“I can’t see him yet, Mom.”
“He’s back there. The road climbs and dips.”
She got in, put the car in gear, and the dashboard immediately flashed a warning telling her she’d better charge up now or risk getting stranded. She had no choice but to ignore it. She leaned forward so she could get a better view through the windshield, eased her foot off the brake, backed up a bit, and maneuvered first around the dead horses, then the trailer, and finally the truck. Once past the truck she accelerated.
She looked in her rearview mirror and saw Buzz braking at the horse massacre site. He came to a stop, got out of his truck, and went to investigate the animals. He left his headlights on and was silhouetted in their glow.
He must have seen them because he lifted his rifle and shot toward them. The back window smashed.
“Jake, get down!
Jake was already down, but he lifted the gun and fired blindly a few times out the smashed back window. She glanced in the rearview mirror again and saw Buzz running back to his truck for shelter.
Then she just concentrated on getting as far ahead of him as she could.
As the road dipped down into a gully, she saw a track leading through a fence off to her left. With her charge light blinking, she knew she didn’t have more than a mile or two left. She swung left onto the track, where she saw a stand of dead trees up ahead, her headlights illuminating their gray trunks. She felt like she was in an airplane, and that the engine had just given out and she was now gliding. She wanted to turn her headlights off because she was sure Buzz would see them in the dark; at the same time, she was afraid she might crash into a tree if she turned them off. So she kept them on…until they failed all on their own.
She swung off the track and crashed into the dead bushes, hoping to hide the car with this last desperate maneuver before her final charge ran out. Junker that it was, the car behaved abysmally, and she found herself in a small creek once the twenty-second ordeal was at an end.
“Get out of the car!” she cried.
“Where are we going?” asked Hanna.
“As far away from here as we can.”
“She’s spent?” said Jake.
“She’s spent.”
He peered over at the dashboard as if he didn’t believe her, but finally nodded in a way that was far too grown-up.
They got out of the car and she was immediately surprised by how slippery the ground was, how it seemed to seethe underfoot with a rottenness all its own, and how it sent up a smell, not quite like a dead rat festering behind a baseboard but still carrying the sweetness of putrefaction.
They struggled down the creek bank. At last they reached the edge and waded into the water—the creek seemed to be the clearest path anywhere. The sound of Buzz’s pickup got closer and closer.
She started to cry. Who was meant to take this? One of Satan’s agents was following her through Armageddon. That was more than any housewife and part-time nursing-home attendant should be expected to take. She didn’t even have her car anymore.
“Keep going straight up,” she said.
“Mom, the bottom’s slippery,” said Hanna.
“Just stay along the side.”
She glanced back toward the road and saw Buzz’s truck coming along the crumbling blacktop, bumping and rattling as it took the potholes, pink haloes forming around his headlights in the mist rising from the ground. As he reached the track, he slowed down.
She turned around. “I can’t see a thing.”
“Mom, let’s climb up here,” said Jake.
She peered into the blackness and perceived some dead brambles in the stray glow coming from Buzz’s headlights.
“Okay.”
“Mom, I’m going to shoot him.”
“You can’t shoot long-range with a handgun.”
“If he gets anywhere close, I’m going to shoot him.”
“And what will you to do if you miss? He’s got a rifle. A rifle’s more accurate than a handgun. Hanna, are you all right?”
“I can’t breathe.”
“Come up here. There’s some logs we can hide behind.”
They all climbed up onto the bank. She reached the logs. They looked like lengths of cow fence that had never been used and, to her surprise, they were dry. After all the rain, things were drying out again in the intense heat.
“Let’s get behind here.”
She got behind the logs. Jake settled in beside her. Glenda took Hanna’s arm and guided her. Hanna started coughing again.
“Hanna, just try to keep them down for the next little while.”
“Mom, I can’t…” She couldn’t finish her sentence because she started coughing again.
Jake gave his mother a glance.
Glenda shrugged. “Sweetie, just try.”
Jake took off his T-shirt, scrunched it up, and handed it to his sister. “Cough into this, Hanna. See if you can muffle them a bit.”
Hanna nodded woefully, took her brother’s T-shirt, and pressed it to her face. She struggled valiantly, managing to keep the explosions to a minimum, stopping the ragged, barking coughs that had plagued her ever since her medicine had run out, but Glenda wondered if it would be enough, especially in the dead quiet of the countryside. At least they were by a creek, and the current made a bit of noise—maybe enough to cover the sound of Hanna coughing.
Buzz turned off the road and came along the track, driving slowly, no more than two or three miles per hour. As he approached, he shone a flashlight out the driver’s-side window. Its beam was powerful, fully charged, and cut through the misty air with silvery precision, catching like bright flecks the flies that spun and whirled above the dead grass. Glenda wondered how Buzz was keeping his engine charged, but then remembered that his vehicle had a gasoline backup system. At last, his flashlight beam found her tire tracks, then the back of her car. It was funny yet awful to see the family car half in the creek like that.
Buzz turned off the track and drove toward her car through the field. Hanna coughed and coughed into Jake’s T-shirt, muting the noise. Glenda rubbed her back, trying to comfort her.
Jake peered over the logs, then started reloading the handgun.
Glenda tried to get her crying under control, but she was scared and her heart was filled with a great sorrow, not only for herself and her children, but for the man who was trying to hunt them down. How Buzz must have loved his brother. She regretted killing Maynard. Never wanted to. But what choice had he given her?
Buzz drove about halfway to the car and stopped. He got out of his truck and crouched behind the front fender for a long time, his rifle poised over the vehicle. Jake finished reloading the gun.
At last Buzz called out. “Glenda?” He obviously thought they were still in the car.
Jake’s hand tightened around the gun. Glenda reached over and rested her hand on his arm. Hanna continued her muffled coughing.
“Kids?” said Buzz.
Buzz waited another minute before he finally ran crouched over to the creek and took a position on his stomach ten yards upstream from her car. He crawled into a small hollow and disappeared from view for the next minute.
Hanna continued to cough, muffling it well. Still, could Buzz hear that? And just where the hell was he?
She couldn’t see him anywhere.
But then he sprang up on one knee, reminding her of a gopher coming out of its hole, and shot at her car, expertly pulling the bolt back after each round, expelling the spent cartridge, loading another one into the chamber, and squeezing the trigger so that he got off a shot every second or so—seven in all, emptying his magazine into the vehicle. He shot with vengeful intensity, his heated emotion guiding his actions. Each muzzle flash was a tongue of white flame. The reports echoed in the hills, and the sound of bullets clanking into her poor old car dried up Glenda’s tears immediately.