striking with sadness and woe. But it was not the woman’s
soul. No.

It was his own.

Pulling the trigger again, punishing the
mother with the torturous voltage, Mike wept.

* * *

Help arrived after what seemed an eternity,
and the mother and the boy were cuffed and gagged. The tazing
didn’t stop, either, even after the cuffing. The crowd of people
still watching the events unfold didn’t take too kindly to that. So
the two crazed family members were eventually hogtied and tossed
into a patrol car. They never stopped rustling.

The medics from the ambulance treated the
wounds of the young girl and placed her on a gurney. Mike
approached her.

“Thank you for saving me,” the girl
whispered, tired as she rested on a white pillow.

Mike looked at the wrapped wound, then looked
at the girl. She was now very pale and low on energy. She looked to
have a fever.

“You’re welcome, miss.”

Mike hurriedly made his way to a nearby
medic. He had a suggestion to make, but wasn’t quite sure how well
it was going to go over.

“Sir, I’m not sure what’s going on here, but
I think you guys could be

in danger.”

The medic’s face briefly showed confusion,
then switched to indifference. “I thought ya’ll cuffed the lunatics
already?” he said.

Mike grimaced at the inconsiderate remark,
but continued, “We cuffed them. But I’m talking about the
girl.”

“What do you mean?”

“I need ya’ll to cuff the girl to her
gurney.” He handed the medic two cuffs and a key. “I also recommend
you gag her.”

“Do
what
?”

“Listen, I don’t know what’s going on or what
happened in there, but I think it might have something to do with
the bites.”

“You mean like rabies or something?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

The medic looked to the police car where the
two suspects were bound and still fighting inside the vehicle in a
relentless attempt to escape their bonds.

“Who’s going to tell her?” the medic asked,
openly refusing to do it himself.

Mike sighed, then approached the girl again.
She looked like she was asleep. He looked at her somehow calm and
serene face. Then her eyes opened suddenly. Mike shook in surprise.
But a small, very warm smile spread across her lips.