Читать книгу Ghost Road Blues - Джонатан Мэйберри - Страница 12

(1)

Long black lines of burned rubber marked where the car had gone off the road into the corn. The tall man with the blond hair stood at the outer curve of the skid mark and stared into the field for a long time, his mouth cut into a cruel smile of triumph. Despite the total cloud cover his skin and blond hair seemed to glimmer with a luminescence like cold moonlight.

He reached out his left hand, fingers splayed so that from his perspective his hand encompassed the whole of the car; then he closed his hand slowly, forming a knotted fist. A wind seemed to blow past him and into the cornfield.

Then his smile changed as he felt a presence behind him. He slowly lowered his arm and turned, his eyes both bright and dark in the strange light. Across the road, standing just at the edge of the forest, was a second man. His skin was gray as dust and he wore a black suit smeared with dirt. The blond man’s face twisted into a sneer.

The man in the black suit opened his mouth to speak, but though his lips formed words, there was no sound. His face registered alarm and then frustration. He tried again and the strain of his effort was clear on his face.

The blond man shook his head and laughed. “Pathetic,” he said in a voice that was the sound of icy wind blowing through the limbs of blighted trees.

Straining, the other man forced out two words—“…stop…you…”—but the effort drained him and his shoulders slumped. He mouthed bastard, but it had no sound and carried no force.

“You thought you had won, didn’t you?”

The other man could not make himself heard, his lips writhed without sound. Finally he stopped trying to talk and just stood there looking stricken.

“You have no idea what you did. You have no concept of how powerful you’ve made me.” He took another step closer and was now only a few feet away from the gray man. “So now…every drop of blood that falls will be on your head. Every. Single. Drop.”

Then his eyes flared from pale blue to a fiery red as hot and intense as the furnaces of hell.

In terror, the man in the dark suit fled into the shadows and was gone.

Lightning flashed in the sky, bathing the road with harsh white light; when the shadows returned, the road was empty.

(2)

Malcolm Crow held the severed arm in both of his hands and wondered what to do with it. Put it with the others? Or maybe hang it in the window.

He opted for the window.

Tossing it playfully up and down as he walked, he went to the long counter that formed the floor of the display window and peered at the tangle of skulls, rats, spiderwebs, tombstones, and necrobilia that lay strewn with artistic abandon in front of the thick plate glass. He pursed his lips, made a thoughtful decision, and then bent down to lay the severed arm in front of the largest tombstone, the one that read:

COUNT DRACULA

Born 1472

Died 1865

Died 1900

Died 1923

Died 1988

Died 2007

He checked to make sure the price tag was showing.

Whistling “Cemetery Blues” along with the CD player, he strolled back to his worktable and began opening a second box of gruesome goodies. Both cartons were stamped with the distinctive death’s-head label of Yorick’s Skull: Repulsive Replicas, Inc. He removed four more identical severed arms, tagged them with his price gun, and set them on a shelf next to the severed hands, human hearts, and glow-in-the-dark skulls. When the bell above the door tinkled he glanced over his shoulder to see a familiar burly, bearded figure amble in.

“Hey! Wolfman!” Crow said playfully, waving a rubber arm.

Terry Wolfe smiled back, his grin splitting the red beard with a flash of white. He was a big man, nearly six-five, with logger’s forearms and a huge barrel chest, but dressed with expensive good taste in a Giampaolo Desanti suit in dark blue wool with faint pinstripes, a pale blue shirt, and a tie that matched his suit. His shoes were buffed to a polished-coal sheen, and his red beard and curly hair were clipped short, though Crow noticed that Terry needed a haircut—he usually got one every week—and that his beard was a little uneven. Pretending not to look, Crow saw that Terry’s smile went no deeper than the surface of his face and that his eyes were bloodshot.

“Whatcha got there?” Terry asked as he stepped up and peered into the box. “Oh, yuck!” He reached in and fished out a huge black rat that lay crushed and sprawled in a congealed puddle of blood and gore.

“Cute, huh?” Crow said with a happy grin.

“Good God, what on earth are you going to do with this?”

“With ‘these,’” Crow corrected. “I have six of them.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“To sell ’em.”

“To whom?”

“Kids. I already sold out of the first lot. Roadkill Ratz are this year’s ‘thing.’” When you step on them they squeal. Kids snap them right up. And split skulls, severed limbs, popped-out eyes, eviscerated dogs, and even bug-eyed monster babies with bloody fangs.”

“When we were kids we used to have rubber chickens.”

“Dude, we grew up with Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers.”

“Sounds like a law firm in hell.”

“The difference is that you never went to monster movies when we were kids, Wolfman, so you don’t remember all the good horror stuff from the seventies and eighties. Zombie flicks and slasher pics and the kids loved it all. But all that changed and now every couple of years they have to amp it up to keep kids interested. It’s harder to spook them, harder to gross them out. They want to push the envelope of nastiness.”

“To reiterate,” Terry sniffed with disdain, “‘yuck!’” He rubbed his tired eyes.

“Rough day at the office? Tired from sitting up all night counting all your millions?”

Terry yawned. “Don’t I wish? Do you want me to tell you what kind of week I’ve had so far?”

“Not really—”

“Since you ask—mostly it’s this bloody crop blight that is very likely going to put ten or fifteen farms out of business, and most of the rest of them will be mortgaged to the eyebrows to Pinelands Farm Bank. Gil Sanders told me just yesterday that his entire corn crop was diseased, all of it. They’re calling it Scandinavian leaf blight because they don’t know what else to call it. That’s twenty tons of corn that’ll have to be burned. He’s already talking of selling his farm to developers and getting out. A few others, too.”

“Like thirty years ago,” Crow murmured. “Like the Black Harvest.”

“God, don’t even say that!” Terry rubbed his face with both hands. “Hopefully this won’t be anywhere near as bad. We have two EPA guys here and the guy who teaches agriculture science at Pinelands College is taking samples all over. Maybe they’ll come up with something. And—” Terry began, then waved it off.

“What?”

Terry gave him a bleak smile. “I know it’s just stress and all that,” he said, “but I haven’t been able to sleep much. Can’t get to sleep for hours, and then when I do I have the weirdest dreams. I dunno, I guess you could even call them nightmares—if guys my age actually get nightmares.”

I sure as hell do, Crow thought, and was about to say it when a customer came in and Terry watched as Crow sold the kid a pair of vampire teeth and two tubes of fake blood. He gave the kid some advice on how to make the blood trickles on either side of his mouth look real rather than fake and the kid left happy. The intrusion broke the stream of their conversation.

Terry shook his red head sadly. “You are a sick little man, Malcolm Crow.”

“Hey, just call me ‘Mr. Halloween.’”

“Other names occur to me. What does Valerie think of all this…” He waved his hand around, at a loss for an adjective that precisely described the Crow’s Nest. “…stuff?”

Crow shrugged. “She thinks I’m a fruit ball.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“But,” Crow said, holding up a finger, “a lovable fruit ball and dead sexy.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure.” Terry snorted. “You’re way too far into this stuff, man. I mean, do you even get mail from the real world?”

“Not often.”

Most of the year, the Crow’s Nest Craft Shoppe was a respectable, upscale arts and crafts store that sold everything from make-your-own birdhouse kits to Elmer’s School Glue, but with the advent of cooler weather a darkness crept over the store, or at least so it seemed to Terry. The basic craft supplies were exiled to the racks in the back room, while the large main showroom of the shop became a place where monsters ruled. Row upon row of rubber horror masks lined the walls, and Terry was always amazed at the horrific detail of these masks. He would have expected the witches and werewolves and ghouls, but these were overshadowed by grinning freaks with bulging eyes and insanely smiling mouths; demons with flaring red eyes and open, running sores; sadomasochistic cenobites that sprouted grids of pins or exposed gray matter; serial killers with thin, loveless mouths and chiseled features; distorted ghost faces from the Scream trilogy; alien invaders with multifaceted bug eyes and whiplike antennae; huge dragon heads with horns and saurian scales and plates; leprous fiends with leering faces; undead zombies riddled with bullets holes; mummies whose bandages slipped to reveal monstrously deformed verminous eyes; and many more, each more horrific than the last.

Then there were the monster model kits, stacks and stacks of them, and apple barrels filled with nasty little trinkets: eyeball key chains and human thumb erasers, plastic vampire teeth and stick-on bullet holes, and scores of assorted insects and vermin. Costumes hung on hangers by a makeshift dressing room and accessories were lined up neatly on Peg-Boards. For a few dollars the local kids could walk away with plastic butcher knives, meat cleavers, Freddy Kruger gloves, Jason hockey masks, pitchforks, witches’ brooms, ball-and-chains, pirate hooks, headbands that made it look as if there were an arrow through their skull, and a variety of makeup in black and orange tubes, guaranteed to transform any ten-year-old into a demon from the outer darkness or a newly risen corpse. Crow loved it. The kids in town loved it. Terry Wolfe, however, hated all of it.

One small counter—Terry’s only haven in the store—was incongruously stocked with rows of beepers and cell phones. Being the local Cingular distributor paid the bills the rest of the year, Crow insisted. The business had its frustrations, though, because the cellular relay tower was on the blink as often as it was working, and no one could understand why; plus more than half the places around town were cell phone dead zones.

“Hey, that reminds me,” Terry said, drumming his fingers on a case of colorful cell phone covers, “while I’m here can I recharge?” He pulled his cell from its belt holster. “I’ve been on this thing all day and it’s dead as a doornail.” Crow took it and plugged it into a charger behind the counter and then went back to stocking the shelves, glancing covertly at Terry as he did so. He didn’t like the way Terry looked and wondered if he was having troubles with Sarah. That, on top of the town’s crop and financial problems, would be almost too much.

That, and the coming of Halloween. Terry never liked Halloween, as Crow knew all too well. It had always scared him dry-mouthed and spitless ever since he was ten. Back in the autumn of the Black Harvest when Terry had been so cruelly injured. That had been the worst time for all of them. Crow’s own brother, Billy, had been murdered by the same man who had killed Terry’s sister, Mandy, and had nearly killed Terry.

Terry and Crow were the only ones in town who had seen the face of the killer and survived—and both of them knew for damn sure it hadn’t been that migrant worker, Oren Morse. The one they’d nicknamed the Bone Man. The bluesman that the town had accused of committing the murders, and had killed.

Terry and Crow knew different, but not once in thirty years had they spoken to each other—or to anyone for that matter—about it, and that had been Terry’s choice. He’d taken his memories of that autumn and had boxed them up and stored them in a back closet of his mind, never to be opened. Crow, on the other hand, thought about that autumn almost every day of his life, and he’d taken the other routes to defuse the ticking time bombs of memories. First he tried to pickle the memories in bourbon, but that hadn’t really done the job, and had nearly ruined his life. Then he went the other route and made a joke out of them. He indulged them, made them a farce by selling monster masks and designing spooky traps for the hayride. Crow thought that doing that had more or less exorcised the demons of memory, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk it over with a shrink to find out.

The upshot was that Terry was afraid of the dark, and Crow was afraid of the light. If they could have compared notes, it might have been both funny and comforting to them.

Yet, despite their private terror, both Crow and Terry took a wry amusement at Terry’s being afraid of Halloween and at the same time being mayor of the town Time magazine had once dubbed “the Most Haunted Town in America.” Pine Deep was one of those peculiar little towns that seemed to foster a common belief in ghosts and ghostly happenings; not just among the town’s eccentrics, but in everyone from crossing guards to town selectmen. The haunted history stretched back to Colonial times when ghosts of slaughtered Lenni-Lenape were said to haunt the new European settlements, and the legends hadn’t dwindled with time but seemed to gather steam with each passing year. It was on this rather spooky foundation that the entire financial structure of the town was built.

Ever since the Black Harvest of thirty years ago when blight destroyed half the farms in the region, the town had begun to change. Developers had bought up the farms and built expensive houses and estates. Money moved in, as the town saying went, and with it came artists, writers, and craftspeople who bought stores and began shoveling in the tourist dollars. The writers wrote horror or gothic novels that made the best-seller lists, the artists painted moody pieces that became popular spooky posters, and the craftspeople made everything from miniature hand-sewn scarecrows to fabulously expensive jewelry like the Vampire’s Tears, a pair of bloodred ruby earrings that Anne Rice wore on the cover of Publisher’s Weekly. The mood and the history of the town seemed to inspire the darker thoughts of the artists, and the tourists loved everything they made.

Terry, always business smart, joined in with the group that capitalized on the haunted history of the town, and used that as gimmicks for advertising. Soon everyone up and down the eastern seaboard came to Pine Deep for the scary fun and games: the Halloween Parade, the Monster Mash dance-concert—once, years ago featuring, appropriately enough, The Smashing Pumpkins—and the seasonal shopping that attracted the most astute and discerning antiquarians. The whole town came totally alive at Halloween and the accounting ledgers of nearly every store went quickly and happily from red to black between September and Christmas, with the definite peak being the weeks leading up to trick-or-treat. Chills and shivers helped Pine Deep prosper as an increasingly upscale community. The fact that Terry Wolfe, with his secret fears, was mayor of “Spooksville,” as the Philadelphia Daily News recently called it, was truly ironic.

The topper of the whole strange pie was that, despite everything, Terry owned the Haunted Hayride.

Crow’s reverie was broken by the ringing of the phone and he leaned across the counter and picked it up. “Yeah…sure, he’s right here.” Smiling, he tossed the portable handset to Terry. “For you. Chief’s office.”

“Uh-oh!” Terry said in mock alarm as he reached out a hand to take the phone. Crow strolled a few paces away and began idly poking in his box of rubber vermin and body parts.

“Yeah, Gus, what is it?” Terry listened for a moment, then said, “No, my cell’s out of energy. What’s the hurry?” He listened for a while and then started saying “Jeez!” every couple of seconds. Terry was a man incapable of profanity and “Jeez” was about as close as he ever got to an expletive. Crow gave Terry an inquisitive look, but the mayor held up a finger and mouthed the word wait. Terry listened for over a minute, then said, “Jeez!” again. “Okay…what about the three gunmen?”

Crow arched his eyebrows and silently mouthed the word gunmen, and again Terry held up his hand. “Jeez-oh-man!” Terry said with feeling, and that was him at his most profane. “Okay, Gus, I’ll be there in a minute. Yeah. Bye.” He punched the Off button on the portable and stood there, chewing his lower lip and tapping the phone against his thigh. Crow cleared his throat; Terry looked sharply at him. “Man, the manure has really hit the fan now.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“You are not going to believe this one, man, but Gus got a call from the Philadelphia Police Department. They red-flagged all the jurisdictions from Philly to the state line because apparently three psychos shot a bunch of holes in some Jamaican druggies and made off with a bunch of drugs and money.”

“Cool!” Crow grinned in spite of himself.

“Yeah, well, the kicker is that they’ve been spotted a few times and for some reason I cannot even fathom, they’ve been heading this way. According to what Gus told me, they probably came through here half an hour ago. There were roadblocks set up. Gus had already been working with Crestville and Black Marsh since late this afternoon. Philly is sending a bunch of their ‘advisers’ up here to take over from Gus. He said he tried to beep me to let me know, but he couldn’t reach me and figured I’d wind up here. Anyway, Gus and the other chiefs arranged some sort of road-check system, some kind of observation-post setup, I don’t know. Anyway, there was supposed to be no way the psychos could get through it without at least being stopped.”

“Stopped?”

Terry snorted. “Yeah, supposedly Gus Bernhardt and his posse are going to try and apprehend a real criminal.”

“Be better to have the Marx Brothers try and arrest them. Gus is pretty good at parking tickets, though.”

“And not much else.” Terry rubbed his eyes.

Crow could see the pressure mounting in his friend’s face, which had gone from a haggard white to a dangerous red.

“So, basically all that the local boys were supposed to do was stop and detain and then turn the bad guys over to the Philly cops. Problem is…a good hour ago, the psychos blew past the Black Marsh checkpoint and crossed the bridge. Now here’s the fun part. The suspects never made it to the roadblock in Crestville.”

Crow said, “Oh,” in a very expressive voice. The town of Pine Deep was a comfortably wide spot in the road, a triangular wedge made up of upscale shops and lush farmland and bisected by Interstate Alternate Extension Route A-32, lying hard against the Delaware River that separated Pennsylvania from New Jersey and framed on all sides by streams and canals. A-32 wavered back and forth between the two states, across old iron bridges and up through farm country, and then plowed right through the town. Black Marsh was an even smaller burg just to the southeast, and miniscule Crestville was the next town heading north. A-32 was the only road that cut all the way through those three towns; the other roads were all small farm roads that led nowhere but to someone’s back forty or to the asymmetrical tangle of cobblestoned streets in Pine Deep’s trendy shopping and dining district. Any car heading to Crestville had to pass through Pine Deep.

“Are they sure they were on the route?”

“Yeah, a Black Marsh cycle cop spotted them. Everyone expected them to run into the roadblock in Crestville. There was a reception committee with eight or nine cars, barricades and shotguns…but they never made it.”

“Shit.”

“As you say. So, now we apparently have to stage a manhunt.”

Crow laughed. “You’re kidding, right? An actual manhunt? Like in the movies?”

“Just like in the movies. Richard Kimble and all that—though Gus Bernhardt is certainly no Lieutenant Gerard. I only hope the cops from Philly are.” Terry cocked his head and peered at Crow. “I wish you’d stop grinning. This is serious.”

But Crow just shook his head. “I doubt it, I really do. This is just Gus getting hysterical. Everyone’s going to run around like Chicken Little and then we’re going to hear that these three clowns are somewhere northwest of Scranton. Sorry, dude, but I just can’t take this seriously.”

“Well, I do,” Terry said, and there was enough asperity in his tone to dial down even Crow’s humor. “This isn’t just Gus this time. There really are detectives from Philadelphia here and they, at least, seem to be taking this seriously.”

“Jeez, Terry,” Crow said, holding his hands up. “Lighten up. Don’t get mad at me. I just know Gus a little better than you do, and until I see actual bad guys rolling down Corn Hill I’m going to find this hard to buy. That’s all.”

A nervous twitch had started at the corner of Terry’s right eye and he was starting to perspire. He mopped his face on his expensive sleeve, hesitated for a moment, and pasted on a bad attempt at an amiable smile, saying, “Okay, okay. Look, I gotta go but I need you to do a favor for me?”

“Sure, call it.”

“Go out to the hayride and let Coop know what’s coming down. Maybe even shut it down for the night. No, don’t give me that look. I think it’s the smart thing to do with all this stuff going on. The hayride’s on Old Mill, just off A-32, and with all the kids out there…well, you know what I mean.” Terry was attempting to sound offhand, but his words were coming out in nervous rapid-fire. “Try to call Coop first, but you know he won’t answer. He never does. He just lets the tape get it. Coop is a pain in my behind.”

“He’s Sarah’s cousin.”

“Nepotism is the only thing keeping him on the payroll. The man’s an idiot.”

Crow found nothing to contest in that statement. “Okay, I’ll button up the shop and head out there. I’m supposed to go over to Val’s anyway, and that’s more or less on the way.”

Terry looked a little relieved. “Thanks for playing errand boy. Oh, and, Crow?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Be extra careful. Don’t grin at me like that, you idiot, I’m serious.”

Crow smiled regardless and dropped into a Festus drawl. “Gee, Mayor Wolfe, does that mean I can bring along my trusty six-gun?”

With no trace of humor in his voice, Terry said, “Yes, it does.”

Crow blinked at him, waiting for the punch line. He said, “You serious?”

“As a heart attack.” Terry cleared his throat. “Look, Crow, all of the cops—local and otherwise—are going to be mustering at the station to coordinate this thing. If I could, I’d send one of them, not that any of them are worth the cost of a pack of Juicy-Fruit. Besides, you used to be a cop….”

“Christ, Terry, in this town nearly everyone except my grandmother has been a cop at one time or other. And she’d have taken the job if she hadn’t had the rhuematiz.”

“Yeah, well. Consider yourself temporarily reinstated.”

“As a cop? You can do that?”

“I’m the mayor, I can do anything.”

“That’s not what Sarah says.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. My wife thinks I’m Superman.” He mopped more sweat and then looked at his friend for a moment. “Look, Crow, just do this for me quick and safe, okay?”

Crow smiled but he could see that this matter really was troubling Terry, so he didn’t make another joke. “Sure, Terry. Whatever you want. And about this whole fugitive thing—don’t get too wired about it, ’cause about the last place three wanted criminals are going to want to go is to a haunted hayride packed with every teenager from the tristate area. Y’know, they got this whole thing about witnesses and such.”

Terry walked behind the counter and retrieved his cell phone, which was only partially recharged. “Yeah, well, just be careful anyway.”

“I promise that I will be very careful. The best man for this job is a smart coward, and damn it, Terry, I’m your man.” He sketched a salute.

Terry Wolfe shook his head, but then he stepped forward and thrust out his hand. “Thanks.”

Crow picked up a rubber severed arm and extended it to shake Terry’s hand. Terry batted it lightly aside and shook his head again, sadly this time. “You are very weird,” he said with a harried grin, and then left.

For a full minute, Crow just looked out through the broad glass window at the darkness, a lopsided smile on his face. He scratched his cheek with the rubber hand.

“Well, hell,” he said aloud. Then went into the back room and fetched his gun.

(3)

Seconds crawled over the car like army ants. Finally Boyd found his voice and croaked, “Tony? Ruger?”

Ruger just grunted at him. He quivered as adrenaline coursed through him. He could feel the hair standing up all over his body. His fingertips shook as he probed his cheek and forehead, which were puffing up and beginning to throb. There was no pain yet, but a growing tingle that forewarned him of it. It felt wonderful. Running his tongue over his gums, he could taste the hot, salty blood, and he drank it down hungrily.

“Is Tony okay?”

Annoyed by the fact that Boyd seemed to be relatively unhurt, Ruger looked at the driver, slumped motionlessly against the steering wheel. “Who cares?” Ruger said.

“What the hell happened?”

“Tony drove us over a ditch and into this fucking cornfield, whaddya think happened?”

“Shit!” Boyd said. “That’s just…shit.”

“Uh-huh.” Ruger was trying to recapture the image of the man in his mind, certain that he knew the man, but the harder he tried to grab at the memory, the more elusive it became until finally it was gone for good. He felt a pang at the loss.

Ruger, you are my left hand.

He jerked the passenger door handle, shoved the door open, and eased himself out of the car, listening to his body for signs of damage and finding nothing but a few blossoming bruises. He stood by the side of the car for a moment and then grabbed it as the cornfield swirled sickeningly around him. Closing his eyes, he fought for balance. It came reluctantly and slowly. He opened his eyes and looked around. The cornfield was still swaying, but now it was because of the wind. He wondered if he had a concussion. The last time he’d had one, it had felt like being buzzed on really good sour mash; a very nice feeling.

“Is the car okay?” Boyd asked as he popped open his door and crawled out.

Ruger studied it, lips pursed. “Nope.”

Boyd came unsteadily around the car and stood by Ruger. They looked down at the right front wheel, which lay almost flat under the weight of the car. The tire was intact, but the ball joint connecting the wheel to the axle had snapped and the whole wheel had just folded under the car.

“Well, shit,” Boyd said again.

“Yeah.”

“Never gonna fix that.”

“No kidding.”

“What’re we gonna do?”

Ruger barely glanced at him. “Your legs work, don’t they?”

Boyd gave him an incredulous stare and then flapped his good arm. “Oh, shit. Man, this is just the fucking top. Walk? Yeah, Ruger, that’s just great. Walk where? Back to Philly? Walk to New Hope? Maybe you want to take a country stroll to Lambertville, I hear they have a good brunch at the inn.” He shook his head. “Where the hell we gonna walk to?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“Yeah? Well, we’re in the middle of East Bumfuck, Pennsylvania. There ain’t nowhere around here to walk to!”

“Sure there is, Boyd,” Ruger said. “There’s always somewhere.”

“What are you, a freaking tour guide? Do you know where we’re gonna go? There ain’t nothing around here, man!”

“Hey, shit for brains…you think this corn planted itself? If there’s corn, there’s a farmhouse. Farmers own cars, even in East Bumfuck. Maybe if we ask real nice they’ll let us borrow one.” He grinned.

“Your mouth is bleeding.”

Ruger licked his teeth. “I know,” he said softly, smiling.

Boyd opened his mouth to speak and then snapped it shut again. He turned, bent, and peered into the car to look at Tony.

“Is he dead?” he asked.

“Ought to be, the stupid fuck.”

“Then why’d you let him drive?”

Ruger shrugged. “He got behind the wheel.”

“Yeah, but you said he was fine to drive.”

Ruger shrugged again.

“Maybe we should see if he’s, you know, still alive.” Boyd leaned farther into Karl’s side of the car. He reached out and nudged Tony’s sleeve. “Yo! Tony! You in there, man?”

No response.

“Let it go,” Ruger suggested.

Boyd tried again, shaking Tony by the sleeve. Nothing. He tried one last time, and this time Tony lifted his head and shook it slowly, trying to clear his eyes and his muzzy brain. The lower half of his face was smeared with blood and snot, and his nose was disgustingly askew.

“Yo, Tony! We thought we lost you, man?”

“B…Boyd?”

“Yeah, man.”

“Boyd?” Tony barely had a voice left, his words croaking out in a whisper not half as loud as Ruger’s slithery rasp, and lacking any trace of vitality. A voice muffled and warped by sinuses flooded with blood. “You gotta help me, man. I’m all fucked up.”

“Well, yeah, you got shot and then you wrecked the car. You ought to be fucked up,” Boyd said, and then his face softened. “Can you walk?”

“I don’t…know. I can’t feel my legs, man.”

Boyd looked over his shoulder at Ruger, who was lighting a Pall Mall. Thunder rumbled overhead, deep and sullen, and in the distance lightning flashed continuously.

“We might have to carry him, man,” Boyd said.

Ruger took a long drag on his cigarette and looked thoughtfully at Boyd, his cold eyes narrowed. “Tell me, Boyd,” he asked mildly, “do you really see either one of us carrying his sorry ass anywhere?”

“Huh?”

“What I said. Can you see us hauling his sorry ass out of that car and carrying it anywhere? Is that how you see things? ’Cause I sure as hell don’t. I see us taking the money and the coke and making ourselves scarce as shit, is what I see. I see us having enough troubles getting ourselves to some place safe without having to cart around a man that’s mostly dead anyway.”

Boyd straightened and faced Ruger, half smiling. “You’re out of your fucking mind, Karl. We can’t just leave him here!”

“Why not?”

“It ain’t right, man.”

Ruger took another long and thoughtful drag on his cigarette. Blue smoke leaked from his mouth and nostrils as he said, “‘Ain’t right’? Is that what you said, Boyd? It ‘ain’t right’? That’s precious, man. Now, why don’t you tell me what ‘right’ has to do with anything?”

“Hey, we’re a team, Ruger. We set this up together and we pulled it off together and we gotta stick together no matter what happens.”

“Is that right? Then I suppose we should have stayed behind to fetch Nicky and Lester just so we could give them a decent Christian burial. Wouldn’t that have been the ‘right’ thing to do?”

“Boyd…?” Tony asked weakly, but when Boyd looked inside the car, Tony’s eyes had drifted shut again. Boyd straightened and looked hard at Ruger.

“Tony’s still alive.”

“Not much, he ain’t.”

“He ain’t dead yet, Ruger, and we just can’t leave him.”

“What do you want to do? Wait here until he kicks? You know as well as I do he ain’t going to make it. He’s gut shot and busted up. It’s not like we can take him to a hospital or anything. There ain’t a hospital from here to Harrisburg that won’t be on the alert for us. Not that anybody’d keep shut about treating a gunshot wound anyway. So what do you suggest we do? Do you know how to treat a bullet wound? Since when are you Marcus-fucking-Welby?”

“We have to do something!”

“We have to save our own asses, Boyd, that’s all we have to do. Tony knew the risks, and if he hadn’t had his head stuck up his own ass he wouldn’t have taken one in the belly. But that’s too damned bad. I for one am not going to stand around here just to keep him comfortable till he dies. This is capital crime, my man, not male bonding, and Tony sure as hell ain’t family to either one of us.”

Boyd shook his head stubbornly. “We’ll find a doctor somewhere, force him to fix Tony. Or bribe him. Hell, we got enough dough.”

“If you think I’m going to waste any of my money on a dead man, then you are actually dumber than you look. I’m getting my money and my share of the coke and I’m getting the hell out of Dodge right now.”

Ruger began to turn away but stopped as Boyd opened his coat, revealing the mother-of-pearl grip of his old Colt Commander. Ruger looked at the gun for just a moment, then slowly raised his eyes to meet Boyd’s. There was no trace of fear in Ruger’s eyes. His flat reptilian stare burned into Boyd’s, and Ruger’s smile slowly blossomed.

“We have to do something about Tony,” Boyd said in a voice that betrayed far more emotion than he wanted.

Ruger nodded slowly. “Uh-huh. Okay, Boyd, we’ll play it that way.” He took a last slow drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt into the corn, then brushed past Boyd and bent down into the open passenger side of the car.

“Yo…Tony?” he asked.

Tony’s eyelids fluttered for a moment and then opened.

“Ruger? You gotta help me, Ruger. I’m hurt bad. You gotta help me.”

“Sure, Tony. Boyd and me, we’ll take good care of you.” Ruger drew his .32 snub-nose and buried the barrel against Tony’s blood-soaked gut, right next to the bullet wound. “Nice knowing you, Tony, but you’re a lousy fucking driver.” He fired a single shot.

The blast folded Tony in half. He caved over and crunched his face once more smashing against the steering wheel.

“Jesus!” Boyd howled and grabbed Ruger’s shoulder with his good arm and wrenched him back and spun him, then released his jacket and raised a balled fist; but Ruger went with the turn and stepped into Boyd, jamming the barrel of his gun hard under Boyd’s chin.

“Throw the punch or put it away,” Ruger said with his wicked grin.

Boyd froze.

“If you’re feeling froggy, then jump. Otherwise put that fist away. I’m not in the mood for this shit, Boyd, and we do not have all fucking night.” His voice didn’t rise above a slithery whisper.

Slowly, gingerly, Boyd lowered his fist, letting it drop limply at his side.

“Good. Now step off.”

Boyd moved back a few paces, and then turned and walked ten feet away. He stood facing the swaying corn, chest heaving, fighting for control. Into the waving rows of stalks he yelled, “Fuck!” at the top of his voice.

“See how considerate I am? Now we don’t have to carry his sorry ass anywhere,” Ruger said. “Well, now the split is two ways. Not five, not four, not three. Just the two of us. That’s half a mil each, Boyd, and enough dope to pretty much double that. That’ll buy a lot of sympathy cards for Tony’s wife and kids. It’ll sure as hell take the sting out of feeling like you’re feeling now. So, let’s just drop this Mother Teresa bullshit and get a move on.”

Boyd turned slowly to face Ruger. Boyd’s face was washed clean of any emotion, though something moved behind his eyes.

“You’re a total piece of shit, Ruger.”

Ruger shrugged. “And that’s a news flash to whom?”

Boyd spat on the ground between them and walked heavily to the car.

It took them five minutes to split the bundles of bloodstained money and the plastic bags of half-cut cocaine into two oversized backpacks. It was a very tight fit. Boyd tried to wipe away the blood that soaked the tightly wrapped bundles of used bills, but Ruger told him not to bother. “We don’t have time. It’s all stained. We’ll find a washing machine somewhere. I hear cold water’ll take the stains out.”

Boyd looked at him in amazement. Karl’s voice was so calm, so offhand that it chilled him.

Ruger winked. “Let’s do it.”

Ruger helped Boyd strap on one pack, buckling it carefully around the limp and useless arm; then he shrugged himself into his own pack and adjusted the straps. Without a single backward glance at the car or Tony’s slumped form, Ruger set off into the cornfield. Boyd tarried a moment longer, staring at the silent shape huddled over the steering wheel.

“Sorry, man,” he said softly, and then turned to follow Ruger.

The tall stalks of corn closed around them.

(4)

Long minutes passed with no sound except the dry rustle of the corn. Then softly, faintly, “Boyd…help me…”

Then silence.