Rita squeezed his hand sympathetically.
“I keep thinking of every mess on the highway I ever cleaned up,” Terry said. “And that guy’s head, pushed right through the wall of that meth-cooker’s trailer.”
Dimly, across the miles, from the direction of the prison, came the sound of explosions.
Terry repeated, “This way is better,” and closed his eyes. Although he knew he was alone in Unit Four, he could still feel his wife squeezing his hand as he drifted away from Dooling and everything else.
10
Frank and Johnny Lee Kronsky were working their way between the wreckage of Barry Holden’s RV and the wall of the prison. They were almost to the smashed main doors when they heard the second bazooka shell whistling toward them.
“Incoming!” Kronsky shouted.
Frank looked over his shoulder and saw an amazing thing: the bazooka shell struck the parking lot on its rear fin, bounced high without exploding, and dropped nose-down toward the bulldozer that had been piloted by the late Jack Albertson. The roar of its detonation was deafening. The driver’s seat was blown through the thin shell of the dozer’s roof. Disintegrating treads rose in the air like steel piano keys. And one of the iron shields that had been placed to guard the cockpit doors shot outward, punching through the RV ahead of it like the peen of a giant’s sledgehammer.
Frank stumbled over the twisted base of one of the main doors, and thus his life was saved. Johnny Lee Kronsky, still upright, was not just decapitated by a flying wedge of the Fleetwood’s siding; he was cut in two at the shoulders. Yet he staggered on two or three more steps, his heart beating long enough to send two gaudy jets of blood into the air. Then he collapsed. The C4 football fell from his hands and wobbled toward the security station. It came to rest with the embedded Android phone visible, and Frank saw 1:49 become 1:48 become 1:47.
He crawled toward it, blinking concrete dust out of his eyes, then rolled to one side and into the shelter of the half-collapsed reception desk as Tig Murphy leaped up behind the security station’s bulletproof glass and fired his sidearm through the slot where visitors were supposed to surrender their IDs and phones. The angle was bad, and Tig’s slug went high. Frank was okay if he stayed down, but if he tried to go forward, toward the doors leading into the prison proper, he’d be a sitting duck. Going back, ditto.
The lobby was filling with diesel smoke from the burning bulldozer. Added to this was the high, nauseating stench of Kronsky’s spilled blood—gallons of it, from the look. Beneath Frank was one of the reception desk’s legs, its splintered end digging into his back between his shoulder blades. Lying just out of Frank’s reach was the C4. 1:29 became 1:28 became 1:27.
“There’s men all around the prison!” Frank shouted. “Give up and you won’t be hurt!”
“Suck shit! This is our prison! You’re trespassing, and you got no authority!” Tig fired another shot.
“There’s explosive! C4! It’s going to blow you to pieces!”
“Right, and I’m Luke fucking Skywalker!”
“Look out! Look down! You’ll see it!”
“So you can try putting one in my gut through the slot? Think I’ll pass.”
Desperate, Frank looked around toward the doors he’d come through, partially blocked by the remains of the RV. “You guys out there!” he shouted. “I need some covering fire!”
No covering fire came. No reinforcements, either. Two of the men—Steve Pickering and Will Wittstock—were in full retreat, carrying the wounded Rupe Wittstock between them.
On the littered floor of the lobby, almost at the base of the security station manned by Tig Murphy, the cell phone continued to count down toward zero.
11
Seeing Billy Wettermore undeniably dead made Don Peters feel a little better. Don had gone bowling with him once. The little princess had rolled a 252 and taken twenty bucks off Don. It was pretty obvious that he’d used some sort of doctored bowling ball, but Don had let it pass, the way he let so many things pass, because that was the kind of easygoing guy he was. Well, sometimes the world tilted the right way, and that was a fact. One less fag in the world, he thought, and we all say hooray.
He hustled toward the gymnasium. Maybe I’ll be the one to get her, he thought. Put a bullet right into Evie Black’s quacking mouth and end this for good. They’d forget all about that mistake with Junior, and I wouldn’t have to buy a drink down at the Squeak for the rest of my life.
He stepped toward the door, already imagining Evie Black in his sights, but Elmore Pearl shoved him away. “Stand back, Quickdraw.”
“Hey!” Don bleated. “You don’t know where you’re going!”
He started forward again, but Drew T. Barry grabbed him and shook his head. Barry himself had no intention of being first inside, not when he didn’t know what was waiting. Probably the one he’d shot had been their only rearguard, but if there was someone, Pearl had a better chance of knocking him down than Peters, whose only kill this morning had been one of their own.
Pearl was looking over his shoulder at Don and grinning as he stepped into the gym. “Relax, and let a man lead the w—”
That was as far as he got before Maura Dunbarton’s cold hands gripped him, one by the neck and the other by the back of his head. Elmore Pearl gazed into those soulless eyes and began to screech. He didn’t screech for long; the reanimated thing that had been Maura stuck her hand into his mouth, ignored his biting teeth, and yanked straight down. The sound of his upper and lower jaws parting company was like the sound of a drumstick being torn off a Thanksgiving turkey.
12
“Damn if we ain’t a couple of lucky sonsabitches!” Maynard Griner exulted. “Any more distance and them shells’d just explode in the parking lot. Did you see that last one bounce, Low?”
“I saw it,” Low agreed. “Skipped like a stone on a pond and took out a bulldozer. Not bad, but I can do better. Reload me.”
Below, the prison was boiling smoke from the hole in the western wall. It was a glorious sight, reminiscent of the gush that came out of a mine when a blast went off, except much better obviously, because they weren’t cracking rocks. They were cracking a goddam state facility. It would have been worth doing even if they hadn’t needed to close Kitty McDavid’s snitching mouth.
May was reaching into the ammo bag when he heard a branch snap. He whirled, reaching for the gun stuffed into his belt at the small of his back.