Right then a shadow flicked into the edge of the headlight beam, and Arlen saw a heavy canvas boot and mud-streaked trousers above. Another step forward, and now he could make out the man completely—Tate McGrath. He was walking at a fast clip, but his head was on a swivel, looking everywhere but at the sheriff’s car. Guarding himself against attack, which was a wise play, but the longer he spent staring into the swamp woods, the longer it would be before he noticed the pair of bullet holes just above the steering wheel.
Tate had a knife in the sheath at his belt and a long-barreled revolver in his right hand, held down against his thigh.
Tate’s better…
He’d certainly have the fastest draw. Arlen was going to need to move quickly, quicker than his body had in years, quicker maybe than his body was still capable of. And right now, Tate’s attention was beginning to drift toward the sheriff’s car.
Wait till he sees the holes, Arlen thought suddenly, an abrupt reversal of his original plan. He’d wanted to move before Tate realized someone had fired a rifle into the sheriff’s car, but now he had the instinctive thought that in that one sharp second of realization, Tate’s focus would narrow. For an instant at least, he’d be more aware of that car than anything else.
Tate’s boots hammered into the mud and the reeds not five feet from Arlen now and came on. Down in the water, Arlen wriggled his fingers on the knife handle. The soil was soft, would make it damned difficult to push off quickly, and he gave up on the thought of trying to clear the ditch completely. No, he’d need to take Tate’s legs out first and drag him down here and finish it fast. He’d need to—
McGrath’s foot hitched in midair, paused and fluttered as if he were searching for a step in the dark, and as it finally descended again Arlen realized what had just happened—he’d seen the bullet holes.
Arlen blew out of the water and the reeds as the soft mud clung to his boots and tried to suck him back down, as if the land itself were Tate McGrath’s ally. Had he been attempting to reach the man at full height, he’d have surely been killed, but that last decision, to go for the legs first, saved him. He got his left hand around McGrath’s calf and gave a powerful yank as Tate spun with the lithe grace of a young man on a ball field, bringing the revolver around as he did it.
Don’t shoot, Arlen thought, don’t shoot, I need silence, I need silence!
Tate fired. He was falling as he pulled the trigger, and the bullet sailed well clear of Arlen, tearing into the mangroves behind them, but the damage had been done: this time there was no doubt that the gunfire had been heard.
Tate McGrath landed on his back on the dirt road and seemed to hardly feel the impact at all, was swinging the gun barrel right back toward Arlen’s face when Arlen swept it aside with his left hand and lunged with his right.
Another shot rang out as Arlen sank the pocketknife into Tate’s chest, buried it all the way up to the handle. He was scrambling out of the ditch now and had Tate’s gun hand pinned down against the road as he pulled the knife free, a warm geyser of blood splashing his neck, and then slammed it down again, aiming higher this time, finding the heart. He leaned into this second thrust, felt the blade push in until the handle caught, and then he put his weight behind it and the handle itself pushed through the wound with the terrible sound of tearing flesh. Tate McGrath opened his mouth to let loose a howl of pain that never came.
He might be the better shot, Tolliver, Arlen thought, but it doesn’t always come down to shooting.
He knew they’d be coming now, after the sounds of those two gunshots, and so he didn’t pause at all before beginning his retreat, sliding back into the reeds with a hand around each of Tate’s ankles, dragging the dead man into the water with him.
53
THE FASTEST WAY TO MOVE would be without the body, of course, but Arlen needed the body. He took Tate’s revolver, dug Tolliver’s out of the weeds, and pushed them both into the dead man’s belt. Then he laid the Springfield across Tate’s chest and backpedaled into the water, towing the corpse behind him.
Thunder crackled again, a low rumble that went on and on, as if the storm were stretching out before beginning its real work. Still to the south but closer now. Down here in the mangroves it was nearly dark, and he was grateful for that.
He couldn’t see anyone approaching yet, but he also couldn’t hear anyone, and that concerned him. Silence meant they were treating this with caution. If they’d all come running down the road at the sounds of the shots, he could have reduced their numbers quickly and easily.
Now, though, he knew there’d be no rash mistakes made by those who lingered up at the cabin. And that meant the dead man in his arms was going to become awfully important.
Love lingers.
He would see if it did.
Back into the mangroves he went, keeping low, floating the corpse and towing it through the water. The mud at his feet was very soft and difficult to move through, but the tangled root systems of these strange, hurricane-proof trees provided cover. He pushed back until he found a snarl of roots that twisted well out of the water, three feet at least, and then he nestled into them so that his back was to the road and Tate McGrath floated in front of him. From this position, he couldn’t see a damn thing, but that was fine; no one would be able to take a shot unless they were directly in front of him, and to accomplish that they’d have to come through a hell of a lot of water. He had a little time at least, and that was what he needed. Time to talk.
He looked down at McGrath’s body. The mouth was parted and showing yellowed teeth, several of them missing, and long gray hair fanned out into the swamp water. Arlen took it all in and felt awash with astonishment over the plan he’d conceived. The idea was insane, and yet he believed it could work.
Love lingers, his father had promised. If indeed it did, then Arlen was about to have a dead man’s assistance.
He took the Springfield off McGrath’s chest and leaned it against the tree, then kept his left hand wrapped around one of the mangrove roots, as if seeking anchor in reality, before he reached with the right and pushed Tate McGrath’s eyelids up. Then he moved the hand under the dead man’s back, in such a way that he could keep him upright and facing toward himself, and spoke softly but clearly.
“I’m going to kill them all. Understand that? I know you can hear it. I’ve reached the dead all day, and I’m reaching you now. Here’s a promise, old man: I’ll wipe all your sons from the earth unless you help me. Your sons, and whoever else waits up there. A wife, a daughter. Makes no difference. I’ll kill them all.”
There was no answer, but he felt himself begin to slip through that unseen door again. It was so strange, simultaneous sensations of falling and walls closing in, like taking a tumble into a long, narrow well. His peripheral vision went first, trembling at the edges and then going to gray, and the swamp faded until all that was left was McGrath’s face. He had sullen brown eyes, and even in death they carried a feral quality. Arlen squeezed his left hand tighter against the mangrove root, not wanting a repeat of the situation that he’d fallen into with Tolliver.
“You got to speak fast, Tate,” he said, his voice less steady than before. “I won’t give you much chance, old boy. I’ll leave you here and then I’ll kill them. I’ll send them to join you, if that’s as you’d like it.”
Nothing. Arlen’s head ached and his throat was dry and now everything in the world seemed gray and wrapped in mist except for those brown eyes. He felt the bark of the mangrove root rough under his palm and tried to focus on that but couldn’t, and abruptly he moved his right hand away from McGrath and let the dead man float free into the water. He drifted away slowly, and his legs sank and his torso rotated until his face had turned away. Arlen caught him and dragged him back and shoved him into the mangrove roots so that he couldn’t drift far. Then he took the Springfield and lifted it, his finger on the trigger.
“All right,” Arlen said, feeling weak. “I gave you a chance, you son of a bitch. Now I�
��m going to send your boys to join you.”
He leaned around the tree, slid the barrel of the Springfield between two of the roots, and looked back up at the road. The mangroves were some of the best battle cover he’d ever encountered. He didn’t like standing so deep in the water, but the root coverage was dense enough that he knew he was nearly impossible to see, and he had a decent view of the road. To his left he could make out the roof of the shed and part of the cabin beyond, but nothing else. The sheriff’s car was still running where he’d left it. They’d have to head up there soon enough. They’d have to go in search of their father when he didn’t return. Sort of boys the McGraths were, they might have even been able to recognize the gunshots as Tate’s. Could be they figured he’d dispatched with whatever trouble had come their way. But time ticked on, and when he didn’t make his way back up that road, they’d know that it hadn’t been so easy, and they’d come for him.
Arlen’s fatigue drained away as he waited, the physical effects of the attempt to connect with McGrath’s ghost easing. Damn it, he’d thought it might work. A wild idea, to be sure, but on a day such as this, when all he’d known to be true had blown apart beneath the mortar shells of firsthand experience, wild ideas had seemed possible. Just because you can reach us doesn’t mean we’re required to help, Tolliver had whispered from the beyond, and it had been the truth. But Arlen had thought, had hoped, that perhaps he could coerce such help.
McGrath hadn’t answered him, though, hadn’t heeded his request or even allowed proof that whatever form of him remained could hear Arlen at all.
Come on, he thought, searching the road for McGrath’s sons. Come on, damn it, let’s get on with this.
The mosquitoes buzzed around him and drank of his blood and he forced himself not to react. The boys were out there somewhere, and they knew this swamp far better than he did.
He finally saw them. Saw one at least. And when he did, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of true admiration. This man, this boy, he moved through the woods as quiet as a snake. He was coming up through the water just outside the reeds, and even though he was moving steadily, he’d somehow avoided Arlen’s eyes until just now, when he was halfway down the length of the road. He held a shotgun in his hands, just above the waterline, and he shifted sideways here and there to avoid obstructions that Arlen couldn’t even see. He was nearing the place where Arlen had once hidden in the reeds. He’d detected it somehow, had looked from a great distance away and spotted some small disturbance there that told him it was an area of danger. Unlike his father, he no longer trusted the sheriff’s car, not after the gunfire.
The water eddied around Arlen, and Tate McGrath’s corpse shifted in it slightly, his legs bobbing against Arlen’s back, trying to sink but prevented by the roots below. As his father’s body floated in the water, the boy moved on, moved like a creature of the swamp, and that, of course, was exactly what he was. Arlen watched him and thought that in his own way this boy was very much like Paul—gifted, truly and deeply gifted, at a very particular craft.
It was almost a shame that he had to die.
Arlen lowered his cheek to the stock of the Springfield, sighted, and trained the muzzle on the boy’s chest. He was close enough that a headshot was possible, and Arlen thought maybe that’s what he would take, even if conventional wisdom ruled against it. He’d end things quicker that way.
No.
He wasn’t sure he heard the word. A whisper in his brain but so faint, so weak, that at first it seemed like a figment. Then he heard it again, and this time it was clearer and seemed pained, as if the delivery of the word came at a terrible strain. No!
Arlen pulled his head away from the stock of the Springfield and looked back at Tate McGrath’s body. The legs were banging against Arlen, the only form of contact he had with the corpse, and the eyelids had slipped nearly closed. But he was calling to Arlen. He was calling out for a second chance.
Arlen reached out and laid a hand on McGrath’s chest, close to the knife wounds, and whispered, “Come around, did you?”
Don’t take that shot. Don’t.
Arlen slid soundlessly back around the tree, so that he was hidden completely, and, with his hand pressed firmly on the corpse, watched the edges of the world shudder and go gray again.
“I told you I’ll kill them all,” he whispered, his face close to the dead man’s. “I wasn’t lying. You don’t want me to take that shot, you best be prepared to guide me to Paul. It’s the only thing that saves them.”
I will.
“How many are there?”
Three. Only my boys. That’s all. They’re my sons. They’re my—
“Owen Cady was a son,” Arlen whispered.
You’ve settled that. Was me that killed him, and you’ve settled that.
“Do you have Paul? Is he here?”
Yes. Yes, he is here.
“Where? That cabin?”
No.
“Where?” He was talking in the softest whisper he could, but even that was a risk. The trance was intensifying, pulling him in deeper and pushing the real world farther away, and he couldn’t afford to let it go on for long. A few more seconds, at most. If Tate wouldn’t help him in that time, or couldn’t, he’d let him go and kill the first of the sons. He’d have to.
Not the cabin. Other side. The creek. Under the dock.
“Under?” Arlen echoed, his voice barely audible. “He’s dead? You killed him, too, you—”
Alive. In chains. We was waiting on Solomon. He’ll be here soon enough.
Just as Tolliver had promised. He’d also promised that Arlen wouldn’t make it back across that bridge, and the smoke in Arlen’s eyes hadn’t shown him to be a liar. But Paul was alive. That was all he needed to know.
The thought of Rebecca entered his mind then. For a long time it had been held at bay by the action of battle, but now he thought of her driving north, alone, the image of her dead brother lingering in her eyes, and he felt a sense of loss more acute than any he’d felt in his life. It unsteadied him for a moment, but then he squeezed his eyes shut and made himself say, Paul. Had to stay focused. Had to stay at this task. It was the only one left for him, and he’d better do it well.
“You guide me,” Arlen whispered to Tate McGrath. “I know that you can do it; was a dead man who guided me here. You get me to him, and those boys won’t die today.”
Yes. I can guide you.
“Well,” Arlen said, “let’s get to it.”
He released the body then. Leaned back into the trunk of the mangrove and took a few deep breaths as the gray mists that had built around the edges of his eyes drifted free and the world took on clarity again. When he cautiously swung his head out around the trunk and looked for McGrath’s son, he found him now almost to the place where Arlen had killed Tate. He was moving much slower now, taking inventory of the signs ahead of him and shooting occasional glances up at the car. He’d be seeing the blood by now, certainly, the blood and the bullet holes in the windshield, and trying to determine what had happened.
If Tate led Arlen in the way that Owen Cady had, Arlen wouldn’t hear a voice, would operate more through an instinct that wasn’t his at all, moving with confidence but without reasoning. Without known reasoning at least.
He didn’t trust such a technique here. There was a whisper in the back of his mind that said a man like Tate McGrath was not to be trusted dead or alive, and that while he surely wanted to see his sons survive, he’d rather achieve that by watching Arlen perish.
So he reached back to Tate, laid his palm flat on the still-bleeding chest wound, and said, “Where?”
Walk backward. Have to put more distance between Davey and you. He knows these woods better than you, better than anyone. He’ll hear you soon enough, but that shotgun in his hand don’t have much range. If you don’t make much of a sound you’ll be able to circle down and come up behind the cabin. Need to get into the creek on the other side to get to the boy. That’ll take time.
Deeper into the swamp. Some of what the dead man had said made sense, but when Arlen looked up and surveyed the brackish water extending through the trees and into the marsh beyond, he wasn’t sure he liked this plan.
Could just shoot him, then. Say the hell with trying to negotiate with a dead man and kill his son right now, kill this one he’d called Davey and then keep moving and try to take the rest of them. So far he was doing just fine—two for two with Tate and Tolliver.
What Tate had said was true enough, though—his sons knew these woods, and eventually Arlen was bound to run into trouble because of it.
He hesitated only briefly and then began to backpedal, walking deeper into the marsh, moving slowly enough so that his passage was nearly soundless, even with the corpse that floated behind him. He moved in a straight line, so that the large mangrove would continue to shield him from view.
It was foolish, maybe; the awkward extra weight made every maneuver more difficult, but he also had the notion that as soon as the sons located their father’s body, they’d have but one thing on their minds: killing. So long as Tate was missing, they might take a different tack. The idea that there were still two of them out there, unseen, was bothersome. After watching the first of McGrath’s sons move through the water silent as an eel, he felt no degree of confidence in his ability to detect the others before they were upon him.
He was cautious with each step, the Springfield grasped in his right hand and Tate McGrath’s belt in his left as he moved backward. Every now and then he turned to glance over his shoulder at what lay ahead. There was an empty stretch of water, maybe thirty feet across, and then more trees. Looked like the water grew shallow over there, which was tempting because he’d love to be out of it, but that would also make his movements noisier and his ability to tow McGrath’s body nearly impossible. Again he wondered if he was making a fool’s play by trusting Tate’s guidance.
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