At first he thought that the cattle fidgeted and lowed strangely because they were tethered. Then the night was suddenly in motion out there, figures crouching, darting forward from all angles. Jesus, this was going to be much better than he'd hoped.
He waited until he couldn't tolerate it any longer, until the cattle were sprawled on the ground and bellowing with madness. When he pushed the plunger, night turned into roaring day. A circle of tall flames entrapped the figures. He shot repeatedly. Through the whooshing flames, he couldn't see his targets precisely, only fire-enshrouded movement.
He kept shooting. Abruptly he was out of bullets, and he frantically reloaded. Laughing, he shot again. His shoulder ached from so many recoils. He shot and shot. He heard the screams. He smelled the burning flesh amid the roaring circle of flames. He shot, reloaded, and shot again, laughing.
The fire diminished. He scanned the mounds of lifeless bodies and continued shooting at them. Then his rifle clicked on empty, and he fumbled in his pocket for more cartridges. Finding none, he tried the other pocket, but that was empty as well, and then he heard a noise below him. Staring down, he saw a figure. No, several of them, clawing at the tree trunk. In the brilliance of the moon, the dying flames around the charnel mound, he heard them climbing, their bearded faces looming toward him, and he kicked. He jabbed with his rifle as hands reached up to grab him. He was screaming.
EIGHT
Five men in the cells downstairs, two other men with rifles watching them. The guards were leaned back in their chairs against the wall. There was a desk, a door that led out to the stairs up to the main floor, and a second door that led through to the tunnel toward the courthouse. That way prisoners could be escorted to the judge without their ever going outside, and the tunnel was both dank and fetid, odors that came underneath the bottom of the second door and filled the cell room. Slaughter had been down here only when he was required. Certainly he'd never been a prisoner, and he was understanding the humiliation, vowing that he'd make things better if he ever got the chance, although that didn't seem too likely. He was finished in this town. He knew that. Parsons had been much too clever for him. He was sickened, and the damp oppressiveness around him didn't help things.
He at least had gotten some sleep. At first he had been anxious, pacing back and forth across his cell. He'd even tried to reason with the guards, but they just looked at him and didn't answer, and his friends who were imprisoned with him, when the arguments had lagged, exchanged diminishing complaints, then gave up, sprawling in defeat across their bunks and finally were silent. Slaughter gave up with them. In his weariness, he slept.
The cells were in a row, five units with a prisoner per unit.
Lucas, who had come back after all these years to see his father, only to discover that the wheel of time had swung around to trap him. He had stayed a prisoner down here when he had testified against his father at the trial. The prosecution had been worried that he'd flee town before telling the jury about his father's temper, so he'd been jailed for what was jokingly described as his protection. He had thought he'd never come back, but his dying mother had been forceful. She'd wanted him to claim the birthright she had worked so hard for. Plus, he intended to make amends. He knew that he'd been wrong, that if he'd told the truth about the compound there was every chance his father wouldn't have been punished. He had stolen two years from his father. With the passage of too many seasons, hate had turned to pity, and with one remaining parent, he was determined not to lose the father he'd never had. He wanted to get to the ranch, to make peace with his father, to warn him, to see if he needed…
The medical examiner, who was puzzled how he'd let himself become committed to this. All his life, he'd tried to keep a distance from other people, and now he was close to being prosecuted for his rare social behavior. If only he'd persisted in his concentration on the dead and not the living. Yesterday when he had found the virus-ridden dog, he should have phoned the police station and been done with it. Instead he had become involved, and now he surely would be forced to…
Owens, who was worried about his family waiting for him. He'd been denied a chance to call them, and he wished that he had left the office upstairs when he said that he was going. But he'd stayed for stupid reasons, loyalty to people other than his family, to this group of men who'd said that they had need of him when his first duty was toward home. Now he would maybe face a jury because Slaughter and the medical examiner persuaded him that they all would lie about the boy's death. What had he been thinking of? What power did these men have over him? Did he want that much for them to like him? He'd be punished for protecting people whom he had no obligation to, and he was wishing now that with his family he had fled to some new place beyond the…
Dunlap, who a while ago had dreamed about that antlered figure, turning, staring past its shoulder at him. He had never dreamed it with such vividness, as if each visitation were more real, more clear until he'd wake up one last time and see it there before him. But it wasn't in his cell when he awakened. Just the memory of what had happened, and beyond the bars the two guards who leaned, chairs against the wall, and held their rifles. He was sweating from the dream and from the absence of the alcohol that gave him strength. His hands shook as they had all day and yesterday, and he was thinking that if he could only have a drink his troubles wouldn't be so fierce and he'd be able to handle this. But in a way he was delighted. In his agony he at last had gotten his story, and if Parsons thought that his imprisonment would keep him from the truth about this, Parsons didn't know how good this loser once had been, although he was not a loser any longer. He would find the truth and neutralize the nightmare and save himself. He clutched at every instant, wondering what…
Slaughter, who was thinking of five years ago and old Doc Markle and the secret they had shared. Slaughter was a coward. If the others had their secrets, that was Slaughter's own grand secret. He had walked too many darkened- alleys in Detroit. He'd faced too many unlocked doors and silent buildings. He'd chased too many unseen figures.
The grocery store. A February snowstorm. At midnight, Slaughter had finally completed his shift. It had been exhausting, the fierce weather making people feel on edge, causing him to be sent on more assignments than usual, mostly to settle violent domestic disputes and drunken arguments in bars. While doing his best to drive home without having an accident on the slippery streets, Slaughter had suddenly remembered that his wife had left a phone message at the precinct for him to pick up some milk, bread, breakfast cereal, and orange juice. The schools were closed, and his wife hadn't been able to leave the apartment to do her weekly shopping because she was busy taking care of their nine-year-old twins.
He'd skidded around a drift and glimpsed the snow-obscured glow of an all-night convenience store. Braking, fishtailing to a stop, he'd quickly left the car and entered the store, where he'd been surprised to find two boys in their early teens standing behind the counter, one of them munching potato chips while the other pocketed money from the cash register. The next thing he'd noticed were the legs of a man, presumably the clerk, projecting from the side of the counter, a pool of blood spreading around them on the floor.
His chest cramping, Slaughter had fumbled to unbutton his overcoat and grab his revolver, but the kid eating potato chips calmly dropped the bag and raised a shotgun, his eyes expressionless when he pulled the trigger. Slaughter had groaned from the blast's impact against his stomach. The stunning force had lifted him off his feet, thrown him past a rack of magazines, and hurtled him backward through the store's front window. Hearing glass shatter, he'd walloped onto the snow-covered sidewalk, in agony, unbearably cold, but worse than that, paralyzed from shock. No matter how hard he had strained to reach for his revolver, his arms refused to move. Snow lanced at his face, and he kept struggling, but he was powerless. Jesus! His hands felt like slabs of wood. Steaming blood gushed from the wound in his stomach, snow landing on it and turning red.