Ryan led them at a brisk pace, with the Armorer at the rear constantly checking that they weren’t being followed. Here the streets were narrower, with older properties built on either side. Most had rickety mailboxes, many still showing the dragon’s-head logo of the West Lowellton Comet and Advertiser . Off the main drag they saw more sun-bleached bones scattered here and there. On a wooden porch several skeletons were jumbled together as if a family had chosen to die together.
The sun shone through the long branches of the whitebeam trees that lined the dappled suburban streets. Intermittently they came upon the rotting remnants of automobiles, their tires long gone, settled on their hubs. They were overwhelmed by the visible tragedy of the Big Chill of 2001. It wasn’t like just reading about it, or hearing from some old tapes. This was now and this was real.
The Holiday Inn stood on a slight mound in the center of a maze of small waterways. Some had silted up; some had dried to lush valleys of moss; some still flowed with gurgling muddy water, The motel itself was a sprawling single-story structure, originally painted white and built with central pillars and columns in the American Colonial style, On its western flank a tall sycamore had died and fallen, breaking three windows. The flowering shrubs that once bad been carefully tended now ran wild, with azaleas and bougainvillea rampant, clear across the circular drive and parking spaces, flooding into the railed swimming pool with its turquoise slide. The permanently green Astroturf was covered with lichen.
The six of them stood and stared. Finn spat onto the dusty road, then started and peered down by his boots. “Fucking tracks, Ryan.”
Ryan mentally cursed himself for being so careless. He’d been so interested in seeing this motel, preserved like a fly trapped forever in yellow amber, that he’d been ignoring basic safety. Like keeping his eyes open.
Finnegan was correct. The thick dust on the blacktop was overlaid with the familiar tracks of the swampwags. He knelt down to run his fingers lightly over the marks, then, stood and scrutinized them from a different angle. He walked a few paces toward the imposing bulk of the motel, looking back at the tracks.
“They all turned here, J.B.,” he said. “They come this far, then they go right around and head back toward the main part of the vile.”
“Yeah. I read it that way.”
“Mebbe this Holiday Inn place marks the edge of Baron Tourment’s secure territory.”
Ryan looked at Krysty. “Could be, lover. This gang runs part of West Lowellton. This baron maybe hasn’t enough sec men to come clear out the nest of rats.” That made sense.
They could imagine no other reason why the tire tracks should stop so abruptly about a hundred paces before the tangled skein of waterways and narrow bridges that circled the building.
From the south came the sullen rumbling of thunder. A deep purple cloud moved menacingly along the southern fringe of the sky, its upper edge touched with vermilion.
“Nuke storm on the way,” said Finn.
“No,” said Doc.
“What?”
“Not a nuke storm. I spent a summer here, way back in my mind sort of trembles when I try and recall dates and places. I spent a vacation with Emily Was that her name? Emily?”
Only once since Ryan Cawdor had met Doc Tanner had the old man mentioned Emily. It was just another ill-shaped piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the man’s mysterious past.
“Go on, Doc,” urged Lori. “Please.”
“It was out near Baton Rouge. Rained, so we got busted flat, roads turned to rivers. Dark at noon, so’s you couldn’t see a hand before your face. Lord, but that was a time. Emily cried on my shoulder, and she lost her kerchief that day. Lace-trimmed. Sky like this. But there was a pool of clear gold light, straight over our headswe saw it. Looking up, like a road to the throne of the Lord Himself. Emily wasn’t much on religion. She seen an eagle in that light.”
The voice was fading, as it often, did during Doc’s recollections. This one had gone on longer than most. Ryan prompted him gently.