by Sam Witt
Then the girl dies.
Elsa gagged on her own blood. Thick, red tears leaked from her eyes.
The black phone rang, a shrill, insistent braying from the far side of Joe’s oversized bed.
“There has to be another way. Please. Don’t make me do this.”
The masks blackened and turned to ash. Mold spores boiled across the surface of the blood-stained sheets, and the tight ball decayed before Stevie’s eyes.
The phone rang.
Stevie crawled off Elsa and crossed the bed. Her hand refused to reach for the phone. The black handset was forbidden. It had never rung when Joe was gone.
The phone rang.
“Please. Anything else. There has to be another way.”
Black streaks grew up the sides of Elsa’s neck, and her lips pulled back from her blood-stained teeth.
Stevie lifted the receiver.
CHAPTER 35
FIRE BLEW THROUGH the meth lab like a cannon shot. Jugs of acetone ignited with dull thumps that splattered burning fuel in all directions. Overheated oxygen tanks popped their regulators and burst through the house’s thin walls, throwing stunned and burning junkies into crumpled piles. By the time Joe was halfway to the stairs, the mattress room was vomiting a steady stream of meth heads, half of them covered in blood while the others screamed and beat at the flames gnawing at their bodies. They screeched and shoved at each other, all of them trying to get to safety but only managing to block the stairs with their struggles while red-streaked clouds of toxic black smoke roiled across the ceiling.
Joe didn’t have time to calm the meth heads and get them moving down the stairs before the fire killed them all. He pointed the shotgun at the ceiling over their heads and jerked the left trigger, filling the air with thunder and bringing down a rain of moldy plaster. “Fucking move,” he shouted.
The threat of violence got the meth heads stumbling away from Joe and down the stairs. The Night Marshal helped them along with shouted threats and shoves that kept the panicked herd moving in the right direction.
Joe stumbled onto the first floor behind the junkies and caught a lungful of bad air. The fire had chewed through the ceiling and dumped a blazing tangle of lab equipment and pressurized tanks of liquid fertilizer onto the ground floor. The sight of those tanks sucked the wind from Joe’s sails and dried his mouth. He had to get out of there before the anhydrous ammonia overheated and turned the house and an acre around it into a smoking crater. Joe scrambled away from the living room and the screaming junkies trying to beat the fire off their clothes or get around the wreckage to reach the front door.
Terrified tweakers blocked every exit Joe could see. They were clogging the broken kitchen windows, wedging themselves tight in the frames and cutting themselves to bloody ribbons on the shards of glass. The kitchen continued to fill as the crowd from upstairs hit into the burning bottleneck in the living room and doubled back in search of another escape route.
Smoke boiled out of the living room and filled the top half of the kitchen with a seething black cloud. Joe threw himself over the kitchen table, rolling and kicking the junkies out of his way as he came down on the other side. He hoped his guess was right and bulled his way into the utility room he’d spotted earlier.
It was little more than a hall crowded by a rusting washing machine and disassembled dryer, both victims of meth head fiddling. But at the end of that crowded little room Joe saw the door he’d been hoping to find. He squeezed past the dead appliances, kicked it open, and took a deep breath of clean air. He was out.
Almost.
“Hi, Sunshine. Been lookin’ for you, baby,” the woman on the back porch said with an alligator smile filled with cracked and rotting teeth. She slammed the heel of her cowboy boot into Joe’s gut hard enough to double him over, then brought both her hands up under his chin to send him staggering backward.
Joe’s feet tangled, and he landed on his ass inside the house. His lungs gulped for air, but got choking smoke instead. His eyes watered, and he crawled away from his attacker, pushing past the dryer, going deeper into the utility room. He needed some distance, room to work his shotgun. The screams inside were fading away as meth heads escaped or succumbed to smoke or flames.
A pointy-toed kick to the ribs flipped Joe onto his side. The woman crouched down next to him and waved a curved knife in his face. She smacked him on the side of the head with its deer-antler handle before he could defend himself. “Where’s the shit you took from Walter?”
Joe shook his head and managed to get a clean breath from the air coming in through the back door. He was trapped on the floor between the maniac with the knife and the washing machine. “I don’t have your pseudo.”
The girl pressed the tip of the knife against Joe’s chin. “I do love my crystal, but that is not what I’m after, and you know it.”
Joe’s shotgun dug into his back where he’d fallen and pinned it underneath him. He searched the girl’s wide, wild eyes and found the three pupils he was looking for. “I don’t have it.”
The knife nicked Joe’s chin. “Where is it?”
Joe’s head throbbed as the smoke choked his brain. How had this woman known where to find him, and how did she know what he’d taken from Walter? “Somewhere safe.”
The screaming had died down, giving way to the piercing wail of a lost child. The meth heads were dead or fled, leaving the rug rat behind to fend for himself. Joe imagined one of the little boys looking for his mom or dad, splattered with the blood of his dead friend, choking on chemical smoke. He ground his teeth and clenched his fists.
“Easy, cowboy. Tell me where the shit is, and I’ll get the kid out of here. Scout’s honor.”
“Even if I tell you where it is, you’ll never be able to get your hands on it. It’s gone, better to forget about it.”
She wiggled the knife in front of his left eye. “I don’t think you get it. They’re offering big money and a place at the table for the lucky girl who brings that shit back home. I’m gonna be that girl if I have to skin you alive to get what I want.”
“Why not just take me, instead? I’m what they’re really after, right?”
The woman grinned and poked the tip of her tongue through a gap in her blackened teeth. “You’ll get yours, but you don’t mean shit to them right now.”
Heat from the growling fire sucked the spit from Joe’s mouth, and thickening clouds of corrosive smoke scratched the back of his throat. He coughed, loud and hacking, bending hard at the waist.
For a split second, the cough brought Joe inside the woman’s reach, and the knife was behind him. He didn’t have time to wait for another chance.
Joe threw his weight into the woman, knocking her off her feet.
She swung her knife, and Joe smashed his left shoulder into her arm, pinning it against the far wall of the utility room.
The woman punched up at Joe with her free hand, but there wasn’t room between them to make the blows count.
The kid choked and gagged, then went right back to wailing.
Joe grabbed the shotgun strap and yanked the weapon around with his right hand. He jammed the barrels into the woman’s throat. She froze.
“Drop it.”
She stared at him, her devil’s eye unblinking and brimming with tears of frustrated rage, but she released the knife.
“My turn to ask questions.”
“Blow me. Got nothin’ to say to you.”
Joe ground his shoulder against her forearm until she winced. “Who are they?”
A racking cough interrupted the kid’s wail, and when he went back to screaming it was little more than an exhausted whine. Joe heard the stuttering whistle of the anhydrous tanks’ pressure release valves spurting poison steam.
“That kid doesn’t sound like he’s doing too good.”
The smoke gathered around them, raking at Joe’s eyes and throat.
“Who wants the shit I took from Walter?” He couldn’t take his eyes off her extra pupils
. She was his best lead, a direct tie to the people behind the half-made girls. All he had to do was sweat her a little longer. Kids were tough. The boy could wait.
“You better get that kid out of here. Be a shame if he died while you were busy threatening a girl.”
On cue, the kid coughed and wheezed in a strangled breath. He was fading fast.
“Last chance,” Joe pressed the shotgun hard against the woman’s throat. Her smile never faltered.
“I don’t hear him crying anymore, Marshal.”
Joe dropped the shotgun and let it hang from its sling. Before she could react, he jerked forward and smashed his elbow into her forehead. Her eyes snapped shut like he’d flipped a switch.
Without looking back, Joe scuttled from the utility room on all fours. The smoke was so low there wasn’t more than two feet of clean air left near the floor. He could grab the kid, drag the woman outside. Have his cake and eat a tasty slice, too.
If he could find the boy. Joe circled the kitchen, but the brat wasn’t there.
The release valves on the anhydrous tanks were letting out solid teakettle shrieks now.
Joe crawled into the living room and started working his way around the edge. The fire in the center of the room shrank his skin against his skull, and he was sure he could feel his brain sizzling. Without oxygen his brain’s gears were slipping, his thoughts falling back on themselves. By the time he found the kid, it took him an extra second to remember what he was supposed to do.
The boy didn’t weigh more than thirty pounds, but Joe had to stop several times while dragging him over the filthy carpet and through the kitchen. Every time he stopped, every time he lay down to catch his breath, Joe was sure he was living his last moment, that the fertilizer would explode and scatter his scorched bones across the crystal farm’s back acreage.
“C’mon, kid,” he panted and lugged the kid into the utility room. The woman was gone. Joe was too tired to care.
The kid stirred at the first taste of clean air the greedy fire sucked in through the back door. Joe hauled them both through the open door and onto the splintered planks of the back porch.
An explosion tore the roof off the house, and Joe flattened himself on top of the boy. Propane. Bad news, but they weren’t dead yet.
Joe staggered to his feet and grabbed the kid by one arm and one leg. He half ran, half fell down the porch steps, slinging the kid over his shoulders as he went. The shriek of the pressure release valves sounded like death’s alarm clock in Joe’s ears. His choices were simple: run or die.
He ran.
The explosion threw Joe forward, a giant’s hand shoving him off his feet and sending him tumbling across the weedy ground. The blue sky vanished beneath a veil of red smoke, and the world caught fire.
CHAPTER 36
THICK FINGERS OF black and red smoke raked at the blue sky, casting long shadows across the land around the burning farm. Joe lay flat on his back and watched the smoke crawl overhead while he stretched his jaw and waited for the pressure in his ears to balance out so he could hear something other than the ringing in his head.
A face thrust itself into Joe’s vision, and it took a moment to realize it was the kid from the fire. The boy’s eyes were wide and white in the mask of soot that covered the rest of his face. He was moving his mouth and pointing at something, but Joe didn’t have the energy to figure it out. The kid was insistent, grabbing Joe’s arm and digging in his heels, trying to pull the Night Marshal.
Joe shook the kid off, but knew he’d better figure out what was going on. He sat up and blinked, trying to make sense of what he saw. Someone was coming. They leapt through a puddle of fire, and Joe saw a flash of silver. It was the woman with the knife, come back to finish him off. She homed in on him like a guided missile, unerring even through the thick smoke, as if she had some sixth sense pointing her nose straight at the Night Marshal. “Shit,” Joe said. He couldn’t hear himself or the kid, but the boy was back to tugging on his arm.
He stood up and realized his shotgun was gone, along with the sling that had kept it attached to him. Joe still had the knife he’d taken from Frank Blackbriar back at the bar; by some miracle it was still tucked into his belt and hadn’t skewered him. He slid it free and held it with the tip jutting down from his clenched fist. He wasn’t much of a knife fighter, but Joe supposed it was better to have some weapon than to face the maniac unarmed.
The kid tugged at Joe’s arm again, and the Night Marshal gave him a gentle shove. The girl with the knife was a twenty feet away and coming on strong, her arms and legs pumping as she ran through fires. “Get out of here, kid.”
Joe felt his legs wobbling. His balance was off, something was wrong with his ears. He didn’t like his chances in this fight.
The kid threw himself against Joe’s knees, driving the Night Marshal off his feet. Joe cursed and tried to kick the kid away, but he was already on his back. He saw the girl coming at him, leaping into the air with the knife clenched in both hands above her head.
Joe didn’t want his last sight to be of the meth freak who wanted to kill him. He closed his eyes and thought of Stevie, of Elsa and Alasdair. He remembered the way Stevie’s hands felt on his scalp and shoulders, the sting of the needle and tug of the thread passing through his flesh as she stitched him closed. He felt Elsa’s slight weight in his arms and Al’s firm handshake.
Something wet and heavy hit Joe’s abdomen and splattered onto his face and chest. He’d been stabbed before. This didn’t feel like a knife wound.
Joe opened his eyes and lifted his head to find a pair of severed legs laying across his own. He looked a bit farther down and saw the maniac’s staring eyes and grisly slash of a mouth poking out from under a the top half of a charred and ruptured propane tank. Joe flopped back and looked up at the sky. Sometimes he could almost believe someone up there was looking out for him.
“Mister,” the kid’s voice managed to cut through the ringing at last. Joe turned his head and found the kid squatting in the scorched weeds next to his head.
Joe started and gave the boy a push. “Damn, kid, you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“Can you take me to see my daddy?” The kid sat on his haunches, hugging his knees. He didn’t have a shirt and reminded Joe of a baby bird kicked out of the nest too soon. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.
“Are you going to cry?” Joe sat up and watched the kid’s eyes filling up with tears. “Don’t. Knock that shit off.”
The kid nodded and scrubbed his eyes with his hands before the tears could spill down his cheeks.
Joe nodded back and got to his feet, yawning wide to relieve the pressure in his ears. Something popped inside his head, and the ringing subsided. He took a look at the maniac and shook his head. One of the propane tanks had exploded and taken off like a rocket. It had come down just as the unlucky girl hit midleap and cut her clean in half. Joe walked over and took the horn-handled knife out of her bloody fingers. He stuffed it into his belt along with the knife he’d taken from Frank and walked back over to the kid.
“Who’s your old man?” Joe asked.
“Gary Warren.” The kid looked up at Joe with a mixture of hope and fear stamped on his face.
Joe looked back at the farmhouse, or where the farmhouse had been. Now all that was left was a shallow crater surrounded by flattened debris, burning weeds, blackened bodies, and screaming meth heads. Joe wondered how many were still in the house when it went up, how many others had been killed by explosions or flying shrapnel. “Never heard of him.”
“Tall guy, bushy hair.” The kid mimed a poufy cloud of hair around his own buzz cut. “Only three fingers on one hand.”
Joe watched the road for any sign of the sheriff or fire department. Nothing so far. “No idea.”
“You gotta know him. Ya’ll got the same knife.” The kid pointed at Joe’s waist. “Only the special folks got them knives.”
“Yeah?” Joe tapped the antler handles and nodd
ed toward the bisected woman. “The idiots I took them from didn’t seem too special.”
“They are. Only people who go up to the place with the sticker bushes can get them. Only them’s invited.” The kid dug a clot of wax out of his ear with his filthy index finger. “Know what I’m sayin’?”
Joe tapped the knives on his belt. The Pryor boy had tried to kill Joe with a knife like this. Frank had tried to do the same back at the bar. And now this maniac. “Where’d you say the knives come from?”
“That place with the sticker bushes all over. Hard to drive up to, with them scrapin’ up the sides of the road.” He licked the nugget of wax off his fingertip and made a face like he’d gnawed a rotten lemon. “I mean, you been there, right?”
Joe nodded. He knew exactly where the kid was talking about and wanted to kick himself for not putting it together at the bar. Might have saved a bunch of lives. “The Blackbriar place.”
The kid’s eyes widened, and he clapped his hands together. “Yep, that’s it. Daddy’s up there today, left me down here with his girlfriend.”
“I’m not taking you up there.” Joe poked around in the brush for his shotgun. He needed to get out of here before the law showed up and he had to spend the rest of the day explaining just how the house had gotten blown up, but he was not leaving without that gun. He was pretty sure he’d need it soon.
“Why not?” The kid got up and poked around in the bushes, too, mimicking Joe. “What’re we looking for?”
“My shotgun.” Joe stopped, gave the kid a hard look. “Do not fucking touch it.”
“I got a shotgun.”
“Sure.” Joe found his gun hidden amid a smoldering clump of narrowleaf plantains and fished it out.
“My daddy’s got a bunch of shotguns.” The kid was right behind Joe. He reached around and picked up one of the plantain weeds. The kid formed a quick noose with the weed’s stem and jerked the blossoming head against it, shooting the plantain’s seeds into a small spot of fire. “Mama had a baby and its head popped off.”