Endless Night (8 page)

“Okay. I should’ve said ‘stupid.’ They’re nuts, all right, but they aren’t stupid. Those two didn’t jump off the balcony, for instance. They knew they might get hurt. And they didn’t come down here. Must’ve figured it’d be a waste of time, and too risky. Or maybe my trick with the phone worked. If they really thought I’d gotten through to 911, they had to figure the cops would be showing up in five or ten minutes. They didn’t want to be around when the cops arrived.”

“I guess not,” Andy admitted.

“Which means they’re gone, right?”

“I guess so.”

“They’re gone.”

“Okay.”

“So let’s get out of here.”

He shook his head and hugged her very hard.

“Andy.”

“What if they’re waiting for us?”

“They aren’t. Come on, we just went through this.”

“Maybe they all took off like you said, but maybe they left just one guy behind to hide and wait for us and ambush us when we come out?”

Jody hadn’t thought of that. “That’s crazy,” she said.

“Yeah.”

She could see the ax man crouching in the dark. Waiting. Knowing she and Andy would be drawn up the hill by the promise of safety in the hands of the police.

They knew it’d be awfully tough to find us down here.

One guy could stay behind easily enough. The rest of them drive off, and he stays. Millions of places to hide. He hides and waits and just when we think it’s all over he jumps us and that’s all she wrote.

Oh, man. It made sense..

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Remember what you said to Mable?” He must’ve detected that Jody was starting to see the matter his way. His voice sounded quick, almost eager, and he relaxed his hold on her. “You said they had to kill us because we’re witnesses.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“They aren’t gonna just let us get away. They’ll leave a guy behind to jump us the minute we show ourselves. I know they will.”

“I guess ... they might.”

Right now, she thought, there must be bunches of cops up there. Cops and firemen. We’ll be fine once we get to them. If we wait too long, though, they’ll be gone. Then we’ll be on our own.

“I don’t know what to do,” she muttered.

“Let’s just stay here.”

“We can’t stay here forever.”

“Till morning. If we wait till morning, nobody can sneak up on us. We can see him coming, you know?”

“He might see us before we see him. And by then, the cops and firemen might not be around anymore.”

“We oughta wait till morning.”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s stay.”

“I’ve gotta think about it.”

Andy snuggled against her.

She stroked his hair and caressed his back and tried to think. She wanted very badly to be with the cops who were probably all over the place in front of the Clark house. As much as she wanted that, however, she hated to do what would be necessary to make it happen.

Waiting for dawn would be a mistake, though.

She asked herself what her father would do in a situation like this. And the answer came fast.

She didn’t have to wait long for Andy to fall asleep. As soon as his breathing changed and his body relaxed against her, she began to ease away from him. She moved very slowly. She paused often. At last, their bodies were untangled. She rolled over, got to her hands and knees, and stood up.

Andy lay on his side, head cushioned on one bent arm, his other arm resting along his side, his legs back.

Definitely asleep, Jody told herself.

But she feared that he might wake up the instant she looked away—as if her gaze was the only power that kept him sleeping. So she watched him while she crept sideways.

What if this is the last time I see him alive?

What if I come back with a cop and he’s dead, all bloody and hacked and
...

He’ll be okay.

She began to climb straight up the slope.

After making up her mind to go for the police by herself, she had considered the best way to do it. The sensible course would’ve been to make a major detour—head off to one side or the other, or actually move away from the hillside, climb whatever fences might be in the way, and cut through someone’s yard to whatever road might be down here.

A lot of directions to choose from. One crazy lunatic, left behind to finish the job, couldn’t cover every place.

A detour might be safer than the direct route, but it would sure take longer.

She wanted to reach the cops fast and get back to Andy fast.

So she had decided to charge straight up the hillside.

Maybe not
charge.
Sneak.

Sneak so Andy doesn’t wake up; sneak so the bastard waiting at the top, hunkered down with his back against the wall, won’t hear me coming.

If he’s even there.

Maybe nobody had stayed behind at all. Maybe they’d all raced off in their cars after setting Andy’s house on fire.

If one of them
had
stayed, he might be anywhere.

The climb wasn’t easy. Several times, Jody’s feet slipped out from under her and she landed on her knees. In places, the hillside was so steep that she had to crawl. Here and there, she was forced to grab weeds or bushes or tree roots to keep herself from skidding backward.

After an uphill struggle that seemed endless, she made her way past a tree, got above it, and leaned back against its trunk. The way the tree slanted out from the slope, it took much of the weight off her feet.

She gasped for breath. Her heart thumped madly. Her skin felt very hot, and she seemed to be sweating everywhere. She wiped her eyes with a moist, slick arm. She blinked.

Almost there.

And then she saw thick piles of smoke clotting the night beyond the top of the wall. The smoke shimmered with a red glow.

It’s the Youngman house, she realized. That’s the one they set on fire. Not Andy’s place, after all.

Unless maybe both.

Probably both.

No wonder all the sirens.

The ruddy light did nothing at all to illuminate Jody’s side of the wall. The top of the wall was a straight edge, the night glowing above it, nothing but blackness below.

Nobody’s there, she told herself.

Yeah, right.

He could be standing with his back to the wall, straight above her, staring down at her right now.

But the wall, Jody guessed, was probably at least a hundred feet long. He could be waiting anywhere along it. (Or be long gone.) If he hadn’t spotted her yet, and if he was a fair distance away to one side or the other, and if she was very quiet and very quick ...

She bent her knees. She started to scoot down the trunk, but its bark scratched her back and snagged I er nightshirt, so she had to push away from it. Squatting, she scanned the slope and wall.

Probably no one’s even there, she told herself.

She leaned forward. On hands and feet, she crept higher.

Really ironic if I get myself killed at this stage of things. Made it through so much, only to get nailed when I’m almost to the cops.

She had learned about irony in her English class last year. Her English teacher, Mr. Platt, had explained that it was the flipside of poetic justice.

She believed in God.

She wasn’t too sure about His merciful side, but one thing was very clear: God delighted in irony.

It would probably tickle him, she thought, to see me catch an ax just when I get to the wall, just when I think I’m home free.

Please, don’t. Okay? It’d kill my dad. You already got Mom in one of your irony binges, so just try to control yourself this time, okay? Please? Amen.

The prayer had no sooner taken flight from Jody’s mind than she thought, Oh, great way to talk to God. Now I’ve probably pissed Him off and He’ll kill me for sure.

She stopped.

Poised on her knuckles and the balls of her feet, she stared straight ahead at the black wall. It was probably no more than two yards away, though she couldn’t be sure. Too dark to be sure of anything.

She glanced both ways, but saw nothing.

Might as well get it over with.

The way her muscles were jumping and jiggling, she wondered if she would have enough strength to make it over the wall.

I’ll make it, she told herself.

On the count of three.

One.

Two.

Three!

She sprangp and forward like a sprinter leaving the blocks, churned up the final piece of hillside, hurled herself toward the wall and leaped.

Even as her hands clamped the top, she heard quick footfalls rushing at her from the left.

Part Two

Simon Says

Chapter Eight

He blamed me. Mitchell, that is. It was just after the girl and the kid got away from us. I’d gotten a hold of the girl’s leg when she was trying to go over the wall, but she broke loose. That’s when my troubles really got started last night, so that’s where I might as well start this off.

It was my fault. I should’ve had her. What messed things up was that I had a hand way up high on her leg, and she wasn’t wearing any panties. All she had on was this red nightie that was like a really big T-shirt. I got distracted, so then it took me by surprise when her leg suddenly kicked back. I lost hold of her ankle, and my other hand got mashed between her leg and the wall. So I lost her.

It beat up my hand pretty good, by the way. Raked skin off the backs of my fingers and knuckles. I even bled, but not much.

Anyway, I lost her. I should’ve had her twice last night, when it comes right down to it. The first time was in the front yard of the old bag’s house—the house she and the kid finally got into. She’d tried to make a turn, but didn’t slow down enough and ended up taking a slide across the grass instead. Which gave me the chance to catch her. I did, too. She tried to get up and get away from me, but I yanked her down by her hair.

I had her flat on her back. Her nightie’d gotten shoved up, so it was rumpled around her chest. I couldn’t see her tits, but the rest of her was all laid out in front of me. That’s when I first saw she didn’t have any panties on. She was real slim, but not skin and bones. Her skin looked smooth and nice. She didn’t look like she had any muff at all, not till I was on my knees by her head, and then I could see how she had some hair, but it was so fine and wispy that you could look right through it.

I held her down on the ground by her head hair. What I wanted to do more than anything was ... a lot of stuff. For one, I wanted to give her a feel. I wanted to run my hands all over her. I wanted to get that nightie off her, too. And believe it or not, I wanted to take a good look at her face. I’d only caught a glimpse of it, and the light hadn’t been any good, but what I’d seen gave me the idea that she had a real knockout of a face.

Anyway, those are things I
wanted
to do. I knew better, though. She wasn’t here for me to play with, she was here for me to kill. And the quicker, the better. No time to enjoy her, just get it done. So I didn’t touch her except to hold her down on the ground by the hair while I went for my knife.

Before 1 could pull my knife, she clobbered me with her fucking baseball bat. It wasn’t hard enough to knock me out, but hard enough to hurt like hell. I couldn’t help but let go of her.

That’s how she got away the first time.

The second time was when she was on the wall and I had her by the leg.

It was my fault that she got away both times.

When I lost her at the wall, Mitchell said, “Damn it!”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. I jumped and boosted myself up. From up there, I saw what was on the other side—namely, a very steep slope—and that’s when I knew we were in for real trouble. I jumped back down and shook my head at Mitchell.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“It’s a big drop-off back there. They’re probably still falling.”

“A cliff?”

“More like a hillside.”

“The fall gonna kill ’em?”

“I doubt it.”

“Shit.”

“We can’t go down there, Mitch.”

“Can’t let ’em get away.”

“I know, I know,” I said.

That’s when he told me to stay behind. He and the rest of the guys, he said, would take care of the exit routine: loading up the bodies and torching the houses and hitting the road. I should stay here to kill the girl and the kid.

For about half a second, the idea excited me. Without the others in my way, I’d be able to do everything I wanted with the girl.

Then the other half of the second hit and gave me an idea I didn’t like at all; if they left me behind, the cops would get me. Almost for sure.

There I’d be, cops crawling all over the place, me on foot and miles from home, with nothing on except my shoes and my Connie kilt.

That’d sure be a sweet fix to be in.

It’d be especially sweet because of the fact that we aren’t allowed to let the cops take us alive. If we get caught, we might talk. That’s the problem. So we can’t let ourselves get caught. We’ve either got to commit suicide or go down fighting.

The penalty for getting taken alive ... never mind, I’m getting sidetracked. The thing is, Mitch wanted me to stay and take care of the witnesses.

“You wanta leave
without
me?” I said.

He goes, “Somebody’s gotta stay.”

“Then let’s
all
stay. Go on back and get the others, tell ’em what happened. If we all search, we might stand a chance of finding those two before ...”

“All right,” Mitch said.

He’d said it awfully fast, as a matter of fact. But I was too relieved, just then, to let it worry me.

“You stay here,” he said, “and start looking.”

He turned away and started walking.

“Can you hurry?”

He twisted sideways and raised his arm and shook his old Rebel saber at me. “You better find her, man. You better find ’em both, or you’re ...”

“Just get the others over here, okay?”