Tom Carlton had had the crappiest of crappy days. For some inexplicable reason – because he knew he'd made sure it was set – his alarm hadn't gone off, and so he'd ended up almost forty minutes late for work, which, in a law firm, was more like an hour. That had meant he'd had to work through lunch to catch up on the cases he was working on. Then it turned out he'd forgotten to sign one of the files he'd dealt with the previous week, and of course it was a top shelf priority one so his boss had shouted himself hoarse at Tom's inadequacy.
It was one of those days that started bad and only got worse. It seemed to drag on forever, so that by the time he finally slid into his car, he felt he'd worked a whole week in just one day. He was exhausted and crabby and was not in the mood to sit in traffic for hours on the way home.
To clear his head, and to avoid the usual rush hour gridlock, Tom pulled off the highway and took the longer scenic route home.
He really liked this drive, especially on evenings like this. The clouds were low and heavy with rain and the light was the same dull grey of the building he worked in. Going through the city on days like this felt like being trapped in some hellish black and white film where nothing ever happened. The valley, even though the green of the grass and trees somehow managed to look slightly grey, reminded Tom that colour did still exist in the world.
He drove steadily through the winding road, taking his time. At least it wasn't his night to fix dinner. Mike would have some delicious concoction bubbling on the stove and fries in the oven, regardless of whether or not they went with the main course. He loves fries. Had them with every meal he could, even breakfast if Tom wasn't around.
Thinking of home and Mike lifted Tom's mood, dragging him out of the miserable rut he'd been in all day. He'd get home, tell Mike all about his mind-blowingly awful day, they'd have dinner and then open a bottle of red and watch some stupid movie with no plot and too many explosions. A fail-safe cure for a bad day at the office.
The old church came into view as he drove farther along the valley floor, marking the halfway point of Tom's journey. It was an ancient wreck of a thing. No one had been in there for years and it was falling apart. It looked sad; the stained warped wooden walls were sagging as if the old building was crying in its solitude.
As he drew closer, Tom saw a car parked outside it. That was weird. He craned his neck round to catch a glimpse of what he expected to be some family van or old geezer car – surely they'd just stopped to use the restroom.
It was a Camaro! A Z28 no less! Tom didn't know a thing about cars, but Mike was crazy about them. The only reason Tom even recognised the Chevy was because it had been Mike's desktop background for weeks.
Tom drove on, wondering who owned the car even he had to admit was gorgeous. Had they just stopped to use the restroom, or had they run out of gas? Were they tourists who'd gotten lost this far away from the highway?
Tom pressed the brake pedal uncertainly. He had this feeling he should turn back. Few people ever took this road. It was miles of scenery that connected two unremarkable towns that had been all but forgotten about since the highway had been built eight years ago. He knew petrol heads loved touring the States' little-used roads, seeing more of the country, avoiding traffic and, according to Mike, giving them a chance to see what their cars could do.
So the driver of the Camaro could easily be one of these petrol heads on a cruise who'd just stopped to look inside an old church. To someone who didn't know the area, it was probably a curiosity worth stopping for. There could be absolutely nothing wrong or ominous about the classic car left outside an abandoned church. Hell, it could be a bunch of addicts getting high for all he knew.
Or it could some old, hip granny who'd broken down.
Tom eased the break pedal further down.
"Goddammit!" he muttered as he made a U-turn, heading back the way he'd come. If he didn't find out, it was going to drive him mad all night. He couldn't stand cliffhangers. Besides, Mike would probably love a picture of the old Chevy. Yeah, he'd use that as an excuse. It was innocent enough, just a curious lawyer wanting a photo of a classic car on his way home from work.
He pulled up beside the Camaro, the wheels of his Ford crunching on the gravel. The Chevy's rear door was open. He stepped out of the car feeling nervous and excited. Making a herculean effort not to snoop in the back seat, he drew out his phone and snapped one quick shot of the car, wincing as the shutter sound broke the stillness of the scene like a gunshot.
Keeping his phone in hand, he pushed the faded, cracked old door open, jumping slightly as its hinges gave way. He stepped over the threshold warily, looking around at the still, dank interior of the ruined church.
Shafts of silvery light shone through the holes in the roof. The few shards of coloured glass that had survived whatever catastrophe had befallen the rest of the stained glass windows added hints of rose and diluted honey to the light that fell from the gaps in the moving, stormy clouds.
Tom stepped forward slowly, struck by the absolute stillness of the place. It was like going to a school long after it was closed for the summer. It should be a place of bright light and community, a sanctuary and a place to turn to for guidance. Instead, it felt dead. Rotting.
The shattered fragments of wood that, Tom assumed, had once been a chair lay scattered around the small room. A broken confessional booth lay crumpled and forlorn by the wall. There was a disturbingly satanic-looking symbol painted on the floor.
As Tom's gaze swept the warped floorboards, he froze. He wasn't alone.
"Oh my god!" he gasped. He ran forward to the nearest of the two unconscious men. He knelt down beside the man in the black suit and fluttered his hands over his prone figure, with no idea what to do.
"Police," he muttered, fumbling with his phone and stabbing the touch screen, wishing it unlocked faster. He dialled 911 and pressed the phone to his ear.
While the call connected, his brain kicked back into gear. He pressed two fingers to the man's throat, searching for a heartbeat.
The skin was as cold and hard as marble.
He was dead.
Tom leaped back, horrified.
The phone clicked against his ear. Tom jumped at the tiny sound. It seemed magnified in his terror.
"911 emergency response?"
Tom blinked rapidly, trying to remember how to speak. "H-Hello?"
"Yes, sir, I can hear you. What is your emergency?" came the calm, measured reply.
He slapped a hand to his forehead, trying to remain calm. The guy was dead, I just touched a dead body, an empty body – oh my god, oh my god, oh my god –
"Sir, are you still there?"
Tom nodded frantically, swallowing hard. Remembering how telephone conversations worked, he finally bullied his tongue into working. "Y-Yeah, I'm here, I'm here."
"Can you tell me your name?"
"Em, Tom. Tom Carlton."
"What is your emergency, Tom?"
The calm of the woman's voice reached through the phone and soothed him, helping him to focus. He explained where he was and what – who – he had found.
"A-And I think he's, I mean, he's cold and there's no heartbeat. I think he's dead."
"And the other man?"
"Oh right." Tom ran over to the other, taller man who lay crumpled in a bloody pile against the far wall.
"Oh god," Tom breathed, afraid to touch the prone figure. "Ehm, he's – he's hurt real bad. He's, uh, he's unconscious and, god, there's blood all over him –"
"Does he have a pulse?"
"A pulse? Oh, okay, I'll check."
With trembling fingers, Tom nervously reached out to the man's neck, aiming for a section of skin that wasn't bruised or bloody.
The faint flutter that pressed against Tom's fingertips made him sag with relief.
"He's alive! He's got a pulse. It's really weak and slow, but he's alive!" Tom couldn't understand it. The guy was so thoroughly beaten; it amazed him that he could still be clinging to life. He and the dead man must have been lying here for hours at least.
"Good, good. I'm sending an ambulance, okay, Tom? They'll be there in ten minutes. Can you stay with him until then?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'll stay. Is there anything I can do to help him? There's so much blood."
The woman talked him patiently through a few steps of basic first aid. She warned against moving the man too much, in case he exacerbated any spinal injuries. Tom's nervousness shot up another three levels at that, but the woman – Sophie, she said – calmed him down again.
There was a very good reason Tom had chosen to pursue law and not anything remotely medical. This experience, terrifying as it was, was making him feel a lot better about his crappy day at work. Bad days in a law firm didn't include dead people. Usually.
With Sophie's patient instruction, Tom helped clear the man's airway and make it easier for him to breathe. He pulled off his blazer and, after several attempts, managed to rip it up and press it against the deepest patches of red. The man wasn't bleeding much anymore, but Sophie said it was a good idea to put pressure on the worst of the wounds. Besides, he really hated that blazer. Mike had gotten it for him on their third anniversary.
The glorious sound of a siren broke the tense stillness of the dead church. Relief broke like a tidal wave over Tom as a breath he hadn't realised he was holding gushed out of him.
"It's okay, man," he muttered to the unconscious man before him. "Help's here. Everything's gonna be fine."
Tom hated making empty promises.
The paramedics jogged in and gently shooed Tom away from the body. He watched awkwardly as they secured the man's neck in a bright red brace, questioning Tom all the while. When had he found them, what had he done, had the man woken or shown any signs of alertness ...
Once the tall man had been safely bundled into the ambulance, one of the paramedics – Katelyn – returned to manoeuvre the black-suited man into a body bag. Tom tried to help, but a squeamishness he hadn't known he'd possessed rendered him more of a hindrance than anything.
The dead man was loaded into the ambulance beside the other. A ventilator had been strapped around the unconscious man's nose and mouth and a machine in the wall beeped in time to his slow heartbeat. A squad car arrived just as the paramedics were making ready to leave. The questioning started all over again for Tom while one of the officers inspected the Camaro. He seemed unable to open the car's trunk.
Tom watched the ambulance speed off with an unpleasant squirming feeling writhe in his stomach. He was no expert, but if his years watching Grey's Anatomy and the paramedic's unnecessarily sombre expressions were anything to go by, that man, whoever he was, would not be alive much longer.