11
Billy Freeman was slouched behind the wheel of his truck, but sat up in a hurry when Abra came out of the Deane house. Her friend—Emma—stood in the doorway. The two girls said goodbye, slapping palms first in an overhead high five, then down low. Abra started for her own house, across the street and four doors down. That wasn’t in the plan, and when she glanced at him, he raised both hands in a what gives gesture.
She smiled and shot him another quick thumbs-up. She thought everything was okay, he got that loud and clear, but seeing her outside and on her own made Billy uneasy, even if the freaks were twenty miles south of here. She was a powerhouse, and maybe she knew what she was doing, but she was also only thirteen.
As he watched her go up the walk to her house, pack on her back and rummaging in her pocket for her key, Billy leaned over and thumbed the button on his glove compartment. His own Glock .22 was inside. The pistols were rented firepower from a guy who was an emeritus member of the Road Saints, New Hampshire chapter. In his younger years, Billy had sometimes ridden with them but had never joined. On the whole he was glad, but he understood the pull. The camaraderie. He supposed it was the way Dan and John felt about the drinking.
Abra slipped into her house and closed the door. Billy didn’t take either the Glock or his cell phone out of the glove compartment—not yet—but he didn’t close the compartment, either. He didn’t know if it was what Dan called the shining, but he had a bad feeling about this. Abra should have stayed with her friend.
She should have stuck to the plan.
12
They ride in campers and Winnebagos, Abra had said, and it was a Winnebago that pulled into the parking lot where the Cloud Gap access road dead-ended. Dan sat watching with his hand in the picnic basket. Now that the time had come, he felt calm enough. He turned the basket so one end faced the newly arrived RV and flicked off the Glock’s safety with his thumb. The ’Bago’s door opened and Abra’s would-be kidnappers spilled out, one after the other.
She had also said they had funny names—pirate names—but these looked like ordinary people to Dan. The men were the going-on-elderly kind you always saw pooting around in campers and RVs; the woman was young and good-looking in an all-American way that made him think of cheerleaders who still had their figures ten years after high school, and maybe after a kid or two. She could have been the daughter of one of the men. He felt a moment’s doubt. This was, after all, a tourist spot, and it was the beginning of leaf-peeping season in New England. He hoped John and David would hold their fire; it would be horrible if they were just innocent by—
Then he saw the rattlesnake baring its fangs on the woman’s left arm, and the syringe in her right hand. The man crowding in close beside her had another syringe. And the man in the lead had what looked very much like a pistol in his belt. They stopped just inside the birch poles marking the entrance to the picnic area. The one in the lead disabused Dan of any lingering doubts he might have had by drawing the pistol. It didn’t look like a regular gun. It was too thin to be a regular gun.
“Where’s the girl?”
With the hand not in the picnic basket, Dan pointed to Hoppy the stuffed rabbit. “That’s as close to her as you’re ever going to get.”
The man with the funny gun was short, with a widow’s peak above a mild-mannered accountant’s face. A soft pod of well-fed stomach hung over his belt. He was wearing chinos and a t-shirt reading GOD DOES NOT DEDUCT FROM MAN’S ALLOTED SPAN THE HOURS SPENT FISHING.
“I have a question for you, honeybunch,” the woman said.
Dan raised his eyebrows. “Go ahead.”
“Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to go to sleep?”
He did. All at once his eyelids were as heavy as sashweights. The hand holding the gun began to relax. Two more seconds and he would have been crashed out and snoring with his head on the initial-carved surface of the picnic table. But that was when Abra screamed.
(WHERE’S THE CROW? I DON’T SEE THE CROW!)
13
Dan jerked as a man will when he is badly startled on the edge of sleep. The hand in the picnic basket spasmed, the Glock went off, and a cloud of wickerwork fragments flew. The bullet went wild but the people from the Winnebago jumped, and the sleepiness left Dan’s head like the illusion that it was. The woman with the snake tattoo and the man with the popcorny fringe of white hair flinched back, but the one with the odd-looking pistol charged forward, yelling “Get him! Get him!”
“Get this, you kidnapping fuckers!” Dave Stone shouted. He stepped out of the woods and began to spray bullets. Most of them went wild, but one hit Walnut in the neck and the True’s doctor went down on the pine duff, the hypo spilling from his fingers.
14
Leading the True had its responsibilities, but also its perks. Rose’s gigantic EarthCruiser, imported from Australia at paralyzing expense and then converted to left-hand drive, was one. Having the ladies’ shower room at the Bluebell Campground all to herself whenever she wanted it was another. After months on the road, there was nothing like a long hot shower in a big tiled room where you could hold your arms out or even dance around, if the spirit moved you. And where the hot water didn’t run out after four minutes.
Rose liked to turn off the lights and shower in darkness. She found she did her best thinking that way, and for just that reason she had headed to the shower immediately after the troubling cell phone call she’d gotten at 1 p.m., Mountain Time. She still believed everything was all right, but a few doubts had begun to sprout, like dandelions on a previously flawless lawn. If the girl was even smarter than they thought . . . or if she had enlisted help . . .
No. It couldn’t be. She was a steamhead for sure—the steamhead of all steamheads—but she was still only a child. A rube child. In any case, all Rose could do for the time being was wait on developments.
After fifteen refreshing minutes, she stepped out, dried off, wrapped herself in a fluffy bath sheet, and headed back to her RV, carrying her clothes. Short Eddie and Big Mo were cleaning up the open-air barbecue area following another excellent lunch. Not their fault that nobody felt much like eating, with two more of the True showing those goddamned red spots. They waved to her. Rose was raising her own hand in return when a bundle of dynamite went off in her head. She went sprawling, her pants and shirt spilling from her hand. Her bath sheet unraveled.
Rose barely noticed. Something had happened to the raiding party. Something bad. She was digging for her cell in the pocket of her crumpled jeans as soon as her head began to clear. Never in her life had she wished so strongly (and so bitterly) that Crow Daddy was capable of long-distance telepathy, but—with a few exceptions, like herself—that gift seemed reserved for rube steamheads like the girl in New Hampshire.
Eddie and Mo were running toward her. Behind them came Long Paul, Silent Sarey, Token Charlie, and Harpman Sam. Rose hit speed dial on her phone. A thousand miles away, Crow’s gave just half a ring.
“Hello, you’ve reached Henry Rothman. I can’t talk to you right now, but if you leave your number and a brief message—”
Fucking voice mail. Which meant his phone was either turned off or getting no service. Rose was betting the latter. Naked and on her knees in the dirt, her heels digging into the backs of her thighs, Rose smacked the center of her forehead with the hand not holding her cell.
Crow, where are you? What are you doing? What’s happening?
15
The man in the chinos and t-shirt fired his weird pistol at Dan. There was a chuff of compressed air, and suddenly a dart was sticking out of Hoppy’s back. Dan raised the Glock from the ruins of the picnic basket and fired again. Chinos Guy took it in the chest and went over backwards, grunting, as fine droplets of blood blew out through the back of his shirt.
Andi Steiner was the last one standing. She turned, saw Dave Stone frozen there, looking dazed, and charged at him with her hypodermic needle clutched in her fist like a dagger. Her ponytail swung like a pendulum. She was screaming. To Dan, everything seemed to have slowed down and gained clarity. He had time to see that the plastic protector-sleeve was still on the end of the needle and had time to think, What kind of clowns are these guys? The answer, of course, was that they weren’t clowns at all. They were hunters completely unused to resistance from their prey. But of course children were their usual targets, and unsuspecting ones, at that.
Dave only stared at the howling harpy coming toward him. Perhaps his gun was empty; more likely that one burst had been his limit. Dan raised his own gun but didn’t shoot. The chances of missing the tattooed lady and hitting Abra’s father were just too great.
That was when John ran out of the woods and slammed into Dave’s back, shoving him forward into the charging woman. Her screams (fury? dismay?) were driven out of her in a gust of violently expelled air. They both tumbled over. The needle flew. As Tattoo Woman went scrabbling for it on her hands and knees, John brought the stock of Billy’s deer rifle down on the side of her head. It was a full-force, adrenaline-fueled blow. There was a crunch as her jaw broke. Her features twisted to the left, one eye bulging from its socket in a startled glare. She sprawled and rolled over on her back. Blood trickled from the corners of her mouth. Her hands clenched and opened, clenched and opened.
John dropped the rifle and turned to Dan, stricken. “I didn’t mean to hit her that hard! Christ, I was just so scared!”
“Look at the one with the frizzy hair,” Dan said. He got up on legs that felt too long and not all there. “Look at him, John.”
John looked. Walnut lay in a pool of blood, one hand clutching his torn neck. He was cycling rapidly. His clothes fell in, then puffed out. The blood flowing through his fingers disappeared, then reappeared again. The fingers themselves were doing the same. The man had become an insane X-ray.
John stepped back with his hands plastered over his mouth and nose. Dan still had that sense of slowness and perfect clarity. There was time to see Tattoo Woman’s blood and a snarl of her blond hair on the stock of the Remington pump also appearing and disappearing. It made him think of how her ponytail had pendulumed back and forth when she
(Dan where’s the Crow WHERE’S THE CROW???)
ran at Abra’s father. She had told them that Barry was cycling. Now Dan understood what she meant.
“The one in the fishing shirt is doing it, too,” Dave Stone said. His voice was only slightly shaky, and Dan guessed he knew where some of his daughter’s steel had come from. But he didn’t have time to think about that now. Abra was telling him they hadn’t gotten the whole crew.
He sprinted to the Winnebago. The door was still open. He ran up the steps, threw himself on the carpeted floor, and managed to bang his head hard enough on the post under the eating table to send bright specks shooting across his field of vision. Never happens that way in the movies, he thought, and rolled over, expecting to be shot or stomped or injected by the one who had stayed behind to provide the rearguard. The one Abra called the crow. They weren’t totally stupid and complacent after all, it seemed.
The Winnebago was empty.
Appeared empty.
Dan got to his feet and hurried through the kitchenette. He passed a foldout bed, rumpled from frequent occupancy. Part of his mind registered the fact that the RV smelled like the wrath of God in spite of the air-conditioner that was still running. There was a closet, but the door stood open on its track and he saw nothing inside but clothes. He bent, looking for feet. No feet. He went on to the rear of the Winnebago and stood beside the bathroom door.
He thought more movie shit, and pulled it open, crouching as he did it. The Winnebago’s can was empty, and he wasn’t surprised. If anyone had tried hiding in there, he’d be dead by now. The smell alone would have killed him.
(maybe someone did die in here maybe this Crow)
Abra came back at once, full of panic, broadcasting so powerfully that she scattered his own thoughts.
(no Barry’s the one who died WHERE’S THE CROW FIND THE CROW)
Dan left the RV. Both of the men who had come after Abra were gone; only their clothes were left. The woman—the one who had tried to send him to sleep—was still there, but wouldn’t be for long. She had crawled to the picnic table with the ruined wicker basket on it and now lay propped against one of the bench seats, staring at Dan, John, and Dave from her newly crooked face. Blood ran from her nose and mouth, giving her a red goatee. The front of her blouse was soaked. As Dan approached, her skin melted from her face and her clothes fell inward against the strutwork of her skeleton. No longer held in place by her shoulders, the straps of her bra flopped in loops. Of her soft parts, only her eyes remained, watching Dan. Then her skin reknit itself and her clothes plumped up around her body. The fallen bra straps bit into her upper arms, the strap on the left gagging the rattlesnake so it couldn’t bite. The fingerbones clutching her shattered jaw grew a hand.
“You fucked us,” Snakebite Andi said. Her voice was slurred. “Fucked by a bunch of rubes. I don’t believe it.”
Dan pointed at Dave. “That rube there is the father of the girl you came to kidnap. Just in case you’re wondering.”
Snake managed a painful grin. Her teeth were rimmed with blood. “You think I give a tin shit? To me he’s just another swinging dick. Even the Pope of Rome’s got one, and not one of you care where you put it. Fucking men. Have to win, don’t you? Always have to w—”
“Where’s the other one? Where’s Crow?”
Andi coughed. Blood bubbled from the corners of her mouth. Once she had been lost, then she had been found. In a darkened movie theater she had been found, by a goddess with a thundercloud of dark hair. Now she was dying, and she wouldn’t have changed a thing. The years between the ex-actor president and the black president had been good; that one magic night with Rose had been even better. She grinned brightly up at the tall good-looking one. It hurt to grin, but she did it, anyway.
“Oh, him. He’s in Reno. Fucking rube showgirls.”
She began to disappear again. Dan heard John Dalton whisper, “Oh my God, look at that. Brain bleed. I can actually see it.”
Dan waited to see if Tat Woman would come back. Eventually she did, with a long groan from between her clenched and bloody teeth. The cycling seemed to hurt even more than the blow that had caused it, but Dan thought he could remedy that. He pulled Tat Woman’s hand away from her shattered jaw and dug in with his fingers. He could feel her entire skull shift as he did; it was like pushing the side of a badly cracked vase held together by a few strips of tape. This time Tat Woman did more than groan. She howled and pawed weakly at Dan, who paid no attention.
“Where’s Crow?”
“Anniston!” Snake screamed. “He got off in Anniston! Please don’t hurt me anymore, Daddy! Please don’t, I’ll do whatever you want!”
Dan thought of what Abra said these monsters had done to Brad Trevor in Iowa, how they had tortured him and God only knew how many others, and felt an almost ungovernable urge to tear the lower half of this murdering bitch’s face entirely off. To beat her bleeding, shattered skull with her own jawbone until both skull and bone disappeared.
Then—absurdly, given the circumstances—he thought of the kid in the Braves t-shirt reaching for the left-over coke piled on the shiny magazine cover. Canny, he’d said. This woman was nothing like that kid, nothing, but telling himself so did no good. His anger was suddenly gone, leaving him feeling sick and weak and empty.
Don’t hurt me anymore, Daddy.
He got up, wiping his hand on his shirt, and walked blindly toward the Riv.
(Abra are you there)
(yes)
Not so panicky now, and that was good.
(you need to have your friend’s mom call the police and tell them you’re in danger Crow’s in Anniston)
Bringing the police into a business that was, at bottom, supernatural was the last thing Dan wanted, but at this moment he saw no choice.
(I’m not)
Before she could finish, her thought was blotted out by a powerful shriek of female rage.
(YOU LITTLE BITCH)
Suddenly the hat woman was in Dan’s head again, this time not as part of a dream but behind his waking eyes, her image burning: a creature of terrible beauty who was now naked, her wet hair lying on her shoulders in Medusa coils. Then her mouth yawned open and the beauty was torn away. There was only a dark hole with one jutting, discolored tooth. Almost a tusk.
(WHAT HAVE YOU DONE)
Dan staggered and put a hand against the Riv’s lead passenger car to hold himself up. The world inside his head was revolving. The hat woman disappeared and suddenly a crowd of concerned faces was gathered around him. They were asking if he was all right.
He remembered Abra trying to explain how the world had revolved on the day she had discovered Brad Trevor’s picture in The Anniston Shopper; how all at once Abra had been looking out of the hat woman’s eyes and the hat woman had been looking out of hers. Now he understood. It was happening again, and this time he was along for the ride.
Rose was on the ground. He could see a broad swatch of evening sky overhead. The people crowding around her were no doubt her tribe of child-killers. This was what Abra was seeing.
The question was, what was Rose seeing?
16
Snake cycled, then came back. It burned. She looked at the man kneeling in front of her.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” John asked. “I’m a doctor.”
In spite of the pain, Snake laughed. This doctor, who belonged to the men who had just shot the True’s doctor to death, was now offering to help. What would Hippocrates make of that one? “Put a bullet in me, assface. That’s the only thing I can think of.”
The nerdy one, the bastard who’d actually pulled the trigger on Walnut, joined the one who said he was a doctor. “You’d deserve it,” Dave said. “Did you think I was just going to let you take my daughter? Torture and kill her like you did that poor little boy in Iowa?”
They knew about that? How could they? But it didn’t matter now, at least not to Andi. “Your people slaughter pigs and cows and sheep. Is what we do any different?”
“In my humble opinion, killing human beings is a lot different,” John said. “Call me silly and sentimental.”
Snake’s mouth was full of blood and some lumpy shit. Teeth, probably. That didn’t matter, either. In the end, this might be more merciful than what Barry had gone through. It would certainly be quicker. But one thing needed straightening out. Just so they’d know. “We’re the human beings. Your kind . . . just rubes.”
Dave smiled, but his eyes were hard. “And yet you’re the one lying on the ground with dirt in your hair and blood all down the front of your shirt. I hope hell’s hot enough for you.”
Snake could feel the next cycle coming on. With luck it would be the last one, but for now she held tight to her physical form. “You don’t understand how it was with me. Before. Or how is with us. We’re only a few, and we’re sick. We’ve got—”
“I know what you’ve got,” Dave said. “Fucking measles. I hope they rot your whole miserable Knot from the inside out.”
Snake said, “We didn’t choose to be what we are any more than you did. In our shoes, you’d do the same.”
John shook his head slowly from side to side. “Never. Never.”
Snake began to cycle out. She managed four more words, however. “Fucking men.” A final gasp as she stared up at them from her disappearing face. “Fucking rubes.”
Then she was gone.
17
Dan walked to John and Dave slowly and carefully, putting his hand on several of the picnic tables to keep his balance. He had picked up Abra’s stuffed rabbit without even realizing it. His head was clearing, but that was a decidedly mixed blessing.
“We have to go back to Anniston, and fast. I can’t touch Billy. I could before, but now he’s gone.”
“Abra?” Dave asked. “What about Abra?”
Dan didn’t want to look at him—Dave’s face was naked with fear—but he made himself do it. “She’s gone, too. So’s the woman in the hat. They’ve both dropped out of the mix.”
“Meaning what?” Dave grabbed Dan’s shirt in both hands. “Meaning what?”
“I don’t know.”
This was the truth, but he was afraid.