Lowell didn’t hesitate. “To see Fritz.”
Fritz Meshaum had done some engine and detailing work for Lowell Griner, and had also moved some blow. In exchange, Lowell had connected the Kraut with a few gunrunners. Fritz, besides being a stellar mechanic and an excellent detailer, had a bee in his hat about the federal government, so he was always eager for opportunities to enhance his personal arsenal of heavy weaponry. When the inevitable day came that the FBI decided to capture all of the nation’s shanty-dwelling asshole mechanics and ship them off to Guantánamo, Fritz would have to defend himself, and to the death, if need be. Each time Lowell saw him, Fritzie had to show off one cannon or another, and brag about how well it could vaporize someone. (The hilarious part: it was widely rumored that Fritz had been beaten within an inch of his life by a dogcatcher. He was tough, was li’l Fritz.) The last time Lowell had seen him, the bearded gnome had gleefully displayed his latest toy: an actual goddam bazooka. Russian surplus.
Low needed to get into the women’s prison to assassinate a snitch. That was the sort of mission where a bazooka could actually come in handy.
3
Jared and Gerda Holden had not known each other well—Gerda was in her first year of middle school and Jared was in high school—but he knew her from dinners when the two families got together. Sometimes they played video games in the basement, and Jared always let her win a couple. A lot of bad had happened since the Aurora outbreak, but this was the first time Jared had seen a person shot.
“She must be dead, right, Dad?” He and Clint were in the bathroom of the administrative wing. Some of Gerda’s blood had splattered Jared’s face and shirt. “From the fall on top of the shot?”
“I don’t know,” Clint said. He was leaning against the tiled wall.
His son, patting water from his face with a paper towel, found Clint’s eyes in the mirror over the sink.
“Probably,” Clint said. “Yes. Based on what you’ve told me happened, she’s almost certainly dead.”
“And the guy, too? The doctor? Flickinger?”
“Yes. Him, too, probably.”
“All because of this woman? This Evie person?”
“Yes,” Clint said. “Because of her. We have to keep her safe. From the police and from anyone else. I know it seems crazy. She could be the key to understanding what’s happened, the key to turning it around, and—just trust me, okay, Jared?”
“Okay, Dad. But one of the guards, that Rand guy, he said she’s, like—magic?”
“I can’t explain what she is, Jared,” he said.
Although he was trying to sound calm, Clint was livid—with himself, with Geary, with Evie. That bullet could have hit Jared. Could have blinded him. Left him comatose. Killed him. Clint had not beaten up his old friend Jason in the Burtells’ yard so that his own son could die before him; he had not shared beds with kids who pissed themselves in their sleep for that; he had not left behind Marcus and Shannon and all the others for that; and he had not worked his way through college or medical school for it.
Shannon had told him, all those years before, that if he just hung on and kept from killing anyone, he would make it out. But to make it out of the current situation, they might have to kill people. He might have to kill people. The idea did not upset Clint as much as he would have expected. The situation changed, and the prizes changed, but maybe, at bottom, it was the same deal: if you wanted the milkshake, you’d better be ready to fight.
“What?” asked Jared.
Clint cocked his head.
“You look,” his son said, “Sort of tense.”
“Just tired.” He touched Jared’s shoulder and excused himself. He needed to make sure everyone was placed.
4
There was no need to say I told you so.
Terry caught Frank’s eye as they stepped away from the group around the bodies. “You were right,” Terry said. He produced the flask. Frank thought about stopping him, didn’t. The acting sheriff took a healthy swallow. “You were right all the way down the line. We’ll have to take her.”
“You sure?” Frank said it as if he himself wasn’t.
“Are you kidding? Look at this goddam mess! Vern dead, girl there did it, she’s shot to pieces and dead, too. Lawyer’s skull caved in. Think he might have lived for awhile, but he’s sure dead now. Other guy, driver’s license says he’s an MD named Flickinger—”
“Him too? Really?” If so, it was too bad. Flickinger had been a mess, but he’d had enough soul left in him to try to help Nana.
“And that’s not the worst part. Norcross and the Black woman and the rest of them have got serious armaments now, most everything high-powered that we could have used to make them stand down.”
“Do we know who was with them?” Frank asked. “Who was behind the wheel of that RV when they hauled ass out of here?”
Terry tipped the flask again, but there was nothing left inside. He swore and kicked a chunk of broken macadam.
Frank waited.
“Codger named Willy Burke.” Terry Coombs breathed out between his teeth. “Cleaned up his act in the last fifteen or twenty years, does a lot of community stuff, but he’s still a poacher. Used to be a moonshiner, too, back when he was young. Maybe he still is. Vet. Can handle himself. Lila always gave him the right-of-way, felt like it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to try and get him for something. And I guess she liked him.” He inhaled. “I felt the same.”
“All right.” Frank had decided to keep Black’s phone call to himself. It had infuriated him so much, in fact, that he would have been hardpressed to recount the details of the conversation. One part had stayed with him, though, and tugged at his sleeve: how the woman had praised him for protecting his daughter at the hospital. How could she have known about that? Eve Black had been in the jail that morning. It kept coming back to him and he kept pushing it away. As with the moths that had burst from the lit fragment of Nana’s cocoon, Frank could not fathom an explanation. He could only see that Eve Black had meant to tweak him—and she had succeeded. But he didn’t believe she understood what tweaking him meant.
In any case, Terry was back on track—he didn’t need any extra motivation. “You want me to start putting together a group? I’m willing, if that’s your pleasure.”
Although pleasure had nothing to do with it, Terry seconded the motion.
5
The prison defenders hurriedly removed the tires from the various cars and trucks in the parking lot. There were about forty vehicles altogether, counting the prison vans. Billy Wettermore and Rand Quigley rolled the tires out and arranged them in pyramids of three in the dead space between the inner and outer fences, then doused them in gasoline. The petrol stench quickly overwhelmed the ambient odor of damp, charred wood from the still-smoldering fire in the woods. They left the tires on Scott Hughes’s truck but parked it crossways right behind the interior gate, as an extra barrier.