“No, no, I’m all right. I just need a short rest”—she reached up. “Help me, Foster, to the bed.”
I took great caution assisting her; she appeared exhausted, worn, and aching all at once. A glance to the “bed” forced a grimace on my part, for it existed as no more than the most primitive of straw mattresses. With a little luck, she’ll be sleeping in a REAL bed tomorrow, likely for the first time in her horrendously burdened life.
A happy sigh escaped her lips. “That’s much better, Foster. Thank you. Dr. Anstruther says I’ll be due in another week or so.”
“Anstruther,” I sputtered the name with venom. “I’ve seen his handiwork. I take it he’s a senior member of Olmstead’s collective.”
She nodded. “He’s the one who runs everything here—for them.”
“I should’ve known.”
She lay back, sedate now, and—I pray God—banishing the profane foray at the lake from her tired mind. “Here, Foster,” she murmured; she took my hand and placed it at the center of her swollen belly. “Feel the life inside.”
It did so with great wonder. A blessing, I mused. Each and every life is a blessing…
“I’d like so much to keep it,” came her next murmuration. Tears welled. “I’d give anything…”
“You will keep it, Mary—this I vow.” The great bolus of flesh beneath the occult robe seemed to beat with heat. “You stay here and rest while I return to the Onderdonk’s to retrieve their motor. In less than an hour’s time, I’ll be transporting you and Walter away from here, to the security of my estate in Providence—”
“You just don’t understand,” she moaned in frustration. “If I try to leave, they’ll come after me. No one in the collective can ever leave.”
“We’ll see about that,” I replied but still mindful of what Zalen had implied of the fates of those who had tried. “Leave it to me. I will drive you to safety or die trying.”
When she looked at me, I noted something behind her eyes that could only be the desperate joy of hope.
“It just makes me love you more for wanting to do this for us. But I can’t let you. We would never make it out; we’d all die.”
“I’m willing to take that chance,” I told her with no hesitancy whatsoever. “Are you? Would you take that chance, for Walter to finally have a good life and attend good schools like other boys? Would you take that chance”—I gave the gravid belly a momentary caress—“to give this unborn child the chance to live and to behold the beauty of the world, and to save it from the blasphemous death that awaits it otherwise?”
She sobbed, gulped, and nodded. “Yes! I will take the chance! Even if we all die, then at least I’ll get to die with you…”
“Wait here,” I told her, choking up. “I’ll return presently,” and next I was out of the house and back out into the moon-spattered night.
I did not allow myself to entertain thoughts which might divert my focus, but what a luxury that would have been. I wended back toward the Onderdonk’s, eyes proverbially peeled, my Colt pistol slippery in my sweating hand. The woods were profuse with night-sounds now, where they hadn’t been before. It made me wonder. If these fullblooded monstrosities were indeed on the hunt for me, I saw no hint of them all the way back to Onderdonk’s ramshackle compound.
The smokers were gusting; I ignored the rich, savory—and unmentionable—aroma. Only from the corner of my eye did I allow myself a glance at the dead creature staked to the tree. The prospect of seeing one of these abominations in detail did not incite my curiosity. Closer to the truck, I had to step around Zalen’s innards and body parts, a fairly daunting task in itself, though I did spare myself one mental levity: It couldn’t have happened to a finer and more forthright gentleman.
Good Lord! came my next distasteful thought, for when I slipped into the time-weathered vehicle, my buttocks grew immediately sopped from the deposit of Zalen’s blood which had been let during his evisceration and dismemberment. I sat still a moment, to slowly survey my immediate surroundings through the windscreen, and saw nothing—absolutely nothing—out of the ordinary. If these fullbloods are hunting me, they’re exhibiting a less-than-fair effort thus far. A grim reminder assailed me next, however: Zalen’s earlier concern about the truck’s starting mechanism. I was an antiquarian and philanthropist, not a car thief. If it’s a keyed ignition, then I’ll have no choice but to drag Onderdonk’s half-cooked corpse from the smoker and search his pockets for the key… I withdrew my pocket-flash, closed my shooting eye to preserve its night-vision, then, for just a split-second, turned on the flash before the dashboard.
My heart fell like a stone.
What my flash illumined was a cylindrical keyway mounted in the dash.
“Here’s the key, Mr. Morley,” the small but sudden voice whispered just outside the open truck window. Where my heart had just sunk in the worst despair it nearly jettisoned from my mouth in the coming shock.
It was young Walter who stood beside the vehicle.
“In Heaven’s name, son!” I snapped a whisper back to him. “You nearly stopped my heart!” but then my eyes flicked to his adolescent hand and proved what he claimed was true. “How… How on earth did you—”
A modest smile of pride touched his face. “Mr. Onderdonk would always keep the key beneath his door mat; I’ve seen him put it there a lot, sir, during my hikes through the woods.”
“Not only a lad of proper manners,” I gushed, “but one of industriousness.” I blinked. “But you were asleep only a short time ago.”
“I woke up and heard you and my mom talking, so I came out on my own, to get the key for you.”
This was certainly a gift I could never have anticipated. “You’re a fine boy, Walter, and a very brave one. But it’s unduly dangerous out here. Do you know about… ,” but then the sentence deteriorated.
“I know all about the fullbloods, sir. I’ve seen them a few times, but tonight, I’ve seen a whole lot of them.”
And it’s my fault, I reminded myself. Walter’s courage was commendable but it did indeed put him in great danger. “Get in next to me, Walter. We’re going to pick up your mother so I can take you both to live with me.”
“But you’ll need help, sir,” he added. “It would be best if I position myself in the back of the truck. I can’t get a good aim if I’m inside with you.”
“A good aim? Walter, whatever are you talking about?”
He raised his handmade bow. “They may try to block the road back to the house, but I’m a pretty good shot.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Lad, you’re surely the bravest boy to ever walk these parts but I’m afraid that suction-cup arrows will do little good against the fullbloods.”
Then he showed me a handful of real arrows.
“See, Mr. Morley? We better go, before they come.”
What could I say to such youthful ingenuity and unhesitant bravado? “All right, Walter. Get in back and be vigilant… And keep your fingers crossed that this old vehicle starts.”
The boy hopped in back. With wide eyes, then, and a trembling lip, I inserted the key into the cylinder, uttered a prayer that seemed dismally anemic, and turned the key.
The rusted hulk hitched, gave off a loud metallic whine that made the tendons in my neck stand out, then rumbled to a start. I ground gears in my attempt to get it in first, gritted my teeth at a long grind, then we were finally moving. The vehicle was indeed roadworthy, but in that evidence, the noise its starting had made could surely be heard from here to town.