“Four-liter V6,” said Benton. “Baby could do it on two wheels.”
Curtis didn’t reply. The Ranger was twelve years old, the treads were at 60 percent, and four liters didn’t make it a monster. Curtis braced himself against the dashboard.
The Ranger might have made the climb on dry ground, but Benton hadn’t reckoned with the rain that had soaked into the dirt at the bottom of the depression. It had turned the earth to mud, and when the Ranger hit bottom the wheels struggled to grip, even as they began to climb up the opposite side. Benton gunned the engine, and for a moment they lurched forward before stopping entirely, the wheels churning uselessly in the soft ground.
Quinn said something, from which Curtis could only rescue the words “shithead” and “eating dirt.” Benton fired the Ranger again, and this time it made two more feet before sliding backward and losing its rear wheels in mud.
Benton slapped the dashboard in frustration and opened the door to inspect the damage. They were mired deep, the gloop almost touching the alloy.
“Shit,” he said. “Well, I guess we go after them on foot.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” asked Curtis.
“They’re unarmed,” said Benton. “You scared of unarmed men?”
“No,” said Curtis, but he had the feeling that he had just lied to himself.
“Well, come on then. They ain’t going to kill themselves.”
Benton laughed at his own joke. Quinn joined in, contributing a combination of hyena sniggers interspersed with cuss words. Then they were off, their boots sinking into the mud as they climbed the slope.
With no other choice left to him, Curtis followed.
The barn loomed large against the dark sky, with the elevator on the left side of it. It was forty feet high, and not as modern as the one close to the cattle pens near Leehagen’s house. There would be no breather bags, no molten glass fused to the steel sheets to allow an easy slide for the grain and guard against acids from fermented feeds, no pressure venting. This was a simple storage bin, and nothing more.
Louis’s breath was coming in jagged rasps, and Angel was visibly struggling. They were both cold and wet, and they knew that they were running out of both strength and options. Louis took Angel by the arm and pulled him onward, looking behind him as he did so. The Ranger had not yet appeared over the lip of the slope. Both the incline and the decline had looked steep to him, perhaps too steep for the truck in this weather. A little time had been bought, but not much. The men would continue the pursuit on foot, and they were armed while he and Angel were not. If they caught them on the open ground, they could pick them off in their current tired state. Even if he and Angel got to the barn, their problems would not end. They would be trapped inside, and if the pursuers called in others then it would all be over.
But Louis was anticipating that they would not call others. If what the old man at the farm had told him was true, then Bliss was coming, and Bliss worked alone. The ones who were now after them were acting on their own initiative. If they thought that he and Angel were still armed, the pursuers might have been more cautious once they reached the grain store, and caution would have given them pause, but Louis guessed that they had spoken to the old man before commencing the hunt. They knew now that they were dealing with unarmed men.
But one of the first lessons Louis had learned in his long apprenticeship as a bringer of death was that in every room there is a weapon, even if that weapon was only oneself. It was simply a question of identifying it and using it. He hadn’t been in a grain store in many years, but his mind was already anticipating what lay within: tools, sacking, fire-fighting equipment…
His mind began making leaps.
Fire-fighting equipment.
Fire.
Grain.
He had the first of his weapons.
Quinn crested the rise ahead of the others, and thought that he saw one of the two men disappear behind the barn. There were two grain storage units on Leehagen’s property. The main one was over by the new pens, close by the feed mill, while this one was a relic from the days when the herd was in its infancy, and had originally been a silage silo. Now it was used to hold grain in reserve, just in case anything should happen to the main store, or if snows came and separated the cattle. In fact, one of Benton’s tasks, when he wasn’t hunting down living things or intimidating those smaller than him, had been to monitor the secondary grain store, checking for damp, rodents, or other infestations. Nobody else bothered with it much, which made it a useful place for Benton to pursue his various hobbies, among them screwing some of the young foreign women, willing or not, who were occasionally transported through the farm from Canada.
Benton and Curtis joined him.
“You see where they went?” asked Benton.
Quinn pointed at the barn with his shotgun.
“It’s empty fields beyond there,” said Benton. “Ain’t a tree for three, four hundred yards. If they try to run, we got ’em. If they stay put, we got ’em, too.”
Benton had advised Mr. Leehagen to have the barn and the silo demolished, but the slaughter of the herd (a rich man’s foolish indulgence from the start) had negated the need for any such action. The silo had been damaged by the fact that it was side-tapped for gravity unloading, causing one wall to collapse inward. A secondary outlet, created against Benton’s advice, fed directly into the barn itself, an emergency measure in case it became necessary to house and feed the cattle there in winter. Benton was grateful that they had never had to use it. It was just like old Leehagen to cut corners in this way. Now it looked as if the barn might serve a final useful purpose after all, by trapping the men that they were hunting.
He slapped Curtis hard on the back.
“Come on, boy. We’ll blood you yet!”
And, with his rifle held high, he led the three men toward the grain store.
The barn wasn’t locked. Louis figured that nobody was going to cross Leehagen by stealing from him, and even the cleverest rat hadn’t learned to open a door using the handle. He stepped inside. The barn was small, with makeshift cattle pens running parallel along its walls. It was lit through a trio of skylights in the ceiling, with a series of ventilation grills beneath them.
“Take a look around,” he told Angel. “See if you can find oil, white spirits, anything that burns.”
It was a small chance. While Angel searched, Louis examined the outlet that fed grain into the barn. It was little more than a metal pipe connecting the silo to the barn wall, with a valve at one end to release the grain. The outlet was ten feet off the ground, a portable metal chute to one side of it and a plastic storage bin beneath it. Louis climbed on to the bin and twisted the valve. It was slightly rusted, and he had to push hard against it to move it, but he watched with relief as grain began to pour onto the floor of the barn. He held some in his hands, rubbing it between his fingers. It was bone dry. He twisted the valve further, increasing the flow. Already, the air in the barn was filling with choking dust and grain particles.
After a minute or two, Angel appeared by his side.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter. Go see how close they are.”
Angel covered his nose and mouth with his coat and raced through the store until he reached the main sliding door at the front of the barn. There were dusty windows at either side. He glanced carefully through the glass and saw three shapes advancing through the rain. They were about two hundred feet away, and already spreading out. One would go around the back while the others came in through the front. There would be no other way for them to search the barn safely while ensuring that their prey did not escape through the back door.
“Close,” Angel shouted back. “Minutes.” He coughed hard as some of the dust entered his lungs. Already, he could barely see Louis against the far wall.
“Let them get a look at you,” said Louis.
“What?”
“Let them see you. Open the door, then close
it again.”
“Maybe I should put an apple on my head, too, or dress like a duck.”
“Just do it.”
Angel threw the bolt on the sliding door, then moved it back about five feet. Shots came. Quickly, Angel closed the door again and returned to Louis.
“Happy now?” he said, as he ran back to join Louis.
“Ecstatic. Time to go.” Louis had some old grain sacks in his hand, and the spare clip for the Glock. He tied the sack around the clip, his Zippo held between his teeth.
“You still have yours?” he said, through the mouthful of brass.
Angel took the clip from his pocket and handed it over. Louis did the same again, adding more weight to the sack.
“Okay,” he said. He gestured at the rear door. It opened to the left. They had just stepped outside when a young man appeared from around the corner to their right. He was small, and armed with a pistol. He stared at them, then raised his gun halfheartedly. It wavered in his hand.
“Don’t move,” he said, but Angel was already moving. He grabbed the gun, pushing it away to the left, and hit the man as hard as he could in the face with the crown of his head. The man collapsed, leaving Angel holding the gun. As he went down, Angel heard the sound of the double doors at the front of the barn opening.
Something flamed behind Angel. He turned to see Louis lighting the sack.
“Run,” said Louis.
And Angel ran. Seconds later, Louis was beside him, his hand on Angel’s aching back, pushing him down to the ground as Angel started to pray.
Benton and Quinn heard the shots as they moved into the barn. One end of the barn was heavy with dust, and they could not see the far wall. Quinn had already grabbed Benton by the shoulder and was forcing him back the way they had come when the burning bag came sailing through the double doors and into the dust-rich environment of the barn.
“Aw, hell,” said Benton. “Aw-”
And then hell became a reality as the world turned to fire.
Jackie Garner was tired of being wet.
“We can’t just stand here in the rain,” he said. “We need to get going.”
“We could split up,” said Paulie, “take a road each and see what happens.”
What happens if we do that is we end up dead, thought Willie. The Fulcis and their pal were clearly nuts, but at least they were armed and nuts. Five of them together had a better chance than two, or three.
“It’s still a lot of ground to cover,” said Jackie. “They could be anywhere.”
At that moment, a hill to the south was suddenly altered by a plume of smoke and wood and dirt that soared into the gray sky, and their ears rang with the sound of the explosion.
“You know,” said Jackie, “it’s just a guess…”
Louis and Angel climbed to their feet. They were surrounded by debris: wood, sacking, burning grain. Louis’s coat was on fire. He shrugged it off and tossed it to one side before he began to burn, too. Angel’s hair was singed, and there was a bright-red scorch mark upon his left cheek. They surveyed the damage. Half of the barn was gone, and the grain store had collapsed. In the midst of the wreckage, Angel could make out the body of the young man who had, briefly, held a gun on them.
“At least we have one gun,” he said.
Louis took it from him.
“I have a gun,” he corrected. “Which would you rather have: you with a gun, or me with a gun at your side?”
“Me with a gun.”
“Well, you can’t have it.”
Angel gazed beyond the remains of the barn.
“They’re all gonna come now.”
“I guess.”
“At least they’ll bring some more guns.”
“I’ll get you one when they do.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Bliss will come, too.”
“Yes, he will.”
“So we still going to see Leehagen?”
“We are.”
“Good.”
“That is good.”
They began to walk.
“You know, my shoes are wet,” said Angel.
“But at least you’re warm now…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
BLISS HEARD THE EXPLOSION, and knew that Louis was near. He had no concern that his target might be dead, for he knew in his heart that Louis’s life was his to take. This reckoning was his due, after all that he had endured.
He had underestimated Gabriel’s protégé, but then Gabriel had always been seeking the perfect Reaper, the one whom he could mold to do his bidding without question. Bliss had seen so many of them come and go, their dying bringing grief to Gabriel only because their failure was his failure. What he had not realized, but Bliss had, was that a man or woman who could be broken to Gabriel’s will would be useless in the end. What made Bliss special-and, he had come grudgingly to acknowledge, what made Louis special, too-was that there was a streak of individuality to them both, perhaps even a kind of perversion of the spirit, that meant they would ultimately break free of the constraints placed upon them by Gabriel and by those who, in turn, used him to serve their own purposes. That was why they had stayed alive when so many others had not, but Bliss had been wise enough to know that such a situation could not go on forever. Eventually he would tire, and his thinking would slow. He would make a mistake, and pay the price; that, or he would attempt to slip quietly into anonymity, taking his secrets with him, but there would be some, Gabriel among them, perhaps, who might prefer if Bliss’s secrets were buried with him, and sooner instead of later. So Bliss had taken a calculated risk: he had named a price, and it had been met. He had made one mistake: Louis had survived. Now it was time to rectify that error.
The explosion made the next part of his task easier. He knew Louis’s location, even if it was farther southwest than he had expected. Curious, he thought, that Louis and his lover should be moving into the trap instead of trying to break out again. He knew from Leehagen’s son that they had tried to find a way through the cordon and had been forced back into the woods. Had they persevered, they might well have broken through the line at another attempt. With luck, even to reach one of the bridges over the stream might not have been beyond them, although they would have managed to get no farther, for their movements had been tracked from the start. Their fate lay entirely in his hands, and he had written that they should die.
Moving in, not out. He thought about finding some way to warn Leehagen, then decided against it. The old thug could work out for himself what was happening, and if he couldn’t then he didn’t deserve to live. Despite all the obstacles that had been placed in his way, Louis was still coming for Leehagen. Bliss admired his dedication. He had always considered Louis impure, for no one had Bliss’s purity, but something of his own tenacity lay buried deep in the younger man.
Quickly and steadily, Bliss began walking toward the site of the explosion.
Something moved in a ditch near the ruins of the barn. A pallet shifted, followed by a sheet of corrugated iron. Beneath it lay Benton. The left side of his face was charred and blackened, thin streaks of raw red flesh visible where the skin had broken like magma bursting through a volcanic crust, and he was now blind in that eye. The pain was excruciating.
He raised himself to a sitting position using the palms of his hands. The backs were burned and cracked, but the palms were unscathed. He looked down at himself. Part of his shirt had been burned away, and the skin beneath was covered in heat bubbles, and punctured by multiple fragments of wood. Beside him lay what was left of Quinn. When the barn had ignited, Quinn had taken the brunt of the explosion. His body had been lifted off the ground, striking Benton and inadvertently shielding him from the worst of what followed, assisted by a fortuitous accretion of debris.
He got to his feet and brushed red and black matter from his trousers. He suspected that some of it was part of Quinn, and felt a sur
ge of indignation at the death of his friend. He put his hand to his head. His skull ached. There was a bare patch where hair used to be. His palm came back bloodied.
The pain in his eyeball was the worst because it was so specific and intense. His depth perception was gone, but he was aware of something protruding from the socket where his left eye used to be. Carefully, he raised his right hand and brought it closer to the eye. The palm of his hand brushed against a sliver of wood, and Benton yelled in shock. Tears fell from his right eye, and his vision blurred. He tried not to panic, forcing himself to stop taking short ragged breaths and instead draw air in deeply and slowly.
There was a splinter in his eye. He couldn’t leave it there. You couldn’t leave a splinter in your eye. It was just…wrong.
Benton held his hands before him and turned them sideways, one palm facing the other. He drew them toward him until they were almost touching his head, one at either side of his damaged eye. Then, slowly, he brought his index fingers together until they touched the splinter. The pain was still ferocious, but this time he had been expecting it. He tightened the tips of his fingers against the shard of wood, and pulled. It was buried deep, so there was some resistance, but Benton didn’t stop. There was a noise like sirens in his head, high-pitched and intense, and it was only when the splinter had come free and something warm was trickling down his cheek that he realized it was the sound of his own screams.
He examined the splinter, holding it close to his left eye. It was almost two inches long, and nearly half of its length was coated in blood and ocular fluid. Sons of bitches put a splinter in my eye, he thought. He was going to get them for that.
Benton got to his feet. He found his rifle, half hidden beneath Quinn’s remains, and picked it up. His brain didn’t seem to be working the way it should. It wasn’t sending the right messages to his limbs, causing him to stumble and drift as he walked. Still, he managed to leave behind the ruins of the barn while falling to his knees only once. He had already forgotten his burns and the remains of Quinn, and the fate of Roundy did not even impinge upon his shattered consciousness. All that mattered was the splinter that had blinded him in one eye. After all, what kind of men would blind another man? Men who didn’t deserve to live, that was what kind.
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