Crawling Things

By Foy W. Minson

In a small, northern California town, an abomination that shouldn't exist outside of nightmares has long flourished unnoticed by limiting its sustenance to what it receives from out of the area.  But fate disrupts that system of provision, and it falls upon the local populace to satiate horrific needs.  The town drunk witnesses the beginning of these depredations, but how can he convince anyone that what he saw wasn't just another phantom from a bottle?  Could such evil come from so innocuous a figure as he describes?  Believed only by a young girl who befriends him against warnings from her local cop and her parents, he knows the thing will keep returning for more of those he loves unless he stops it.  But can he overcome mean-spirited harassments, laughing criticisms of his crusade, and alcohol-enhanced limitations of a head wound from a war he can't remember?  Can he construct a suitable weapon in time to kill the monster?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Foy W. Minson
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985599299

Foy W. Minson

Foy W. Minson joined the U. S. Air Force in the summer after high school graduation, became an aircraft mechanic, and served eight years, half of it in Europe.  After that, he was a police officer for almost eighteen years before taking a disability retirement, after which he was a private investigator, a commercial property manager, a security guard, and a courthouse weapons screener.  He currently lives and writes in Santa Rosa, California.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Varna, Bulgaria

1846

The night stirs.  In the murky gloom beneath the branches of an enormous, low-hanging fig near an ancient retaining wall against a low hill, an unmarked section of the stonework swings back into stygian darkness.  A figure, shapeless in generous skirts and hunched beneath a dark shawl with a cowl shading her face, emerges and moves to the edge of the tree’s faint moon-shadow.  She waits there at the edge of the churchyard until a cloud slides across the crescent moon, plunging the ghostly scene into deeper darkness.  Carrying a basket held high, she steps out in a shuffling gait that limits any jarring of its contents tucked beneath a gray, silky mantle.  She pauses at the front corner of the old church, making certain, even at this late hour, that no one is about.  She steals along the wall to the wide fan of steps before the church’s main doors and creeps up high enough to set the basket on the top step.  Again, glancing about, she turns with the re-emergence of the moon and, as silent as the other shadows, retraces her steps.  Without further pause, she enters the darkness behind the wall, and the secret portal closes.

THE SHADOWS CAST BY the moon had moved little by the time the old priest’s slow footsteps echoing through the dark streets approached the tall, front doors of his church.  He had spent the hours since mid-afternoon giving what comfort he could to the family of one of his older parishioners after officiating at the man’s funeral.  The man had been a good husband and provider.  He should have died peacefully in bed surrounded by those who loved him, not struck down in the street for a perceived insult.  Life for his people under the heel of the Ottoman Turks was trying, indeed. 

The priest yearned for his bed and the oblivion of sleep, but he was confident that a supper kept warm would be waiting for him even at this hour nearer to midnight than dusk.  And, even though he had little appetite, he would do his best to eat most of it.  The sisters did try. 

Centuries old and grimy with encrusted soot, the granite blocks of the old, gothic church’s outer walls, dark even in daylight, seemed in the night to soak up the light of the slivered moon like the soot-coated, glass chimney of an oil lamp.  Still, he had trod those worn steps so many times over the years he would have noticed even a newly added pebble.  As he topped the lowest step, moonlight leached details from surrounding shadows, and the basket materialized on the top step.

He smiled.  Probably something left for the family.  Not wanting to further disturb them in their grief, a thoughtful donor must have left it at the church rather than at their house.  Or perhaps it was something for him and the three aging, religious sisters housed next door.  A loaf of good bread would be a welcome change from the sincere but lamentable efforts of the ladies. 

He was reaching to draw back the cloth covering the prize when the fabric moved.  It couldn’t have been caused by a breeze; there was none.  With a sour taste seeping into his mouth at the prospect of what he now suspected, he closed his eyes and silently voiced a prayer that it was a loaf of bread with possibly a mouse gnawing at the crust, knowing all the while that it would not be so.  Such a gift, if it was what he now feared, was not all that rare in these days of oppression so blatant as to be laughable if the results weren’t so deadly.  Too many times in the nearly forty years he had served at the church, the responsibility of a young life had been left in his hands.

He pulled the cloth back and peered into the face of an infant whose age was likely measured in short weeks.  Wide-open, dark eyes peered back at him, though the babe remained silent.  He lowered the cloth back to block the chill air and picked up the basket.  There was no note pleading that the church might care for the child in the place of its deceased parents.  Of course, such a supplication was not needed; although, it would be helpful if he could at least provide a name to the child’s new family.  But then, perhaps going through a christening would better engender feelings of family with whomever he selected.  He just hoped he could find a suitable family before he had to send the child over to the orphanage.  He’d give himself a week, confident that the sisters could handle any necessary tasks for that long.  The orphanage had too many already, and he was disturbed by the growing prospect of the church losing the orphanage building to the Ottomans.

A sister relieved him of the basket not ten steps inside the front door.  He asked her to determine the nature of this latest donation and headed for the rectory. 

A half hour later, another sister interrupted his night prayers to report a healthy baby girl, well-fed and sleeping peacefully in fresh swaddling.  She left him with a steaming bowl of stew that filled his room with the gamey aroma of mutton, and he sat fishing for pieces of meat while pondering potential solutions of equally scanty proportions.

AFTER MASS THE FOLLOWING Sunday, the priest stood outside the front doors while his parishioners trickled out.  As their priest and confessor, there was little he didn’t know about every one of them.

Nikolai and Raina Vasov stepped into the sunlight with Nikolai’s older brother, Khristo, and the pieces of the puzzle the priest had been wrestling with shifted and settled into place, and it was as though a heavy load carried awkwardly on weary shoulders settled into place.  The load became no lighter, just more easily borne. 

Khristo’s wife, Katrina, came after them carrying her daughter, Ariana, aged two.  Ariana’s two brothers, Giorgio, seven years, and Sergio, five years, emerged from the church, tore off down the steps, and disappeared around the corner of the building in whatever game had seized them.  The priest had officiated at the younger couple’s wedding three years earlier, and they were still childless.  He knew they loved children from the way they doted on their niece and nephews. 

Khristo and Nilolai’s younger sister, Alexandrina, had married only in the past year and was also childless, but she and Miklos had not yet had much time to create a family. 

Nikolai was captain on one of the ships owned by Khristo, a prosperous merchant there in Varna, one of the major seaports on the Black Sea.  The priest was confident that Nikolai and Raina, both good Christians, would be good parents.  He had hopes that life as a Vasov might ensure the foundling had a chance for a good life. 

He caught Raina’s eye when the young woman glanced about.  With a smile, he beckoned for her to bring Nikolai and to join him.

IT HAD BEEN TWO YEARS since Khristo Vasov had gained a new niece from the good priest of his church when he walked into the room where his wife sat at a table with Raina.  On the floor nearby, four-year-old Ariana played with her adopted cousin, Sofia, now a toddler.  When Khristo locked eyes momentarily with Kristina, their conversation stopped and both women sat silent while he pulled out a chair and sat. 

Raina stood up to leave in order that Khristo could discuss matters that seemed important, but, with a shake of his head, he waved her back to her seat.  She picked up Sofia and sat back at the table. 

Even Ariana could tell all was not right, and she went to her mother to cling to her skirts.  As she gazed up at him, he had to tell himself it was not condemnation he could see in her large, brown eyes. 

He diverted his eyes as he raised the two purses in his hand, heavy velvet with strong draw-cords and comfortably heavy if not for what it represented and set them on the table.  Turning back to face his small family, he forced his mouth into a smile that his eyes denied and muttered, I could not refuse.

Kristina reached a hand across to touch his.  But, my love, Vasov has long been a name of importance in Varna.  Is it to mean so little now?

Khristo fingered one purse, working loose its tightly drawn cord.  Little enough to the Turk.  He is an uncle of the Sultan’s newest wife, and he has much influence.  He desires the wealth he thinks my ships, docks, and land will give him.

But, if you refuse —

If I refuse, he will take it, anyway, and probably my head, as well.  The Turk will still become a merchant, and the Vasovs would not have even this.  He brushed his hand over the top of the bag so that it flopped over, spilling some of the gold coins onto the table.  Barely the price of even one of the ships.  I don’t know why they even pretend.  It is like a game for them to see how many ways they can make our people squirm.  If they don’t take it with taxes, they just take what they want, anyway.  Christians are expected to be grateful for simply being allowed to live.  It is too often we are not.  His words were becoming harsh.

Ariana began to cry, and Katrina helped her climb up onto her lap.  Shush, sweet one.  Your father is not angry with us.

Khristo laid his hand across the heavy, velvet purse and peered at it for a moment before resuming, his voice once again the soothing blanket his family knew.  There may be enough if I use it wisely.  But we must leave Varna and this house that is no longer ours.  We must leave Bulgaria.  Turning his eyes to Raina, he added, All of us, and quickly.  I’ve already sent someone to warn Nikolai before he sails.  You must come with us...Alexandrina and Miklos, too.  The Turk will, no doubt, place his own captains on the ships, and it would amuse them to throw their predecessors into the sea — while still in port, I pray.  I just wish I could take all of my captains.  I should be able to get word to those still awaiting sailing orders.  I might be able to save most from a long swim. 

Katrina’s eyes grew wide and fearful.  But —

He turned his eyes from hers after a moment to gaze out the window and beyond the wall of the courtyard, beyond the trees...all the way to the far horizon where the sea met the eastern sky.  We will go to America.  They say Christians in America are free, freer than we have been under the Ottomans in five hundred years, especially recent years.  Too many with enough power to sidestep their own laws resent our success.  But I will make a new life there for you and...  He reached out for his daughter to climb onto his lap and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.  ...for you, my little flower, you and your brothers, and... turning to smile at the niece he loved as a daughter, he added, ...yes, for you, too, sweet Sofia.

Katrina reached out and touched Raina’s arm, Nikolai and Alexandrina, too?

Yes, as my siblings, they could be in danger, too.  I can see there may be a fear that as my family, they could petition to reclaim what was mine, not that they would be successful.  But those of my blood should not have to live in fear of reprisals and harassment.  No, family takes care of family, no matter what.  It has always been our way, family takes care of family.

SOME HOURS LATER, THE eastern sky was showing faint signs of approaching dawn.  Down a hallway near the rear of the expansive Vasov manor overlooking the nearby sea, there gaped an opening in the elaborately tiled wall to a passage lit from within by a flickering torch in a wall sconce.  Nikolai shifted Sofia, wide-eyed but silent, to his other arm as he stopped on the small landing just inside to watch Raina helping Ariana down a steep flight of steps.  Miklos waited at the bottom with another torch as Alexandrina went past him leading Ariana’s two brothers by hand into the tunnel beyond into which flickered the light of his torch.  Katrina, standing on the landing with Khristo, took Sofia from Nikolai when he started down and held her adopted niece tight for mutual comfort and reassurance.  She shared a nervous smile with Khristo who held the door open from just inside and to one side.  They gazed a final time out into the grand home he had inherited along with the shipping business as the new, family patriarch at the death of his father shortly after they had wed.

Sounds of hollow pounding echoed through the rooms and halls, and her forced smile lost all but its anxiety. 

With a humorless grin that reflected the scorn glinting in his eyes, Khristo said, The soldiers of the new merchant seem impatient.

How long will the door hold them out? his brother asked.

No more than minutes once they bring up their ram — but days, if ever, before they find this door once I close it.

Nikolai flashed a glance at the two of them, nodded with a forced smile, and descended the steps. 

Katrina peered into her husband’s eyes.  Those years ago when your father had this tunnel dug did you ever think it would actually be used.

He paused long enough to reflect back on earlier times.  I don’t know if my despair ever truly got that low.  But, as he told me more than once, it is a foolish rabbit to not have a back door from his warren if he must live among wolves.

Still holding Sofia, Katrina turned from Khristo and followed Nikolai down the steps. 

Khristo pulled the door closed, confident that its offset seams artfully blending with the large mural on the other side would sufficiently conceal its existence.  He took only a moment to set the heavy, locking bars in place, and then, taking the torch from its sconce, he descended to join the others in the long-unused burrow.

When he caught up to Katrina, her words trembled with fear as well as the exertion of fast-walking with Sofia in her arms.  Are you certain we must flee?  Perhaps they only mean to ask questions about the operation of the business.

Khristo eased her burden by taking his niece into his own arms.  If only it were so, he said.  But, if such a thing could be, our people would not have suffered as we have through the years.  I have come to know the Turk in the short time since his wish was made known to me.  He let me have yesterday merely as a tease.  Now he would have his gold back along with my head for having the impudence of taking it in the first place.  Quickly, now — the boat cannot wait long.

CHAPTER 1 – Family Obligations

The late model van tilted when a gust of wind hit it broadside causing it to swerve on the mist-slickened street.  Frederick wrenched the wheel of the unfamiliar vehicle too far, then too far the other way before he fought it back under control.  An approaching car flashed its headlights and blared its horn as it swept past.

Feel better, asshole? Frederick muttered.

He had considered taking the van out occasionally, just enough to become more familiar with its handling, but, as always, he managed to talk himself out of it.  Why risk getting caught in it any sooner than necessary?  That had always been his philosophy, and it had served him well, the same as using each van only once, and then dumping it.  Besides, he was a good driver, and all the vans were pretty much the same.  If he could handle one, he should be able to handle the next one. 

But why in the world had he waited until the middle of February? 

Because that asshole boss of mine is an asshole.  That’s why. 

His reaction to his own wit came out as a derisive snort, and he blew a string of snot all over the steering wheel hub, its tail drooping down his chest.  He wiped it off his lips and chin with the back of his hand then wiped his hand on his thigh.  His watery eyes peered out through the windshield as the wipers made intermittent swipes. 

That asshole had wasted the whole summer urging hordes of screaming brats to ride painted, wooden creatures around in circles while he took their money, refusing to shut the ride down for even one day.  So, then Frederick had to spend the whole after-season up until well after the first rains helping the asshole paint, repair and upgrade the equipment.  Couldn’t have the little darlings stub a toe on a loose board or pick up a splinter.  Now, because his boss was such a greedy asshole, he had to make an Auntie Sofia-run when he really shouldn’t even be out of bed.  Hell, it wasn’t like she could just wait indefinitely.

Tonight, he wanted nothing more than to stay in his trailer out in the back lot at the park, take half a bottle of cough syrup, maybe some pills, and curl up in bed.  The thought of fuzzy-warm blankets pulled up beneath his chin while he drifted off was almost compelling enough to make him dump what he had already collected and turn around. 

But he didn’t.  Auntie Sofia needed what he provided, and the obligation had long been his to see that she received them.  She was family, and family takes care of family.  He just hoped she had been able to hold out okay.  Every time he went to see her, he made sure he stressed the hazards of her venturing out on her own.  He was pretty sure she understood enough not to try it, but hunger could be a demanding incentive.

He turned off the expressway at the street he had selected on the city map now spread out on the passenger seat.  He was good at remembering the maps routes he laid out, but it never hurt to have it handy.  He knew the chosen street would take him deep into a good area after just a few blocks.  He had been there nearly a year earlier from a different direction.  Not hunting, just checking it out for future reference. 

He was pretty sure a year would be long enough.  People that lived in places like that didn’t pay much attention to cars passing through.  They had enough problems figuring out where to steal their next meal.  They wouldn’t have noticed a plain looking van just driving down the street.  Besides, now that he thought about it, this was a different van than the one he had then, anyway. 

He leaned over far enough to hook his handkerchief out of his back pocket and wadded it up to dab at the stream of mucus threatening to drip from a nostril.  He sniffed a couple of times, hacked a couple of coughs when the stuff ran down the back of his throat, and wiped his handkerchief across his red, swollen eyes. 

Should have gotten the flu shot.  Shoulda done it.

Muffled crying drifted out from the back of the van, but he tuned it out.  As long as they didn’t get too loud, it shouldn’t be a problem.  But then, a second cry, also muffled, drifted through the heavy, maroon curtains he had hastily rigged behind his seat, and it was louder.  Maybe it still wasn’t too loud. 

He had almost been tempted to keep looking for more back where he had gotten them, just a couple more was all he needed to give him a full load — well, full enough, the way he was feeling.  But he had always made it a prime rule not to over-hunt an area, and it had kept him safe.  Where he was going wasn’t all that far or different from where he was little more than half an hour earlier.  Just a quick drive across the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge was almost as good as going half way across the state.  It should be far enough away not to be connected to the other ones.  Not for a while, anyway.  And, considering the nature of the creatures involved and the level of official concern apt to be stirred up to resolve the issue, more likely never.

Just after the next turn, an old hotel hung with an iron fire escape on a faded brick wall and housing permanent tenants of limited means loomed over the two, three and four story buildings around it.  Eighty year-old houses with fading and flaking clapboards hunched behind sagging fences on narrow lots not worth developing or worthy of urban renewal.  Multi-hued row houses faded to uniform gray, dilapidated duplexes and neglected apartment buildings interspersed with an assortment of machine shops, body shops, tattoo parlors, liquor stores and pool halls.  In walls of broken bricks, chipped and cracked stucco, and dull, unpainted cinderblocks, every window reachable from the ground wore iron bars. 

Frederick sniffed again, hawked a couple of times, swallowed, and kept driving.  He slowed down at mid-block and then crept at idle the last few yards so that he got to the next intersection only as the light turned green.  It wouldn’t do to be caught sitting at a red light and have someone pull up beside him or come walking out a door just as one of them in back managed to get extra loud. 

He had worried that he had gone on the hunt too early across the bay because of how he was feeling, but even with night just falling, he had made his catches without any problems.  And not a lot of people were out and about at this early hour over here, either, not in this weather.  The few restaurants in the area remained viable only due to their attached bars, and the storefronts the still had tenants were already darkened behind padlocked gates. 

He peered ahead and checked both side-view mirrors for movement among the reflections on every wet surface.  Perhaps half a dozen souls were in view walking the streets, few enough to make trolling worthwhile.  There was little to invite the locals to venture out on a night like this, and that suited him.  It was cold but not icy, wet and gusty but not actually raining.  He nodded and allowed one corner of his mouth to lift in a smile that was more sneer.  The streets were his.

He turned right at the next corner so he could check the alleys, shifted into low and slacked off the gas to just above walking speed.  He glanced to left and right as the van crept past the first alley, but the only one he saw was to the left where a man browsed through a dumpster.  He avoided big ones even when he was feeling strong and healthy.

The next alley was empty of anyone in both directions, but the one after that looked promising.  He was pretty sure he spotted several small figures part way down on the right silhouetted against the light halfway to the far end of the block.  It was late for kids to be out, but not, he believed, in a neighborhood like this.  Not even in this weather.  He saw them as little more than barn-rats, prowling around half the night, poking into holes and places they had no business being.  A lot of them probably didn’t even have homes, just living out on the streets, no one to miss them if they just weren’t there some morning.  No great loss for anyone to get all excited about.  In a day or two, he figured, they’d be forgotten. 

He parked the van and got out in the shadowy area beneath a burned out streetlight just past the mouth of the alley.  Then, leaning back in, he spread the curtain behind his seat enough to peek through at the two small forms sprawled on the floor of the windowless, dark interior.  Other than where they had squirmed about, they were still as he had laid them.  No loose arms or legs protruded; they were still secured.  One of them whimpered, but the duct tape across their mouths muffled even the most energetic cries.  They should be going into shock by now, lessening even more any efforts to resist their bonds.  That was one of the advantages of the younger ones, even these back-alley waifs that he preferred: they usually cowed readily once they saw escape was not possible and that further resistance would get painful.  They didn’t have to be uninjured, only alive.  He just had to be careful not to inflict an injury that would result in uncontrollable screams of pain for which there was only one quick and sure method of handling.  They did have to be alive.

At the mouth of the alley he slipped around the corner and crept on the balls of his feet along the base of the building.  The debris littering the pavement was as integral a part of the scene as the mold and soot staining the bricks of the canyon walls.  Stray spirals of wind curling through the gorge stirred the accumulation of years, making them seem alive and independent of each other in their disconnected dances. 

He had read about how a predator stalking prey can creep through a forest carpeted with dry, crackling leaves without making a sound.  He was a predator in a different environment, but he, too, was skillful.

When he drew within fifty feet, blending into the shadows, no more than a shadowy blot sliding across a surface covered with dark blots, he saw there were three, probably around eight or nine-years old, huddled around something in their midst, possibly in the hands of one of them.  They were so engrossed they still hadn’t noticed him when he hovered over them, peering down over their shoulders at the feral kitten one held.  It hissed and spat at the hands gripping it against its efforts to reach them with its needle-like teeth.

With a Grrr! the boy holding the kitten thrust it toward one of the girls, a teasing threat of teeth and claws.  She jerked back and shook her head, firmly rejecting any suggestion to take hold of the tiny beast. 

In that same instant, also in reaction to the threat of ripping teeth and claws, Frederick flinched.  The young ones, the little ones with their little, needle-like teeth, could be the worst.  Tiny, razor sharp teeth would chew and chew until there was nothing left to chew.  Stumbling half a step backwards, he gasped a tight, Uhnn! 

Whether from the movement or the sound, the other girl glanced around. 

Like a great, shadowy bat with his black raincoat unbuttoned and billowing behind him, Frederick gave the impression of filling the alley.  In that mass of blackness, his gaunt, pallid face with its distortion of old scars, the beak of a nose from which the tip had been brutally removed long ago, and the twisted stubs of destroyed ears seemed to float unattached.  Beneath protruding brow ridges, his glaring, deep-set eyes, still open wide in sudden, phobic terror of bestial attack, appeared ebon in the night.  With his mouth still agape in his gasp of fright, his never corrected overbite appeared more like the fangs of Nosferatu. 

His hand shot forward to grasp her with splayed stubs of long-ago gnawed fingers like the disfigured talons of a huge raptor.

She sprang to her feet from a squat with the speed of reflex, but Frederick expected it and was ready.  With a flick of his wrist, the back of his bony fist slammed into the side of her head, and she slumped.  Before she hit the floor of the alley, Frederick lashed out at the boy, again with a fist to the temple. 

The yowling kitten hit the pavement and was gone in three leaps.  But the first one, taken blindly in its own panic, drove it straight toward Frederick before it caromed to disappear into lurking shadows. 

Frederick jerked away from the charging terror just as he swung at the other girl.  She ducked his fist and spun away from his grasping other hand.  Before he could reach her, she darted away in a fast sprint — developed, no doubt, in running from angry shop owners — toward the far end of the alley.  Abandoning thoughts of chasing her, he scooped up the two others under his arms and lurched back out of the alley.

At the van, he released them to the pavement at his feet while he fished the key from his pocket.  With practiced speed, he unlocked the sliding door on the side, grabbed a roll of tape from just inside, and ripped off a piece.  Like a calf-roper at a rodeo, he whipped it around the boy’s wrists then pulled off another piece for the ankles.  Another piece went over the mouth with care not to seal off his nose — they had to be alive.  Frederick laid him ungently on the floor of the van, reached down for the girl, and did the same with her.  Neither one had even begun to come around by the time he slammed the door and walked around to the driver’s door.

As soon as the van’s engine thrummed to life, he slipped it into drive.  With satisfaction of another success surging through his body to replace the ebbing adrenalin rush, his mind flashed through visions of memorized street maps in a mental leap to the next essential step.  If he turned left at the next corner, then across a one-way street going the wrong direction, he could take the next left, and it was a clear shot to the expressway. 

He was almost to the corner when he heard tires squealing.  In his side mirror, he watched a forty-year-old, low-rider Caddy careen around the next corner back, swerve a couple of times, and then surge toward the van.  That didn’t have to mean it was after him, though.  It could as easily be running from the police; probably even more likely.  He turned left and nudged the gas a bit as he watched the mirror.  He was only half way to the one-way street when the Caddy slid around the corner behind him.  It could still be coincidence.  It was still several car-lengths back when he turned onto the one-way street that went the wrong way; he could always get back to the right direction after he was satisfied he wasn’t pursued. 

The Caddy turned behind him.  Damn! 

With the big, low-slung car crowding his back bumper, Frederick whipped into an alley at the last instant.  The left rear corner of the van slammed against the corner of the building, but he got it straightened out and sped toward the far end.  In quick glances to his mirror, he watched the Caddy back up past the mouth of the alley then nose into it, its rising bellow echoing between the narrow walls like an enraged beast.  Certainly not running like a forty-year-old car.

At the next street, Frederick turned left and stomped the gas pedal to the floor.  No sooner did the van jump forward, though, than he had to slam onto the brake.  Two other cars, both big sedan, low-riders like the Caddy, had come around the corner and stopped crossways in the street, blocking it from curb to curb.

What was happening?  No one should be this concerned.  They were trash!  Throwaways!

The sidewalk was still open. 

He veered, bounced over the curb, and lined up on the sidewalk.  It was wide enough for the van by mere inches between the unyielding wall beyond his side mirror on the left with streetlight poles and signposts lining the curb on the right.  A newspaper box protruded too far, though, and went bouncing.  At the cross street just beyond the twinned, low-rider barrier he bounced back onto the roadway and punched it again.  A glance in the mirror showed the Caddy following his course onto the sidewalk, but, long and wide, it sprayed a shower of sparks from its left side scraping the soot-covered bricks. 

The van swayed right, then left onto the next cross street, a wide avenue.  There were no moving cars as far ahead as he could see, and he was pretty sure it would take him to the expressway if he hadn’t gotten turned around in all the maneuvering.  The van’s engine-scream dropped a fraction as it shifted into high gear.  It was beginning to look like he was going to make it out and away.  If he could just get to the freeway, it was only a short shot to the San Rafael Bridge and then an easy run of half an hour or so up U.S. 101 to Cedar City and Aunt Sofia.  He was confident the Caddy and its attendant low-riders wouldn’t follow even as far as the bridge.  Like any territorial animal, they didn’t like getting away from their home turfs, especially for nothing more than a couple of expendable and replaceable young ones. 

Suddenly, the Caddy swept past him, its powerful engine roaring.  He expected it to sideswipe him as it went past, but it waited until it was ahead before whipping back in front of him.  Its brake lights flashed on, and he swerved to pass it, but it swerved to match him, and it continued to slow down in a steady deceleration he was forced to copy.  He tried repeatedly to veer around the Caddy, but it matched his every move.  Both mirrors showed headlights closing fast from behind on both sides.  The other two cars moved up alongside him, one on either side where they blocked him from trying further detours on the sidewalk, and they slowed to match the Caddy’s speed.  Then, as a group with the van in the middle, they came to a stop in the middle of the street at mid-block.  The car on his right even stopped with its tail end angled over behind the van so he couldn’t back up.

No longer concerned with the van or its cargo, Frederick threw open his door, but then yanked it back closed and hit the lock button just as a figure lunged at it from outside.  He scrambled over the center console, entangling himself in the spread map, then out the passenger door.  But his feet had no sooner hit the pavement when a fist smashed him full in the face.  He slammed back against the passenger seat and sagged to his knees, his nose burning, and his lips and mouth gone numb as the salty taste of blood flooded it. 

Through the loud ringing in his ears, he thought he heard someone ask, Where —?  He didn’t catch the rest of it, but he had few doubts what they wanted