by JJ Zep
“Chris?” Kelly was standing in the entrance. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “About as right as things can be under the circumstances. Sheriff Walcott’s dead, Nathan too.”
“Oh my God. Who –?”
“The Dumfries brothers. I thought they might have come up here to pick up Clay.”
“Clay’s gone,” Kelly said.
“Gone?” Now it was Chris’ turn to be confused. “When did this happen?”
“Shane went to look in on him about a half hour ago and he wasn’t in his bed. Looks like he might have snuck out through the ER while no one was looking.”
“Or been carried out,” Chris said. He turned to Wackjob. “You sure you didn’t see anything?”
“No sir,” Wackjob said. “But I’ve been out front most of the time. If they snuck out through the side entrance I’d probably have missed them.”
“I’d better call Joe,” Chris said, already turning towards the Jeep. “Creed Dumfries has it in for Hooley, and he’s not the kind of man to let a grudge slide.”
twenty
Ruby looked across the short distance that separated her from the chainsaw-wielding maniac. True to form, Doom was overconfident, wading in, swinging the blade in clumsy arcs. Ruby could have finished him off quicker than she’d finished Bucky in the arm wrestling contest. But she needed to buy a couple of minutes, needed to allow whatever device Pete had stashed in his wristwatch to run down. She sidestepped another of Doom’s thrusts, ducked under the arc of the saw, the blade missing her by inches. The crowd roared its frustration.
Doom’s last attack had thrown him off balance, forcing him down onto one knee. That gained her a few seconds and Ruby used them to scan the crowd. Pete was working his way through the melee. His intended target, Chang, sat back in his high chair as though attending a matinee. She cast a quick glance towards level one and then to level two. A flash of blue attracted her attention, Mae standing among the punters at the rail. Then Mae was gone.
That fixed things in Ruby’s mind. All she had to do was stay out of Doom’s way for thirty more seconds. He came at her now, tattooed face contorted in silent rage. Fifteen seconds. Ruby let him come, anticipated his attack, a downward sweep this time, starting above his right shoulder. Ruby backed away from the deadly arc, let the blade sweep by her and then caught Doom’s wrist and twisted. Bones snapped under her grip, loosening Doom’s hold on the saw. In one fluid movement Ruby had relieved him of it. Then she swung the saw, one handed, like someone performing a hammer throw. The blade caught Doom just below the ear on an upward trajectory, carving through flesh and bone as it removed a quarter of his skull.
Even as he fell, Ruby was on the move, sprinting for the side of the pool, the bloody saw swinging in her hand. The crowd saw her coming and parted like a stage curtain as Ruby leapt the six feet from the shallow water to the paving beside the pool. Pete stood directly in front of her, eyes wide, mouth working to form words that had not yet escaped his throat when Ruby loped off his head.
The crowd was in motion now, a panicked, screaming rush that sent several of the punters plunging to the hard surface of the pool. Ruby tossed the chainsaw aside, fought her way through the melee, the space opening up before her. Patrick Chang was standing up in his high chair, barking orders to his guards, his cool façade evaporated. Ruby sprinted the short distance to the chair and launched herself at it, forcing Chang back into his seat. Her foot found purchase in the space between Chang’s legs and for an instant his terrified face filled her vision. She immediately vaulted from the chair to the first floor rail, gaining a grip and pulling herself over. A rattle of gunfire zipped past her as Chang’s guards opened fire. Then Pete’s exploding Rolex detonated and the gym resonated with fresh screams.
Ruby wasn’t sticking around to survey the damage. She sprinted for the stairs, leapt at them, raced upwards, taking them three at a time.
The third level was not as packed as the other two. Ruby scanned the crowd for Mae and Pearl and didn’t see them. The crowd backed away from her, eyes wide, regarding her with caution.
“You!” Ruby demanded, pointing to one man. “A woman in a blue kimono and a little girl, which way did they go.”
The man’s eyes widened, his mouth gaped open but produced no sound. He pointed along a corridor.
Ruby ran in the direction the man had given her. The passage ended in a pair of doors. Ruby pushed through into the female restrooms. She dropped to the tile and peered under the stalls, spotting the hem of Mae’s blue kimono in the second one.
“Mae,” she said. “I don’t have time to mess around. So here’s a one-time offer. Hand over the girl and you live. Make me come in there after you and I’m going to make you wish you hadn’t.”
“I hand over the girl and Pete kill me,” Mae’s voice came back.
“Pete’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yeah, dead. Like you’re going to be if Pearl’s not out here by the count of three. One…two…”
The door to the stall swung open.
twenty one
Joe positioned the bolt cutters around the loop of the padlock and squeezed, snapping the lock. He got a grip on the handle of the storm door and released it in a squeal of rusty hinges. Then he stood back and peered down the darkened staircase into the cellar. If he and Hooley were going to make their stand here, then the cellar was essential as a fallback position. That made the storm door essential as an escape route. Never back yourself into a corner you can’t get out of, was a credo that had served him well over the years.
He mopped the sweat from his brow with his forearm and looked towards the swatch of sky visible between the trees. It was heading towards late afternoon and he should call Chris and let him know what was happening. But, he had things to do before he made that call. Hooley was refusing to budge, and as Joe wasn’t going to leave him out here on his own, he was staying too. He realized that that left Chris short-handed but Chris had Charlie and Wackjob to help him. All Hooley had was Joe, even if he insisted that he didn’t need Joe’s help.
“Cracker’s more stubborn than a trainload of mules,” Joe muttered as he waded past the cobwebs and into the cellar.
The kerosene lamp he was carrying provided a scant light. By it, he discerned a tight space, perhaps twenty feet by thirty. An ancient workbench stood to one side, a set of tools arrayed above it, against the wall. At the opposite end of the room a semi-collapsed shelving unit had spilled its contents onto the floor. Cardboard boxes of varying sizes covered the rest of the space, many of them burst open. Everything was coated with dust and cobwebs. Somewhere in the mess Joe heard scurrying noises.
“Great,” he said. “We’ve got us a petting zoo.”
The cellar wasn’t going to clear itself. Neither did Joe have time to. The best he could do was to open up some floor space where he and Hooley could throw down a couple of mattresses. He set the lamp down on the workbench and got to work immediately. Twenty minutes later he’d cleared enough room to accommodate the two of them. He’d also found some items that might prove useful, a length of rope, a couple of folding camp chairs, a full set of mag wheels, and, not least, a pack of Bicycle cards. If he and Hooley were going to hole up here for any length of time, perhaps he could coax the old sourpuss into a few rounds of poker. In addition, he liberated a claw hammer and a couple of large Phillips screwdrivers from the tool rack. Melee weapons were always useful at close quarters. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
When he was satisfied that he’d done all he could, he crossed the room and took the rickety wooden staircase up to the house. The stairs complained under his weight and at one point Joe was certain that the entire structure swayed underfoot. He was glad to step off the top landing and through the door into the passage.
He called for Hooley and got the echo of the empty house in reply.
“Where the hell have you got to now,” he muttered. But he knew where Hooley was. It was where Hooley
always was at this time of day. Joe walked through to the lounge and looked out the front window across the yard. Hooley stood in the space among the trees where Janet was buried, an alcove surrounded by a picket fence and with a swatch of wildflowers to either side. Joe could see Hooley’s lips moving as he carried on a conversation with his dead wife.
Joe had one more thing to do before he needed to disturb Hooley. He walked around the front of the house to where the storm door still stood open. Then he went back into the cellar and hauled the four mag wheels. A few minutes later he had the storm door closed and the mags arranged on top of it. That would hold the door in place, but would be easy to push aside if he needed to exit the cellar in a hurry.
twenty two
“Pete made me do it. I no hurt that little girl.”
Ruby ignored Mae’s protestations. “Where’s Pearl?” she demanded.
“She here,” Pearl looked back into the stall, held out her hand. “Come, come, little girl. You tell your mommy, Mae no hurt you.”
Ruby stepped forward, brushed Mae aside. Pearl was standing just inside the stall, staring blankly ahead. “You okay, kiddo?” Ruby asked. Pearl made no reply.
“Mae no hurt little girl,” Mae said.
“Shut up Mae,” Ruby said. She reached into the stall, took Pearl’s hand and pulled her into a hug. Pearl remained stiff and unresponsive and Ruby felt her anger bubbling up inside her. Right at that moment, she could have broken her promise, reached across and snapped Mae’s neck.
A rattle of gunfire from outside brought her back to the seriousness of her situation. Pete’s men were likely to be looking for her. Chang’s bodyguards too. They probably thought she was involved in the plot to assassinate him. She had to get out of the building. But how? It sounded like there was a full-scale gun battle going on downstairs.
An idea occurred to her. She turned towards Mae, got a hold on the belt of the scabbard slung across Mae’s chest and relieved her of the katana. Mae immediately slumped to her knees. “Please,” she begged. “Please don’t kill Mae.”
Ruby slung her Katana over her back, took Pearl by the hand and walked towards the door, leaving Mae sobbing behind her. She opened the door a crack and peered out into the corridor. Nothing moved. The patrons that had been watching the fights from up here had fled.
Ruby slipped through the door and trotted down the passage, slowing as she reached the end. The corridor opened up into a large hall. Racks of multicolored dumbbells lined the walls, all coated with dust and cobwebs. There were press benches and barbells of various sizes. Towards the end Ruby could see exercise machines arranged into a circuit. Diffused light spilled in from the left. That was where Ruby was headed.
She walked swiftly past the racks of weights. The floor to ceiling window lay before her, offering a view of the parking lot. Two thirds of the way down was the hole she’d seen earlier from Pete’s car.
Somewhere a door creaked open and Ruby heard the sound of running feet, now shouts and another volley of bullets. She grasped Pearl’s hand tighter, led the child towards the window, along it, walking as fast as she could without having to resort to dragging Pearl.
The gap in the glass lay just ahead. Ruby stepped towards it and peered out. She drew in a sharp intake of breath. Ruby had no fear of heights. She did, however, have a fear of slamming into the road surface at high speed. It looked so much higher from up here than it had from outside. Maybe there was another way.
She’d no sooner had that thought when she heard Mae’s voice. “Hey! Hey, she’s up here!”
Ruby turned and saw Mae standing at the rail, shouting down to the shooters below. A moment later, she heard footfalls ascending the stairs, moving at speed. All bets were off now. She was going to have to jump.
She looked through the gap in the window and calculated her trajectory. A paved walkway ran against the side of the building then into an weed-strewn strip of grass then to the blacktop. An ancient sedan occupied the slot directly in front of her. The distance was about fifteen feet. She’d need a running start.
“She’s up here, you assholes! Hurry up!”
Ruby scooped Pearl up in her arms and jogged a short distance back from the window. “Hold on kiddo,” she whispered.
“Hey! Hurry she’s going to…”
She bunched her muscles and pushed off, her boots gaining immediate traction on the carpet. The gap in the window loomed and Ruby powered through it. One minute her boots were on solid ground, the next she was free and sailing through the air. Then gravity took over and she was plunging earthward. The roof of the sedan raced up to meet her and Ruby greeted it by folding her legs to take the sting out of the impact. She felt the roof give under her feet and collapse as every one of the sedan’s windows imploded. Then she was bouncing off the hood, thudding with her back into the blacktop as she protected Pearl.
The wind was ejected forcibly from Ruby’s lungs. In the next moment a row of bullet holes punched into the car behind her and Ruby knew she had to move or risk being hit. She staggered into a crouch and ran head down, Pearl still clutched to her, the bullets thudding around her until she was out of range.
She cut across to where Pete’s Chevy Impala stood on the tarmac, the keys still jangling in the ignition.
Ruby had never driven a car before but she was a keen observer. She'd watched other people carrying out the simple set of maneuvers required to propel a vehicle forward. How difficult could it be? She turned the key in the ignition, eliciting a roar from the muscle car. Then she slammed it in gear just as the first of her pursuers emerged from the front of the gymnasium.
Her first attempt slammed them into the car in front, her second into the one behind. At the third attempt she slid from the bay, sideswiping a couple of vehicles in the process. She smashed her foot down on the gas and raced the Impala for the exit, swinging the wheel left and turning out onto the street just as the rear window imploded. The Impala fishtailed and then straighten up.
“Buckle up, kiddo,” Ruby said. “We’re going home.”
twenty three
John Messenger scuffed his boots through the dirt on the soft shoulder. It was mid-afternoon and he’d just reached a junction, the convergence of two roads that formed a sloped ‘T’. The path he’d taken had carried him from the interstate up into the brush-covered foothills, along a stretch of winding blacktop that was occasionally hemmed in by steep-walled canyons. Then the road split and with it the landscape seemed instantly to change. The valleys and slopes before him now were tree-lined, swatches of dark green offset against the deepening blue of the sky.
Messenger turned and looked back on the horde that followed him. They appeared to stretch back into eternity, the stragglers rendered liquid by the heat devils dancing in the distance. They were moving too slow, Messenger realized. They’d have to step up the pace if they were going to make the town by nightfall, as he intended. He needed to get them moving.
When Messenger had first learned how to enter the hive mind, each episode had been accompanied by an insistent buzz in his ears, a series of violent, gory images, a brilliant white light that had delivered excruciating pain to his frontal lobe, a process so painful he’d come to think of it as ‘riding the lightning.’
Now, though, he stepped effortlessly through the wall into the space from which he derived his power, the confluence of energy derived from the meager life force of every creature that followed in his wake.
He spoke a single word into the void. Then he angled across the pavement and met the rise of the road. The horde followed.
twenty four
“Joe, come in.”
Chris had been trying to raise Joe on the radio for the last twenty minutes without any luck. That probably meant that Joe had persuaded Hooley to come into town and that the two of them were headed this way right now. But why then was Joe not responding on the CB in Hooley’s truck? Hooley probably had it turned off, Chris decided, maybe he’d even disconnected the device. Hooley was pron
e to such strange behavior these days. ‘It’s what Janet would have wanted,’ he normally responded when questioned.
Chris tried one more time. “Joe, Hooley, if either of you can hear this, please pick up. I need to know that you’re okay.”
The radio remained defiantly silent.
Chris let out a sigh and replaced the handset. Had it been anyone else he’d have gotten into his Jeep and raced across town to check on them. But Joe Thursday was the most competent man Chris had ever known. Pit Joe against every Z on planet earth and he’d come out the other end with blood on his boots and a smile on his lips. Joe could take care of himself. Right now Chris had to take care of the people who couldn’t.
The folk still left in Big Bear Lake had to be persuaded to head for the Lakes Mall or to get out of town altogether. And that had to happen in the next few hours. It was going to be dark soon.
*****
Some four miles away, Hooley heard the sound of Chris’ voice on the radio and chose to ignore it. He knew what this was about. Chris wanted to persuade him to come into town and hide out in some boat club on the off chance that a bunch of Z’s rolled through.
Well, he wouldn’t do it. His place was here with his wife and no one, not Joe Thursday, not Chris Collins, not the good Lord Jesus himself, would convince him otherwise.
Besides, Hooley had no fear of Z’s. Let them come, and if he got bit, so be it. He was done with this world, eager to move on to the next, where he and Janet would be together again. He wouldn’t let himself be turned, of course. That, he was sure, would prevent him from entering the kingdom of heaven, same way that he wouldn’t be able to pass through the gates if he killed himself. But if a Z was to take a chunk out of him and he then popped a gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger, he was pretty sure that God would understand. The idea held a strange appeal for him.
