Mine

3: Good Boys

South of Chicago's spraw, I-94 became I-80, but the highway still aimed across the flatlands of Illinois. Mary had to pull into another gas station near Joliet, and Laura – who'd gone the last ten miles with her fuel warning light on – pulled in after her and filled up the tank while Didi held the gun on Earl Van Diver. "I need to use the bathroom," Van Diver said through his speaker, and Didi said, "Sure. Go ahead," and handed him one of the paper cups.

Laura got into the backseat with Van Diver while Didi relieved herself in the bathroom, and then Didi took the wheel. Within fifteen minutes the car and the van were back on the highway again, both keeping a steady sixty-five and fifty yards apart. Van Diver closed his eyes and slept, a soft, groaning noise coming from his mouth every so often, and Laura had a chance to relax, if only in body and not in mind. The miles reeled off and the exits went past, and Didi felt the car shudder as the winds hit them in hard crosscurrents.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, with Moline, Illinois, twenty miles ahead, the sky was the color of wet cotton, and wandering shards of yellowish light speared through holes in the clouds. Mary Terror, her system raw with caffeine, nevertheless felt the weariness starting to overtake her. Drummer was tired and hungry, too, and kept crying with a high, thin wail that she couldn't block out. She gauged the BMW behind her, and watched the Geneseo exit coming up. It was time to make the move, she decided. She kept in the left lane, making no indication that she had her eye on the exit. When it was almost too late to turn, she stepped on the brake, veered the van across two lanes in front of a Millbrook bread truck whose driver pounded his horn and displayed his command of expletives, and then Mary was speeding up the exit ramp and the BMW had flashed past.

Didi shouted, "Oh, shit!" and hit the brake pedal. Laura, roused from an uneasy sleep in which snipers on rooftops took aim at Mary Terror and David on a balcony, saw Didi struggling with the wheel, the van no longer in front of them, and instantly realized what had happened. Van Diver's eyes came open, his senses as alert as those of a predatory animal, and he looked back and saw the van turning to the right off the exit ramp. "SHE'S GETTING AWAY!" the metallic voice roared, the speaker at top volume.

"No, she's not!" Didi fought the car across the lanes, the tires shrieking and other cars blowing their horns and dodging around her. Didi got the BMW into the emergency lane, put it into reverse, and started backing toward the Geneseo exit. In another moment she was speeding up the ramp, and at the intersection she took a hard right that threw Van Diver into Laura and crushed Laura against the door. Then she was racing north along a county highway that cut across flat, winter-browned fields, a few clusters of tract housing on either side and a factory in the distance, its chimneys spouting gray smoke above the horizon. Didi passed a Subaru, almost blowing it off the road, and she saw the van about a half mile ahead. She kept giving the engine gas, the distance rapidly closing.

Mary saw the BMW approaching. The van didn't have enough power, there was no way to outrace the car, and there was nowhere to hide on this straight, flat road. Drummer was crying steadily, and rage flew up inside Mary like sparks swirling from a bonfire. "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" she screamed at the baby, but he wouldn't be quiet. She saw a sign on the left: Wentzel Brothers Lumber. A red arrow pointed along a narrower road, and the lumberyard stood surrounded by brown fields. "Okay, come on!" Mary shouted, and as she took the turn she lifted the Colt out of her shoulder bag and laid it on the passenger seat.

She went between a pair of open iron gates that had a sign saying WARNING! GUARD DOGS! The lumberyard was maybe four or five acres across, a maze of timber stacked anywhere from six to ten feet high. There was a trailer, before which was parked a pickup truck, a forklift, and a brown Oldsmobile Cutlass with rust-eaten sides. Mary turned the van deeper into the maze, her tires throwing up dust from the unpaved surface. She pulled up alongside a long, green-painted cinderblock building with high, dirty windows, and she got out, holding Drummer's bassinet and the Colt revolver. She searched for a good killing ground, the dust roiling around her and the crying baby. As soon as she stepped around behind the building, she was met with a fusillade of barking as loud as howitzer shells. Within a dogpen topped by a green plastic canopy were two stocky, muscular pitbulls, one dark brown and the other splotched with white and gray. They threw themselves against the pen's wire mesh, their white fangs bared and their bodies trembling with fury. Beyond the dogpen were more stacks of lumber, piles of tarpaulins, and other odds and ends.

"Jesus H. Christ!" a man bellowed, coming from around a pile of timber. "What the hell's goin' on with you boys?" He was big-bellied and wore overalls and a red plaid jacket, and he stopped next to the cage when he saw Mary's gun.

Mary shot him, as much of an involuntary reaction as the pounding of her heart. The bullet hit him like a punch to the chest, and he went down on his butt on the ground, the color leaching from his face.

The noise of the shot and the violence of the man's fall sent the pitbulls into paroxysms of rage. They ran back and forth in the pen, colliding with each other then caroming off, their barking savage and their beady eyes on Mary and the infant.

Didi hit the brake as she saw the van, and the BMW skidded to a stop. Laura was out first. She could hear the hoarse, rapid barking of dogs, and she started running toward the sound with the automatic gripped in her hand.

Didi and Van Diver got out, and Van Diver did not fail to notice the keys left in the ignition. Behind the cinderblock building, Laura found the dogpen and the man lying on his back on the ground, blood on his chest just below his collarbone. He was breathing harshly, his eyes glassy with shock. The pitbulls raged behind the wire mesh, running back and forth over their territory, and Laura saw the beef bones of past meals scattered about on the ground. Laura carefully walked on between the high stacks of lumber, her gaze searching for Mary. She stopped abruptly, listening. The dogs were barking loudly, but had she heard the sound of David's crying? She went on, wary step after wary step, her knuckles white around the gun's grip and her heavy coat blowing around her.

Back near the car, Van Diver hesitated and let Didi walk on. Mary Terror's van was parked next to the building, and Bedelia Morse was between Van Diver and the van. She carried no weapon, but she'd been a blood-spilling member of the Storm Front. It would take a quick snap of her neck, he thought, to send her to her reward, and then he could plan on getting the gun away from Laura. He made up his mind: three seconds of judge, jury, and executioner.

He strode toward Didi, the speaker dangling from its plug in his throat, and he reached out for her.

He grabbed a handful of her hair. She said, "Wha -" and then he was twining his other arm around her throat from behind. Instantly, Didi started fighting to get away, her head thrashing before he could tighten his arm.

Mary Terror stepped out from the opposite end of the building with Drummer's bassinet held by one arm. She fired twice, a bullet for each of them.

The first shot shattered Earl Van Diver's right shoulder in a burst of flesh, bone, and blood. The twisting of Didi's head saved her from having her brains blown out. She was aware of a zip and a wasp's sting, but did not yet know that a chunk of her right ear was gone. Didi screamed, Van Diver fell to his knees, and Laura heard the shots and the scream and raced back between the lumber stacks the way she'd come.

Didi ran for cover. Mary shouted, "TRAITOR!" as she fired a third time. The bullet thunked into a pile of lumber and sent jagged splinters flying, but then Didi flung herself to the ground and scrambled into the maze of corridors between the lumber stacks.

Mary aimed her gun at the man on his knees. He was clutching his ruined shoulder, his face glistening with pain sweat. His speaker had been pulled out of his throat and lay beside him. He was grinning at Mary, an unearthly grin. She walked toward him, and saw steam rising from the man's face and bald scalp in the frigid air. Mary stopped. Suffer, she thought. "Oh, yeah," she said. "I remember." She pulled the hammer back, to blow his grin to pieces.

"Don't do it!" Laura said. She stood in the shelter of Mary's van, her gun trained on the big woman. "Put it down!"

Mary smiled, her eyes dark with hatred. She turned the Colt's barrel on the baby's head. "You put it down," she said. "At your feet. Right now."

And behind the building, the Wentzel brother who'd been shot in the chest was sitting up, his mouth gasping. The pitbulls were going crazy, smelling carnage. He held something in a bloody hand. It was a key ring he'd taken from his pocket, and a small key was ready to be used. "Good boys," he managed to say. "Somebody did your daddy real good." He pushed the key into the dogpen's lock. "Gonna chew up their asses, ain't you, boys?" The lock clicked open. He pulled against the dogpen's door. It swung open. "CHEW 'EM UP!" he commanded, and the pitbulls snarled and shivered with excitement as they boiled out of the cage. The brown one raced on, but the mottled dog paused to lick his master's chest for a few seconds before he, too, went hunting for meat.

"Down," Mary repeated. "Do it."

Laura didn't. "You won't hurt him. What would Jack say?"

"You won't shoot me. You might hit the baby." In five seconds, Mary decided, she would lunge to her knees – a movement that would take Laura by surprise – and fire the remaining bullets. She counted: one… two… three…

She heard a savage snarling, and she saw Laura's face contort with horror.

Something hit Mary's right side like a miniature freight train, its power knocking Drummer loose from her grip. As Mary fell, so did the baby's bassinet. It hit the ground alongside her and Drummer spilled out, his face red and his mouth open in a silent, indignant yell.

Something took hold of Mary's right forearm. It tightened like an iron vise, and Mary screamed with pain as her fingers spasmed open and the Colt dropped. Then she saw the brown pitbull's jaws clenched to her arm, its eyes staring into hers with murderous intent, and the beast suddenly shook its head back and forth with a violence that almost snapped her arm at the elbow. Mary clawed at the dog's eyes, its teeth ripping down through her brown sweater into the flesh and pain streaking up her shoulder.

Laura got her legs thawed and ran for her baby. Mary screamed in agony as the dog tore at her arm, her other hand trying to reach the Colt. And then Laura saw the gray and white pitbull race out from beside the building. It made a course change that froze Laura's heart.

It was going after David.

She dared not shoot, terrified of hitting the child. The pitbull was almost upon him, its jaws opening to ravage the precious flesh, and Laura heard herself shout "NO!" in a voice so powerful it made the animal's head tick toward her, its eyes aflame with bloodfever.

She took two more running strides and kicked the dog in the ribs as hard as she could, staggering it away from David. The pitbull whirled in a mad circle, snapping at the air, and then it went for the baby again, darting in so fast Laura had no time to aim a second kick. Its teeth snapped shut, snagging the baby's white blanket which was splotched with Edward Fordyce's dried blood. And then the pitbull shivered lustily and began to drag David through the sawdust on his back, the blanket tangled around his body.

Mary dug her fingers into the brown pitbull's eyes. The beast made a half groan, half howl and shook its head violently, its teeth tearing down through her flesh. It pulled against her arm with a terrible force, the shoulder muscles shrieking. The arm was about to be broken. Mary reached for her Colt, but her fingers lost it as the pitbull jerked her again and fresh agony filled her up. Then she went mad herself, punching at the animal's skull as it tried to drag her. The pitbull released her, backed off, and sprang again, its white fangs bared. Its jaws clamped on her right thigh, the teeth working through her corduroy jeans into the meat of her leg with crushing pressure.

Laura threw herself at the dog that was dragging David. She grabbed around its muscular throat and hung on. The pitbull let go of David's blanket and went for her face, its body quivering with power and its teeth snapping at her cheek with the sound of a bear trap springing. She shielded her face with her left hand. The jaws found it, and clenched shut.

She heard a sound like sticks cracking. A terrifying bolt of electric agony speared up through her wrist and forearm. Broke my hand! she realized as she kept fighting to pull the dog away from her baby. Bastard broke my hand! The pitbull savagely twisted her hand, more pain ripping through her fingers and wrist. She could feel the teeth grinding on the bones. She thought she screamed, but she wasn't sure. Her brain felt like a fever blister about to burst. She pressed the automatic's barrel against the pitbull's side and squeezed the trigger twice.

The dog shuddered with the shots, but it did not let go. And now it was trying to drag her, blood streaming from its side and foaming from its mouth. Its claws dug into the sawdust. Laura's wrist was about to snap. She fired again, into the side of the pitbull's blocky head, and the dog's lower jaw exploded in a spray of bone chips and blood.

Mary was fighting her own battle ten feet away. She slammed her knee into the brown pitbull's skull with everything she had behind it. Then a second and third time, as the dog's teeth kept tearing her thigh open. She got a finger hooked into one of the eyes and yanked it out like a white grape, and at last the pitbull grunted and released her thigh. It danced with pain, shaking its one-eyed head back and forth and snapping at the air. Mary crawled for the Colt, tried to latch her fingers around it, but they were spasming out of control, the nerves and muscles of her injured arm rioting. She looked up as the pitbull charged at her again, and she cried out and shielded her face with her arms.

It hit her shoulder with a bone-bruising blow, knocked Mary aside, and fell with a pain-maddened snarl upon Laura.

The dying dog was still hanging on to Laura's left hand. The one-eyed beast fastened its teeth on the overcoat sleeve of her right arm and began to tear at it. She couldn't get her gun angled to shoot it. She kicked and screamed, the one-eyed dog working on her right arm and the other animal still trying to crunch her hand with its ruined jaws.

Mary scrambled to the wailing baby, scooped him up with her left arm, and struggled to her feet. Blood streamed from her gnawed thigh, her jeans leg drenched. The two dogs had Laura between them, the woman trying to wrench loose. Mary saw the Colt on the ground. Her right hand was still convulsing, drops of blood falling from her fingertips. Panic flared within her. She was hurt badly, near passing out. If she fell and the dogs turned on her and Drummer…

She left the gun and hobbled toward the van, ignoring the man she'd shot. As Mary transferred Drummer to her right arm and used her left hand to open the driver's door, Didi came at her with a two-by-four she'd plucked off a lumber pile. Mary saw the blow coming and dodged it, the wood whacking against the van's side. And then Mary stepped in and drove a knee up into Didi's stomach, and Didi cried out and doubled over. Mary brought her left arm down across Didi's back, the blow whooshing the air from Didi's lungs and dropping her to her knees.

Didi groaned, her battle-flag-red hair hanging over her face in defeat. Mary could see how gray it was. Didi looked up at her, eyes watery with pain. It was the face of an old woman, tortured by the things that were.

"Go on," Didi said. "Kill me."

Laura kicked the dying pitbull away from her broken hand, and the animal staggered in dazed circles. The other dog still had hold of her ragged coat sleeve, its fangs starting to reach the flesh. She couldn't get a shot at it, unless…

She dropped the gun and wrenched her arm out of the overcoat, the dog's teeth snapping shut in its wake. Then she picked up the automatic, jammed the barrel right up under the pitbull's throat, and squeezed the trigger.

Mary Terror flinched at the sound of the shot. Blood was running down her leg in hot rivulets. Before her, Didi kneeled with sawdust in her hair, and Didi saw the raw fear in Mary's eyes. Mary's right hand was still spasming, torn muscles twitching in the forearm wound. Drummer was screaming in her ear, the world starting to turn gray. Mary got into the van with Drummer and slammed the door. She backed away from the building's side, intending to crush Didi beneath the wheels, but Didi had shaken the cobwebs loose and crawled to the safety of the lumber stacks. Mary got the van turned around and sped toward the gates, the tires throwing dust.

Five seconds later, Didi heard another car door open and close. She emerged from her hiding place as the BMW's engine started. Earl Van Diver was behind the wheel, his face a grinning, terrible rictus. As Van Diver twisted the wheel with his shattered shoulder, Didi saw his mouth open in a soundless scream. The BMW tore away, in pursuit of Mary Terror. Its right front tire went over the speaker and crushed it to bits.

Didi stood up. She saw the mottled pitbull lying on the ground. Laura was on her knees, her right arm free of the tattered coat sleeve, and the brown pitbull faced her six feet away. Didi picked up the two-by-four, her ear stinging, and walked toward the animal.

Before she got there, the pitbull groaned deep in its blasted-open throat and collapsed, its eyes fixed on the woman who'd delivered the bullet.

Tears of pain glistened on Laura's cheeks, but her face was shocked clean of all emotion. She looked at the bluish-red lump of her left hand. There were only three fingers and a thumb on it. The little finger was gone, torn off at the knuckle. Her hand made her think of a fresh steak, tenderized by a butcher's mallet.

"Oh my God," Didi said. Blood was dripping from her right ear like a chain of rubies. "Your… hand…"

Laura had gone deathly pale. She blinked, staring at Didi, and then she keeled over onto her side.

Laura's purse was in the car, Didi realized. Her money, credit cards… everything was gone. It was over, and Mary had won.

"Help me! Somebody!" The voice was coming from over near the dogpen. "I'm dyin' over here!"

Didi left Laura and went back to where the big-bellied man lay against the dogpen. He was a mess, but Didi saw that the blood wasn't spewing out so no arteries had been hit. He looked at her wearily, trying to focus."Who're you?"

"Nobody," she said.

"You gonna kill me?"

She shook her head.

"Listen… listen… call an ambulance. Okay? Phone's in the office. Locked up." He offered her the bloody key ring. "Call an ambulance. Goddamn Kenny took off early. Oh, I'm hurtin'. Do it, okay?"

Didi accepted the key ring. One of the keys, she saw, was for a General Motors car. "The Olds is yours?"

"Yeah. Yeah. The Cutlass. Call an ambulance, I'm bleedin' to death."

She didn't think so. She knew a dying man when she saw one. This guy had a broken collarbone and maybe a punctured lung, but he was breathing all right. Still, she'd have to call the ambulance. "You just be quiet and don't move."

"What am I gonna do? A fuckin' polka?"

Didi hurried back to Laura, who was sitting up again. "Can you walk?"

"I think… I'm going to pass out."

"I've found us a car," Didi said.

Laura looked up at her friend, her eyes swollen and her broken hand throbbing almost beyond endurance. She wanted to lie on the ground, curl up, and cry in the cold. But she could not, because Mary Terror still had her baby, and Mary Terror was on her way to California. Laura had something left; she pulled it from a deep, unknown place, the same place where people gritted their teeth and fought uphill against the iron-spiked wheels of life. She had to keep going. There was no quitting, no surrender.

Laura lifted her right hand, and Didi helped her stand. Then Didi picked up the automatic, and she and Laura walked together past the dead dogs.

In the trailer, Didi called 911 and told the operator there'd been a shooting, that an ambulance was needed at the Wentzel Brothers Lumberyard near Geneseo. The operator said an ambulance would be there in eight to ten minutes, and for her to stay on the line. Didi hung up. A small metal box atop the office's desk caught her attention, and she spent forty seconds finding the right key to unlock it. Inside were a few checks clipped to copies of receipts, and a bank deposit envelope that held seventy-one dollars and thirty-five cents. She took the money.

Didi got behind the wheel of the Cutlass, with Laura lying semiconscious amid burger wrappers and crumpled beer cans in the backseat. A pair of large red plastic dice hung from the rearview mirror, and there was a Playboy bunny decal stuck prominently on the rear windshield. The Olds chugged, refusing to start as she turned the key. Didi thought she could hear a siren, getting closer. The Olds chugged again as Didi pumped the accelerator. And then the car shuddered, and with a cannon's boom black smoke blew from the tailpipe. Didi checked the gas gauge, seeing that its needle stood at a quarter of a tank.

The Cutlass creaked and groaned like a frigate in a tempest as Didi backed up, wrestled the grimy wheel, and drove toward the gates. She could feel the tires wanting to slew off to the right, and she decided it was best she hadn't looked to see how much tread they still wore. Then they were through the gates and heading back to the interstate, the Cutlass slowly but steadily gaining speed and making a racket like bricks in a cement mixer. An ambulance appeared ahead of them, approaching across the flat fields. It passed them, its siren yowling, on the way to save a Wentzel.

The two women went on, and only when they were five or six miles farther west along I-80 did Didi give one gasping, terrible sob and wipe her eyes with her dirty sleeve.