The Dead Town

Chapter 8

In addition to the guy in the Stetson and the greatcoat, two other men materialized out of the night and snow. They were also armed with shotguns.

Carson and Michael had their Urban Snipers as well as pistols, but seated in the Grand Cherokee, they were not in a position to survive an exchange of fire.

To Michael, she said, “I could shift gears, tramp the gas.”

“Bad idea. I didn’t take my invincibility pill this morning.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Whatever they want us to do,” Michael said.

“That’s pussy talk. We’re not pussies.”

He said, “Sometimes you’re too macho for your own good.”

The guy with the walrus mustache rapped on her window again with his gun barrel. He looked as if he had been constipated since birth. When she smiled at him, his scowl curdled into a glower.

Carson thought of Scout, her baby, not seven months old, back in San Francisco, in the expert care of Mary Margaret Dolan, housekeeper and nanny. Her little daughter had a smile that could melt glaciers. With Scout in her mind’s eye, Carson was overcome by a dread that she would never see the girl again.

Switching off the engine, she said, “They’ll make a mistake. We’ll get an opening.”

“ ‘All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.’ ”

“Who said that?”

“I don’t know. One of the Muppets. Maybe Kermit.”

They opened their doors and got out of the SUV, raising their hands to show that they were not armed.

The cowboy with the walrus mustache warily stepped back from Carson, as if she were the biggest and meanest piece of work that he had ever seen. His face suggested fearlessness, but his quick shallow inhalations, revealed by rapid frosty exhalations, further belied his fierce expression. He directed her toward the front of the Grand Cherokee.

One of the other gunmen shepherded Michael from the passenger door and told him to stand beside Carson. This one wore a Stetson, too, and a leather coat with sheepskin collar. The cold air revealed his breathing to be less agitated than that of the other man. But his restless eyes, shifting from Carson to Michael and to various points in the night, revealed the fear that he was striving not to disclose.

These were not Victor’s creations. They were real men with some reason to know that horrific events were occurring behind the scenes in this apparently peaceful Montana night.

The third man, who quickly searched the SUV, appeared with both his shotgun and one of the Urban Snipers. “They have another of this here. Never seen its like before. Pistol grip. And it seems to be loaded with big slugs, not buckshot. They have two pistols and a satchel full of spare magazines and shotgun ammo.”

The second cowboy looked to the one with the mustache. “What you want to do, Teague?”

Teague indicated the Urban Sniper and said to Michael, “You want to explain that cannon Arvid is holding?”

“It’s police-issue. Not available to just anyone.”

“You’re police?”

“We used to be.”

“Not around here.”

“New Orleans,” Michael said.

“Used to be — but you still have a police-only gun.”

“We’re sentimental,” Michael said.

Teague said, “Ma’am, you handle a weapon that powerful?”

“I can handle it,” Carson said. “I can handle you.”

“What kind of police were you?”

“The best. Detectives. Homicide.”

“You come right at folks, don’t you?”

“Fewer misunderstandings that way,” Carson said.

Teague said, “I have a wife like you.”

“Get on your knees and thank God for that lady every night.”

Most people weren’t as bold at eye-to-eye contact as Teague. His stare was scalpel-sharp. Carson could almost hear her stare ringing off his with a steely sound.

“What’re you doing, anyway, riding around all gunned up?” Arvid asked.

Carson glanced at Michael, he raised his eyebrows, and she decided to go with a little bit of the truth, to see how it played. “We’re on a monster hunt.”

The three cowboys were quiet, weighing her words, glancing at one another. The soft silent snow coming down, breath smoking in the cold air, the great dark trees slowly fading to white all along the street … Their quiet reaction to her strange statement suggested they had experienced something that made a monster hunt seem as reasonable as any other activity.

“What have you seen?” she asked.

To his pals, the nameless cowboy said, “They have guns. That means they must be like us. They need guns.”

“Clint’s right,” Arvid said. “Those killing machines don’t need guns. We saw what they can do without guns.”

Michael said, “Machines?”

Unlike Arvid and Clint, Teague hadn’t lowered his shotgun. “They looked like real people, but they weren’t. There was a Terminator feel to them but even weirder.”

“Space aliens,” Arvid declared.

“Worse than that,” Carson said.

“Don’t see what could be worse.”

Teague said, “Ma’am, are you telling us you know what they are?”

“We should get off the street to discuss it,” Carson suggested. “We don’t know what might come along at any time. Clint’s right — you and us, we’re on the same side.”

“Probably,” Teague said.

She indicated the house set deep in the trees and all the parked cars in the driveway, their headlights aimed in different directions. “Seems you expect to have to defend the place. The wife you mentioned — is she over there?”

“She is.”

“What’s her name?”

“Calista.”

“I bet Calista would make up her mind about Michael and me five times faster than you. She must want to kick your butt sometimes, how long you take to make up your mind.”

“I’m deliberate. She likes that.”

“She’d have to.”

They engaged in another staring contest, and after a half smile jacked up one corner of his mouth, Teague lowered his shotgun. “Okay, arm yourselves. Come with me, let’s swap information, see if we can all come out of this thing alive.”

Arvid returned the Urban Sniper.

Michael settled into the passenger seat of the Grand Cherokee as Carson climbed behind the steering wheel again. By the time she switched on the headlights, Arvid and Clint had returned to their sentry posts, vanishing into the snow and shrubbery.

She drove forward along the shoulder of the road and turned right into the driveway, following Teague, who had already walked halfway to the house.

As she parked behind the last SUV in the caravan, Carson realized there were more vehicles ahead of her than she had first thought, at least a dozen. The property was bigger than it appeared from the street. The single lane of blacktop curved past the house to a low building, perhaps a combination garage and workshop.

When she got out of the Jeep, she heard the engines of some of the other vehicles idling, those that brightened the snowy night with their headlights. Here and there, in the shadows between the cars, men stood in pairs, quiet and vigilant.

Crossing the yard to the front porch, Carson said to Teague, “Are these people your neighbors?”

“No, ma’am,” Teague said. “We belong to the same church. We were at our family social, which we hold once a month out at the roadhouse Mayor Potter owns, when these aliens — or whatever they are — attacked us. We lost three good people. No kids, though, thank the Lord.”

“What church?” Michael asked.

“Riders in the Sky Church,” Teague said as they reached the porch steps. “Our folks who died earlier — we reckon they all rode heavenly horses through the gates of Paradise tonight, but that’s not as fully consoling as it ought to be.”