Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04]

by Charles L. Grant

  He raised his head and looked through the pane at the blackness outside. Lowered his arms. Turned around and saw the others in the kitchen. Watching him. Listening.

  He touched his collar, touched his cross.

  * * * *

  These ... do not make me special. I am not special. I am no more special than any of you, and you can’t think of me that way if we’re to do what we have to do.

  But we are different, somehow we’re different and that’s why we’re here.

  Don’t ask me if you’ll live, because I don’t know. Don’t ask me if you’re going to die, because I don’t know that either. Don’t ask me for miracles, because miracles are reserved for the special, not the different. Don’t ask me to bless you, because ... I killed a man tonight.

  But if you’re wondering now, right now, after all this, how we can take on those Riders, how we can possibly win, then I’ll remind you that I and my friends once stopped a woman in a great white car, and John there once stopped a boy on a great and dark palomino, and Trey

  Falkirk, bless his soul and rest it, did the same in the desert.

  I...

  * * * *

  He couldn’t speak.

  * * * *

  I...

  * * * *

  He couldn’t smile.

  * * * *

  Go to bed, he finally told them. All of you, go to bed. Try to get some rest, I know you won’t get any sleep. If you’re going to stay here, there’s my bed too, someone take it. I have some hard thinking to do, and I doubt I’ll get to use it. Go on now, scoot. Don’t worry about me sneaking off. For all your miserable sins, I’ll still be here come daybreak.

  * * * *

  They crowded through the door, not looking at him, not speaking to him, not speaking to each other. When he was alone, he grabbed the nearest chair and fell into it, limp, exhausted, not entirely sure he’d be able to get up again.

  He listened to the wind.

  He listened as the house, bit by bit, fell silent.

  * * * *

  And then he listened to the silence.

  * * * *

  7

  1

  H

  e stands at the end of a long rough jetty, nearly one hundred yards from the safety of the shore. Rhythmic explosions from twenty feet below as the cold December sea tears itself apart against the uneven boulders. His hands are in his pockets, only once in a long while slipping away to clear the cold spray that drips from his face. He wears a black denim jacket over a thick dark sweater; faded jeans, worn sneakers. With no hat for protection his hair ducks and twists in the wind.

  He faces the horizon and looks at the water and sees nothing but waves rolling steadily toward him. Rising as if taking his measure, falling as if needing less distance before they can rise again, and crest, and drive him at last into the slick and jagged brown-black stone.

  Clouds low and heavy.

  Feathers of rain in the distance.

  Every few minutes, a flare of lightning, and thunder warns.

  He has been here for hours, since the winter sun first rose, and finally there’s a long deep breath, a long and slow exhalation while his eyes close and his shoulders slump and his lips move in a silent prayer he fears won’t be answered.

  * * * *

  Far behind him, on the beach, people wait, huddled and shivering. Watching. Afraid that he won’t turn around, that he’ll forget they are there, that he will instead take that next step. Into the sea. That after all this time and after all he has told them he will be lost to them, and they’ll be lost.

  Yet none move to join him, and none move to speak to him, and none move to help him because there is nothing they can do. They can only stand there. Waiting. And watching. While the cold stiffens their limbs and discolors their faces and takes their breath and turns it into ghosts the wind blows back into their dark and fearful eyes.

  Every few minutes someone will look at someone else, a raised eyebrow, a pulled-in lip, a tilt of a head, a confused shrug. With nothing to say to the man on the jetty, they have nothing to say to each other as well. Not anymore. It’s all been said and it’s all been done, and there’s no sense in doing anything else.

  Just wait.

  Ignore the bloodstains, ignore the cuts and bruises, pay no attention to the rough bandages and heavy cast and deeply aching muscles and sharp aching bones and the sure and certain knowledge that what they’ve been through so far can’t possibly shine a light on what they know is to come.

  A tall man, lank and bowed, turns to stare at the trees that line the miles of sand that face the ocean. Nothing moves there but the branches, needled or bare. Nothing moves but clumps of violently trembling sawgrass that tops the few dunes he can see from where he stands. Nothing moves, and he turns back, expecting nothing more, a quick smile and a soft grunt when the woman beside him slips her arm around his waist.

  Two children, young girls, flank a woman who wears a weighted veil over her face, only her eyes exposed. The three hold hands and dare the wind to knock them down.

  A young man and a young woman stand close without touching.

  There are others. Not many.

  And apart from them all is a woman who holds the neck of her thin coat closed at her throat. A scarf over her hair flutters as if trying to break loose and fly. Of them all she is the only one whose eyes are red and puffed from weeping. Yet her back is straight and her chin is up, and alone among all the others she has no trouble with a smile.

  Alone among all the others, she seems to know, and she is ready.

  * * * *

  2

  scarlet fire

  emerald sparks

  * * * *

  Acting Sheriff Verna Dewitt sits at her old desk—she can’t bear to use Vale’s office—and listens as the state cop tells her for at least the zillionth time that for such a small island, the son of a bitch is pretty damn big, but not to worry, they’ll leave a presence on the mainland end of the causeway, no way those guys are fool enough to try to leave by boat in this weather. If they try to get off, they’ll be caught.

  They shake hands and she walks him to the door, says, “Wait, I forgot.”

  The captain seems impatient, but he’s too polite to walk away.

  “The waves,” she tells him. “They’ll be plenty damn big now, so watch it crossing. The trick,” she continues before he can interrupt, “is to wait for the second one.”

  He frowns. “What?”

  “The second one. Don’t ask me why, it’s some kind of thing to do with the bottom, but in a storm like this, there’ll be one huge wave washing over the road, and some people figure it’s okay, and they gun it. Don’t. There’s always a second big one, sometimes bigger than the first. That one’ll knock you clear to Carolina. When that one’s gone, then you gun it.” She smiles sweetly. “Got it?”

  He tips his cap. “Thanks, Sheriff. Appreciate the tip.”

  “No problem,” she answers. And when he’s gone, she turns to Salter and says, “Stupid son of a bitch didn’t believe a word I said. That man’s going to drown, Dwight, I swear to God.”

  “He’s the last one, huh?”

  “Yes. You and me, Dwight. Let’s hope the Indians don’t attack, or we’re up poop creek.”

  Salter laughs and shakes his head. “That’s not the way I heard it, Verna.”

  “Yeah? Well, you heard it that way now.” She reaches for her slicker and floppy rain hat. “I’m going to ride around a little. Maybe I’ll get lucky and run Stump over.” She grins as she jams the hat on. “By accident, of course. Purely by accident.”

  “What about the prisoners? They’re complaining about not getting any lunch.”

  “Lunch?” She pauses at the door. “Damn. Give ‘em an hour, then give Hector a call, have him make something up. Christ,” she mutters as she pushes the door open, grunting against the wind that tries to break into the room, “you’d think he was still the goddamn mayor.”

  * * * *


  The storm clouds bulge and contract, black patches and grey, as they speed over the island on their way north. Far off the coast a waterspout bounces over the surface, bending, swaying, finally collapsing in silver sparks. A few minutes before noon, a rain shower slaps the streets and windows, and ends as suddenly as it began. A few minutes later parts of the cloud-sky turn a vivid ugly green, sign of a tornado that doesn’t appear.

  Whitecaps on the bay spit foam and spray.

  The sea rises, and the waves rise with it.

  * * * *

  Although Hector is at Betsy’s, he hasn’t bothered to open. No one’s going to be out today unless they absolutely have to be, and he might as well keep his promise to Gloria and get himself off the island before the tide and high seas cut him off.

  Resolved as he may be, however, he can’t stay away from the window. He can’t stop watching the clouds, listening to the wind. Gloria will think he’s loco, that’s for sure, but there’s something odd about this one and he doesn’t want to leave until he figures it out.

  Besides, if the causeway’s flooded, that means wrestling with the car, and his shoulder still aches from the kick it received when he shot Ronnie Hull’s extra rifle at that scum of the earth, one of the Teagues. There’s a bruise—it looks like he’s collided with an anvil—and he can barely lift the arm. Steering that old car ... he shakes his head, and sighs.

  He’s stuck, and thinks, Gloria’s going to kill me.

  * * * *

  Despite warnings from the cops, the firemen, and just about everyone else who had an opinion, Ronnie has spent the whole morning sifting through her father’s office, and their apartment, looking for things to salvage.

  The fire, started with a few gallons of gasoline and a match, has left little for her to use. She knows that, after the first of the year, the whole building will have to come down; she knows that the storm will drown anything left behind.

  She’s not looking for anything special. A keepsake, a utensil, a photograph, a ballpoint pen...she doesn’t care; as long as it was hers or Daddy’s, she doesn’t care.

  Every hour or so she takes a break, pulls off her work gloves and climbs over the debris into the front room, where she stares through the shattered window at the spot where her father died. Remembering how Stump looked when he saw her riding down on him, how her father looked as he was cast aside like an old rag; remembering the voice of the preacher, the one they all thought was nothing more than a thick-neck handyman, and the look on his face, such sorrow; remembering what she had said, and that he’d prayed for Daddy anyway.

  She looks, and she remembers, and then she returns to the ash and char and sodden paper and crumbling walls, and looks again for something she can bring out, so she can remember.

  * * * *

  Kirkland Stone sits on the loveseat, his feet propped on the chipped coffee table. In the corner is his bloodstained shirt, thrown there after Lauder cut it off him. He inhales deeply as one finger brushes over a vicious bruise across the front of his neck. Then he smiles around the room before suggesting to Stump Teague that the next time he wants a battle, he use something less primitive than a shotgun, so he can be sure he’ll win.

  “Did the job,” Stump says, not in the least impressed with either the man or his speech.

  “Yes, perhaps, but a good machine pistol might have saved the lives of your brothers.”

  Teague starts from his armchair, then shrugs and slumps again. “Lucky shots.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Whether or not,” Lauder calls from the kitchen where he is trying to put together a decent lunch from the larder discovered in this empty house’s pantry. “Remember, we still have work to do, Mr. Stone.”

  “I realize that, Dutch, I realize that. The question is, exactly what are our priorities, and how do we go about achieving their completion?”

  “The faggot preacher,” Stump says without hesitation. “I don’t care what you guys do, but I’m getting that preacher.”

  “Well, so are we, Mr. Teague, so are we.” Stone crosses his legs at the ankles, splayed fingers across his chest. “But how?” He nods to the window, to the early darkness outside. “It isn’t going to be easy moving around in this weather. We don’t have transportation now that our... benefactor has been eliminated from the operating equation.”

  Stump squints at him. “What?”

  “We need a car, you jackass,” Lauder calls angrily.

  “Why the hell didn’t you say so? I got a car.”

  “Really,” says Stone.

  “Really,” Stump answers, sneering. “When do you want it?”

  “As soon as we eat, if that would be convenient.”

  “You got it, Stone.”

  “And after we get your preacher man, Mr. Teague, may I assume you will assist us with our own little endeavor?”

  “Which is?”

  Lauder walks into the room with a tray loaded with sandwiches and bottles of imported beer. “I,” he says, setting the tray on the coffee table, “want to shove a stick of dynamite up that porky mayor’s ass.”

  “Mr. Lauder,” Stone scolds with a coy smile.

  Stump shrugs. “Sounds good to me. What about the money?”

  “Finders keepers, Mr. Teague. Share and share.”

  “Better and better. Then, what? We come back here for the night?”

  “Heavens no. My friend and I are leaving the island as soon as we’re finished.”

  Stump looks from Lauder to Stone and back again. “He’s kidding, right?”

  “He seldom kids,” Lauder informs him.

  “Whatever.” Stump grabs a sandwich, takes such a huge bite it makes Stone wince. “But I sure as hell hope you guys can swim good, ‘cause it’s the only way you’re gonna get off this piece of shit today.”

  * * * *

  The vanguard of the storm system has nearly completed its run, and Rick has decided that he isn’t going to stay in the Tower one second more. The structure, solid enough to last through any number of hurricanes and other winter storms, sways with each gust, enough that he’s beginning to learn what it’s like to feel seasick. Not to mention the incessant throbbing behind the lump in the middle of his forehead, Where his skull met the steering wheel when he crashed into Teague’s car. Not to mention the slight sprain his left wrist suffered.

  Trifles, he figures, compared to what will happen to him if he stays here.

  He can see the rain on its way, a dark grey curtain that stretches from cloud to ocean; he can feel the subtle change in the wind’s direction; he blinks each time lightning snakes through the clouds; the thunder is still too far away to be more than a grumbling.

  That much he supposes he could stand if he had to stay.

  It’s the ocean itself that bothers him.

  He’s been watching the waves as they roll toward shore, and it took him a while to realize exactly what he was seeing—the presage of a storm surge.

  He has already called as many people as he can, asking them to spread the word. Within the last hour his binoculars have tracked at least two dozen vehicles speeding up Midway toward Landward and the causeway. Islanders know the drill—pack and run before the causeway’s flooded. Money and clothes, people and pets, the hell with everything else.

  A normal surge might bring water all the way through to Midway, flood a few cellars, knock down a few old trees, raise the level of the harbor and damage a few boats, unpin a pier or two—nothing that hasn’t happened a dozen times before.

  But from the looks of it, the feel of it, he’s convinced this one is going to be a monster, and has no compunction about telling folks this, If he’s wrong, the worst that will happen is that he’ll look like an idiot, and Ben Pellier will buy him drinks for a week just so he can poke a little fun.

  If he’s right...

  The Tower sways sharply, nearly knocking him off his feet.

  “That’s it. I’m outta here.”

  He grabs the binoculars and the cell
phone, opens the trap door, and double-checks to make sure he’s left nothing important behind. Then he starts down the ladder, favoring his left hand, looking around at the dipping treetops, gaping once when he thinks he sees scarlet lightning over the water.

  Then the trees are around him, the wind’s power has lessened, and he’s thinking about sliding the rest of the way down when an explosion overhead throws him off the ladder.

  Damn lightning, he thinks, just before he hits the ground and the tower buckles around him.