No one moved.
“Ellie,” he said, and motioned for her to get up off the couch. She did, but kept her eyes on Tre, who was clutching his abdomen as a dark, wet stain spread across the front of his shirt. David snared her around the wrist and pulled her close to him. Then he pointed the gun at Turk. “Get in here. Up against the wall with the others.”
“You’re a poison.” Turk’s voice was a low rumble. “You’ve come here and infected us all.”
“Do it now or I’ll shoot you in the face. Your wife, too.”
Pauline sobbed into her hands. She was still kneeling on the floor, her hair, face, and arms slick with Jimmy’s blood.
“I’ll put a bullet in her head, Turk. I swear it.”
Still cradling his dead son in his arms, Turk looked down at Pauline. “Get up,” he told her. “Stop crying and get up. Do what he says.”
She used Turk’s leg as support, hoisting herself off the floor. Blood from Jimmy’s mouth continued to spill onto the floor, black as oil. Blood had soaked Turk’s pants legs.
Once they were all in the living room, David backed toward the front door. He clutched the gun in two hands, yet still it shook. His breath whistled up the stovepipe of his throat. Ellie clung to his hip. When his foot thumped against something, he glanced down and saw it was the skull. Solomon. It spun slowly on the carpet like a top winding down.
“Don’t move and don’t follow us.” David opened the front door without taking his eyes from the roomful of people.
“Poison,” Turk said.
And then they were outside, he and Ellie, wincing against the harsh white sunlight of late afternoon. He paused midway down the driveway and pulled Ellie against him, covering one of her ears with the palm of his sweaty hand. He fired the gun at one of the Silverado’s tires, the gun bucking, the report like a whip crack. Then he shot out a second tire, hearing a faint metallic zing! as the bullet presumably rebounded off the rim.
“Run,” David said, and shoved Ellie forward.
The girl stumbled, then righted herself before breaking into a full gallop. They were on the other side of the street when a shotgun blast sheared the limb off a nearby tree. Ellie screamed. Brown leaves and splinters of wood rained down on them. David shouted for her to keep going.
27
He wasn’t sure whether they were being followed or not, but he wasn’t taking any chances. They didn’t slow down until they reached the main thoroughfare of town, and even then it was just to catch their bearings before taking off again. Ellie spotted the surplus store first, and they both sprinted across the street and around back, where the Olds was still tucked into its parking space. The car keys were in David’s pocket, so the urge to just jump in and speed off was powerful, but he knew he’d regret not grabbing his phone and whatever else he could manage from inside the store, so he darted through the partially opened door and raced across the store, knocking over a display rack as he went, until he nearly tripped over one of their sleeping bags. He gathered their bags in his arms while Ellie grabbed the shoe box of bird eggs, then together they ran back outside.
He kept anticipating a second sonorous blast from the shotgun, or perhaps for his pursuers to appear around the next street corner. But neither of those things happened. He jammed the key in the ignition, revved the Oldsmobile’s engine, and sped out onto the vacant street. Tires squealed as he gunned it toward the town limit.
The only peculiar thing he saw—or imagined he saw—was the wooden Jesus from the Powell house, now liberated from His cross, standing in a narrow alleyway between two buildings, staring at David with those mad eyes . . .
*
He was still speeding fifteen minutes later when a police car turned on its rack lights behind him.
Shit.
He looked over at Ellie, who sat ramrod-straight in the passenger seat. The expression on her face—or lack thereof, for she looked to him like a zombie freshly dragged from the grave—terrified him.
He glanced up at the rearview mirror.
Maybe it’ll pass us.
But they were the only two cars on this desolate stretch of highway.
Shit. Shit.
The cruiser sped up until it was right on his bumper. David considered his options, which were practically nil, before clicking the directional and pulling over onto the shoulder.
Ellie turned around in her seat and stared through the rear windshield as the car came to a stop. “What are you doing?” There was panic in her voice.
“We have to stop,” he said.
“No!”
“It’s okay. Relax.”
Cooper’s gun lay on the console between their seats.
This is it, he thought. It’s showtime. What am I made of?