The Dark Trail Read online

  The Dark Trail

  By

  Will Mosley

  Copyright 2015 by Will Mosley

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  Part 2 Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Chapter 20.

  Chapter 21.

  Chapter 22.

  Chapter 23.

  Part 3. Chapter 24.

  Chapter 25.

  Chapter 26.

  Chapter 27.

  Chapter 28.

  Chapter 29.

  Chapter 30.

  Chapter 31.

  Chapter 32.

  Epilogue

  Introduction

  The house was silent as if it were alive, but resting itself, and the drone of the air conditioning unit outside wasn't noticed until it reached the automatic shutoff. Then, the house became considerably mute, so silent that he could hear Karen breathing. He quailed his own breathing so that his loud exhalations wouldn't repulse her. The utter quiet made the rumble of a far away truck blazing through town sound as if it was as close as the next neighborhood. The screech of a vehicle needing brake pads, though faint, became a fortuitous focus for several seconds. Then the sound of the brakes ceased and absolute stillness slowly lulled Doug away. But within moments, Karen stirred in the bed, bringing him from the edge of whatever dream sleep had planned for him. Then she stabbed her heel into his shin.

  “You gonna check that out?” she asked.

  “OUCH! Check what out?” Doug grunted.

  She turned on her back. “You didn't hear that?”

  “Just tell me what you heard. I was trying to fall asleep.”

  “It sounded like the door latch popped, or the air conditioning unit is on the fritz again.”

  The first of her two observations concerned him, but once compared to the sound of the air conditioning unit, the two noises weren't nearly identical.

  “You want me to get up?” Doug asked.

  “Please!” Karen huffed. “That is, if you don't mind, your holiness.”

  “Now?” He asked again. She briskly rolled over prompting Doug to sit up. “I didn't hear anything.”

  “I guess my hearing doesn't count, then.”

  “I'm just saying. You hear everything.” Doug got up and reached for his Glock. Then remembered that he had placed it on the microwave in the kitchen last night. “If a bird craps on a branch you're like, 'Doug, I heard something. Go check that out.'” He mocked.

  “Well, it's not like our recent problems can be neglected either, can they?” Karen barked back.

  “I'm going, I'm going.”

  Doug kept the house dark because, as he had learned in the police academy, if a criminal has a light to see by inside your house, and you're sleeping, he has the advantage: your eyes will have to adjust to the light while his eyes already have. This measure of protection also made the house impossible to navigate, but made it easier to fall back asleep once the noise was deciphered. In a half sleep, half wake state, he slid his hands along the walls, grateful when he reached the stairway and its railing to guide him. Once down stairs and facing the kitchen, he placed his hand on the wall that bore the stairs, sliding it along until his forefinger hit the threshold of the half-bath. He lifted his hand from the wall, readying it to proceed once he was past the door, and he heard a footstep – not his. His bare feet slapped against the hard wood floor, but this sound was a shoe and no one in the house had on shoes at this hour.

  Fully awake, Doug opened his eyes wide and searched the darkness for movement, but saw nothing. He paused and allowed his eyes to absorb the infinitesimal amounts of light that would eventually reflect from the kitchen appliances. He saw reflection from the dining room table, black with trace amounts of dark blue, enough to recognize it. Then the microwave came into view with the same black-blue aura. Suddenly, the night moved, shifting from left to right as if it had purpose and obscured the microwave momentarily.

  “Hello?” Doug whispered. His pulse quickened at the phantasm of liquid night. On the microwave laying on its side, his Glock was no more than a black, flat rectangle. He took one step toward it, his feet nervous on the smooth wood. A spectral orb of night suddenly veiled the Glock as it seemed to lean away from the wall. His mind made no sense of this spectacle and processed possible reasons for these illusions – since, in the dark, the human eye conjured all matter of fantastic images. But as a glint of dim moonshine reflected from some object between him and the orb, he saw the cant of leaning shoulders and instantly realized that the orb was someone's head, and that another human was standing in his kitchen – hiding around its corner merely feet away. Panic froze him as if he were a child caught throwing rocks at windows. And then, the flash.

  As bright as the sun sitting on the living room couch, the flash screamed blindingly white orange light, rupturing the night with its brilliance and carried thunder through the house, scattering silence. At once, the night absorbed the light, and with no delay the flash retreated. Half covering his face, Doug noticed, ignited behind the flash, furious gray eyes, an auburn mustache and goatee, a scorched white face as if it had been dipped in fire and its heat remained, and below the man's chin was an uncovered Swastika.

  “Doug!” a voice screamed from upstairs. To the right of the first flash, another hot orange detonation burst through the night. There's two of them! The thought streamed through his mind as an image of two invading, darkly dressed gunmen instead of words. Doug Carrity turned and ran as bullets whizzed within inches of him and slammed into walls as flash after flash exploded behind him. At the staircase, Doug grabbed the hand rail and sprinted, despite his injured knees, from stair to stair, bounding up them, acid boiling his tendons, two, four, six, eight, ten! His mind could not help but count. A scream, stuck at the base of his throat like a soda burp, Warn them, now! Scream, now! The wall at the top of the stairs – in front of him now – exploded into thousands of pieces, into dust that sprinkled his eyes and rubbed against his pupils like jagged fragments of glass, hanging pictures and their frames chewed by fracturing, blasts, then the virulent voice under the gunfire shouted, “Your time's up, officer!”, and there was no doubt to whom that voice belonged. Doug turned to dash down the hallway. Karen's silhouette stood in the doorway to the left, Angelica, just a tiny child-sized blur, scrambled from right to left, to Karen. “Mommy?” She half shouted, half questioned. Then, searing pain cooked his legs from the inside and all forward momentum served only as force to throw his face into the carpet.

  “Gun!” Doug reached out to Karen, gripping the back of his thigh, his teeth clenched withholding screams of pain. She stood unmoving, uncomprehending. Blood gushed from the leg wound, coating his hand like black oil as he reached to Karen in an effort to hasten her reaction time. “Gun! Now!” He let loose with his words anchored to a scream. Footsteps, like stampeding horses, pounded on the stairs, each louder than the last. They were approaching fast. She left the doorway and returned in a
second and tossed a 38 special revolver only inches away from Doug's reaching hand. With one useless leg, he shoved himself forward, snatched the pistol from the floor, footsteps closing in, maybe on the top stair, Doug rapidly slithered into Angelica's room. The carpet where he lay only a second ago, exploded. Then all footsteps, all gunfire, all noise, stopped.

  On the floor, holding the gun toward the door, Doug waited for the dark delineation of a human to cross the threshold, his leg writhed him into muted agony and he could not take his free hand from it.

  “Someone's in the room to the left and he's over here.” A voice whispered. A firm hand knocked on the wall three times, and the house was soundless again. Angelica gently whimpered in the master bedroom with Karen, and clothing eagerly shuffled in the hallway. Doug thought briefly about switching on the bedroom light, but he remembered his training, and that alone was what could save him.

  “Greg?” Doug said. “Greg Hart. Is that you?”

  “Hello, Officer Carrity.” The voice sang. “I told you that I'd be seeing you.”

  Doug's gun hand was steady. “Greg, listen. This is not what you want to do.”

  “Sure it is, officer.”

  “My family is here. Whatever problems we had in the past, we can reconcile them now. This is the wrong way to go about this.”

  “You remember my foot, don't you?” Doug remembered seeing the mangled bones and white torn flesh when he visited Greg in the prison hospital after the nurse had removed the temporary bandages. He made the visit that day to hopefully get Greg alone and tell him that the injury to his foot was not retaliatory and he wasn't responsible. But Greg was in a deep anesthetic slumber.

  “This is how I reconcile my issues, Carrity.”

  “What do you want, Greg? You want money? I can get you money.”

  “No,” Greg, casually. “I got money. I don't need yours.”

  “Then what?” Doug begged.

  “I just want you dead.”

  Doug thought about his family, thought about what Greg was demanding and how simple it would be to resolve this.

  “You want me?”

  “Yes. Why don't you just step out here for a minute.” Greg said. Another voice laughed from the hall.

  “Okay. Listen to me Greg. You go downstairs and outside. I will be out there. Just allow my wife to lock the door. I will give myself up if you do not bother my family. Do we have deal?”

  Greg chuckled. “That's not possible, Officer. You said my name. They know who I am now. I can't let them go just that easy.”

  “Greg, Please!” Doug shouted. “Use some common sense, will you?”

  From the master bedroom, Karen cried out in desperation, “I won't tell anyone your name if you just leave! Please leave!”

  “Honey, be quiet!” Doug demanded.

  “Oh, she sounds sweet, Carrity. Now I'm wondering how good she is in the sack. See, now you've got me thinking about screwing your old lady. You're taking me off my game!”

  “Greg, please accept my offer. You can take –,”

  In that moment, under Doug's pleading voice, the tiny, high pitched dialing tones of a cell phone chimed from the master bedroom, through the hallway and through Angelica's room. Each digit pressed tolled like bells. Doug heard it and swung his head in the direction of the sound. In the hallway, was a brisk sweeping of cloth, then silence, as if someone had turned their head quickly, brushing facial hair against a jacket or shirt, and the air was electrified as all focus was directed at that sound.

  “Karen, Don't!” The words fell out of Doug's mouth, but what other choice did she have?

  “Dammit! Someone's calling the cops!” The other voice cried out.

  Oh God! They're about to go! Doug thought.

  “Let's get this over with.” Greg said, and around the threshold of Angelica's room, an arm emerged as if growing from the dark hallway and three ear piercing explosions went off over Doug's head a second after he noticed the arm. Instead of aiming at the wall, behind which at least one of the men were standing, he aimed at the hand that held the gun, fired twice, missed twice, and in the hallway, the movement of a bounding man rushing passed the doorway, moving toward the master bedroom startled him.

  “Karen! Angelica!” He screamed. Instincts told him to rush the attacker. Instead, forgetting the vivid pain in his leg and grasping the 38 special with both hands, he fired aimlessly toward the route of the running man, pulling the trigger impotently until his anger was halted when the gun suddenly clicked. He pulled the trigger again... click. In the master bedroom, Karen screamed and tears rolled down Doug's cheeks. Click. Two almost instant gun shots rang out from the room, her screaming stopped and two heavy objects thudded to the floor. Click.

  “That's six shots, Doug. I've been counting.” Greg said from around the corner as if he wanted to be congratulated for his ability. “You can keep pushing that accelerator, but you're out fuel.”

  “You bastard,” Doug spat between clenched teeth. “This is my family... my home!” He exchanged anger for sobbing and dropped his pistol on the floor, then yelled, “How do you know I don't have another gun aimed at the door just waiting to blow your damned head off?”

  Greg laughed as though these three little lives were mere stepping stones – easily walked over and forgotten. Like the hood draped image of death, face unseen, but the staff of retribution clearly visible, Greg stepped into the doorway, his gun hand lowered to Doug. “I'll take my chances.” He said, pulled his trigger and blew the contents of Doug's skull across Angelica's bed.

  Greg stared at Doug's lifeless body – his eyes, barren of focus or thought, were rolled back as if he were forcing them to look at the ceiling, and mouth gaped in a silent exhalation – and more than anything, wanted to do something just. The killing was enough in Greg's mind, and since this was his first murder, he felt the need to savor it, maybe even linger in the room until whatever life energy he'd forced from the body became part of him. His only regret was that Ben had gotten to kill two Carrity's to his one. He badly wanted to piss in Doug's breathless mouth hole, maybe shock the local authorities a bit when they arrived, but time no longer crept as it did moments before he exacted punishment, now it moved briskly.

  “You got him?” Ben asked at the doorway. Greg pointed his gun at the body.

  “What do you think? Maybe once more? Ya think I could kill his spirit too?”

  “I dunno, man but we don't have –,”

  Behind Ben in the master bedroom, something moaned. “Shhh!” He said to Greg. “Something's moving in there.” Greg rushed to the door, into the hallway and entered the bedroom beside Ben. Then, he grabbed Ben's arm and pulled him back.

  “Let me finish this.” Greg whispered and Ben waited in the hall.

  “Just hurry, Greg. We only have a minute and a half before we have to be gone!” Greg waved his hand to the hallway behind him and stalked the noise with his Glock leading the way.

  The sound was loud beside the bed where it crackled and moaned this time. Greg tracked it as if the sound waves left faint tracks of light to follow. There was something familiar about the noise, then, in the corner on a side table he saw a tiny green light radiate in the dark. The noise was not coming from the dead woman and girl that he stepped over, it was coming from... he stepped closer... a baby monitor.

  The child on the other end moaned again and shifted under the sheets which came over the radio waves as static.

  “A minute fifteen.” Ben said.

  Back in the hallway, Greg noticed a closed door directly across from the master's bedroom. He put his ear to it and listened to the sheets shuffle, but no moaning. Inside the room was sparse: a dresser, a changing table and a crib. Beside the crib was the transmitter to the baby monitor's receiver glowing bright green, and inside the crib was a baby – a Carrity.

  Greg lifted the baby out and cradled him, smiling as he rocked the child. Ben looked into the room.

  “A minute. Hey, what's that? Is that a baby?” Ben
asked. Greg looked up with smile so radiant, it eerily shone in the house's darkness.

  “Yeah! And it's a boy, too!”

  “What – what are you gonna do with that kid? We oughta just let the cops send the little punk to an orphanage or something.”

  Greg's smile reduced to a grin. “Hey! You know something, I wonder what this kid's gonna be when he grows up?”

  “Who cares, we don't have much time.”

  “Maybe a doctor, maybe lawyer or some shit like that. No, wait! I know now! I see it in his eyes. He's going to be a pilot! An aviator like that Lindburgh guy!”

  Ben wearily rolled his head and looked down at his watch. “We're getting close to 45 seconds, man.”

  “A true Orville Wright is what I say. Aren't you?” Greg tickled the baby's plump cheeks.

  “Forty five – Where are you going?” Ben asked.

  “To the test field. I wanna see if he has the right stuff.” Greg walked to the window, unlatched the locks and opened it. Ben cocked his gun and trained it on Greg's back.

  “I can't let you do that, Greg. Put that kid back in his crib and let's go.” Greg lifted the window, then held the child over his head and made airplanes noises with his mouth while flying the baby around. “I'm serious, Greg! Put that kid –,”

  “Shoot, Ben. Pull the trigger.” Greg said, then continued with the baby. “Look at him go, folks!” The gyration woke the child and within seconds he started crying. “That's just an exhaust malfunction. Our pilot is one of the best aeronautical experts in the world!”

  “Greg, listen. I will shoot you if you don't put that baby down, man. That's a baby! You wanted to get –,”

  “Pull the trigger, Ben, or keep your mouth shut!” Greg stopped whirling the crying baby around, held him at his waist like a laptop bag and stared at Ben. Ben didn't pull the trigger, and after a few moments lowered his weapon instead. “You shoot me, you can't go back home. You know that, don't you? My brother will have every warm body whose willing looking for your sorry ass!”

  With no more thought than discarding a used cigarette box, Greg tossed the baby through the mesh screen and out the window. Two seconds later, the crying stopped on the concrete pad below.