Free Cry Havoc by William Todd Rose Page A

held her breath. For a moment everything was quiet and she had just begun to think it was her imagination when she heard it again. Furtive and sneaky...  not an animal. A stray dog or cat wouldn't care if anyone in the store heard them. Human? In all likelihood, yes.
    Richard ? He wouldn't come looking for her would he? No, that was ridiculous. She'd seen Jane stab him with what looked to be a pretty good-sized knife. Even if, for whatever twisted reason might possess his deformed mind, he did want to come after her, Polly seriously doubted he was in any shape to do so. Hopefully, Jane had killed the bastard.
    A whistle echoed through the silence of the store and it took a moment before she recognized the tune. It was the theme from the Andy Griffith Show. Now that it was obvious that she wasn't alone in the store, her heart began to race so fast that should could feel her pulse twitch in her left eyelid.
    “Hey girlie-girlie-girl.... ”
    The voice was high pitched and slightly nasal. Definitely not Richard.
    That, however, didn't mean that this stranger was any less dangerous.
    “I know you're in here. I saw you come in.”
    There was a loud clang of metal on metal, as if he had swung some sort of pipe and hit one of the beams that the price check machines were attached to.
    “Come out and play, girlie-girlie-girl. Come to, Daddy.”
    Another clang.
    “It won't hurt...  much.”
    Laughter echoed in the darkness and she made her way toward the escalators, still dressed only in her bra and panties. Of all the rotten damn timing....  She'd always rolled her eyes when she'd watched movies and the heroines stripped down only to find themselves immediately placed in the path of the monster or psychopathic killer. She'd thought it was cheesy and more than a bit trite. But now look where she was. All she could keep thinking as she slipped through the store was you gotta be frigging kiddin' me.
    She tried to ease up the escalator in sort of a duck-walk fashion, hoping that the sides would at least keep her partially hidden from view.
    From behind her, she heard another clang. This time closer.  Louder.
    “Come out, come out, wherever you are.... ”
    Almost to the top now, sleepwear and lingerie.
    Clang .
    She struggled to keep her breathing steady: slow inhale through the nose, exhale softly through the mouth. Just like in yoga.
    “Keep it together, girl. You are not going to die in this place.”
    Laughter again, this time seeming to swirl all around her, as if it were forming from the very molecules of air itself. A hundred million tiny voices all giggling in unison.
    “There you are! Daddy's home...  why don't you come and give him a big, wet kiss?”
    Shit. The man was at the bottom of the escalators. No time for stealth now. She broke into a run, scrambling up the few remaining stairs as he banged his pipe off the bottom step, this time resulting in more of a dull clunk than a clang.
    He continued up the rest of the escalators slowly, pausing on each one to smack the step ahead of him. He was whistling again, the bastard.
     
    Polly stood as motionless as possible and concentrated on her breathing. So shallow, so soft, that she even her breasts didn't rise and fall.  She stood rock still and watched as he worked his way through the racks, thrusting his pipe into the middle of each one in case she was hidden within the clothes like a rabbit in a warren.
    “I'm gonna getcha girlie-girlie-girl. I'm gonna getcha.... ”
    He was close now. So close that she could see dark stains covering his jacket and shirt. Stains which, in any other situation, she probably would have mistaken for motor oil.
    But in this new, fucked up world she knew exactly what had caused those stains.
    And she knew that unless she was very, very careful within the course of a few seconds she would be adding a few stains of her own to the ensemble.
    And that couldn't happen. Not after all she'd been through, damn it. It simply couldn't