Skin Deep By Thomas Mc
Chapter 5: Chase
Sparrow was sitting in the common room of the vacant bed and breakfast talking to Sheriff Matt while the kind woman named Katy, who it turned out was his wife, treated her skinned elbows. ". . . and he took everything with him when he left." She shook her head dejectedly. "Now I have no clothes, no money and no place to crash."
Matt nodded then remarked. "As far as that trucker is concerned, I'll put out a description on him and his truck but without a license plate number he may be very difficult to find." He shrugged to indicate his lack of certainty. "The chance of getting your things back is pretty slim but I will try." He closed his computer pad.
Katy gently touched Sparrow's shoulder. "Can you at least tell us what your name is, dear?"
After a few moments thought, Sparrow answered. "My name . . . is Michelle, ah, Michelle Farrow."
"Do you know if you have any family here-bouts?" Katy asked kindly.
Sparrow shook her head sadly. "I don't really think I have any family." She hung her head.
The sheriff turned to Katy. "We can put her up here for a while, don't you think?"
Katy nodded toward her husband. "Of course we can." She faced Sparrow. "You're welcome to stay here as long as you need to." Katy stood up. "Come on, Michelle; let's see about getting you settled in." She led Sparrow upstairs to one of the empty bedrooms.
~ o ~
David found an isolated culvert and stopped to assess his situation. He was barefooted wearing just a pair of loose pants, a thin comfortable shirt that he usually slept in and his brother's hooded cloak. Fortunately the weather wasn't too cold so he wasn't particularly uncomfortable. He looked up at the overhanging clouds ahead and then, with a shrug, set out in the general direction that he was sensing Sparrow from while trying to stay out of the sight of strangers.
About mid morning a soft drizzling rain had started to fall and David felt he had reached a point where he couldn't continue without the risk of being seen and he was starting to get soaked, so he took shelter in an old abandoned warehouse.
~ o ~
Shortly after sun-up Peter knew that David had crossed into New Jersey and was now moving west-south-west at a slightly reduced rate and there was equal parts urgency and caution ruling his son's emotions. After about three hours Peter became aware that David had stopped moving.
Clarissa interrupted his reverie. "Peter, you're the only one that can track him. We need to arrange a caravan immediately so that the moment he finds her or gets into trouble we can go after him." At Peter's acknowledgement she got on the phone to arrange for three vans to make up the caravan. The logistics of such a caravan were old hat but this was the first time it had been done at such a last minute. Also this was the first time they had done it without a clear destination or timetable in mind.
Clarissa brought home a map of the New England states hoping that Peter could use it to pinpoint David's location. Most of the family was now aware of what was happening and preparations were being made to retrieve David when the opportunity presented itself. Based on Peter's feel of direction and distance they were able to pinpoint David's location to within a quarter mile. Though a fairly large area it made it possible to map out the fastest route to the area. After getting that close Peter's sense could lead them right to him. It still took most of the day to get everything organized.
Immediately after sundown, just as all the preparations for the caravan were completed, Peter announced that David was on the move again. "He's continuing southwestward away from us and he is moving fast. I think it's fairly certain that he must still be following Sparrow and we have no way to know how far away she is."
~ x x x x x ~
Christmas Eve
David was making his way over open country. He wasn't quite sure exactly where he was but he knew that he was following a more or less straight line toward Sparrow's location. As near as he could tell she hadn't moved since yesterday morning when he had bolted out of the tunnels in his search for her. He was pretty sure that she was currently asleep.
Ever since that blast of fear, revulsion and anger yesterday morning, his sense of her had been steady and was becoming increasingly stronger. He had already realized that a full blown bond had formed between him and Sparrow. He thought about it and decided that the new situation suited him just fine. He had admitted to himself that he was falling in love with her while he had been hiding in that old abandoned warehouse yesterday afternoon. As far as he was concerned, the presence of the bond merely confirmed what he had already realized.
It was somewhere around four in the morning that David became aware of a group of several presences directly ahead of him and slowed down. He closed the distance carefully and soon found himself at the edge of a fairly large RV camp. The place was nearly empty. There were only a dozen vehicles in a place designed for about a hundred. It was still very early and there wasn't any one moving so David took off straight through the camp. He was over half way across the campgrounds when he was startled by someone emerging from the RV fifty feet directly ahead of him. A flashlight came on lighting that person's way through the darkness. He stopped moving beside some playground equipment and was hoping that in this dark overcast night he wouldn't be noticed. Then he sensed sudden fear and the flashlight beam came up and swung toward him as he turned his head away from the light. Then a woman's startled exclamation. "Who's there?" The flashlight beam touched him and stabilized. "Who are you?" The woman asked nervously.
David thought quickly trying to come up with some innocuous explanation for his presence. "I'm just having trouble sleeping so I came outside for a walk to clear my head. I'm no threat to you." David responded. He sensed her fairly typical attraction response to his voice mixed in with her nervousness and hoped that she would just pass him by.
"Well I hope the walking helps." She remarked as she gave him a very wide berth. She glanced back at him several times as she continued to the building that housed the camp's public restrooms and showers.
David was about to continue when he detected a less than benign presence and, looking back, spotted a man lurking behind one of the darkened campers. The unknown man was looking in the direction that the woman had gone and the emotions emanating from him were not particularly nice. Since he had not detected the lurking man earlier, David suspected that the man had just awoken and emerged from the camper while he had been speaking to the woman.
The lurking man glanced several times at David and was giving off wariness and impatience on top of his other emotions. The man was probably unaware that David could clearly see him even in this darkness. He appeared to be simply waiting for David to move on. After a few seconds David continued to the tree line at the edge of the park and merged with the shadows, disappearing from the man's sight. A few seconds later the man sprinted over to the building that the woman had entered. As soon as the man entered the door David emerged from the trees and moved quickly toward that building.
As he reached the door he felt the woman's surprise and terror just as he heard her muffled scream. David burst through the door then went left into the woman's changing room and saw that the man had the struggling half dressed woman on the floor beside a running shower stall. With a roar David leaped forward and grabbed the suddenly terrified man, throwing him across the room toward the doorway. The woman screamed again as David turned and advanced on the man, his clawed hands displayed for maximum visual effect. The man yelled in fear as he scrambled out the open doorway. He ran across the campground, jumped into his camper and seconds later pulled out spraying gravel everywhere in his haste to leave the area.
David turned around to see the woman still sprawled on the floor, her eyes wide as saucers, as she stared back at him. Her fear was still as strong as ever as she stared back at him. He shrugged and sighed. "That guy is gone. You should be safe now." He turned and left the building closing the bathhouse door behind him. Seconds later the woman came running out of the building just moments after David had entered the woods. She looked around vainly for the creature that had just saved her but he was nowhere to be seen. With a deep sigh, she shook her head, shrugged and went back inside.
David breathed a sigh of combined resignation and relief as he continued away from the campgrounds. He hadn't really expected gratitude from the woman but it would have been nice. He had something more important to worry about; Getting to Sparrow and convincing her to come back home. He adjusted his course slightly based on his sense of sparrow's direction.
About an hour before sunrise David began looking for some form of concealing shelter. He was in an area that went from hilly uncultivated land to public park forests and heavily farmed valleys. He had just about decided to settle for the next heavily forested park and hope no hikers spotted him when he came over a rise and saw what looked like a long abandoned farmhouse. The surrounding fields had obviously not been cultivated for a long time and the small ramshackle farmhouse he found had all the window broken and partially boarded up, as well as being surrounded by a collapsed porch.
David entered the farmhouse and found the interior in just as bad shape as the outside. He suspected that the place had been abandoned for several years and wondered what had happened to the farm. A quick scan of the place showed that it had been temporarily occupied on occasion but it looked like no one had been here for at least a month. He found a beat-up old sofa that wasn't in too bad a shape and settled down for the day. It had been a long night and he was very tired. ~ o ~ Sparrow opened her eyes, stretched and glanced around the small bedroom. She got out of the bed and stretched again then picked up the change of clothes that Katy had loaned her. She put the clothes on then glanced at the mirror as she picked up her wig. She paused at the sight of the ruined half of her face and felt that old black despair rising up to engulf her. Then her thoughts went to David and by concentrating on him and his family she was able to push those old feelings away but those thoughts of her time with them left her with a layer of melancholy in its place.
Sparrow entered the homes relatively small dining room where Katy greeted her. "Good morning Michelle. How are you feeling this morning?"
"I'm doing OK." She replied.
"Michelle, I was thinking that even though the bed and breakfast is closed I still have customers for the pub and restaurant and I could use a little extra help just for general care of the place and to watch the register for me occasionally." She looked Sparrow in the eye. "I can't pay you a lot but the job is yours if you want it, at least until you get back on your feet and decide what you want to do. I'll even throw in free room and board."
Michelle thought a moment. It was actually a very generous offer. "OK, ahh thanks."
Matt entered the dining room. "Morning babe, morning Michelle." He gave Katy a quick peck on the cheek.
Katy replied. "Good morning dear. Breakfast?"
"Sounds great to me." Matt responded with a grin as he gave Katy a half hug then let go.
They were all distracted by the sound of a vehicle coming up the gravel drive. "That's odd. The cook is already here." Katy glanced at her watch. "Whoever it is, they're a bit early." She headed through the common room to the front bay window. "We don't open for another half hour." She glanced out the window to see a familiar camper pull up to the main house's front door. She looked over her shoulder at Matt in surprise. "It's my sister."
"Sally? Is here?" Matt responded as he approached the front door. "She didn't tell us she was coming down." He pulled the door open just as his sister-in-law was approaching it. "My god Sally, what happened to you?" He exclaimed as he took in her black eye, her bruised jaw and arm, as well as her pronounced limp. He reached out and took her elbow.
Katy rushed over. "Oh, Sally, you poor dear. Come over here and sit down." She began hustling Sally over to the dining room table and urged her into one of the chairs then she called out. "Michelle would you bring us some coffee?" She turned her attention back to Sally. "Tell us, what in the world happened to you?" Sparrow approached with three cups and a hot pot of coffee. "Thank-you Michelle." Katy took the cups and pot from her and started pouring the hot coffee.
Sally took a sip of the coffee with a grateful sigh then glanced around at her audience. "I was getting really tired last night so I stopped and spent the night at an RV park about four hours from here. I got up really early this morning and went to take a quick shower before driving the rest of the way." She took another sip of the coffee. "This horrible man came into the women's section just as I was starting the water in the shower and he attacked me." She shivered with remembered terror. "He would have raped me right there on that hard cold floor but some . . . one else came in and stopped him and chased him off." She phased out momentarily as an image passed through her mind that she didn't think she would ever forget then shook herself. "Anyway I was so upset and I was as scared of my rescuer as the guy that tried to rape me. By the time I realized that I was safe, my . . . savior had already gone." Again she remembered the strange scene then she again shook herself back to the present. "I ran outside to thank . . . him for saving me but I couldn't find him."
~ o ~
David was startled awake when he heard the voices of a bunch of teenagers entering the farmhouse. It was still daylight outside and he was surrounded by open fields so he quickly and silently climbed up into the attic. The group of teenagers turned out to be made up of three couples and it was soon evident that they had chosen the old farmhouse as a convenient make out place. Snippets of conversation made it clear that this was the explanation for the signs of infrequent occupancy that he had seen. It was still daylight outside and the only access to the attic was visible to the teenagers, so for the time being he was trapped.
An hour later David was doing his best to ignore the highly erotically charged emotional atmosphere in the little farmhouse. Glancing out through a small hole in the roof David saw signs that it would be dark soon. He was anxious to get underway yet still the teenagers hadn't left and there was no way David could get out of the attic without being seen. He was trapped. Finally in desperation, David started to growl into the old air-conditioning duct-work. The teenagers were startled and got very nervous. The girls were looking around worriedly while the boy's tried, unsuccessfully, to reassure them. The erotically charged atmosphere was replaced by nervous uncertainty mixed with a hint of fear. He roared once and hit a convenient rafter. That did the trick and the teenagers were falling over themselves as they hastily exited the farm house.
As the car accelerated away, David dropped down out of the attic, exited the other side of the farmhouse and headed off into the growing darkness. ~ x x x x x ~ David was moving quickly through a heavily wooded area and had to constantly readjust his heading as he negotiated the increasingly rugged terrain and thick stands of trees. He was in a relatively clear path through a thick cluster of trees when suddenly the ground gave way beneath him and He fell about a dozen feet landing with a jolt on a hard metallic surface. An instant later the dim moonlight went out as he heard a sharp metallic snap. He was crouched on a hard surface in pitch black.
He stood up and banged his head on something hard. Carefully he reached up and his hand came into contact with what felt like metal bars. He also felt something soft resting on top of the overhead bars. He carefully felt all around himself and soon discovered that he was in a six-foot by six-foot by six-foot cubical cage. The floor of the cage appeared to be made of a hard solid metal. He could feel only empty space beyond the bars that surrounded him. He felt panic rising in him and paused to force himself to calm down.
~ o ~
Peter's sleep was restless. He could feel his son getting further and further away. He wanted to rush after him but until David had stopped moving it might be a waste of time to try chasing him down. A three vehicle caravan was unwieldy enough as it was and would tend to draw too much attention if they started zipping up and down a bunch of roads while trying to chase down a moving target. Suddenly he felt David's rising panic and jumped out of bed. Before he could do more than start getting into his clothes he felt the panic fade away to be replaced by deep concentration.
~ o ~
David reached up and again felt the soft material beyond the overhead bars. It was some type of heavy fabric. He managed to snag it with his claws and pulled it through the bars. The fabric pulled tight and stopped moving. He got a good grip on the wad of material that he had pulled through the bars and dug his claws in for a better hold. Then he pulled with all his strength. There was a moment of resistance then with a loud ripping sound the fabric came free and he pulled it all the way through the bars. Intermittent moonlight streamed through the bars and he could now clearly see his cage and the cloth that had covered it. The fabric was made to look like ground covered in a layer of fallen leaves. He was surrounded by walls of dirt about a foot beyond the bars. The entire ceiling was made of two hinged doors and he quickly located the latches. After a little study he realized that both latches had to be pulled at the same time to get the doors open.
By stretching his arms out as far as he could, he was barely able to reach both latches. He got his claws hooked into both latches and pulled. The first latch opened but the second slipped. His second try also failed. On his third try he got both latches released and the two doors swung open. He let one door fall back closed while he pushed the other door all the way open then he climbed out of the cage and closed the other door. He clambered the remaining six feet out of the pit. He looked back down at the trap he had fallen into. It had obviously been designed to trap some type of large animal and he suspected by the way the cage had concealed itself after he fell in that it was probably illegal. He tried to fix it's position in his mind and again he was on his way.
A few hours later he was out of the more rugged terrain and approaching a road and an all night roadside convenience store. As he got close he saw some man waving a gun at a couple of teenagers inside the store. No one saw him as he slipped up beside the front door where he stopped for a moment to listen. It was quickly obvious that the gunman was robbing the store and was getting frustrated and irrational because the kids didn't have access to the safe. David could feel the gunman's rage building and knew that things were soon going to get violent.
Cutting loose with his most threatening roar, David burst through the front door and swiped at the partially turned gunman's arm, sending the gun flying and nearly knocking him off his feet. The man yelled in pain and fell back against a row of shelves. David was now halfway between the two teenagers and the gunman. He faced the staggered gunman, raised his claws and roared again. The man hit the door so hard in his attempt to get away that he nearly knocked himself out. As he staggered of into the night, David lowered his arms and faced the two frightened teens. "I think you're safe for now. When you call the police tell them that there is some type of illegal animal trap about ten miles east-north-east from here. He turned and left. The night clerk and his girlfriend stared at the door for several seconds in stunned disbelief.
Three more hours later the sky was beginning to lighten with the morning and he had to find shelter. He finally found an empty shallow cave in a heavily wooded area and, after checking for any other occupants, settled in for the day.
~ o ~
Sparrow (AKA Michelle) smiled as she arranged the place settings on the just cleaned table in the restaurant side of Katy's Pub and Restaurant. It felt good to be doing something useful and to be accepted by her new found friends. She glanced up at Katy who caught her eye and smiled encouragingly at her. Sparrow smiled tentatively back as she continued with her task. While she was rolling another batch of clean silverware into napkins, her mind drifted momentarily to thoughts of David. She wondered what he might be doing right now. ~ x x x x x ~ That evening, as soon as he felt it was safe, David left the cave and set off moving as fast as he could push himself. He knew that Sparrow was close and he was determined to reach her tonight if at all possible. ~ o ~ Hours later after a long night of moving at a near run David was getting very tired. It had been three days of hard travel, moving at night and hiding during the day. He had hardly eaten during these last three days and he was very hungry. He had even nearly been caught a couple of times but he had kept on going. Sparrow was very close now and he didn't want to stop but he could see the first rays of sunrise over his left shoulder. He was in the middle of a large group of open fields and he needed to get out of sight very soon. He looked around for some form of shelter and spotted a large metal barn or storage shed up ahead in the middle of the vast acreage of fields. A hundred feet from the large shed sat the only other nearby form of shelter. It was an old motor home with a green farm tractor sitting next to it. David could barely sense a presence in the motor home and would have moved on but it was too late in the morning and the shed was the only shelter available to him.
With another quick glance at the impending sunrise he approached the large metal storage shed. It wasn't ideal but at least it would keep him out-of-sight until nightfall. Then he could start looking for Sparrow. He could tell that she was very close and he had to fight the urge to keep going despite the danger of approaching daylight. He looked closely at the doors and realized that the lock was rusted and broken. A quick pull and the door on the right slid open about two feet.
He sensed the flash of surprise, anger then fear a moment before the loud bang rang out followed immediately by the rattle of something hitting the door beside him and the sharp sting in his calf. He dived through the door, pulling it shut behind him just as another bang and rattle rang out. David quickly examined his right calf. There were eight small holes. He was trapped in a shed in the middle of an open field by someone wielding a shotgun and he had eight pieces of buckshot in his calf muscle. This was definitely not good.
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