“Sony, ma’am,” he said, “but it’s better for both of us this way, believe me.”
The guns were held in place by a length of cable threaded through the trigger-guards. The cable was pad-locked to an eyebolt on the side of the case. Johnny hoped he would have better luck finding the key to this lock than he’d have finding the one that opened the box with the Ruger in it.
The third key he tried popped the padlock. He stripped the cable back through the triggerguards with a jerk so hard that one of them-a Remington .30-.06-came tumbling out. He caught it, turned . . . and the woman, Mary, was standing right there. Johnny gave a strangled little whoop that probably would have been a scream if he hadn’t been so scared. His heart stopped beating, and for one very long moment he was positive it wasn’t going to restart; he’d be dead of fright even before he fell backward onto the corpse in the silk shirt. Then, thank God, it got going again. He slammed a fist into his chest just above the left nipple (an area which had once been hard and now wasn’t very) just to show the pump underneath who was the boss.
“Don’t ever do that,” he told Mary, trying not to wheeze. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I thought you heard me.” She didn’t look terribly sym-pathetic. There was a golfbag, of all things, slung over her shoulder. A tartan golfbag. She looked at the corpse in the closet. “There’s a body in the Fire Chiefs closet, too. A man.”
“What was his handicap, any idea?” His heart was still galloping, but maybe not so fast now.
“You never quit, do you?”
“Fuck you, Mary, I’m trying to kid myself out of dying, here. Every martini I ever drank just jumped on my heart. Christ, you scared me.”
“I’m sorry, but we’ve got to hurry up. He could come back any time.”
“A concept that never crossed my poor excuse for a mind. Here, take this. And be careful.” He handed her the .30-.06, thinking of an old Tom Waits song. Black row shells from a .30-. 06, Waits sang in his stripped and somehow ghoulish voice. Whittle you into kindlin.
“How careful? Is it loaded?”
“I don’t even remember how to check. I did a tour ofVietnam , but as a journalist. That was a long time ago, in any case. The only guns I’ve seen fired since then have been on movie screens. We’ll figure the guns out later, okay?”
She put it gingerly into the golfbag. “I found two flash-lights. They both work. One’s a long-barrel job.
Very bright.”
“Good.” He handed her the flashlight he had found.
“The bag was hung on the back of the door,” Mary said, dropping the flashlight in. “The Fire Chief . . . if it was him… well, one of the clubs was stuck down through the top of his head. Way down. He was sort of… skewered on it.”
Johnny took two more rifles and the shotgun from the rack and turned with them in his arms. If the walnut doodad on the floor below the rack contained ammo, as he assumed it did, all would be well; a rifle or shotgun for each of the grownups. The kid could have Sheriff Jim’s .45 back. Shit, the kid could have any gun he wanted, as far as Johnny was concerned. So far, at least, David Carver was the only one of them who had demonstrated he could use one if he had to.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said, helping Mary ease the guns into the golfbag.
She shook her head impatiently, as if that wasn’t the point. “How much strength would it take to do something like that? To push the handle of a golf-club down through a man’s head and neck and right into his chest? To push it down until there was nothing but the head sticking up like a. . . a little hat, or something?”
“I don’t know. A lot, I guess. But Entragian’s a moose. A moose indeed, but now that she’d put it in this light, it did seem strange.
“It’s the level of violence that scares me the most,” she said. “The ferocity. That woman in the closet.., her eyes are gone, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“The Carvers’ little girl. . . what he did to Peter, shooting him point-blank in the stomach over and over the people out there hung up like deer in hunting season . . do you see what I mean?”
“Of course.” And you’re not even touching the rest of it,
Mary, he thought. He’s not just a serial killer; he’s the – Brain Stoker version of Dr. Dolittle.
She looked around nervously as a particularly strong gust of wind hit the building. “It doesn’t matter where we go next, as long as we’re out of here. Come on. For God’s sake!”
“Right, just thirty seconds, okay?”
He knelt by the woman’s legs, smelling blood and per-fume. He went through the keys again, and this time had almost reached the end of his choices before one popped the lock on what did indeed turn out to be a small but exceedingly well stocked ammo chest. He took eight or nine boxes of shells, ones he hoped would fit the weapons he had already taken, and dumped them into the golfbag.
“I’ll never in this life be able to carry all that, Mary said.
“That’s okay, I will.”
Except he couldn’t. He was ashamed to find he couldn’t even get the golfbag off the floor, let alone sling it over his shoulder. If the bitch hadn’t scared me so bad-he thought, and then had to laugh at himself. He really did.
“What are you grinning about?” she asked him sharply. “Nothing.” He made the grin disappear. “Here, grab the strap. Help me pull it.”
Together they dragged the bag across the floor, Mary keeping her head down and her eyes fixed firmly on the steel bouquet of protruding gunbarrels as they came around the counter and backed toward the door. Johnny took a single look up at the hanging corpses and thought: The storm, the coyotes sitting along the road like an honor guard, the one in the holding area, the buzzards, the dead. How comforting it would be to believe this was all an adventure in dreamland. But it wasn’t; he had only to sniff the sour aroma of his own sweat through the clogged and painful channels of his nose to be sure of that.
Something beyond anything he had ever believed- anything he had ever considered believing-was happening here, and it wasn’t a dream.
“That’s it, don’t look,” he panted.
“I’m not, don’t worry,” she replied. Johnny was pleased to hear her panting a little, too.
Out in the hall, the wind was louder than ever. Ralph was standing at tl~ie doors with his arm curled around his son’s shoulders, looking out. The old guy was behind them. They all turned to Johnny and Mary.
“We heard a motor,” David said at once.
“We think we did,” Ralph amended.
“Was it the cruiser?” Mary asked. She pulled one of the rifles out of the golfbag, and when the barrel drifted toward Billingsley, he pushed it away again with the flat of his hand, grimacing.
“I’m not even sure it was a motor,” Ralph said. “The wind-”
“It wasn’t the wind,” David said.
“See any headlights?” Johnny asked.
David shook his head. “No, but the sand is flying so thick.”
Johnny looked from the gun Mary was holding (the barrel was now pointed at the floor, which seemed like a step in the right direction) to the others protruding from the goltbag to Ralph. Ralph shrugged and looked at the old man.
Billingsley caught the look and sighed. “Go on, dump em out,” he said. “Let’s see what you got.”
“Can’t this wait?” Mary asked. “If that psycho comes back-”
“My boy says he saw more coyotes out there,” Ralph Carver said. “We shouldn’t take a chance on getting say-aged, ma am.
“For the last time, it’s Mary, not ma’am,” she said crossly. “Okay, all right. But hurry!”
Johnny and Ralph held the golfbag while Billingsley pulled the rifles out and handed them to David. “Put em a-row,” he said, and David did, lining them up neatly at the foot of the stairs, where the light from the clerks’ area would fall on them.
Ralph picked the bag up and tipped it. Johnny and Mary caught the flashlights and shells as they slid Out. The old man handed the ammunition to David a box at a time, telling him which guns to put them by.
They finished with three boxes stacked by the .30-.06 and none by the gun on the end. “You didn’t get nothing that’ll fit that Moss- berg,” he said. “It’s a damned fine gun, but it’s chambered for .22s. You want to go back n see if you can find some .22s?”