Chapter 52

A powerful kick, perfectly placed, blew open the front door of the house.

Dexter walked inside, breathing slowly and evenly. Dead leaves and brambles were lodged in his hair, like the crown of a pagan god. His shirt hung partway open. Deep, blood-crusted craters of flesh that had once held misshapen slugs expanded and contracted with each breath he took. Blood painted his chin, like some strange beard, and thick crimson crud was lodged under his fingernails.

He’d spent last night in the forest that bordered the subdivision, winding up there somehow after he had staggered out of the house, bleeding profusely yet miraculously alive. Collapsing, he’d awakened in the dead of the winter night, wracked with pain from the bullets stuck like giant splinters in his body.

Although in agony, he understood he could not go to the hospital. The police would have been expecting him to wander into a hospital or emergency clinic, to seek treatment for gunshot wounds, and would have dropped a net on him and hauled him in.

With no options, he’d been forced to open his own clinic, under the moon and the hard stars. A hospital with only one instrument.

His Bowie knife.

Amazingly, in spite of his fall down the stairs, he’d managed to keep the blade on his person. Resilience was a sign of a true warrior.

He’d used the knife to carve the slugs out of his flesh. One at a time. With no anesthesia. The procedure had taken hours, the blood loss had been tremendous, and the pain had been unbelievable; he’d blacked out more times than he could remember.

But the suffering, though hellish, had also been sweet. Cutting deep into himself, feeling the warm blood flow over his fingers, he had fixated solely on his wife’s shining face.

See how I’m bleeding for you, bitch. See the sacrifice? Till death do us part . . . .

It didn’t seem possible that a man could bleed so much and continue to live, but he had held on to life, savagely. Perhaps, thanks to the mad mulatto doctor, he had become something greater than a mere man.

Sometime after he’d removed the last slug, he passed out again. When he awoke, it was dawn, and he was ravenously hungry.

He came upon an unsuspecting doe in the woods. He’d intended to gut it with the blade, but using the knife suddenly seemed like a crutch, like something only a weakling would use. He finally understood that a man of true power did not need a weapon.

So he’d leapt onto the doe like a panther and, with one mighty twist, snapped its neck.

The raw, steaming flesh was the most satisfying meal he’d ever enjoyed in his life.

He had evolved to a higher level, he realized. His capabilities were blossoming, in unexpected ways—his body had mostly healed from the gunshot wounds and his crude, battlefield medical procedure. Death had tried to take him, but he had given Death the finger.

He was truly unstoppable.

One thing hadn’t changed, however: his mission to find his wife. She was more important than ever.

He wanted to fuck her. To impregnate her. Something he’d been unable to do before his incarceration, supposedly due to some shortcoming of his. The asshole doctors had called it a low sperm count. Whatever the problem, his evolution had solved it.

He was going to get his wife pregnant, keep her close while she brought the baby to term and gave birth to his seed, the first of a new generation of genetically advanced men.

Then he was going to kill her.

He got a hard-on just thinking about it.

But first, he had to find her. The illegitimate husband was the key. The motherfucker knew where she had gone.

Dexter went deeper inside the house. The only sound was the humming refrigerator.

He’d known before he kicked down the door that the guy was gone, or else he would have entered with more stealth. A few rings of the doorbell while he was cloaked had failed to rouse any reaction from Joshua or the little dog, confirming the house’s vacancy. With them away, he saw no need to break in stealthily, like a common burglar.

He noted that the bastard had cleaned up the place. Had swept up the glass and re-arranged the furniture. He’d set out new pictures, too.

It was as if he were telling Dexter to fuck off. A charge of anger pulsed through Dexter, like electricity crackling through a wire.

But where had he gone? To run errands? No. Wrong. If he was out taking care of routine business, the dog would have been there.

Their battle yesterday could have rattled Joshua so much that he’d decided to take the dog with him wherever he went, to keep the little pisser safe, but that didn’t feel right to Dexter. Something else was going on.

He entered the kitchen. He stood beside the island, and looked around.

Beside the refrigerator, there was a small wooden board on which hung various keys. An erasable white board hung near the key rack. It was the size of a regular sheet of paper, with a black marker and a small eraser clipped to the side. The title at the top read: “To Do List.”

Dexter approached the board. There was one item written in barely legible handwriting: Remember Coco’s food for Eddie’s.

Coco had to be the little dog. But who was Eddie? And why did his name sound familiar?

Dexter ran his hand through his hair, dead leaves falling loose and wafting to the floor.

Eddie had to be a friend. A friend that Joshua was entrusting with the dog.

Which meant that Joshua was going somewhere, and didn’t want to take the dog with him. Such as going to be with Dexter’s wife, wherever she was hiding.

Still, the name Eddie was familiar to him. He had seen the name recently, in reference to Joshua.

He turned around and around in the kitchen, as if searching for the answer on the walls.

Yesterday. The mailbox. Dexter had skimmed through Joshua’s mail. The envelope that had looked as if it contained a holiday card. He had seen the name “Eddie” in the return address, along with a more distinctive name. Ariel or Ariyanna or something.

He didn’t see an envelope lying on the counter, so he looked in the next most reasonable place: the tall, stainless steel garbage can at the edge of the kitchen.

He found the envelope, Christmas red, buried amidst a couple of banana peels and a crushed box of Honey-Nut Cheerios. The big boy apparently liked to eat a healthy breakfast.

Dexter fished out the envelope and flattened it on the counter. There was a return address label, white on black text with a silver snowflake in the background: Eddie and Ariel Barnes. It was an Atlanta address.

Dexter glanced at the refrigerator. One of those photographic holiday cards was pinned to the freezer door with a magnet: “Happy Holidays from the Barnes Family.” An attractive young black couple and a fat-headed kid were gathered in front of a Christmas tree.

Dexter recalled seeing the guy before. He crossed into the family room and looked at the wedding photos. There he was, standing with Joshua in one of those groom and best man poses.

“It’s going to be a Merry Christmas for you, Eddie,” Dexter said.

Dexter crumpled the envelope and tossed it in the trash—he’d memorized the address—and left the house to make the acquaintance of Mr. Eddie Barnes.