Patty, who’d gotten out behind Rebecca, picked it up. She immediately checked to see if it was ready to fire, then pointed it at Ryder.
“I got a deal for you,” Ryder said.
“Yeah?” Bell said.
“Yeah,” Ryder said, smiling as if nothing was wrong in the world.
“What is it, asshole?”
“You help us move something, and I’ll show you where there’s another Prepper cabin—one that the Senator and those crazies don’t know about.”
“What are you doing here? Why did they let you go?”
“The senator—the crazy fucker—wants Sue Ling and me to run a whorehouse for them. The New American Army, or whatever the hell it’s called, is going to need one up here in the Sierras. I told them they should use this old rich guy’s place.”
“I’ll ask you one more time, Ryder, and you’d better tell me the truth. What are you doing here?”
“I came for the gold we hid,” Ryder said. “I want to get it and split before the New American Army get here. They’re sending some Comfort Girls here, to this mansion, and some men to guard the whorehouse.”
“What gold? What are you talking about?” Bell said.
“This old fucker. He had a lot of it. We hid it here. I told them I would work the whorehouse just so Sue Ling and I could get up here and get our goods and split. The New Freedom Army is about an hour behind me. Like I said, the Senator is sending some men and a few girls they collected already. I don’t want anything to do with it. All we want is to get our gold and get the fuck out of here. I’m not working for them. Johnny Ryder works for himself. Fuck these people.”
“Is there a helicopter here, or was that all bullshit?” Bell said.
“It’s right up there.” Johnny pointed toward a barn-like garage. “I didn’t touch the thing. I’m no pilot,” Ryder said. “We don’t have much time. I told them exactly where this place was. I had to, or they wouldn’t let me come. They have some kind of drone and they followed me with it. They’ll be here soon. The drone is above us. So they know you’re here too, now.” Ryder pointed above him. An object hovered about a hundred feet above them, silent and grey.
“These are some high-tech motherfuckers,” Ryder said.
A burst of shotgun fire shattered the drone and brought it to the ground in pieces.
“Fuck them,” Rebecca said. She’d fired the AA 12 with one hand and was able to hit the drone in the moonlight.
“Is that a yes, chief?” Ryder asked.
Bell looked down the hill and saw two sets of headlights slowing on the highway below.
“Move that fucking jeep,” Bell said and lowered the empty pistol he had trained on Ryder. He got back into the limo and waited for the convoy below, watching it in the rearview mirror, as Ryder got the Land Rover pulled around and out of his way.
Bell floored the limo in reverse. He backed it down the driveway about fifty feet, then spun the wheel as hard as he could. The rear end of the limo slammed into the side of the hill. The stretch limo was now effectively blocking the driveway up to the mansion. Bell scrambled out and ran up toward the house.
* * *
Howard had carefully packed the medicines he’d collected at the doctor’s office, putting them in a cardboard box he’d found. The medicine locker in the Poole’s office had been untouched, despite the fact that the office was a wreck. Poole’s young receptionist, who had come back to check on the office, had been beaten with a chair and was lying in the waiting room, dead. Howard, sorry for the dead woman, had pulled a curtain off of a window and pulled it over her body.
Two cars had come racing through Timberline while he’d been in the doctor’s office. One had crashed trying to avoid an abandoned car and everyone inside had been killed immediately. The car’s horn was still blaring loudly. A second car, coming into town behind the first, managed to avoid the gauntlet of stopped cars. The second car, driving at high speed, had gone on toward the south end of town. Howard had seen them both pass through the office window, which had a full view of Main Street.
He stared out at the crashed car, its horn blaring loudly. He could see the dead bodies in the car. It looked like a whole family. The driver’s head had bashed the steering wheel so hard that it had engaged the horn. It had been Howard’s stopped Prius they’d failed to get around. He felt guilty. His hands had begun to shake.
He finished filling the box with the medicines he’d found and walked out of the doctor’s office and across the chaotic street toward the car that had just crashed. He laid the box in the snow and opened the driver’s-side door. A dead woman rolled out, about thirty, with short red hair. The family had hit a wooden telephone pole at sixty or seventy miles an hour. No one in the car had been wearing safety belts, probably so they could fire weapons at the Howlers.
The car, an old Dodge Dart, was full of weapons. The woman had a pistol in her clenched hand. He glanced at the backseat: at two teenage kids, their necks broken, their faces plowed brutally into the front seats when they collided with the pole. He turned away, unable to take the sight.
He looked at who he guessed was their father. The man had a box of bullets, still open and on his lap. His arms were heavily tattooed. The dead woman, her body dangling out of the car face up, had a surprised look, as if she might get up.
“My fault,” Howard said out loud. “My fault.” He was crying. “What’s happened to the world?” He yelled the words and looked around him. The street was littered with frozen bodies dusted in snow; abandoned cars, some with their doors still open; and dark storefronts. Nothing moved on the street.
He looked down at the automatic in the dead woman’s hand. He pulled the pistol from her still-warm hand and put it in the box alongside the medicines he’d collected. He heard a car’s motor from far away. The car slowly turned the corner onto Main Street. Howard recognized the old camper he’d run into at the freeway rest stop hours before. He moved away from the car with its horn still blaring and walked toward the approaching camper. It was snowing lightly. He stopped in the middle of the street, put the box on the ground in front of him and raised his hands in the air. He wasn’t sure exactly why he did that, but he did.
The camper, slowly navigating the street’s abandoned cars, finally came to a stop a few feet in front of him. The old man, Jon, was driving. Howard walked to the driver’s side window and watched Jon roll it down.
“Howard? You can put your hands down, amigo. We’re friendly.”
“Jon,” Howard said. “I’m glad to see you. I killed these people.” Howard nodded behind him at the wrecked Dodge. He had to speak loudly over the sound of the car’s blaring horn.
“Where are you going?” Jon said, looking out in front of him at the smashed car. He could see how its bumper had chipped out a big piece of wood from the pole when it struck. “Looks to me like they hit the pole, Howard.”
“Yes, but it was my fault. My car, it was in the way,” Howard said. He felt exhausted.
“They were probably speeding, Howard.”
“Yes, they were, but it’s my fault.”
The man looked down at him. He opened the camper’s door and climbed down to the street. He was carrying an automatic in a pancake holster. Jon walked toward the car and checked on the family, making sure they were dead. He popped the hood of the car and pulled the horn’s wires out. The blaring stopped. It was quiet again. Jon walked back and looked down into Howard’s box.
“What’s that?”