Crimson Shore

48

Chief Mourdock slid his bulk into the squad car and exited the station garage, lights flashing, siren wailing. He had a vague idea that the sight of the squad car in full siren would be a comfort to the people cowering in their houses.

He felt completely flummoxed by what he had seen. Rose Buffum had spoken of a demon, a monster, but of course that was crazy. It had to be a Jack the Ripper type, a homicidal lunatic, who had come into Exmouth and gone on a rampage. Things like that happened in the unlikeliest places. It was just some random horror.

And yet those splayed, torn bodies...

At this thought he felt a cold, paralyzing fear, so powerful he gasped aloud. Six months from retirement... and now this, on top of the Dunwoody murders?

Fuck it. He would get to the bridge, park, lock the squad car, and wait for the SWAT teams and backup to arrive from Lawrence. At this time of night, in the storm, the roads would be free of traffic. They’d be here in no time.

...But what if there were downed trees? What if the roads were blocked? What if the power failure delayed them?

The fear stabbed like an icicle probing his guts. He reassured himself that all he had to do was wait for the SWAT teams to arrive and take over. They would push him aside, relieve him of all responsibility and decision making. Then, whatever happened, it wouldn’t be on him.

The Metacomet Bridge loomed ahead, the row of sodium lights that normally illuminated it dark. He eased onto the bridge, the rain lashing his windshield, the wipers slapping back and forth. He drove halfway across and put the vehicle in park, keeping the engine running, making sure the doors were locked. When he satisfied himself that he was safe, he pulled out the mike and called the Lawrence dispatcher. He was assured that a massive response was on its way, all the 10–33 equipment Lawrence had accumulated since 9/11 being put into service — MRAPs, BearCats, heavy weaponry, stun grenades, tear gas, and two M2 Browning.50-caliber machine guns. The convoy would arrive in Exmouth in less than ten minutes.

Until that time, Mourdock told himself, he could do nothing.

But now he wondered if maybe it had been a mistake sending Gavin into town alone. It would look really bad if his deputy were killed, with him sitting here doing nothing. But Gavin would be safe; the killer had gone. Surely the killer was gone.

Mother of God, he was looking forward to his retirement, his pension, his sofa, and a cold six-pack in front of the ball game.

But the more he thought of it, the more he realized that, whether or not Gavin was killed, it would look bad — him, sitting out here in his locked patrol car, away from the town that he had been hired to protect. It wouldn’t go unnoticed by the first responders...

Suddenly he had an idea. He could turn around, take Dune Road toward the ocean, avoiding downtown and its chaos. There was a turnout south of town, not far from the lighthouse, where he could wait. If he turned off his headlights, nobody would see him, nobody would know. Then, when he heard the sirens and saw the lights of the approaching cavalry, he could rush back into town as if he’d been on the scene the whole time.

The vise of fear that had clamped around his chest eased ever so slightly. Cowardly? No — just looking after number one. After all, he’d put in his twenty... almost. And there was that sofa and that cold six-pack to protect.

Throwing the vehicle into gear, he did a three-point turn, drove off the bridge, then took a right off Main onto Dune Road. To his left, he could just make out the faint glow of the burning house. Then came the lighthouse beam, winking through the storm.

Past the lighthouse, he reached the turnout, maneuvered the patrol car around in readiness to scoot back into town, killed the lights but left the engine running. He glanced at his watch. Five minutes for the convoy. Just five more minutes and his ordeal would be over...

A sudden blow rocked his car. He gave a shout, staring wildly out into the darkness.

Something had slammed into the rear door on the driver’s side — a branch blown on the wind, maybe. As he fumbled to turn on the exterior searchlight, another massive blow hit the door, turning the window into a dense spiderweb of cracks.

Abandoning the searchlight, his breath coming hot and fast, Mourdock extracted his flashlight and turned it on. Something was prodding at the fractured, rubbery window, pushing it in. A hand broke through — a bloody hand with horrible, blunt brown nails that were an inch too long.

Mourdock screamed, dropping the flashlight and scrabbling for his weapon.

A second hand — sinewy, pale — punched through the window and ripped out the loose glass. Then a hideous bald head, encrusted with blood and gore, pushed in while one arm simultaneously reached around, fumbling at the door with a curiously infantile gesture.

“Noooo!”

The chief finally got his Glock out and pointed it, firing wildly, but now the door flew open and the maniac lunged into the backseat. Oh, God, it was a monster: a hideous, naked, emaciated monster with a pit bull’s face and projecting snout, a huge rack of blunt teeth, a pink tongue, and brown eyes that glittered with homicidal malice.

Still firing wildly, Mourdock fumbled with the gearshift, trying to maneuver it into drive... but just then a hand snaked out, plastering itself onto his face, those blunt nails curling around his cheekbones and spastically tightening.

“Ahhmmmmmm!” Mourdock, feeling the foul-smelling palm pressed against his nose and mouth, the nails sinking deep into his flesh, tried to scream and pull away; there was an agonizing wet jerk and his voice was released in a spray of blood as his flesh parted from his skull, and then he heard a hoarse gasping sound so close he wondered where it could have come from, until he realized it had come from himself.

Agent Pendergast had lost the trail of the killer just south of town, but he sensed, from the purposeful beeline, that it was headed for Crow Island. And now, as he crossed the road that traversed the marshes and led to the beach, he saw a police car — the chief’s squad car. The headlights were off, but the engine was running. Through the gusting rain he detected movement.

Suddenly, a figure leapt up onto the hood, then scurried crab-like down the front grille just as a flash of lightning brilliantly illuminated the vehicle. In a moment, it was dark again. But in that moment, Pendergast saw something freakish and bizarre, something so far out of his experience as to be inexplicable: a tall, bony, emaciated man, completely naked, covered with countless cuts and scars, with a bald head, a dog’s face, and a long, forked tail with a hairy knob at the end.

And then it was gone.

Pulling out his Les Baer, Pendergast raced toward the patrol car. He saw the creature moving away at the speed of a running dog, then loping off the road — heading toward the wildlife refuge and Crow Island.

He turned his attention to the squad car. The windshield was opaque, coated with blood from the inside. The back door, however, was open, its window broken and missing. Grasping the frame, he leaned in. His flashlight beam revealed Chief Mourdock. The man was sprawled across the front seat. He was all too obviously dead.

Pendergast withdrew from the car and jogged to the spot where the unearthly creature had left the road. Gun at the ready, he followed the tracks through the sand to the fence edging the wildlife preserve, which the creature had evidently leapt over. On the far side the tracks continued, straight as a compass line. Pendergast paused long enough to mentally visualize a map of the area, quickly realizing that the straight line ended at Oldham.

Constance was at Oldham.

He broke into a run, acutely aware that the creature was twice as fast as he was.