Free Dark Creations: The Hunted (Part 4) by Jennifer Martucci, Christopher Martucci Page B

sheepishly as another knock sounded to the front door.
    “You don’t need to flirt, babe, I’m a sure thing,” she teased and rubbed her belly again.
    He moved to the front door, smiling all the way, and opened it. Two uniformed police officers stood in his doorway.
    “Can I help you?” he asked.
    He detected the faintest look of surprise cross the faces of both officers.  He could not quite place what it was about that flash of an expression that unsettled him, but he placed his body directly before them, felt his posture straighten, stiffen.
    “We’re sorry to bother you,” one of them began.  “We’re just here to tell you that there have been several break-ins reported in this neighborhood and wanted to give you a heads-up and ask you if you’ve seen anything unusual, any strange people roaming around?”
    Though initially, their presence seemed odd and their expressions unorthodox, Jack dismissed his intuition as growing pains, kinks in his reintroduction to civilian life.  He twisted his body and called to Dawn to ask whether she had seen any suspicious people in the area.  As he did so, he felt an explosion of pain against the back of his head.  The sting was followed by white-hot throbbing and bursts of light in his field of vision.  The attack had stunned him.  He spun to face his adversaries, only see a nightstick connecting with his face.
    He felt his body drop to the floor, helpless to stop it from falling.  His vision flickered, alternating between darkness and flashes of color.  He fought to stay conscious as blackness encroached, peaceful, silent, stillness.  He drifted in and out of nothingness, seduced by its serenity, and heard the officers distantly.  They seemed to be arguing as one said, “What should we do?” and the other said, “I don’t know, kill him.”  Then oblivion summoned him again, briefly urged him with its quietude.  When he returned, he heard one of them say, “She was supposed to be alone.  We can’t kill him without orders.  Just grab her and we can come back for him if we have to.”
    Just grab her .  Who are they going to grab? he wondered.  His thoughts were muddled, fragmented.  Nothing seemed to make sense.  He floated between darkened silence and the sound of men’s voices.  But none of it had meaning.  And then he heard a woman’s scream, Dawn’s scream .  The sound ripped him from the silent void, returned him to consciousness.  He lifted his head as another shriek rang out but was abruptly muffled and followed by a scuffle.  Suddenly, the seemingly meaningless phrases held significance.  The strange appearance of police officers at dawn, the peculiar expressions they exhibited fleetingly, none of it was related to his adjustment from war to home.  They had come for something else.  They had come for Dawn.
    Rage coursed through his veins like lightning and resurrected him from obscurity.  He staggered to his feet and called out her name. 
    “Dawn!” he heard himself scream as he stumbled into the kitchen.
    The officers saw him and began shoving something out of the back door.  His feet began moving beneath him as he raced toward them full speed.
    “Get your fucking hands off her!” he ordered.  Thin rivulets of blood trickled from his forehead, burned into his eyes.  He was able to make out two large shapes and one smaller one. Charging toward one of the larger shapes, he lunged headlong.  As he was about to collide with it, the large shape raised his hand high above his head.  In his hand, he held a long slender baton that he brought down without delay.
    By the time Sergeant Jack Downing realized what was about to happen, it was too late to stop it.  He felt the nightstick strike him again, heard the distinct cracking sound of hardwood meeting with his skull.  He collapsed to the floor instantly, and felt his body go limp.  Darkness swarmed like innumerable locusts, crowding out the sun, frightening and sudden.  He was