Filled with dread, I turned back toward the darkness. “Waylon? It’s Bill. Are you there? Waylon? Can you hear me?”
Just beyond the tree line, I heard it: a deep guttural noise, somewhere between a grunt, a groan, and a growl—the sort of sound a bear or buffalo might make if it were gravely wounded. I froze, gripped by a reflexive rush of alertness and primal fear. The sound seemed to be coming from my left—from deep in the trees, near the distant corner of the lot. Get the hell out of here, I thought. Wait for the police. But something in the sound was familiar: a bass note whose frequency resonated in my memory. Oh, shit, I thought, my feet moving now, taking me toward the darkness. “Waylon? Hey, Waylon, where are you?” Halfway across the yard, I stopped again to listen. A wet, rasping sound emanated from somewhere just beyond me. I hurried toward it, but could not find the source. “Waylon?” I heard a fainter groan, a softer rasp.
Easing into the woods, holding my own breath to listen, I caught the sound of labored breathing. I unholstered my phone and touched the menu button to wake it up and illuminate the screen, which I used as a makeshift flashlight. “Waylon! Oh Jesus.” The big man was lying faceup on the ground, blood bubbling and burbling from a hole in his chest. “God. Waylon, hang on, man. I’m calling 911.” Fingers shaking, I punched the numbers, and when a woman answered in a flat, bored voice—“911, what’s the nature of your emergency?”—I found it hard to force out audible words. “I . . . need . . . an ambulance,” I finally managed.
“Speak up, sir. I can barely hear you.”
“I need an ambulance,” I said again, louder this time. “A man has been shot. Or stabbed. He’s bleeding—a lot—from his chest.”
“What’s the location, sir?”
“My son’s house. In Farragut.”
“I need a street address, sir.”
Address? My mind was blank. What’s Jeff’s address? What the bloody hell is Jeff’s address? “Uh . . . Fox Den Drive. . . . 9125 Fox Den Drive.”
A pause. “Sir, is that East Fox Den Drive, West Fox Den Drive, or North Fox Den Drive?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. I don’t know! I don’t know!”
“Sir, I can’t sent an ambulance if I don’t know which street.”
“Christ. It’s . . . West. West! The same place police cars are heading right now. Send the fucking ambulance!”
“Sir—”
I hung up, then dropped the phone to the ground and leaned closer.
Waylon’s rasping sounded different now—urgent, with an undertone of grim determination. As if he was trying to summon up strength for a last stand, or last words. I knelt beside the gasping, burbling being. “Waylon? Waylon, it’s Bill Brockton. I’m right here with you, Waylon.” Groping in the darkness, I found one of his huge hands, slick with blood and God-knows-what, and took it in one of mine. With my other hand, I tried to cover and seal the gurgling hole in Waylon’s chest. “Help’s coming, Waylon,” I said. “You hear the sirens? They’re almost here. Hang on, big man.” Waylon gave another bestial groan—from the pain of his shredded insides, or the pain of my pressing palm? God, what do I do? I thought, then—in an absurd echo from my college fantasies of medical school—I thought, First, do no harm. I felt a wave of grim despair. What does that even mean, ‘Do no harm’? We do harm just by breathing. I did harm—terrible harm—by asking Waylon to guard my family.
I felt a hand encircling and clutching my arm—a painful, powerful grip, coming as it did from a man sliding through death’s door. I saw, or sensed, Waylon’s lips moving, so I leaned closer. “You trying to tell me something, Waylon?”
“Gracie.” It was scarcely a whisper, more like a feather of air fluttering against my eardrum. Almost the way he might have whispered her name in her ear, as her boys slept in the next room.
Out in the street, I heard sirens. Screeching tires. Slamming doors. Thundering feet. “They’re here. Hang on, Waylon.” I turned my head toward the house, toward help. “Here!” I shouted. “In the backyard. Hurry!” Then, to Waylon, “They’re coming. Hang on, buddy.”
The big man shook his head slightly, then grunted, as if he’d just taken a punch to the gut, a knife to the ribs. “Can’t. Tell . . . Gracie.”
“Tell Gracie what, Waylon?”
“I wanted . . . marry her. . . . Adopt . . . boys.”
“You tell her, Waylon. Hang on, so you can tell her yourself. Please.”
Waylon made a sound that started as a growl, then became a primal, guttural groan. “Uhhhnnn.”
“Help! Hurry!” I called.
I heard voices shouting, and gradually I realized they were shouting my name. “Dr. Brockton? Are you here? Are you hurt? Dr. Brockton?”
Do no harm, a voice was shrieking in my head, louder than any siren. No harm! No harm! No harm!
Another voice, soft and sinister, responded with a hiss: Too late. Too late. Too late.
CHAPTER 35