Here's the first installment of my web serial Addicted.
Cade Becker just survived a brutal attack at the hands of his big
brother. Now, on the mend and wracked with guilt, Cade decides to find
out for himself what could turn a good man into ... something else.
His search leads him from his suburban New York home to an abandoned
town full of horrors and beyond, his brother's last words "Where is
she?" still ringing in his ears.
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The
barking brought Cade and Melissa Becker back to consciousness, if
only barely. The floodlights were on, meaning that something had
triggered the motion sensors.
He
mumbled something, and she responded with a sleepy groan. “Loki,
come on, buddy, shut up.” Expecting the dog to throttle back to
growling, as he always did when he wanted to bark but his owners most
decidedly wanted him to not bark, Cade drifted down, a few glorious
degrees closer to slumber.
Loki,
uncharacteristically, continued to bark.
“Friggin’
deer,” he said as he stared at the ceiling. “You need to do a
better job of marking your territory. Now shut up already!” Loki paid him
no mind, and barked louder than before.
Dog
owners know that a dog is like a baby in many respects, not the least
of which is that the dog owner learns to decipher his pet’s
different barks the way a parent can decipher a newborn’s cries.
After a while, he knows when a dog’s hungry, sees a squirrel, wants
to play…
…and
when he knows something’s wrong.
Cade
bounced out of bed, instantly awake, and walked to the balcony doors.
The spotlights threw out a wide cone, but the back yard was large and
a great deal was lost to shadows. He absentmindedly scratched Loki,
his hackles raised, behind the ears. Still he barked, and that had
never happened before. Cade stared into the backyard intently,
concentrating on the fringe of the light, knowing that anything
within it would be noticeable.
A
small voice came to him. “What is it?”
“Nothing,
babe. Go back to sl-“
To
his left, but exposed in the light, something made a beeline to the
back of the house. It was not a deer, unless they had learned to run
on their hind legs. Cade jumped back, and that’s when the pounding
started. Whatever it was didn’t care if it was seen or heard, only
that it got into the house.
“What
the fuck?!?”
“Oh
my God! What is it?”
Loki
bolted downstairs, making a vicious sound the whole way. He wanted to
tear whoever was trying to get in his house apart.
Cade
couldn’t agree more. He threw open the closet door, and fumbled in
the dark for the keypad he knew was there behind half a dozen suits
he never wore. “Call the cops.” They simultaneously punched in
numbers: she on her cellphone, he on his safe. The door swung open.
He pulled out the handgun, popped in a magazine, and hit the slide.
“You…are
not...going outside. Wait for the police!”
He
grabbed the spare magazine and shoved it into his pajamas pocket as
he slid on his shoes. Now the attacker was screaming something that
may have been, “Where is she?” Over and over again…”Where is
she???”
The
pounding was moving all along the back wall of the house randomly, as
if the wannabe intruder was too far gone to notice that there was a
very large, very breakable plate glass window close by. He was hidden
from sight by the balcony, but Cade got the impression that the
intruder wouldn’t care if he had a neon sign on his back.
“This
guy’s fucking crazy, honey. He’s in the light, he’s screaming,
he knows we have a dog in here, and he’s still trying to get in. He
could leave us and go next door, and I don’t want any dead
neighbors on my conscience. I’m not going after him unless I have
to … I’m not stupid … but I need to keep him in sight.” He gave
her a kiss. “I’ll be fine. Promise. Be sure to tell the cops what
I look like and that I’m armed.”
She
began speaking into the phone as he bounded down the stairs. Between
the pounding and the barking, he couldn’t even hear his own
footfalls on the wooden staircase, so he knew he didn’t have to
worry about losing the element of surprise. He opened a window in the
study and slid out as nimbly as his tired thirty-something-year-old body would
let him.
Moonlight
and familiarity with the land allowed him to sneak around the side of
the house quietly, not that it was necessary. He peered around the
corner. Sure enough, the madman (he was sure it was a man, now) was
running back and forth along the back wall, hitting whatever happened
to be in front of him. Cade could hear Loki matching the man pace for
pace inside the house, his snout undoubtedly only a few inches from his prey.
Maybe
I should have just let him out, instead. Where are the goddamn cops?
True
to his vow to not be stupid, Cade only watched. Something about the
way the man moved reminded him of someone he knew. What bothered
him was the way the man was pounding. His left arm was moving
normally, but his right never got raised above shoulder level. Almost
as if he had an injury … or an artificial shoulder.
Just
then, by design or accident, he found the window. It cracked, then
broke.
That
woke him up. Melissa was in real danger now, so he yelled, “Hey,
asshole!” and moved around to the back to get a clear shot. The man
turned, and it all fell into place.
He
thought of the man screaming, “Where is she?” He knew that
panicked voice. He had heard it for the first time when he was a
young boy, lost in the woods during an ambitious game of Hide and
Seek. “Game’s over, Cade! Where are you? Where are you?” He
remembered thinking how mad Mom was going to be when his big brother
couldn’t find him, and how funny that would be.
Then
Matt Becker charged, covering the distance too fast, way too fast.
