“The guy beside Kurtz is Freddy Johnson. Those Mouseketeers are all Kurtz’s boys, the ones who were supposed to-whoops, look out!”
Another spang, another whining steel bee-between them, this time-and suddenly the knob on the transmission stick was gone. Owen burst out laughing. “Kurtz!” he shouted. “Bet you a nickel! Two years from mandatory retirement age and he still shoots like Annie Oakley!” He hammered a fist on the steering yoke. “But that’s enough. Fun is fun and done is done. Turn out their lights, beautiful.”
“Huh?”
Still grinning, Owen jerked a thumb at the box with the blinking amber bulbs. The curved streaks of byrus under his eyes now looked like warpaint to Henry. “Push the buttons, bub. Push the buttons and yank down the shades.”
12
Suddenly-it was always sudden, always magical-the world fell away and Kurtz was in the zone. The scream of the blizzard wind, the pelt of the snow, the howl of the siren, the beat of the buzzer-all gone. Kurtz lost his awareness of Freddy Johnson next to him and the other Imperial Valleys gathering around. He fixed on the departing Sno-Cat and nothing else. He could see Owen Underhill in the left seat, right through the steel shell of the cab he could see him, as if he, Abe Kurtz, were all at once equipped with Superman’s X-ray vision. The distance was incredibly long, but it didn’t matter. The next round he fired was going right into the back of Owen Underhill’s treacherous, line-crossing head. He raised the rifle, sighted down-
Two explosions ripped the night, one of them close enough to hammer Kurtz and his men with the shockwave. A trailer-box with the words INTEL INSIDE printed on it rose into the air, turned over, and came down on Spago’s, the cook-tent. “Holy Christ!” one of the men shouted.
Not all of the lights went out-a half hour wasn’t long and Owen had had time to equip only two of the gennies with thermite charges (all the time muttering “Banbury Cross, Banbury Cross, ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross” under his breath), but suddenly the fleeing Sno-Cat was swallowed in moving fire-flecked shadows, and Kurtz dropped his rifle into the snow without discharging it.
“Fuck a duck,” he said tonelessly. “Cease firing. Cease firing, you humps. Quit it, praise Jesus. Inside. Every one of you but Freddy. join hands and pray for God the Father Almighty to get our asses out of the sling they’re in. Come here, Freddy. Step lively.”
The others, nearly a dozen, trooped up the steps to the Winnebago, looking uneasily at the burning generators, the blazing cook-tent (already the commissary-tent next door was catching; the infirmary and the morgue would be next). Half the pole lights in the compound were out.
Kurtz put his arm around Freddy Johnson’s shoulders and walked him twenty paces into the blowing snow, which the wind was now lifting and carrying in veils that looked like mystic steam. Directly ahead of the two men, Gosselin’s-what was left of it was burning merry hell. The barn had already caught. Its shattered doors gaped.
“Freddy, do you love Jesus? Tell me the truth.”
Freddy had been through this before. It was a mantra. The boss was clearing his head.
“I love Him, boss.”
“Do you swear that’s true?” Kurtz looking keenly. Looking through him, more than likely. Planning ahead, if such creatures of instinct could be said to plan. “As you face the eternal pit of hell for a lie?”
“I swear it’s true.”
“You love Him a lot, do you?”
“Lots, boss.”
“More than the group? More than going in hot and getting the job done?” A pause. “More than you love me?’Not questions you wanted to answer wrong if you wanted to go on living. Fortunately, not hard ones, either. “No, boss.”
“Telepathy gone, Freddy?”
“I had a touch of something, I don’t know if it was telepathy, exactly, voices in my head-”
Kurtz was nodding. Red-gold flames the color of the Ripley fungus burst through the roof of the barn.
“-but that’s gone.”
“Other men in the group?”
“Imperial Valley, you mean?” Freddy nodded toward the Winnebago.
“Who else would I mean, The Firehouse Five Plus Two?
Yes, them!”
“They’re clean, boss.”
“That’s good, but it’s also bad. Freddy, we need a couple of infected Americans. And when I say we, I mean you and I. I want Americans who are crawling with that red shit, understand me?”
“I do.” What Freddy didn’t understand was why, but at the moment the why didn’t matter. He could see Kurtz taking hold, visibly taking hold, and that was a relief. When Freddy needed to know, Kurtz would tell him. Freddy looked uneasily at the blazing store, the blazing barn, the blazing cook-tent. This situation was FUBAR.
Or maybe not. Not if Kurtz was taking hold.
“Goddam telepathy’s responsible for most of this,” Kurtz mused, “but it wasn’t telepathy that triggered it. That was pure human fuckery, praise Jesus. Who betrayed Jesus, Freddy? Who gave him that traitor’s kiss?”
Freddy had read his Bible, mostly because Kurtz had given it to him. “Judas Iscariot, boss.”
Kurtz was nodding rapidly. His eyes were moving everywhere, tabulating the destruction, calculating the response, which would be severely limited by the storm. “That’s right, buck. Judas betrayed Jesus and Owen Philip Underhill betrayed us. Judas got thirty pieces of silver. Not much of a payday, do you think?”
“No, boss.” He delivered this reply partially turned away from Kurtz because something in the commissary had exploded. A steel hand clutched his shoulder and turned him back. Kurtz’s eyes were wide and burning. The white lashes made them look like ghost-eyes.
“Look at me when I talk to you,” Kurtz said. “Listen to me when I speak to you.” Kurtz put his free hand on the nine-millimeter’s grip. “Or I’ll blow your guts out on the snow. I have had a hard night here and don’t you make it any worse, you hound, do you understand me? Catch the old drift-ola?”
Johnson was a man of good physical courage, but now he felt something turn over in his stomach and try to crawl away. “Yes, boss, I’m sorry.”
“Accepted. God loves and forgives, we must do the same. I don’t know how many pieces of silver Owen got, but I can tell you this: we’re going to catch him, we’re going to spread his cheeks, and we are going to tear that boy a splendid new asshole. Are you with me?”
“Yes.” There was nothing Freddy wanted more than to find the person who had turned his previously ordered world upside down and fuck that person over. “How much of this do you reckon Owen’s responsible for, boss?”
“Enough for me,” Kurtz said serenely. “I have an idea I’m finally going down, Freddy-”
“No, boss.”
“-but I won’t go down alone.” Ann still around Freddy’s shoulders, Kurtz began to lead his new second back toward the “Bago. Squat, dying pillars of fire marked the burning gennies. Underhill had done that; one of Kurtz’s own boys. Freddy still found it difficult to believe, but he had begun to get steamed, just the same. How many pieces of silver, Owen? How many did you get, you traitor?
Kurtz stopped at the foot of the steps.
“Which one of those fellows do you like to command a search-and-destroy mission, Freddy?”
“Gallagher, boss.”
“Kate?”
“That’s right.”
“Is she a cannibal, Freddy? The person we leave in charge has to be a cannibal.”
“She eats em raw with slaw, boss.”
“Okay,” Kurtz said. “Because this is going to be dirty. I need two Ripley Positives, hopefully Blue Boy guys. The rest of them… like the animals, Freddy. Imperial Valley is now a search-and-destroy mission. Gallagher and the rest are to hunt down as many as they can. Soldiers and civilians alike. From now until 1200 hours tomorrow, it’s feeding time. After that, it’s every man for himself Except for us, Freddy.” The firelight painted Kurtz’s face with byrus, turned his eyes into weasel’s eyes. “We’re going to hunt down Owen Underhill and teach him to love the Lord.”
Kurtz bounded up the Winnebago’s steps, sure as a mountain goat on the packed and slippery snow. Freddy Johnson followed him.
13
The Sno-Cat plunged down the embankment to the Swanny Pond Road fast enough to make Henry’s stomach roll over. It slued, then turned south. Owen worked the clutch and mangled the stick-shift, working the “Cat up through the gears and into high. With the galaxies of snow flying at the windshield, Henry felt as if they were travelling at approximately mach one. He guessed it might actually be thirty-five miles an hour. That would get them away from Gosselin’s, but he had an idea Jonesy was moving much faster.
Turnpike ahead? Owen asked. It is, isn’t it?
Yes. About four miles.
We’ll need to switch vehicles when we get there.
No one gets hurt if we can help it. And no one gets killed.