Dead and Alive

CHAPTER 23

As they reached the T junction where the entrance lane met the main road through Audubon Park, Michael drew the illegally purchased.50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol from the scabbard at his left hip.

Carson said, “If they’re going to be trouble—”

“I’d bet both kidneys on it.”

“—then I’m thinking the Urban Sniper makes more sense,” she finished, turning right onto West Drive.

The headlights washed across the pale forms of Mr. and Mrs. Guitreau on their rainy-night, fully-nude, high-speed dog walk.

Michael said, “If we have to get out of the car, it’ll for sure be the Sniper, but not if I have to shoot from a sitting position.”

Hours earlier, they had seen Pastor Kenny Laffite, one of the New Race, breaking down psychologically and intellectually. And not long after that, they were forced to deal with another of Victor’s creations who called himself Randal and whose rap was as creepy-crazy as Charles Manson channeling Jeffrey Dahmer. Randal wanted to kill Carson’s brother, Arnie, and he had taken three rounds point-blank from an Urban Sniper before going down and staying down.

Now this weirdness.

“Damn,” Carson said. “I’m never gonna get a chance to finish that okra succotash.”

“I thought it was a little salty. I’ve gotta say, Mrs. Guitreau has a truly fine butt.”

“For God’s sake, Michael, she’s some kind of monster.”

“Doesn’t change the fact she’s got a great butt. Small, tight, with those little dimples at the top.”

“It’s Armageddon, and my backup is an obsessive butt man.”

“I think her name’s Jane. No. Janet.”

“Why do you care what her name is? She’s a monster but she’s got a cute butt, so you’re gonna ask her for a date?”

“How fast are they going?”

Glancing at the speedometer, Carson said, “About twenty-four miles an hour.”

“That’s maybe a two-and-a-half-minute mile. I think the fastest the mile’s been run is just under four minutes.”

“Yeah, but I don’t expect we’ll ever see their pictures on a Wheaties box.”

“I heard greyhounds can do a mile in two minutes,” Michael said. “I don’t know about German shepherds.”

“Looks to me like the shepherd is pretty much spent. They’re gaining on him.”

Michael said, “If we have a dog in this race, it’s the dog. I don’t want to see the dog get hurt.”

The shepherd and his pursuers were in the left lane. Carson swung into the right lane and rolled down her window.

As rain bounced off the sill and into her face, she drew even with the nude marathoners and heard what they were shouting.

The woman — okay, Janet—chanted urgently, “Dog nose, dog nose, big, big, big.”

“I think she wants the dog’s nose,” Carson said.

Michael said, “She can’t have it.”

Neither of the nudists was breathing hard.

Bucky Guitreau, the nearer of the two, was raving with a slight quirky calypso lilt: “Kill, kill, pizza guy, pizza guy, kill, kill.”

Both the district attorney and his wife, certainly replicants in the throes of a total breakdown, seemed oblivious to the Honda pacing them. The dog had their full attention, and they were closing on him.

Reading the speedometer, Michael said, “Twenty-six miles an hour.”

Trying to discern if the runners were even capable of breaking their fixation with the dog, Carson shouted at them, “Pull over!”