The Dead Town

Chapter 56

After setting the Meriwether Lewis kitchen on fire, they waited outside in the falling snow, shotguns ready, to see if anything tried to escape. Flames flew up quick and bright, as jolly a blaze as Sully York had ever seen, the first flash blue from the Sterno, then white and orange as the cooking oil ignited. Faster than he expected, the windows began to blow out from the intense heat, which was a most satisfying testament to their planning of this sortie. When the kitchen was a raging inferno and no filthy space-born malefactors attempted to flee, afire or otherwise, through the door that had been left open to oxygenate the flames, their work here seemed to be done. Even with a fire-control system, the explosive beginning of the blaze was likely to overwhelm the building and leave it a burnt-out shell, eradicating any other off-world fiends that might be hanging about therein.

Sully disapproved of destruction for destruction’s sake, which seemed ever more popular in the modern world, but he always took delight in burning out or otherwise eliminating Evil when Evil just couldn’t keep its ugly head down and stay to the shadows, when it came right at you with all teeth bared. The world needed a little Evil, so Good had something to compare itself to, but you couldn’t let it think it had the right-of-way on the road and an invitation to dinner.

As they headed toward the Hummer parked between school buses, Grace Ahern said, “If they planned to feed the elementary students to those Builders, they’re planning to do the same to the kids at the high school. We’ve got to get in there now and burn those suckers, too.”

Grace said what she meant and meant what she said, by God, and Sully York liked nothing in his life better than the sound of her voice, the common sense and never-turn-tail spirit that it conveyed. She raised young Travis alone, working hard at more than one job, and though they didn’t have much, they had their pride and each other. He doubted that he would ever hear this woman complain or whine; she was as incapable of self-pity as any of the Crazy Bastards, in their day, had been incapable of running from a fight — or losing one.

Bryce rode up front with Sully, and Travis sat in back with his mom, and that was just how it should be, for several reasons. Sully would have liked to spend half his time watching the street ahead and half watching Grace in the rearview mirror, but lacking one eye, he couldn’t be quite that distracted. Dash it all if he hadn’t become a moonstruck lad in the autumn of his years, which would have been an embarrassment if it wasn’t so exhilarating and if she hadn’t been such a shining example of pluck and guts.

Of course, he was too old for her, no argument could be made to the contrary. They were both too old for her, he and Bryce, although Sully was more than ten years younger than the writer and not yet on Social Security, certainly not decrepit. Yes, he was missing one eye and one ear, and one hand, but he was also missing an appendix and a spleen, and no woman had ever held the lack of those against him. He was too old for her, nonetheless, though there was something to be said for the fact that he wasn’t too old to be the male influence that Travis would need in order to grow up strong and true to his potential.

They arrived at William Clark High School and parked in the rear lot. In addition to Grace’s primary job at Meriwether Lewis, she occasionally did some part-time work at the high school, evening prep for the next day’s lunch, and she had a code to turn off the security system.

Switching on the lights, she proved to be as dead-on right as the prophet Cassandra and as quick to fearless action as the goddess Diana on a hunt. Worse than cockroaches infested this kitchen, more of those repulsive sacs suspended from the ceiling. Already a team with mutually understood tasks, the four of them worked together to set another fire of extermination.

Entirely splendid!