Ghost Road Blues (Pine Deep 1)

Val wiped the mud off his face and shook him very gently.

“Daddy…please…”

Henry Guthrie raised his hand just a few inches, all he could manage, and touched her arm.

“Daddy!” Val’s heart leaped and she felt tears break and spill as her father slowly opened his eyes, squinting against the stinging rain.

“Get…get me…my sweater, pumpkin,” he murmured dreamily, “I’m feeling…a chill…”

“Oh, Daddy…”

Guthrie’s eyes opened wider and for a moment clearer lights burned within them. “Val?”

“I’m here, Daddy. I’m here. It’s going to be okay. I’m here. ”

In a whisper, he asked, “Where is he?”

Val shook her head. “I think he’s gone. I don’t see him anywhere. ”

Guthrie closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. The lights had already dimmed perceptibly. “Val…”

“Yes, Daddy?”

“You’ve got to warn…” he began, but suddenly a terrible coughing fit made him leap and jerk. Blood bubbled out of his nose and he gagged. It took a long time, and a lot of his dwindling supply of strength to speak, and even then it was in a faint whisper, barely audible beneath the roar of the storm. “Val…you’ve got to warn…Mark and…Con…. ”

Then his mouth lost the words and he slumped limply against Val’s lap. His hand fell away and slapped bonelessly into the mud.

Val screamed. She bent her head to his chest and listened, listened…

It was there, the faintest of beats, a feeble fist beating on the window of a burning building. It beat once, paused long…too long, beat again.

It grew fainter, and she felt her own heart slowing with it, but it kept on beating. Trying to live. Trying.

Val tried to pull him, to drag him to the house, but she was a battered and exhausted woman with a torn shoulder all alone out in a storm. Half a mile from the house. The enormity of it broke her, and she collapsed back down onto her knees.

She held her father for a brief moment—almost more time than she could spare—and then laid his head down, kissing his forehead and cheeks before climbing to her feet. She turned toward the house and as she did so her lips curled back into a snarl of feral hate that had no trace of humanity left in it. Clutching her bad arm to her body, she set out toward the house at a tearing run.

3

Mark Guthrie lay on the floor and strained with every muscle in his body. Sweat burst from his pores and blood was singing in his ears as he fought against the ropes and tape that held him.

As soon as he had heard that single awful gunshot, he’d thrown himself off the couch and had wormed his way across to the ringing phone. It felt as if the effort took twenty years, but he actually made it on the eighth ring, shoving his shoulder against the low table with a dynamic effort. The table toppled neatly over and the phone crashed to the floor. Mark rolled over to it and pressed his ear to the receiver just in time to hear the click as the call was disconnected from the other end.

He bellowed as well as the duct tape would allow.

Connie sat on the couch, watching him with wide, desperate eyes, and he turned to her, trying his best to convey a look of hopeful confidence. He knew it probably looked pitiful, bound and gagged and sweaty as he was.

Since then, he’d tried to hang the phone up by pushing it with his chin. No luck. He did manage to press the plunger down long enough to get a dial tone, but the phone was an old rotary: no way he was going to dial it, not even 911.

Still, he kept trying, using the tip of his nose to try and turn the dial. The labor seemed to take forever, and by the time he would have the dial start to move, the phone would begin signaling that it was off the hook and he would have to push the plunger down again to get a fresh dial tone. It was tedious, frantic, frustrating work.

Karl Ruger made it a pointless exercise as well.

Mark didn’t even know that the man was in the house until he saw the shadow that washed over him. He turned quickly, saw the man standing over him, tall and powerful, soaked from the rain, holding the tiny automatic in one hand.

“Howdy, campers,” Ruger whispered. “Are we having fun yet?”

Mark tried to squirm away, twisting violently like an arthritic snake, but Karl laughed and kept pace with him, continuing to straddle him until Mark thumped against the couch and could go no farther.