Sometimes there IS an ax murderer

Kate Flora: This month we’re sharing spooky, scary scenes from our books. Today I’m sharing a scene from the sixth Thea Kozak mystery, Stalking Death. To set the scene, Thea has been consulting for a private school where a black female student and star basketball player is being stalked by unknown persons. She traumatized but the administration doesn’t believe her.  Then there is a murder and Thea is called in handle the public relations crisis. In this part of the book, she has identified the stalkers and the killer, and they have abducted her. She’s in the trunk of a car, far from anywhere. Injured and terrified.

But ten minutes was too long for Alasdair. Suddenly, he turned away from his self-involved dance and came back to peer into the trunk. “She’s still in there? Come on. Let’s get her out. Let’s get this thing done. I’ve got a ride to catch.” In the hand swinging loosely by his side, he held an axe.

Fear exploded in me like dynamite. Far away, a siren moaned. Chambers and Woodson turned to look. I jerked at my hands, tearing through the last of the tape, pulled them apart, and pushed myself out of the trunk, springing past them and taking off down the road. I ran like the devil himself was chasing me. Or a crazy maniac with an axe. I ran for my life, straight down that dark and bumpy dirt road with three men chasing me, one of whom had a gun.

The words ‘broken field running’ were muttering in my head. A strategy to avoid giving Woodson a straight shot. But it was damned hard to zig and zag when I couldn’t see the ground. It seemed a better strategy to get off the road and into the woods. Sure, the sounds of my feet clomping over branches and rocks would be louder, but there would be lots of cover, too. As soon as I got around that curve I could dimly see up ahead.

I came around the curve and almost slammed into a car standing the roadway with its lights off. I didn’t wait to see if it was friend or foe or merely some local who’d come out to go parking or jack some deer. I thought I heard a voice yell “Hey,” but I wasn’t stopping for anyone or anything. Not until I’d put a good safe distance between myself and the guys with guns and axes.

I veered off the road into the woods, my arms raised before my face for protection. Branches slapped at my arms and snagged my hair. Sharp sticks scratched my cheeks and forehead and stabbed at my legs. Fallen branches and tangles of brush rose to trip me.

I moved through it all with the inexorable momentum of a juggernaut. Scraping, banging, and crashing my way deeper and deeper into the forest, tripping and falling and pushing myself up and going on, unable to hear whether I was still being followed because of all the noise I was making, and too afraid to stop and listen. Once, I heard what sounded like a gunshot. A commotion of voices shouting and then  more shots.

When at last I paused to catch my breath, hands on my thighs, my chest on fire, I heard someone behind me and saw the broken beams of a flashlight filtered through the trees. Grimly, I used my sleeve to wipe the blood away from eyes and started off again. I ran until my chest was exploding and pain stabbed my side, the thud of my feet reverberating through my skull.

I ran for my life, and because training with Andre had made me strong, it was a hell of a run. All those hours in the gym were finally paying off. I ran through the trembling muscles and the cramps and the gasping, pushing on, looking for that second wind until I stumbled up a slope, tripped over a slippery rock at the top, and tumbled down the other side, landing hard on my hand and jarring my head.

I lay there on the spongy moss, groundwater seeping through my clothes, waiting for dizziness to subside so I could scramble up and go on. I could still hear my pursuer crashing through the woods. See those yellow beams getting closer, slicing through the forest like rays emanating from the hand of an evil wizard. I wobbled unsteadily to my feet, trying to pick out an escape route. He was so close now I could hear him panting. I crawled out of the open toward the darker shadows that meant brush, and shelter.

Suddenly, he was there at the top of the slope, the flashlight beaming down as he searched for me. I lay very still, glad I had dressed in black, hoping I just looked like more darkness, as the beam moved slowly over me and then moved away. My heart stopped when it found me. When the beating resumed, I thought he must be able to hear the thudding that filled my ears. Then the beam stopped and moved slowly back toward me and I heard Alasdair’s manic chuckle. “Gotcha! They promised me I’d get to do this and I’m going to.” For effect, he used the beam to illuminate the axe. All this way through the woods, he’d brought his favorite toy because Chambers and Woodson had told the little boy that if he was good and cooperated, he’d get to chop me up.

That must have been the conversation I hadn’t heard because they’d moved away. It would have defied belief if I hadn’t known all the events leading up to this. I scrambled to my feet, slightly blinded by the light, and staggered around, looking for something to use as a weapon. There are some good-sized rocks but I wanted a sturdy stick. Not much of a weapon against an axe, but it would keep him at a distance.

I hurried away from him, back into the woods, searching the dark forest floor until I found the darker shape of a branch. Alasdair followed at a leisurely pace, keeping me fixed in the beam of his light, chanting, “Run, run, as fast as you can. You can’t beat me, I’m the Gingerbread Man.” A vicious little monster with all the time in the world. Toying with me the way a cat plays a mouse.