Ghost Road Blues pd-1

by Jonathan Maberry

  His face was crisscrossed with gouges and cuts, dark with bruised flesh and as waxy as a mask. Terry felt tears burning in his eyes as he looked at his friend. He would, he thought, forever relive that dreadful moment when he had searched for the pulse and not found it, and heard Val scream. He wondered if maybe that had pushed her over the edge, and if so, then he was partly responsible for her present situation. How was he to know that he was feeling for the pulse in the wrong place? He was a politician, not a paramedic.

  When the real medics had come over and dug their fingers into the carotid arteries and reported that Crow was still alive, Terry felt at once massively relieved and abominably stupid. He had pressed the wrong spot on Crow’s neck and had, of course, felt no pulse. He tried to tell Val, to explain and apologize for his mistake, but she had passed out. In shock, the medics told him. Comatose. Out of it for now, and better for it. Terry wondered if that was true. Knowing that Crow was still alive would probably do her a power of good.

  Terry touched Crow’s face, feeling the iciness of the skin, the slickness of sweat.

  “Jesus, Crow…” he murmured.

  “Bullet graze on the left side,” paramedic had reported after a quick examination. “And another on the right of him. Looks like it glanced off his belt.”

  “Is he going to die?” Terry had asked, dreading the sound of his own words.

  The paramedic gave a philosophic shrug and said, “Maybe of old age. Two hits and neither of them much of anything. Damn lucky guy. But he has lost some blood and somebody kicked the living piss out of him. Nice gouge on his head, looks like it might have been a pipe or something. Now, sir, if you’ll just step back…”

  Terry had let them get to work, and now here Crow was, all trussed up and ready to be carted away to the hospital and the surgeon.

  “Okay, Jack, we’re ready for him,” called one of the medics from inside the ambulance. The medic that had first diagnosed Crow as being among the living came over and double-checked the buckles on the straps.

  “Okay down here.”

  The two medics squatted, grabbed either end of the stretcher, and as one lifted Crow with great care and practiced ease.

  “Take good care of him,” Terry said in his mayor’s voice. The medics swapped a quick glance. They heard that sort of thing fifty times a week, as if they would take less care if someone didn’t tell them to do it in an officious voice.

  “Ouch!” said someone in a loud, complaining voice.

  Terry stared.

  Crow opened his eyes, looked around, then closed them and sighed. “Oh, shit,” he said groggily. “Now what?”

  Unbelieving, delighted, Terry crowded the stretcher, touching Crow’s arm. “You bloody idiot,” he said.

  “I love you, too,” Crow mumbled hoarsely. He blinked a couple of times. “Christ, was I that drunk?”

  “No, you numbskull, you were shot.”

  Crow’s eyes snapped wide and his face hardened as everything came rushing back. “Val!” He tried to sit up but he hit a brick wall of pain and collapsed back down, aided by the hands of the paramedics.

  “Shh, shh, she’s okay,” said Terry. “She’s in the other ambulance. They’re taking good care of her. She’ll be fine.”

  Breathing out a heavy sigh, Crow said, “Oh, thank God.” Darkness welled up in Crow’s mind, and he could barely form words. After several false starts, he managed to say, “Terry…did I…do it?”

  “Do what? Did you do what?”

  “Did I…kill the rotten son of a bitch?”

  Terry patted Crow’s arm. “From what one of Sergeant Ferro’s men said, you two were standing there shooting at each other, you fell down, and when the officer joined in and started to shoot, Ruger ran off.”

  “Ruger?” Crow’s eyes widened. “That was really…him?”

  “Yeah…are you impressed with yourself?”

  “Damn, Terry, but he was one tough bastard. Almost…couldn’t take him…”

  “You fought him?”

  Crow licked his split lips and then quickly — but disjointedly — told Terry everything that had happened. “We beat the living shit out of each other…and then he shot me. Shot that poor girl, too. Rhoda.” He grabbed Terry’s sleeve. “She dead?”

  “No, but she’s hurt pretty bad. They took her to the hospital.”

  “You sure Val’s okay?”

  “She’ll be fine,” Terry said, though he felt that he was lying.

  Crow saw dark shapes materialize out of the confusion and there were two men standing there. One tall and black and middle-aged, the other taller, white, and younger. They had the cop look about them.

  “Mr. Crow?” the black man said.

  “What’s left of him.”

  “Do you know what happened here tonight? We can’t seem to get a clear picture of the events of—”

  “I just got here a few minutes ago, man. Drove up, saw some asshole attacking my girlfriend, and jumped right in. I…don’t know much of what else happened.”

  “You didn’t go into the house?”

  “No,” Crow said and then felt a hand clamp around his heart. “Val’s family—”

  “Her brother and sister-in-law are on their way to the hospital. Nothing serious.”

  Crow was relieved for a second, and then realized that the cop hadn’t said anything about Val’s father.

  “What about Henry — Val’s dad?” His head was pounding as he tried to remember something Val had tried to tell him. “Jesus Christ! I think he’s out in the cornfield. I think he’s hurt!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! No…oh, Christ, I don’t know…send some fucking guys out there!”

  The cops looked at him for a moment and then melted away. He heard them shouting orders.

  Crow’s body felt like a single huge bruise and his head was swimming. As much as he was trying to keep it together he felt himself fading fast.

  He still had Terry’s sleeve caught in his fist, and he gave it a shake. “Terry—”

  Bending close, Terry said, “Yeah…?”

  “Find…Henry!” And then the darkness wrapped itself completely around him and he passed out.

  Terry leaned back and sighed in frustration and disgust. “Okay, fellas, take him away. When you get to the hospital, tell them that the township is picking up the tab for all this. Oh, and tell Dr. Weinstock that I want him to call me the moment — and I do mean the very moment — that Mr. Crow comes out of surgery.” He glared at the ambulance driver, looking every inch of his muscular six-four. “You boys got that?”

  They nodded curtly.

  “Good, now get a move on.”

  The ambulance left in as much of a hurry as safety would allow, and Terry watched them go. Then he spun on his heel and called for Detective Sergeant Ferro. The detective was speaking in low, fast tones with LaMastra and looked up as Terry hurried over.

  “How’s your friend?” Ferro asked.

  “He passed out and they’re taking him in,” Terry said.

  “He say anything more about what happened?”

  “More or less. He and one of your bad guys went toe-to-toe. Crow says he beat the man in a fight, though from what he said and the way he looks, it was a close call.”

  “Then it must have been Boyd who Jerry Head saw run off into the corn,” LaMastra said. “If your buddy had gone up against Ruger we’d be scraping him up with a spatula.”

  Terry half smiled. “Maybe, and maybe not. Don’t underestimate Crow. He may be a little guy, but he’s just about as tough as they come.”

  “Good fighter, is he?” asked LaMastra.

  “Very. I could tell you stories—”

  “Maybe later,” Ferro interrupted. “What else did he say?”

  “Oh, he said that he shot the other man. He was surprised when I told him that Ruger — or whoever — had run off into the fields. He thinks the guy was hit four or five times.”

  Ferro grunted. “Officer Head also fired a
t the suspect but isn’t sure if he hit him at all. He said he gave him a cursory look, and it appeared that the suspect fit the description of Karl Ruger.”

  “Nah, had to have been Boyd,” LaMastra repeated, shaking his head.

  “Either way,” Ferro said glumly, his face as lugubrious as an undertaker’s, “the man left a lot of wreckage and at the moment we’re no closer to catching him than we were an hour ago.”

  “Mr. Crow must have only thought he’d hit him that many times,” offered LaMastra. “In the dark, in the rain, and having taken some hits himself, Mr. Crow wouldn’t have been able to really tell. And Jerry was firing from the porch…that’s what, seventy, eighty feet?”

  “More likely he was wearing body armor of some kind,” Ferro said. “Anyone can get hold of it these days. The shots might had knocked the wind out of him, knocked him down — but he could have gotten up and run off.”

  Reluctantly, Terry had to agree.

  The three men looked at each other for a while and then looked away into the moonlit fields.

  “That means both Boyd and Ruger are still out there,” Terry said softly. “And so is Henry Guthrie.”

  Ferro sniffed and pointed his chin at the darkened corn. “We’re combing those fields now. If Mr. Guthrie — or anyone else — is out there, we’ll find him.”

  They stood there in silence for a while as the cops and crime scene investigators and paramedics swarmed around them, and neither they nor all of the dozens of cops, techs, or EMTs saw the slim form of a man with pal gray skin, a dark suit, and a blues guitar slung over one shoulder standing by the edge of the cornfield. Every time the lightning flashed, the shadows it cast of the tall corn fell not on him, but through him.

  Chapter 19

  (1)

  He lay dying in the dark.

  The blood wormed its way out of him, soaking through his clothes, seeking the earth below his back, letting the hungry soil feed on him. Overhead the moon looked down at him with typical cold intensity, and stars littered the fringes of the sky. A night bird cawed plaintively somewhere in the corn; other sounds troubled the darkness: sirens, men shouting, car engines roaring as vehicles came and left.

  He knew he was still too close to the house, safe only with the cover of darkness and the fact that they didn’t know in which direction he’d gone. He couldn’t linger here. Soon they would be finished with those assholes back at the house. Soon they would be after him with flashlights and maybe even with dogs.

  “Fuck!” he growled softly.

  He had to get up, he knew that.

  But lying there was better for now.

  It wasn’t the pain that kept him from rising: Karl Ruger knew everything there was to know about pain, and he’d kicked pain’s sorry ass too many times to sweat that now.

  No, it was the hate. Hate had put the steel in his legs that let him stagger away from that mean little bastard he’d gone toe-to-toe with, bullet holes and all. Hate had driven him at least this far away from the cops and all the activity. Hate had kept him awake when the damage and the spigot-flow of blood wanted to lull him down into a drowse that he knew would kill him.

  Hate made him patient, too.

  The hate wanted him to live, not die. The hate wanted him to find some way of staying awake, staying strong, staying alive long enough to get help, to force help. It was only hate that had given him the patience to stuff his torn shirt into the bullet holes, and kept him from screaming while he did so. That hadn’t stopped the flow of blood, but it had slowed it.

  The hate was wise, too. It knew that if he didn’t rest, just for a while, then he would die on his feet and the bastards would win. The bastards would prove that they were stronger than he was. There was no way in hell that Karl Ruger was going to let that happen. His hate was the power that had always kept his black heart beating. It was what kept the vinegar that pumped through his veins cold and fast. It was what made his mouth smile and his tongue water whenever he saw the fear of him that was always there in other people’s eyes. The hate was Ruger’s secret self, defining him, completing him. Now it protected him, teaching him the secret of how to survive this long and nasty bitch of a night.

  More than all of this, his hate was his one and only god. A dark god that nightly listened to his blasphemous prayers, offering not absolution, but permission, encouragement, enticement.

  Lying there, dying, bleeding, trying to gather together the power to rise once more and move, he prayed in his own way for strength.

  He prayed for the strength to live long enough to find that little bastard and kill him. Slowly, painfully. Artfully. He prayed for the strength to find that broken-nose country bitch and teach her some big-city manners. His own kind of manners. He prayed for the strength to hurt them all. Hurt them so bad and so deep that even if they did somehow live past his revenge, they would beg for no new tomorrows. He prayed for the strength to find Boyd, and his money, and to make Boyd sorry that his father had ever fucked his mother. To make him sorry that the thought of betraying Karl Ruger had ever wormed its way into his tiny brain. To make Boyd sorry that he hadn’t been simply killed during the drug buy back in Philly.

  He prayed for the strength to be all things in all ways to them that were as dark as the utter darkness in his heart.

  Above him the cloud-free sky rumbled with improbable thunder, like an old echo of the storm come rolling round again.

  Ruger, you are my left hand.

  The words rang suddenly in his head, clear and strong as if someone had spoken them aloud.

  Karl Ruger lay there in the cornfield, feeding the soil with his life and his hate and his black prayers.

  In the vastness of the night that overhung the cornfields, something stirred. Something that heard Ruger’s secret murmurings and the rage-filled screaming of his soul; something that had been given life by the same force that had crash-landed Karl Ruger in Pine Deep. The thing rose from where it had crouched, dragging horror with it, and slouched through the fields toward the place where Ruger lay, a missionary of hell coming in answer to those prayers.

  (2)

  Where was Val? Hadn’t she been there a while ago? Henry thought she had, but now he couldn’t remember. Maybe it had been a dream.

  Where was Mark? Mark would help him. Mark was strong, he could carry him back to the house, get an ambulance for him.

  Mark…? he thought he called out, but the word echoed only in his head and he knew that he hadn’t found the power to say his son’s name out loud.

  Henry Guthrie closed his eyes again, the lids pressing tears out from under the lashes.

  Please, God, he prayed. Please, God…

  He wanted to say the words out loud. Maybe they would have more power that way, but he was slipping away from that, or any other, ability, sliding down into a long and formless darkness. He tried to conjure images of Val and Mark and Connie, but his mind was going blank, and it broke his heart.

  Please, God, he begged. Help them.

  Something rustled the corn near where he lay, and Guthrie managed to open his eyes; it was like jacking up a truck. He searched the shadows with his failing vision, hoping, hoping…

  But it was not Val come back to help him; it wasn’t Mark. It was a stranger. The man walked slowly toward him and stopped, standing over him. He had a face as gray as the mist that was starting to form in among the cornstalks. His cheap suit was soaked and rainwater glittered like diamonds in his kinky hair.

  Guthrie tried to speak, and found he could manage, just a single word: “Who…?”

  The man lowered himself slowly to the ground, sitting cross-legged by Guthrie’s side.

  “I won’t hurt you, Henry,” said the gray man.

  “…who?” Guthrie croaked.

  “Just an old friend. I just come to wait with you awhile.”

  “…need…help…”

  The Bone Man shook his head sadly. “No, Henry, no. It’s too late for that. I’m sorry.”

  Guthrie closed
his eyes for a moment, feeling the emptiness overwhelm him.

  When he opened his eyes, he expected the man to be gone, a phantom conjured by his dying brain. The gray man sat there still.

  “Val…?” Guthrie forced the word out past all weakness. He needed to know, but dreaded the answer.

  “She’s alive.”

  “Mark?”

  “Mark, too. And Connie. All of them. Alive.”

  “Thank…” Guthrie began, but it took him a long time to finish. “…God.”

  The Bone Man had no response to that, but his face looked so much sadder. He pulled his guitar around and laid it across his thighs.

  Guthrie tried to raise a hand, tried to touch this man. Seeing the feeble attempt, the gray man took his hand and held it. His long fingers were even colder than Guthrie’s numb and bloodless skin.

  “Who…are…you…?” Guthrie asked. “Do I…do I know…you?”

  A small sad smile drifted across the Bone Man’s lips. “You did. A long, long time ago,” he said in a distant voice. “You were kind to me once. You were kind to me when no one else was.”

  “I…don’t remember…”

  “Maybe you will. Soon. But right now, just rest, Henry.” The gray man’s face looked so sad, and a single silver tear gathered in the corner of his eyes. “It’s time to sleep now. Just let it all be. You’re done with it now. Just go to sleep, Henry. Just go to sleep.”

  Guthrie’s eyes had been drifting shut and his hand sagged loosely in the Bone Man’s grip. Guthrie seemed to sigh and then he settled back against the ground, the tension of fighting for words and breath easing.

  The Bone Man sat with him for a while, still holding the slack hand. Then he bent forward and kissed Henry Guthrie on the forehead. The tear that had gathered in his eye spilled and a single silvery drop splashed down on Guthrie’s face. The Bone Man touched the spot where the tear had landed and then he picked up his guitar and began to play softly.

  “Good night, Henry,” he whispered as the long, cold wind of the void blew past them both and lifted the sound of the blues up to heaven.

  (3)

  Karl Ruger felt the darkness closing in, and he cursed it.