She had to know it too. Otherwise why was she coming back here? Had to be scared, seeing what she’d seen. He understood that. A sheltered girl like her, all she knew was the home her granny had made for her, that retard boy they’d taken in, the mongrel that ran in the yard. Her granny didn’t let her talk to the Morries, and that was good and right. The few times Rattler had seen one of the Morrie boys talk to her, he’d made sure it was the last time. He might not have been the most involved father, but a girl didn’t need that, anyway. She needed a dad who looked out for her, who knew what was right and what was wrong. Rattler did the right thing when it was important. He kept the boys away. He would make sure that when the time came, it was a pureblood boy who came to call, and no other.
She must have known that. Because where, after everything that had happened to her, was she coming to find safety? Back here to Gypsum. Oh, Rattler didn’t have any illusions that she was coming to him. She had in mind to come see a girlfriend maybe, a favorite teacher. Who knew with girls? They were delicate things, emotional things. Hell, he thought ruefully, rubbing the socket around his scarred eye, they could be quick and unpredictable, and a man had to be on his toes around them.
But now she was on her way back. Rattler had seen it with his blind and spinning eye that morning as he’d lain in bed: he’d seen the car, the girl, the boy, the Exxon sign lit up in the sky above them.
Derek took a dispirited swig from his tarnished flask and returned it to his pocket. He didn’t bother offering it to Rattler. Everyone knew Rattler didn’t drink. He never had, even when they were kids, Rattler and Derek and Armand and the rest of them skipping class to smoke behind the Elks lodge. Even then Rattler knew drink was poison; it was what had led so many of their fathers away from the Banished. Drink made them lazy, distracted them, and then they married outside; they sired their bastard broods and drank and did drugs and pissed away their pride and their birthright.
No more.
“If they was comin’, they’d be here by now,” Derek said, a little more loudly, disgust in his phlegmy voice. The liquor gave him courage, a cheap and deceptive kind of courage, but one that had to be dealt with all the same. True, the man had let Rattler take over the old house on his dead pappy’s land, and Rattler owed him for that, maybe, though a man who’d live in his mother’s trailer instead of cleaning up the mess his own father had left behind wasn’t much of a man in Rattler’s book. But Rattler had taken something from Derek, and he would remember that when it came time for splitting up the spoils. Derek would be taken care of.
That was the future. Now was now.
Rattler moved fast. His hand shot out and seized Derek’s ear and twisted it, and as Derek squirmed and mewled like a puppy, Rattler twisted harder and forced Derek’s head around so he would have to look across the field to where night was etching a layer of purple-black on the fading glow where earth met sky.
“Guess you don’t know nothing,” Rattler said softly as an old brown sedan pulled slowly off the road and came to rest a few feet shy of the cattle guard.
16
HOW COULD WE HAVE SLEPT?
I woke with my head resting against the cold glass of the passenger window, the night thick and black on the ground, only Kaz’s outline visible as he slept next to me. I had been dreaming something awful, something disturbing enough to wake me: I’d been back in the locked room in the lab, fire raging behind me, the zombies rising from their chairs, staring at me with their unblinking eyes, their rotting, impassive faces and coming at me. Their feet on the floor clacked and slapped, a rhythmic sound as they came closer and closer and-
But the sound, the clacking, did not stop, even though I was awake. It was in my ear, on the glass, and I jerked away from it, too late seeing that there was something, someone, out there, silhouetted against the star-dotted sky. I grabbed Kaz’s arm and yanked it hard, trying to force his name from my lips. But fear had stolen my voice.
“What is it?” Kaz woke instantly. “Hailey? What’s going on?”
“Outside,” I managed to croak, and then I gasped, because there was another figure on his side of the car, this one thin and stooping. Then a brilliant beam of light shone in our faces, blinding me.
“Open up.” It was a rasping gravel voice thick with the drawl of Trashtown. My father’s voice.
“Rattler,” I whispered, clutching Kaz’s arm harder. As if to confirm the thought, the tapping resumed, gently now, but the light shone pointedly on the barrel of a gun, the thing Rattler had been using to tap the glass. And it was pointed at me.
“Come on now, Hailey-girl,” Rattler crooned, almost a singsong. “Come on outta there. We’re goin’ for a drive.”
“He won’t shoot me,” I said. But he would shoot Kaz without a second thought.
Kaz knew it too, because I could see him hesitating, reaching for the keys dangling in the ignition, trying to figure out whether he could get the car in motion before Rattler took a shot.
The grinning figure on the other side, leering through the window, seemed to make up Kaz’s mind. Slowly, he took his hand off the keys.
Rattler had known we were coming.
He and Kaz, both Seers, were plagued with visions of the things that stirred them most, the things that they held dearest or that threatened the greatest harm. That was how it always worked. Kaz had seen the Quadrillon sign because Chub was there. Rattler, though, cared most about Prairie. I lowered the window a crack. “She’s not with us, you know.”
Rattler’s expression didn’t so much change as drive over a speed bump. For a flash of a second, it was shot through with anguish and even worry, something I’d never seen on his face before. “I know it,” he muttered. “Now get out.”
Kaz reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze, and then we both got out. My mind raced, looking for ways to fight back, to escape, but Rattler seized my arm roughly and guided me toward Kaz and the other man. Rattler was much stronger than me, and the other man held a gun loosely at the small of Kaz’s back as they headed for the road. A car drove past in a blur of headlights and spun gravel; the people inside probably didn’t even see us walking along the ditch beside the road, and even if someone stopped and inquired whether everything was all right, I was sure Rattler had a reply at the ready. Help wouldn’t come in that form.
We walked toward the lights of the gas station and fast-food restaurants ahead, not even a quarter of a mile away. I shook my head in disgust as we came within fifty yards of the giant Exxon sign: choosing to stop here in the shadow of this sign was like sending Rattler a postcard inviting him to come find us.
I’d made another rookie mistake. I kept pretending that I could stay a step ahead of all the dangers that surrounded us, and I kept failing. First I’d led the General’s men straight to us. And now Rattler. I couldn’t keep letting things like this happen. I had to be sharper, think faster.
At the edge of the Long John Silver’s parking lot was a big old sedan sagging on its wheels, and Rattler and the other man led us to it. In the parking lot’s bright lights, I got a better look at the man and realized I knew him; he had been one of Gram’s regulars. Derek Pollitt. He’d been one of the quieter ones, never putting a hand on me or even joking with me, and for that I was grateful. He opened the passenger door for Kaz and then got in the driver’s seat.
Rattler opened my door, but before he released my arm, he stood looking into my face. It was the first good look I’d had of the eye I’d stabbed, and it was a transfixing sight. The skin below the eye was rimmed with a red ragged scar. The eyeball was milky and pale, and it seemed to spin as Rattler stared at me, but surely that was an illusion.