“Yeah, but we got her,” Hawkeye said. “She’s tried to make herself look ugly, but I can tell she’s got a real pretty face and a nice―”
“This isn’t why we’re here,” Zach barked. “You wanna have your fun, you do it on your own time.”
A ten-year-old boy ran into the room and froze.
Dannyboy swung around with the silver .45 and Zach pushed the muzzle to the ground.
“Rodrigo, I told you to stay hidden,” the woman lamented, bursting into tears and imploring the men to leave her son be.
“Don’t hurt my mom,” the young boy said over and over. It was as though he didn’t care that they were armed or several times his size.
The kid’s hair and skin were much darker than Colton’s, but Zach couldn’t help seeing his own son standing before him. Colton had been the same age when the judge had put Zach away for what was supposed to be a twenty-year sentence.
“Let them be,” Zach told his men.
“Oh, come on,” Hawkeye protested, still pulling on the woman’s arm.
In a flash, Zach swung out and smacked the open palm of his hand against the side of Hawkeye’s face. The sound reverberated throughout the vault. Hawkeye released her, clutching the place where he’d been hit.
“Ouch, man, why’d you do that?”
“’Cause you didn’t listen the first time I told you. There won’t be a next time.”
Zach left, returning to the Harley’s cargo carrier, where he retrieved a tub of peanut butter and package of saltine crackers. He brought them to the woman.
“It’s not much,” Zach said, “but it’s all we can spare.”
She took the items, tears of joy and appreciation in her eyes.
“You’re a good man,” she told him.
Zach thought about it, let the idea percolate and then shook his head. “You’ve never been more wrong in your life.”
Mother and son watched him, fearful and puzzled at the same time.
He tipped the front of his half helmet and walked away.
Chapter 28
Sandy
Deputy Sandy Hartman was clearing out the trunk of her cruiser when she came upon the cardboard box containing Sheriff Joe Wilcox’s things. After his death, her intention had been to bring the box to his wife Doris, but it was a trip Sandy had never gotten to make because like her husband, Doris had died from the flu that very same day.
Those first few weeks when the pandemic was reaching out with terrifying speed, it was hard to fully digest any one particular death. There were just so many happening on a daily basis.
A dumpster less than twenty feet away was tucked in a recessed corner at the back of the sheriff’s office and Sandy lifted the box with the clear intention of tossing it away. But a little voice inside her head suggested she look inside, if for no other reason than to remember the boss and the man she had so admired.
Tilting back the lid, Sandy was hit at once by the smell of Joe’s cologne, a manly scent that seemed to permeate every item he came into contact with. Looking down, she saw a number of the items that had adorned his desk all those years. Pictures of Doris, of the two golden Labs he had regarded as their surrogate children, and of the lovely home they had lived in for over forty years. Next to that was the small wooden placeholder which read ‘Sheriff Joe Wilcox’ and beneath that ‘The buck stops here.’
She felt her eyes begin to well up with tears and struggled to hold them back. There were far too many tears to be shed and too little time in which to do it.
She was about to close the box, if for no other reason than to shut down that painful part of her memory, when she saw the daily planner. If Joe had been nothing else he had been an exceptionally well-organized man. And that had perhaps been one of the secrets to his success all those years. She picked it up and ran her fingers over the cool black cover. Flipping it open, she flicked through the days and months before the virus hit, the entries bearing an almost fatalistic quality. In a way it was like reading a diary from a passenger on the Titanic in the hours before the ship was to end up at the bottom of the Atlantic.
The final entry always proved to be the most haunting. She imagined that Joe’s would list the symptoms he was experiencing and the fateful knowledge that he would soon be dead.
Except that wasn’t what she found. On the date of that final entry was a strange note which she reread several times to make sure she wasn’t imagining things.
10:30 a.m. Meeting with Hugh Reid.
After that there were no other entries. Sandy hadn’t realized the two men had met on that final day. Was it possible Hugh had inadvertently infected Joe with the lethal disease? She wondered what it was the two men had spoken about. Sandy set the planner back in the box and replaced it inside the trunk, closing it with a thunk. She decided there was only one way to find out. Hopping into her cruiser, Sandy decided it was time to have a word with the new mayor.
•••
Finding his office at the Teletech plant empty, Sandy headed for the sprawling mansion he called home. She knocked and was surprised, almost startled, when he answered the door. It wasn’t so much the mayor’s recent and dramatic weight loss as it was the look of anger she caught in his eyes. The look of a man whose efforts were being thwarted at every turn. A man who was growing more and more desperate. An image of Dale’s face flashed before her mind’s eye and she understood at once what was causing his distress.
While she abhorred the tactics the mayor was using, she could also comprehend the pressure he was under to keep those who had survived the flu from dying of hunger or dehydration.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” he said, grinning. His teeth were impeccably white and straight, exactly what you would expect of a man with more money than he knew what to do with.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Mayor,” she said. “I just had a couple of questions I needed to ask you.”
The strained look of kindness on his face began to fade. “I hope this is not about Mister Hardy,” he said. “I’ve heard rumors that at one time the two of you―”
“Were just friends,” she cut in. “But all that’s over and done with now.”
“I truly hope so,” he replied, the smile slowly creeping back. “So what is it you’d like to know?”
She glanced over his shoulder into the palatial cavity of his home. “Mind if I come in?”
“Of course, although I’ll warn you I’m incredibly busy at the moment.”
“It won’t take more than a minute.”
The two of them made their way through the foyer, high ceilings centered with an expensive-looking chandelier. There was opulence here in droves and yet none of it had been able to save the lives of his wife and children. Sandy was sure future generations would look back on these times and see the virus as the great equalizer in a nation where a few men had so much and so many had so little.
A minute later, they reached a spacious living room. Against the wall was a large L-shaped leather sofa. The glass coffee table next to it had gold-colored legs. The television mounted on the wall opposite it had to be close to seventy inches. She was sure given his line of work it was only one of many in the house, each more useless than the last.
“I’d offer you something to drink,” he said sheepishly, “but I’m afraid we’re a little dry at the moment.”
She attempted a smile, hoping it looked more natural than it felt.
“Well, I’ll come right out and ask you,” she said. “There’s an indication that Joe Wilcox came by here shortly before he took ill and passed.”
Both of Reid’s eyebrows rose. “Is that so?”
“It seems that way,” she replied. “I was just curious what the two of you spoke about.”
Hugh was already shaking his head. “I’m afraid I can’t be of much help, Ms. Hartman. I had asked Joe to come by, but he never did. I’m assuming he checked himself into the local clinic when he realized he wasn’t feeling very well.”
Sandy lowered
herself onto the end of the leather couch. It was soft and incredibly comfortable, like those seats at the cinema you couldn’t help but fall asleep in. Hugh moved over to what looked like a wall and tapped it with his hands. A vertical crack appeared, revealing a set of double doors leading to a wet bar.
“I may not be able to offer you a glass of water,” he said. “But I can certainly offer you a bourbon.”
Sandy rubbed the back of her tired neck as she peered down at her feet. She was on duty and probably shouldn’t drink—even the mayor knew that. Nevertheless the offer was appealing. Hugh was pouring himself a glass when Sandy spotted something peeking out at her from beneath the couch. She reached down and scooped it up.
It was a flag pin, the kind worn on the lapel.
And the back was gone, which meant that it had fallen off of someone’s shirt or jacket. Hugh turned, a glass in hand, just as she was slipping the pin into her pocket. He stared at her for a moment and she wondered if he had seen.
“Are you certain you won’t have anything?”
“I really should be getting back to work,” she said. “So you’re sure you didn’t see him that last day?”
“I swear on my life,” he said.
She grinned and this time she was sure it looked real. “That’s good enough for me.”
“Let me see you out, Deputy.”
He walked her to the front door and held his glass up in a cheers as she nodded and retreated to her cruiser. She sat there for a full minute staring down at the pin in her hand, wondering if this was the same one Joe Wilcox used to wear. The two looked alike, but there were millions of these floating around and each one was practically identical. Perhaps Hugh was telling the truth. What reason would he have to lie? She pulled out of the driveway and drove away, not entirely able to shake that uneasy feeling creeping through her bones.
Chapter 29
During a short break from reinforcing the property, Walter approached Dale with a Remington 700 slung over his shoulder.
“You heading out to hunt mule deer?” Dale asked, half joking. His face as well as the back of his neck were deeply tanned from all the work they were doing.
“This is for you,” the old man said enigmatically. “And now I’m going to show you how to shoot it.”
Dale’s Mossberg was slung over his own shoulder. Nowadays, it never left his side. “I’m fine, Walter.”
“Indulge an old man, will you?”
Dale used his metal cup to scoop up a drink of water and wiped his mouth when he was done. “You’re more stubborn than I am. I’d be willing to bet Ann would agree with me.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Walter said, sensing victory.
The two men headed to a patch of open land behind the property. About a hundred yards out, Walter had already set up a garbage can lid as a makeshift target. Before them was a plastic deck chair and a small wooden table. Atop it sat a box of .308 rounds and what looked like a medium-sized bean bag.
“So now what?” Dale asked, unslinging his shotgun and resting it against a nearby tree.
Walter handed him the Remington. “I want you to hit that target.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“If I do, will you let me get back to work?”
Walter smiled, the wrinkles around his eyes bunching up. “Sounds like a deal.”
Dale wasn’t sure why he’d just made that offer since he didn’t know the first thing about shooting a rifle. During those moments when he was forced to use violence, he preferred getting up close and personal, not pinging from three hundred meters away.
Moving into a shooter’s side stance, he took the rifle and brought the scope to his eye. The view was slightly distorted by dark shading around the right side of the image. Peering through the crosshairs, he saw they divided the garbage lid target into four sections. A series of small black dots ran along the vertical and horizontal crosshairs. He drew in a deep breath, waited until the crosshairs were over the middle of the lid and gave the trigger a quick pull. The rifle bucked violently into his shoulder. He glanced up, looking over the scope, still waiting for the sound of metal on metal. It never came.
“Was I off?”
“Way.”
Dale laughed. “Told you it wasn’t for me.”
“Don’t give up,” Walter said, stepping in. “These skills may come in handy someday. Accuracy isn’t usually a factor when you’re blowing trespassers away at thirty feet. But a hundred yards and beyond, gravity starts to drag the bullet down. The farther the distance, the more the bullet slows and the more gravity will be pulling on it.”
Walter showed him next how to DOPE his scope for a target at a hundred yards.
“One minute of angle or MOA, spreads about one inch every hundred yards,” he explained. “On the scope, each click of these two knobs represents one quarter MOA. So if you land three inches below target at say three hundred yards, that means you need to adjust up by one minute of angle or four clicks. Same thing for shooting too far left or right.”
After a long day of manual labor, Dale was struggling to keep all this new information straight in his head.
Walter pointed at the scope. “When you looked through the eye piece, you probably saw a bunch of dots on the crosshairs.”
Dale nodded. “Yeah, I was wondering what those were for.”
“They’re called mil dots,” Walter said. “And roughly speaking, each of them represents three point five minutes of angle. What that means is once you get your scope zeroed in for, say, a hundred yards, you don’t need to keep clicking your sights up and down, left and right. If you’re in a pinch, you can always use your mil dots. Now look through the scope.”
Dale did so, holding the crosshairs over the center of the garbage can lid again.
“Say, for instance, you’re landing thirteen inches low. Raising the barrel so the target is flush with the first mil dot beneath the crosshairs is all the adjustment you should need.”
“Okay,” Dale said. “That makes sense.”
“Now grab a seat and we’ll go over trigger control.”
“Why do I feel like I’m back at school?” Dale joked. He was a grown man, but he might as well be tucked into a tiny flip desk.
“If it’s any consolation, you’re a good student.”
Dale lowered himself into the plastic deck chair.
“Now, rest the barrel of the rifle on the bean bag. Once we’ve set up firing positions inside the bedrooms upstairs, you’ll be doing the same with the sandbags.”
Again, Dale followed Walter’s instructions.
“Your shotgun and this rifle are two completely different tools and you need to think of them that way. The shotgun’s a rough-and-tumble buddy, the kind of guy you ogle pretty ladies with while having a beer on the front porch.”
“How is it you can see inside my mind?” Dale asked, cracking a smile, but holding in a bout of laughter.
“Doesn’t take a genius,” Walter shot back. “But if your shotgun’s a buddy, the rifle’s a beautiful woman. Slender with smooth lines. She can be fierce when she needs to be, so don’t get on her bad side, believe me.”
“Oh, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes in that department,” Dale said, biting back the unexpected sting he felt pierce his heart. No matter what the pop psychologists said on TV, grief over the passing of a loved one was never something you simply got over or forgot about. It came at you like rogue waves in the middle of the Atlantic, some higher and more devastating than others. There was no predicting when and where one would strike, but when it hit, all you could do was hold on and hope for the best.
Walter must have noticed the change in Dale’s eyes as his mind and heart floated off somewhere else.
“Didn’t mean to open old wounds,” Walter said, apologetically. “Was only trying to add a bit of humor to the situation.”
“It’s not your fault,” Dale reassured him. “Just something that’s part of my life now, I suppo
se.”
“I wish I could say something insightful right now, although I’m not sure it would do any good.”
“That’s fine.” Dale’s gaze fell to the rifle in his hands.
“Where were we?” Walter asked, drawing a blank.
“Uh, you were saying how this rifle’s like a beautiful woman.”
“Oh, yeah. I was getting to the trigger pull. The Mossberg doesn’t need a whole lot of delicacy. The Remington, however, is a different kettle of fish entirely. First, you wanna make sure the rifle’s nice and stable, that you have good sight alignment, which is to say neither side of your scope should appear shaded. Next you wanna place the pad of your finger on the trigger and when you’re confident about the shot you wanna make, slowly build the pressure, continuing to pull through for a second even after the shot’s been fired. This’ll help keep you from jerking the trigger and missing the target.”
Dale took a deep breath and followed Walter’s steps one after another. He carefully applied pressure to the trigger and felt the rifle kick. A split second later came the sound of the bullet striking the lid.
“Bravo,” Walter said. “Now, try doing that with a moving target that’s shooting back at you.”
Dale wiped a heavy layer of sweat from his forehead. It was hard to imagine.
“Don’t worry,” Walter said, trying to offer a few more words of encouragement. “Assuming we live long enough, you’ll get there eventually.”
Chapter 30
Randy
The funeral for Clay Gaines was a surprisingly unusual event in a town that had seen so much death. The majority of folks who had passed recently had been buried in their own backyards by loved ones. For the rest, homes―once sanctuaries―had quickly become crypts, filled with the unclaimed dead.
The cemetery, nestled on a small hill at the edge of Encendido, had once been a field of lush green grass, but was now a pasture filled with the yellowed remnants of what might have passed for cut hay. But the cemetery wasn’t unique in this way. All of the lawns in town looked the same way.
The men and women who watched Clay’s pine box lowered into the ground all wore surgical masks. In recent days, some had neglected to use the protection, even when in close contact with someone else, but perhaps this reminder of death had prompted a renewal of the habit.
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