Now the matter was simple. Now it was just the infected versus the immune.
The desk was hit and slammed against the wall. The door fell on top of Cambry, and before he could get up, people were running over the door, squashing him. He felt like a cowboy who has fallen off his horse during a stampede. I’m going to die under here, he thought, and then for a moment the murderous pressure was gone. He lunged to his knees, driving with adrenaline-loaded muscles, and the door slid off him to the left, saying goodbye with a vicious dig of the doorknob into his hip. Someone dealt him a passing kick in the ribcage, another boot scraped by his right ear, and then he was up. The room was thick with smoke, crazy with shouts and screams. Four or five bulky hunters were propelled into the woodstove, which tore free of its pipe and went crashing over on its side, spilling flaming chunks of maple onto the floor. Money and playing cards caught fire. There was the rancid smell of melting plastic poker chips. Those were Ray’s, Cambry thought incoherently. He had them in the Gu!f. Bosnia, too.
He stood ignored in the confusion. There was no need for the escaping internees to use the door between the office and the store; the entire wall-no more than a flimsy partition, really
–had been smashed flat. Pieces of this stuff were also catching fire from the overturned stove.
“Now,” Gene Cambry muttered. “Now.” He saw Ray Parsons running with the others toward the front of the store, Howie Everett at his heels. Howie snatched a loaf of bread as he ran down the center aisle.
A scrawny old party in a tassled cap and an overcoat was pushed forward onto the overturned stove, then stomped flat. Cambry heard his high-pitched, squealing screams as his face bonded to the metal and then began to boil.
Heard it and felt it.
“Now!” Cambry shouted, giving in and joining the others. “Now!”
He broad-jumped the growing flames from the stove and ran, losing his little mind in the big one.
For all practical purposes, Operation Blue Boy was over.
11
Three quarters of the way across the paddock, Henry paused, gasping for breath and clutching at his hammering chest. Behind him was the pocket armageddon he had unleashed; ahead of him he could see nothing but darkness. Fucking Underhill had run out on him, had-
Easy, beautiful-easy.
Lights flashed out twice. Henry had been looking in the wrong place, that was all; Owen was parked a little to the left of the paddock’s southwest comer. Now Henry could see the Sno-Cat’s boxy outline clearly. From behind him came screams, shouts, orders, shooting. Not as much shooting as he would have expected, but this was no time to wonder why.
Hurry up! Owen cried. We have to get out of here!
I’m coming as fast as I can-hold on.
Henry got moving again. Whatever had been in Owen’s kickstart pills was already wearing off, and his feet felt heavy. His thigh itched maddeningly, and so did his mouth. He could feel the stuff creeping over his tongue. It was like a soft-drink fizz that wouldn’t go away.
Owen had cut the fence-both the barbed wire and the smooth. Now he stood in front of the Sno-Cat (it was white to match the snow, and it was really no wonder Henry hadn’t seen it) with an automatic rifle propped against his hip, attempting to look everywhere at once. The multiple lights gave him half a dozen shadows; they radiated out from his boots like crazy clock-hands.
Owen grabbed Henry around the shoulders. You okay?
Henry nodded. As Owen began to pull him toward the Sno-Cat, there was a loud, high-pitched explosion, as if someone had just fired the world’s largest carbine. Henry ducked, stumbled over his own feet, and would have fallen if Owen hadn’t held him up.
What-?
LP gas. Gasoline, too, maybe. Look.
Owen took him by the shoulders and turned him around. Henry saw a vast pillar of fire in the snowy Might. Bits of the store-boards, shingles, flaming boxes of Cheerios, burning rolls of toilet paper-rose into the sky. Some of the soldiers were watching this, mesmerized. Others were running for the woods. In pursuit of the prisoners, Henry assumed, although he was hearing their panic in his head-Run! Run! Now! Now!-and simply could not credit it. Later, when he had time to think, he would understand that many of the soldiers were also fleeing. Now he understood nothing. Things were happening too fast.
Owen turned him around again and boosted him into the Sno-Cat’s passenger seat, pushing him past a hanging canvas flap that smelled strongly of motor oil. It was blessedly warm in the “Cat’s cab. A radio bolted to the rudimentary dashboard chattered and squawked. The only thing Henry could make out clearly was the panic in the voices. It made him savagely happy-happier than he’d been since the afternoon the four of them had put the fear of God into Richie Grenadeau and his bullyrag buddies. And that’s who was running this operation, as far as Henry could see: a bunch of grownup Richie Grenadeaus, armed with guns instead of dried-up pieces of dogshit.
There was something between the seats, a box with two blinking amber lights. As Henry bent over it, curious, Owen Underhill snatched back the tarp hanging beside the driver’s seat and flung himself into the “Cat. He was breathing hard and smiling as he looked at the burning store.
“Be careful of that, brother,” he said. “Mind the buttons.” Henry lifted the box, which was about the size of Duddits’s beloved Scooby-Doo lunchbox. The buttons of which Owen had spoken were under the blinking lights. “What are they?”
Owen turned the ignition key and the Sno-Cat’s hot engine rumbled into immediate life. The transmission ran off a high stick, which Owen jammed into gear. Owen was still smiling. In the bright light falling through the Sno-Cat’s windshield, Henry could now see a reddish-orange thread of byrus growing beneath each of the man’s eyes, like mascara. There was more in his brows.
“Too much light in this place,” he said. “We’re gonna dial em down a little.” He turned the “Cat in a surprisingly smooth circle; it was like being on a motorboat. Henry collapsed back against the seat, holding the box with the blinking lights on his lap. He felt that if he didn’t walk again for five years, that would be about right.
Owen glanced at him as he drove the Sno-Cat on a diagonal toward the snowbank-enclosed ditch that was the Swanny Pond Road. “You did it,” he said. “I doubted that you could, I freely admit it, but you pulled the fucker off.”
“I told you-I’m a motivational master.” Besides, he sent, most of them really are going to die anyway.
Doesn’t matter. You gave them a chance. And now-
There was more shooting, but it wasn’t until a bullet whined off the metal just above their heads that Henry realized it was aimed at them. There was a brisk clank as another slug ricocheted off one of the Sno-Cat’s treads and Henry ducked… as if that would do any good.
Still smiling, Owen pointed a gloved hand off to his right. Henry peered in that direction as two more slugs ricocheted off the “Cat’s squat pillbox body. Henry cringed both times; Owen seemed not even to notice.
Henry saw a cluster of trailer-boxes, some with brand names like Sysco and Scott Paper on them. In front of the trailers was a colony of motor homes, and in front of the biggest, a Winnebago that looked to Henry like a mansion on wheels, were six or seven men, all firing at the Sno-Cat. Although the range was long, the wind high, and the snow still heavy, too many were hitting. Other men, some only partially dressed (one bruiser came sprinting through the snow displaying a bare chest that would have looked at home on a comic-book superhero) were Joining the group. At its center stood a tall man with gray hair. Beside him was a stockier guy. As Henry watched, the skinny man raised his rifle and fired, seemingly without bothering to aim. There was a spanng sound and Henry sensed something pass right in front of his nose, a small wicked droning thing.
Owen actually laughed. “The skinny one with the gray hair is Kurtz. He’s in charge, and can that fucker shoot.”
More bullets spanged off the “Cat’s treads, its body. Henry sensed another of those buzzing, hustling presences in the cab, and suddenly the radio was silent. The distance between them and the shooters clustered around the Winnebago was getting longer, but it didn’t seem to matter. As far as Henry was concerned, all those fuckers could shoot. It was only a matter of time before one of them took a hit… and yet Owen looked happy. It occurred to Henry that he had hooked up with someone even more suicidal than himself.