Parasite (24 page)

The man went limp and Seth tossed the machine aside. Still trying to get a full breath, he rolled off him and onto his back. For a good minute he stayed nearly as still as the unconscious man and woman in the room with him.

The only sound was his noisy breathing through his mouth.

Staring at the ceiling with his one good eye, he finally broke the near silence.

“I am chosen.” The words came out in an incomprehensible wet garble. A pang of intense pain radiated from his broken ribs and he clenched his teeth. “And now I’ll get the girl.”

Jared Lawrence’s eyes snapped
open, and memories of what had happened in the church immediately came flooding back.

Corina!
his mind screamed, and he tried to pull himself to his feet.

Only he couldn’t do either: he couldn’t scream, and he couldn’t rise from a lying position.

Wide-eyed, he scanned his surroundings. There was something in his mouth, something like a tough jerky, hard and salty, which not only prevented him from screaming, but also somehow affixed his head to the table. The lights shining into his eyes were bright, and all he could make out was the shadow of a man hovering over him.

“Hurry,” he heard a somewhat recognizable voice say. “He’s waking.”

There was an affirmative grunt and he felt an uncomfortable pressure on his thigh.

Did they take me? Did the man who grabbed Corina’s arm take me? Her and me?

But before he could think these questions through, he felt more pressure on his leg, only this time it was deep and painful.

“Arggh,” he sputtered, his tongue traveling up and down the length of whatever was in his mouth like a horse bit.

He closed his eyes against the pain, and only opened them again when a few seconds later the pain and pressure subsided.

The lights dimmed, and the face over him slowly came into focus.

What he now saw was a belt was pulled from his mouth, and Jared licked at his dry and cracked lips.

“You’re back,” the man said, a friendly smile creeping from beneath his beard.

This too incited questions in Jared’s mind—
back? From where?
—but like the other queries, he had no time to consider them.

“Where am I?” he asked. His throat was dry, parched. “Where is Corina?”

Confusion passed over the man’s face, but this expression faded so quickly, Jared wasn’t sure it had actually been there.

He tried to sit up, but the man gently rested his palm on his forehead.

“Best stay down for a bit longer—let the drugs kick in.”

Jared squeezed his eyes shut again.

Drugs?

For a brief moment, he almost receded back into the oblivion that which he had just crawled out of.

It was all too much.

“He’s good,” he heard another voice say. “Got the bullet out, stitched him up—should be good to go.”

The hand on his forehead gently caressed his head, sweeping his greasy hair from his face. This simple act felt good; after all this time and after all that had happened, it felt good to be looked after, even if he’d had to be shot to receive the treatment.

But then there was Corina...

“Corina?” he croaked again.

There was a silent pause, and this time Jared opened his eyes.

“We’re looking for her,” the man that still hovered over him said.

As Jared’s eyes continued to adjust to the lighting, he realized that he recognized the man.

It was the priest—Father Carter, or something like that.

The man’s smile grew.

“My name is Father Carter Duke,” he said, reading his thoughts. Then he waved a hand to the other man, the one who had been fixing his leg but who was now standing beside the priest. “And this is my friend Pike.”

Jared didn’t know what to say—what was an appropriate greeting for a time like this?
Nice to meet you? Thanks for saving my life?

Neither of these two options felt right, so instead he said what was most pressing. “I need to find Corina.”

This time when he went to sit up, Father Carter didn’t hold him down. The smile on his face, however, faded. A bout of dizziness hit Jared as he struggled to bring himself to a seated position. Once again, the father’s hands steadied him.

“Jared,” he said slowly. “We will find Corina, I can promise you that.”

Jared, eyes closed again, couldn’t help but guffaw at the words—after all, that was all they were: words. What could this priest possibly do to find Corina that he couldn’t?

Faith wasn’t one of his strong suits, and if it hadn’t been for Corina wanting for some bizarre reason to stick around in Askergan after being pulled from the basement, he wouldn’t have even been at the church. Still, he was a man searching answers, and after all this time when even the internet continued to draw blanks, there were only so many places that someone as desperate as he could go.

“I’m not a normal priest, Jared.”

The man’s eyes were serious, and for some reason Jared had an inclination to believe him. After all, before he had been shot, the sermon that Father Carter had delivered had been anything
but
normal.

“And my friend here?” he continued, drawing Jared’s eyes to the other man, the man with the stern expression and the strange name. “He’s no normal altar boy. He can... he can find people, amongst his many talents.”

Jared’s mind flashed to the way Pike had so easily dispatched the biker in the church.

Many talents.

“Stick with us, Jared. And we’ll find Corina. I promise.”

Jared realized that the priest was holding out his hand.

His eyes darted from Pike to Carter and back again.

No, these were definitely not normal church people, and this place was no normal church.

Without thinking, Jared reached out and grasped Father Carter Duke’s hand.

Only finding Corina mattered now; his only link to the past, his family. And if these men could help, then he would forge any deal he had to in order to find her.

Still, when the smile returned to Father’s face, Jared instinctively wondered what sort of agreement he just bound himself to.

The sheriff awoke with
a splitting headache. At first he didn’t remember what had happened, let alone where he was, and he just lay on the ground, staring at a bath towel.

A towel. Nancy’s towel.

It all came flooding back and Paul tried to jump to his feet. But when he placed his arm on the floor, a searing pain shot from his right shoulder all the way to his fingertips.

“Shit,” he swore, recalling that he had been shot. He glanced down at his arm, and was relieved to find that the bullet had only grazed him, creating a flesh wound that had only bled a little. Some minor prodding with his other hand suggested that the bleeding had even stopped for now.

Nancy.

He used his other arm to push himself to his feet. For a second, his entire world spun and he thought he would come crashing down again. But squeezing his eyes shut somehow forced his equilibrium back to true, and the sensation passed.

Standing now, he probed his head next, and found a nasty lump on his forehead right above his left eye. With a grimace, he quickly searched the rest of his body, from his chest to his naked legs, for any signs of injury.

Nothing seemed out of place.

Yet he couldn’t help but think that he shouldn’t be alive.

But he was, and so was Nancy, at least for now... or at least that was what his intuition told him.

Sheriff White quickly grabbed his pants and pulled them on; they seemed lighter than usual, and it took a moment to realize that his gun was no longer in the holster.

Fuck. The biker must have taken it.

How could I have been so careless? How could I have let the man sneak up on us?

But that wasn’t quite fair, and he knew it. After all, the man had been camped out in the closet for... well, for God only knows how long. And the fucking creep had just been sitting in there, waiting and watching... the fucking guy had watched them have sex.

Still, he should have been more prepared; after what Dirk had told him, he should have been ready for
anything.

Paul swallowed hard.

The Crab has plans for you yet.

He did up his fly and buttoned his pants.

“Yeah, I’ve got plans for you, too, bud. You and your biker crew.”

Head still pounding, the sheriff fled his and Nancy’s house, not bothering to lock the door behind him. He surveyed the road, squinting into the dusk.

I must have been out for a good few hours
, he thought.

There were no cars on the street, and he didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. He supposed if there had been some motorcycles there, it would definitely have been a bad thing. A thing that would have prevented him from getting to the station and rounding up his hodgepodge team of civilians and criminals to go get Nancy back.

After all they had been through, after all of the unbelievable things they had seen over the past week, the last thing that he would let happen was to let a group of drug-dealing bikers fuck up his life—their lives—or Askergan.

Nancy’s face flashed in front of his eyes, her pretty face still damp from the shower, her hair wet and stringy.

I’m sorry
, she had mouthed.

Paul wondered for what. After all, this wasn’t her fault—none of it was
her
fault. This was his fault.

How had he let things go so far south since Sheriff Dana Drew had passed? How had he not been able rein things in? Even before the crackers had invaded, there had been signs of the town going to shit, that drugs had started to infiltrate everything from the church to the schools.

And not just the high schools, but the fucking middle schools.

“I’m sorry, Dana,” he said to empty air.

Askergan County’s sheriff pulled his cruiser door open and he stepped inside. It was like an oven in there, having baked in the sun all day, but he didn’t bother turning on the AC or rolling down the window. With gritted teeth, he backed out of his driveway and tore back down the street. The irony of retracing his steps, of racing out here to make sure that Nancy was okay, only to lose her and then race back, was not beyond him.

But that was beyond his control.

He couldn’t control the townsfolk, who were spiraling into a deep, dark hole; he couldn’t control the bikers that had stolen Nancy from him; and he questioned whether he could control even his newly appointed deputies.

The one thing he could control, however, was himself. And he just prayed that it was enough. Enough to save Nancy, and enough to save the godforsaken county.

“Stay alive, Nancy. Keep it together. I’ve got some crab hunting to do.”

“Jesus fuck.”

Seth was staring at his ruined face in the mirror.

His nose was a mess, the usually straight and narrow reflection a flat mush on his face. He tried to wipe the blood away from beneath his nostrils, but it was quickly replaced by fresh liquid. But while his nose was bad, his eye was probably worse. It was pushed back from his face, a little further than the other one. The pupil was wide, and the upper eyelid sagged over top of the sunken globe. A dark purple and red bruise was already starting to form on nearly the entire half of his face.

“Fuck.”

Seth looked away; staring at himself would only serve to either make him sick or make him question what he was doing.

Neither would do, not now.

Probably not ever.

Get the girl.

Seth went to the bed, his gait awkward as he bent to his left, trying to insulate what he was certain was at least two, maybe even three broken ribs.

He was convinced that if the girl on the bed—
the girl
—hadn’t awoken during their struggle, that there was a close to zero chance that picking her up would wake her.

Grinding his teeth against the pain, he reached down and threw the blanket off the girl. To his surprise, she was dressed in a pale blue dress that went to just below her knees.

He hadn’t been expecting that; he had been expecting a hospital gown, or maybe scrubs... not a neat blue dress. His eyes flicked to the man that lay unconscious on the ground, a small trickle of blood leaking from a cut on his forehead.

He must have put that on her...
What is he? Her boyfriend, maybe?

A cursory glance revealed no rings.

Not married.

And what is so special about this girl?

She didn’t look like anything special, what with her thin, pale face and black hair swirling about on the pillow beneath her head. He surmised that she might have once been pretty, but now she was just skin and bones.

Get the girl.

The voice was loud now, and Seth immediately snapped out of his stupor.

First he yanked out the remaining cords and tubes that still hung from the woman and then, in one sweeping motion, he leaned down and draped the woman’s thin arm behind his neck. Wheezing through the pain, he readied himself. Then, with a cry, he hoisted her body over his shoulder and across the back of his neck, like a fireman carry.

She was lighter than he’d thought, much lighter, and he found that when he straightened out, the pain in his side receded back to a dull grind.

He slid his right foot forward, wondering if, as light as she was, he would be able to support his weight and hers.

His ribs flared, but relief washed over him when he thought he could manage. He tried another step, and was again met with success. With a grunt, he took another two steps. Before he knew it, he was walking by the woman at the front desk who lay face down in a pool of her own coagulated blood.

Got the girl
, he thought.
But why was she chosen?

He spat a glob of blood.

Why was
I
chosen?