Aronson was silent for a moment, allowing more screams and reports of debauchery to reach them from South Cottonwood Street.
"This is intolerable," he said at last in a weak, broken voice.
Miguel nodded in the dark.
"Yes. We should withdraw for now, back to the meeting place. I can return and watch the agents' camp by myself. It might be better, anyway. I need to move around them, and I want to scout out the field where they have left the cattle. We must find out how many of them are on guard there, and I can do that without being caught. Probably. You, probably not. Let us go, then."
Without allowing the poor man another second to think about it, Miguel was up, drawing the Mormon to his feet and exiting the overgrown lot where they had been conducting their surveillance. The agents had set themselves up in a poor area of town, southwest of the main business center. Miguel could see that even before the Wave it would have been home to the poorer folk of Crockett. Many of the houses that still stood looked small and mean, especially on the western side of Cottonwood Street, where remnant forest still covered the hills and fields. A good deal of refuse and rusted machinery lay where it had been abandoned in gardens and driveways long before the inhabitants had Disappeared, but unlike the town center and some of the more affluent neighborhoods, the area had not been ravaged so completely by fire and looters. To judge from the scenes he had just witnessed, the Hy Top Club had not been relieved of its liquor supply in the years since the Wave had swept away its clientele.
He pondered that.
Perhaps one of the road agents was a fortunate local, someone who had been out of the country in 2003. Perhaps with the army in Iraq. If so, he could have led his comrades here after they had attacked Aronson's people. In the post-Wave world a little local knowledge could be a very precious resource.
The two men retreated carefully through the darkness. This far from the club, with so much scrubland in the way, not much light made it through from the burning oil drums, but the stars burned with cold brilliance high above and a half moon laid an opalescent glow over the ruins of the town, allowing them to pick their way through. They took it slowly, retracing their steps of an hour before, finally emerging into a small open area where the surrounding forest of hickory, elm, and sweetgum gave way to knee-high grass and a few thin saplings. In twenty years, thought Miguel, it would all be forest again.
Aronson whistled, a trilling call like a night bird, and five silhouettes arose from the grass in front of them. Miguel was impressed. Had he not known the Mormons were secreted in the little glade, he would not have spotted them unless he was especially alert. They had even taken care not to tamp down the grass, leaving a telltale path as they walked over it. He recognized the outline of Willem D'Age as the man spoke in a low, anxious voice.
"What have you seen, Brother Aronson? Are our women alive? Are they well?"
"They are alive, for now," Miguel said, before the other man could set off a panic among his fellows or tell D'Age anything that might tip him over the edge into a righteous fury. "And they will stay that way if we keep our heads about us. Gather around."
The group clustered around the returned scouts. Miguel deferred to Aronson, who delivered a competent report of what they had seen on the edge of town. He managed to contain his obvious distress about their women and shaded the details to spare his comrades. Nonetheless, they could not help themselves.
"So these animals, they have taken the women as chattels?" D'Age asked.
"They treat them very roughly, brother," said Aronson.
"Then we should go now and release them from this veil," another voice piped up. "We shall lay the Lord's vengeance on them for their trespasses."
The speaker was young, and Miguel recognized him as one of the boys, Orin. He was waving around a military assault weapon, and Miguel could tell even in the starlight that every line in his body was tensed and quivering like a bow drawn too far and held too long. He reached over and placed his hand over the boy's where it gripped the front end of the rifle.
"Boy," he said quietly but with great firmness, "this is no game. We shall kill these men tonight. Or they shall kill us. It is not play. Put your weapon away until it is needed. Until blood is the only outcome…"
Miguel hoisted his own rifle, his much-loved Winchester, and held it in front of the boy.
"I have leveled this gun at five men. They are all dead now. Do you understand? Do not wave your weapon around. It is not a toy."
Not only the overexcited lad fell still, but all the men around him.
"Good," said Miguel. "Then we can prepare." Miguel heard the lowing of the cattle, well before the stench of the animals reached him, and then the wind changed and the familiar bovine reek was in his nostrils, at the back of his throat, everywhere, thick as fresh shit on the heel of a new boot. He smiled thinly. He did not imagine for a moment that the road agents guarding the stolen livestock would be savvy enough to detect his particular smell on the night breeze. To get stuck with a job like this when there was a party to be had, they would be the bottom feeders of the crew, the new recruits with nothing to leverage. Still, he would pay them the heed due to men who would kill without a qualm, given the chance.
That was why they would never get the chance.
Two hours he had been watching them as they made their rounds of the football field that butted up against the big loop road that swung around the southwestern reaches of the town. The sporting field was fenced, and the fence line had not deteriorated too badly in three years without maintenance, providing the agents with a convenient area to pen their newly stolen herd within a reasonable distance of the Hy Top Club. It was, he estimated, no more than a ten-minute walk through the darkness, depending on whether you risked turning an ankle or even breaking a leg by cutting across the overgrown gardens that lay in between.
The sounds of revelry had died away in the last twenty minutes. No more music or laughter drifted through the newly grown forest that was quickly reclaiming the outskirts of Crockett. The occasional scream did so, however, and Miguel could only hope that the Mormons would be able to contain themselves until the moment was right. Before they could move on the main body of the agents, he had to dispose of these two quietly. Even two men, well armed, arriving at the wrong moment could be enough to turn the tide against them.
Miguel settled himself against the rough, sticky trunk of a pine tree and brought the night vision goggles up to his eyes again. There were two of them, both young, as he had thought. One was taller, however, and, unusually for these times, quite fat. A prodigious belly spilled over his belt buckle, and as Miguel watched, he appeared to be shoving some sort of long bread roll into his face. They were both dressed in a ridiculous mishmash of Hollywood outfits he would have thought of as cowboy biker: jeans with chaps, buckskin shirts, studded black leather vests, and wide-brimmed hats. The shorter and thinner of the two was also wrapped in what looked like a full-length black leather coat. They each carried pistols in hip holsters, but Miguel assumed they were modern semiautomatics, not revolvers. They were for show at any rate, because each was also armed with an assault rifle. Some sort of M16 variants if he was not wrong.
The smaller one was smoking and occasionally drinking from a flask he would take from inside his full-length coat. That was good, the vaquero thought. Drink up, my little friend. Drink up. They shivered and stomped around a small campfire they'd lit near the northern end of the running track that ran around the football field.
Or did they call it a gridiron field here? he wondered. True football was a game played with a round ball between civilized people.