***
Libby throws the back door of the RV open at Hank's command and steps aside as Hank carries Loreal in and lays her down upon the bed. He looks over his wife, her face contorted with pain, her right leg reduced to a stump, a belt wrapped tight around it as a tourniquet. He hears footsteps as Josh runs up to the vehicle and joins Libby, little Tyler, Becky and Sarah; the class's sole survivors.
“You find anyone else breathing?” Hank asks.
“No,” Josh replies, his voice cracking.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You checked everyone? 'Cause if we drive off and leave some poor bastard bleeding out on my lawn, it's your ass I'm blaming.”
“I'm sure,” Josh gulps, almost bursting into tears.
“What happened to the bald guy?” Libby asks.
Hank's eyes widen. “Son of a bitch...” Hank jumps out and runs around the RV, scanning the ranch's exterior. “God damn it! That motherfucker must've stolen my ATV! Horse shit!”
Hank kicks a stone across the gravel front drive, then throws the RV's front driver’s side door open and gets in, slamming it shut. He revs the engine into life, still cursing, as Josh bursts into tears in the back. Libby pulls the back door closed and takes a seat beside Loreal's bed, then lifts little Tyler onto her lap and wraps a comforting arm around him.
“What were them things?” Becky asks.
“They looked like dinosaurs,” Libby answers.
“Nuh-uh,” Becky scoffs.
“They looked more like giant rats than dinosaurs,” Sarah adds.
“That's what they looked like to me,” Libby says. “I think they were raptors.”
“Raptors?” Becky scowls. “Raptors don't look nothing like that.”
“Yeah, raptors look like lizards,” Sarah concurs. “All scaley and stuff. Them things had feathers.”
“You're just going on what you seen in the movies,” Libby tells them. “You know the velociraptors in Jurassic World ain't even based on real velociraptors? Velociraptors weren’t no bigger than turkeys, and twice as dumb. Them dinosaurs they train in the movie were based on Utahraptors.”
“Utahraptors?” Becky repeats, scrunching her face up.
“If that's true, why'd they call them velociraptors?” Sarah asks.
“I guess it just sounds cooler,” Libby reasons.
“I don't like dinosaurs no more,” little Tyler says.
“Me neither,” Libby replies. “Mrs. Williams, are you feeling alright?”
“I'm fine, sweetheart,” Loreal Williams says, though her face is etched with agony.
“You ever seen anything like them things before?” Libby asks.
“That guy who showed up,” Loreal says, her voice cracking, speaking difficult, “the bald guy… he said he's from the future. And that traveling through time had caused it to mess up. Some kind of... interference in space time, or something...”
“So... you think them things were really dinosaurs?”
“I don't know, sweetie, but they might be. You know, it's the craziest thing: the story that guy told us, it sounded exactly like the plot of my novel...”
New York, New York
The cab pulls up at 1160 Madison Avenue. Erica Fitzkoff-Baldini pays the fare and gets out. Two men in long brown coats approach her before she reaches the white-gloved doorman. She knows long before they flash their badges that they’re cops.
“Dr. Baldini,” the taller one says, “I'm Detective Laurence Croft, and this is Detective Anton Smythe, of New York City Police Department. We'd like to speak to you about your husband.”
John. Of course it’s about John – only people who know her through him ever refer to her as Dr. Baldini.
“You seen the news this evening?”
“No.”
“Only a massacre at a school in Texas is keeping your husband from being the lead story. Now we could stand out here on the street gabbing about it, or perhaps you'd like to invite us into your apartment.”
Erica glances at the white-gloved doorman, he turning his nose up at the scene. It was only a recommendation from John's work associates that had secured the lease on their apartment; Erica doesn't think showing two police officers through the lobby will help them get it renewed.
“I don't know if that's such a good idea. What's this about?”
“It's about the death of a twenty-four year-old woman in the handicapped bathroom of a McDonalds at around nine-thirty this morning. Security cameras show your husband entering the bathroom with her and leaving alone a short time later. Now, would you like to continue this conversation out here on the street, or would you rather discuss it inside?” Detective Laurence Croft follows Erica's gaze to the white-gloved doorman. “If you're worried about Alfred over there getting uppity, we could always head downtown and talk it over at the stationhouse.”
“You don't need to worry about keeping anything secret from him anyhow,” Detective Anton Smythe adds, “we already told him why we're here.”
“We were wondering if your husband was holed up inside,” Detective Croft explains. “He ain't.”
Erica reluctantly leads the two police officers into the lobby, the door being held open to them in silence. The shorter cop, Smythe, makes wisecracks about the lobby's opulence as they wait for the elevator.
“Your husband usually go in for this kind of thing,” Detective Smythe asks, once they’re seated on white leather sofas inside, “ducking into handicapped bathrooms with twenty-somethings?”
Erica stares down at the coffee table, the detectives' words whirling round her, the strangest of evenings having gotten stranger.
“Your husband the faithful type?” Detective Croft clarifies.
“I guess.”
“You guess? How come you ain't sure?”
“I mean, as far as I know, yes.”
Erica’s had suspicions, but that’s to be expected when your husband's job involves palling around with Wall Street types and cosying up to clients at cocktail bars.
“I understand you just got back from vacation,” Croft says, “to the Caribbean. How was it?”
“Nice.”
“The Caribbean's nice, or the time you spent there was nice?”
“Both,” Erica lies.
“So you two didn't fall out over there?”
“No. Well, I mean, there were a few arguments, but nothing important. Just normal husband-and-wife stuff.”
“What did you argue about?”
Erica sighs. “I can hardly remember now. Places to visit, where to eat dinner. Minutiae.”
“Me and my wife are the same,” Detective Croft says. “I heard that's the best indicator of a marriage built to last; you argue over small stuff, then kiss and make up after.”
“I'm glad I ain't married,” Smythe laughs.
“How about you, doctor?” Croft asks. “Did you and your husband kiss and make up?”
Erica frowns.
“You think he might've fucked some floozy in a McDonalds' bathroom to get back at you?”
Erica closes her eyes. The reality of the thing they’re talking about suddenly reveals itself to her. When she opens her eyes, a tear falls from the left one. “How did she die?”
“Your guess is as good as ours at this point,” Croft answers. “There were no obvious signs of a struggle. We've not got the toxicology report back yet, so don't count drugs out. Your husband a drug user, Dr. Baldini?”
“No,” she says, wiping accumulating moisture from her eyes.
“Did he tell you he's been suspended from work?”
She lifts her head to make eye contact. “No. When?”
“This morning,” Croft explains, “all of an hour before the girl led him into the handicapped bathroom.”
“She led him?”
“Yeah,” Croft smiles. “I guess that's one positive you can take from all this.”
“Why was he suspended?” Erica asks, the strange insequential breakdown of her husband'
s morning confusing her.
“He got an email from some charity and told them to go fuck themselves,” Croft answers.
“Nice guy,” Smythe adds.
“It went virular on the internet, or however you say it,” Croft continues. “Blew up. A public relations disaster. Which, given your husband works in public relations, pretty much just makes it a disaster.”
“Are you close to your husband?” Smythe asks.
“He's my husband.”
“That don't answer the question,” Smythe smirks.
“Yeah, we're close. I mean, we live together, we sleep in the same bed, we see each other every day--”
“I don't think that answers my partner's question either,” Croft interrupts. “Are you close emotionally? Spiritually?”
“Yeah.” She breaks off eye contact. “As close as two human beings ever can be.”
“Do you have any idea where your husband might be hiding out now, doc?”
“No.”
Smythe and Croft look at each other, conversing without words. Croft suddenly stands up. “Okay, doctor, here's my card.” He drops it onto the coffee table. “If you hear anything from your husband, give me a call.”
The policemen leave. Erica stares at Detective Laurence Croft's business card in a daze. There’s too much to comprehend. Solutions come to her: calling someone, family, friend, her sister, her mother, Sophie, Jessica, or burying, washing the world away, with a bottle of wine, or adjusting, accepting, absorbing a new reality with an old vice, running out to the store and buying a packet of cigarettes, and the thought of all those foolish futile band-aids does nothing to stem the bleeding, the blood-red whirlpool of bewilderment, the imperfect tempest of incomplete details, bubbling up, surfacing, and as she stares at the sepia of Detective Laurence Croft's business card, she pulls another from her pocket, no name upon it, just a telephone number in simple black on white. She takes her phone out and taps the number in.
“Hello,” Robert Sanchez's blonde aide says several rings later.
“I'm in.” And she's speaking, words streaming out of her mouth, action, filling the vacuum, overloading the void. “I think Mr. Sanchez needs someone who understands his condition watching over him. I can take a cab to the television studio, it's only a few blocks from here.”
She feels the blonde's beaming smile in the silence that follows.
Amarillo, Texas
“Where you going?”
Hank jumps with shock, then turns to face Libby.
“Jesus Christ, you almost gave me a God-damn heart attack.” Hank’s at the door of his RV, in a parking lot buried beneath The Healing Heart hospital. “I'm going to find the son of a bitch who stole my fuckin' ATV.” He opens the door.
“Do you think he really comes from the future?”
Hank laughs as he climbs into the driver's seat. “Loreal filled you in on all that horseshit, huh?”
“You don't think it's true?”
“No I do not.”
“So you don't think those were dinosaurs that attacked us?”
“You and your fuckin’ dinosaurs,” Hank says, shaking his head. “Kid, I don't know what in the fuck those things were, but I'd say the only son of a bitch breathing who does know is the same son of a bitch that just done stole my ATV. So now I'm gonna go find his ass and whoop some sense into it, and I ain’t stopping ‘til that swivel-eyed motherfucker gives me an explanation for this shit.”
“Let me come with you.”
Hank laughs again. “Now why in the hell would you want to come with me?”
“I can help you.”
“Help me? Girl, this is a God-damn hunting expedition on a grand fuckin’ scale, tracking the sneakiest fuckin’ animal known to man: man. You ain't never shot a fuckin’ thing in your God-damn life, how in the hell do you reckon on helping me?”
“I'm pretty good with technology. I can help you look out for digital footprints, online activity...”
Hank laughs once more. “Look, even if I wanted your help, which I don't, I think I already got enough parents to deal with after a pack of wild fuckin’ animals done turned my educational facility into a God-damn all-you-can-eat buffet. The last thing I need is your folks coming at me for kidnapping and God-damn child endangerment.” Hank slams the driver's-side door shut. “You just run on back to Loreal's room and wait on your parents to come get you.” Hank turns the key and the engine roars into life.
Libby slips away from him, then pulls on the handle to a door at the side of the RV's living quarters; it’s unlocked. She jumps inside, letting the door fall shut behind her as the vehicle starts moving. She drops to the floor and crawls into a space beneath the bed, then lays in the darkness, listening to the engine's roar.
The Story Continues in
Americosis Vol. 2
Available now from all good ebook retailers*!
*And a few of the shittier ones as well.
Join the Mailing List at
HaydnWilks.com
to be notified immediately
of all future releases!
also available from haydn wilks
The Death of Danny Daggers
Cardiff. The last few days of summer.
Danny Daggers is about to die. He just doesn’t realise it yet.
A Leeds University student with a very popular YouTube channel,
Danny Daggers is taking his alcohol-downing stunts on tour.
He’s about to find out that not everyone’s a fan.
Ji Eun is a Korean student doing work experience at the South Wales Post.
Rory Gallagher is the alcoholic veteran journo who’s mentoring her.
Carnage in Cardiff might be just what they need to begin and revive their respective careers.
Tom and Joseph work at one of Cardiff’s many call centres.
Tom is fed up of working boring jobs and living for the weekend.
Joseph is just happy to have a job.
Then there’s the Amstell brothers.
Simon’s just escaped from prison.
And he happens to be the father of Joseph’s girlfriend’s son.
And his brothers happen to be psychopaths.
These stories collide and intersect over a frantic few days of
heavy drinking, drugs and ultraviolence,
set against a backdrop of dystopian modern Britain.
Available now at Amazon
Join the Mailing List at HaydnWilks.com
to be notified immediately
of all future releases!
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends