Stone Angel

CHAPTER 27

Tom Jessup stood by the nurse’s station in the hospital corridor, holding Ira in his arms. Other cases were rolling by on gurneys, each one an entourage of emergency personnel. Darlene was crying, the public address system was issuing orders, and the harried triage nurse was looking down at Ira’s swollen, bloody face as she checked his pulse and pulled back the lid of one eye.

“I’m sorry, Sheriff. We’re stacking up critical cases in the halls. It’ll be a while before a doctor can see him. The chemical burns are first priority.”

He knew what she really meant. The boy’s breathing was a ragged whistle, and his color was edging toward a blue pallor. He had seen this before in the aftermath of road accidents. Ira was dying, and the nurse was more interested in the patients who might be saved.

She hurried off to examine the next victim coming through the emergency entrance. The new arrival had bubbly skin and blood-soaked clothes. Half of the woman’s long dark hair had been burned away. The sheriff watched the nurse shake her head over this patient too, condemning an unconscious woman to die alone by the wall where the gurney was pushed.

Well, he had not broken the sound barrier getting Ira to the hospital in thirteen minutes flat just to lose him in the waiting line for a doctor. He turned to Lilith. “Get me one of those little bastards with a stethoscope. I don’t care how you do it.”

The sheriff laid his burden down on the long counter of the nurses station. All around him was a desperate energy of noise and motion, blood passing by in plastic bags on metal carts, and more blood on the people wheeling down the hall on the way to the operating rooms at the far end.

Darlene hovered over her son, her head very close to his. She was listening for breath, ready to breathe for Ira if he should stop.

The sheriff looked up to see Lilith walking down the hall with a stalking gait, and he could guess where she was heading. Her father could go directly to that place in the trout stream where the fish gathered to exchange secret handshakes and plan strategies to outwit fishermen, and Guy never came home without a trophy. Apparently, his daughter knew the source pool of doctors.

A door swung open and he could see the cloud of cigarette smoke, the vending machines and furniture a damn sight more comfortable than the plastic junk in the lobby. Lilith was smiling as she snagged a doctor on his way out.

The man was angry at first, but then he smiled, openly appraising the young woman in front of him, taking inventory of her parts and pausing awhile at her breasts, as if he had the right. She leaned in tight to whisper something in the man’s ear. Tom Jessop was certain the doctor meant to cover his balls with one hand, but the motion was aborted as Lilith grabbed his arm and propelled him down the hall.

The sheriff smiled at his deputy and mouthed the words “Nice catch.”

The doctor leaned over Ira, and assessed the damage. “Definitely a collapsed lung. I need a nurse and an OR, but – ”

“You got it, Doc,” said Lilith, slipping away down the hall in search of a nurse to terrify and an operating room she might commandeer.

While Ira was being prepped for surgery, the sheriff was leading Darlene to the waiting room, another kind of bedlam, voices rising in hysteria and tears, shouts and laments for the dead and near-dead. He settled her in the only empty chair. She had been crying softly all this time, but now the fingers of one hand slowly opened, and she was staring down at a tiny cell phone in her hand. Her head snapped up with some new anxiety.

“Kathy,” she said.

And now Darlene had his complete attention.

“Kathy’s gone to Owltown.” She gripped his arm tightly. “I know she means to kill somebody.”

“I might be able to give her a hand with that.” Before Darlene could say any more, he was striding across the lobby. He pushed through the glass door, and crossed the driveway to his car. As he was pulling out of the parking lot, the passenger door flew open and Deputy Beaudare piled into the front seat.

The coffin had been thrown clear in the blast. It lay cracked open in the dirt just short of the paved road. The glass dome had shattered to tumble the corpse of Babe Laurie onto the ground. Flames from the truck had reached across nine feet of strewn rubble to find him. The suit caught fire and Babe’s face was passive as the flames lapped at his head and ate the mortician’s wax from the cracks of his broken skull.

But the mob was oblivious to Babe. They were all staring down the dark road where only one streetlamp was lit. It went out. Farther down the street, another lamp switched on, and there was Mallory again. And so she moved toward them, in and out of the dark. The last lamp at the foot of the road went on, but the pool of light was empty. Yet the crowd was riveted, staring at it, waiting for her.

But she was already among them, passing through their ranks while they were looking for her in the light.

Mallory stepped out from the thick of the crowd, and stood at the rim of the stoning circle. The men closest to her backed away as she lifted the side of the duster and swept it back over the holstered gun riding low on her hip. Unhurried, almost casual, she walked toward Riker’s unsupported right side. She flung one of the unconscious man’s arms over her shoulder and encircled his waist.

Mallory was facing the road ahead as she spoke to Charles. “Go forward, don’t stop for anything.” Her free hand gripped the gun in its holster.

Four men moved into the road in front of them. All held rocks in their hands. One greedy man held three, and this one stepped forward, grinning as he bent his arm back to throw his first rock.

Her gun cleared the holster.

The man had heard the bang of the bullet that ripped open his thigh, and he had seen the flash of the gun, but now he only stood there looking down at his ruined leg and wondering if these events might be connected. And then the commonsensical laws of gravity and insupportable limbs kicked in. He fell to the ground and dragged himself off, crying, still shaking his head in disbelief. The crowd parted to let him pass, but showed no signs of helping him and no fear of the gun in her hand.

Slowly, Charles and Mallory walked forward, dragging Riker’s body between them. The mob was not so concentrated now. They had spread out, walking on either side of them. A woman in a red satin dress screamed obscenities at Mallory and tossed a bottle. It missed Mallory by three feet, but she drew her gun on the woman and fired. The woman looked down on the black hole in the sleeve of her dress, and her face waffled between outrage and confusion.

Of course she would be astonished. A moment ago, this woman had been invincible. But now she was a naked target in a red dress.

Mallory raised the gun again, and the wounded woman ran screaming between the gray buildings.

They walked forward into the lull. One teenager ran in front of them, and the next missile was a brick. It hit Charles’s shoe, glancing off and doing no real damage, but Mallory drew on the assailant. Though he could only be fourteen or fifteen years old, the boy understood immediately that his tender age was not going to shield him, that when she leveled her gun at his head, she meant to kill him. He melted back behind the adults on the sidewalk. In the bar behind the boy, a wide front window broke in an outward burst of flames and flying glass. The crowd rippled in jerks and starts.

“They don’t have a leader,” said Mallory. “They’ll take their cues from us. Stay cool, Charles.”

Oh, right.

A small barrel-chested man appeared in front of them, and his rock hit Mallory in the shoulder. Retribution was swift. She leveled her gun and fired it as the man was running away. The little man fell, screaming and clutching his side where the blood was spurting between his fingers Another rock came from behind a car. She put her next bullet through the vehicle’s window. An anguished man stumbled away from the car one hand to his shoulder where the red stain of blood was spreading down the front of his shirt.

She fired another round into the crowd, at random this time, and then another shot.

Now they all stopped, beginning to sense their individual mortality in this strange lottery of bullets. She only had to raise her gun this time, and more of them fell away. By Charles’s count, her six-shooter should be out of bullets now. There were only stragglers hanging on the fringe, but at least twenty of them.

A rock hit Mallory between the shoulder blades. She turned and took aim at the man who had thrown it. He put out his hands as though this might stop a bullet, and then he faded back into the heat of the growing fire.

“Charles, take Riker’s weight for a second and don’t stop moving.” She swung out the speedloader from her belt and jammed the bullets into the free chambers of her gun. Then she picked up her share of Riker’s weight again.

Charles felt the heat at his back, and his head was turning when she said, “Don’t look. The buildings are burning. There’s nothing else to see.”

Ah, but there was, and only Charles could see it. He looked over the heads of the crowd to follow the quick lean figure with flowing white hair moving away from the most recent fire and on to another building. Augusta was carrying a gas can and a bottle with a rag stuffed in its mouth.

Another rock flew to Mallory, hitting her in the leg. Cheers came up from the crowd, hurrays for a strike. She raised her gun and fired into the clot of men on the sidewalk. One of them screamed and the rest moved away from this victim, as if bullets might be contagious. Mallory was still looking that way when Charles saw another arm rise to hurl a rock in their direction. But now this man was himself hit in the head with a rock. A light laughter was heard in the dark. The tone was young, sweet and high, but Charles knew it was Augusta.

Two rats crossed the porch of a near building, running in advance of the black smoke hugging the boards as it crawled forward. But then, the smoke sipped back under the doorsill, as though the wood structure had inhaled it. In the next second, two front windows blasted outward in a hot spray of fire and glass shards. Rolling waves of flame quickly covered the outer wall.

The fire might have been Augusta’s pet when it started, but now it went where it wanted to, spreading to the roof. A tongue of flame licked straight up in the air. He could feel the heat on his face, and his eyes stung. The wind washed over him and carried the smoke back toward the lower bayou. The acrid stench remained. The fire roared.

It was feeding.

“Don’t be afraid.” Mallory spoke in an easy conversational tone. “There’s no point in it anymore.”

He understood. He had given himself up for dead the moment he had lain down to cover Riker’s body. Mallory had given him all these remaining minutes of life – a gift she bought at great cost. And he had bought nothing for her. But while he understood that fear was pointless and almost ungrateful, his heart was racing. His body was still afraid and pounding out adrenaline.

Two young men stood close to the burning building, passing a whiskey bottle between them and laughing at the fire. They didn’t realize it was alive and hungry.

Charles knew; he could hear it eating things.

A flame stabbed straight out and ran its tongue around one man’s head, searing his flesh and setting his hair afire. They ran away together, one man madly slapping the head of the other, batting out the flames. The burning man screamed, yet he would not let go of the whiskey bottle in his hand.

For the rest, they hardly noticed the fire. They were drunk on liquor and drunk on the moment, reeling and cursing alongside Charles and Mallory, all moving inexorably along the road.

Mallory’s gun banged off a shot and cast a wider protective circle around Charles and Riker. The crowd hovered at the edge of this unseen line and came no closer, menacing only with raised fists and their mouths twisting in ugly shapes. The mob screamed, the fire roared. Mallory’s gun shattered the night and scattered them again.

But they came back, the mob and fresh fire. Another building bloomed with yellow flames as they passed it. Charles looked back over his shoulder. The blaze was beautiful, dazzling. A bottle hit the side of his head, but he hardly felt the blow. He was exhilarated; he was scared out of his mind.

A man’s shirt caught fire and he rolled in the dirt alone, left behind by the wall of people who moved with them up the Owltown road. The liquor bottles in all the bars were bursting glass bombs. But Mallory made the biggest noise of all, her gun exploding with authority.

Charles watched two large boys, nearly man size, perched on the rail of a porch, keeping to the shadows, dark as crows and watching, waiting, moving their lips in unison. And now Charles realized they were counting off her shots.

The next rock fell short of the mark. Mallory fired an empty gun. They were almost at the end of the road when the bird boys flew from the porch rail and ran forward with rocks in their hands.

“On your right,” said Charles.

She watched them for a moment and then threw the gun at the boy in the lead, clipping his head and drawing blood. The other boy stopped for a moment to look at his friend, who was sinking to the ground, blood dripping on his shirt from the head wound.

“Take Riker,” she snapped, “and keep going.” Mallory went after the boy who was still standing and holding a rock in his hand. She grabbed one of his arms and broke it over her raised leg. Charles heard the bone snap. She walked away from the boy, and left him screaming as they continued to walk, shouldering Riker between them, facing forward, both tall and taking long strides, matched horses in tandem. Charles had never felt so perfectly in tune with Mallory.

The flames were all around them now. The older men were gone, faded away in the heat. And now the younger men and a scattering of women drifted back to the edge of the road. And last, the boys, with their violent eyes and hairless bodies, took flight and entered one of the buildings.

A gunshot rang out from the upper window. Mallory talked to him across Riker’s body. “Most people can’t shoot worth a damn. These bastards couldn’t hit a moving target to save their lives.”

“I thought these people were all issued hunting rifles at birth.” Charles looked up to see the long metal barrel protruding from the window on the second floor.

Another shot kicked up the dust in front of them. “Well, that’s an improvement,” said Mallory, in a cool critique of the shooter.

Charles caught the flight of a bottle with a fiery rag in its neck sailing through the window next to the shooter’s. The interior was lit up with a burst of flames. And there were no more shots from the upper floor. He looked around for Augusta, but she was nowhere in sight.

They walked steadily, never slowing the pace. People were walking along with them but keeping their distance. He wondered why. Mallory had no weapon now.

“They don’t know what to do,” said Mallory. “They’re pure reaction. Don’t look at them.”

Finally, they were at the top of the paved road, within steps of the dirt path that led through the windbreak of trees and into Dayborn, where electric lights were burning instead of torches and buildings. The energy of the mob had petered out to nothing, to wandering figures without direction.

Charles looked to Mallory and Riker. They might survive this after all.

Ah, but now a man stepped into the street, flanked by two teenage boys. Malcolm’s suit of lights sparked with a million independent fires. He was holding a rifle in his arms. Two more men joined them. One carried a baseball bat, and the other man held a rock in each hand.

The sheriff kept his eyes to the road ahead. The headlights of the car picked out the details of trees and shrubs along the way, but the moon had gone into the clouds, and everything beyond the scope of the beams was utter darkness. At the turn for the road to Owltown, he saw the flames and stopped the car, yelling, “Get out!” Lilith opened her mouth to speak.

He was faster, saying, “This is my personal business, Lilith. It may not be all that legal. Now you don’t want to spend your vacation days in court, do you? Witnessing against me?”

And though he did not believe he would live to face Guy Beaudare with the tragic news of Lilith’s death, he could imagine the man’s pain at losing his only child. All too well, he remembered the agony of losing young Kathy Shelley.

Lilith would have a long life ahead of her, time enough to recover from this insult.

He could see she was gathering a few well-picked angry words, but before she could spit out more than “You can’t – ” he reached past her, opened the door and pushed her out on the road. As he sped off, he watched her in the rearview mirror as she stood up, dusted herself off and stared after his taillights disappearing down the road.

Riker’s head wound continued to bleed and this was the only clue that the man was still alive.

Malcolm raised the rifle. He was pointing it at Charles’s face.

Riker’s body hung limp as dead weight, and perhaps it was a mercy that he was unaware of what was about to happen. Charles listened to the crackle of fire and looked at the angry faces surrounding him. They were all stealing back.

He turned to Mallory. Her face shone in the firelight, and he found some comfort there. Death was surely coming, but he was beyond being frightened anymore. This tiny fragment of a day, standing on a patch of dirt at the end of the gauntlet with Mallory, this was sublime. It was the peak experience of his entire life – only one exquisite moment left.

He wondered what Mallory would do to wreck it for him – that was her nature.

“If you move, Charles, even a hair,” said Malcolm, “I’ll kill you.”

And Charles supposed it was good logic to take out the largest target first, but foolish to underestimate Mallory as the lesser threat. He neglected to enlighten Malcolm, for he had finally come up with a last-minute gift for Mallory. His death might buy her seconds of diversion to run, to live.

“Malcolm, you’re a real moron,” said Mallory, dripping with contempt. “A rank idiot.”

Charles thought this might not be the time for common name-calling. Possibly a more elegant line from -

“I understand the town idiot died,” said Malcolm, smiling behind the rifle sight.

She shook her head in mock wonder. “You keep making the same mistake, Malcolm. You always leave the scene before the job is done. Ira’s still alive. Screwed up again, didn’t you?”

Malcolm lowered the gun, but only a little. Charles was still in the rifle sight.

“Another loose end to lead the sheriff to three more murders.” Her voice was taunting, and now she had a larger audience, as more people came closer, pressing around them.

“Shut up,” said Malcolm, turning the gun on her now. “Just shut up!”

Of course, this was his audience and he couldn’t afford to lose them to a better act, not now.

“Yeah, like you’re going to do your own killing for a change.” Mallory seemed almost bored. “According to the witness, you walked away from my mother’s house before the stoning. You let your brothers do the job. Now you might have gotten away with that murder – if it had gone to trial.”

The spinning red light of the sheriff’s car was barreling down the road from the highway, the siren screaming with urgency. It turned onto the Owltown road at its base and rolled toward them through the streets of flames.

“Get him!” Malcolm screamed.

The crowd moved into the road as the car was slowing. It stopped dead in the morass of arms and legs as bodies crawled over the vehicle like insects. The door was opened and the sheriff was dragged from behind the wheel. Charles saw the blood on one side of the man’s head as the mob lowered him to the ground in front of Malcolm.

The sheriff’s hand was slowly moving to the weapon in his holster. A shout came out of the mob, and Malcolm turned to point the rifle at Jessop while a young boy relieved the man of his pistol.

“I called in for backup,” said the sheriff. “This time, the law will be here before you can run. Give it up, Malcolm.”

“I don’t think so.” Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t hear any more sirens, Tom.”

The boy who held the sheriff’s gun kept his eyes on Malcolm, not quite sure of what was happening, so excited he could not stand still but danced his feet in the dirt.

Charles watched the flaming debris from a bar land on the roof of a store and spread along the shingles. Near the neighboring building, a barrel was in flames. Bright sparks flew over the roofs of other structures. A woman batted live cinders from her hair, and another woman brushed them from her skirts.

“This is the story,” said Malcolm, nodding in Mallory’s direction, but not taking his eyes off the sheriff. “She shot up all these innocent citizens in a wild killing spree, and she had to be put down like a dog. You died in the line of duty, Tom. I hope that’s a comfort.”

He lowered the rifle and pointed one finger at the young man with the sheriff’s gun. “Shoot him, Teddy!”

“Don’t do it, Teddy,” said Mallory to the boy. There was so much authority in her command that the boy lowered the sheriff’s gun and stared at her.

“Malcolm has a gun,” she said, speaking only to the boy. “Don’t you wonder why he doesn’t do his own killing?” She turned to Malcolm. “Why let a kid take the fall? Do it yourself.”

Charles thought this was not her best idea.

Malcolm glared at the boy with the gun. “Kill him now!”

The boy dropped the gun and ran. Malcolm raised the barrel of the rifle. “All right, I will do it myself.”

“No you don’t!” screamed a woman’s voice.

Every head turned to stare up at the deputy standing on the roof of the sheriff’s car. Lilith’s face was shining with sweat, her chest was heaving and her gun was pointing at Malcolm’s head.

“Kill him!” yelled Mallory.

The crowd was silent, watching, waiting.

Malcolm’s face was grim, eyes locked on his target, the sheriff. “Put the gun down, Deputy, or I’ll shoot your boss right now.” He risked a glance at the woman with the gun. “Put it down! Now! Do what I – ”

Lilith let a bullet fly through Malcolm Laurie’s forehead. Bone fragments scattered, and blood sprayed from the hole. There was time for him to register surprise, but only just. An accident of perfect balance kept the body standing for another moment, but he was dead before he toppled forward and hit the ground.

And now they heard the sirens.

A convoy of police cars roared down the road from the highway, perhaps twenty pairs of lights shining in the night. The remains of the crowd scattered, fleeing the brightness of burning Owltown.

Lilith Beaudare climbed down from the roof of the car. She was stiff in her movements. Her body had lost its fluid grace as she walked toward Malcolm’s corpse with slow, halting steps. She stopped to look down at her gun, as though surprised to see it there and wondering who that killing hand might belong to.

Mallory had to call Lilith’s name twice to break her trance, and now they stared at one another. The spinning lights of the sheriff’s car turned their faces blood-red with every revolution. Glowing cinders swirled above them and came back to the earth in a brilliant rain of slow-falling stars.