The Dead Town

Chapter 41

In the snow on the nearly flat roof of KBOW, Sammy Chakrabarty took up a position at the front of the building, behind the three-foot-high parapet. Between four-foot lengths of that roof-encircling wall were two-foot-wide crenellations from which a defender could, in relative safety, fire down upon attackers. He sat with his right side against the parapet, head craned forward to peer through one of the crenels, looking east toward the entry to the parking lot, where the bad guys would turn in from the street — if they came.

Sammy took some comfort in that if, even though he knew in his heart that they would come.

Sometimes a cold night in Rainbow Falls was a fine thing, the chill invigorating and the town pretty in the clear, crisp air, but this was the ugly side of cold, a mean little troll of a night that had sharp teeth and a bite sufficiently venomous to numb his nose. He sat on a plastic garbage bag to keep his bottom from getting wet. For the most part, he was warm, his clothes adequate to the conditions.

But he worried about his hands. He had worn a simple pair of knitted gloves to work, the kind that didn’t hamper driving, but that were not bitter-weather gear. If the replicants arrived in significant numbers, if there was a prolonged assault, Sammy feared that his hands would stiffen to an extent certain to affect his handling of the assault rifle and the shotgun. Consequently, instead of sitting with the rifle ready in his grip, he propped it against the parapet and kept his hands in the flannel-lined pockets of his jacket.

He anticipated that the replicants would have one of two strategies: either a fearless assault on the doors, with the intent of storming the place and killing everyone therein, or an attack on the broadcast tower immediately behind — and attached to — the station.

If they controlled the power company, as Deucalion insisted they did, they could black out this entire square block, but that would not put an end to Mason Morrell’s clarion call for strong resistance to the revolution. The station had emergency generators housed within the building, fed by a large gasoline tank buried under the parking lot, and they could remain on the air for at least twenty-four hours on their fuel supply, perhaps twice that long.

The open-girder steel tower was of strong construction, its four legs sunk in eighteen-foot-deep concrete pylons that anchored it to the earth and that were themselves anchored in bedrock. This design ensured the tower would ride through the worst projected thousand-year earthquake that might rock the area related to a volcanic event at Yellowstone. The weakest point was the transmission cable that came out of the rear of the building in a conduit. The tower might be toppled with enough explosives, and the precious cable could be obliterated with a smaller charge. Sammy would be shooting down on any team that tried to approach the tower, and with the rapid-fire semiauto Bushmaster, he should be able to take them out long before they reached their objective, even if they were tough enough to take four or five mortal hits before succumbing.

From Ralph’s home bunker, or whatever it was, he had brought not only weapons but also additional equipment that might prove useful, including four Motorola Talkabouts, walkie-talkies about the size of cell phones but an inch and a half thick. These allowed Ralph, Burt, Mason, and Sammy to speak with one another in a crisis. Sammy kept his in a jacket pocket.

The Talkabout chirruped, and when he pulled it from his jacket, he heard Burt Cogborn say, “Sammy, are you there?”

Sammy held down the transmit button, said, “In place and ready for action,” and then released it.

From his post in the reception lounge below, Burt said, “If something happens to me and you take in Bobby, never ever give him any of those rawhide treats. He loves them but dogs can choke on them too easy. Over.”

Sammy replied, “No rawhide treats. Got it. Over.”

Before Sammy could return the Talkabout to his pocket, Burt said, “You’ll want to take him out to pee first thing in the morning, again around eleven, also after he eats at three-thirty, and a fourth time just before bed. Over.”

Sammy was about to respond when Burt transmitted again:

“Bobby pees four times a day, but he rarely ever poops four times. What he does is he poops usually three times a day, so if on one of his outings he doesn’t poop, don’t worry about it. That’s normal. Over.”

Sammy waited to be sure that Burt was finished, and then he transmitted: “Four pees, three poops. Got it. Over and out.”

Burt wasn’t finished. “Just to be sure you got it right, tell me which bunny is his favorite. Over.”

“Light-green, fully floppy bunny, not just floppy ears,” Sammy replied. “Over and out.”

Anyone on the channel whose Talkabout was switched on could hear their exchanges. The device chirruped before Sammy could pocket it, and Ralph Nettles said, “Good thing you aren’t obligated to take me in, Sammy. With this prostate, I have to pee like every half hour. Over and out.”

Sammy waited for a while before stuffing the walkie-talkie in his jacket pocket once more.

As if somebody opened a door in the sky, a breeze came down to chase off the stillness. The snow seemed to fall faster, which was probably an illusion. Instead of spiraling in a waltz with the air, the flakes hurried through the darkness, bright slanting skeins in the parking-lot lamps.

Instantly the air was colder than before, and Sammy fisted his lightly gloved hands in his pockets.