Kill Them All

CHAPTER FIVE

Friday, 12:49 p.m.

Once they were out on the open road, Sally put on sunglasses, popped in an old Emmylou Harris music cassette, and floored it. The engine roared like someone-perhaps the kid called Kyle-had souped it up. This girl was a rush. The wind whipped her hair back and flushed her cheeks. They soaked up the sunshine but didn’t say much, didn’t really have to talk. They were clearly attracted to each other, but he was a drifter, just passing through.

Matt enjoyed his brief time with her. She had no idea who he was, and he liked that. He wished he could stay longer, but he suspected he was nearer to locating the Dark Man than he’d been in weeks. The prospect of another face-to-face meeting both thrilled and frightened him. His torment, the curse of recognizing evil in others, would never end unless he stopped the Dark Man. Somehow, someway, someday…

Sally drove, and Emmylou Harris sang “Too Far Gone” with a clear soprano voice that broke Matt’s heart. The wind howled as if struggling to slow them down. When Matt looked over his shoulder, the Ruby Mountains behind them were retreating into low clouds and the green foothills were shimmering like a mirage. In front of them the Nevada landscape went flat, high-desert bleak, just bleached fists of tumbleweed and the grinning skulls of long-dead cattle. They tore up the road to the 41 cutoff, and then Sally slowed down and whipped off the highway with a spray of sand and rocks. A hot and dusty silence descended.

Sally licked her lips. “Don’t do anything stupid out here all by yourself.” She lowered her sunglasses and took him in one last time. “Cowboy, I owe you. I really mean that. You ever want to collect, you know where to find me.”

“Wally’s Saloon in historic Dry Wells, Nevada. Yes, ma’am.”

She kissed him on the cheek. It had been a long time, and Matt felt himself stir. She kissed him on the mouth, and he kissed her back, but then Sally pulled away.

“You’d best go,” she said in a husky voice. “Stay clear of those bastards you beat up, avoid the strangers, find out whatever you need to know from Kearns, and get the hell out of Elko County. You’ll be safer that way. Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

Matt shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll be fine, so long as somebody comes along in the next couple of hours.”

She laughed. “There are cars out here, Matt. Just not a lot of them.” She tossed him a large plastic bottle of water from below her front seat. “You take care.”

He slid out of the car, grabbed his backpack, ax, and bedroll, and put on his beat-up cowboy hat. “You, too, Sally.”

She sped away without looking back. Matt Cahill knew a part of her heart had stayed with him. She’d made him think of his dead wife, Janey, and sadness thickened his breathing. He shouldered his things and walked over to the fork in the road, where he set his gear down, slammed the ax head down into the earth, and propped his hat on it for a bit of shade. He had a seat, closed his eyes, and waited for the drone of the next car headed south and west.

The sun beat down, frying his bare skin, drying his body out like a strip of old leather. Matt wondered how he’d come to be so alone in the world. Not for the first time, he thought, Shit, why me?

Of course, the only possible answer was Why not you?

Time passed, and then a shimmering little silver bug appeared on the horizon. A car was coming his way. About fucking time.

Matt swallowed several gulps of water and got to his feet. Apprehension tickled his stomach. This might all be for nothing, but it felt good to be close to finding out. When the car seemed close enough, he stuck out his thumb. He willed the driver to throw caution to the pathetic lack of wind, take pity on a slowly roasting hitchhiker, and take a risk.

As the car got closer, Matt noticed it was drifting from side to side. The observation gave him an uneasy feeling. He shaded his eyes. The road looked empty all the way back to the horizon. All things considered, Matt figured he’d have to take whatever he could get.

The vehicle was a flatbed Ford truck, with a piss-poor paint job somewhere between silver and blue. The windshield had a long crack across it. The front fender hung low, like a penis at half-mast, and the right front headlight was missing. The driver pulled up and parked with the engine still running. The engine sounded like the car looked. Matt walked closer and saw that the driver was a man around fifty, compact and wiry, with big bottle glasses and a dyed comb-over. He wore a checkered red-and-white cowboy shirt with a string tie, and he seemed exhausted.

“Well, shit. You gonna stand out there all day looking at me?” The driver had a tenor voice, scratchy and annoying. Fortunately he drove the next several miles without saying another word.

The driver dropped Matt near where he’d been standing when he’d first heard the call for help. Matt could see the old mine shaft, and beyond it some buildings. He walked past the “Kearns Property Leave Shit Here” sign. After about a quarter mile, an old house came into view. It was low to the ground, slanted to one side, painted white to deflect some of the smothering heat. There was a splintering wooden porch and a rocking chair. Behind the place was a shambles of a garage, car parts everywhere, old farming equipment, rusty wrecked cars half covered with thirsty weeds.

Matt dropped his backpack, ax, and bedroll in the sand. He studied the shack for a while, looking for any movement. Kearns had already seemed out to lunch. A man who lived alone out here might just as soon shoot a stranger as ask questions.

And then he saw it, a faint shimmering in the air near the back of the garage. Matt felt his stomach clench with disappointment. He gave the buildings a wide berth and walked around to the south. There was a small stovepipe chimney at the back of the garage, and it was releasing heat and a trace of smoke. Matt sniffed the air, smelled something sharp and chemical. His shoulders slumped. The guy was cooking meth. Matt turned to go.

“Don’t you fucking move. I’ll blow you out of those boots, motherfucker.”

Matt froze. His scrotum tried to shrink into a slipknot.

An eerie specter rose out of some trash and a bit of cactus. He was covered with dust and powder. Kearns again. This time the man cradled a sawed-off shotgun in his arms, business end pointed Matt’s way. The twin barrels seemed to sneer. The guy still wore those ripped overalls, no shirt, and had blistering, sunburned skin. He was one butt-ugly sight, balding and toothless and sallow. Matt, as accustomed to horrific apparitions as he’d become, almost cringed at his appearance. Now it was clear that the rot wasn’t from evil. It was from the crystal methamphetamine the dumb peckerwood was cooking and shooting.

“Mr. Kearns, I just came to apologize for striking you. I’ll just be on my way.”

“Who the fuck asked for an apology?” No front teeth, a slavering lisp. “You from the gummint?”

“I’m not from the government, no, Mr. Kearns.”

“Bullshit.” Kearns spat. “You get off my land.”

“Sure…”

Suddenly Kearns shrieked. A crow and two vultures took flight in alarm as the sound echoed. Startled and afraid of the shotgun, Matt flinched.

“What is it?” he asked.

Kearns fired the shotgun, aiming towards his own house. Out here in the middle of nowhere, the noise was like the bark of a giant dog. “Stay away from me, you bastard! Stay back!”

Spooked, Matt looked. The house. The rocker. There was nobody there.

Kearns squinted, carefully studying his porch for the movement of a creature that didn’t exist. Matt took advantage of the distraction and edged towards his belongings. Kearns clearly had a bad case of amphetamine psychosis-full-on auditory and visual hallucinations. If he had really seen the Dark Man, the experience had run together in his mind with dozens of other delusions. He’d be useless in terms of acquiring new information. The trip had been a waste of time-and could still be a fatal mistake.

The gun discharged again. An echo barked back a few seconds later, and then one more. The crow cawed as if amused. Kearns screamed in a voice high and shrill. He fired at it the bird, and blood and feathers exploded in all directions.

“Take that, you skinny, black-winged motherfucker!”

Matt trotted over to his stuff but didn’t take his eyes off of Kearns. He gathered up the backpack and sleeping bag and reached for the ax. Matt thought he heard some kind of low throbbing sound, wasn’t sure from where. Could have been the panicked blood thundering through the veins in his own ears. Facing down an enemy was one thing. A psychotic with a shotgun was quite another.

Kearns hunkered down like a man taking a dump in his pants, which was actually quite possible, all things considered. He gripped the shotgun in his trembling right hand and with his left he dug into his filthy pocket for another shell. He seemed to have forgotten Matt’s presence or written it off as a hallucination. Kearns reloaded and stalked towards his own home.

But Kearns stalked nothing and fired at nothing. Matt backed away, the ax in his right hand and the pack and bedroll over his left shoulder. He was almost out of range of the shotgun when he noticed the humming sound again and pegged it for an engine.

A vehicle this far from the highway?

A large one, a truck or a van, and it sounded closer. Perhaps he could hitch a ride away from this madhouse.

“Ugh!”

Kearns threw his hands up as if upset by something, and the shotgun went sailing. Matt blinked. Part of the redneck’s head disappeared, to be replaced by a strange pink cloud that floated away. Kearns dropped to his knees and fell over dead.

He’d been shot, and Matt hadn’t heard a thing.

Someone was using a silencer.

Matt ducked and tried to run, but something slammed into the side of his head, and he dropped his gear. The world went white with pain, spun in a circle, and turned pitch-black.