Dark Advent

by Brian Hodge

  “We’re gonna finish what we started yesterday,” Travis called out. “No fuckups this time, I promise you that. Same rules we told you yesterday, they go for today. That blond bitch Diane is mine. Erika goes to Solomon. And one more thing: Jason Hart is with them again—he came back last night. Watch out for him. It sounds like he thinks he’s turned into a professional hardcase. Mean, too, the way I hear it. Take him alive if you can, but don’t take chances. If you’ve got no choice, kill him. Everybody else, wipe them out however you want.”

  Travis watched his men as they grew alive and animated, as if the scent of blood had rejuvenated them. They’d be okay. And soon they’d be even better, once they got their chance to blow off a little steam. They’d been cooped up too long with no chances to let it out. It wasn’t good for guys like this to not have their outlets.

  Travis had been expecting a fearsome hangover this morning, given the volume of tequila he’d poured into himself last night. Happy surprise, he actually felt great. He’d eaten a few aspirin before falling into bed, and popped a few more after getting up this morning. A fuzzy mouth and the fading whisper of a headache, that was it.

  You can’t keep a good man down.

  Travis swung his shotgun skyward and pumped a shell into its chamber, the click-clack slicing through the morning air as keen as a razor. It was electric, exciting. He felt vindicated…he felt right.

  “Let’s do it!” he shouted.

  They sprinted for their trucks with one goal, one purpose, one mind. They were taking five trucks this time, all freshly gassed up. Engines roared to life like awakening lions, clouds of exhaust jetting out to challenge the sweet morning air.

  Travis would drive the lead truck, with Hagar at his side to give directions. He’d planned on Pit Bull being the third man in the cab, but Solomon threw a quick kink into those plans. He wanted in, so Pit Bull rode in the truck bed with a handful of other soldiers who, Travis noted with a grin, gave him plenty of room.

  As he guided their course, Hagar sat as rigid as a statue, as if trying to compress himself into as small a space as possible. Like the last thing he wanted to do was press against Solomon. Can’t much blame him, Travis thought, but then again, the man was looking at things the wrong way. Hagar was a walking miracle. Travis couldn’t think of anyone that Solomon had been so pissed at who’d come out unharmed.

  Maybe Solomon was saving it all for today. For this puny band of survivors who had turned into such thorns in their sides. Individualists, rebels, and nonconformists. People intent on doing it their way, instead of the established way. They’d had their chance.

  And now it was time for them to face the consequences.

  How was it that Pit Bull had phrased his personal philosophy, in jail last summer? You don’t tangle with Pit Bulls, ’cause Pit Bulls bite. Amen to that.

  You don’t tangle with Travis, ’cause Travis will crucify you.

  Hagar pointed at a low brick building coming up on the right. “This is it. This is where I followed them to last night.”

  Travis raised his arm high out of the cab, the signal to stop. As the convoy converged around him, he was out of the truck and in command, waving the others onward. They swarmed across the pavement and split, half sticking at the front with him, the other half flanking around the side to hit the garage bay door.

  Outstanding. A man could do a lot with his own SWAT team.

  Feeling Pit Bull hanging at his back like a massive shadow, Travis used his riot gun to open the front door. Wood and glass and metal showered inward, and then they were inside, fanning out from room to room, kicking open doors…and getting a nasty surprise that felt all too familiar.

  I’m not believing this.

  “You said they were here, you asshole!” Travis screamed at Hagar. “Every man here trusted you to know what the hell you were talking about!”

  Hagar shrank from him as if terrified that he couldn’t possibly be so lucky as to survive another confrontation like this. His face squirmed, all eyes and innocence, all truth and sincerity. Travis was a muscle twitch or two away from smashing that face in with the butt of his shotgun, because this routine was getting old in a hurry, and somebody had to pay for it.

  A few of the other men were coming up through a hallway to the left, from the garage. The fellow in the lead was nodding.

  “Looks like they split again,” the man was saying. “But they were here. Their water truck’s in back. Gas tank sounds bone-dry.”

  “Those fucks,” Travis said. “Those fucks.” Keep it together. Don’t lose it like yesterday.

  “They must’ve took off south already,” Hagar said. “I told you they were here, though. I told you!”

  Travis ignored him and moved over to Solomon, who was standing in a nearby doorway, holding a Styrofoam cup that leaked tendrils of steam. He sipped from it.

  “Coffee,” Solomon said, then pitched it, cup and all, into one of the side rooms. “Not very good, but it’s still hot. We only missed them by minutes.”

  “So what next?” Travis demanded.

  The two of them were the center of attention, and Solomon tilted his head up to gaze at the ceiling. His eyes were all business now, his silvery-blond hair spilling over his forehead, his jaw tight and clenched. He inhaled deeply through his nostrils and they flared, as if he planned on determining their prey’s whereabouts by sense of smell alone.

  “Let’s use our heads, shall we?” he said quietly. “If they’ve left their water truck behind, then they’re already on the way to Texas, because they obviously don’t need it anymore. But if they’d driven north first to get to the interstate, I do believe we’d have seen them, or heard them. So. Suppose they wanted to take the nearest available route out of town. What does that leave?”

  “I-55,” said Travis, and a smile touched his lips. “Straight south.”

  Solomon nodded, lowered his gaze from the ceiling, then went striding out the door and onto the front steps. A humid wind kicked up as the rest of them followed and gathered outside around him. Again, Solomon sniffed the air, gave a satisfied nod.

  “That’s what they did,” he whispered, eyes lighting with wolfish delight. “I’d bet my life on it. It’s how they think.”

  We’re gonna do it this time, thought Travis. I can feel it.

  They ran for their trucks, because paybacks were finally in reach, and everybody knew that paybacks were a bitch.

  5

  St. Louis dwindled mile by mile, the winding maze of highways and overpasses thinning out, with fewer and fewer green signs announcing exits and interchanges. They passed barricades and scattered orange cones marking spots where construction had begun long ago and would never be finished. A steamroller sat to one side of the highway, extinct now, rusting and coated with dust. Four lanes narrowed to three, and finally down to two, until they were left with eastern Missouri countryside.

  Goodbye, St. Louis.

  Jason’s Sunbird was in the lead, and as they traded the city for the gently rolling hills to the south, reactions were more mixed than he’d thought they would be, even in himself. Of course there was joy, excitement, anticipation. Relief. But Jason began to think, in fondness and sorrow, of how the city used to be, the clubs and concert halls and shops and restaurants he had visited from the time he’d been a toddler. For Erika, she was leaving behind the only hometown she’d ever known. Diane knew that a piece of herself would always be buried there, in a grave marked only by a crudely fashioned cross. Only Caleb could watch the city slide past and feel only glad to be rid of it, for he had no stake in it. It was only a pause along a journey.

  And a mystery as well, a beacon that had drawn him in and left him to wonder why, for what purpose.

  “How far we looking to get to today?” he asked Jason.

  “Better than halfway. I’d like to get to Heywood as early as we can tomorrow, so we�
�ve got plenty of light left to get settled in.” He grabbed the road atlas from the floor beside Erika’s leg and handed it back. Diane spread it open across the nylon jock bag in her lap and peered at it with Caleb.

  “Get an hour or so beyond Little Rock, Arkansas, and we should be doing okay.” Jason gnawed at a granola bar. They weren’t taking any time to eat a relaxed, sit-down breakfast this morning. An entire lifetime of sit-down breakfasts awaited them in Heywood.

  He flicked a glance into the rearview mirror. Directly behind them was the first of the pickups, Rich and Pam and Jack sitting three abreast. In the truckbed sat seven five-gallon gas cans, the remainder of what they’d been able to scrounge and save after filling up all the vehicles.

  He then looked at the useless radio dial. No working tape player either. Too bad. They could do with some music about now. Caleb still ate like a farmhand, and went at his granola bar with lip-smacking gusto. You couldn’t help but love the old guy, but sometimes he tried your patience in little ways. Jason wondered if he’d been the type who jingled a pocketful of loose change. That seemed to be a perennial favorite of old men everywhere.

  Gonna be a long trip…

  They’d been rolling through the countryside for twenty minutes when Jason, his eyes routinely checking the mirror, noticed one of the backmost cars traveling abreast of Rich’s truck. From what he could tell, the driver was conversing with Jack Mitchell, their faces deadly earnest. Something about the whole scene ripped into Jason’s gut like a claw. He didn’t like the looks of it, and feared that the morning’s tranquility would soon be shattering as surely as crystal on stone.

  Speculation became certainty when the car dropped back and the truck began to creep forward. It wouldn’t be good news, that much he knew. There was only bad news and worse news these days.

  Jason swung the Sunbird toward the right and eased off the gas, slowing until Rich drew alongside, close enough to touch, and they matched speeds. Everyone in the Sunbird looked up at Jack with expressions that said they were expecting the worst.

  “Looks like we’re gonna have company!” Jack yelled, loud enough to be heard over the whine of tires and engines.

  “Bad joke, right?” Jason said, voice tight through his constricted throat.

  “I wish it was,” Jack said. He pointed back north. “Sean Clarkson was fooling around with a CB radio in his car. God knows why, but he was playing around with it. He caught some crosstalk between some of Travis Lane’s men. They’re coming in right behind us.”

  Jason thought he could easily let his head sag against the wheel and cry, because all any of them wanted was to be left alone. But time was the crucial factor, and they had none to spare. The main message that the other side seemed so intent on getting across was that he and Erika and the rest were living on borrowed time, and had been all along. And that now, their hours were finally up.

  Yet hadn’t he wished they could end it all before getting to Texas? Hadn’t this been his last thought before sleep last night?

  Sometimes wishes do come true.

  “You’ve got that atlas,” Jack said. “Is there anyplace coming up that we could turn off and hide for a while? Let them pass on by?”

  Jason shook his head, swerved suddenly to the right to miss a rusty section of tailpipe lying in the road like a misshapen backbone. He eased near the truck again. “And then what, Jack? Run scared the rest of the trip? All that would accomplish is postponing the inevitable. And I’m getting sick of that.”

  “Listen, we’ve been gone this long and haven’t seen them back there yet,” Rich called from behind the truck’s wheel, shouting past Pam. “I’ll bet we got a fifteen- or twenty-mile head start on them. That could last us a while, but you can bet they’ll try to make that up fast.”

  “Think we could outlast them?” Jack said. “We’re all gassed up, maybe they’ll run out first.”

  Jason clenched the wheel and shook it, then balled a fist and pounded on it, as if trying to beat it apart and let fate steer them from here on out. Threads were unraveling inside him, and if he let too many more fray he would no doubt begin screaming his lungs out. He felt everyone’s eyes on him until the seizure passed.

  “You think these guys’ll just get tired and call it a day and turn around?” he shouted at the truck. “Never happen! And if we let them get ahead of us, chances are they’ll have a welcoming committee waiting at the Heywood city limits. And if we get there first, they’ll hit us where we live. But I guarantee you they won’t come in stupid like they did a couple days ago. They’ll do it right next time.”

  Sober looks from all three in the truck. Finally, it had come down to the moment that every one of them had been dreading for nearly a year, the moment they’d tried to wish and hope and pray away. The moment they couldn’t run from. The moment that would either set them free forever or leave them dead.

  “Did Sean tell anyone else?” Jason asked.

  Jack shook his head. “He came straight up to us.”

  Think, Jay, think. “Let’s just keep rolling, and pick up the speed. You fall back one at a time and warn everybody else. And if you get any bright ideas, you know where to find me.”

  Rich cut his speed and let the pickup drop back another notch. Looked as if Colleen and Juanita and Nicholas would be the next lucky recipients of the news.

  Pick up the speed, he’d said. Right. And watch our ass.

  * *

  Eighty miles per hour.

  Travis couldn’t remember the last time he’d kicked anything up this fast. Except maybe the pulse rate of Diane’s little protégé. It felt good, felt right. Overdue.

  The black Chevy truck ate up I-55 as smooth as you please. Somewhere down the road they were guaranteed a splendid time for one and all, but for now, the chase was half the fun.

  The pickup’s cab was warm, despite the vents being open to let in the early morning air. The day had the feel of a scorcher in the making. The sun was bad already, and soon it would graduate to miserable. Not a problem. Travis was built for heat as well as speed. He could feel the sweat flow and savored every drop. The last dregs of tequila were seeping through his pores, leaving him purified and primed.

  The chase, the hunt…it was a far more sporting way than kicking down some dumb bastard’s door and letting him have it in the face before he even knew what was happening. This was Peter Solomon’s philosophy, espoused as they’d departed that temporary South Side hideaway.

  And now, with the sun on the rise and the music of the road beneath his tires and the taste of excitement wetting his mouth, he knew that Solomon was right.

  His most primitive ancestors would have felt this way. This would’ve been the thrill they had experienced in bringing down a mammoth, a victory bought with blood, and to the savage belong the spoils. He could feel the ancient instincts rising within him, undoubtedly a result of his association with Solomon. The man was harsh, but he inspired. He brought things out of you that you never knew were there. Travis’s sense of smell—had it ever been this keen? Here he was, in the lead truck, the first of their convoy, and he could smell the passage of their prey before him. Their gas fumes hung in the thick, humid air. And, he swore, their fear. He could follow it as long as needed.

  He was back on top again, back in control. Can’t keep a good man down. It now seemed paranoid to have brought Pit Bull along for protection, because his men were backing him one hundred percent again, he felt that. A couple of minor lapses, that’s all he’d had. No climb to greatness ever came without slips.

  “Hunting them down like dogs,” Travis said.

  Hagar glanced furtively at him and nodded, then went back to inspecting his machete. He should’ve known every inch of it by now. It had held his undivided attention ever since they’d hit the road.

  “Like dogs,” Solomon said, satisfaction evident in his voice. He took a couple of deep breaths and,
with a broad smile, thrust his head out the passenger window into the onrush of wind. His hair became a swirling mass.

  Travis wasn’t quite sure what he expected Solomon to do. So he waited, watching from the corner of his eye. In no way did he expect Solomon to start singing. But sing he did, his voice a powerful and dead-on tenor.

  “Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day,” Solomon bellowed to the sky, then looked over at Travis with a twinkle in his eye that could’ve been mischief and could’ve been murder. “I’ve got a beautiful feeling, everything’s going my way…”

  6

  The morning unrolled with the road, hard and hot and pitiless.

  I-55 led steadily south, loosely following a parallel course with the southeastern border of Missouri. The land was rural, for the most part, with small towns occasionally encroaching upon the highway from either side. Better than a hundred miles out of St. Louis, the green hills leveled into flatland, with ripples of heat rising from every horizon. To Jason, it felt as though they were driving across an enormous frying pan.

  Nobody had much to say. Caleb had fallen stoically silent. Diane fidgeted with her nylon bag. Jason would’ve preferred that she hadn’t showed him the pipe bombs inside. Kept in the bag and away from fire, there was no chance one could accidentally go off, but the way their luck was going, it was likely to happen just the same.

  Across the front seats, he held hands with Erika. Her hand felt small and cold, and worry seemed to radiate from her in waves as distinct as the shimmers rippling the horizon.

  They approached the Sikeston exit, a Union 76 Truck Stop sprawling at left. Beyond it stood enormous yellow and red signs heralding Big Bob’s Fireworks, “The Biggest and the Best in the Midwest!”