There was movement off to one side, and he swung around, his heart leaping to his throat. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the animal, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t a dog. It was something bigger than a dog. Much bigger and faster.
He jumped into the backseat of the limo and slammed the door. “Holy shit,” he said. “The Tuskers—they’re coming! I saw one.”
“Don’t be silly,” Kathy said. She leaned over the front seat, opened the glove box, and pulled out her pearl-handled pistol. She was quite proud of the gun. She had done an entire story on it; buying it, getting the license, practice shooting.
She stepped outside and looked in the same direction where Seth had seen the flash of movement, which meant she’d seen something too.
It came bursting out of the underbrush by the side of the road, the biggest pig Seth had ever seen. It had red eyes that glowed, or so it seemed to him, and hair bristling on either side of a head that was huge and ungainly even on that massive body. Its tail was sticking straight up in the air; its hooves clattered on the road. A stink filled the air, and a grunting sound that sounded for all the world like a growl.
Kathy began firing instantly. Her first shots landed behind it. “Shit!” she cried out, changing her aim but missing again as it charged faster than she could adjust for; the next couple of bullets gouged the asphalt in front of the animal. Kathy backed up, her back slamming into the limo.
There was the sound of several clicks, and then, miraculously, the final bullet in the clip hit the monster between the eyes. It slid on its belly the last few feet to Kathy, razor-sharp tusks forward, and she jumped out of the way at the last moment.
She stood there taking big gulps of breath. Then she straightened her pantsuit with as much dignity as she could muster.
She got back into the limo’s front seat, calmly rummaged through the glove box until she found the extra clip, and inserted it. Only then did she turn around to address Seth. “Do you suppose it’s too late to join the Hunters?”
Chapter Nine
Day of the Pulse
Andy woke up late, having closed Monson’s Diner the night before by himself. He’d arrived just minutes after Kathy Comfort and her cameraman left. Their breakfast plates were still on the table.
“She seems to think she’s something special,” said Marcy, the older woman who worked the morning shift. “They were asking about the Pederson ranch. I gave them directions.”
Damn, Andy thought. I missed her. But she’ll come back sniffing around, unless I miss my guess.
It wasn’t like there were a lot of choices for places to eat in town, so he was sure to see her again—unless she got her story and left. Would the Hunters tell her anything? He doubted it, based on his own experience. He’d managed to pry some of the truth out of them, but a reporter probably wouldn’t get very far.
He’d see her tonight, or tomorrow morning, or tomorrow night, and one way or another, he’d engage her in conversation. It was a dangerous thing to do—his mug was still on some of the old FBI flyers, though there’d been an effort to remove them. The total extent of his disguise was that he was clean-shaven now and wore his hair short, unlike the unruly beard and hair he’d worn in his criminal career. Back then, he’d been too busy making money to spend any time in a barber’s chair.
He’d still be making money if his bosses hadn’t asked him to kill the Fortuna family.
Damn, he thought. I don’t want to think about that.
He stood stock still at the cash register as the memories overwhelmed him. He gave the wrong change to John Snyder, not once, but three times. The old man laughed it off, but after he left, Andy waved Marcy over.
“Take care of things, will you?” he muttered. Carter was cooking today, and for once, he felt like he could abandon his post. He went into the back room and sat at his cluttered desk. The room was filled with cases of cans and other nonperishables. A walk-in freezer ran along the outer wall.
When he was sure he was alone, he let the memories wash over him.
He’d been ordered to kill not just Dominic Fortuna, who was a bad guy who probably deserved to be taken out, but also Fortuna’s wife, Katerina, and their three small children. He’d gotten as far as the preliminary scouting. He might still have talked himself into killing the couple, on the general principle that the wife must know what her spouse was doing, if he hadn’t talked to her first.
Katerina was an innocent, he quickly discovered. She was one of those rare people who was genuinely nice to everyone. He’d taken a liking to her, and to the three kids, who were quiet and polite. He’d never killed children before, and now he realized he couldn’t.
Andy knew that he was a damned soul. He’d lost count of how many men he’d killed. But he’d been lucky in that every one of his targets were murderers themselves.
He’d never thought he possessed a conscience, but once he balked at killing the Fortunas, the Pandora’s Box opened wide. He started dreaming of his former victims every night. It got so bad, he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, could barely communicate with anyone.
Still, he was surprised to find himself, on a bright Monday morning, pacing outside the federal courthouse in Houston. He watched prosecutors and judges walking by who he knew for a fact were bought and paid for. When Carly Jaspers went by him, she looked at him curiously. He’d seen her before, at one of the Godfather trials, and knew she was smart, but even more importantly, honest.
She said later she didn’t know who he was, but that he looked like a man with a guilty conscience. She’d seen it before.
“You need directions?” she asked.
“Yeah…to your offices,” he said on the spur of the moment. “I’m looking for you, Ms. Jaspers. I’m here to confess.”
She stopped in midstride and examined him sharply. Then she looked around for help. But for once, there in front of the courthouse, there were no uniformed officers in sight.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not armed. I’m here to give myself up. I really think you’ll want to talk to me, Ms. Jaspers.”
By the time Carly Jaspers milked him for everything he knew, most of the bosses who had sent him after the Fortuna family were behind bars. And both the Fortunas and Vinnie Paglioni were living under assumed names as far from New York City as possible. The only thing Vinnie/Andy regretted was that he would never see Carly Jaspers again.
The last time he’d seen her, she was in his bed, her hair tousled and wild, her expression unusually soft and relaxed.
She was staring at him.
“What?” he asked.
“It would be easier to hide you if you weren’t so damned good-looking.”
“I’m sure the Gambinos don’t care how good looking I am.”
She examined him, her serious prosecutor’s demeanor back in full force. “Maybe if you grow a scraggly beard, maybe wear some glasses?” She squinted at him. “Nope, wouldn’t work. We’ll just have to find a place so far from anywhere that no one will ever find you.”
As Andy sat in the back office, consumed by his memories, the door buzzer went off multiple times.
I should go help Marcy before she gets overwhelmed, he thought after it buzzed for the umpteenth time. She’s always threatening to quit. And Sherry isn’t ready to handle things when it gets busy.
Instead, he closed his eyes and visualized Kathy Comfort’s face.
She reminded him of Carly, in more ways than one. She was a little older than him, hard-boiled and smart, a little brash in demeanor. He liked that. He liked that a lot. It was going to be a challenge, he could tell, but he’d always been able to get the women he wanted to return his interest, at least for a while. He hadn’t gotten the nickname “Smooth” for nothing.
Andy had to admit he was lonely. He’d never thought that would happen. When he’d bought the diner and settled down in the small house a few blocks away, he’d actually been content for a time. If he wanted a little actio
n, he could always head into the wilderness, do some hunting or fishing. He liked his life just fine.
Except that none of the local women interested him much. They were nice enough, but maybe that was the problem: they were too nice.
The door buzzer kept going off, and finally he sighed and got up. Marcy glared at him when he came to the front, but he ignored her and took his place at the register.
It was a busy morning. That Kathy Comfort was in town was apparently common knowledge. There was a fair bit of discussion about whether anyone should or would talk to her about the Aporkcalypse.
“They better not say a word,” old Jeffries, the school janitor, said. “Not if they want to keep living here.”
“Would it really be so bad?” Carrie Singer asked from a booth three partitions away. Everyone knew everyone in this town. She was the local real estate agent, but since the Hunters owned most of the land in the Morrow Valley and refused to sell, she wasn’t selling much.
“We don’t want to be known as the ‘pig place,’” Jeffries growled.
“We talked it over,” Herb Jensen said. He was the only lawyer in town, and had been reelected mayor five times in a row. Though it was pretty much an honorary position, Herb seemed to think it gave him some authority. Since he seemed to want the title so much and was well spoken, everyone always voted for him. “We’ll be legally liable if they know we lied.”
No one had to ask who “they” were. Most people lived in the Morrow Valley because they didn’t want anything to do with the outside world, certainly not big government.
Andy stayed quiet, as he usually did. Though he’d lived there for five years, he was still an outsider to most of the locals—though as proprietor of Monson’s Diner, he was given a certain amount of respect.
In the middle of the argument, the lights in the diner flickered and went out. He heard the cook, Carter cursing. The kitchen had no windows, so he was in the dark, except for the small slit where the food was placed.
Carrie was texting something, and she suddenly exclaimed and threw her phone onto the counter, where it sizzled and popped. Outside, a delivery truck backing up to the store next door stopped abruptly.
“What the hell was that?” Herb asked. He looked at Jeffries, who by virtue of being a janitor was apparently expected to know something about electronics.
“Hell if I know,” Jeffries said. “Some kind of electromagnetic pulse?”
“Like the kind nuclear bombs make?” Herb answered, sounding dubious.
“Could be a solar flare,” Jeffries allowed. “Or a lightning strike.” They all instinctively looked out the windows, though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
Andy went to the kitchen door and propped it open. Jerry was just inches away and shouted in surprise. Andy ignored him, went to the back room and opened the back door. The emergency generator was in the shed. If the power outage lasted for very long, neighbors would be showing up with perishable foodstuffs, asking to store them in his big walk-in freezer. Apparently, whatever had caused the power outage hadn’t affected machines not turned on at the time.
Daryl Monson, the previous owner of the diner, had been sure that the end of the world was coming at any moment. He had put in the generator, as well as installing stoves that could be converted to wood burning, and a huge pantry full of supplies, which Andy had barely dented. Sure enough, the end of the world had come—for Monson, in the form of a winding road, a six-pack of beer, and the branch of a juniper tree through the windshield.
Andy knew it was going to be a busy afternoon and night as people congregated in the one place in town they knew would still be open for business. He should be getting ready.
But there was something unsettling about the whole thing. The tension in the air was like what he’d felt before one of his jobs.
First Kathy Comfort showing up, now this…
When Sherry arrived a few minutes later, even though it was her day off, he took it as a sign. He took his apron off and handed it to her. “Time and a half if you take my shift,” he said. “Remember, people tend to tip really well when these sorts of disasters happen.”
“All right,” she said.
She didn’t sound certain, because the diner was filling up rapidly, but he didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. He slipped out the back and started up his jeep. He wasn’t sure it was going to fire up, and it took some grinding before it turned over, though that could have been from either the pulse or just a normal rundown battery.
Andy stopped off at his house and ran inside to grab his revolver and a handful of cartridges, which he plopped into one of his pants pockets. The road out of town was blocked by stalled traffic in a couple of places, and he had to make a few detours, but soon enough, he was headed up the old highway to the Pederson ranch.
He rounded the corner to the Javelina Heights subdivision. A huge boar stood in the middle of the road as if challenging him. It seemed to get bigger as he approached, its hair bristling atop its hunched back. Once upon a time, Andy might have tried to avoid the animal, to steer to one side of the highway—and perhaps catch the edge, overcompensate, and go shooting across the road and rolling down the hillside.
This time Andy didn’t even slow down. He hit the boar smack in the middle of the jeep’s bumper. The creature flew over the hood, squealing. It slammed into the windshield, shooting webs of cracks across the glass, and tumbled over the roof with a loud thump. Andy looked in the rearview mirror. The boar was rolling lifelessly down the middle of the highway.
With that, Andy lost all doubt about what was happening. Somehow he’d always known the Tuskers would be back, meaner and stronger—and in greater numbers than ever. In his conscious mind, he’d thought his hyper-vigilance was because of his gangster past. Now he understood that the war between the Tuskers and the citizens of Morrow Valley was far from over.
What Andy had really been waiting for was another Aporkcalypse.
Chapter Ten
If one Tusker on the highway was surprising, a whole passel of them was downright alarming. Andy turned the corner into a sea of them, squirming, squealing, grunting like one giant creature. Kathy Comfort’s black limo was stalled in the middle of the roiling, heaving mass. Their musky odor seeped through the closed windows of his jeep.
The limo was rocking back and forth, and Andy realized the swarm was trying to tip it over on its side. The driver held a camera to his face, filming the whole thing. Kathy Comfort sat on the passenger’s side, holding a small gun in her hand, looking as though she was waiting for the first of the attackers to make it inside, her jaw set in determination. The white face and wide eyes of her assistant, Seth, stared out from the backseat. The Tuskers moved with coordination, digging their tusks beneath the undercarriage of the limo and straining upward. As the tires lifted, other Tuskers slid underneath, continuing the upward movement.
Andy slammed on his brakes. Without thinking, he laid on the horn. At the same time, he lowered his window. “Hey, you porkers! Come and get me!”
The pigs lost concentration. The limo’s tires slammed back onto the asphalt of the highway, and the vehicle bounced violently, crushing some of the animals. Flailing hooves and squealing emanated from beneath the limo.
The rest of the pigs froze for a moment, turning maddened eyes to Andy. As if directed, a section of the heaving mass broke away and ran for the jeep. The rest resumed their efforts overturn the vehicle.
Andy barely had time to close the window before the first of the pigs slammed into the side of his door. Their tusks grated, digging into the metal. The largest Tusker’s snout pressed against the window at the height of Andy’s eyes, its own eyes filled with anger, but also a calculating intelligence. The jeep slid sideways under their onslaught, and then there was a loud popping sound as a tusk dug into the spare tire that was attached to the back and it exploded.
That did it. Andy put the jeep into drive and lurched forward, running over o
ne of the smaller animals, causing the front of the jeep to rise a few inches and then bounce back onto the road. The others scattered, then chased him as he accelerated toward the limo. He put his hand on the horn, and as he’d hoped, the pigs surrounding the limo scattered, allowing him to pull up only inches from the other vehicle.
He got as close as he could, and when he stopped, the windows of the vehicles were roughly aligned. The jeep was a few inches taller than the limo. He rolled down his window, motioning for the other driver to do the same.
“Need a ride?” he asked.
“If you would be so kind,” Kathy Comfort said, cool as could be.
The assistant, Seth, crawled over first. Actually, he more or less dove headfirst into the back of the jeep.
The driver still had his camera up, continuing to film. “Ladies first,” the man said.
“That’s bullshit, Gary,” Kathy said.
He kept filming, unperturbed. Kathy looked ready to object some more, then shrugged, climbed over his lap, and wormed her way over the steering wheel. She put her hands out for Andy to grab, and he pulled her over into his arms.
She smelled nice. Andy recognized expensive perfume when he encountered it—it had been on some of the high-class call girls he’d once frequented. Kathy’s dress rode up over her thighs, and he managed not to stare. Still, as she slipped onto his lap, he gave her a slight hug, which he imagined she returned.
What the hell are you thinking?
He glanced over at her as she got her legs around and slid over to the passenger’s seat. He thought he saw a small, intrigued smile on her face. Strange how even in the middle of danger, it was impossible to ignore a sexy woman.
He felt something tapping him on the back of his head, and he reared back a little and turned around. The driver/cameraman was holding the camera out for him to take. Before Andy could react, Kathy reached past him, took the camera and turned the lens back on her driver, still recording. It was going to make a hell of a story.
The Omnivore Wars Page 7
