The security doors only locked and unlocked in the dispatcher’s office. Emilio doubted he would be able to hold it for long against the beast should it decide to come through. James had to be quick.
Just as James disappeared into his cell, three more shots rang out. These shots sounded closer.
“Hurry!” Emilio yelled down the hall toward James’ room as he pushed the heavy security door shut.
“Who’s there?” a muffled voice asked from other side of the door.
It didn’t sound like Sam or Bill, so Emilio assumed it must be Chad. Or the beast pretending to be Chad. “Chad, is that you?” Emilio called out.
“Yeah, now come on out, slowly!” the voice answered.
“Yeah, right,” Emilio muttered to himself.
He waited a few seconds and was about to call out to see what was taking James so long, when a scream came from the other side of the door. “Oh, shit! Hurry!” Emilio yelled down the hall.
Just then James came running out of his cell, pistol in hand.
“What the hell kept you?” Emilio asked, but before he could get an answer an unexpected force slammed into the door, almost knocking him to the ground. Emilio placed his shoulder back against the door. James added his weight just as the second blow landed. Even though it was expected, it still almost knocked the door open. They prepared again for a third blow and weren’t denied. This time the blow landed and the force didn’t let up, as the beast on the other side of the door lowered its shoulder and began pushing. Little by little the door opened, until the beast was able to reach its right arm through the crack in the door and claw at the other side.
The hand slapped the inside of the door just inches from Emilio’s face. It looked like Sam’s thick fingered hand with its chewed-short fingernails, but when it pulled back from Emilio it made a scraping sound, not unlike fingernails on a chalkboard, as the unseen claws raked across the metal door, removing the sickly blue paint in thin strips that curled as they were peeled away.
The hand withdrew and struck out again, this time barely missing Emilio’s face.
James had his back to the door and was leaning into it with all his strength and all his weight. He saw how close the beast came to removing Emilio’s face and knew he had to act or the next swing might not miss. James lifted the gun in his right hand until it was above Emilio’s head and pointing the barrel down at the beast’s hand.
He pulled the trigger. The solitary gunshot echoed loudly in the hollow halls of the jail. The bullet passed through the beast’s already injured right hand long ways. The pain startled the beast into releasing its pressure as it withdrew its hand through the door, almost causing the heavy metal door, with the added weight of James and Emilio, to slam onto its already twice injured hand.
Emilio and James kept leaning on the door for some time, unwilling to take the chance of the beast coming back and surprising them.
CHAPTER 24
The One Who Kills
Ironically, it was Darren Woolford and Tom Weatherford who were first on the scene. They had been patrolling just west of Newton when Darren radioed in and received no response. Assuming something was wrong with his radio, Darren tried to reach the jailhouse with his cell phone. Still no reply. Although the last thing Darren would have imagined was that the beast had attacked headquarters, he decided they should drive by and check in. They drove up and started to the front door of the Newton County Hilton, still not expecting anything out of the ordinary.
Then a dark shape bolted out of the door and dashed across the street on four legs. Darren recognized the beast and managed to draw his pistol but not until the beast was almost a hundred yards away. Still, Darren fired a couple of shots, but they didn’t have a prayer of finding their mark.
While Darren was calling for backup, Thomas saw a shape lying on the ground near the front of the car. He pointed it out to Darren. Darren, with his gun still in his right hand, took his flashlight out and shined it in that direction and found the two dead DPS officers.
Less than two minutes later another DPS cruiser roared into the drive, followed seconds later by another.
It took the better part of fifteen minutes for James and Emilio on one side of the heavy security door and over a dozen officers on the other to convince each other that the beast was not on the opposite side of the door. By the time they did, Carl, who was now temporarily in charge, had arrived.
And so had the media. The story that something big had happened at the Sheriff’s Department spread like wildfire. The circus had begun, and this time there was no Captain Sam Jones to play ringleader. It was still several hours before sunrise, but the reporters and cameramen, along with the concerned and curious citizens of Newton began to converge on the Newton County jail. It was all the law enforcement officials could do to keep them out of the building, much less enforce the curfew. Soon, live feeds of patrol cars and ambulances parked in front of the Newton County Sheriff’s Department were being sent to all the major networks across the nation.
Pandemonium gripped the city of Newton.
Both Bill and Chad had been unconscious but alive when the paramedics arrived, but Chad coded as the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance and they were unable to bring him back.
As they were loading Bill, Carl asked one of the paramedics if Bill was going to be okay. The paramedic replied that he gave Bill a fifty-fifty chance.
“Then he’ll make it,” Carl said as the paramedic hoped into the ambulance’s passenger side. “He’s a tough old bastard.”
The paramedic paused and turned back to Carl. With a grim expression on his face, he said, “I’ve known Bill Oates since I was a boy. I know he’s a fighter. That’s the only reason I’m giving him that much of a chance.”
Now Carl Price was sitting behind Bill’s messy desk. He felt uncomfortable sitting in Bill’s chair, but it wasn’t the disarray of the desk that bothered him — he just didn’t feel it was appropriate that he sat here, it was like he was committing some form of desecration to a sacred relic. He had wanted to talk to James and Emilio in the squad room from behind his own much neater, if slightly smaller, desk, but he found the squad room was too busy this morning for a private meeting.
James and Emilio sat silently across from him.
Emilio was dressed in a motley outfit. He was wearing his beige game warden shirt, but he was still wearing the only pants he had been able to find that slipped easily on and off on his thickly bandaged and slightly swollen leg — the Orange jumpsuit bottoms usually worn by the inmates. Emilio was constantly digging in one ear or the other. Apparently neither of his ears had popped since the discharge of James’ gun right above his head; the ringing was obviously driving him crazy.
James was wearing his old jeans and a plain white t-shirt. There was a haunted, blank expression on his face — but hadn’t that expression been there all along? The changes hadn’t taken place overnight. Anyone who had been around him for the last month would have noticed the gradual metamorphosis, but they probably wouldn’t have imagined how drastic the change had been. His cheeks looked hollow from lack of proper nutrition; in fact, James had weighed around one-sixty-five when Angie was killed; now he weighed barely over one-twenty. The last six or so weeks of getting only two or three hours of sleep at a time had given him permanent dark circles under his eyes. Even his normally tanned complexion had paled, giving him a sickly look.
Of all the changes, his eyes seemed to have changed the most. Lack of sleep gave them a permanent bloodshot look — almost like that of a career drunk. His eye-color even seemed to have changed; what used to have been non-descript brown eyes seemed to be a sickly combination of grey and brown. James now tended to avoid eye-to-eye contact unless he was talking directly with someone, but if someone did look in his eyes, and he returned their gaze, they would see a window into a mind that was not entirely stable anymore. They would see a touch of madness — not a wild, lunatic madness — but a cold calculating madness.