Bad Radio (24 page)

Above and around me, a more ancient and patient hunger took notice as well. The endless churning sea of life tangling around me was insignificant, despite its vast expanse, a collection of parasites on the leviathan of our God who filled the sky in all directions. The sense of anticipation cut deep, as unrelenting as the hunger and fear.

There would be food. And soon.

“Hey.” Anne’s voice pulled me awake. My body was rigid, and I was nauseous and disoriented. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just a dream.” My eyes were gritty and my hands were sore where I had been clenching them. I sucked in air and flexed my fingers, feeling like I had just been pulled out from under some suffocating mass.

“Did you see someone in that town like I did?”

“No, it was something else, but connected, I think.”

She sat up and watched me with concern. The light from the window behind her ran fire around the edge of her hair and shadowed her features. “Tell me about it.”

I pressed my palms against my eyes, making sparks. “It was alien. No real sights or sounds, just touch and emotion. I don’t think I shared a lot of senses with whatever it was, so maybe I was just getting the things I could understand. It was all frantic hunger, like panicked starvation, and movement inside some mass of other things that were desperate in the same way.

“I was aware of this endless mass of them, but at the same time, I knew what any particular one felt, because they were all identical. It was like being an entire universe of crawling things, but also being each one individually, too. And permeating it all was some kind of other consciousness, something even more alien. It was everywhere. If you can imagine the whole universe being alive and grasping, hungry, and packed completely full of other hungry things.”

“I really can’t. And you were part of it?”

“Not really. I could tell I was just touching the fringes of it.” I shivered. “That was enough.” She put her hand on mine in sympathy. It helped.

We took turns using the shower and changing clothes. By the time we were dressed, packed, and downstairs, it was already well past noon. The house smelled like food, leading us by the nose to the kitchen.

Dominic was once again putting plates on the table. “Last meal. Afterwards I have some presents for you. But first, eat.” He had taken a couple of steaks and cut them into thin strips, then pan fried them with onions and red wine. Stuffed into massive toasted rolls, they became heaven on Earth.

“So, Dom. Where are you headed to once you leave here?” I found that I was actually interested.

“I have a ranch out west. It’s remote, comfortable, and has no connection to me as far as anyone knows. It was for my retirement from the business, assuming that none of my enemies retired me first. I never really thought I’d use it. Peter will never find me there.”

“Out west?”

He smiled at me. “What you don’t know, you can’t tell. I figure you’ll last about five minutes in that town before you’re shitting worms and talking your head off. Best we don’t read each other’s diaries, if you get my meaning.”

“Fair enough. You want to know if we win?”

“You’re not going to win.”

“So why help? Why come find me at your office and give me that speech about being your best shot?”

“Shit happens. You could get lucky. You won’t, but hey, it doesn’t cost me anything either way.”

I laughed and tossed my linen napkin onto my empty plate. “That’s the spirit, never give up. So, you mentioned that you had something for us?”

He led us out of the kitchen and into the garage. The lights on his black Land Rover flashed as Dom thumbed the remote in his pocket.

“It’s not registered to me, so feel free to do whatever you want in it. The back has all of the weapons I had left, and some camping gear that I bought and never used. There’s also something special for the lady.”

He opened the cargo door and pulled a long nylon sleeve from under a black tarp. The zipper sang as he unzipped it, revealing a gleaming black shotgun. He handed it to Anne.

“I had some of these made to sell to the gangbangers. It’s a .410 shotgun, sawed off short, with a fifty round drum. It fires standard three-inch shells, and being a .410, the recoil is so light even a child can handle it. Which was the whole point, since a lot of the gangs are full of thirteen-year-old kids.”

Anne stared at him. “That’s awful!”

“Yeah, and they didn’t sell for shit, either. The little bastards wanted a big macho gun, not a little .410. Never mind that inside ten yards, this thing will explode a guy like an overripe cantaloupe. No, they all wanted SPAS-12 assault shotguns and Desert Eagles and Glocks, like they were in some kind of fucking action movie. Or AK-47s. You have no idea how many requests I got for gold-plated AK’s. Jesus Christ, people are stupid. Anyway, it shoots three rounds a second if you hold the trigger down, and will mulch a room full of people before you can say boo. It’s loaded with alternating shot and slugs, just for the hell of it. Should come in handy.”

She slipped it back in the case and zipped it up. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Any .45 ammo in here?” I asked.

“Couple of boxes, hollow point and jacketed both.”

“Good.” I had been able to check my Browning during our trips, I just needed the rounds to put in it.

“Directions to the town are already in the GPS from my last trip. Good luck.” He held out his hand and I shook it. Anne hesitated, but ended up shaking his hand as well.

Ten minutes later we were on the road, completely unprepared for what was to come.

“The great sea has set me in motion set me adrift,

Moving me as the weed moves in a river

the arch of sky and mightiness of storms

have moved the spirit within me till I am carried away

trembling with joy.”

—Uvavnuk, Netsilik Inuit shaman

26

I
liked Dominic’s Rover. It had a steady workman-like competence underneath all the leather and wood trim, like a draft horse spruced up for the county fair. It wasn’t as reassuring as my old farm pickup, but maybe that was just because old people like me prefer the familiar.

I dialed Henry’s cell. Now that we finally knew where Piotr was, I figured that somebody outside this vehicle should know, too. The sere landscape flickered past my window as the phone rang. Eventually there was a click, and Henry’s deep tones urged me to leave a message.

“It’s Abe. We found him. Peter is holed up in Belmont, Wyoming. I should be there by tonight. Call me when you get this.”

“No answer?”

I handed Anne back her phone. “He’ll call when he gets the message. I hope Leon hasn’t taken a turn for the worse.”

“Worse than being paralyzed by a worm that crawled out of a dead guy?”

“You know what I mean. Leon is Henry’s whole world.”

Anne’s head lolled on the creamy leather of the headrest, and her eyes were closed. “He was stable in the hospital when we left. There’s no reason to think he’s gotten any worse now.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s okay.” I thought of all the wounded and sick I’d known over the last eighty years, and how quickly things could take a turn for the worse. There was no point in shaking Anne’s faith at this point, I just wish I shared it.

We drove northwest up I-25 while the sun slowly turned fat and orange as it fell out of the sky. We were approaching Cheyenne when I broke the silence.

“Anne?”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“You’re doing it again. I just told you that I’m going to do this, and you agreed. Now you’re going to try and drop me off in Cheyenne. I’m telling you no. You were perfectly willing to sacrifice me when we started this. So was I. The greater good and all that. Don’t screw it up now that we’ve spent all this time together.”

“That’s not what this is about.” It was, of course.

“Uh huh. Abe, I don’t want to die. I really don’t. And I appreciate all of these attempts to keep me safe, but when I think about one of those pits, full of blood and parts and stuff, with people hanging alive from racks overhead …” She jerked slightly, like an arrested shudder, and looked out the window. “If this Piotr or Peter or whatever is really holding a whole town hostage, then I have to help. I saw that woman in my dream, I
was
her, and I could feel how scared she was. I’m going to help her, and the rest of them, no matter what. And so are you. And if we die, well, might as well go out doing some good.”

“If you’re going to pay with your life, you may as well buy something worth the price.”

“Who said that?”

“Your grandfather. We were all volunteers, you know. Before every operation, each of us had to agree to go out, just as if it were a suicide mission. Which, you know, they pretty much were. Patrick set the bar for which ones we were going to go on. Of course, with the consequences being what they were during the war, it meant going out on all of them.”

“Then it’s settled. You can’t save those people without me. How do you plan to cover an entire town full of thousands of houses and buildings and roads and farms and God knows what else? It’s a pretty big goddamn haystack, isn’t it? I’m a needle finder, just like my grandfather. Without me, you’re useless.”

Looking into her fierce eyes, I had to smile. “That’s very true.”

She folded her arms and sat back. “Wake me when we get there.”

The sun was just hovering over the horizon when we crossed over onto I-80. A small sign with an arrow that read “Belmont – 31 Miles” appeared on the shoulder without the usual warning of prior signage. I had to brake hard and swerve to make the ninety-degree turn onto the cracked gray asphalt that ran off into the distance.

The main highway soon vanished in my mirrors, leaving nothing but an endless ribbon of worn-out road before and behind us. To my left the sunset was fading fast and the scent of dust was giving way to the first faint tang of cool night air.

“Wow, pretty deserted out here.”

“Probably why Piotr chose it. The more isolated the better.”

Anne spotted the reflective green rectangle first, just as dusk began to settle around us. It said, “Belmont City Limit” and underneath was a smaller sign riveted to the same post that declared, “Pop. 30,218 – Home of the Wildcats.”

The sign was faded with a pattern of shallow dents across the face. A pretty common sight out in the country, where bored young men would inevitably connect the possibilities of shotguns, pickup truck beds, and targets whizzing by.

She grinned at me and shook an imaginary pom-pom. “Go Wildcats! That was the name of my high school’s team, too.”

“I think every town in America is required to have at least one team called the Wildcats. Were you a cheerleader?”

“Do I look like a cheerleader to you?”

“Every time I close my eyes.”

“Pervert. No, I was never a cheerleader. I would have loved to try out, but Patrick wouldn’t let me. Never a moment to spare from my competition training.”

Streets began to branch off from both sides of road as the town sprouted up around us. “You feel prepared, then?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Me neither.”

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