Nowhere People (Nowhere, USA Book 7)

by Ninie Hammon

  Though it wouldn’t really count as killing a somebody. Wasn’t like she was white, a real person. Still, she’d do just fine.

  Viola told the crowd she was gonna use Thelma as a demonstration of the way things was gonna go today, then she pulled her .357 magnum pistol out of her purse and aimed it at Thelma, and the crowd gasped — grumbling and rumbling moving through the people like watching sheet lightning firing off inside a cloud.

  “She’s gonna be the first.” She cocked the pistol. She talked to the crowd, but never took her eyes off Thelma’s face, was enjoying the deer in-the-headlights look she saw there. “Somebody killed my Essie, drove by the Tackett House yesterday and shot her down like a dog.”

  That brought gasps and muffled voices from the crowd, too. Oh, everybody knew Essie’d got shot. Viola couldn’t have kept a thing like that quiet if she’d wanted to. But it was likely most people didn’t know the specifics of what’d happened.

  Least the people who wasn’t there didn’t know. She addressed her next words to the folks who was there.

  “You’re out there right now, listening to my words — the one who kilt my little girl.” She turned her gaze from Thelma to the crowd now, but stayed where she was with the gun leveled at Thelma’s chest. “And you others is out there, too, the others as was in the car when the shot was fired. I’m talking to you now, and I ain’t gonna mince words. If you step forward and tell me who done it, I will let you live. You got my word on that — won’t touch a hair on yore head. But if don’t nobody step forward …” She turned her focus back to Thelma. “Ima shoot Thelma Jackson.”

  A rumble of denial and protest belched out of the crowd, loud and raucous. She hoped wasn’t nobody in the crowd packing, though it was likely that somebody out there had a gun. Folks here carried their firearms with them wherever they went. That was why Viola was standing kinda outta sight, behind Thelma, up next to the pillar — in case somebody decided to take a shot at her.

  “And then I’m gonna get somebody else up here … and I’m gonna shoot them, too.” She let her rage growl out through her voice. “And Ima keep killing people one after another until somebody tells me who killed my Essie. You folks got to the count of three.”

  Thelma Jackson just stood there, didn’t say nothing at all and that surprised Viola. She expected the woman’d drop down to her knees, maybe, beg Viola not to kill her, cry and holler and plead for her life. But she didn’t do none of those things, just looked at Viola, and the look in them eyes! Viola almost stepped back from the fierceness of it.

  “One!” Viola called out.

  You coulda heard a mouse in house shoes tiptoeing across a cotton ball it was so quiet.

  “Two!” She didn’t call out this time, just said the word normal. Wasn’t nobody didn’t hear her. She knew they thought she was bluffing, didn’t really think she’d do it.

  Well, they was about to get the surprise of they lives.

  She lifted the pistol up and aimed the barrel at Thelma’s face, took a half step toward her so it was only inches away from her forehead and called out,

  “Thre—”

  She never got out the rest of the word.

  Lester didn’t have a shot!

  Viola was almost completely concealed behind the white pillar on the porch and Thelma Jackson was in front of her.

  Lester listened to her speech about how she was going to keep shooting people until somebody fingered the person who’d killed her daughter. His eye never left the sight on his rifle. He had set the crosshairs of it, fixed on the edge of the pillar Viola stood behind. The instant she showed herself, he would squeeze the trigger.

  She began to count.

  “One!”

  The barrel of the pistol edged out beyond the pillar where Viola was pointing it at Thelma Jackson’s head. That was all, though. Should he take a shot, try to hit the gun barrel, knock the pistol out of her hand?

  Could he make a shot like that at this distance?

  He’d threaded bullets through inch-wide gaps in the vegetation of a jungle a hundred yards away. But he was twenty years old at the time and he hadn’t fired his sniper rifle since.

  “Two!”

  Thelma had a second, maybe two to live. Lester sighted on the pistol barrel and began to squeeze the trigger.

  “Thr—” Viola moved. Lester shifted his aim and fired.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Pete no longer felt the pain of the gravel digging into his bony knees. As soon as he heard the sound of Viola Tackett’s voice, he placed the barrel of his M1 in the slot between the stones and lowered his face to sight in on a man in a black tee shirt, one of the armed men standing out from the crowd. That’s when Pete saw that Lester didn’t have a shot.

  Maybe Pete was wrong. Maybe from Lester’s angle …

  It was impossible to tell for sure, but from where Pete crouched on his knees in the gravel on the roof, it appeared that one of the big white pillars on the porch of the school was between Viola and Lester. She stood beside it, not out on the front of the porch with Neb. And Thelma Jackson was smack in front of her.

  Pete did have a shot. From his position, he would have to thread a needle around Thelma, but he could see more of Viola than Lester could.

  Maybe Judd had a shot, too. Pete couldn’t tell. But he knew Judd would never take the initiative to deviate from the plan even if he did. In truth, Pete wasn’t even sure Judd was going to be able to hold up his end of the deal, but wasn’t no way to find out a thing like that in advance. He’d often been surprised by which soldiers froze and which ones brazenly ran into enemy fire. They often weren’t the ones he would have picked for bravery.

  Viola began to count.

  Should Pete take the shot?

  He was no sniper! He’d shot expert on the firing range half a century ago, and he was good enough to bag a deer every season. At this almost point-blank range he could easily take out the targets he’d been assigned this day, no doubt about it. Shooting M1 like he was, body shots would be kill shots.

  But this wasn’t a body shot. If Thelma moved, even an inch …

  “Two!” Viola cried.

  If Pete fired, he might miss and kill Thelma Jackson.

  If he didn’t fire, Viola Tackett would put a bullet through Thelma’s forehead.

  Pete began to squeeze the trigger.

  “Th—”

  Viola suddenly lurched backward, blood spewing out of her shoulder, the pistol flying out of her hand.

  Nobody in the crowd had any idea what’d just happened, but Ned Tackett was standing on the front of the porch, facing the crowd and their rooftop positions. When Pete called out, “Drop your weapons, all of you! Hands—” Neb lifted a pistol and fired and a chunk of the facade a couple of feet from Pete exploded into dust.

  Pete snapped his sight back on the man in the black tee shirt, who was turning now, raising his rifle. Pete dropped the man in his tracks before he could get off a shot, the boom of his rifle setting the tinnitus in his ears singing.

  And then the rhythm took over. He’d forgotten about the rhythm.

  Fire!

  Fire!

  Fire!

  Change the magazine.

  Wrack the bolt.

  Fire!

  Fire!

  Fire!

  The crowd exploded, people screaming and hollering and running ever which way and Pete had to pick his shots careful.

  Return fire clattered into the building, sent chunks of stone exploding off the facade, stinging his face. Pete Rutherford didn’t hit nothing he didn’t aim at that day, and what he did hit crumpled to the asphalt.

  Judd’s hands were shaking so violently he could barely hold onto his rifle. Obie Tackett had been standing right there, a gun pointed at Judd — and then he lurched backward, never even let go of the rifle, just flew off the back of the building and was gone.

  Like he hadn’t never been there to begin with. No gunshot; he was just gone.

  For a moment, Jud
d wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing. It’d happened so fast. He’d heard the feet-on-gravel sound. He’d turned. Obie’d said something about … asked what he was doing … and then there was a spray of red and Obie disappeared.

  Judd’s head snapped to the post office building down the street, but he could see nothing. Of course he couldn’t. He hadn’t heard nothing, neither. Lester had shot Obie Tackett and not a soul in the world knew it’d happened except Judd Perkins.

  Lester Peetree had saved Judd Perkins’s life.

  That’s when Judd’s hands started to shake and he was afraid he was going to throw up. Or wet his pants. He did need to go something fierce.

  Then he heard Viola’s voice from below, and that was the signal. Soon’s he heard her start talking, he was supposed to sight in on a target.

  He lifted the rifle and put the barrel in the slot. The barrel jumped around like a man with a bee in his drawers and Judd couldn’t seem to grab hold of himself.

  They was counting on him. He had a job to do.

  And he thought of E.J.

  “I have a plan — not a very good one, but it’s the only shot we have. You start the tractor, engage the power take-off and unhook the clasp on the barn doors. I’ll open the doors, get Buster’s attention and then dive under the PTO.” Judd has trouble following E.J.’s train of thought. His confusion must show on his face because E.J. says, “He’ll come after me, his fur’ll get caught in the spinning PTO and …”

  And it’ll wrap that dog around the shaft, crush him to death instantly. But the PTO ain’t but maybe two feet off the ground.

  E.J. must see that on his face, too, because he says, “A skinny guy like me, I’ll fit.”

  “What makes you think you can outrun—?”

  “I don’t, actually. That last part is just … you know, a Hail Mary. I figure he’ll take me down as soon as I turn around and start running … well, hobbling.”

  “But E.J., if Buster gets you, he’ll kill—”

  “He’s already killed me, Judd. It’ll take a while, but I’m as good as dead. He’s rabid and I’m not vaccinated. Without that vaccine, the best doctors in the best hospital in the world would just have to stand by my bed and watch me foam at the mouth.”

  Judd just looks at him, flabbergasted.

  “Rabies is an ugly way to die, Judd.”

  “So’s getting your throat ripped out by a dog,” Judd whispers.

  “True that. I’d rather die in my sleep at some time after my one-hundredth birthday. As soon as Buster took a hunk out of my leg, that stopped being an option. Of the available options, I pick number two. It’s the only chance we have to save Julie and Michelle.”

  Judd actually backs up a step, shaking his head.

  “I don’t know about this, E.J. …”

  “Yes, you do, Judd. You do. You don’t like it and neither do I. But you know, if you’ve got a better plan, let’s hear it. If you don’t, we go with this one.”

  And then E.J. Stephenson walked right out into the jaws of a mad dog.

  Judd felt the jittery sensation melt out of his body like frost when the morning sun hits it. His grip steadied. He pushed the rifle barrel out through the opening and put his eye to his sight. It was a Diamondback HP 3-12x42 scope. He’d once dropped a deer with it at seven hundred yards.

  With huge magnification like that, it was hard to maneuver at such close range, but he was expecting that and compensated.

  He placed the crosshairs of the scope on the back of a John Deere cap. He saw oil stains and dirt on it. The bottom was frayed, like it’d been chewed on. Maybe a puppy’d got it. He moved the crosshairs down, could have counted the hairs on the back of the man’s neck. Down from there he found a single red square in the man’s black-and-red checked shirt and fixed on it.

  Viola was counting, shouting out numbers.

  One.

  Two.

  She didn’t get the whole of the next number out and Pete’s voice rang out from atop the Hair Affair Beauty Shop and Nail Salon. He only got a couple of words out before the first gunshot rang out and a heartbeat after that, Judd heard the crack of Pete’s M1 rifle.

  The checked-shirt man was moving, lifting his rifle as he turned. Red and black squares blurred and Judd pulled the trigger, saw blood spurt out a hole the size of a baseball.

  Moving the sight instantly to his next target, a skinny man wearing a dirty tee shirt and jeans who had a pistol and was firing wildly at the rooftops. Judd planted a shot square in the center of the smiley-face logo on the front of the shirt.

  Ping! A bullet ricocheted off the facade an inch from Judd’s face. Another hit the top of the facade next to him and knocked out a hunk of plaster. Now, Judd was aiming at moving targets, men dodging around, diving for cover. He knew how to lead a shot, aim where a bolting deer was gonna be, not where it had been and he dropped the man who’d fired the shots at him. Then he swung the rifle to the right, tore out a bearded man’s throat and fired at another bearded man who’d taken cover behind a parked car. He missed, blew a hole in the trunk of the car. Movement caught his eye and he watched a man dive on his belly behind a mailbox. Another was running across the street right toward Judd. He followed the man with his sight, rising as the guy got closer and closer, and pulled the trigger right before the man disappeared from view.

  Judd was no soldier, but his friends who had served in the military always said you never heard the shot that hit you. Turned out they were right.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Stuart McClintock could barely see, his eyes beginning to bug out of his head from the pressure around his neck. What he could see was a horde of … what? Small … beings … children were gliding down the hillside toward them. Jolene had squeaked out a little cry, would have backed away but she was on her knees beside the grave. She did all she had strength to do, simply fell over on her side and curled up in a fetal position, making some fear sound that was a little like sobbing.

  Surely the old lady choking Stuart couldn’t see. But she somehow knew the children were coming. At first, she froze like she’d been unplugged. Then seemed to have renewed strength for the attack because her attention snapped back to him and the pressure on his neck grayed out the world on the edges. Sparkles and spots. No sound. Light fading.

  A force slammed into Stuart from the side, into him and the woman choking him, staggering them both, and suddenly one of her squeezing hands let go of his neck. He would have reached up with his own hands to pry loose the other hand, but he was so nearly unconscious that his limbs refused to obey his commands.

  Suddenly the other hand let go. Stuart lurched back, gasping in great lungfuls of air. And as light returned to the world he could see through watering eyes why the woman strangling him had let go. Her arms were no longer attached to her body. The child … thing that had ripped them off knocked her off her feet backwards and Stuart sank to his knees, his head bowed as he felt a rush of cold pass by him. It broke around him and Cotton and Jolene like a wave breaking around a rock and flowed back together toward the creatures crossing the meadow toward them.

  One of the women Jolene had run over was nearby and two of the children tore into her. Literally tore into her. Without making a sound, they attacked her with claws and fangs, ripping her apart. Maybe that was the most horrible part, that the whole thing happened in silence, not the snarling of animals who attack a prey, no screaming from a wounded animal, no sound of any kind except scuffling sounds as the creatures were torn apart and thrown to the ground, where the other children swarmed over them, ripping and …

  One of the larger children launched itself at Reece Tibbits, who made no effort to fend it off. Some part of Stuart’s mind informed him that Reece likely couldn’t see the attack coming, given that he had no head. Reece staggered back, but didn’t go down. Another of the children joined the first, ripping and slashing at Reece’s body. It grabbed hold of Reece’s arm and slashed, pulling and clawing until the arm came off but the s
tump didn’t bleed. The woman who’d been strangling Stuart hadn’t bled, either.

  The pregnant woman had made it to Cotton. He slammed the shovel down on the top of her head, a crushing blow, but she merely staggered back a step from the momentum of the shovel hitting her, not from any injury. The whole top of her head and front of her face was smashed in, but she lurched forward again, arms extend, and Cotton wasn’t quick enough to lift the shovel again for a second blow and she grabbed him around the throat. He dropped the shovel and grabbed her arms, trying to free himself, staggered back and tripped over the shovel, went down heavily on the ground with the woman on top of him.

  Two of the children attacked the two grappling on the ground. One of them sliced claws across the woman’s back, opening up groves deep enough to have reached vital organs. There was no blood. The second bit into one of her arms, slashing with dagger teeth. Then the first child ripped through one of the woman’s arms, almost severing it, breaking her hold on Cotton’s neck. The other child grabbed the woman’s body and flung her backward onto the ground. And then they were all over her, clawing and biting and tearing and …

  Stuart looked away. To Cotton, he croaked, “The bones!” Then he crawled to the spot beside the grave where Jolene lay, curled up in a ball, sobbing, crying, screaming, all and none of them.

  “Jolene.” He shook her shoulder. “Help us. We have to get the bones into the grave.”

  She uncurled enough to look at him and then turned her head toward the carnage, but he grabbed her chin and forced her face back to his.

  “Don’t look that way, look at me, focus on me now and help me.”

  He crawled toward the nearest leaf bag and Jolene got to her knees and picked up the one she’d dropped on the ground. Cotton helped Jolene lift it, and the three of them emptied the bones into the grave. They made an awful clacking sound when they hit the bottom, skulls and leg bones and arms and fingers and toes.