CHAPTER 8: Aftermath

Seven stitches needed to close the wound.

Penetration of the large intestine, requiring treatment for peritonitis.

Blood work for internal bleeding.

Not to mention bed rest and minimal activity for bruising to the head and back due to being thrown at a car.

At least ten days needed for recovery overall, if he took it slow and didn't re-open any wounds or show signs of infection.

Overall, Deputy Hawkins thought he was pretty damn lucky to be alive.

This was especially considering he barely remembered what he did to get to help. The officers who picked him up had told him that he had taken a civilian car, later identified as belonging to Laurie Lloyd, nee Strode, and driven it, half-conscious, until he practically crashed into another patrolling police car. They said he had tumbled out of the car seat when officers had opened the door, holding a gaping wound in his abdomen, which had hustled the men into getting him to an ambulance.

By all accounts, he had gotten off easy, considering this all happened after a run-in with Michael Myers. And considering what the man had done to his doctor, sister, and a dozen other victims. Including one officer, Officer Francis. Hawkins knew the man. Relatively new to the force, but dedicated, professional. The force was still reeling from his death. So was the rest of the town, from the tragedy they had experienced once again.

And once again, there had been the same survivor. Laurie Lloyd.

And it was because of Laurie Lloyd that he was here, in the hospital on his way to talk to her, when Sheriff Barker had already snapped at him for attempting to come in a week early and told him that off-duty was off-duty and if he didn't haul butt back to his bed, his vacation was going to become permanent. Hawkins settled himself in the chair with some relief, as his wound was twinging his side. He'd already shooed out the doctor and nurse, a dark-skinned and clearly competent young woman with an attitude reminiscent of one of their K9s, who had told told Hawkins in no uncertain terms that he would be kicked out if he caused so much as one spike in the heart rate of her patient.

But he had to get the full story, because what he had now was full of holes, and holes always led to questions, and Hawkins hated questions.

And that was his explanation for sneaking himself here, on his off-duty time, and planting himself in a chair at Laurie Lloyd's side. While he waited, he pulled out a notepad, going over his notes, though by now he had them all memorized.

Mrs. Lloyd… perhaps the only person ever to survive three of Myers's massacres. The first as a baby; the second eleven years ago, during Myers's first escape attempt; and now this.

He had seen photos of what the girl had looked like after the second massacre, and she had definitely come off better this time around. Lying asleep in her bed, she was pale, hair clumped, leg in a cast and hooked up to IVs… but certainly not the battered, torn up mess she had been when Sheriff Brackett retrieved her from the streets of Haddonfield.

But that was the Halloween of eleven years ago. Hawkins's concern was much more recent, and he perused his notes again. The timeline, as near as he could make it out, was this:

At seven o'clock in the evening on October 30th, a bus had pulled away from Smith's Grove with Michael Myers and several dozen other patients locked inside. The bus had crashed some twenty-five minutes later whilst halfway to another facility (cause: unknown), giving Myers the opportunity to escape. Autopsies were still underway, but according to the late Dr. Sartain, it had been Myers who had slaughtered the two guards on the bus before making his way to Haddonfield.

By Halloween morning, after apparently walking nonstop through the night, Myers had reached the gas station, where he either tracked down or encountered Aaron Korey and Dana Haines, investigative crime journalists who had attempted to interview him just a few hours earlier, and who just happened to be carrying the mask he had worn whilst committing his second series of murders. Myers had proceeded to kill them and two mechanics working at the station, stealing a jumpsuit and his mask.

By the evening of October 31st, he had been back in Haddonfield, hunting the streets. His movements were easiest to trace here. First he had taken possession of a knife belonging to one Gina Panchella, a housewife and mother who had apparently caught him breaking in. He might have left it at that, had her neighbor, one Andrea Wagner, not been unlucky enough to catch sight of him. She had fled, only for Myers to follow and slaughter her – as well as her teenage daughter and her boyfriend, who happened to be upstairs.

So far, so good. It appeared that Myers then turned his attention to his family members. He went after his niece first, who had been trick-or-treating with a friend, Billy Hill. Hawkins and Dr. Sartain had interrupted him and managed to get young Billy home; while all that was going on, Myers had tracked down his nephew and murdered Officer Francis in attempt to get to the boy. Luckily, Mrs. Lloyd (who had also been wandering the streets for her children) and Hawkins himself had confronted Myers before it could go any further.

And then… this was where Hawkins's own recollections entered the area of inferences. After injuring Hawkins, Mrs. Lloyd, her children, and Dr. Sartain had piled into his police car and driven from the scene, stopping at the end of Cherrywood Lane, a dead-end street that led to the fields and forests bordering the edges of Haddonfield. Apparently the former Sheriff Brackett and his daughter had owned the house there, and Mrs. Lloyd had lived with them briefly after the events of Halloween over a decade ago. There was no evidence to suggest that she had ever returned there after her marriage, which made it a bit of a mystery as to why she and Dr. Sartain had chosen to drive to such an isolated area.

A mystery... unless Mrs. Lloyd had been pulling some kind of self-sacrificial stunt, getting herself and her brother as far away from the town as possible. From what he'd seen of her, it was certainly within Mrs. Lloyd's capacity. Almost heroic, he supposed. In any case, it had worked; what traces they could find of Myers showed he had indeed followed his sister there, sparing the townspeople further casualties.

But from there was where investigations devolved into a tangled mess. At some point, the police car holding the doctor and Lloyd family had crashed down an embankment. The accident had ruptured the gas tank and disrupted the wiring, leading to a fire that ended in a massive burnout, engulfing the entire vehicle. The fire had been such that both nearby officers and residents had spotted it and called it in, at which point police had begun making their way towards the scene.

The occupants had survived, obviously, though what Hawkins could not quite figure out was how they had crashed – even at night, it was obvious where the road ended, and the embankment should have been visible. The investigating officer had suggested that whoever was driving had seen Myers behind them and panicked... though how Myers had overtaken a speeding car that fast was beyond Hawkins. The old legends of him being able to disappear and reappear at will were only ghost stories for children...

At any rate, the accident was corroborated by the injuries on the two Lloyd children. The boy, John, had sustained only minor cuts and bruises. Though he had been hospitalized along with his mother and sister, he had been released the next day. The parents of his frequent babysitter, the Carruthers, had generously agreed to house him until his mother was deemed fit to leave. Repayment, apparently, for Mrs. Lloyd had found their daughter, one Rachel Carruthers, wandering the streets after curfew and had insisted on driving her safely home. The girl, Jamie, had received a minor concussion and head wound which had kept her in the hospital for another day for observation, but after exhibiting no further symptoms, she too was released to the Carruthers. Both had confirmed that the car had rolled down the hill and that was how they had been injured.

The investigating officer had then theorized that, after freeing themselves from the wreck, the doctor, Mrs. Lloyd, and her children had been confronted with Myers. Hawkins's own gun had been found at the scene, likely lifted by Mrs. Lloyd during their first confrontation with Myers, so the investigator had deduced that Dr. Sartain, attempting to protect the Lloyds, had tried to shoot Myers. Yet only three bullets had been fired, and all three had been found in Mrs. Lloyd, suggesting that Sartain was a very poor shot (the officer had written).

The other theory the officer had proposed was that Myers himself had picked up the gun and used it to try to kill his sister. But Hawkins had his doubts about that. He may not know much of anything about Myers, but he did know that his MO tended to involve knives, bludgeoning weapons, and his own bare hands. Somehow, grabbing a gun and firing it at his potential victims did not fit the man.

However she received her injuries, Mrs. Lloyd had nevertheless managed to drag herself and her children away from the scene while Myers preoccupied himself with slaughtering his doctor, which according to the autopsy, had been quite thorough and prolonged – a stab wound to the spinal column, then disembowelment, then a slow bleeding out before finishing the job off with multiple slashes to the chest and face. Then he had... simply walked off? The investigator had hypothesized that Myers had heard the incoming police and made his escape, leaving his wounded sister for dead at the end of the road, where the police had found her and her children.

It made sense, Hawkins supposed.

But only on a surface level, for as soon as he tried to dig deeper, more questions came up than answers. If it was Sartain firing (and they had found his fingerprints all over the gun), how did he miss so badly as to only hit Mrs. Lloyd? Why had Sartain also sustained wounds to the leg and arms that were too low, too small, and too shallow for someone of Myers's build? Why was it that the investigating officer could only follow Mrs. Lloyd's dragging, shambling blood trail a few feet before it suddenly disappeared – before it was replaced with large, heavy footprints – as if she had crawled her way only so far before being scooped up by someone and deposited where the police had found her?

And then there were the children's stories. According to them, the accident had taken place later; their mother had exited the car alone and met with her brother herself, though they were confused on what exactly she had been doing. They insisted that Dr. Sartain deliberately drove the car down the embankment. That they had been rescued from the burning car by Myers. That the doctor had never confronted their uncle at all, that he had been far from the accident with their mother. They had no idea how she had been injured (though both suspected the doctor), but what they agreed on was that it was their uncle – Myers – who had carried their mother to the road himself, and then simply left, doing them no further harm.

Obviously that made no sense. The investigating officer had concluded that the car accident had damaged the children's memories. The sheriff had chalked it up to them being in shock. But Hawkins had seen John and Jamie Lloyd himself, and while rattled, they had been quite sure of what they had seen.

Which was why Hawkins was here to talk to Mrs. Lloyd herself.

Hawkins glanced at her again. Her injuries had been rather serious; she had been fortunate to have been brought to a hospital so soon. Lucky too, that only one of the bullets that had hit her had penetrated an organ – the small intestine, specifically, so that like Hawkins, she had had to be kept in the hospital for treatment for infection and blood loss. The one in her back had lodged itself in her flesh, necessitating further surgery to remove it, but with no risk of spinal injury. And the one in her leg had hit bone, fracturing her femur, but at least had missed the artery, which would have caused her to bleed out in minutes. All of this meant much longer care and time in the hospital for Mrs. Lloyd, though she was at least conscious for most of the day now.

Such as now, as she stirred awake. Her eyes widened slightly when she took him in, bent over slightly in his chair to account for his still-healing wound.

"Deputy Hawkins," she said, starting to sit up, then wincing.

"Try not to move, Mrs. Lloyd."

She began to shake her head and seemed to instantly regret it. "No, it's just – I'm glad you're alive."

He managed a small smile. "Bit of a miracle, and had to spend some time here myself, but yes. Though not as long as you'll be here."

She made a grimace, fingers curling. She had acquired the distant look Hawkins was by now familiar with. "Sorry. Just remembering the last time I was here."

"You going to be okay?"

She nodded, attempting a smile, then frowned. "Have you spoken to my children?"

"Yes. In fact, that's why I'm here."

She went pale – or rather, paler than she already was. "What happened? Are they okay? Did they –"

He held up a hand. "They are fine, last time I checked. Actually, what I was speaking to them about – off the record, since I'm technically not supposed to be back on-duty – was what happened last week on Halloween."

She looked at him, and Hawkins was disconcerted to see her face close off, eyes wary. "Halloween?"

"Well, yes. Obviously we want to find out what happened and what to do next, so we are speaking to all witnesses and persons involved, including your children."

"And what did my children say?" She looked straight at him as she spoke, but Hawkins had the sense that she was choosing each word carefully.

He looked steadily back at her, trying to project assurance. "Can I ask you first what you saw happen?"

That closed off look became even stronger, the wariness turning into something akin to fear; Hawkins had the distinct feeling of being with a trapped animal. "I don't remember," she said, too quickly. "Everything happened so fast, it's all confused in my head."

"Mrs. Lloyd." Hawkins shifted forward in his seat. "I think you and I both know that's not the truth."

She just looked at him, and Hawkins felt his suspicions rise. There was something else here, something that neither the investigating officer nor her children had let on, and the strangest thing was he had no idea what it was or why she would not want to tell him. Surely she, of all people, would want to get to the bottom of this Myers case… to make sure the man was no longer plaguing their town.

He cast about for some way to gain her trust. It seemed like she was refusing to speak because she was afraid of the police, for some reason. Well, he was not here as a cop, technically...

"Mrs. Lloyd, we've already done a thorough investigation of the scene. Here's what we came up with." He gave a quick rundown of what they had uncovered.

She said, "If that's what they said happened, then that's what happened."

Again, that too-fast response. "Perhaps it was," he conceded, "and Sheriff Barker has no interest in pursuing the matter further. Given that Myers is still at large, he wants all our energies focused on catching him – but between what I read and your children's statements, there are... holes. Particularly in Dr. Sartain's actions, and yours, and Myers's."

"And you want me to fill them." That trapped look was back.

He made an open gesture with his hands. "Nothing is being recorded. The investigation is already in the process of being closed. Whatever you say will not affect anything we do. This will be completely off-the-record."

This time, her gaze seemed different, directed inward. It reminded him of that moment right before Myers had attacked him, when Laurie Lloyd had been crouched near her car, when Dr. Sartain and he had both appealed to her. He had not been able to identify her expression than, but he had had a sense of what she was thinking , the same sense he was feeling now: that she was debating with herself, that there was something here she wanted to do, but had so far refused to.

When she looked at him again, it was with the posture of someone readying themselves. "You won't believe anything I say," she told him.

"Try me."

"And… you will not agree with what I did."

He frowned momentarily. "I highly doubt that, Mrs. Lloyd."

A bitter half-smile twisted her mouth. "Then..." She hesitated. "All off-the-record?"

"Off-the-record."

A beat. Then she began to talk.

When it was over, Hawkins just sat back, his wound aching worse than ever. Her account had closed up the holes, but it had also given him with a lot more questions.

And it left him wondering who exactly this woman was.

"So, according to you, Dr. Sartain was the big bad guy behind everything?" The thought was discomfiting; the short, squat little doctor, obsessed with his own patient to such an extent?

She nodded, closing her eyes for a moment. She was leaning back against her pillow, face a little paler than before; retelling her story had taken a great deal of energy.

"Which I guess…" And here was where things shifted from disconcerting to downright disorienting, "…makes Michael Myers the hero of this entire thing."

Her eyes snapped open and she sat up. "No," she said, with more strength than he had heard so far. "He's not a hero. He might have saved my children, but it does not make him a hero." She laid back against her pillow, body sagging. "Not after... after everything he's done."

"And will do, because of what you have done."

Her jaw clenched, but she did not deny it. And now Hawkins knew what Laurie Lloyd had been thinking on Halloween night, why he had not been able to figure out her expression – not because he could not identify it, but because he had refused to. It had not been satisfaction or relief on Laurie Lloyd's when he had shot down Myers; it had been conflict.

"Everything he has done..." Hawkins could not fathom it, "…and you let him leave."

"I owed him." Her voice was rough. "He saved me. He saved my children."

"And you believe that this makes up for it? Redeems him?" Perhaps Mrs. Lloyd was suffering one of those syndromes psychologists liked to toss around – Stockholm's or something.

"No. No, it never will. But I-" She paused, fingers clenching her hospital blanket. "He got us out. He took me – would have stayed with me until – I couldn't let him be killed –" She rushed on. "You know he wouldn't go back. I couldn't just let all those people – let him – die like that. They wouldn't have tried to – he would have killed all your men..."

But Hawkins knew her concern was superficial, that she was merely trying to justify what she had done. "Mrs. Lloyd." He leaned towards her. "You know it's what he deserves."

She just looked at him sadly. "I do know. But... he's my brother."

And there it was. Like receiving a key to a chest whose contents he had no understanding of. Because for some incomprehensible reason, Mrs. Lloyd was treating her relationship to Myers not as the biological fluke that it was, but as something significant. Meaningful. And that was in spite of everything that had happened to her, her family, her friends, her children; despite the fact that Myers had shown no inkling of similar feelings back.

Mrs. Lloyd released a breath. "He's my brother," she said again. "And I… I owed him." She seemed to cling to those words, fingers twisting in her blanket.

Hawkins could only look at her. It felt as if the entire world had shifted after Halloween, like he had closed his eyes on a world where he knew how everything worked and where each person in his town had fit, and opened them on some alternate timeline, where nothing made sense anymore – not Dr. Sartain, not Myers, and most of all, not Mrs. Lloyd.

He closed his notebook. "You know, I was one of the responding officers that Halloween night, when Myers first broke out." She looked at him, eyes guarded. "I remember it still – all those phone calls. Those teenagers. The house, Myers's body still on the front lawn." He tapped his pen. "I was the one who saw he was still alive. At least four bullet wounds, including one to the head, and the son of a bitch was still breathing. I thought right then about shooting him. Just blowing his brains out on the grass. Still don't know why I didn't. Guess at the time, I felt it wasn't right. Thought the law should deal with him."

She gazed coolly at him.

He stood. "You know why I'm telling you this?"

Her eyes gave away nothing. He wondered if this was what it was like to look in her brother's eyes.

"If I see Myers again in this town," he said, "I'm not hesitating. Whatever he's done or not done, your brother or not, I'm taking the shot."

A beat of that flat stare. Then she nodded. "I didn't think you'd do any less."

There was nothing more to say. Hawkins could only look at this girl, this woman, diminutive, swathed in bandages with a haunted look to her eyes. Mrs. Lloyd. Laurie Strode. Angel Myers. He looked, and he wondered – if it came down to a choice, to save either Hawkins or Myers, who would she choose? Him? Or her brother?

He was afraid to admit that he did not know.

Before he left, he looked back at her one last time. "Good day, Mrs. Lloyd."

"Goodbye, Deputy."

It was while leaving the hospital that he thought he saw the flash of a mask outside a window, a dark shape half-hidden in the trees.

Despite his wounds, his doctor's orders, he raced out the hospital for the exit, almost running over a candy striper in his haste to scan the nearby grounds.

But there was nothing. He stood, panting in the parking lot, examining the rows of cars, the shadows of each tree. Still nothing, save for a smirking nearby EMT who was shooting him funny looks.

Perhaps there had never been anything, and he was letting the stress get to him.

Myers would not come to the hospital, not without being noticed, and he would certainly not risk being caught just because his sister happened to be recuperating there.

But Hawkins would be ready if he ever did.

Sighing, the deputy got into his car and drove away from the hospital.

Three days later, Laurie left the hospital, picking her children up from the Carruthers and returning home.

Two weeks later, she made the announcement that she was putting her house on sale.

Five months later, it was done. There had been just enough time for Laurie's fractured leg to heal. With all the papers signed, she, Jamie, and John packed their possessions and left the suburban areas of Haddonfield for the house at the end of Cherrywood Lane.