Bloodthirst in Babylon Read online

  The cop stared. “Hey, it’s you,” he said, sounding amiably unable to come up with a name.

  Doyle wiped water from his lips, reinforcing the notion that it was only his thirst that had brought him to within earshot. “Everyone’s gone and the place is locked up ‘cept for the employee door,” he said. “If someone wants to lock up after me…”

  The young cop broke into a broad grin. “You’re a curious one, aren’t you, Doyle? Like to hear what’s going on?”

  Well, at least the cop knew his name.

  The tall, white-haired department store owner came out, apparently drawn by the voices. He had the physique of a runner and crystal-clear eyes.

  He stood behind the cop and muttered angrily, “For God’s sake, this is the sort of thing I’ve warned against.” His comments and glare were addressed to the cop, as if the subject of his simmer wasn’t standing right there.

  There goes the job, Doyle Armstrong had thought at the time. He had the sinking, panicky sensation of someone on the verge of unfair termination—but then the feeling was replaced by one of buoyant relief: He was free of Babylon at last.

  “Mr. Chaplin, you have a key,” the cop said, as carefree as usual. “Doyle here is anxious to get home. It’s ‘Doyle,’ right?”

  Doyle nodded as the elegant older man grunted and retreated to his inner sanctum, soon to return with a thick ring of keys, which he slapped into the cop’s hand.

  Marty McConlon rolled his eyes, still smiling, as if the two of them were weathering Chaplin’s storm together. The cop ambled toward the parking lot exit with Doyle silently in tow. Shadowy mannequins loomed from every crooked bend of the narrow aisle. Ceiling blades swirled high overhead, the ancient store’s answer to central air.

  The cop held the door and presented the night with a flourish.

  “I didn’t hear nothing,” Doyle had mumbled on his way out. For some reason, it seemed important.

  “Okay,” the young cop breezily replied. “You didn’t hear a thing.”

  He grinned.

  V

  That had been the night before. Tonight, the frozen-limbed mannequins still creeped him out as he groped his way to the employees’ exit, this time alone. He made it safely and turned to search the shadows for the on-duty manager who was supposed to lock up after him.

  Doyle saw and heard no one, but he’d been told to leave, so he shrugged and stepped partially out of the doorway and peered at the parking lot. It stood nearly empty in the foggy yellow glow of a pair of tall sodium vapor lights. Past the lot, on Main View, traffic moved fairly steadily. It was a few minutes after nine, and dark.

  “I want to get home before dark.”

  Now what the hell had the fool girl meant by that? Doyle pushed his way out and clanged the metal door closed behind him. His ears perked for even the smallest sounds. Habit, most likely, from the Badlands. He took a sharp right onto the pavement in front of the three-story building, then another onto the sidewalk of well-lit Main View Road.

  It was like day out here, people of all ages—but mostly older—strolling and eating ice cream cones and walking dogs and gazing into lit store windows displaying shoes, hardware, rugs, books, banking and dry cleaning services, jewelry, food and coffee.

  Nothing like his neighborhood, where folks really did need to get home before dark.

  A car horn sounded and someone on the sidewalk playfully yelled at the driver.

  Both sides of the street were lined with birch and maple saplings tethered to tree lawns to form skimpy green arches in front of the brick and wood-frame storefronts.

  “…home before dark.”

  Funny, a young girl like that, afraid of walking alone with all these folks out on the streets.

  “What a night.”

  The voice chilled him, nearly stopping him in his tracks. An old lady passed, dragging a yellow poodle that walked as though its feet hurt. Not her. The voice was young, insolent and male.

  The blond-haired man came from nowhere to sidle up to Doyle. Said nothing now. Just smiled brightly in the streetlight.

  He fell in and matched Doyle’s pace. They wound their way through outdoor tables filled with ice-cream eaters and coffee sippers.

  The street looked less well-lit the next block down.

  The blond man snickered. He slowed, fell behind until Doyle couldn’t see him without a glance over his shoulder. Jason Penney, in his early twenties, couldn’t have gone more than one-fifty sopping wet. Doyle could take him easy if he had to—but where were Purcell and the others? He had to know.

  An extended family out for a stroll made room for Doyle and the trailing Penney in front of a tire store still open for business. With the incandescent light leaking from a display window fully illuminating the scene for brief seconds, Doyle saw what looked to be four or five generations of a family, one member more wizened and slow-moving than the one before. Their lively chatter died as the two groups passed.

  Penney laughed like he’d been expecting that reaction. “Finally some respect from this goddamn town,” he said. He had a high, tight voice that would have seemed insolent just commenting on the weather.

  Doyle said nothing. He watched a white-eyed figure on a painted bench. As he got closer, it became a slender, raven-haired young woman with a cigarette dangling between her lips. She caught his gaze.

  “There you are,” she said.

  Huh?

  She drew the cigarette from her lips, tapped out the ash on the ground and grinned as Doyle hurried on.

  Another shadow, smaller than the girl, disengaged itself from a tree larger than the saplings in the previous block, and a boy in his early teens made Doyle veer. The boy snorted.

  Footfalls. More pairs of feet than just Penney’s following him like echoes. He forced himself to maintain a steady pace and not look back. He was nearly to Third Street. Half a block away, four elderly people sipped cool drinks at a café table set up in front of a bookstore. Three younger men drew around the seated figures and the four hurriedly rose and finished their drinks.

  “Stay awhile, Grandma,” one of the newcomers called out, and the others hooted.

  His deep rumble identified him immediately as the notorious Purcell.

  Doyle had seen him with the cop, McConlon, on other nights. Just hanging, the two of them with heads together. Purcell’s rigid face was now blue with stubble.

  “How ya doing, Doyle?” Purcell said, eyes locked in on him as the old folks scuttled away.

  Doyle wouldn’t have even guessed that Purcell knew his name. Bro; that’s all he’d heard from them before now.

  “Hey, Duane, don’t he look like the dude on TV?”

  Coarse laughter. Lots of it.

  Doyle whirled to see too many young men. They came closer, clustered around him in a claustrophobic circle. No, not just men. There was the slender dark-haired girl with the cigarette, and the younger boy. And still others coming at him from out of the darkness.

  “You mean the comedian dude?” said Purcell. Then to Doyle: “Say something funny, bruthuh.”

  Doyle jerked backwards as something touched his foot. He looked down in disgust as he felt the rat’s cold belly and sorry-assed tail slithering across his shoe and touching up against one bare ankle. He stepped back quickly as the thing ambled into the night.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  The town was full of the things.

  More wild laughter. Keep walking, he told himself. They wouldn’t do anything with all these town folks out. Doyle had been stopped just out of the business district, and most of the strolling townspeople seemed to have found other placed to be, but he still saw the occasional car on the street out front and hand-holding couples quickly squeezing past the crowd on the sidewalk. It was too busy out here for him to be in any real danger.

  Besides, the Sundown was just a couple more blocks to the east. Not far at all in a car. Course, he was on foot. And currently surrounded by eight or ten townies who didn’t look like they were t
here to safeguard his way back.

  Purcell broke from the circle and took a seat at the outdoor table the two elderly couples had hurriedly vacated. He made a quick hand motion and someone from the back of the cluster dropped something heavy onto the tabletop. He grunted at the effort and the glass-topped table shuddered.

  Doyle swallowed to wet the cement that had formed in his throat. “Okay, a suitcase,” he said, trying to keep it light.

  Yeah, a scuffed leather suitcase that—

  “Hey,” he said in the next moment. “That’s mine!”

  Something squealed as more fat, long-tailed bodies rolled across his feet. Doyle tried to back up, but he’d run out of space. He could feel hot breath huffing down his neck, and smelled the strong scent of rancid meat.

  “What the hell?” he snapped, anger momentarily overruling fear.

  He moved in to snatch the suitcase—his luggage—but Purcell swatted it off the table. It fell heavily and someone scooped it up and made it disappear in the crowd.

  Something about the feeble streetlight out front made Purcell’s eyes shine white-hot.

  “How did you…?”

  Doyle’s anger had already started to turn to leaden dread as he considered what it meant that Purcell had his things. First, that they’d broken into his room at the Sundown, and had obviously packed his bag. Where was Carl during all this? Had they hurt him?

  He could hear the sound of a zipper unzipping, and then the slender-haired girl said, “Check this out.”

  She’d opened his suitcase and now held up a pair of his wildly patterned undershorts, drawing hoots of laughter.

  Catching quick peeks at the street, Doyle could see a few cars cruising by without slowing to investigate the sidewalk mob. Maybe even speeding up.

  “So now you’re all packed up with nowhere to go,” said Purcell, still seated.

  “You broke into my place.”

  “Not me,” said Purcell. “Friend of mine, this afternoon. And he didn’t break in. He used a key. Left the place looking as neat and tidy as he found it.”

  Doyle’s fury got him moving. He wheeled and headed straight for the nearest body, determined to steamroll through it if he had to. But he didn’t. The crowd unexpectedly parted. That’s all they wanted to do, just tease him. Freak him out, scare the scary nigger away.

  Their plan had worked to perfection. He wouldn’t even go through the motions of filing a police report. Let them keep his underwear and toothbrush and ragged suitcase. Small price to pay. He’d be out of there by morning. Carl could tag along if he wanted. Or stay. That was fine, too.

  It took a few seconds for Doyle to realize he was leading a crowd. He heard Penney giggling behind him and a few others muttering, but they kept their distance. Kept it until they drew even with a parking lot fronting a florist shop with three customers chatting away on the other side of an inviting expanse of warmly lit display glass.

  As they closed in, Doyle threw his elbow back and connected with Jason Penney’s throat. He enjoyed the hell out of hearing the townie gagging and puking, but everything went very bad very quickly after that.

  As they fell on him, Doyle’s first thought was that this was going to be the worst beating of his life. But that was interrupted by other thoughts, much darker ones, when the first set of teeth nestled into his groin.

  Part One

  Boomtown

  What an object of horror Babylon has become among the nations!

  Jeremiah 50,23

  Chapter One

  Black and white with a cherry on top.

  Melanie’s first and still-favorite riddle sprang to Todd Dunbar’s mind as the squad car pulled the weary Olds to the shoulder of a highway somewhere north of Toledo and I-90, the turnpike they’d left early to save a few bucks. Joy’s idea, and a clever one if you didn’t count the extra fuel cost in cruising a highway to nowhere.

  The “cherry” flashed red and blue on the dome of the marked Crown Vic that had pulled behind them on the road’s saggy shoulder.

  “Uh oh,” Joy murmured from the seat next to him.

  Yeah. Uh oh. The too-late warning got passed around in the backseat, first taken up by ten-year-old Melanie, then echoed by her five-year-old sister, Crissie, and finally picked up by four-year-old Todd Junior, or simply Little Todd.

  “Quiet,” Todd told all of them as he pawed through glove box litter for the car’s title or registration or whatever the hell paperwork he had to prove the pile of junk was his.

  Like anyone else would claim it.

  He found a plastic packet of official-looking documents under layers of fast food napkins, crumpled packs of cigarettes and creased maps of states through which he couldn’t recall traveling.

  The mess bothered him, as if the cop would consider neatness when doling out punishment for whatever violation he’d witnessed. Maybe nothing more than the general condition of the beater itself. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d been pulled over for that in the last eight months.

  Todd sneaked quick peaks out the rearview while the rest of the family gawked in open curiosity at the flashing vehicle behind them. Men were raised as boys to look bored rather than guilty or excited when caught in the sights of the law, even when innocent. Women and girls craned their necks every time they saw a fucking strobe light.

  ‘What’s he doing?” Joy demanded in her high, tight voice.

  If they were a band of outlaws, she’d be the one copping a plea even before they got read their rights.

  Todd drew a cigarette from the one crumpled pack that still held a few and held it between grim lips while he depressed the car’s lighter. His first instinct had been to hold off. Nothing to be gained by pissing off a non-smoking cop, but the wait was making him crazy.

  “He’s running the tag,” he said, knowing his brief response would only draw more questions.

  He was right. They came, like a hard rain, from wife and daughters alike.

  “Easy,” Todd muttered, trying to stem the chatter while wrestling once again for an explanation.

  So many possibilities, beginning with the muffler that had finally burned through the wire coat hanger he’d used to prop it in place a state or two ago. It had been, for the last ten or fifteen miles, sparking pavement like a butane lighter. Or maybe it was the stickers on his West Virginia plates. Todd couldn’t remember if he’d renewed them on time, but he suspected the worst. When you don’t have cash for such luxuries as car insurance, tires and sticker renewal, you fly under the radar screen as much as possible.

  He glanced once more out the mirror, but three bobbing heads in need of washing obstructed his view. Dunbar sighed. Pack of hill rats from West Virginia: in some places, reason enough to get pulled over.

  “I told you we should have paid that ticket,” Joy said with a strained urgency that suggested she’d admit to anything if they’d let her walk.

  “No one here cares about Parkersburg parking tickets,” he said between clenched teeth.

  “Afternoon, folks. See your license, please?”

  Todd jumped at the cop’s sudden appearance in his open side window. One of the girls yelped, a sharp sound like a hiccup. The lighter popped up from the dashboard mount to indicate its red-hot availability, but Todd ignored it. He brushed the cigarette from his lips and let it fall to his lap while he rooted around in his back pocket for his paper-thin wallet.

  All this time to kill, and he’d forgotten to dig out his license. He hoped it was current. Another expense you set aside when it’s that or a bag of groceries. As he riffled through his wallet, he knew that the officer looking over his shoulder could read the family’s bleak condition in the emptiness of its credit card pockets and the flimsiness of the billfold compartment. That is, if he hadn’t already detected destitution in the migrant meanness of the car and family. Todd found and pulled free the laminated card and hurriedly stuffed the wallet in his pants.

  As he handed over the license, he caught his first glimpse of the man stan
ding there. His face was round and smooth and young, the expression on it unexpectedly open.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Todd watched the cop study the license for a minute or more, moving his lips while reading the bare-bone details of Todd Dunbar’s life. The cop stopped once or twice to peer into the backseat as if he held in his hand a family history that could be verified with a glance.

  “Mr. Dunbar,” he said tentatively, like he was trying out the name for effect. He straightened up, popping his back and grimacing. This one wasn’t nearly as trim or muscled as many of the young cops with whom the Dunbars had become acquainted of late.

  He bent again and brought his soft face level with the window. “A ways from Parkersburg, huh?”

  Todd nodded. “A ways.”

  He knew what the cop was getting at, but it wasn’t any of his goddamn business why he’d brought his family down from the hills. This was still America, wasn’t it?

  “We’re looking for work,” Joy blurted in the stubborn silence following her husband’s scant response. “We were in Akron—in Ohio—‘cuz I got a cousin back home who’s friends with a man who said he was working for this polymer company there that was hiring. But we got there and they wouldn’t even take our application, so we’re heading to Detroit. I got a brother-in-law who knew a guy…”

  By the time even Joy realized she’d missed her train of thought, Todd had his gaze fixed on a billboard fifty yards up the road. It was faded and pockmarked with small caliber bullet holes outlined in rust. It said there’d be an ice cream stand at the next mile, but Dunbar doubted it. Things changed. You couldn’t stop it.

  “Detroit,” the cop said. “Guess you folks are unfamiliar with the area or you would have taken the turnpike to 280 and caught I-75. This way, you pass through every forgotten little town in southeastern Michigan. And there’s a lot of them.”

  “We never been there. To Detroit,” Joy said. “We were looking for a shortcut to save money on tolls, so we got off the interstate before Toledo and headed north. One highway led to another.” She shrugged, wisely letting the rest go.