"If somebody else gets through, it wouldn't matter how fast we pulled out. Containment. That's what it's all about now."
Silence for a long moment, then the sound of a throat clearing. "It wasn't supposed to go down like this."
"It never is. And then the wild card shows up. Anybody with half a brain would have turned around at that roadblock instead of crashing through it."
"I heard their kid was in here, Durham. What if there are other people out there like that? People who weren't here when everything went to hell, on their way back home right now? Then what?"
"You know damn well what. We follow orders, just like Zacher and Harris did. Look at it this way, Pearson. Everyone they knew is dead anyway. Not a lot to come home to. Bottom line, anybody gets into this town, they don't get out, fucking period, end of story."
And there it was, Sharon thought, as clear as new glass. The man and woman in the pickup had not been terrorists, drug runners, foreign agents, or any of the other things her mind had been buzzing through, searching for something that might explain, if not justify, being gunned down by American soldiers. They'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Just like we are.
"Goddamnit, Durham, this is a fucking nightmare. Somebody's going to find out."
"Not if we do our job."
Right next to her, Sharon heard Annie take a soft breath. And then a plump hand moved a fraction of an inch in the darkness beneath the greenery, and a rainbow fingernail touched her hand. It startled her at first. She'd never seen Annie touch anyone. For the first time in nearly twenty years, she felt a sharp sting behind her eyes. She'd been alone for a very long time.
On Sharon's other side, Grace had rested her forehead on the tops of her hands, eyes closed.Too close, she was thinking.Too damn close. They'd almost walked into those soldiers, and it was her fault. She had been in the lead and she'd almost gotten them all killed. She put the guilt away, back in the place where she carried all the guilt for so many other things, and began to inch backward on her belly, deeper into the woods, farther away from the path. She moved very slowly, careful not to disturb the fronds overhead, because there could be no more mistakes. After several minutes of this painstaking, backward belly crawl, they were deep enough into the cover of the trees to rise to their hands and knees and begin the agonizingly slow, silent crawl away from the soldiers, away from freedom, back toward the town.
After what seemed like a very long time, they reached the edge of the woods behind Four Corners and lay abreast in the cover of a thicket of young locust trees.
Grace examined the strip of lawn that lay between them and the frame house behind Hazel's Cafe, then looked carefully in every direction, focusing longer on the shadows behind them. Those men in the woods had been so hard to see until they were almost on top of them. There could be a dozen of them within spitting distance and she wouldn't know it.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, forcing herself to clear her mind and concentrate only on the needs of the moment, and what they needed at the moment was a place to hide, a relatively safe place where they could consider all they'd seen and heard and decide what to do next.
Her gaze fixed on the storm-cellar door that slanted up to the foundation of the frame house. In front of the door was a bare patch of grass, indicating frequent use-maybe it was unlocked, too, like everything else in this town.
Grace looked over at Sharon and Annie, held up one finger that told them to stay put, then sprang away, darting across the grass, grasping the handle of the heavy wooden door and heaving it upward. The hinges moved easily in their oiled casings. She laid the door to rest on a concrete block obviously placed for that purpose, then looked down a short, steep flight of concrete steps. There was another wooden door at the bottom. Without a moment's thought to what she would do if there was someone behind that door, she scrambled down the steps, turned the old metal knob, and pushed inward.
A wall of cool, dank air rushed past her like a chilly ghost anxious to warm up. Goose bumps rose on her arms, as much from the temperature change as from anything lurking within. Her hand closed tighter on the sweat-slicked grip of her Sig as she let her eyes adjust to the gloomy space, barely illuminated by the thin, brownish light that filtered in through window wells near the ceiling. Sweating rock walls shored up the foundation, and rough-hewn uprights marched across a packed earth floor. Stacks of cardboard boxes with sides bowed and sagging from the damp climbed around some of the posts like moldy pyramids.
Grace moved silently through the clutter, zeroing in on every shadow that had the potential to conceal, then hurried back up the concrete steps to wave Sharon and Annie in. She watched as the two women crossed the lawn in the kind of fearful, crouching run you saw in war movies, not in real life.
Once they all were safely inside and the doors were closed behind them, Annie made a beeline for an old, four-legged concrete sink-to get a drink, wash her hands, rinse out her dress, who knew with Annie-but Grace grabbed her arm and pointed silently toward the ceiling. Even turning on a faucet wouldn't be safe if there was someone upstairs.
She moved to the flight of open wooden steps leading up a dark passage to the first floor, Sharon and Annie right behind her. At the top, she stopped and pressed her ear to the door, holding her breath, listening for a long time before turning the knob.
The door opened onto a central hallway that bisected the house from front to back. To their right was the front door that Grace had peered through earlier from the other side, when she'd been standing on the stoop, wondering who on earth would cut all the phone lines in this little nowhere town.
They moved soundlessly through the house in a stealthy, tiptoe exploration, stopping briefly at the open, double-hung windows in the living room to look and listen. There were no sounds coming from the street anymore, and that in itself was chilling. There should be noise after a slaughter, Grace thought-the wail of sirens and people to mark the terrible occasion. And yet there was nothing.
In the kitchen, at least, they found evidence that someone actually lived in this town-there was an unopened package of four pork chops floating in a bowl in the sink. The three women raised their heads from the sink and looked around, more wary than ever that this abnormally deserted town had been normal not so long ago, populated by normal people who took pork chops out to thaw for supper.
The bedroom and bath belonged to an older woman, filled with a lifetime of knickknacks, crocheted doilies, and bizarrely, an old stuffed animal propped carefully against the pillows on the bed. Grace imagined a carnival game fifty years past and an aging woman's memories of a lanky boy and better times. The pervasive, sickly-sweet smell of cheap perfume that's been in the bottle too long lingered in the stifling air.
Sharon sat on the bed and reached halfheartedly for the phone on the nightstand. She knew it wouldn't work. It was just something you did. "You heard them," she said, putting down the useless phone. "They're all dead. Everybody who lived in this town. The woman who lived in this house."
Grace and Annie just looked at her. Well, yes, that was probably true, but that didn't mean there was any reason to just blurt it out like that.
"And they're not soldiers. Our soldiers do not kill civilians. They do not shoot down people in the street."
Grace didn't think it was necessary to remind her that such unthinkable things had indeed happened, in this country and others. Sharon knew that as well as any American. But good soldiers and good cops had a bond and common purpose that Grace had never experienced. She'd been on the other side too long, glimpsing it only through Magozzi's eyes. And Annie didn't bother herself with such trifles, never trusted a man inside or outside of a uniform, as far as Grace knew.