Borderland (17 page)

As
things stood now, the Browning shotgun and the nine-millimeter Beretta were
being toted again, this time by Nolan and himself. Vic had acceded to Nolan's
claim of being the better shot and given him the pistol. The shotgun rested on
two hooks by the front door on the living room wall. Vic had wondered what the
hooks were for until he'd placed the shotgun up there. Then he'd wondered why
his father had needed to have a shotgun by the door.

He
missed his own handgun. He had been forced to sell it before moving and it had
been like a sad farewell to a close companion. The old Colt .38 had been with
him every day for ten years. He had other weapons, but none were as familiar to
him as the Colt. It was strange to miss it so much, that inanimate thing.

Myra's
smile widened as Vic and Christa approached her. "Was that the phone I
heard?"

"Yes,"
Vic said. "I need to go into town at five. Jinx Lahr called and said they
have a proposition for me. Maybe they want to make an offer on the place. Would
you mind looking after the girls for me?"

"If
you'll pick up some gas while you're there," Myra answered. "Cal says
the Mustang is completely dry."

"No
problem. Do we need anything from the store?"

"Not
that I can think of." She winked at Christa. "Maybe a package of
cherry Kool-Aid. The grape gets pretty slippery."

Christa
smiled and Vic put her down. "Why don't you help Myra, Christa. I'm going
to see what Andy's up to."

"Maybe
I should come with you," Christa suggested.

"Why?"

A shrug.
"I don't know."

Vic
disliked that answer and she knew it. "Just stay here and help. That's our
stuff too, you know. Myra's not our maid." He waited until Christa went to
stand beside Myra before turning back to the house. The girls had been acting
strangely lately, almost secretive, and that annoyed Vic. He knew they liked to
play their games, but when it came to shirking work or disobeying him it was
time to stop. And he didn't like the idea of Andy playing upstairs. The stairs
were steep and ultimately dangerous for little girls who operated with two left
feet most of the time.

He
called for Andy as he entered the house, though he knew it wouldn't have much
effect. He had watched her play before and never seen such absorption. At the
top of the stairs he passed through what felt like a patch of cold air. He
paused, frowned then decided that a window was open somewhere and that the long
awaited rain forecasted by the television weatherman was indeed coming.

"Andy?"
he called. "You still up here, honey?"

He heard
nothing. He stepped forward and felt the cold again, different this time. It didn't
feel like a breeze now, rather it felt as though it were moving with him. He
glanced at his arm and was surprised to see his flesh beginning to goose
pimple. He rubbed his palm over his arm and reached for the first door to his
right—Cal's room.

"Andy,
are you in—" His mouth snapped shut and he staggered back a step. A noise
of disbelief came from his throat as his eyes bugged.

The bed.

Flies
swarmed over the stacked corpses to land on protruding tongues and the long
jagged gashes of slashed throats. Men, women, naked, dead, long white legs and
arms, some with coarse hair, others fine and… bloated green bellies and livid
backs…staring eyes with milky irises that still managed to convey dread, agony
and the last terror-filled moments of human life about to be ended....

Vic
threw himself back into the hall. He stumbled over something directly behind
him and heard a sharp cry as he landed hard on his backside. He looked to see
Andy kneeling beside something on the floor.

"Daddy,
you stepped on Barbie's car! It's smashed!"

"Andy!"
He snatched her by the arms and jerked her away from the open door of Cal’s
room. Her eyes rounded in alarm and she stared at him with something like fear.
"You're hurting. Daddy, you're hurting my arms!" She struggled to
pull away, and as he gripped her even tighter she began to cry. Vic ignored her
tears and came up from the floor. He held her against his chest and put one
hand on the back of her head to keep her from looking in the direction of the
room. Then he looked.

His hand
fell away from Andy's head. His mouth opened and he gaped at the neatly made
vacant bed and the plump embroidered pillows. Freshly laundered curtains
fluttered in the breeze coming through the open windows. One fly buzzed lazily
at the screens. The room darkened for an instant as a cloud made a momentary
pass over the sun then the sheets were bright white again, the air once more
filled with sunlit particles of dust, the room empty.

Andy's
sobbing intensified. Vic closed his mouth and looked at her. "Jesus, I...
I'm sorry about the car, Andy. I'm sorry I scared you."

"Can.
. . you. . . fix it?" she asked between hiccups.

He
glanced down. "I don't know. I can try. Maybe we can glue it." He
quickly glanced at the room again, half-expecting to see it changed after
having looked away for an instant. He saw nothing. No one.

What the
hell was wrong with him? He'd never had a hallucination in his life.

Stress,
he thought suddenly. That had to be it. He'd reached his breaking point and was
stressed out. He was lucky to have lasted this long without suffering any
physical problems. Or maybe it went deeper than that. The bodies had to mean
something, the ghastliness of the vision itself.

Maybe he
was experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Wait, no he couldn't be. He'd
been in supplies during the war. He hadn't seen that kind of carnage anywhere
but in K.C. after a gang killing.

Okay.
There you go, son. You've been thinking about that shit all day today. Your
gun. Your old job. No wonder it came back on you. Stressed out, buddy. Too much
worrying about the house, the girls, the bills, Cal being kidnapped. . . and
the sorry performance of the Cubs. He forced a nervous laugh. Christ, what a
mess.

"Daddy?"
Andy said uncertainly.

"What,
honey?"

"Can
we go down and try to fix Barbie's car now? She can't go anywhere without it.
She'll be just like Drusie and won't be able to leave. And she won't be able to
help her new kitty friends."

Vic
smoothed her hair. Drusie was a new one on him. Georgie, Barbie, and now
Drusie—little Andy had a thing for names that ended with a long e.

Like
Connie.

Don't
start that crap, he warned himself.

"Okay,"
he said aloud. "Let's go see what a little glue will do." He put Andy
down and reached for the small red sports car. He had really smashed the hell
out of it. It would take more than Elmer's…”

An icy
sensation at the back of his neck cut off his thoughts and made him instantly
alert. He saw nothing but a puffy-eyed Andy smiling hopefully at him. Vic gave
his head a shake and ran a hand over his nape.

Maybe he
should talk to the doctor while in town. This kind of stress was nothing to
mess around with. It could even kill a man.

CHAPTER 14

Ed
Kisner cruised west on U.S. highway 54 in his tan Pontiac Bonneville sedan. He was
a born sightseer, a natural people-watcher, and he enjoyed getting away from
Denke to do these things. He liked Wichita especially. It was a clean city and
full of nice friendly folks willing to help an old man. Before Darwin Kimmler's
death, Ed's city had been Tulsa. Ed hated Tulsa. He always had trouble meeting
his quota in Tulsa. Since receiving Wichita as an assignment he had done
better.

Well,
last time didn't really count. That wasn’t his fault, no matter what Jinx Lahr
said. Accidents happened. He'd thought the kill was clean. God knew he wasn't a
doctor. How was he to know?

Jinx
could be such a snooty old bastard some times. Thought he knew everything. And
okay, he was plenty smart, but he wasn't that smart. Ed thought of lots of
brilliant stuff on his own. Of course when he did Jinx tried to make it sound
like it wasn't so hot, that he'd already thought of the same thing himself. But
Ed knew better. Jinx just wanted everybody to think he was the end all, be all.

Ed
wondered how many of the others knew about Jinx's liking for little girls. Ed
knew. Yes, indeed. He knew about Jinx's collection of kiddie porn, the sicko.

He
smiled to himself as he entered the city limits from the west. U.S. 54 was
called Kellogg in town, and he could take Kellogg all the way and make only one
turn to get to the business district, or as Ed liked to call it, the financial
district. He liked a city that was easy to navigate. He liked a city with lots
of tall, dark parking garages downtown.

But he
couldn't do that this time because that's what he'd done last time and his
methods had to vary. That was one of the biggest rules: never do the same
things twice, at least not in the same year.

He often
wondered what methods Darwin Kimmler had used here—before he started paying off
the council with profits from his stud farm to get out of the hunt.

Ed
didn't think he was in any danger of copying the dear departed Darwin. Darwin
had been a strange, brooding fellow with even stranger ideas, always wanting to
change things. He'd grown up with everyone else and hadn't said a word about
change then. It was when he married that girl he met on navy leave in San Diego
that he began to talk about doing things another way. How he had the nerve to
bring that woman back with him was something Ed could never get over. True, she
hadn't stayed long, but Darwin had still broken the most steadfast rule in
Denke: No strangers. Strangers didn't understand.

The rule
was broken yet again when Darwin let those stubborn fool Callahans hang around.
He'd still be alive if he hadn't. He knew better than to bring more strangers
in. He for damn sure did. What happened to him was his fault.

Still,
things were changing and there wasn't a thing anyone, not even Jinx Lahr, could
do about it. They could squabble and squawk all they wanted, but Ed knew Denke
wouldn't remain isolated forever. The events of the last year had shown him
that much. And what about that big gray Buick Electra he'd seen at the highway
turnoff that morning? The men inside the car sure as hell hadn't looked lost.
If they had business in Denke, Ed didn't know about it. Not that he claimed to
know everything, like the almighty Jinx Lahr.

He
smiled to himself again. What he knew about Jinx, like how he had gotten his
name, for instance. Gil Schwarz's daddy raped Erma Lahr while Frank Lahr was
out in the fields one day. There was a shortage of females in Denke at the time
and Gil's mama had just died, leaving Gil's daddy hard up for a woman. Erma
Lahr did everything in the world to get rid of the baby conceived that day—even
threw herself down the stairs at the old Denke place—but that baby had a will
to be born. When Frank Lahr found out about the rape he called his wife a whore
and took to sneaking around with little Coral Nenndorf's mama. Coral's daddy
found out and shot Frank Lahr, who lived long enough to go home, get a gun, go
back to shoot Coral's daddy, and then finish the last hour of his life by
gunning down Gil Schwarz's daddy for starting the whole thing.

On the
day of the funerals, guns were outlawed in Denke. And when Erma's baby was
finally born, she called the hated little thing Jinx.

Ed's
grandma, a gossipy old thing half bald and three quarters deaf had shouted the
story to Ed one day after Jinx had beat him up for the umpteenth time. Ed never
forgot it. He could still see his grandma's gums glistening as she laughed and
drooled in the telling. The popular story was that Gil Schwarz's daddy went
crazy in his grief over his wife and shot the others in cold blood. Since every
Schwarz from time back had been slightly crazy, everyone who wanted to believe
this version went right ahead and did. Thanks to his grandma, Ed knew the
truth. And it made him feel better. He had one up on old Jinx.

He still
did, though Ed sometimes wondered when he witnessed Jinx's treatment of his
half-brother Gil. If Jinx knew Gil was his half-brother then he had to be
pretty ashamed of the fact. Gil Schwarz was the craziest Schwarz to come down
the pike yet. Big, mean, and crazy. After botching up every hunt, it was
decided not to send Gil anymore. And age hadn't calmed him down any. It seemed,
in fact, to have made him even meaner. Ed had seen the look in his eyes the
night he sloshed goat's blood all over the inside of Myra Callahan's trailer.
Old Gil had become frenzied at the sight of that blood and Ed lost more than
one drop of pee in his pants when the big ox started waving that blade around.

Crazy.
If everyone didn't know it already, they knew it when the silly dimwit punched
the hole in the Mustang's radiator and drained the gas. Jinx had taken on a fit
about that. How was she going to leave? Gil said he didn't want her to go. He
asked if he could have her. Her and the genius boy.

Everyone
knew he was brain dead then. There was no way, Jinx told him. Darwin said they
were kin to rich folk, and rich folk tended to mind when one of their own came
up missing. Hadn't they swarmed the place after Gil bludgeoned that Patrick
Callahan fella in the ham? They came and took his body and his car away. Jinx
didn't know why Myra and the boy stayed behind, but he finally got it into
Gil's thick head that messing with them was too risky. He wanted them to leave
so things could get back to normal around Denke. And for screwing this up, by
God, Gil could just go on town cleanup duty for the next month.