But with Cat, he saw another path. His choices were no longer limited to remaining Mr. Tumbleweed, blowing town to town, or selling out and settling down with some robotic, female agent of conformity. Cat represented a new option, one he’d never previously entertained, at least not beyond the wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if degree of entertainment. Cat was smart and strong and sexy as hell, and after only a single day together, he knew she was, at her very core, much different from other girls he’d known. She had backbone, grit, and her own lurking moral code, one that didn’t just mirror the weak ass ethics of the hypocritical world. She read. She thought. She’d lived and would continue living, making memories, trying things. She was an individual, and in any extended union between them, even if you called it settling down, she’d remain an individual. It was no wonder she’d cut out of high school, with all its bullshit and cliques and long, boring-ass classes. She was too strong for that.
Finished, he zipped up, and when he turned, he saw the green bottle on the ground, just under the hedge. He picked it up and showed Cat. "Cougar Beer, the world’s number #1 microbrew," he read. Then turning it, he read, "‘According to the Surgeon General, consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems.’ After tonight, I guess they’ll need to update the warning label, huh? Consumption of Cougar Beer can cause other negative side effects including, but not limited to, pyromania, cannibalism, and total psychosis."
Cat laughed. "In-fucking-dubitably."
He smiled at her, and she smiled at him, and he thought, No shit, this is love. This is what love is like. He opened his mouth to congratulate her use of tmesis, but at that moment, a bullet traveling at over 1000 feet per second passed through his skull, wiping out the words, his memories, his plans, his life.
Chapter 42
Turning onto Milling’s street, Herbert realized what he’d really like to do was take his time, go in there with his peashooter, and have some makeshift office hours. Recite his essay from memory and have Milling analyze it again…at gunpoint.
But there wasn’t enough time. He had miles to go before he slept, after all, and Milling was just one enjoyable yet insignificant stop on the list, no matter how much Herbert would have loved to savor the experience.
Besides, the meatheads were still trailing him, and they would make an extended visit…difficult. As it was, he’d pull a hit and run, and he was all but certain the meatheads would take care of any leftovers.
Oh, he hoped to hell that Milling was home.
So far, he hadn’t had much luck with the list. Getting around town was harder than he’d expected. Too many crashed cars. So he’d ended up missing whole blocks, whole quadrants of town, whole stacks of names.
Oh well, if he ended up with extra ordinance, he’d just drive along Sorority Lane, play paperboy with his leftover pipe bombs, and call it a night. You couldn’t have everything.
But he sure hoped he had Milling.
Nearing the address, he thrilled to see the porch light, the people standing around. Not crazy. Normal. Maybe half a dozen shapes on the porch, some sitting, some standing, the sitting ones rising now, black lines jutting out of their silhouettes. Guns.
Armed citizenry.
Herbert grinned. Like all great men, he loved a challenge.
A quick glance in the rearview showed him the meatheads just spilling onto the street.
He had maybe ten, fifteen seconds to get it on. The noise would bring the meatheads like hyenas.
"Sit up," Herbert told the girl in the back seat. "You don’t want to miss this."
Not so much as "fuck" from her. He hoped she wasn’t dead or something. It would be fun to take her back to the basement and play hide-the-beaker with her for a while. Not if she was dead, though. He was no sicko.
Herb slowed, pulled to the curb.
The shapes on the porch, still mostly obscured by lights above and behind them, pointed weapons at him now.
Again, his scrotum tightened. He dowsed his grin. It was important to look shocked, fearful.
He rolled down the opposite window and leaned across the seat. "Um, hi," he said, and lifted a hand. "Are you people okay? I mean, you’re not crazy, are you?" His body trembled with the laughter that roared inside him.
Someone on the porch responded. No. They weren’t crazy. Someone asked who he was.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked if Professor Milling was home.
"Yeah," a deep voice said. "He’s inside. Gary, go get Chuck. A friend’s here to see him."
A friend? Herbert had to bite his lip to contain the laughter.
But now the speaker was coming down the steps, shotgun at port arms, a big guy in a heavy wool coat with a Navajo design.
Herbert lit the fuse on the pipe bomb he’d pinched between his legs.
The big guy stopped on the bottom step. "You hurt? You need help?" Then, leaning and squinting, but still keeping his shotgun angled away, Herbert was pleased to see, the guy said, "What’s that? A sparkler?"
"Yeah," Herbert said. "A sparkler. My daughter in the back seat, she loves fireworks."
"Huh?"
And in the back seat, the girl was sitting up.
"Fuck," she said.
The big guy’s face twisted with concern and confusion.
The whole time, Herbert had been flashing glances at the door, wishing to hell that Milling would show himself.
Now the sparks from the fuse were stinging his hand, sending the faint smell of burnt hair into his nose.
I wait too long, this thing’ll kill me.
He glanced down. The fuse was close. Mere seconds. And the pipe was up against his balls.
"Look down the street," Herbert said. "Those guys are crazy."
Falling for the oldest trick in the book, the guy said "Huh?" and looked toward the charging meatheads, and that’s when Herbert flipped the pipe Frisbee-style into the gloom of the porch.
Someone shouted.
Herbert let go the brake, stomped the gas, and scooched low in his seat as the Crown Vic leapt from the curb.
Then came the flash, like lightning, followed by its world-splitting thunderclap explosion, and glass sprayed the inside of the car. Herbert whooped, roaring away, then straightened, turned, and, through the blown-out rear window, eyed the rapidly receding scene: the big guy out in the street, literally afire but unmoving; more flames on the porch, lots of smoke…and the meatheads, predictable as always, charging through that smoke, up the steps, and into Milling’s house.
Now that, thought Herbert, is sick.
Chapter 43
Cat could not at first believe he was gone. She looked for a way for it not to be true. But it was true.
Steve was dead.
Cat sighed. It came out as a shudder.
She felt light, strange, hollow. She did not cry. She squatted over him, touched his hair, and tried to come to terms with all that had happened. In the space of less than twenty-four hours, she and Steve had met, fallen in love, and saved each other’s lives.
She closed her eyes. She was so tired. So tired.
Oh, Steve. Oh Steve, Steve, Steve…
And then she did cry. She cried and cried and cried, heavy with exhaustion. They had packed so much into so short a time.
It occurred to her then that he was what she’d been hoping for, moving to this town. And now he was dead.
Something in her paused. She couldn’t indulge in that line of thinking, not yet.
She stretched out beside him on the cold pavement, her shoulder in the cooling blood. It wasn’t safe, here in the open, but she found she could not care about her own safety. She cared about Steve, about being with Steve, and for a second she wondered if she were meant to be with him even now, in death, and she filled with an odd hope that they might yet be reunited.
But even that hope flickered, faded, and died. Hope did not hold.
She lay for a time, unthinking.
There was no
more gunfire. Unafraid, Cat lifted her head, stared out into the darkness, and saw only dark houses, dark lawns, and the darker curtain of night beyond. No life, no movement. Nothing. It was as if the bullet that killed Steve had come literally from nowhere, one more cruel-ass joke of a cruel-ass universe.
Steve, killed? It did not seem possible.
But it was.
Steve was gone.
She rolled him over. Beneath a red mess that was not Steve, his smile remained. Cat observed this without solace, without terror, without incredulity. It just was.
She let her head roll back to face the starry night sky. In it, she saw no heaven, only darkness vast and cold and illusory, its points of illumination having arrived unevenly through space and time, every star’s wink a lie, some years-gone, others decades old, all of them arriving piecemeal, in this singular moment, a palimpsest simulacrum uncaring, unfeeling, unreal.
Steve was gone.
She cried no more. She would cry when there was nothing left to do; for now, something remained.
She went through Steve’s pockets, grunting when she had to tilt him, and came away with a wad of cash, his phone, and the little notebook. This work did not bother her. Until it was again time to cry, she would remain cold and empty as the night sky. She tucked the phone into her pocket and flipped through the notebook until she came to a familiar page, where she saw the red fingerprint and the name beneath: Herbert Weston. She committed the address to memory then tucked the notebook away, too.
She stood and drew the knife from her belt. Its blade gleamed with moonlight, a wry smile burning in the night.
She walked.
When, soon after, a lunatic in bright white sneakers and striped boxer shorts sprinted by on the opposite sidewalk, Cat barely registered his passing. She strode on, knife in hand, as grim and dogged as a pilgrim unto Death.
Chapter 44
Charles was blind.
Just as he’d reached the door, patting the air in front of him in an attempt to quiet Gary, the front porch had exploded.
Debris hit him like birdshot. Even as he pitched backward, he felt his eyes pulp. He hit the ground hard, everything dark, everything ringing. When he could breathe again, he drew his lungs full of hot, dusty air that made him cough and choke. Then he was crawling.
He didn’t care about the pain or his eyes or his ears. He only cared about Mary. He patted his surroundings, feeling his way toward her, guided through the ringing darkness by milestones of familiarity: walls, molding, table legs, and, finally, deep pile carpet.
The floor vibrated. People coming…
He hurried along the carpet, ran headfirst into what he soon recognized as the nightstand, and found Mary’s bed. He got into bed beside her and said a prayer of thanks when he realized that she was deep, deep asleep, so far down under the blanket of morphine that even the explosion had not awakened her. He snuggled against her. She was so small now, so very small. He kissed her stiff hair, and whispered his love for her, waiting for death.
They never came for him. Hours later, dizzy with pain and weak with relief—at one point, they had come close enough to topple the nightstand lamp onto the pillow beside his head—he drifted off to sleep. Much later, as token to the incalculable madness of the universe, Charles awoke in permanent darkness beside the still form of the woman who had been his wife.
Chapter 45
Home at last, Herbert popped the door to the back seat and grinned down at fate’s little present, who seemed to be sleeping…and dreaming. Behind their lids, the girl’s eyes moved rapidly.
He gave her a shake.
She opened an eye.
"Honey," he said, "we’re home."
She blinked at him, looking dumber than a rolled up sock.
Ignoring the pain, he bent and worked his hands under her arms, loving her warmth and softness.
"Fuck," she said.
"That’s the plan," Herbert said. "I’m glad to see we’re on the same page." He crowed with laughter and pulled. As he tugged, the whack-job rolled limply, flopped free, and smacked her forehead on the frame of the car.
"Fuck," she said.
"Indeed," he said. "Now let’s get this straight. What do you want to do?"
"Fuck."
Herbert cackled. "No problem, sweetie. You’re a little porky, but I don’t mind." He rolled her over. "You’ve got nice boobies, anyway."
She stared vacantly up at him, face round and pale in the moonlight, clouded in places with bruising. Her eyes were empty, black. From the fresh gash in her forehead ran a line of blood. Its dark stream flowed into one open eye, and drained, pinkly diluted, from its opposite corner. Tears of blood, Herbert thought.
Tucking his pistol into his waistband, he bent and took her ankles. He wished she’d get up and walk, but he didn’t think she would, even if he threatened her, so he just dragged her toward the house. He’d missed a lot of names on the list, but he’d gotten a bunch, too, and he’d gotten a lot of assholes he’d never even planned on getting, and the whole night had given him an all-time blue-ribbon hard-on. He felt like it was going to rip right through his pants. He was going to drag this stupid whore inside and fuck her silly then fuck her some more and then maybe some more, and then maybe he’d dissolve her in a tub of acid before he packed up and burned his place to the ground.
After that, on to bigger and better things. Oh yes. Much bigger and much better. As the night wound down, rough plans formed unbidden, taking shape in the murk of his subconscious. So he dragged her, toughing out the pain in his shoulder and his acid-burnt leg. Reaching the steps to his house, he let her ankles drop and wiped sweat from his brow.
He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and turned back to the problem of the girl. It was only three steps, but so what? His leg hurt bad. He could drag her, but that would be hard, too.
"Hey," he said. "You want to fuck the Master of Ceremonies, pick your sorry ass up and come inside."
She didn’t move. Shit, Herbert thought, if you can engineer the deaths of tens of thousands of assholes in a single night, you ought to be able to get this bitch inside without fucking up your leg.
He could rig a pulley. He could use some acid to persuade her. Either might work, but both took time. Lacking patience, he pulled the Glock and slapped the flat of it against the side of his undamaged thigh. "Come on, honey. Let’s go. You don’t hurry it up, I’ll blow a hole in the back of your head and skull-fuck you where you lay."
Actually, that sounded interesting. Like that movie Headers. Blast a hole in the back of her head, shove his dick into the warm mush.
Behind him, someone said, "Herbert?"
A girl’s voice.
He turned, brought the pistol around.
Standing in his kitchen was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. Beautiful and terrible. The tattered remnants of a black shirt did little to conceal her black bra, her straining cleavage, her trim, dancer’s body slick with blood, everything firm and perfect, perfect, perfect…down to the large knife gripped in one hand.
If ever there had been a dream girl, this was certainly she. His personal Shiva, a goddess of death, summoned by his deeds of destruction, here, at last, to consummate the darkest union.
She sprung, the great blade flashing aloft.
Squealing with delight, Herbert raised the pistol and fired.
Chapter 46
The pistol boomed, blossoming flame, and Cat’s left arm jerked, exploding with pain.
This did not matter.
What mattered was her right arm and the steel that filled its hand, the steel that she drove, fast and hard, into Herbert Weston’s gut.
“Aaaiiiiyeee!” he screamed, his body going momentarily rigid as she hugged him close.
Then he bucked and flailed and fired overhead.
She shouldered into him and drove forward, and he skittered along on tiptoe, begging, “No, no, no,” until she slammed him into the wall and sunk the knife once more into his belly. He shuddered, and
a long squeal ripped from him, obliterating his pleas for mercy.
He was slow and weak.
She was fast and strong.
She was strong with hatred and vengeance and righteousness; strong with a night of running and fighting for her life; strong with coke and hard love for a boy who’d died in her arms. Most of all, though, she was simply strong with the strength that she now knew defined her. With this crashing strength, she buried the knife to its hilt then ripped upward, opening the pitiful fuck from belt to sternum.
He shrieked, squeezed off two more shots before dropping the pistol to the linoleum, and stared at her with terror and comprehension. She pulled him close, pushed her fist into him, twisted wrist and knife, and jerked the blade up and down inside his chest cavity, pumping the steel with a masturbatory motion that jellied his lungs and split his trachea and sliced through his heart, carving it to pieces. He gurgled, growled, and died, and she let him drop away, the smell of urine strong in the air.
In what seemed a fitting eulogy, Herbert Weston had pissed himself.
Chapter 47
Morning arrived with incongruous beauty to central Pennsylvania, the sun smiling down from a cloudless blue sky columned in smoke and salted with ash.
The blond-haired man on television was supposedly a newscaster, but everything about him, from his close-set eyes to the cut of his suit to the cadence of his voice, convinced Cat that he was military.
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