by Kris Ashton
Brolin stared at him. His bugged-out eyes flared like stoplights, and Marcus prepared to defend against the inevitable knuckle sandwich coming his way. But then something worse happened: Brolin lost all his machismo and aggression. It visibly drained out of him like water disappearing down a plughole. He looked over at Stan, who had finally made friends with some other kids.
“He’s right, you know,” Brolin said. “Dig it: it took a kid to say it, but he’s right. We’re all dead.”
“I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” Marcus said. “You’re ready to give up just like that, without a fight? Without at least trying something? Anything? You want to just have a suicidal sit-in and wait for the bombs to rain down on us?”
“Hey, man, like I said, if you have any ideas I’m ready to listen. But so far all I’ve heard coming out of your mouth are a lot of windy platitudes.”
Marcus scoffed. “That’s rich coming from you. So let’s see here, you’re willing to risk physical harm and jail time to protest against my reactor, but you’re not willing to risk your life to protest against ‘the man’ stealing it from you?”
“Don’t try and turn this into some sort of pro-nuclear propaganda speech, Barkley. Your goddamned reactor probably would have ended up killing us all anyway.”
“You know what, Brolin? You should be awarded a medal. A medal for being the most ignorant jackass ever to trot out of San Francisco.”
“You son of a—”
“Barkley is right,” Sheriff Grayson said.
They both gawped at him. The sheriff looked up, first at one and then the other. He shook his head. “Not about the medal. About what he said before. It’s time to stand up and fight.”
He got to his feet, his stature still impressive even with his arm in a sling and his eyes smudged a weary black. “We’ve been going about this the wrong way. It’s time to take up the fight against our enemies—and I have an idea how to do it.”
7:42 p.m.
The children stood in a huddle, like penguins trying to keep warm in a blizzard. Bert overlooked them from the altar, the ache in his arm getting worse as the mercury fell with the night. Barkley and Brolin, both bare-chested now, stood either side of him. Stan was tucked under his good arm.
“Mr Barkley, Mr Brolin and I have to go outside for a while. We have something to do, something that might help us escape from this place. While we’re gone, Stan here is the sheriff of the church. You’ll do what he says, when he says, and if you don’t you’ll answer directly to me. Is that clear to everyone?”
A low chorus of “Yes” and “Yes, Sheriff” met this. Not only had the command come from on high, Stan had gone out with an adult and seen him killed. Even the older boys could not claim that.
“Okay, that’s all,” Bert said. “We should be back within the hour.”
The children melted away from the altar, chatting amongst themselves. Stan moved out of Bert’s encircling arm and looked up at him. “What if you don’t come back, Sheriff Grayson?” he said. He spoke with a child’s fearfulness rather than the moribund cynicism that had tainted his earlier words.
Bert tried to think of something inspirational or fatherly to say, some sort of homily to comfort the boy, but it would not come. Perhaps that was as well, he decided. “You’ll have to figure that out by yourselves,” Bert said. “My only advice would be to pick up these guns and try to get out of town.”
Strangely, this appeared to comfort Stan, as if Bert had confirmed his worst suspicions and he could now go about dealing with them.
“Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”
7:45 p.m.
They didn’t open the church doors with an excess of care. The creatures could have staged a second assault already, so cautiousness seemed redundant. The night air sucked at their body heat, gooseflesh rising up and their nipples hardening in response to its cold lips.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay to drive, Sheriff?” Barkley said as Bert opened the door.
“I want you both riding shotgun—or machine gun,” Bert said. “I should be fine now that my arm is in a sling.”
“Where are we going?” Brolin asked from the back seat.
“First we need transport. There’s a man, Jack Gruenwald I think his name is, who collects all the local kids and takes them to school over in Laymon every day. I know he keeps the bus at home nights and on weekends, so fingers crossed it’s there now.”
They took to the main road, their eyes watchful. Brolin had the barrel of his gun resting on the dashboard, ready to aim it like a tank turret if the need arose. Barkley sat lengthways on the seat (as criminals were instructed to do if they didn’t want the handcuffs to bite the tender skin of their wrists) and guarded their flank.
The clouds had settled in for the night and screened out the natural light of the stars and the moon. The road was strewn with eggs, but if not for the cruiser’s headlights or the occasional bump beneath its tires they might not have known they were there. All their precautions were for nothing; not only did they arrive at Jack Gruenwald’s street unmolested, they did not see so much as a single creature. Bert became convinced the creatures had bigger fish to fry—and that boded well for his little band of rebels.
Gruenwald had renovated one of the shanties provided for the second generation of miners around the turn of the century, a long line of spaced-out dwellings that Bald Eaglers referred to as Miners Row. (Some selectman had insisted the strip be named Juniper Street, a stupid moniker that never took off.) The other shanties had been abandoned and left to dereliction in favor of newer-style houses, but Gruenwald had taken pity on the one closest to Main Street and turned it into a comfortable if severely modest cottage. The sight of his yellow school bus parked in the fine gravel square that served as a driveway made Bert’s heart sing. He pulled up beside it and put the cruiser in park.
“Are we going to hotwire it?” Barkley asked.
“A bus isn’t like a car,” Bert said. “You can’t just rip the cover off the steering column to get to the ignition wires. We can hotwire it if we have to, but I think it might be quicker to see if we can find the keys.”
The bus had been shut and locked, so the keys couldn’t be in there. Bert walked up to the cottage’s front door and found it unlocked—not uncommon in Bald Eagle, even in the Year of Our Lord 1969. As he stepped into the hallway Bert heard lowered voices, but a flickering grey light thrown on the wall confirmed they belonged to TV people. No other lights burned in the cottage, not even a lamp in the poky living room to soften the TV’s harsh glow. Bert drew his service revolver, not because he expected to use it, but because the empty shanty-with-makeup gave him the creeps. He felt as though he had walked into a morgue, perhaps one where the residents did not rest as soundly as they should.
So the last thing he expected to see as he rounded the corner into the living room was Jack Gruenwald asleep on the couch with a bowl of popcorn at his side.
“Jack!” he said, as if invoking his name could somehow dispel the oddness of his presence.
Barkley and Brolin joined Bert in the living room as Jack’s eyes rolled open with the languor of one reluctant to wake. His vacant gaze roved between the three of them before they lighted on Bert. “Sheriff,” he said.
“Good Lord, Jack, have you been shut up inside this whole time? We thought we were the only ones left save for a bunch of kids.”
Jack’s eyes flickered and he sat up in the couch. “I’ve been sick. Flu the past couple of days.”
“Well, it’s the most fortunate bug you’re ever going to get,” Bert went on. “I don’t know if you’ve seen anything out your window, but this town’s gone to hell in a handbasket in the past few days. I’ve got a plan to save all our hides, but we need to borrow your bus.”
“Sure, Sheriff, whatever you need,” Jack said.
“Sheriff, he’s one of them,” Brolin said.
Bert snapped his head around. “What are you talking about,” he hissed.
“He’s only just gone through the change, but he’s one of them. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen more than you have.”
Jack rose slowly to his feet. His eyes drifted past the television, circling around the room until they focused again on the three men standing in his doorway. Or tried to focus, Bert noted.
“His right hand,” Barkley added.
Jack held his right hand in a loose fist. A large hand, used to manipulating the heavy wheel of a school bus. It could contain anything. Anything at all.
As Jack approached, Bert tugged his revolver from its holster and leveled it at him. “Don’t come any closer, Jack. If you are Jack.”
Confronted with the pistol, Jack’s face lost some of its slackness and tiny flares of understanding seemed to go off behind his eyes. His feet stalled. “What? What’s…”
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” It was a dumb thing to say, but Bert could think of nothing else.
“I’ve been sick,” Jack said with wounded eyes. “That’s all. I don’t get what you’re trying to say.”
Bert’s eyes dropped once more, fast as light, to Jack’s loosely clenched fist. This time he saw it for certain. Whatever he had in his hand reflected a weak sparkle of TV light.
“Tell me the license plate of your bus,” Bert ordered.
“What? Why would—”
“You look at the damned thing every morning. It should just roll off your tongue. Now quickly: what’s the plate number of your bus?”
A row of four lines tilled across Jack’s forehead. “It’s…C1…something, it’s this flu. Listen, why don’t we…”
As Jack spoke he leaned forward and raised his hand, the one holding the silver object. Bert’s vision resolved to such sharpness that it seemed it might cut his eyes. He heard Barkley and Brolin draw breath; fear response in stereo. Bert fired his pistol, aiming for the heart—if indeed a heart as he knew it still beat in that area of Jack’s chest.
A bloody starburst appeared in his white shirt and at such close range the .38’s puny bullet was enough to knock Jack off his feet. He fell backward, like an old redwood falling at the teeth of a chainsaw, and his skull collided with the tiled edge of the coffee table. Probably he did not feel the impact; when he came to rest flat on the carpet his eyes beheld the bowl of popcorn on the lounge but did not see it.
Barkley whistled air through his teeth. Brolin said: “That was a close one.”
Bert started to reply but the first word caught in his throat. His gun, which had not deviated from its fatal line, now dropped to his side. He knelt beside Jack’s body and he picked up his right arm. Bert peeled back Jack’s fingers, which were still warm and pliable like clay on a hot day.
“Sheriff!” Barkley said. “What the hell are you—?”
Bert caught what slipped from Jack’s fingers and held it up to the TV’s glowing face.
It was a cigarette case.
8:01 p.m.
Affixed to one wall of Jack Gruenwald’s cramped kitchen (a realtor might have called it cute) was a timber board with half a dozen hooks screwed into it. The word KEYS had been scorched into the top of the board, perhaps with a soldering iron. A home job whatever the case; all four letters suggested a shaky hand writing with an unfamiliar implement. The bus keys were easy to spot, attached to a leather strap with BUS stamped into it. Bert took these off their hook.
Shock had clamped all their lips shut, but now Bert’s and Brolin’s eyes met and apparently the hippie felt obliged to say something.
“Sheriff, listen—”
“Not one word, Brolin,” he said, brushing past him and making for the hallway. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“But you—”
Bert rounded on him, barely suppressing a desire to take out his billy club and go upside Brolin’s head with it. “I just shot an innocent man. Probably one of the last men left alive in this town, by the grace of God. I have no interest in making excuses for myself.”
With that he turned and walked out the front door, leaving Brolin standing there like a carp waiting to be fed a hunk of bread.
Bert climbed aboard the school bus and inserted the key. He tried not to wonder how many times Jack Gruenwald’s hand had done the same thing, or think how it would never do so again. The door gave a rubbery squeak as it opened.
Bert sighed and handed the keys to Brolin, who had followed him like a scolded puppy hoping to make amends. “Take the bus back to the church and make sure the kids haven’t turned on each other or something.”
Brolin craned his head up. “I’ve never driven a bus before. I’ve never even driven a pickup truck.”
“What are you worried about?” Bert said. “I don’t think you’re going to pass too many cars between here and the church. And I can guarantee you won’t be arrested for driving without a passenger vehicle license.”
Brolin still looked doubtful, but he climbed the bus’s three stairs. On the vestibule, he turned back. “What comes next?”
“Barkley and I are heading out to the strip mine to get some dynamite. Give us an hour, and if we’re not back—well, you can either come looking for us or go your own way.”
Some of the cloud cover had started to break up and Bert saw the hippie’s throat bob up and down in the weak starlight. “Dynamite?”
“Yep, dynamite. We’ll see how tough those assholes are when we roll up with a trunk-load of explosive.”
8:27 p.m.
As Bert eased himself back onto the cruiser’s seat, holding onto the roof for support, Barkley checked the time. “We’ve got less than four hours now, Sheriff.”
“That’s if Richard’s as good as his word and doesn’t get nervous and call in the strike early,” Bert said. He could see no point softening the truth. It would be like adding a spoonful of sugar to a dose of strychnine.
Barkley nodded. He looked glum, but he did not seem depressed or frightened. As they set off, he asked, “Where are we going, exactly?”
“There’s a strip mine in the south-east corner of the county,” Bert said. It had been the last post-war mine opened in Bald Eagle, and the only one that had not been a shaft mine. It now sat in the angle formed between Main Street and the i70 (like a scar in the small patch of forest) but was visible from neither. “They keep huge stocks of dynamite there and I have a key to the storage area.”
Barkley cocked an eye at Bert. “Dynamite?” he said, and he sounded so much like Brolin had that it surprised Bert into a laugh.
8:40 p.m.
Bert guided the steering wheel with the heel of his hand and they bumped onto the access road. An endless back-and-forth procession of dump trucks had cut two wide ruts into its compacted gravel and Bert had to slow for fear of scraping the exhaust system right off his car.
Barkley had been quiet in contemplation for a few minutes. Now he said, “Well, it’s a courageous plan, I suppose, in the way the Japanese kamikaze pilots were courageous during the war.”
“It’s still a free country,” Bert said, following the wash of headlights around a sharpish bend. “You don’t have to have any part of it if you don’t want to.”
“What else am I going to do? We haven’t actually tried diplomacy or negotiation, but I don’t think the creatures would be interested.” He chuckled. “Maybe a bribe.”
“A fella tried to bribe me once,” Bert said.
“Really? Only once? I knew a cop from LA, and he said—”
“I guess there aren’t as many opportunities for corruption in Bald Eagle. None at all now, unless you count Richard-goddamned-Warland. Anyway, it was just after I graduated from the academy, still real wet behind the ears. The Depression was with us then—you remember it?”
“Well enough, I suppose, although I was only a kid.”
“The Depression did things to people, men especially. And I’m not talking about going hungry or not being able to buy a new sole for their shoe when the sock showed through. It was the change that got them. If you grow up eating nothing bu
t soup and wearing the same pair of trousers for five years, you can still be happy enough in yourself if it’s what you’re used to. Things got better after the war, but mentally some people never recovered—it was like financial shellshock, I guess. You get some folks who pinch pennies so hard Mr Lincoln’s head is squashed flat. That’s fine, of course, those same people are usually as generous with their time as anyone. But others turned mean—they used their financial hardship as an excuse—and I think they got to like it. Damon Greeves was one of those men. He’d done well with shares until 1929—one of the youngest operators ever to hit it rich on Wall Street, I believe. And then like so many others he found himself flat broke in a matter of days. And like everyone else, he did it tough during the ’30s (although he somehow managed to convince Mrs Greeves to marry him in 1937). He was smart, though, and when he smelled Hitler’s war coming up, he invested the few dollars he had in a canvas company.
“By the finish of the war he was as rich as he had ever been, probably richer, but he never lost that chip off his shoulder—never stopped being angry at a world that had robbed him of his fortune.
“Well, one day I got a call—April 5, 1946 it was. I’ll never forget that date. It was Mrs Greeves. I could tell right away from her voice that she had been crying. She said, ‘Officer, it’s Valentina Greeves. He hit me.’ And that’s all I got out of her. I’d never heard the name before, but it didn’t matter. I asked around and didn’t have to go far before I got the whole story. The Greeves had gone on their honeymoon, such as it was, in the early winter of 1937 and she’d been taking her lumps, off and on, since 1938.
“I drove out to their place, which wasn’t far from where Brolin set up his commune, actually, and as soon as Greeves saw me through the window he was all ingratiating smiles and friendliness. Mrs Greeves, as you can imagine, was nowhere to be seen—probably in their bedroom all banged up.