The Unborn

Chapter 34

Everything in his body was screaming that something was wrong. Danni had said that she would be at Bluey’s tonight, and according to Tadpole she had even asked for the night off. Mike slipped his cruiser into overdrive and pressed his foot down a little harder. The needle on the speedometer rose. With the phone clamped between his ear and his shoulder, dialling out, he made another turn and hit the accelerator again. The adrenalin was pumping through his veins and his heart was thudding against his chest.

‚Answer the damn phone, Danni,‛ he cried into his mobile. It rang out and the call ended. Mike slipped it back into his breast pocket and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Thoughts of Kylie-Anne and Marla were running through his head. He envisioned their naked, ravaged bodies lying still on one of Augie’s metal gurneys. The visions frightened him almost to the point of madness. He made one last turn onto Cloverdale Street and slowed the cruiser to a snails pace. Mike rolled to a stop in front of Danni’s house, the lights were all off apart from a dull glow emulating from her bedroom window at the side of the house. He scanned the yard for signs of anything out of the ordinary, apart from the fact that the spare pavers she had sitting next to the steps were gone, all appeared to be as it should be. His hand pulled the phone from his pocket and he dialled her number again. He let it completely ring out before hitting the end button. His eyes kept a close watch on the glow in her bedroom window. It was still there. Maybe she had fallen asleep watching T.V in her bedroom, he didn’t even know if she had a television in there, but now wishes he did.

It only took a few more seconds to make the decision to knock on her door. He figured it was far better to wake her and know she was alright, than to leave her and find out that she was not alright. Mike opened the cruiser door and stepped out onto the roadside. He turned and faced the house just in time to see the dim glow in Danni’s bedroom fade out completely. Alarm bells sounded in his head and tingles ran through him. Something was definitely not right, he could feel it. He reached back into the cruiser and hit the button on the glove box. It fell open and his gun lay inside. Mike grabbed it out, opened the chamber and checked the bullets. They were all loaded. With his gun in hand he wiggled back out of the cruiser and onto the road, leaving the driver’s side door open he made his way onto the footpath and into Danni’s yard.

In the darkness, it was difficult to negotiate the unsteady pavers of the pathway beneath his feet. Once or twice he nearly stumbled and fell before he eventually managed to reach the steps. One step at a time he climbed up to the porch and stopped dead at the front door, his eyes peered through the tiny pane of bubble glass on the front. He could see nothing but darkness. His hands began to sweat around the body of the gun, he took turns at wiping each one on his jeans until they felt drier and sturdier around the weapon. With one ear pressed firmly up against the door, Mike listened intently for any sound but heard nothing but the chirping of summertime crickets and the wind howling through the camphor laurel tree around the side.

His mind was fighting a battle of it’s own. Should he bang on the door and then look around or should he just look around? If he banged on the door it would wake Danni and she could let him in, no problems there. But if he went snooping around and peeking through windows he might frighten her and that could end up causing her to panic and do something rash. In her condition, he certainly didn’t want to frighten her, but he didn’t want to simply walk away and dismiss her absence as nothing either. He decided on the first option, bang on the door and see what happens.

His fist thumped loudly against the timber of her front door, three times. There was still nothing, not so much as a stumbling sound of her tripping over anything in the darkness, fumbling for a light switch. Again his fist beat down hard on the door, he called out her name.

“Danni, it’s Mike.” He listened and still heard nothing. “Are you in there? Are you okay?”

Something was really off, his thumps on the door were enough to wake the dead and if she was in there, surely she would have woken and answered the door.

“I’m coming in,” he yelled through the door. “Hold on, Danni.”

Just as he was bracing himself to charge at her door, Mike heard a faint thump and then the sound of glass smashing. He peered through the bubble glass again and saw a dark figure moving toward the back of the house. It appeared to be slumped over or doubled up because it was too short to be Danni. She must be injured. Mike tightened his grip around his revolver and turned side on. He took a couple of steps back from the door and then pushed off his back foot and ran shoulder first, directly at it.

Mike found himself laying face down on the hallway floor, splinters of timber and glass below him and all around him, the door barely hanging on the frame by it’s hinges. His revolver was lying on the floor in front of him, just inches away, his phone not far from it, smashed to pieces. Shaking his head, he rose up onto his hands and knees and began crawling like a baby in the direction of his gun. Within seconds he gripped the butt and wrapped his fingers around the trigger. A sharp, searing pain pierced his hand. He looked up and saw a foot crushing his hand back to the ground. His fingers spas-med under the pressure and he lost his grip on the gun. The foot then kicked the weapon away from him and moved behind him, coming to rest in the middle of his back and pinning him to the floor.