She swung the hammer.
It clanged off the door, and a thump came from inside the room.
“The doorknob fell off,” said Zach, sounding distant, as if he were in another dimension and not simply on the other side of the room.
“Stay back.” Libby swung again, and metal screeched. Another swing. The sound this time was a pop, the sort of cracking that came from an especially stubborn knuckle.
Her hand felt like a fireball attached to her wrist, but she swung again anyway, not caring if she damaged her hand permanently, not thinking website design might be a little tricky with only a left paw and a mangled claw. The door popped open, and Trevor clapped.
A slender, brown-haired boy caked in dirt and blood came tentatively into the hallway. He looked first at Libby, then at Trevor. “You did it,” he said to her son.
Trevor nodded.
Zach broke out into a huge smile, and the two boys high-fived.
“Let’s—” Something wet touched her on the back of her knee. She screamed and spun around with the hammer.
The dog whined and backed away just in time to avoid losing the front half of his snout. The hammer whizzed by with what couldn’t have been more than two inches to spare, and the movement almost sent Libby sprawling to the floor.
“No!” Trevor ran to the dog and wrapped his hands around its neck in much the same way he’d hugged her only minutes before. It was a beautiful animal, if a little grimy. The dog shifted and licked Trevor’s face. Trevor said, “You almost killed him.”
Libby’s hammer hand sagged, and she took a deep breath. “Sorry, buddy,” she said, addressing both Trevor and the dog. She turned to the second boy and stared into his wide eyes, wondered how long it took for a kid to get over the kinds of things he must have been through.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.” She hurried down the hall swinging the tools at her side, the three evacuees trailing behind.
Mike thought of Peter Pan fighting Captain Hook. His short chisel poked out in front of him, a makeshift dagger no match for the other man’s wicked sword. The kidnapper made a long, arcing swing that Mike sidestepped narrowly. He tried triggering the drill, which he’d managed to hold on to, and jamming it into the guy’s side, but he wasn’t quick enough.
They’d descended the porch steps and now circled around each other in the gently sloping front yard. The swordsman stumbled forward a few steps before spinning back into the fray. He grinned. His naked, hairy chest flexed rhythmically, like his whole torso was a giant, beating heart. A short black line, which Mike guessed would have been red or at least reddish in the light, marked the place where the boy had cut into him earlier that night. Mike was glad to see it. It proved the man wasn’t invincible.
Seeming to read his mind, the kidnapper said, “I cut you once tonight already.”
As if Mike might have forgotten. Searing pain throbbed in his hip with every step he took. He held the chisel out in front of him and moved a little to the left, wincing but not wanting to stay still and provide the lunatic an easy target.
He thought of Libby saying the guy might have a crossbow, thought about the way he’d immediately dismissed the idea. There hadn’t been a crossbow, but now here Mike stood facing a ninja’s sword. If that didn’t beat all.
The kidnapper thrusted the weapon out in front of him and charged. Mike managed to get himself out of the way again. He swung his chisel almost reflexively, and it clanged against the broad side of the blade.
The man cut to his right and circled back to his original position. He looked from Mike’s face to his feet, and his smile faded.
“You,” he said. “No. I don’t…I killed you.”
Mike eyed him suspiciously, wondering if this was some kind of ploy, a trick meant to divert his attention so the psycho could run him through. He stood his ground, finger on the drill’s trigger, opposite hand wrapped around the chisel.
The kidnapper looked back into Mike’s face and said, “I should have known.”
Mike kept moving, shuffled his feet. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, Muhammad Ali had said, and Mike didn’t think he’d ever heard a better bit of advice.
When the kidnapper came at him this time, he did so with a low, grunting wail. The man held the sword in both hands and had it pulled back over his shoulder. Mike didn’t sidestep this time but moved forward instead, the cordless drill whirring in front of him and the chisel swinging up from his side and aimed at the man’s face.
The drill hit the kidnapper’s midsection, digging into his abdomen. The chisel bounced harmlessly off his shoulder. The sword hit Mike in much the same place the chisel had hit the other man, only it was sharp and far from harmless.
Mike’s arm went suddenly numb, and the drill died and fell to the ground between the two men’s feet. Mike dropped the chisel, too, and reached up for his shoulder. The kidnapper took a step back and hefted the sword, which dripped fresh blood.
“I can’t let you do it again,” the man said.
Mike dropped to his knees, groaning, trying to make sense of the man’s words, unable to think anything except that his arm was killing him but that the man with the sword would probably kill him faster. He tried to steady himself, ended up on his rump in the dust. His blood poured out of the wound in his shoulder, cold somehow. The stuff running over his fingers might have been ice water instead of blood.
“You should have just let us be this time, old man,” said the kidnapper. He pulled back the sword.
Mike could do nothing but sit and groan and watch the blade advance.
Inside the living room, Libby watched through a dusty window, squinting.
At first, she didn’t believe what she was seeing, thought the thing in the kidnapper’s hands must have only looked like a sword but been something else entirely—maybe a pipe or a broom handle. When the weapon slid into Mike’s stomach and re-emerged from his lower back, however, she could no longer pretend.
Mike’s scream was the worst thing she’d ever heard in her life, a sound she was sure she’d remember until the day she died, a wet, gurgling bawl that didn’t seem muffled by the walls or the door or the windows. Libby thought that scream might have gone straight from his mouth to her brain, some strange sort of telepathy.
She sensed Trevor coming to join her at the window and turned immediately to keep him away.
“What was that?” he said.
Libby flipped him around and pushed on his back. “Through the back door,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”
Trevor didn’t want to go at first, but Libby kept pushing. She heard Zach and the dog padding along ahead, heard a strange flapping sound like someone walking through mud.
“The car’s around the side of the house,” she said. “Get in back with the dog and wait for me.”
They found the back door and exited the house. “Hurry to the car,” she said, looking at the back of the boys’ heads. Part of her wanted to follow them, needed to follow them, knew it was the smart thing to do, but Mike might still be all right. She couldn’t leave him there to die. She’d loved him once, maybe loved him a little still. She couldn’t leave him.
When she saw the boys moving in the right direction, she cut around the truck and found the ax in the tree stump. She’d noticed it on the way in, before running in to Trevor. It wasn’t as good as a shotgun, but it was a damn sight better than a hammer. She dropped Mike’s tools in the dirt at the stump’s base and grabbed the ax with both hands.
It didn’t come loose easily. She had to wrench it back and forth five or six times before it finally unstuck.
She thought about Marshall, thought she’d gotten herself out of that situation fairly well, almost entirely unharmed physically despite the mental trauma. Carrying the ax back to the house, she told herself she wasn’t a pushover, that she wasn’t a victim.
Hank jerked backward on the sword, and the man fell onto his back.
Mr. Boots, he thought, starin
g at the man’s footwear. He should have expected this sort of thing.
Mr. Boots flailed a little, and Hank stabbed him again, this time higher up on his stomach, closer to his heart. “Guess you thought you’d do it again, huh?” He twisted the sword. “Kill us all off and take the boy for yourself. But it doesn’t work that way.” He leaned on the sword’s handle, listened to Mr. Boots groan. “You never killed me. It was the moose. Everything’s different this time.”
He pulled the sword free again and grinned.
Stupid son of a bitch, he thought and jabbed the sword into the old man once more.
Trevor helped get the leashed doggy into the back seat but didn’t climb in after him.
“What’s wrong?” Zach asked.
“I have to find my daddy. Wait here.” Trevor turned away from the car and hurried around the front of the house.
Libby burst through the front door. In the yard, the kidnapper hovered over Mike’s slumped body. She charged him.
The ax was heavy, not the kind of plastic-handled thing you bought at Wal-mart, but an old wooden tool with a head that felt like it must have been made of lead.
She was ten feet from her target when Trevor came at her from around the side of the house.
“No,” she said, though she’d meant to scream it. She twisted his way at the last minute, meaning to push him away from the bare-chested stranger, but she was moving awkwardly and ended up tripping over her own feet.
The ax fell on the ground beside her. Trevor approached from one direction, and the man from the other.
Run, she wanted to say, get away. But she couldn’t speak. Something smacked the side of her head, and she had time enough to realize it was the man’s fist before unconsciousness took her and everything was lost.
Hank loaded Lori into the passenger’s seat and strapped her into her belt. He’d gotten the boys in the back where they were still huddled, the dog between them and whimpering again. He’d tied the kids’ hands with their own shoelaces and knotted Manny’s leash to the headrest. Later, if everything went well, he could let them loose. But for now, he had to drive and couldn’t risk any of them trying something stupid.
He ran a hand through Lori’s hair and kissed her softly on the forehead, sorry he’d had to hurt her but knowing he could make up for it later. She was a beautiful woman—a fine wife—and he knew she’d be a good mother to their boys. He closed her door and circled around the front of the car to his own side.
After finding the gearshift and studying the car’s controls for just a moment, he shifted into reverse, backed partway down the driveway, and then turned the car around and drove away from the house.
As they moved, he looked into the rearview mirror and thought, Goodbye forever. The house and the body in front of it grew smaller until, finally, they were gone.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Mike had crawled halfway along the front of the house, dragging himself with his good arm and trying to ignore the pain just about everywhere else.
He coughed once and tasted blood sliding over his teeth.
The monster had taken his family, had loaded them into the car and stolen them away.
Mike crawled another foot. There was a truck in the back yard. He’d seen its rear bumper when they arrived. If he could get to it, and if the keys were inside, he could go after them, rescue them.
He coughed again, and something thick flowed across his tongue. Maybe vomit, maybe more blood, or maybe some of his internal organs, cut loose and floating freely through his insides. He didn’t know. He spit out the wad and dragged himself farther.
He’d gotten almost to the corner of the house when everything blurred. He tried to shake his head to clear it but only made the dizziness worse. He closed his eyes, tried taking deep breaths, then coughed and dropped flat to the ground, still at least fifty feet from the truck and the chance to be the hero.
When he heard the siren, his eyes opened, and he didn’t know how long he’d been out. He hadn’t died, though he thought he must be only a few breaths away. The man standing over him wasn’t Deputy Willis, nor was it the thinner man who’d been with him at the house.
Mike tried to gesture to him, point in the direction the Honda had gone, but he could move only his pinky finger. Still, he did what he could, pointed with the tip off his littlest digit and blinked at the looming lawman.
“—try to stay still,” the man said, and Mike found that pretty funny.
Against the man’s ridiculous suggestion, he used the last of his strength to lift his hand and point after the missing car.
The deputy grabbed Mike’s hand like he thought he wanted to shake. “Hold on, buddy. We’ve got paramedics on the way.”
But Mike couldn’t hold on. He felt the breath coming out of him like air from a punctured tire. He tried to suck in a little more but didn’t think it got much farther than the back of his mouth.
Family, he tried to say, but it came out as a soft groan. It was the best he could do. He dropped his head to the ground but let the deputy hold on to his hand. It felt good to be touched. He didn’t want to die alone.
Deputy Ben Moore leaned close to the bloody man and let go of his hand. He touched the man’s neck. Nothing.
He wasn’t sure if this was the guy they were looking for or another one of his victims, hadn’t actually been sure they were at the right house until he stumbled across the crawling mess of a guy and the trail of blood behind him. He shone a flashlight back along the streaked gore and found a sword lying in the grass beside the house’s foundation.
I’ll be hanged, he thought. He didn’t guess he’d ever seen a sword like that before. Not in real life.
He moved away from the body and back to the patrol car, where Hollis Breckmore was yakking into the radio. He opened the door and said, “We’re looking at a DB here. Better call in for some backup. I’m gonna take a look around.”
Breckmore nodded, and Moore shut the door. He’d made it halfway around the house, hand on his holstered pistol, when the patrol car’s headlights shut off and he heard the passenger’s door slam. He looked back. Breckmore hustled after him, his flashlight and his gut both bobbing.
Breckmore paused at the corner of the house to have a look at the corpse before hurrying to catch up with his partner.
“That’s a mess,” Breckmore said.
Moore nodded and told him it sure was, and then the two of them walked around the back of the house together.
EPILOGUE
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, COLORADO
2005
On the first night of the rest of his life, Hank Abbott drove out of the mountains in a silence broken only by the sound of gravel ricocheting off the undercarriage of the Honda and the occasional groans and bursts of rustling from his newfound family. Lori sat slumped in the passenger’s seat with her cheek flattened against the window, her lips parted, her breath frosting the glass. George and Davy sat tangled around the dog in the back seat, looking scared though Hank knew what they really felt was relief.
The clock on the dashboard went from 11:59 to 12:00, and Hank realized it was no longer his birthday. But that was all right—he’d gotten everything he wanted.
Their trip out of the mountains had been twenty-three years in the making, but late was better than never at all. Hank watched the sides of the road carefully, looking for glowing eyes or dark-brown blurs. He couldn’t make the same mistake twice. This was his family, after all, and he loved them.
He piloted the car around a sharp curve and thought to himself that this had been one hell of a vacation. As the road straightened out ahead, Hank guessed he didn’t care if he never saw the mountains again.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I was fourteen years old when I wrote my first novel, The Reaper (a shoddy book about a body-jumping entity and its slew of bloody victims). After Reaper, I wrote five more novels. Some of those five were readable, but none saw print—or really deserved to—until now. Although I’ve worked hard to get where I
am, I can’t take all the credit; over the years, I’ve had a lot of help from many people. I’d like to take a minute to thank some of them.
Thanks to Mom and Dad for influencing, nurturing, and encouraging me. Thank you to my wife, Amy, whose faith that I would reach my goal never wavered, and my daughters, Dakota and Katelyn, who join their mommy in putting up with me on a daily basis. To my brothers and sister, Samuel, Krista, Andy, and Enoch, who are my readers and supporters. To my teachers, Karen Poulson, Diane Dickey, Alisa Boyd, Roland Merullo, Catherine Newman, Corinne Demas, Helen von Schmidt, and Justin Kimball, who each pushed me in the right direction, sometimes more than once. To my friends, Paul Reschke, Jon Lhost, and Leigh Borum, for being my family away from family. To everyone at the Amherst College post office. To Paul McCartney and Collective Soul for the music I listened to most often while writing not just this book but also the ones leading up to it. To Jonathan Maberry, who offered me advice and encouragement when I needed it most.
And, of course, to you, my readers. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoyed the book.
DP
ALSO BY DANIEL PYLE
NOVELETTE
DOWN THE DRAIN
ANTHOLOGY EDITED
UNNATURAL DISASTERS
(COMING 2011)
Daniel Pyle lives in Springfield, Missouri, with his wife and two daughters. For more information, visit www.danielpyle.com.
PRAISE FOR DANIEL PYLE
DISMEMBER
Dismember’s a fast-paced grindhouse-movie of a book with plenty of unexpected twists and turns and a fresh new crazy for a villain. The late Richard Laymon would have been grinning ear to ear.