Faith of the Divine Inferno - Leslie Thompson (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

understand her.
“Cindy?” Shaw appeared out of his bedroom, still dripping from his shower and pulling his t-shirt over his head. At the sight of him, Cindy fell to hysterical pieces so that even her son felt her fear and cried with her. “What’s wrong?” he asked when she paused for breath.
“There are men in my house!” Cindy was gulping a lot of air in a valiant attempt to get a hold of herself. I half expected her to explode from it. “I don’t know what happened. One minute I was putting a cartoon on for Clay so I could shower, and the next minute five big men come busting through my door, screaming and yelling about abominations. I didn’t know what to do, so I grabbed Clay and ran out the door.”
“Call the police,” Shaw told me. He went to a closet inside the breakfast nook and took out a gun safe stored on the top shelf. Cindy’s eyes bugged as he took out a revolver and loaded it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, knowing full well that he was going to go to Cindy’s house and start shooting people if he had to. That would not be a good idea. If he wasn’t already in trouble for the unwilling lies I told at the Immortal Church of God, then he was going to be in it up to his eyeballs if he killed someone off duty.
Shaw gave me a look that was all the confirmation I needed. “Call the police.” He repeated. “Tell them that there is already an officer on the scene.”
“You aren’t going over there,” I snapped. “Those are probably the cult members Ryerson sent looking for us. If you wait here the incompetent jack-asses will either go away or come to us. If you shoot them here, it’ll be easier to claim self-defense.”
Shaw closed the revolver with a snap and went out the back door without another word. There is no arguing with some people. I ground my teeth in frustration and Cindy spoke in a tiny voice. “Cult members? What do cult members want with me?”
I started to correct the woman, but stopped. The less she knew, the better off she would be. “Stay here. I’ll be back.” I growled at her.
“You’re leaving me? Where are you going?” Cindy was getting hysterical again.
“Stay here and do not call the police! I’ll be back as soon as we’re done.” I slammed the door closed behind me and hoped that the woman did as I told her. I planned to do something very stupid, and the last thing I needed was to have to explain it to the cops, and then to a lawyer, a judge, and a jury.
Happily, I had woken up sufficiently paranoid that I put an inner pants holster, complete with a semi-automatic pistol under a roomy shirt before I left my apartment. As far as I knew, Shaw didn’t know that I was carrying it, though he did give me a look when I put a collapsible baton into my purse on our way out of the door. In the interest of not accidentally shooting Shaw before I knew where he was, I left the safety on when I pulled the gun and held it pointed at the floor in a two handed grip as I followed Shaw to the little cottage that shared his backyard.
He scowled at the gun from around the back door as I lifted my weapon on my approach. “I told you to call the police,” he hissed at me. “You better have a permit for that.”
“Of course I do,” I hissed the lie, keeping my voice down. “I’m going to corner one of these bastards and find out what Ryerson wants with me.” Without waiting for him to tell me no, I took the lead deeper into the house. I moved almost silently, easily falling into the old stalking habits I’d learned when I had to hunt for my food. I listened and watched everything as I moved, sorting out the slightest flicker of movement from the corners of my eyes and identifying every small sound that met my ears. A lot of the noise I heard was Shaw clomping over the hardwood floor behind me.
“What do they teach you about sneaking up on people in cop school?” I snarled at him in frustration. “If you can’t be quiet, then be still.” Shaw glared at me but stayed silent, his gun pointed harmlessly away from me to avoid shooting me by accident. I doubted Shaw ever shot anyone he didn’t mean to, but it was good to know that he put safety first.
I found a corner and squeezed my body into it to listen. So far, I hadn’t heard anyone but Shaw, and I’d seen nothing to indicate that the intruders had been looking for anything. Not that I could tell for sure, Cindy wasn’t a very good house keeper. There were dirty dishes piled in her kitchen sink, and her floor looked like a tornado had thrown up on it. A pile of clean laundry sat on her tiny table with some of it folded neatly in the basket sitting in the chair. I assumed that the living room was beyond the kitchen, then perhaps the bedrooms, living room, and front door.
Shaw positioned himself so that he was behind a wall and could see through the door beyond me. He met my eyes and shook his head, indicating that he didn’t see anyone without speaking. At least they taught him that much in the academy. I nodded and listened to the sound of Cindy’s hot water heater turning on, and her air conditioning blowing air through the vents. We waited for anything to happen, but the longer we waited, the more apparent it became that no one was there. I stepped out first and stood in the living room door way, making a lovely target out of myself.
When no one shot me, Shaw eased out from his cover and looked around. Like the kitchen, Cindy’s living room was a mess. Toys and dirty dishes were strewn everywhere, and cluttered the battered end tables sitting next to her threadbare couch. Next to the easy chair was an accordion folder full of carefully organized doctor bills and medical records. A peek at the name on the paperwork left me feeling guilty. Cindy was the single mom of a son with a serious heart defect. She didn’t need my crap overflowing onto her.
Wherever the intruders went, they had realized that they had the wrong address and had moved on. That they were looking for me in Shaw’s neighborhood meant that they were getting smarter and were having me followed. The alarm bells went off in my head as it occurred to me that the men had left Cindy’s house so that they could get the correct address and attack Shaw. My heart pounded at the thought that poor little boy would be subjected to those mad men. There was no telling what they would do to him.
“We better get back,” I announced as Shaw returned from Cindy’s bedroom. “If these guys are looking for us, it means that they know they were in the wrong house.”
“They’ll go to my place next,” there was real fear in Shaw’s voice as he jogged to the back door ahead of me. He broke into a run once his feet touched grass and I rushed to keep up with his longer strides. But he was faster than I and he reached his kitchen door first.
Cindy was a nervous wreck when we returned and had taken to compulsive cleaning to cope. We found her cleaning the cabinet beneath Shaw’s kitchen sink with Jim pounding on the pots with a spoon. She shrieked in terror and banged her head on the cabinet top as soon as we came in and she screamed again when she saw the gun Shaw held openly in his hand.
At the sight of her understandable response, I discretely put my pistol back into its holster at the small of my back. Shaw rushed to the front door to look out while I did my best to calm Cindy down.
“Did you find the men?” she gasped once she could think coherently.
“No, they’re gone. I think they knew they had the wrong house. They won’t bother you again,” I assured her.
“Who’s house are they looking for?” Cindy scooped up her son and held him tightly while he squirmed and complained. She was suddenly much calmer now that she knew that she wasn’t the target of a pack of lunatics.
We were standing in the middle of the kitchen when we should have been crouched on the floor and away from the windows. Even with the blinds down, there was a chance that someone could see us moving around. They definitely saw us cross the yard and go into the house. My back itched at the thought that there was someone waiting to strike at us through the window, and I fought the urge to fling myself onto the floor and crawl around like a baby.
“Get Clay home and call the cops now.” I pushed Cindy toward the door. I heard footsteps approaching and turned to see Shaw entering the kitchen with his revolver held at his side.
“I don’t see anyone,” he began. A sharp crack of breaking glass stopped him, making all three of us jump, and I felt as if I’d been punched in the back. I gasped and staggered, only vaguely aware that Cindy was screaming again as searing pain streaked along my back and chest and my lungs felt like they were being crushed in a vise. Stunned, I looked down to see a slender shaft of sharpened wood protruding from my upper chest. For the life of me I couldn’t understand how the thing got there and then another appeared just below my left breast. My body shuddered and wracked itself in shock and pain, and my legs took on a mind of their own and decided that this was a good time to give up.
I had enough sense to twist and hit the floor on my left side so that the projectiles weren’t disturbed and made my injuries worse. I fought for every breath through my compromised lungs and my limbs flopped helplessly against the floor. Every uncontrolled movement brought terrible pain through my torso and I screamed in agony.
Suddenly Shaw was there, staring horror into my face and calling my name. I tried to focus on him but couldn’t. My body was trying to repair the damage caused by the wooden shafts, but implements only tore open new wounds as soon as my flesh tried to close around them. Desperate to make the pain stop, I struggled to my knees and grasped the wood in my fingers. This was going to suck.
Shaw saw what I was doing, and grabbed my wrists to keep me from pulling out the shafts. “Stop! You’re making it worse!” he said. Then he rolled me against his legs and snapped the arrows flush with my back and threw the fletched pieces away.
Poor