Stalked

PROLOGUE

The prisoner squinted at the threatening ebony sky through the steel mesh that made up the cage in the rear of the patrol car. He knew he should be afraid, but he was dead inside. His heart was black. All he could do was watch the big wind come and hope it would scoop him up into its twisting, churning middle.

Five seconds later, the storm howled down upon them.

"Oh, mother of God," the cop who was driving squealed. She was a rookie and heavyset, with squat fingers clutching the wheel. Sweat dripped down her cheeks from under her butch dark hair. The ferocity of the wind lifted the front wheels of the speeding vehicle off the highway, and rain like a deluge sheeted across the glass. The driver did the only thing she could do; she stopped, because she was blind. The car danced, doing a shimmy on its tires.

"Keep going," her partner told her.

"Are you fucking crazy? The storm shifted, you stupid son of a bitch, it's coming right at us."

They were stopped askew on a rural section of highway, surrounded by deserted farmland. All the residents had left, headed north, abandoning their homes to the wind and water.

"We're thirty miles from Holman," the other cop repeated. His voice was scratchy, like quarry dust. "We need to get this sack of shit back behind the walls. Keep going."

Debris hammered the car windows: rocks, tree branches as large as his thigh, roof shingles, dead birds.

"No way, man, no way. We have to get inside right now."

"Inside ain't going to make any difference," the other cop replied. The inmates called him Deet, because he trailed a sweet smell of insect repellent to drive away the Alabama mosquitoes. That was the only sweet thing about him. He was short and lean, but he was a beast. He wore steel-toed boots and liked to break shinbones with a swift jab of his toe.

"I saw a farmhouse," the driver said. "I'm going back."

She wheeled around in her seat as she backed up. The prisoner stared into her eyes, which were wild with animal panic. She was petrified, close to soiling herself. The smell of her fear awakened something familiar and arousing inside him.

The pavement gave way to gravel, and she stopped.

"I see it!" she said, as lightning lit up a battered farmhouse.

Deet jerked a thumb at the backseat. "What about him?"

"We can't leave him in the middle of the storm."

"We ain't letting that guy out of the cage," Deet growled.

The prisoner leaned forward, his hard face against the mesh, and spoke to the two cops. "Leave me here, I don't give a shit."

He didn't care. Dying here was better than going back to Holman.

For weeks, he had anticipated the road trip to Tuscaloosa, so that he could inhale the river stench of the Black Warrior again and eye the street girls in their halters. There was nothing they could offer him for his testimony; he was a lifer. All he wanted was a taste of the city grit on his tongue and a vibe off the street. One more bite of the life that had been stolen away from him ten years ago.

Ten years ago. He remembered that smug bitch watching from the back row of the courthouse as he was sentenced. She had tracked him across the south and tipped off the Alabama cops, and he went down for murdering a competitor, his life erased over a nobody who deserved what he got because he was skimming the merchandise. He wished he could have had another half hour with her, to wipe that fucking grin away like sand, before they buried him inside the walls.

Being outside again only made it worse to go back. The few minutes in court-in a suit without the cuffs or the leg irons-were a hoax, like a steak dinner before they slipped you the needle. It made the years ahead-in an overcrowded, stinking cell, seeing gray cement and steel every minute of your life-seem unbearable. Getting sucked up by the storm would be a blessing.

"Where the hell can he run?" the woman screamed at Deet. "Come on, we have to go now!"

Deet cursed and flung open the car door. The wind ripped it out of his hand, and the metal groaned. The noise of the storm roared like a train. Deet pulled his gun and pointed it at the prisoner's head.

"You give me any trouble, you're dead!" he shouted. He unlocked the rear door.

The prisoner got tangled up in the chains and fell to the ground as he tried to plant his feet in the dirt. He felt Deet's hand on his shirt collar, pulling him up. He spit out mud from his mouth.

"Let's go!" the woman yelled. She waved an emergency radio and slammed the trunk of the squad car shut.

Rain buffeted the prisoner, like ice picks jabbing at his face. He struggled to walk in miniature steps up the driveway, which was a rushing river now. When he stumbled, his feet hobbled by the leg irons, he felt the barrel of Deet's gun on his neck, pushing him forward. They reached the front porch of the two-story farmhouse, but the door to the home was barricaded by plywood nailed to the frame. The woman cop put down the radio and clawed at the boards to tear them away. Her fingers bled.

He wondered how far he would get if he tried disappearing in the storm. Deet read his mind. He eyed the prisoner and cocked his gun. "You want to run? Go ahead. It'll save-"

Deet stopped talking. When the prisoner narrowed his eyes against the driving rain, he saw that Deet didn't have a head anymore. Right above Deet's body, a yellow highway sign with a dripping, bloodred fringe bobbed in the side of the house where it had flown like a guillotine and become impaled. Something like a soccer ball rolled down the porch and then was picked up by a gust and whisked away. Deet's head.

He heard the other cop wail, an awful noise, primal and terrified. Deet's body collapsed in a heap, gushing watery blood that spilled down the wooden steps like paint. He dove for the gun, but so did the other cop, and she was surprisingly fast for a big woman. She kicked him backward off the porch and drew her own weapon. She grabbed Deet's gun and shoved it in her belt and, not taking her eyes off the prisoner lying prostrate in the blood and mud, she squatted and threw up over Deet's body.

"Get up!" she screamed, wiping her mouth.

She got the front door open and waved him in ahead of her with a flick of her gun. He pretended to limp. The frame of the house rattled like aluminum cans, and the wooden beams under his feet shuddered as if their nails were about to pop. It was black inside, and the cop switched on the radio and its emergency beacon. Angry static crackled between the walls, and every two seconds, the room flashed with red light.

"Downstairs," she instructed, pointing to an open door.

"Unlock me."

"Bullshit."

"I can't take stairs in these chains," he insisted, keeping the desire out of his eyes. Do it, do it, do it.

"No way."

"I'll break my fucking neck, you stupid bitch. I can't see in the dark."

"Move."

"Shoot me if you want, I'm not going anywhere like this."

She swore and threw a set of keys at his feet. He kept a tired mask on his face as he freed himself and stretched his numb limbs. He took stock of the cop, who held her gun with unsteady hands. Her uniform was wet and painted on her skin, and water dripped from her hair. She danced with impatience.

"Downstairs," she repeated, her voice cracking.

The uncarpeted steps shrieked as his foot landed on each one. She was right behind him, but she was young and she stayed too close, the gun jabbing into the small of his back. He tripped, and she froze. His hand snaked back, and in an instant, he yanked her wrist, pulling her past him and uprooting her down the steps. She screamed as she tumbled, breaking her legs and collarbone, landing in a fleshy heap on the concrete floor. The radio shattered into plastic pieces. He was on her immediately, stripping away both guns, dragging her by the scruff of her shirt into the center of the basement.

She moaned in agony. Blood spat out of her mouth. "You bastard!"

He fed on her fear. Seeing her at his feet, helpless and desperate, made him feel like a reptile sloughing off an old, unwanted skin. He was reborn out of ten years in hell, a new man.

With a great crash, the half-window notched into the concrete wall of the cellar erupted inward, and water poured through in waves. The smell was fetid and moldy. The cop screamed as dirty water puddled around her. "Oh, Jesus, the river's flooding. We've got to get out of here."

He laughed at her. "We?"

"You can't leave me here, for God's sake. I can't get up."

Three inches of water swirled around his feet and grew steadily deeper. He watched as the cop pulled herself up and then splashed back as her splintered bones gave way. She flailed at the water and shouted for help, but her voice was a whisper as the storm assaulted the house.

"Please," she begged him. "Please."

He became physically aroused watching her. He rubbed himself through his jeans and listened to the sounds of her pain. She went under for the first time when the water was up to his thighs. She came up again, coughing and gagging, and then swallowed as the water closed back over her head. Each time she rose up, she screamed obscenities now, railing at him because he was the one in control of her fate, he was the one with absolute power, he was the rock-hard instrument of life and death. There was no escape.

A metamorphosis took place before his eyes. He no longer saw her face. Instead, he saw the face of the bitch who had taunted him like a devil for ten years, and he knew there would be no escape for her now, too.

"That's the thing about floods," he told the cop, the last time her face broke free of the dank river water. "They wash away your sins."