But, Jack thought, I’m not going anywhere yet.
He backed against another table. A massive pot sat on it. Jack glanced into it. Filled with milky water and dotted with whitish chunks on the top.
Bones, boiled down.
He grabbed an edge of the pot with his right hand, ignoring the burn, and pushed it forward, sending the bones and the slimy water crashing to the floor. The slimy soup hit the spot where the cook took his next step.
He moved forward, oblivious.
That was a mistake. Because the fat cook wobbled, and the saw flew up as he struggled for balance.
Dunphy even looked wide-eyed at the saw as if it might angle around and bite into him.
Jack—now close to a wall of knives and cleavers and saws.
But he saw something on the table that looked like a gun. A butcher’s tool, with a barrel. Sitting right there.
He picked it up just as Dunphy regained his footing.
Jack came close to the cook now, and before the man even knew what was happening, Jack pressed the bolt gun against Dunphy’s side and pulled the trigger.
It made a dull thudding sound. No bullet inside. But the fat barrel had shot something out.
When Jack pulled away, he could see the smooth hole in the cook’s chest. What the hell was it—something to kill people before Dunphy started to work on them? A quick shot to the brain, and it would be all over?
Like steer in the slaughterhouse back in the old days.
This was a human slaughterhouse.
But Jack needed the cook alive.
Jack fired another, now at Dunphy’s throat. Another smooth hole opened. Blood gushed forth. The chain saw fell from his hands, and Jack had to step back to dodge it, coughing from the smoke, the chain spinning, still running.
Dunphy fell backward. A beached whale, shooting blood out of the blow hole in his throat.
Jack went to him, crouched down.
“Where are they?”
The cook shook his head. He grabbed at his throat as if he could close the hole.
“Where the hell is my family?”
He pressed the bolt gun against the cook’s head.
Dunphy shook his head again.
But he was spraying blood like a geyser. No way he could stay alive for long.
“Tell me. Tell me, you fat fuck, or I’ll fill your head with holes.”
The cook’s mouth opened. More blood dribbled out. There was no way he could talk, Jack could see.
But the lips moved.
Once, then repeating the same word, unintelligible.
Dunphy now had two hands around his neck, attempting to stem the flow. Jack pressed the bolt gun against his head, right behind the left eye, and pulled the trigger. A dull thud.
Dunphy’s hands fell away from his throat.
Jack let the bolt gun fall from his hands.
He stood up, covered in blood from the butchering tables and cook, and—
Saw the freezer.
Dread building in him with each step, his hand shaking when he finally reached out to unlatch, and then open the freezer.
He knew what he saw there the night before.
He thought of the blood that covered him. The great boiling pan of bones.
No, he begged.
The door popped open. The frost snaked out. That made it hard to see for a moment, but then it cleared as Jack walked in.
His superheated body, sweaty, steaming from the fight, created more fog.
Now he walked down the length of the freezer.
He looked at the first body. One of the Blair kids. Then, another, a man he had never seen.
More bodies behind him.
None he recognized.
The joy—immense.
My family isn’t here.
My family is somewhere else, alive.
He turned and started out of the deep freeze.
He had to get the hell out of here. Maybe no one would come looking for a while.
Couldn’t be a place people like to come.
It’s not dark yet. I just… I just have to get the hell out of here and find my family.
Over and over. The same thought.
He moved as fast as he could to the back doors of this slaughterhouse.
38. 7:50 P.M.
Christie walked over to her two children, sitting so quietly on the bed of this small room.
She stood there, and then paced. Simon had fallen asleep as if some protective mechanism had kicked in during the day. And Kate, sweet Kate, had even put her arm around her younger brother.
Her daughter hadn’t slept, but lay in the bed, near catatonic.
The fear of the first hours had changed into this terrible expanse of waiting.
Christie would sit. But only for a few minutes before she’d have to get up.
A guard with a gun outside made sure they didn’t go anywhere.
Ed Lowe had explained it like it was some glitch that had to be fixed.
“You see, Mrs. Murphy, kids…”
Christie loathed that this man would even talk to her kids.
She imagined doing things to him… things that she had never imagined before.
“You’ll see,” Lowe had said. “Your husband will come around. Sure. You and your kids can be safe. We can use your husband. And he’ll see Paterville can be a good place for you as well.”
Christie had said nothing.
Jack would never agree to live with these people.
Were they any better than the Can Heads? Were they a new strain of monster that could pretend to be human?
Lowe had food brought to them. No one ate any.
With darkness coming, her worry grew. Where was Jack? He’d never agree to be part of this.
And when Ed Lowe figured that out, what would happen to them?
She started walking back and forth again.
Jack sat curled in bushes, waiting for darkness. No alarms. Maybe no one had been in the kitchen yet.
The dark took forever to come.
Each little bit of deepening gloom arriving torturously slow.
But while he sat there like a wounded animal, he had time to think and plan, looking at all the possibilities.
None of them good.
But one had to be selected.
He looked up at the sky, the last bit of light fading.
Now, night fallen, Jack made his way through the brambles, ignoring scratching thorn bushes and jagged branches.
He had expected someone to be at his car, guarding it.
But no.
They must have had confidence in Dunphy and how tied up Jack had been.
He crawled down to the car. This time when he opened up the back, he’d have to kill the interior light as quickly as possible. A switch on the roof. Still, it would glow for seconds. Someone could see.
He looked around, but in the gloom he couldn’t tell if anyone was watching.
Nothing to do but take a breath and open the door.
He unlocked a back door and as fast as possible he slid in and reached up to the ceiling switch. Bright light filled the Explorer’s cabin. And then it went dark.
A moment, waiting.
He shut the door quietly and moved to the back. He opened the rear door. Lifted the rug of the luggage area. Fiddled to get the key into the hole. Opened it. So practiced with that move by now.
No light, so he had to feel, pulling out his other guns—a .44, a Glock. His rifle was gone. Nothing he could do about that. He filled his pockets with shells, making them bulge.
No holster, so he stuck the .44 under the front of his belt, the Glock under his belt at the back.