Текст книги "Howlers"
Автор книги: Kent Harrington
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 25 страниц)
“Thank you.” Bell said. “Your dad is the sheriff, right?”
“Yes. Talk about fearing doing wrong,” Lacy said.
“It doesn’t really matter what caused this,” Bell said. “I mean, what difference does it make?” It was the first time she’d heard Bell sound angry, or even upset. Even when she’d told him Robin had deserted them, Bell had seemed to take it all in stride.
“No, it doesn’t, I guess,” she said.
Bell sped up. He’d been driving slowly, in an attempt to conserve fuel, keeping the truck to 30 miles an hour. But he’d seen headlights coming toward them in the distance and he decided to speed up.
“Maybe they can help us?” Lacy said, seeing the headlights too.
“Maybe,” Bell said. Almost immediately the truck’s engine started to sputter. He tromped the gas pedal, as if to force the truck to keep going, but the engine died, and he allowed the truck to coast to a stop. He kept his hands on the wheel as it came to a halt, afraid to look at Lacy. He saw a huge plane pass directly above them, flying over the road, very low. He could just make it out, the plane’s distinctive upturned wing-tip lights; it looked to him like an Army C17 transporter.
“The military is here,” Bell said. “That’s one of ours from the base at Reno, probably.” They both saw the car headlights approach quickly. The truck’s door opened and Lacy got out and ran to the front of the vehicle. She started to wave her hands in the air, hoping to flag the approaching car down. Bell turned on the truck’s high beams and emergency flasher. He got out and felt the immediate blast of cold air. He stood beside Lacy, who was waving madly. He, too, lifted his arms and started to wave them above his head.
“They’re not going to stop,” Lacy said under her breath. She stopped waving and dropped her hands. She could tell the car was picking up speed, afraid of what was in front of them.
Bell turned and looked at her. He grabbed her hand. It was the first time he’d looked her in the eyes since they’d gotten in the car. He could see she was terrified the car would not stop for them. He let go of her hand, stepped out into the on-coming lane and raised his hand. He didn’t budge as the car’s headlights grew bigger and brighter.
Bell heard Lacy scream. He heard the car brake at the last possible moment, slide on the icy road, and begin to fishtail.
Bell moved to the right, scooping up Lacy as he ran. He managed to get them out of the way as the brand new white Land Rover—completely sideways in the road—hit their truck, smacking it back a good ten feet.
Bell ran to the Land Rover when it had finally stopped. He recognized the stoner couple who had picked him up earlier that morning. The two were driving a different car, but he was sure it was them. The young man leveled a pistol at him through the Rover’s driver’s-side window.
“It’s Bell! Don’t shoot—for Christ’s sake!” Bell watched the Land Rover’s window come down.
“God damn, man! What the fuck are you trying to do ... get us killed?” Johnny said. He lowered the pistol. “Jesus fuck, man! I thought you’d turned into one of them.”
The girl Sue Ling, wearing a white mink coat and the gold earrings she’d stolen that morning, looked up at him and smiled. “I screamed like a little bitch when I saw you in the headlights,” she said. She had an AR-15 rifle between her legs.
“You can’t go down there,” Bell lied. He shot a glance at Lacy and she understood she should go along with the deception. “There’s hundreds of them just down the road about three miles back.” Bell said. “We just got by them, but ran out of ammo.” It was all a lie; he said it before he’d even thought it through.
“Shit,” Johnny said. “We just got through a pack of twenty or so behind us. How did you manage that?”
“You have to turn around,” Bell said again.
“Well, we can’t drive through a hundred of the gnarly motherfuckers,” Johnny said. “This GPS says that’s the only way to Highway 50. The emergency radio is on and says that Sacramento is safe. The US army has it cordoned off.”
“The car’s radio is working?” Lacy asked.
“This one’s is. It’s got satellite radio.” Bell saw Johnny Ryder smile.
“You should have seen the cool mansion we found,” his girlfriend said. “It had so much cool shit, we couldn’t take much.”
“Will you please shut the fuck up!” Johnny said to the girl. “You better get in. Your truck is fucked up, man.”
“There’s another way to Highway 50,” Lacy said. “There’s a jeep trail, a U.S. Fire Service road, near our house. If you have gas you could make it. It cuts over to Highway 50.”
“We got a full tank, and four-fucking-wheel drive,” Ryder said. “Get in. Let’s get the fuck out of here while we still can!”
CHAPTER 20
Dillon was loading the ammunition canisters for the Thompsons. He had a jumbo Wal-Mart box of .45 caliber shells open on his lap. They were passing vacation cabins, all dark. The one-lane road was covered in snow, with the patrol car’s headlights cutting a narrow tunnel of light into the pitch-black night in front of them.
“Do not forsake me, oh my darling ... now that I need you by my side. Oh, I’m not afraid of death, but what will I do if you leave me.” Dillon sang the lyrics of an old Western song as he loaded the drum magazines. “They used to play Frankie Lane a lot on Death Row. The Row was right above my tier in San Quentin. Sometimes they’d play Rawhide when someone was leaving the tier for a parole hearing. Those old gangsters, they’re a different breed all together,” Dillon said, turning to Quentin. “A lot of them were cop killers. Or FBI. Federal Bureau of Incompetents.” He saw Quentin smile. “You know how many FBI agents it takes to turn on a light bulb?” Dillon asked.
“No, how many?” Quentin asked, playing along.
“Doesn’t matter. They won’t find it unless it’s already turned on.” He laughed at his own joke. “You don’t plan on arresting these guys, do you? That’s all bullshit. Why don’t you be honest, lawman?”
Quentin didn’t answer.
“What are you going to do with them, lawman? Can’t exactly load them all in the car, can we?”
“You couldn’t blame him, could you?” Rebecca said from the back seat.
“What do you want to carry, honey? We got an M-16 in the back for the pretty lady,” Dillon said.
“That suits me fine,” Rebecca said.
“What about the pencil neck? Kid, what do you want to carry? Besides your pacifier? Maybe you just want to rush in and hit the Delete Button when you see them?” Dillon said.
“He can stay in the car,” Quentin said. He switched on the patrol car’s spotlight and turned it, from a handle inside the cab, so that the spotlight painted the fronts of the summer cabins they passed.
“I can’t fight,” Gary said.
“You can’t fight. Or you won’t fight?” Dillon said, not bothering to turn around. “Then what fucking good are you?” He turned and looked at the kid. “Really, what fucking good are you?” It was a real question, as if his type of person were a total mystery. “I’d like to know. Really.”
“Just can’t. I don’t know anything about guns,” Summers said.
“What’s there to know?” Dillon said. “See this? It’s called a trigger, you point the thingy here, it’s called a barrel, at the guy you want to shoot and pull the thingy and it goes bang.”
Summers turned away and looked out the window.
“Do not forsake me oh my darling ... on this our wedding day ... The pussy goes too, or I don’t get out of the car,” Dillon said.
Rebecca laughed.
“You can’t do that. He’s just a kid,” Quentin said. “And what good would he be to us in a fight?”
“I don’t care, I think it’s time the kid pulled his weight,” Dillon said. He reached down at his feet and pulled one of the dozens of pistols they’d brought with them from the gun store. “Let’s see, a HK 9-millimeter. Looks used. Never shot one. Heard they’re pretty good, though. Here. You want freedom from these damn Howlers, kid? You’ll have to fight for it. Kill for it.” Dillon tossed the pistol into the kid’s lap. “Wait along ... wait ... wait along, wait along ... I must face a man who hates me or lie a craven coward in my grave. Look at that big hand move along nearin’ High Noon,” Dillon sang. “I’m tired of people like him. They always want to bitch and moan about the Man this, and the Man that. But when it comes down to it, they’re afraid of fighting for anything better in life. No one gives you anything, kid. That’s what I’ve learned. “And I must face a man who hates me. Or lie a coward in my grave.” Dillon turned back around, whistling the song.
Rebecca picked up the automatic from Summers’ lap and began to show him how to fire the weapon, pure venom in her voice. “And I hope to God they shoot you, and you die,” she said when she’d handed it back to him, finally.
Quentin shut off the headlights and the spotlight as they rounded a bend in the narrow gravel road. “It’s up here, about a mile,” he said.
The patrol car slowed, then stopped. They’d crossed an old wooden bridge in the dark. A house stood at the top of a driveway to their left. Its windows were bathed in a yellowish Coleman-lantern light.
“That’s it,” Quentin said.
“Now what?” Dillon said.
“We go up there and place them all under arrest,” Quentin said. He was lying to himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit he wanted to kill them all. He saw Dillon smile in the moonlight.
“I’ll go first,” Rebecca said. “When you hear me start shooting, you come on along.”
Dillon turned to look at the girl, impressed by her lack of fear. He picked up a Glock 21 from the floor.
“Give me that.” Rebecca took the automatic from Dillon’s hand. She checked to make sure it was loaded and had a bullet in the chamber. She did it so quickly and expertly that Quentin couldn’t help but smile. “They’ll open the door for a chick. I’ll tell them I’m scared.”
“What if they think you’re one of the things?” Quentin said.
“My tough luck,” Rebecca said. She reached for the door handle, the Glock in her other hand.
“Wait—Rebecca. I promise, we’ll both be right behind you. We go up the driveway together. You knock on the door,” Quentin said. “Once you get inside, we’ll come in.”
“Take the kid with you,” Dillon said. “Here.” Dillon reached down and picked up a simple five-shot .38 revolver. He checked to make sure it was loaded and handed it to Summers. “Even you should be able to use this. Just point and click, motherfucker.”
Rebecca knocked on the cabin’s front door. She had tucked the Glock into the small of her back so that her parka covered it.
“Help! Help!” She knocked again. The door flew open and a tall young man with long blond hair was standing in front of her.
“Well, fuck me!” he said.
“We need help,” Rebecca said. “They’re out there. The things. Our car broke down.”
“Well come on in, good looking,” the man said. He moved back from the door.
Rebecca saw that he had a pistol in his hand. She saw two dead Howler bodies hanging on one of the cabin’s back walls near the fireplace. The Howlers had been nailed to the knotty-pine wall of the living room like animal trophies—their arms stretched out, their ugly thick faces horribly bullet-pocked. Rebecca looked to her right and saw a tall, older biker with short black hair, standing at one of the cabin’s windows. He was wearing night-vision goggles.
The man who opened the door pointed his pistol at her and Summers, who’d walked up behind her.
“Now, I want you two to come on in here,” the younger one said. Rebecca saw another two men in the kitchen, holding short-barreled shotguns. One of them slipped out the back door. The tall man in the night-vision goggles, holding a walkie-talkie, spoke into the radio, still looking out the window. Rebecca reached behind her slowly.
“Hands where I can see them, bitch!” the blond said.
“We need help,” Rebecca said, bringing her gun hand back in front of her.
“Sure you do. You’re about to get it, too,” the blond said.
Summers jumped at the man. Rebecca pulled the pistol from behind her. The tall man at the window turned. Rebecca saw the green tint of the night-vision goggles as he moved for his pistol on the chair behind him. She fired, hitting him in the face, the hollow-point, 230-grain bullet boring a hole through one of the night-vision goggles’ lenses. She turned and fired almost point blank at the blond, sending two rounds through his right ear, as Summers fought with him. The blond dropped to his knees and fell over. She turned to fire at the man in the kitchen, but he was gone.
Rebecca flew out the front door and screamed for Quentin to watch the side of the house. Rebecca saw, almost immediately, the orange-yellow flash of the Thompson’s muzzle. The two machine guns opened up at once on someone she could just make out standing in the snow at the side of the cabin. The gunman tried to run. His body danced, hit by both machine guns. She ran across the living room and toward the back door, expecting the other gunmen would try and come back inside the house. She pointed her pistol at the back door as she approached. As soon as she saw its dark knob move, she opened fire, shooting through the door in rapid fire until the pistol’s slide remained in the far back position, the Glock empty.
She heard voices and turned to see Quentin and Dillon walk through the front door.
“You okay?” Quentin asked from the doorway. She nodded, then opened the back door. The gunman’s head and upper body slid face down onto the dirty kitchen floor. She saw bits of white down, little white tufts poking through the nylon where her bullets had exited the back of the man’s red parka.
“Take the asshole’s shotgun, we’ll need it,” Dillon said. She went outside and found a combat-style shotgun lying at the bottom of the steps, its barrel buried in piss-stained yellow snow.
* * *
They could not get Marvin to speak. Miles had given up. Patty, he noticed, hadn’t really tried. It was the ranger who had led the doctor back into the house when they saw more of them in the woods heading for the Poole’s backyard. Forty or more Howlers had gathered in the woods, just out of sight, attracted to the sound of the howling.
Patty stood in the snow-covered backyard and watched them come. She dug into her red mackinaw coat pocket and felt the plastic covered shotgun shells; only three shells left. A howling started up from the forest. A gang of them was heading toward the fence, walking in the deep snow, some of them stumbling, their clothes snow covered.
Tired and angry, Patty walked over the backyard, stepping over the bodies of the Howlers she’d shot. It had become personal, a matter of her own survival. She’d seen too much violent death in the last several hours. Shooting the doctor’s wife had changed her—the poor woman’s tortured face imprinted forever. She wanted to kill them all. She was angry that she didn’t have more ammunition. She watched the closest Howler stumble on toward the fence. She turned and saw Miles guide Poole into the house and close the French door.
She turned back and faced the fence. The closest Howler kept coming, its mouth hung with frozen saliva, its dead eyes bloodshot.
“You motherfucker!” Patty said under her breath. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you hear me? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
The thing kept coming. It stopped immediately in front of her, separated only by the chain-link fence.
“ucluchih uulchi nockeer raw, nocker raw.” The thing spoke to her, its glue-looking spit bubbling on the thing’s lips as it spoke.
She never heard one speak before, and it shocked her. “What?”
“Ul raw,” the thing said. Then it jumped onto the fence. She let it climb, watched it, relishing the thing’s nearness—seeing its ugliness close up. She heard the fence chatter as the Howler climbed it. She waited for its belly to get to her eye level; then she plunged the kitchen knife she’d picked up in the snow deep into the thing’s gut, through the fence. She watched it continue to climb, ripping its own bowels open as it pulled itself up the fence.
“Die ... Die ... Die,” Patty said, the knife sunk to the hilt. But even partially eviscerated, pulling its own guts out with each move up the fence—it wouldn’t die. She stepped back, letting go of the knife, and shot the thing in the head, just as it was about to lift itself to the top of the fence, dragging a long tail of red and white guts behind it. The thing’s body slumped back headless, its body caught on the fence. It hung there, caught on a cowboy-style belt buckle that said TEXAS.
The doctor had not spoken a word since Miles had led him back into the house. They’d done what they could to comfort him, but Marvin had refused food when they offered him some of the canned chili they’d found and cooked. Both Miles and Patty had eaten several cans, heating the chili on the Pooles’ gas range, which still worked despite the lack of power. The doctor had sat in the living room staring out the window to the street beyond. They’d brought him clothes for the trip they were planning. Marvin had put them on without speaking. When Miles had told him what their plan was—to leave the Sierras via Highway 50 and head for Sacramento, where Miles said the government was broadcasting from an emergency radio frequency—Marvin had simply nodded.
“I’ve decided to stay here,” Poole said when they came in to check on him. “I’d rather stay here. You two go. Take the car.”
“No,” Miles said. “We can’t leave you here. No way. You’re coming with us.”
Poole looked at them both and shook his head no.
“They’ll need doctors in Sacramento,” Miles said.
“My wife and children are all dead,” Poole said in disbelief.
Miles didn’t know what to say.
“Your family would want you to go on living,” Patty said.
Marvin looked up at the young woman. “For what?” Poole said.
“To help people who will need a doctor!” Miles said. “That’s why. And maybe you can help figure out what the fuck is going on.”
“All right,” Marvin said. “I’ll go.”
At 6:30 in the evening they walked into the garage and got into Marvin’s wife’s dark blue Cadillac Escalade. They’d been hearing howling since the sun went down. Miles suggested he should drive, with Patty literally riding shotgun in the passenger seat, as she was the better shot. They’d gone back to Crouchback’s place and found another two boxes of ammunition for the twelve gauge—sixty rounds—but none for the damaged .30-30.
Miles looked at Patty. “Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah, as I’ll ever be,” Patty said. She watched Miles reach up to the visor and hit the garage-door opener. Patty watched the big garage door rise up in the rearview mirror. She saw several Howlers standing out in the street.
Seeing them too, Miles almost hit the button to close the door back down, but didn’t. “Fuck,” Miles said. He heard Patty hit the button rolling down the Cadillac’s passenger-side window. “Just fucking kill them,” Miles said.
He pulled out of the garage. He felt the cold air from the car’s open window and heard the shotgun go off almost immediately. He heard Patty rack the shotgun. She was leaning out of the window. He stepped on the Cadillac’s throttle, fishtailing out into the street, in reverse, whipping the steering wheel as the big car slid out of control. When it stopped sliding, he turned the wheel and floored it again.
He turned to look next to him; Patty was gone. He slammed on the brakes and looked in the rearview. She’d been yanked out of the car’s window and was lying on the ground. Miles put the car in reverse and floored it, aiming a rear bumper at the Howler standing over Patty. The Howler held the shotgun it had taken from her.
“Don’t get up,” Miles whispered, staring into the rearview mirror as he punched it. He felt the car hurtling backwards. He felt it hit something. He wasn’t sure whether he’d caught the Howler, or run over Patty. He waited what seemed for an eternity for the passenger door to open, not sure it would. “Come on—”
Patty jumped into the cab, coming out of the dark. She’d been searching for the shotgun but hadn’t seen it.
“I’ve lost the fucking shotgun,” she said as she slid into the seat, her jacket covered in snow.
Miles shifted into Drive and hit the accelerator, sending the Cadillac speeding down the street.
“Stop the car!” Marvin yelled. Miles, not understanding what was wrong, slowed the car. Marvin opened the back door and saw the black snow-dirty asphalt rushing past.
“Jesus, Marvin!” Miles said, slowing the car to a crawl.
“Stop the car!” Marvin said again. “I’ll get it.” Miles stopped the car. Marvin stepped out of the Cadillac and walked down the middle of the dark empty street. He saw Howlers jumping through the windows of a house and heard a man scream. He kept walking, looking to either side of the road for the shotgun. He finally saw it lying in the road in front of him. A Howler, both its legs broken, was lying in the snow near it. Marvin bent down and picked up the shotgun. He racked it, sending an empty shell out into the night.
He stood and looked around him. The neighborhood he’d known was gone. He could see broken windows, the bodies of his neighbors—people who like himself had been living normal lives just 24 hours before—lying where they’d had been killed. He looked up at the sky overhead and saw the stars. They looked bright and distant and perfect. The storm had passed. Something about looking up at the stars made him want to live, despite everything, as if he were all men, and not just one man.
“God help us all,” Marvin said out loud, lowering his head. He walked up to the crippled Howler that was trying to use its broken legs to stand again. Marvin laid the shotgun on the thing’s forehead. The thing grabbed for the barrel. Marvin fired and the Howler’s face disappeared. Its dead hand let go of the barrel. He turned and slowly walked back toward the Cadillac’s huge red taillights.
Marvin Poole was a changed man. He was now a violent and angry man, who had chosen to go on living, but only for vengeance’s sake, like some dark angel of death.
“Are you okay?” Miles asked, as Marvin slid into the back. Miles saw the doctor had a strange and different look on his face . He saw that it was peppered with Howler blood.
“Okay,” Marvin said, “Now. I’ll keep this with me.”
* * *
“He’s up there in that little cabin. He blocked the road so nobody can drive up there. Can you imagine?” Cooley said. They’d parked in front of the pine logs blocking the gravel road that led up to Chuck Phelps’s ranch.
“Doesn’t look like much,” the man riding next to Cooley said. He was a client of the accountant’s and an important official with the ATF in San Francisco. Cooley had given the ATF man and his wif —Fredrick C. Billings, Jr., and Mrs. Billings Jr.—a free luxury package at the B&B that included 90-minute massages and “European dermabrasion” in exchange for Billings’ promise to stop by the Phelps place and “investigate.” Billings was more than willing to get a free weekend in the mountains if all he had to do was flash his badge at some doomsday prepper and tell him to keep the noise down. And, of course, should the ATF man see anything illegal, it would lead to the opening of a formal ATF case file.
“The law can pick it up from there,” Billings assured Cooley, who had gotten him out of some hot water with the IRS. Billings considered Cooley a little bitch, but a useful one. “These types are all pretty much the same. They’re out of touch. Most of them are crazy. You say he’s a Vietnam vet?” Billings was sweating slightly because he’d splurged on a mineral bath and rub-down after breakfast with one of the cute hard-bodies Cooley had staffed the place with.
“Yes. But that might be just a story, you know, to get sympathy. Like bums who hold up cardboard signs and ask for handouts,” Cooley said. He turned off the satellite radio, tuned to 80’s hits. Cooley loved and admired Sting. They’d just missed the first on-air government warning about the Howlers, broadcast over satellite radio that morning.
“How far is the cabin from the road?” Billings asked.
“Not far. I was up there last summer. He took a shot at me!”
This was a lie; the truth was more prosaic. Phelps was in Timberline. The accountant had gathered up all his courage and decided to confront Phelps about his gun range—a perfectly legal one, the hick local sheriff had explained to Cooley. One that Quentin had checked himself, and found respected all the county’s ordinances about outdoor gun ranges.
“Yes,” Cooley continued. “Nearly killed me. I told the police up here, but they’re all, you know. They’re all a bunch of hillbilly types. You can’t believe it. It’s like going back in time up here. Everyone knows everyone. And they protect this crazy guy just because he was born here.” “He shot at you?”
“Yes. Nearly killed me, too. Came close. I ran, had to,” Cooley lied.
“I see,” Billings said. “And you told the police up here?”
“Yes.”
“All right, let’s go have a word with this yahoo.” Marching past a “No Trespassing” sign without a warrant made no difference to the two men.
Three Howlers attacked the two men as they climbed the steps to the Phelps cabin. Two were naked, a man and wife, having gotten sick while at the B&B’s isolated “lovers only” outdoor hot tub on a deck in the woods.
Cooley, always quick-witted, pushed Billings down in the snow in hopes he could make it into the cabin in time. Billings, already exhausted, fell backwards toward the screaming creatures who had run up behind them. Sitting in the snow, Billings took out his service pistol and fired at the screaming naked Howlers, missing all but the closest, which he killed by sheer luck. The other two reached him as his pistol clicked empty. One of them, the man, knelt immediately in the snow and shit. It was the strangest thing Billings had ever seen. The woman waited, not sure whether she should go on toward Cooley who was just making it up the stairs to the cabin.
“Help! Help me! For God sake!” Billings yelled. He stood up.
The female Howler, waiting for her mate, knelt and began to howl.
“Help me! I’ve hurt my ankle,” Billings said, not aware that it was Cooley who had pushed him down as he was running.
Cooley opened the door, stole a quick glance at the terrified injured man and then closed the cabin door behind him, locking it. Exhausted and drenched in sweat, Cooley watched from the window as the two Howlers literally pulled Billings apart, tearing his arms off his body first, as if he were a paper doll.
Still alive, Billings stood up, arms gone and shoulders spurting blood, and limped pathetically toward the cabin. But the creatures caught him after only a few steps.
Cooley, hands shaking, pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911.
“Hello, 911?”
“Yes, 911 operator speaking.”
“Operator,” Cooley said, “I’m in a cabin in the woods and someone has just been murdered.”
“Can you hold, please? We’re receiving a high number of calls.”
“NO, I CAN’T HOLD!” Cooley dropped his phone on the floor and blocked the door with an old-fashioned steel bar he saw for the purpose. The bar fell in place across the door, held by two steel hooks. Cooley, feeling safe, watched the naked creatures through the cabin’s small windows. Both were running toward the porch. The two things jumped up the stairs onto the porch; he watched them pound on the bullet-proof, two-inch thick, military-grade, and bomb-proof plastic.
He stared at the ugly things as the Howlers tried to smash the small windows. He backed away from the blood-printed glass as both Howlers broke their wrists trying to punch through it. It was impossible; the window’s thick plastic was too tough. The two finally stopped pounding, their broken and dangling hands useless, both began to howl and shriek.
“Jesus,” Cooley said, staring at the naked couple. Their faces had changed from just a day ago. Jesus . . . those two were staying at the B&B. He turned from the small bloodstained window and saw two dogs looking up at him. One of them, a giant German Shepherd, started to growl and then leapt at his throat.
