“Timmy? The door?”
Timmy Wickens ran around to the front of the van and pushed the barn door, which had only been wide enough to allow a person through, all the way open. For the first time, from our spot in the pen, we could see the yard, the farmhouse off in the distance to the left, the gate to the driveway just beyond that to the right. I thought I could see, walking toward the barn, Wendell. Coming back from the cabins with some plan for getting rid of our dead bodies, no doubt.
Dougie put the van in drive and began to pull out just as Wendell was reaching the barn.
Timmy gave a small wave goodbye, in case Dougie might see him in his rear-view mirror. Timmy turned around as the van pulled away, and his eyes landed on the walkie-talkie-like detonator, still sitting atop its plastic carrying case, over on the workbench.
“For fuck’s sake,” he said. “Can’t that boy remember anything?”
He ran over to the workbench, just as Wendell was entering the barn. “Hey!” he said, cheerful. “So Dougie’s on his way!”
Gristle and Bone put their noses to the air.
Timmy Wickens turned, the detonator in his hand, and said, “The stupid idiot forgot this! Get this to him!”
Wendell ran over to the workbench and grabbed the detonator, still not in its box, from his father, then turned to run after the van.
What happened next happened very, very fast.
37
THE VAN, its rear red taillights coming on as Dougie tapped the brakes going across the bumpy yard, was nearing the house when Charlene stepped out to wave goodbye.
Then, as I strained to peer harder into the distance, I saw that she wasn’t just waving. She had something in her hand. A brown lunch bag.
Wendell took the detonator from his father’s hand like a relay runner grasping a baton. He pivoted, started running after his brother.
“Don’t hit the red button!” Timmy warned.
“Don’t worry!” Wendell shouted back. “I know how it works!”
The pit bulls, Gristle and Bone, raised their snouts again. Something had caught their attention and was distracting them from their task of guarding the prisoners. Their hindquarters lifted from the floor, and they turned about, attempting to track down the source of what was wafting up their nostrils.
They fixed their eyes on Wendell, and their heads turned with him as he ran from the barn.
I knew then what had sparked their interest. It was the scent of fish guts, smeared all over Wendell’s pants and the front of his shirt from his plunge into the pit.
The dogs were transformed into low-flying missiles.
“Hey!” Timmy shouted at the dogs. “Get back to your post!”
They were oblivious. Nothing else mattered now. They were on a mission to find their dinner. Their paws pounded the floor as they took off after Wendell, their jaws already open in anticipation, the gums pulling back away from their teeth through the sheer force of their acceleration.
Wendell never saw them coming. He was running, and then he wasn’t, as each dog grabbed hold of a leg, like a pair of lions bringing down a gazelle.
Wendell screamed.
“Hey!” Timmy shouted again at the dogs. “Halt!”
“Let’s move,” Lawrence whispered. With Timmy occupied by the dogs and what they were evidently about to do to Wendell, he wasn’t watching the stall. Lawrence hopped the gate, slid back the bolt, and opened it wide for the rest of us.
“An ambulance,” said Betty, still kneeling over and tending to her husband. “We need an ambulance.”
Wendell’s screams were unlike anything I’d ever heard before. I’d once heard a man trapped in a car trunk with a python, but even that was nothing like this. As the dogs brought him down they ripped into his legs with an insane ferocity. Wendell pitched forward, the detonator still gripped tightly in his right hand.
At the house, Charlene turned her head to see what the fuss was about.
I saw Wendell’s hand fall toward the ground.
The van slowed as it passed the farmhouse. Charlene held out the lunchbag as Dougie stuck his hand out the window to grab it.
The dogs, frenzied, ripped away chunks of Wendell’s jeans. And, judging from the blood that was instantly appearing, chunks of him, too.
His hand, still clutching the detonator, slammed into the ground.
The van blew up.
The explosion was so intense, the fireball so massive, I never even saw scraps of sheet metal or glass blowing outwards. One second there was a van, and the next, this huge orange ball.
Timmy, who was out of the barn and about ten yards away from the dogs and Wendell, was blown back by the force of the explosion. In the barn, we could feel the shock wave of heat blast past us.