Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

The Keeper flickered his wrist next to the dog's eyes. He uttered but a single word: "Hit!"

The pit bull sprang forward. The Keeper dodged the swing of the shovel. The dog leaped several feet into the air and knocked Pamela to the cement. "Back!" The Keeper ordered, but the starving dog would not obey. "Back!" he demanded, sensing his loss of control. "Off of her!!" The dog was wild with hunger and the scent of the blood. The Keeper lifted the shovel and went after the dog.

Sharon looked away. The sounds of the slaughter echoed throughout the building. The Keeper shouted, he struck the dog again and again, but the dog's will overcame it all.

Sharon fainted. When she awakened, it was dark in the kennel.

She heard a car racing away.

Moving arrows of white light shot through the trees, followed by the growing whine of a car engine advancing steadily toward her. Daphne switched off the flashlight and darted into the trees as that sound grew increasingly louder. Tegg or some stranger? Maybe this wasn't a driveway after all, the way it seemed to go on forever.

She hid behind a tree, standing completely still as the vehicle passed, her breathing competing with the sound of tires in the mud. It was the Troopertegg. Wherever he had been for the last half hour, he was now leaving.

She headed back onto the road and took up running again, though this time with the light off, guided only by the glow of a broken moon. She checked over her shoulder repeatedly: If he returned the way he had come, perhaps he was gone for good; if, however, he turned left at the end of this long road, he would come across her car and most certainly return.

She ran faster, rounding two long turns. All at once the road spilled out into a clearing. The moon played its game of hide-and-seek, disappearing and denying her any sight of what lay ahead. It was far too dark to see anything clearly, but she edged her way tentatively out into the muddy, rutwormed driveway and followed it slowly up a rise. A large, heavy shape loomed to her right, another smaller, more angular shape directly ahead.

The moon cleared the clouds and it was like someone turning on the stage lights: ahead of her an old two-story homesteader log cabin; to her right, the large arcing curve of a Quonset hut.

No lights in the cabin. A single vehicle parked that she recognized immediately as belonging to Pamela Chase. A sense of dread filled her-had there been two people in the Trooper? She had seen the outline of only one. Had it been Tegg or Pamela Chase? Could she be certain?

She switched on the flashlight and sprinted to the cabin, drawing her weapon as she went. She could feel her heart clear up in her throat. She tried to swallow the lump away. Was Sharon here? She attempted to blink away the annoying white sparks that interfered with her vision. It had been two long years since she had tasted terror.

She climbed the wooden stairs, slipped off the gun's safety, and made herself alert for the slightest noise. A board creaked slightly underfoot.

The Quonset hut exploded in barking. It so startled her that she dropped to one knee and trained her gun in that direction, the flashlight tucked immediately beneath the weapon. For a moment she couldn't catch her breath, she was so surprised and startled. Frightened.

The dogs howled constantly for the better part of a minute and then gave it up to silence. Daphne, winded from the exhausting run, collected herself. She stood and circled the perimeter of the cabin, sliding her back against the logs, rushing quickly across the windows, weapon pointed through the glass. The kitchen door was open, its window broken. She edged it open with the toe of her shoe, and stepped inside, glass crunching beneath her shoes. She moved stealthily room to room, her weapon and flashlight held as a team, jerking around door frames and leveling the gun.

She climbed the stairs to the tightly confined second floor and continued her search. She entered a very small bedroom, the floor dotted with mouse pellets and dust balls. A mass grave of dead flies was collected at the bottom of the window frame from which one of the panes of glass was missing, the wood around it moldy.

She stepped up to this window and looked out on the Quonset hut below, hearing a loud hum coming from the building. At first she couldn't place it. His car returning? she wondered, panicked by the thought. As the moonlight intensified, a shadow raced from one end of the Quonset hut to the other, as if someone had yanked away a huge cover, and she identified the source of the sound as a vent stack plugged into the corrugated roof. A furnace.

Why heat a Quonset hut-even a kennel, if that's what it was?

They hadn't had frost in six weeks.

She hurried down the stairs, wondering whether to check the cellar before the Quonset hut. She had to! She descended slowly, her pulse thumping in her ears. It smelled like Dixon's autopsy room down here, and it terrified her. Light from the flashlight played off the stone walls. The storm doors to the outside were open, letting in the night. She reached the bottom of the stairs, gun poised, and turned right. Nudged open a door. Stepped inside.

The light revealed a plastic room, a shiny gray. It found the overhead surgical light and lowered onto the bloodstained operating table.

She was sure then what the furnace was for. She went off at a sprint. Up the cellar stairs, out into the cool night air. She fell to her knees and vomited. She stood and ran harder. The Quonset hut seemed to fade away from her. Her vision dimmed. Hyperventilating. Her feet sloshed through the wet grass.

She reached the door to the shed, the dogs barking frantically, and found an enormous padlock containing it. She stepped back, aimed her weapon, and shot four consecutive rounds. Two hit the lock but did nothing to open it, boring holes through the metal to no effect. Two others penetrated the galvanized metal, lost to the inside of the shed.

When she heard a rhythmic banging, obscured by the barking, she caught herself immediately and stopped firing. What had she been thinking? "Sharon?" she shouted, paying no consideration to the possibility of someone-a guard, Tegg-being nearby.

Daphne reared back and kicked the door repeatedly. It didn't budge. She grabbed hold of the lock. It was hot. One shot had struck it cleanly, damaging the casing, but the lock itself remained intact.

She circled the building, beating on the walls with the butt of her gun. Three quarters of the way down one wall, a return signal echoed back. Tears streaming from her eyes, Daphne shouted to the wall, "I'm coming in!" She came completely around the building: no other doors.

Deciding the structure's only door was far enough away from Sharon's location inside, Daphne elected to use the gun one more time. She placed the barrel's opening directly in contact with the brass lock, stretched her arm straight out, averted her eyes, leaned fully away, and squeezed the trigger. The dogs were barking so loudly that the discharge sounded more like a hand clap.

A piece of shrapnel sliced into her lower leg, barely noticed as she inspected her target. An oversized bullet hole was bored through the center of the lock, which otherwise remained intact. She slammed it against the door repeatedly, frustrated and angry.

She checked her leg. It was a pea-sized wound, the metal lodged inside. It was bleeding, through not badly. With each passing second, the pain intensified.

She knew then that she had to find another way inside. That lock wasn't coming off. She hurried to Pamela's vehicle and climbed inside. No key! She pounded her fist on the dashboard in frustration. She spotted an old tractor, grass growing up around it, but even from thirty yards away it was apparent that it hadn't run in years.

She came out of the car. Limping, she circled the building again. There had to be another way inside.