Familiars Read online

  FAMILIARS

  By

  George S. Mahaffey, Jr.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About The Author

  Copyright 2016 by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  Cover design by: [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction and all rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

  BLOOD RUNNERS: ABSOLUTION (Book 1 of 3)

  BLOOD RUNNERS: DESIGNATED SURVIVORS (Book 2 of 3)

  AMITYVILLE: ORIGINS (Book 1 of 2)

  AMITYVILLE: REVENANTS (Book 2 of 2)

  RAZORBACKS

  RAZORBACKS II

  RAZORBACKS III

  THE PACT

  THUNDER ROAD (Book 1)

  THUNDER ROAD (Book 2)

  VERTICAL CITY: A ZOMBIE THRILLER (Parts 1 through 4)

  Who can live with this consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise?

  - Allen Ginsberg

  Chapter One

  Two little blobs of light. Evan saw them in the distance, or at least he thought he saw them. The road was dark and there was the mist and of course Lucy was driving like a crazy person, so he couldn’t be absolutely sure.

  He turned from his perch behind the car’s headrest, a sober-faced boy of twelve with the soft, yet haunted eyes of a combat veteran. His gaze hopped from the rural seaside highway to the dark shadow in the back of the car, the bulky thing under the heavy plastic sheet that lay under the hatchback. For a second he thought it moved.

  “Do you see them?” a voice barked.

  Evan didn’t immediately respond. Instead, he turned and studied the woman driving, his mother Lucy, who was nervously running a hand through a dark canopy of greasy hair.

  “Goddammit, Evan,” Lucy said, flinging a volcanic look at him, “do you see the headlights or not?”

  “I don’t see anything, Miss Lucy.”

  Lucy let out a ferocious sigh and eased up on the gas.

  “You said a curse word,” Evan said, slumping in his seat, staring through the windshield at a glimmer of water just over the horizon.

  “I know I did. I’m sorry.”

  “You said never to say a-”

  “I know what I said.”

  “You’re scared, Lucy.”

  “Am not.”

  “You only swear when you are.”

  “I’m totally fine so drop it,” she said, lowering a quivering hand down to float the dial on the dash radio. It was full of static.

  “Are they gonna catch us?”

  Lucy arched an eyebrow in Evan’s direction. He was holding her look, trying to be something other than the impulsive boy that he was. She could tell by the way he didn’t break gaze that he still trusted almost everything she said. That’s one of the things she loved about him the most. She wondered how long that would last.

  “Have we ever been caught before, Evan?”

  “There’s always a first time for everything.”

  “Says who?”

  “Nobody says, that’s just something you know.”

  Lucy turned off the radio and headlights, taking a sharp left on a dirt road only she could see.

  Minutes later, the car gouged down a switchback barely wider than a goat path. A ribbon of dirt that curled over a hillside to the ocean.

  A quarter mile in, Lucy wedged the car between a brace of boulders and a thicket of saltbrush, leaving the keys in the ignition.

  Lucy and Evan exited the car and Lucy scanned the dunes and cliffs that rose up over them. The moon was full and afforded an excellent view of the rural high ground. Lucy smiled because there were no signs of movement. She opened a rear door as Evan shadowed her. He watched her remove several items from the car: a plastic squirt bottle, rubber gloves, a sponge, and a jug of gasoline.

  “I ever tell you how brave you are?” she said, turning back to him.

  “All the time.”

  “Don’t sound so excited.”

  “When you say something over and over it kind of loses its meaning.”

  “How old are you again?”

  “Uncle G says twelve going on fifty.”

  Lucy frowned, tossed the squirt bottle, gloves, and sponge to Evan who crawled inside the car and spritzed the surfaces with a water/bleach solution, wiped it, then chucked the items on the front seat. Lucy waited a few seconds for the solution to dry, then doused the interior and exterior of the car with gasoline.

  Evan’s nose curled up, the air tanged by the gas scent. Lucy popped the hatchback and assumed a lifting position near the bulky item in the back.

  “Gonna need your help.”

  Evan didn’t respond.

  “Ev?”

  Evan remained as inscrutable and rigid as a fence post.

  “Can’t do this without my main man.”

  Evan slowly nodded.

  “On three we do like before,” she said.

  He mustered another slight nod and moved aside Lucy, sliding his hands under the bulky item. His fingers felt the cool plastic sheeting and the contours of the thing hidden beneath it. He tapped a finger on it, expecting something to rise up and attack him. Nothing did.

  “One, two,” Lucy said, crouching low, hands under the object, “three!”

  They torqued the item out of the car and began carrying it down to the beach.

  In seconds they were hauling the plastic-wrapped object down over the scrub-studded steppes that spooled to the water. Evan watched the waves pounding the surfline. His shoes filled with sand and his little brow knotted with sweat.

  “Almost there,” Lucy said, Evan wondering how much the item weighed. One-hundred twenty pounds? One thirty maybe?

  Lucy planted a foot in a hole and fell forward as Evan lost his grip and the item crashed into the sand. An arm slid out of the plastic. A bone-white limb attached to a hand with manicured nails. A little tributary of red ran from some point inside the plastic and pooled in the palm of the hand before dribbling into the sand.

  Evan blinked. It was the juxtaposition of the white arm against the red blood under the moonlight that was so jarring. He crouched and looked into the plastic and saw the faint outline of a young girl with a savaged neck.

  “What was her name?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He looked up at Lucy.

  “What was her name, Lucy?”

  “I don’t know. I swear I don’t. But she’s okay now, Evan. She’s not in any… she’s gone to her rest.”

  Evan reached for the girl’s hand.

  “Don’t,” Lucy said. “Do not touch that.”

  “Prints?”

  She nodded and Evan helped her lift the body and carry it into the freezing water. Sandy muck sucked at Evan’s shoes as he helped Lucy slide the body out into the deeper water. They watched the body rise and fall as the waves ushered it into the darkness.

  Evan collapsed on the beach and Lucy plodded past. She marched forward and flung a lighter at the car, causing it to erupt in f
lames. Lucy was eerily backlit by the burning car as she raced down the beach and stood before Evan.

  “I know what you’re going to say, Evan, but this is our job, okay? This is the way it’s always been and will always be.”

  Evan stared at his mother and then his mouth unhinged and he screamed and screamed.

  Chapter Two

  Five Years Later

  The once soft eyes had gone hard. That’s the first thing Lucy thought as Evan pulled up in the primer-splotched Audi hatchback and doffed his dark wraparounds.

  She rose from the curb in the summer heat and scoped the ride as Evan’s window powered down.

  “You like the new wheels?”

  “Very snazzy,” she said with a nod. “Where’d you get them?”

  “At the place where such things are gotten.”

  Evan eased his lanky, nearly six-foot frame out of the car as Lucy did a lap around it. She stretched out her hands to measure the length of the space in the back.

  “Don’t worry,” Evan said. “I checked first. Little shy of six by five. It’ll fit him.”

  She looked back as Evan reached into the vehicle and grabbed an oversized duffel bag.

  “I feel like, maybe, we should’ve gone with a minivan,” she said after a moment’s pause.

  “You’re actually complaining?”

  “Merely thinking out loud.”

  “Know what I had to go through to get this thing?”

  “Know what I had to endure to bring you into this world? We’re talking sixteen hours of labor, kiddo, and the goddamn epidural didn’t even work.”

  “You said a curse.”

  “Probably the least bad thing I’ll do today.”

  He shrugged the duffel bag over one shoulder, Lucy at his side.

  “Remind me why we have to do this, mom?”

  “Lucy or Miss Lucy if you please,” she said, mimicking a southern drawl.

  “Why am I still calling you that?”

  “Because when you’re on the clock you use business names.”

  “But it’s weird, like you’re the madam of a brothel in New Orleans or something,” Evan replied.

  “And how would you know about that?”

  “Given what we do for a living, Miss Lucy, there’s lots of stuff I shouldn’t know about that I know about.”

  Evan walked down a trail toward an inner city park as Lucy hustled after him. They passed a few joggers and families with kids, the trail leading to an asphalt path that serpentined to a plaza of cement wreathed by greenery. The families appeared to have retreated from this area which was peopled by surly-looking teens who were slapping palms and capering about near warped picnic tables and rusted barbecues.

  Evan tossed the duffel bag open to reveal several items: a chest-protector of the sort a baseball umpire might wear, a dented catcher’s helmet with a tongue of plastic to shield the throat, and a four-foot long wooden dowel.

  Lucy donned the protector and helmet and adopted a defensive stance.

  “Do you know how ridiculous we look?” Evan asked, fighting to avoid the glances from the other kids.

  “I’d rather look ridiculous than be unprepared. Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

  “This is totally your thing.”

  “It’s our thing and one day it will be all yours.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “It’s steady work, Evan.”

  “So’s cleaning the floor at a slaughterhouse, but you don’t see people lining up to do that do you?”

  Lucy punched Evan in the side of the head. Evan startled from the stinging blow which caused him to bite down on his tongue. He tasted his own coppery blood and his eyes narrowed. He fists balled up and then he eased back and thumped Lucy in the chest.

  “Here we go, here we go,” she whispered.

  Evan proceeded to bob and weave, sparring with his mother. He threw a series of punches that she parried. She swung back and he ducked and dodged and responded with three wicked jabs.

  She smiled while watching her son shuttle and pivot on the balls of his feet. He didn’t have the same build as his father, but the moves (at least when Clark was younger) were similar. Clark had been more powerful, but the bulk that drove the power slowed him down. He was lead-footed and predictable, especially toward the end, but not so with Evan who was cat-quick and agile.

  Lucy dropped to her haunches and grabbed the dowel. She swung it at Evan who jumped, the wood grazing the heels of his shoes.

  “Whoa! Attaboy, Evan,” she said, delighted.

  She brought the dowel down and Evan caught it between the palms of his hands. A moment passed between them and then Evan wrenched it loose and flung it away. Lucy snapped back the catcher’s helmet, winded.

  “You’re getting better. I mean it, Evan, you’re stronger and I can tell that your stamina has-”

  “Soon as I’m eighteen I’m gonzo, Lucy. I just wanted you to know that.”

  She mulled this over for an instant.

  “Gone as in-”

  “Boom. Resigning my post. Out of here.”

  “Okay, so where will you go?”

  “Figure I’m just gonna bolt. Get the hell out of Dodge. Leave it all behind.”

  “Your father and I tried leaving it all behind once.”

  “And?”

  “Sometimes ‘all’ has a way of following you.”

  Gales of laughter and a few barely audible expletives caught Lucy’s attention. She looked over a shoulder.

  Some of the teens from before, three males, two white and one black, swaggered across the grass. They shared a whisper and laughed again, separating to encircle Lucy and Evan.

  “You beating up your old lady, bra?” the black teen asked.

  “Not exactly,” Evan answered, peering at the ground, twisting his foot in the grass.

  “Well what the hell exactly you doing, dude?” one of the whites asked, “practicing for some bullshit cage-match or something?”

  The other boys roared with laughter.

  “We’re doing our jobs,” Evan replied.

  One of the white boys, a wannabe gangster with tatted, pipe-cleaner arms, sauntered forward and planted a finger in Evan’s chest.

  “Anybody who fights a girl is a pussy.”

  “Actually, we were training.”

  “Anybody who trains with a girl is a faggot.”

  “Leave him alone,” Lucy said.

  “Fuck off, grandma,” the boy said, waving his hand dismissively.

  “Why don’t you come make me,” she said.

  The boy turned and smiled and his comrades hooted and hollered.

  “Wouldn’t mess with her if I were you,” Evan whispered.

  The boy shoved Evan back and advanced on Lucy who removed the chest protector and dropped it to the ground.

  “Better leave that thing on, bitch, ‘cause when I finish with you you’re gonna wish you had-”

  Lucy’s hand shot out so quickly, the boy’s words collapsed in his throat. She latched onto his neck and brought a knee up into his chest. That’s all it took and down he went. The black boy saw this and pounced, throwing a fist that Lucy caught in her left hand. The boy’s eyes were as big as hubcaps, shocked at the woman’s strength. The ropy muscles in Lucy’s arms snapped taut like rubber bands. She angled her body around and punched the boy in his solar plexus. He let out a puff of air and folded up like a pocket knife. The last boy was dancing back and forth, enraged and terrified all at once. He ran screaming at Lucy who punted him in the groin, dropping him like a poled animal.

  Lucy rubbed her hands and cracked her neck side-to-side, staring down at the heap of boys near her feet. The black boy looked up at Evan.

  “Shit, man, that lady fight for a living or something?”

  “Yeah,” Evan said after some thought, “I guess you could say that.”

  Lucy gathered up the gear in the duffel bag and Evan threw it over a shoulder. He headed back to the car as Lu
cy shadowed him.

  “I could’ve handled myself back there,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Then I assume you also know that what just happened is totally not normal, right?”

  “Yep, know that too,” she said, a zippered smile on her face. “But since when were we ever normal?”

  Evan stopped and pointed at the sky. Twilight was just beginning to cloak the land, the sun sinking like burning gold over the horizon.

  “Better get our stroll on,” he said. “Gideon will be getting up soon.”

  Chapter Three

  Evan jimmied the screwdriver into the steering column and gave the boosted Audi some gas. He and his mother motored down through stretches of Baltimore City that had seen better days. Evan gaped out his window as a landscape of desperation and decay swept past: weed-strewn lots drowning in rusted car carcasses, block after block of rowhouses in formerly blue-collar neighborhoods now on life-support.

  The Audi shot down Key Highway and was soon moving through the high fence that protected one of Baltimore’s six public marine terminals. Lucy directed and Evan drove past men and machines hauling and stacking cargo containers of all shapes and sizes.

  There was a guard holding up his hands at a security gate that wreathed the actual docking areas where the cargo ships disgorged their contents.

  “You know this guy?”

  “No, but the Gentry does.”

  Evan slowed and powered down his window, keeping his knee in front of the screwdriver. Lucy handed Evan a laminated badge with numbers and symbols.

  “Ultimate backstage pass,” she said.

  Evan flashed the badge at the guard who waved them past.

  Evan eased the Audi down a gravel road and parked between a pair of titanic, dry-docked tanker ships. He clutched a series of lifting straps while exiting the Audi. Lucy greeted him, a small handcart at her feet, hands outstretched, as if she expected him to lob the straps.

  “I’m seventeen,” he said.

  “Really? I had no idea.”

  “I told you before. I can handle myself.”

  “I realize that, but I didn’t get permission for you to go in to do the actual initial extraction.”