Ghost Road Blues pd-1

by Jonathan Maberry

  Crow stepped into the rush, and as Ruger’s arms closed like a crab’s pincers around his legs, he punched downward in as hard and true a vertical line as a drill press, driving the two big knuckles of his right hand between Ruger’s shoulder blades, dropping all his body weight with it to try and break the man’s back. It was a devastating blow, but the mud was soft and Ruger was hard. Still, the air went out of his lungs for a moment and he tasted mud in his mouth.

  Crow stood over him for a moment, chest heaving, heart hammering from fear as much as from exertion. He had never seen anyone move so fast or hit so hard or fight with such animal ferocity. He risked a glance at Val, who was on her knees, one hand massaging her throat, he face slack with dizziness and nausea. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, and even opened his mouth to say something, but Ruger abruptly reached up and punched him right in the balls.

  Crow screamed and staggered back, cupping his testicles, yet backpedaling to give himself room.

  Ruger got to his feet, covered in mud like a golem, and he smiled with muddy teeth. “I’m going to fuck you up so bad they’ll have to bury you in installments.”

  “Talk is cheap, dickhead,” Crow wheezed. His groin felt as if it were on fire.

  Ruger hurled a handful of mud at Crow’s face, and followed it with another rush.

  Crow was not as hurt as he pretended. A strike to the groin, even a hard one, does little actual damage. It’s just pain, and it is the pain that stops most people, but some people don’t care as much about pain. They know it, they’re used to it; it may not be an old friend, but it is an old companion. Crow was long acquainted with pain, even the pain of a hard punch in the balls. It hurt him, but hurt can be dealt with.

  He waited in his half crouch, looking done-in, letting Ruger close the distance, letting Ruger provide the force.

  Then he slid in between Ruger’s reaching arms and turned half away, catching one of his arms with one hand, and cupping the back of his neck with the other and then pivoted his body as fast as he could. Ruger’s force, plus the speed and arc of the turn, plucked Ruger right off the ground and sent him flying right into the driver’s door of the big brown Impala. The back of Ruger’s head slammed into it and he rebounded with a grunt, leaving a deep dent in Missy’s door. He slid down to the ground shaking his head, tried to get to his feet, and fell back again against the door, head lolling.

  Crow stepped forward and grabbed him by the hair, hauled him ten inches away from the car so he could look at the man’s face, snarled in disgust, and then literally threw him backward into the same dented spot on the fender, ringing his skull off the crumpled metal. Ruger sagged bonelessly to the ground by the tire and lay there in the rain, blood running from his scalp.

  Crow looked down at him, watching for signs of trickery. Ruger didn’t flicker so much as an eyelash. Just to be sure, and because his battered face was really starting to hurt like a bastard — and because the dread of this man still turned an icy knife of terror in Crow’s guts — Crow kicked him in the mouth and shattered all of the man’s front teeth.

  Ruger fell over sideways, face forward into the mud.

  Crow stood there, swaying, feeling his knees wanting to buckle. Fireworks were going off at the corners of his vision and there was something wrong with his head — it felt as if it had been badly broken and poorly taped back together. He wanted to vomit, or collapse. Instead, gasping, holding one hand to his streaming nose, he turned and slogged through the rain and the mud to Val. He swooped down on her, gathering her in his arms, aware of her hurt, her dangling arm, her bruised face, but needing to feel her solidity, her realness in his arms. He showered kisses on her mud-streaked face, kissed her hair and her eyes. She was crying with big, painful sobs, and each one stabbed into Crow as surely as a needle.

  “Baby, baby, baby,” murmured. “What happened here? What did he do to you? My sweet baby…”

  Her voice was a strained croak, the vocal cords bruised beyond normal speech. She was still half conscious, swimming on the edge of a big waterfall that wanted to take her over and down into the blackness.

  Somewhere, half drowned by rain, the wail of police sirens could be heard, coming, coming…The sirens made her remember.

  “Daddy!” she cried. “Oh my God, Crow…Daddy’s out there!”

  “What? Where?”

  “In the cornfield. He needs help. I tried to help him, but I couldn’t, Crow, I couldn’t…” she rambled, hysterical, almost inarticulate with trauma. It was all catching up to her now, overwhelming her. The iron determination that had kept her steady earlier was crumbling now as grief and injury took hold.

  “Val,” Crow said sharply, trying to steady her. “What about your dad? What’s wrong with him? Where is he? What the hell happened here?”

  The sirens were louder, closer.

  “In the cornfield. We were helping the hurt man. We tried to run. I heard a shot. Daddy…he…”

  “Jesus Christ! Did that son of a bitch shoot your father? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “I tried to help him. I did. But I couldn’t…my arm…I just couldn’t.”

  “Shh, shh,” he soothed. “It’ll be okay. Just tell me where he is. I’ll go get him. And see? See there? Cops. There are cops coming. They’ll help, too.”

  “Help?” she asked in a little girl voice that broke Crow’s heart.

  “Yes, baby, they’ll help. Now tell me where your dad is. Tell me so I can go help him.”

  The police cars screeched as they slid to a halt outside the front of the house, sirens dying away, but the lights swirling red in the storm. Crow could hear doors opening and slamming. He turned and in as loud a voice as he could manage, he yelled, “Hey! Back here! We need help!”

  The sloshy sound of footsteps drew near, and Crow could see flashlight beams dancing. Two officers, still silhouetted behind the lights, came racing toward them, guns drawn.

  “Mr. Guthrie?” one of them called.

  “No, it’s me. Malcolm Crow. And Valerie Guthrie. Call for an ambulance, she’s hurt.”

  One cop peeled off and ran back to the car, the other came and shone a light on them. Close up, Crow recognized Rhoda Thomas, one of the younger officers.

  “Oh my God,” Rhoda gasped. “What happened?”

  Val’s eyes were swimmy with growing shock and all she could do was shake her head. Crow said, “I don’t know what all went on. When I got here, Val was running from some maniac. He caught her and all but strangled her. I think he must have done something to her arm, be careful with it.”

  “Where is he?”

  Crow jerked his head toward Missy.

  Rhoda looked at the slumped figure and frowned. “What happened to him?”

  “We had words.”

  “Who is he?”

  “How the fuck should I know? I think he might be one of the assholes you people are looking for. Who knows? Look, we got to check something out. Val said that this clown shot her father. At least I think that’s what she said. Out in the cornfield somewhere. We have to find out what’s happened.”

  “Rhoda!” a voice called, and she and Crow turned toward the house. A cop Crow didn’t know stood by the side of the house, pointing toward it. “There are two people in here. Man and woman. Man’s tied up, and I think the woman’s been assaulted. I called for an ambulance.”

  “Jesus,” Rhoda breathed.

  “Oh my God! Connie!” Crow looked from Val to the house to the cornfield and back to Val, trying to decide what to do. He bent his face close to Val, kissed her, and whispered in her ear, “Val, baby. I need to find your dad. You’ve got to tell me where he is. C’mon, baby, try to think.”

  Val’s eyelids fluttered and her eyes went in and out of focus, and slowly, slowly came back to focus. The pain came with the clarity, and she hissed through gritted teeth.

  “Shh, shh, just breathe, just breathe,” Crow soothed. “Now, baby, where’s your dad?”

  With her strained vocal c
ords, and wincing with the waves upon waves of pain, Val told him which path to take, but her voice dwindled and finally failed. Her eyelids fluttered shut and she went down into darkness. Crow held her, kissing her eyes, and then carefully laid her down on the muddy ground. Blood dripped from his torn face onto her lips, but he brushed it away. He raised fierce red eyes to Rhoda. “I’m going to see if I can find Mr. Guthrie. You stay here. Watch over her. And, Rhoda…”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t let anything happen to her, you got me?”

  “Yes. I promise.”

  Crow stood up slowly, hissing and wincing as he rose. Every inch of him hurt abominably. “You’d better cuff that son of a bitch before he wakes up. Be careful, though — he’s one tough bastard.”

  Rhoda looked past him to where Ruger lay. Crow was looking past her at the house, but in his peripheral vision he could see her eyes snap wide.

  “Watch out!” she cried and shoved at him with one hand as she fumbled with her gun with the other. The sound of the Beretta was like summer thunder, and as Crow dove to the ground, he could see blood blossom on Rhoda’s chest, seeding the air with bright red petals. She pirouetted away from him, her own gun firing uselessly into the mud, but as she spun the gun came up and around in a fast arc and the heavy pistol crunched into the side of Crow’s head.

  Crow fell hard and the world seemed to be made of white lightning and thunder and all of it was inside his head. He fought to clear his vision, and saw with horrified eyes the muddy gun — his own gun — clutched in Ruger’s bloody fists. The madman stood there, covered in blood, pieces of broken teeth sliding from between his pulped lips, holding the familiar gun. Something burned along Crow’s left side and half the air was knocked out of him. He couldn’t tell if he had been shot or grazed. His mind froze. He felt like he was facing something that just couldn’t be whipped. How could the bastard get up after that beating? How could he have found the gun in all that rain and mud? How could he be stopped? The gun exploded again. Firing, firing.

  Crow rolled away, trying to dodge the bullets, and as he turned one hand slapped mud and the other slapped down on Rhoda’s wrist. He fumbled, felt the fist, felt the slack fingers releasing from the butt of her gun, felt the gun itself. It all happened in a bizarre slow motion as thunder boomed above him and a smaller, deadlier thunder boomed across the rain-swept yard. Crow clawed the gun into his own hand, swept it up as he rose to a crouch, slipped his finger into the trigger guard. Something hit him on the belt line on his right side, punching hard against the hipbone and spinning him all the way around and flinging his arms straight up in the air as if he were surrendering. The pistol almost flew from his grip. Now both sides of his body were on fire. There wasn’t enough air in the world and black fireworks burst in the corners of his eyes. Howling with rage and pain, Crow wheeled around and brought the gun down into a two-handed shooter’s grip and even as his knees started to buckle he squeezed hard on the trigger and fired, fired, fired. Ruger danced backward in a crooked jerking series of steps as Crow’s bullets hammered into him.

  But he did not go down.

  Then he heard shouts and saw an oblong of light at the front of the house and a silhouette burst out onto the porch, a gun held in both hands. He, too, fired, but Ruger was moving now, fading back out of the spill of light, staggering in a drunken zigzag toward the vast rolling sea of cornstalks. The officer on the porch kept firing and one of the shots blew Missy’s windshield into glittering fragments, but if any of the bullets hit Ruger it was impossible to tell.

  Crow’s head was spinning and he lurched two steps toward the cornfield before his legs gave out and he dropped heavily onto both knees, the gun still in his right hand, the barrel now pointed straight upward. His eyes rolled up white in their sockets and he sagged onto his back, Rhoda’s gun firing up into the night sky, firing at the storm, firing itself dry, and then falling from his hands as darkness swarmed over him and smothered all light.

  Chapter 18

  (1)

  Its work completed, the storm ended.

  Snickering and sated, the bruise-dark clouds slouched away into the west, leaving behind wreckage and an awful stillness. Cold and dispassionate, the moon was merely an observer in the sky, vaguely amused at the debris of hurt and suffering below; indifferent to the things that still crept and capered in the deeper shadows of the cornfields.

  The flocks of night birds boiled out in their ragged flocks from under dripping trees, littering the sky, their ironic calls lost within the long and desperate wails of the hastening police sirens.

  Cars began skidding to a stop along the big curved driveway in front of the Guthrie farmhouse. One after another, lights slashing red and blue and white swords through the shadows. Doors opened and people erupted from the vehicles, swarming in and clustering around the fallen bodies, shining lights, opening emergency kits, searching for signs of life, trying to fight the blood that seemed to flow like fountain water from too many wounds.

  Sergeant Ferro pushed brusquely past the gathering crowd of assorted police officers and squatted down by Rhoda, shoulder to shoulder with Jerry Head, who was pressing his fingers against her throat. Head held his breath and watched, exchanging a worried glance with Ferro.

  “She’s alive.”

  Ferro turned and shouted, “Get a paramedic over here. Now!”

  “Right here, sir,” someone said briskly, right at his elbow. “Please step back and give me room.”

  Head touched Ferro’s arm. “Ruger was here, Sarge. I saw him and we exchanged some shots. Positive ID. It was him.”

  “Where?”

  “He ran into the corn.”

  “You hit him?”

  “I…think so. Not sure, though. Looks like the guy who was driving that Chevy hit him, though. Ruger shot him as well, I think.”

  Ferro looked at him, searching his face.

  The officer shook his head. “It was really confusing out there. The storm and all…”

  Terry came slogging through the mud, his face stricken by all the blood and bodies. Everyone looked so damned dead. He didn’t know where to look, or how to feel. It was like being in a war.

  He spotted Crow and ran to his side. “Medic!” he bellowed as he reached for his friend, touching his throat as he had seen Head do with Rhoda.

  Finding nothing.

  He turned away in despair and saw Val looking at him. She lay on her side, curled into a tight fetal position, her slim body battered almost beyond recognition, but her eyes were open. She looked into Terry’s eyes and read his anguish.

  And screamed.

  (2)

  It was bloody work, and bloody awful.

  Time shambled along, dropping discarded minutes as it stumbled toward midnight. The storm buried itself in the distant west, but now a cold, sharp wind blew in from due north, a wind with biting teeth and scratching claws. The workers labored on, shivering with the cold.

  Three bodies were lifted off that stretch of muddy ground, carried gingerly by police officers and paramedics. A pair of female officers, Coralita Toombes and Melanie White, helped get Connie Guthrie dressed and took her to the hospital in the back of a police unit; the male officers gave them space, knowing that their presence, their maleness would do more harm to the sobbing woman than their badges would do to reassure her. Mark and another officer followed the ambulance. He was dazed and in shock, and lacked even the presence of mind to ask about his father and sister. His entire mind — what little was left on line — was focused on his wife.

  More patrol cars arrived. More ambulances arrived. The population of the Guthrie farm swelled, and a crop of flashing lights grew all along the road.

  Terry Wolfe tried to organize it all, tried to be the mayor, but he felt beaten up and so far beyond weary that he couldn’t remember feeling anything else. After a while the tide of events seemed to swirl around and eddy away from him, and he just drifted along, watching, letting the professionals do their work. He bummed a
cigarette off Jimmy Castle and LaMastra lighted it for him, offering him a tight, meaningless smile before hurrying away to help Sergeant Ferro. Smoking in deep, steadying lungfuls, Terry walked around the house, walked in and out of the house, walked up and down the drive past the vehicles, trying to be noticed in case he was needed, but hoping that no one would need him for anything.

  The three stretchers lay side by side near the ambulances as paramedics made fast the straps and officers moved their vehicles out of the way. Terry stood over them, and then watched as each person was lifted carefully into the back of one of the medivac units.

  Rhoda went first, her face gray and still, eyes sunken. A ventilator was fitted over her mouth and huge compresses were taped to the bullet wounds in her stomach and chest; medics had started an IV of Ringer’s and were giving rapid-fire medical assessments via microphone to a trauma doctor at Pinelands E.R. Looking at her, Terry felt so sad. She looked like a child, no more than fourteen or fifteen. A law student who just wanted to do some routine police work in a quiet arts community, just to get a feel for that side of the law. Well, he reflected bitterly, how does it feel, kid? Like a nightmare, I imagine.

  They loaded her into the ambulance and closed the door.

  Valerie Guthrie was next. She was swathed in bandages, her left arm taped firmly to her body, eyes lightly closed. Every once in a while those eyes would twitch as if she were watching some scary movie in there, and the monsters kept jumping out. Terry hadn’t been able to get a single coherent word out of her, and from what the paramedics said, it was probably more shock than injury. Terry wondered why. He didn’t much care for Val as a person, had always thought her too hard-shelled, too forthright, but knowing that Crow loved her — and she loved him — made his heart soften toward her. She didn’t seem too badly injured, so what the hell could have happened out here to have broken her down like this? He drew deeply on his cigarette as they carried her past and handed her into the ambulance.

  The last to be moved was Crow.