Текст книги "Howlers"

Автор книги: Kent Harrington

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

CHAPTER 23

The two young women stood by the patrol car and watched as the Escalade passed under the hotel’s lit-up gated entrance. It turned left toward Timberline and the Phelps Ranch. The Cadillac picked up speed and passed the burning old-school motel out on the highway. The motel’s cabins were shadowy black-and-burnt husks; the intense fire that had destroyed them was almost burnt out. They lost sight of the Escalade in a cloud of grey-white smoke pouring steadily out of the motel’s ruins, drifting toward them. One of the burnt cabins’ tiled roofs collapsed into the rooms below it, the sound horrible and strange. Devouring flames along with a huge spray of sparks, looking almost like fireworks, shot upward into the darkness.

“You have a plan?” Patty asked, turning toward the patrol car. “How are we going to get this guy out of there?” Patty looked at the younger woman standing in front of her.

The girl was wearing a brand new spotless blaze-orange hunting vest and matching hat and an old black down jacket. Her long blond hair, very thick, was spilling out of the cap. She looked like a young fashion model, and not anyone you’d take to a gunfight. The girl inspired no confidence, but it was too late to go back. Patty wished she had not volunteered to stay.

“Yeah, it’s pretty simple,” Rebecca said. “We go down and kill those two assholes, I guess.”

“That’s it?” Patty said. “What if there’re Howlers?”

“We kill them, too,” Rebecca said, giving her a smile. “You must be a city person. City people always make things more complicated than they need to be. Ready?”

“All I have is my service revolver,” Patty said. “And I’m out of ammunition.”

“I can fix that. .357, right? Wait. I don’t have any rounds for that, I’m afraid.” Rebecca walked Patty to the back of the patrol car and opened the trunk. The contents were illuminated by the hotel’s Greek Island lights strung along the gate. “Take your pick. I’d go for the AK and a Walther as a backup. The Walther is a chick’s gun, but, you know, they’re cool, I guess. I’m sticking with the short-barreled .45.”

Rebecca pulled a new looking AK-47 from the messy pile of ordinance she and Dillon had thrown into the trunk of the sheriff’s car earlier in the day. She made sure the assault rifle’s two taped-together banana clips, pulled from the tangled mess of guns and holsters, were loaded. She explained how to change the tape-together clips, how you simply reversed them when Patty needed to reload. When Rebecca finished her quick tutorial on the weapon, she shoved the setup into the rifle and chambered a round, double-checking the safety.

“Okay, you’re open for business,” Rebecca said, handing her the weapon.

Patty, impressed, looked down at the pile of handguns in the patrol car’s trunk and picked up the Walther Rebecca had pointed to.

   “Well, I’m a chick—so the Walther it is, then,” Patty said.

“The Walther is loaded. We kept it behind the counter at the store. The AK is a fully-auto model. My dad was a gunsmith and made a few adjustments I think you’ll appreciate. Please promise not to tell ATF, or any tree-huggers either. And expect it to twist when you fire it. That’s the problem with full auto.” Rebecca winked at her. “My name is Rebecca Stewart, by the way. Pleased to meet you.”

“Patty Tyson.” The two shook hands.

“Might as well be on a first-name basis if we’re going to have each other’s backs and shit,” Rebecca said. They both got into the patrol car, Rebecca behind the wheel. Patty placed the AK-47 between her legs.

Rebecca drove the road at a crawl. She flipped off the police lights and turned off its headlights. They made their way down the long driveway, finally stopping in the hotel’s huge turnaround. The hotel’s generators kept the entire property lit up and elegant. The normalcy seemed strange, Patty thought, given what had happened over the last twenty-four hours.

The turnaround was scattered with luggage, dead bodies, random bits of clothing, and personal items. A red Hermes handbag sat near a dead woman. A Howler at the bell captain’s station was beating an obviously already dead man. The thing dropped the dead bell captain he was beating and lurched toward them, out into the turnaround.

Patty felt the patrol car stop. She saw the thing’s lips dripping its signature ribbons of saliva. It let out a ripping howl, one of the loudest Patty had heard. It was so loud it made her want to bolt from the car and run. It was demon loud, almost like a bark, like a mad dog/monkey might make, piercing. Patty started to get out of the patrol car ready to shoot the thing, raising the AK-47, but Rebecca stopped her.

“No! They’ll hear the shots inside—the two crazies,” Rebecca said. Patty turned away and got back into the car beside her.

“So what do we do?” Patty said. The girls watched the thing come toward them, the ribbon of saliva hanging from its open mouth, the silver-like string almost touching the ground.

“Fuck!” Rebecca said. She hopped out of the patrol car, ran to the trunk and got out an orange plastic Orion flare gun she’d thrown into the random mix of weapons. She opened the flare gun as she stepped out and away from the back of the patrol car, checking to make sure the flare gun was loaded. The Howler, excited to see her standing in front of him, began to lope toward her.

Rebecca raised the flare gun and waited for the thing to get a few feet in front of her before she fired, aiming for its wide-open gob. She could see its icy blue eyes in the moonlight. The low-speed flare launched as soon as she fired; the fat plastic bullet hit the Howler dead in its mouth, sticking in its gob like a plug in a bottle. The thing’s face lit up like a pumpkin on Halloween. The lit flare, burning progressively hotter, began frying the thing’s throat and brains, making it dance in pain in front of Rebecca, almost comically. It stopped dancing and tried to howl, but couldn’t because of the plug in its throat. It made more of a human sound, little pain grunts. The flare’s chemical fire started to pour out of the thing’s ears and mouth like a horrible Roman candle.

In a stupid spasm, the Howler began hitting himself in the face as if it would do some good. The thing fell to the ground dead, its face puckered, burning and red as salmon flesh. Fire shot out a hole in the back of the thing’s skull and lit up the turnaround, tinting the lobby doors an eerie orange-yellow.

Rebecca climbed back into the patrol car. Patty gave her a startled look. Any question she’d had about the beautiful girl’s effectiveness in a fight now gone.

“Sometimes you just got to go for it, you know what I mean?” Rebecca said.

“Yeah. Right,” Patty said.

“Put your clothes on!” Bell barked at the naked couple having sex in the hotel pool, oblivious and lost in their pleasure.

Rebecca and Patty had walked into the lobby and found Bell hung upside down in the lobby, expecting to die. Johnny and Sue Ling had left him there, having reneged on their deal to allow Lacy to leave in the hotel’s limousine. Instead they’d taken the cash Bell had collected and thrown Lacy out of the hotel, either to freeze or be killed by Howlers on the road. Bell had misjudged their intentions; they had no rational plan.

The two had left Bell strung up as Howler bait so they could feel safe while they went for a swim in the hotel’s heated pool, both high as kites from coke and booze. They were screwing in the shallow end of the detritus-filled pool, a bottle of Dom Pérignon within easy reach.

Sue Ling’s legs were way up in the air, her ass hiked up onto a submerged step, when Bell dropped the barrel of the Walther on Johnny’s bobbing shoulder muscles, which were hardening for a climax. Bell wanted to pull the trigger right then and there, but couldn’t.

“Oh, fuck that’s good,” Ryder yelled. He felt the pistol. “Is that you, Bell?”

“Yeah, asswipe. It’s me.”

“Shit!” Johnny said. “I knew I should have killed you.”

“Step out of the pool,” Bell said. “Both of you.” He was trying not to kill them both. He’d tried to pull the trigger and couldn’t. He was not a cold-blooded killer.

“These are the two?” Rebecca said. “They look pretty harmless.”

“Yeah?” Bell said. “Well, they are most definitely not harmless.”

Sue Ling climbed out of the pool, stark naked, having pushed her boyfriend off. She ran to where she’d piled her clothes on a lounge chair and pulled on her panties and a pair of skinny designer jeans she’d ripped off. Johnny stood in the shallow end, his dick hard and his face expressionless. Then Ryder got out too and put his clothes on. Bell had picked up both their weapons and tossed them into the deep end of the pool while they’d been fucking.

“Now what?” Johnny said, getting dressed, his face red.

“Payback is a bitch,” Rebecca said.

*   *   *

Quentin opened his eyes. A pounding sound was coming from outside the cabin, very loud. It had woken him.  Marvin, who’d been examining him, was staring down at him, shining a flashlight in Quentin’s eyes and sitting on Quentin’s narrow cot-style bed.

“What happened?” Quentin said.

“You were knocked unconscious,” Marvin said. “A few hours ago.”

“Where are we?”

“Some kind of doomsday-prepper’s cabin,” Marvin said. “We’re safe, I guess. For the time being anyway.”

“Where are Lacy, and Lieutenant Bell?”

“They went to get Bell. Patty and Rebecca Stewart,” Marvin said. He watched Quentin pull himself up in the narrow bed where they’d laid him. “Lacy is outside waiting to see you. I want to give you a shot of something first, so I’ve asked her to wait.”

“Shit.” Quentin said. “What a mess. Sharon—”

“Yes, I know.” Marvin said. “Lacy told me what happened.”  The doctor turned off the flashlight. “You have a concussion, maybe slight, maybe not. Time will tell.”

“Great,” Quentin said.

“We found a medical room, believe it or not. It’s a huge closet with all kinds of drugs. I’m going to keep you awake. Give you a shot of something,” Marvin said.

“Awake.”

“Yes. I don’t want you to sleep. If you go downhill, we’ll be able to tell. If you’re going to have serious side effects, they’ll happen soon.”

“What will happen?”

“You could have swelling of the brain,” Marvin said. “You’ll vomit, feel dizzy, and you’ll want to sleep. If you’re lucky, coma and death will come next.”

“Am I going to die? Is that what you’re trying to tell me, Marvin?”

“Well, there’s not too much I could do here for you, really. You’d have to go to a hospital. And that might not be possible.”

“I see,” Quentin said. He looked around the small bedroom. The cabin had been finished nicely with knotty-pine boards; the floors, too, were pine and waxed. The furniture was simple, but oddly tasteful, as if Chuck Phelps had expected a woman to live here with him. Chuck had had a girlfriend for a time in the ‘90’s, a nice girl from Sacramento, but she’d left him and moved on. Perhaps she’d helped with the furniture, Quentin thought.

“Are Grace and the kids here, too?” Quentin asked, wanting to change the subject. He remembered being hit by the Howler who’d come out of nowhere. He remembered looking into the thing’s dead eyes, and then the nothingness.

“No,” Marvin said. “They didn’t make it.” He stood up.

“I’m sorry, Marvin,” Quentin said. “I’m sorry.”

The doctor didn’t answer him, or even acknowledge what he’d said. He walked out of the room. He seemed to be acting strange, distant. It was, Quentin thought, to be expected. He’d lost his entire family.

Quentin looked across the room at his boots, which were sitting in a corner of the room. The horrible scene with Sharon played itself out again. The doctor slipped back into the room and told him to pull down his pants for an injection into his hip muscle. Marvin lifted the disposable syringe and waited for Quentin to pull down his jeans.

“This guy Phelps, he’s built a fort here,” Marvin said, watching Quentin struggle with his belt and pants, pulling them down, wiggling on the bed to expose his thigh. Marvin stabbed the needle into his thigh muscle unceremoniously.

“Yeah. He’d never let me in. He let my wife in years ago when she was pregnant with Lacy,” Quentin said, watching Marvin pull the needle out of his thigh. Quentin pulled his jeans up and buckled up his cowboy belt.

“We just found a second level,” Marvin said. “Underground bunker complex. And a map.”

“What is it? What you used on me?”

“Amphetamine—it’s past its sell date, so it may not work too well. But there are a couple hundred of those things out in front of the cabin now trying to get in. We’re going to need your help. Your daughter is in the hall.”

“Is that the pounding sound, them?”

“Yes,” Marvin said.

Lacy rushed into the room, threw herself on her father and burst into tears. “Oh, Daddy—Daddy!”

  They held each other for a long time without speaking.

*   *   *

Pregnancy had changed Marie Collier. Only nineteen in her eighth month, she had become touchy, hypersensitive to odd things: loud cars, or loud people in restaurants, especially the loud new City types who were starting to come up from New York and LA, building outrageously expensive summer mansions. The locals called them Fun Hogs. Pregnancy had made her extremely volatile, as it did some women. She would burst out crying for odd reasons, once because she and Quentin had driven past a kid in a wheelchair who was trying to keep up with his brothers and sisters on a dirt road. The profound unfairness of life overwhelmed her. And she was physically restless, so she would walk out after lunch that summer—sometimes straight down the quiet country road that led to town, and sometimes toward the mountains behind the Collier ranch, taking a trail that had an inch of soft dust from horse’s hoofs.

Sometimes, when she was lonely, she’d cross the fields that separated their place from Chuck Phelps’s place. Phelps had shown her a complete understanding of all her fears: fears that their child would be born with a congenital illness (because her sister was autistic), or ugly (a secret irrational fear). The more she visited, the more she chose to visit. No matter what she told Chuck, he understood and never judged her, or acted surprised. She’d sworn him to secrecy about her visits. When she and Quentin had crossed Chuck’s path in town that summer, he’d never once mentioned them. It was as if they’d been having an affair—a sexless one.

*   *   *

“Now,” Chuck said, “I’ll probably never have kids. I’m getting old.”

“Yes, you will,” Marie had said. “You’ll find someone. I know you will.”

“No. Who would want me? I’m nuts. Even I know that! And you need a woman for that—right? I can’t just make one in the woodshop.” They’d both laughed.

“Thanks for not saying anything to Quentin about me coming out here. He worries about me walking out in the woods alone,” she said. “You’re a mess.”

Chuck had wood chips stuck to the hair on his chest.

“Do you get lonely?” Marie asked.

They were sitting out in the field in front of the cabin he was building. He’d brought out some cookies, gingersnaps he’d made himself, and ice-cold lemonade. They were sitting on a blanket. She took a bite of a cookie. “Did you kill people, Chuck? Is that the problem, why you want to be alone? I just come over here and talk about myself. You must be bored as hell of me.”

“No. I would miss your visits,” Chuck said. “Yes, I killed people.” He poured himself some lemonade. “I killed people who deserved it, and a lot of people who didn’t.”

“But it was war. You did what you had to do,” she said.

“I suppose,” he said. He had a far off look in his eyes. “My mom asked me not to go. She was a Quaker.”

“Really? I didn’t know that,” Marie said.

“Yup. I broke her heart when I enlisted. I don’t think she ever forgave me.”

“Why did you do it? Join?”

“I think I was afraid I wasn’t going to be a man if I didn’t do it. Stupid kid stuff. Come on, I want to show you something, but you have to promise not to tell anyone. This is my secret,” he said and stood up. “Promise?”

“Yeah. Lips are sealed.”  She reached for his hand and held it like a little girl holding her father’s hand. “I like to hold hands,” she said. She reached over and hugged him and heard him start to cry. She held him and let him cry.

Exactly a month later she had a perfect baby girl. They walked through the field to the foundation of the cabin Chuck was building. He pulled a canvas off the center of the cabin’s foundation and exposed a network of tunnels and subterranean rooms he was digging below ground. Some of the tunnels went out beyond the perimeter of the cabin’s foundation and along the gravel driveway heading to the county road.

“Wow!” Marie had said in a low voice. “You did that by yourself?”

“Yeah, I know,” Chuck said. He smiled from ear to ear.

One of the tunnels went out and toward the field behind the cabin. “What’s that one for?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s for ambushes,” he said. “Yeah, had to rent a pneumatic jackhammer, ran into some mighty big rocks out there.”

Marie kept Chuck’s secrets. He was always invited to the family’s Thanksgiving dinners over the years. Her Thanksgiving dinners were picture-perfect affairs, always full of people and children and life. She’d been able to talk to Chuck when he came to visit her at the hospital toward the end. They never spoke of her illness, not once. Instead they reminisced about that summer Lacy was born, when she’d come to visit him.

“I brought you a key.” Chuck had told her that last day in the hospital. He dug in his pocket. “It’s for Quentin and the girls, and you, too,” he’d said.

She’d reached for it. The key was attached to small wood figure of a fish.

“It’s coming soon,” Chuck said.

“What’s coming, dear?” she’d asked. Marie took his hand and held it as she’d held it back then, twenty years before.

“The—something. I feel it now. It’s close. I had a dream. I won’t be there, but it’s important—the cabin—for Lacy and Quentin. They were there, in my dream, and they were safe. We were—” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence: in his dream he and Marie were spirits, watching her family from the top of the cabin’s roof. Chuck and Marie could see it all, but their loved ones couldn’t see them.

“What about Sharon?” Marie asked.

“I don’t know. She wasn’t there—in the dream. It was winter and I saw them there in the cabin, Lacy and Quentin. Will you tell Quentin to keep it with him, the key to my place?” Chuck said. “Please. He won’t understand if it comes from me. He thinks I’m a nut. But I know you’ll understand. You always understood me. You’re the only one who did. It’s important.”

“Yes, I’ll tell him. Chuck, I believe you. And I love you. You know that.”

Chuck Phelps had cried only one other time as a grown man, on the day he realized he was in love with another man’s wife and would never, ever, have her, or a real life. He cried a second time, holding the hand of the woman he loved.  He sat with her until she fell asleep and a nurse chased him out of the hospital room. He’d driven back home in the summer twilight, in a dull trance, full of regrets. He wished he’d never gone to their shitty war. It had ruined his life.

   Two days later, at two o’clock in the afternoon in the small community hospital in Nevada City, Marie dreamed of herself walking out, pregnant and hopeful and fearful all at once, on a hot July day, years before, watching the afternoon’s splendid painting of the sky’s beauties: the pines’ tops moving slightly in the warm breeze, the smell of those pine trees in summer, the confusion of the forest floor as she picked her way toward the Phelps place. She felt herself speed up, walking faster, something waiting for her. She felt/saw herself climb up onto an old stump, holding her precious round belly from which a daughter would emerge soon. She glanced behind her, back toward her home with its new shiny metal roof, put on that summer by her young husband. She thought she could hear Quentin hammering.

It was at that instant, with July’s big sun shining in her eyes, that Marie Collier passed away, the sound of a Sierra summer in her ears.