MASON STREET NEAR DOLL FACTORY ROAD
She was a huddled ball down in the footwell of the backseat, her entire body clutched as tightly as a fist. The state police cruiser was still and cold. Outside, the wind was a tireless howling monster.
Dez had no idea how long she lay there. Thirty minutes? More? Probably more. She knew that, despite everything, despite all need and logic, she had fallen asleep. There had been no other direction in which she could flee.
In her sleep she thought she heard the chatter of automatic gunfire, the screams of men and women, and the roar of truck engines. But now that she was awake she heard none of those sounds.
Every muscle ached from the tension of remaining perfectly still. Her head hurt horribly where she had struck it when they’d hit her with the Taser. Her chest hurt from the strain of keeping silent even while the sobs tore their way out of her.
And she was cold. God … so cold. The November wind blowing in through the open door cut her like knives. Frigid rainwater dripped from the wire cage and pooled under her. There was no escape from the cold. Rain soaked into the tight knot of her French braid and burned like drops of boiling water on her scalp, especially over the bruise she’d gotten when falling. It crept down the collar of her shirt and the waistband of her pants, soaking her underwear, pooling inside her clothes as she lay shivering.
He left me.
Those three words hung in her mind like an echo frozen in time. She knew that the thought was illogical, but what did logic have to do with her world anymore? Logic had been consumed back at Doc Hartnup’s. Logic was torn flesh and gnawed bones. Logic was dead.
He left me.
She’d warned him. Goddamn it if she hadn’t warned him. She told him not to get out of the car. He hadn’t listened. They never do. That was a lessen Dez had learned when she had begged her daddy—begged him on her knees as she clung to his legs—not to go when they wanted to send him to Kuwait. She’d soaked the knees of his pants with her tears, and Daddy had been forced to peel her off of him. He’d been so frustrated that he’d yelled at her. Told her to grow up.
Dez had known that it was wrong for him to go. There were monsters out there in the darkness. There always were, hiding in the shadows, right beyond the corner of your eye, waiting to take you.
Daddy had gone anyway.
On the last d
ay—on that terrible morning at the airport—he’d tried to make it all right with her. He’d knelt down and stroked her blond hair and kissed her nose. He’d said, “Don’t worry, Pumpkin, you know I’ll come back for you. ”
That’s what he’d said.
Not come back to you.
Come back for you.
Then he left. Six weeks later he was gone forever, his helicopter blown out of the Arabian skies by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by someone in his own platoon. Friendly fire, they called it.
Mommy was dying already when they got the news. She was leaving Dez one ragged breath at a time as cancer gnawed at her with relentless hunger. When the man from the army read the letter, Mommy had simply closed her eyes and looked away. A single, silver tear rolled down to the pillow. She never spoke a word after that. Not to the army man, not to anyone. In three weeks Mommy was gone. She went away from Dez, too. First into her own grief and then into the darkness and finally into the ground.
Dez was in the second grade. Too young to understand the mysteries of death, but too old not to grasp the concept that anyone could leave at any time. For any reason. Daddy had proved that. So had Mommy.
So had everyone.
Even this trooper. This young guy named Saunders.
Left her.
Alone.
In the cold rain.
With the monsters.
So, why not sleep?
Why not fall into the deepest, darkest hole that opened up in her mind? It was so much safer down there, because you’re all alone. No one can leave you when you’re all alone.
She lay there in the footwell and listened to the rattle of the rain on the roof. Fighting the shivers. Trying to ignore the cold. Trying to block out the pain in her cramped muscles.
Wondering, though, why she was alive. Why hadn’t the monsters taken her? She couldn’t run. She was cuffed, battered, helpless. Meat in a fridge for those fuckers.