THE WATER SURGING IN THE GUTTERS bears upon it phosphorescent laces of foam. Deprived of wind, the rain falls hard in plumb lines. Thin scarves of fog do not race like the rain, but instead wander through the day to a different tempo, like lost spirits seeking some final resting place, glowing with the lightning as if each bolt is a welcoming call that lures them toward some far shore.
The scene is beautiful, and it is crafted solely to enhance the drama of what Egon Gottfrey will soon do. Yet he’s weary of it.
Here in eastern Texas, in the central time zone, perhaps half an hour of daylight remains, but the dark-gray overcast is so thick that the sun seems already to be setting behind the swollen clouds. He is eager to proceed and would approach the target house now if only the storm would relent.
A moment later, the volume of rain diminishes. Becomes a light drizzle. The drizzle becomes sprinkles. The arsenal of Heaven seems to have fired its last thunderbolt. In the gathering gloom, the rain entirely stops.
21
LUTHER SAID, “THIS DOESN’T LOOK GOOD.”
Vehicles had been ordered off the road and were parked on the flanking desert, three long parallel rows beside the outbound lane, many fewer along the inbound side. Agents wearing FBI T-shirts and baseball caps were carrying riot guns and watching over the restive motorists in their cars and trucks. The Bureau boys looked pissed, as though they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot out tires—maybe even a windshield—if one of the drivers they’d ordered into limbo decided to tramp on the accelerator and take off.
Jane said, “If we are who we say we are, we’ll play it bold. Drive straight into it but slow.”
In the eastbound lane, a disabled Dodge Charger, which perhaps had been serving as a barricade, had been T-boned at high speed by a Cadillac Escalade. The Charger was on its side, afire. The front doors stood open on the Caddy.
Evidently run down by the Escalade, two mangled corpses—one male, one female—lay in the eastbound lane.
As Luther pulled around the dead to proceed slowly eastbound in the westbound lane, an armed agent waved him vigorously toward the shoulder of the highway.
“We’re coming straight at them, so they can’t see the FBI on the roof and doors,” Luther said.
“Or maybe the Airbus pilot got the word out, and these guys are on to our game.”
Jane put down the window in her door as Luther lowered his. She held out the badge in her right hand, raised high for all to see, as Luther offered his in his left hand.
The agent still waved them insistently to the side of the road, and two other men warily moved forward with their shotguns raised, one to each flank of the Suburban.
With the motor home close behind, Luther braked to a stop, but didn’t leave the pavement.
The Auto Assault-12 stood between Jane’s knees, butt on the floor, muzzle aimed toward the ceiling. Under the circumstances, it availed her nothing. Any attempt to use it would draw instant fire from the two approaching agents.
The man who came to the driver’s side saw FBI on the door, but he didn’t lower his weapon. Blood spattered his face, maybe not his own blood. From a distance, Jane had thought these men looked angry, and they did, but they were also terrified, wide-eyed and as pale as soap, wound so tight that if a neural spring failed, there could be unintended shotgun fire.
“What’s happened here?” Luther asked.
Staying three steps back from the driver’s door, the agent spoke as if Luther’s simple question was an affront. “What happened here? What do you think happened here? What’s it look like happened here. Freakin’ zombies happened, like they’re happening everywhere.”
The agent on Jane’s side said, “In like ten seconds one of our guys had his face chewed apart, torn off. What kind of crazy bastard can do that, can even think of doing it?”
Luther said, “That’s why we’ve been ordered to escort the man in the motor home the hell out of here.”
The bloodied agent looked toward the Tiffin Allegro. “Who’s he, he gets an escort?”
“Better you don’t know a name. There’s no revolution without him. He’s from the central committee.”
Jane leaned toward the console and looked through the driver’s door window at the agent. She didn’t have to fake anxiety; her voice was shot through with fear for her boy. “Hey, listen, the guy in the RV is a mean ballbuster. You want to know who really runs the DOJ and the Bureau, pulls the strings—it’s not the attorney general or the director, it’s that sonofabitch back there. If we don’t get him out of here fast and then something goes wrong, we’ll wind up with needles in our arms. Maybe you have bigger worries right now, but number one with me is being injected and brain-fucked. So can you just, damn it, please cut us some slack?”
The agent glanced at the Tiffin again, then quickly away, as if the man up there behind the wheel might curse him with the evil eye. He was harried, shaken, thrown off his game by recent weird events. “All right. Go on through. But slow. It’s a mess.”
Although Luther and Jane had been granted permission to proceed, the other agents watched them with sharp suspicion as they passed. Beyond the wrecked Cadillac and the burning Dodge Charger, four more bodies were splayed on the pavement, two perhaps cut down by gunfire, at least one of the others butchered in a manner that Jane could not discern.
Small flying insects of a species unknown to her had ventured forth from their shadowed havens into the desert heat, enticed by the feast of fresh blood. Wings silvered by sunlight, they swarmed in shimmering hysteria above the dead, and the burning car smoked into a sky as pale and dry as the land below. Beyond the windows of the impounded vehicles alongside the highway could be seen stricken faces, drivers and passengers who seemed as patient as spectral voyagers waiting on the bank of that final, black river for the ferry that forever conveyed travelers in only one direction.
As the scene of horror and chilling portent receded, Jane felt no relief. The junction of State Highways 78 and 86 lay about twenty miles ahead, and the town of Indio—where they would return to the comparative safety of Ferrante Escobar’s fenced property—was almost another fifty miles farther. In seventy miles, in this new wicked world aborning, anything could happen.
22
IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, the downpour ceases only temporarily, to facilitate Egon Gottfrey’s approach to the target house. Once he gains entrance to the residence, no doubt the Unknown Playwright will cue the lightning and thunder, crank on the spigot, and flood the scene with storm effects once more, as this act of the drama moves toward its violent, Wagnerian conclusion.
Carrying the Medexpress container and a tote bag, he crosses the quiet street to the house that stands three doors south of the one where Ancel and Clare Hawk abide in a false sense of security. He turns north.