In the middle of the street, The Shape hears another roaring engine, sees the blue-and-white police SUV approaching fast, skidding through a turn, barreling toward The Shape.
This time it will not pass The Shape.
Standing still, The Shape stares—
—waiting—
—less than a heartbeat—a breath—a clench—
Brakes squealing at the last instant, tires shrieking in protest, the SUV slams into The Shape—
—and the impact hurls The Shape backward.
Sudden motion—jarring impact on the asphalt.
The Shape lies still…
35
“Stay in the car!” Hawkins shouted to Allyson.
She looked rattled by the impact. She’d barely had time to buckle up before he rammed his cruiser into Michael Myers.
At the last second, he’d held back, hit his brakes rather than crushing and running over the murderous son of a bitch. Hawkins had no idea where the merciful impulse had come from. He’d like to think his better angels had prevailed, but he thought it probably had more to do with the presence of the teenaged girl in his backseat. A small part of him had balked at letting someone so young and innocent witness him commit cold-blooded murder—even if Myers deserved that and more.
In hindsight, the best thing he could have done for Allyson and her whole troubled family—not to mention the entire town of Haddonfield—would have been to rid the world of Michael Myers once and for all. He doubted a prosecuting attorney in Warren County would have found a single jury member willing to convict Hawkins of anything more severe than reckless driving. With luck, Myers had been killed on contact. Hawkins’ conscience would be totally fine with that.
He and Sartain got out of the cruiser and approached the prone Myers from opposite sides. Clutching his service weapon, Hawkins advanced cautiously. A quick glance back at the cruiser showed Allyson leaning forward, peering through the windshield at the three of them.
Sartain lowered himself to one knee to examine The Shape lying in the middle of the road. He leaned forward, reached out with his good hand and checked the neck for a pulse.
Seemingly relieved, Sartain looked up at Hawkins and said, “He’s alive.”
Okay, not as simple as I’d hoped.
Nodding, Hawkins extended his weapon, sighting down the barrel for a head shot, mid-forehead, just north of the eyes partially concealed by the pale mask.
“Not for long,” Hawkins said. “Stand back.”
Outraged, Dr Sartain bellowed, “Officer Hawkins, do not kill my patient!”
Hawkins’ finger lay beside the trigger guard. As soon as Sartain moves his condescending ass, this is over. “I’m finishing this,” Hawkins told him. “That’s a promise.”
“No!” Sartain shouted defiantly. “He’s unarmed.” A moment later, Hawkins thought he heard Sartain whisper, “But I’m not.”
“What did you say?”
“If you do this,” Sartain replied, “I’ll see you prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Hawkins said. Hell, the mayor might give me the key to the city for putting down this rabid animal.
Hawkins took aim again.
Sartain stepped in his way.
“Get back now, Doctor. I’m going to fire! GET BACK NOW!”
Instead, Sartain removed a pen from his pocket, clicking it nervously.
“I’m not going to ask you again, Doctor,” Hawkins said, practically spitting out the words in frustration. “Step away from the suspect!”
From her obstructed view in the backseat of the patrol car, Allyson strained to see what was happening out on the road. She slipped her fingers through the openings in the steel-mesh barrier and pulled herself forward, the tip of her nose brushing the metal as she stared intently through the windshield.
Hawkins had struck Michael Myers with the car, but hadn’t killed him, at least according to Dr Sartain—apparently Michael Myers’ doctor from Smith’s Grove—who checked for and found a pulse. She could only hear some of their contentious conversation through Hawkins’ half-open window, but the topic of the debate seemed clear. Hawkins wanted to put a bullet through Myers’ brain, and Sartain wanted to save his patient.
Personally, Allyson sided with Hawkins; she wanted the nightmare to end as expediently as possible. If she closed her eyes longer than a moment, she saw the gruesome image of Oscar impaled on the fence spike, bleeding out in front of her. Forty years after his incarceration, Michael Myers continued to threaten her grandmother and anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path. Clearly, the justice system had failed.
But Sartain never spoke to Hawkins after closing the distance between them. Instead, Allyson saw him fiddling with his fancy pen, twisting the clip and—
—a gleaming two-inch blade flipped out of the pen!
Sartain held the blade to the side, hidden from Hawkins’ view, while clearly visible to Allyson—but only for an instant. Long enough for Sartain to switch the pen to an overhand grip.
NO!
Before Allyson could scream a warning, Sartain grabbed Hawkins’ gun hand by the wrist with his injured arm, pushing it to the side as he as he swung his right hand around and plunged the pen-blade into Hawkins’ neck. Hawkins’ gun fired, wide of the mark, the bullet ricocheting off the asphalt.
As Sartain drove his blade deep, cutting back and forth, Hawkins’ dropped his gun, his body swaying. He toppled over to his left, blood gushing from the jagged wound in his neck. He fell below the hood of the police cruiser, mercifully out of Allyson’s view.
But the murderous doctor stood calmly between the headlights of the police cruiser, twisting the clip of his pen to retract the bloody blade. She stared at him through the windshield, petrified with terror.
Dr Sartain stared down at the corpse of Officer Hawkins.
The blood pulsing from the man’s neck had stopped within moments. If he wasn’t clinically dead yet, that moment was only a few feeble heartbeats away. Sartain inhaled, smelling the fresh blood, filling his lungs with the moment of the kill. His kill.
Once again, he felt the power and freedom that he knew Michael must feel each time he sank his blade into a living body and snuffed out the life inside. A profound dominance, the power to twist the fate of another to one’s will. Despite the discomfort radiating from his injured shoulder, a sense of utter calm flowed through him, invigorating him.
He examined the bloody blade extending from his custom pen for a moment, then twisted the barrel and—
Click!
—the blade retracted, hidden from view.
As he returned the pen to his jacket pocket, he turned toward Allyson who stared back at him in shocked disbelief from the back of Hawkins’ cruiser. When he spoke to her, he raised his voice, but his tone was measured and calm. “Do not move, young lady,” he said. “Do not scream. Stay where you are.”
She couldn’t open the car door, but he preferred she not spend the rest of the night screaming her fool head off, attracting unwanted attention and giving him a headache. She was a minor player in what was to come and should not try to rise above her role.
Panicked, Allyson immediately reached for the door handle only to find the door locked. Of course, she realized belatedly, police cars transport prisoners! Between the locked steel-mesh barrier, the uncomfortable seat and the locked doors, she basically sat inside a mini jail cell.