The Dead Town

Chapter 25

Carson would have preferred to stay at the Samples house with the Riders and Riderettes, having all those well-intentioned, well-armed, tough, and savvy people covering her back. Not to mention the excellent coffee and the pumpkin pies in the oven. But considering their numbers, the percentage of them who had been in the military and therefore knew something about strategy and tactics, and the cell-phone videos of the horror at the roadhouse, they didn’t need Carson and Michael to recruit their neighbors and turn their block into a garrison.

The most urgent task at hand was locating Deucalion. With his singular gifts, only he would be able to drive the children out of Rainbow Falls, past the roadblocks, to the comparative safety of Erika’s house four miles west of town. With no telephone service of any kind, they would need to track him down somehow, which at first seemed to be an almost impossible mission in a town of nearly fifteen thousand.

As Carson piloted the Grand Cherokee through a sea of snow, tides washing across the windshield and foaming at the wheels, heading toward the center of Rainbow Falls, Michael said, “I’ve got an idea.”

“You always have an idea. You always have a dozen ideas. That’s why I married you. Just to see what ideas you’ll come up with today.”

“I thought you married me for my looks, my sensitivity, and my fabulous bedroom stamina.”

Carson said, “Lucky for you, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But I will acknowledge you really do an exhaustive job cleaning the bedroom.”

“Here’s an idea. Why do I have to do any house-cleaning? We have a full-time housekeeper. Why doesn’t she do it?”

“Mary Margaret is a great cook and a nanny. She does only light housekeeping. Keeping a spotless house requires someone with muscle, determination, and fortitude.”

“Sounds like you.”

Carson said, “Do you want me to clean, and from now on you do all the stuff I do, like fix plumbing and electrical problems, keep the cars fine-tuned, do the accounting and taxes?”

“No. I’d wind up electrocuted trying to replace a valve in the toilet just before the IRS seized the house. But back to my idea — we know Deucalion intends to take out the crews of as many of those blue-and-white trucks as he can. So if we can locate one that’s still operating and we tail it, maybe we’ll find Deucalion when he finds the truck.”

“That’s pretty much a lame idea.”

“Well, I don’t hear any dazzling suggestions from our plumber-electrician-mechanic-accountant.”

They rode in silence for a couple of minutes.

Then she said, “I’ve got a bad, bad feeling about this, Tonto.”

“The way I see it, kemo sabe, we can’t fail. When Deucalion received his gifts on the lightning, they had to have come from a higher power.”

“The Riders call Him the Trail Boss in the Sky.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Loreen Rudolph told me. You were at the other end of the kitchen, checking out the contents of all those cookie jars faster than the kids could.”

“Have you ever known anyone with five cookie jars? Anyway, for over two hundred years, Deucalion has been on Victor’s trail, and he won the round in New Orleans. I think he’ll win this round, too, the entire fight. He’s on a divine mission. It’s his destiny to stop Victor and undo everything Victor does, so this is going to turn out okay.”

No snowplows were on the streets. The replicants of the city employees were engaged in other activities, mostly murder.

Carson drove past a park where walkway lampposts dwindled along a serpentine path, the snow like white-hot sparks immediately around each lamp but like pale gray falling ashes in the gloom between them, and past the last post lay a black nothingness that felt as vast as the ominous dark of an ocean on a moonless night.

“The thing is,” she said, “this is Deucalion’s mission. We’re supporting players. We don’t have to live for him to fulfill his destiny.”

“Well,” Michael said, “I’m putting my trust in the Trail Boss.”

Only a few pedestrians were on the sidewalks, heads bent into the endless skeins of snow, and Carson looked them over as she passed them, wondering if they were ordinary men and women or instead might be dark beasts slouching into the world from a subterranean manger where demons were born.

When Carson turned left off Cody onto Russell Street, she saw one of the blue-and-white trucks parked at the curb, engine running, crystallized exhaust smoking from the tailpipe. She coasted past it.

Michael confirmed what she thought she had seen: “No one in the cab. Go around the block.”

She went around to Cody, turned onto Russell again, parked fifty feet behind the truck, and doused the headlights. They watched the vehicle for a few minutes. The pale exhaust feathered up into the night like a procession of spirits answering some celestial trumpet that only they could hear.

“Why would they leave the truck unattended?” she wondered.

“And they wouldn’t herd their silver-beaded zombies into it in such a public place. Alleyways, back entrances … that’s where they’d want to load up.”

“Check it?”

“Let’s check it.”

No businesses remained open in this block. Traffic was even lighter than it had been before they stopped at the Samples house. Russell Street looked as lonely as a trail through some arctic wasteland, so they boldly carried the Urban Snipers.

The night had grown colder, the snowflakes icier.

The cab of the truck was still unoccupied, but two dead men were sprawled in the cargo hold. Not men. Replicants. This was clearly Deucalion’s work.

Closing the cargo-space door, Michael said, “I already have another idea.”

“Your last one didn’t get us killed, so let’s hear this one.”

“Instead of us trying to find a truck to follow until Deucalion attacks it, we switch our gear from the Jeep to this and cruise until our monster buddy comes to kill the crew.”

“Let’s hope he recognizes us before he breaks our necks.”