Adermoor Cove: Donovan Road - 10. Chapter 10

The search party was over. Everyone had gone home due to the rain. It had taken Lane and his group an hour to reach Ramona's house. By then it had stopped raining - for the moment at least.

Ted had driven home in his fancy lawyer car, promising Carlos they would come back to the woods and look for Ramona but didn't mention the cave, although Lane got the feeling the cave was what they really meant. If they wanted to put themselves in danger by searching it, that was fine by Lane, but he didn't want to be near it.

If only they had found something more than a shoe in the woods. If only they'd found Ramona, okay by some miracle, then Lane wouldn't feel useless. I did my best, he kept trying to tell himself, but it didn't stop him from feeling inadequate.

He watched Ramona's house recede through the windshield as Enzo backed the cruiser out onto the road. The house looked lonesome under the grey sky, the windows staring out like hollow eyes. Then the car turned and the house was gone, replaced by pine trees. It took a second for Lane to realize they were headed back in the direction of the lighthouse.

His mind turned back to the cave. Ted and Enzo had both agreed they'd never seen the cave before, so what was it doing there now close to the edge of the woods? Had it just been waiting for Lane to find it? What was inside it? Where did he lead? Now that he was heading back home he hated himself for not having the stones to explore it more, to see where it led.

"Look out!" Carlos screamed suddenly.

Lane didn't have time to look up. In one blink of the eye he was sitting upright; in the next up was down and down was up as the car rolled. Lane was thrown about in his seat with only the seat belt to keep him strapped in. He felt as though he was being pummeled over and over again by a giant fist, knocking the air from his lungs. He heard the sound of breaking glass and crunching metal from every direction.

Then everything stopped.

Lane was hanging upside down again so the roof was directly below him. He could see shards of glass everywhere. The strap of the seat belt was stretched taut against his chest, groaning with strain. It was another second before the static completely cleared from his brain.

"Carlos?" he said in a weak voice. He could just see the deputy's arms hanging limply from the ceiling.

"Oh God," Lane croaked.

From the driver's seat, Enzo sucked in a breath. He reached over to Carlos and felt for his pulse. "He's okay. Just unconscious. Are you okay?"

"Shhh!" Lane hissed, his voice barely louder than a whisper. "There's something out there!"

A moment of silence. Lane strained to listen, praying what he thought he'd heard wasn't a figment of his imagination. Then he heard it, a deep chuffing sound coming from a massive animal. A bear. He could tell from the way Enzo had gone completely still the sheriff could hear it too.

Lane held his breath. Maybe if they held still and didn't make any noise, the bear wouldn't hear them, the bear would just move on.

Carlos, stirring awake, chose that moment to groan. Enzo grabbed his shoulder and put a finger to his lips. Carlos nodded and went still.

A massive pair of bear paws came into Lane's view. They were wide, at least six to eight across. The claws were long enough they touched the blacktop. Lane hadn't been this close to a bear since his mother, Nora, had taken him to the Indianapolis Zoo as a child.

There was something wrong with the bear - Lane could smell it. It was the smell of deterioration, made more potent by the moldy scent of rain still lingering in the air. It turned Lane's stomach. He had to hold his breath to keep from gagging.

Something wet hit the ground. Lane couldn't stop himself from looking, as several more drops hit the pavement. It was the infection that had plagued Charlie, Brendan and Vanessa. The darkness. There were things wriggling around within the droplets, parasites no bigger than inch worms.

The bear stopped, now closer to the front of the car. Rain had begun to fall against the road once more. Thunder cracked in the sky. The bear grunted and lowered its head. Lane could now see its eyes. Black drops dripped down the side of its face like tears of ash. Its fur had once been brown but now there were black spots all along its flesh, like moss. The front of its mouth looked as if it had been eaten away.

Then it looked right at Enzo.

Enzo, still strapped in his chair, reached for his gun. The next thing Lane knew the bear had squeezed its head through the window and was dragging Enzo through it. One second he was there, the next he was gone. Carlos was on the police radio calling for help. Then he threw the radio down and unstrapped the seat belt, shouting for his father.

The sound of gunshots and Enzo's screams broke Lane free from his paralysis. He dropped clumsily onto the roof, biting back a scream as glass cut into Lane's knees. He climbed his way up to the front of the cruiser with the floorboard over his head. The radio was squawking in his ear. He thought about grabbing it and repeating Carlos's cry for help but there was no time. The reports from Carlos's shotgun were deafening.

He wiggled his way through the window and stood. Carlos stood just feet away and was firing the shotgun. The bear was just feet away, its back heaving up and down. And Enzo was somewhere underneath it, letting out gurgling screams of agony. Blood flew from his lips in red spurts.

An eerie sense of calm came over Lane, temporarily drowning out the terror he felt, or at least dampening it. The bear was tearing into Enzo, ripping out his entrails. Somehow Enzo was still alive, still screaming.

Lane knew there was nothing they could do to save them; he knew a single shotgun wasn't going to take the bear down; he knew Carlos and he had to get away while they still could. He grabbed Carlos's arm. "Stop! We have to go!"

"My father…"

"He's dead. Now move!"

Enzo had gone completely silent now. If it wasn't for the gore that clung to the front of his shirt Lane could have fooled himself into thinking the man was simply asleep. All he knew was that they had to get away and the woods would be the best option to do that. At the very least they could climb a tree, out of the bear's reach.

With Carlos behind him, Lane ran towards a parting in the trees, cutting his arms on thick unwavering branches. Adrenaline helped him to push forward and ignore the pain. He was determined to keep himself and Carlos alive. With any luck the bear would forget about them.

He wasn't sure how long they'd been running when his foot caught on something and he crashed to the ground. Pain jolted through his body. His clothes hung off him, soggy and weighed down from the rain. Carlos grabbed his arm, helped him up. The cop was shaking, trying to suppress his grief. He turned away from Lane, perhaps in embarrassment. They were alone in the woods together, safe - for the moment at least.

Carlos let out a scream of anger and frustration, back hunched over, followed by hoarse sobs.

Lane went to him and hugged him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so, so sorry." It was the only thing he could think of to say. He hated the sense of relief he felt, the relief that someone was going through the same painful experience he'd been through multiple times. Now there's someone else who will know what I've been through, he thought, who will know what I feel. I don't have to carry it by myself anymore.

He pushed the thought away, focusing on the feeling of Carlos' arms around him, the solidity of his body. The realness of it. They were both trembling, cold.and afraid, holding onto each other so tightly Lane could feel their hearts beating against one another's. Carlos had buried his face in Lane's neck to muffle the sound of his sobs.

The moment was interrupted by the sound of something bursting through the trees, coming straight for them.

"We have to go," Lane said. He tugged at Carlos's arm and they were running again, fighting through the exhaustion.

Lane concentrated on the motions of his body. He ignored the sharp ache, like being stabbed by a sharp knife, pulsing through his rib cage, and the burning ache in his thighs. If he was to survive he had to keep going.

He didn't know how long he'd been running when he realized Carlos was no longer behind him. Lane fought the fear threatening to engulf him. Maybe Carlos had fallen behind and just needed to catch up.

A minute passed, then two, and Carlos had not appeared yet. Except for the sound of rain falling against the tree branches the woods were completely silent.

Carlos was gone.

                                 ...

"He's gone," a voice said.

Lane turned to face the voice that had spoken, hugging himself. He looked like a small boy, frightened and alone. His eyeliner had smeared and was now trailing down his face like black tears. His doppelganger stood just feet away, dry as a leaf, eyes as cloudy as the sky above their heads.

"The bear has him."

"What?" Lane looked back in the direction he'd come in. "I didn't even hear it take him."

"No, because you were too busy running for your life. Not that anyone could blame you."

Lane bit back a scream of frustration. Screaming wouldn't help, had never helped in the past. "Is there anything I can do? Can he be saved?"

His doppelganger smirked. "Now there's the Lane everyone knows and loves. Maybe, if you hurry."

"What do I do?"

"Well you already know where it's going and you already know what it wants, just as you sense Carlos is alive and why it took him."

"Because whatever the fuck it is, it doesn't want him, it wants me."

Lane's doppelganger nodded. "Very good."

"Can you help me?"

"That's something I don't know. With past incidents I've been able to reach you just enough to be able to survive and we were only dealing with people. But the block Nora put on me makes it hard."

"Block?" Lane demanded. "What block?"

The other Lane rolled his eyes in perfect imitation of the original. "You're good at ignoring the facts you know but don't want to admit to. But now is not the time to be discussing that particular subject. We've only dealt with infected people before, never a bear. I don't know if we have the power we need to stop it."

"We have to try," Lane said. "I came here to do something different, to end this nightmare once and for all. I'm done running."

This whole time his doppelganger hadn't stopped smiling; now his smile spread even wider. "That's the spirit."