Currency of Souls (22 page)

Wintry carries the boy downstairs. He goes slowly because of the pain, and because he doesn't want to drop the boy. Doesn't want the Sheriff to have to try to hide his mourning any more than he's already doing.

So he takes the steps easy. Kyle isn't heavy. It's like carrying a baby, and right now Wintry wishes he knew magic, or had the power of healing, because he'd bring that kid back for the Sheriff lickety-split. But he doesn't know magic, and he doesn't have Cobb's power to heal. If he did, he'd surely use it on himself, and make the awful burning go away.

Though the stairs seems to go on forever, it has an end, and when Wintry reaches it, it feels like he's just come down off the mountain he calls home—used to call home—into the valley.

He stands there for a moment, ignoring the raging fire in his arms and the terrible pain from the muscles beneath, and he pictures Flo, who might walk in that door any second, smiling, delighting in his surprise. Just like the night he asked if he could walk her home and she agreed, except it was his home he walked her to. Just like she surprised him by refusing a drink, or anything but the short walk to the cot in the corner. Just like she surprised him by weeping all the way through their lovemaking, then asking him to marry her afterward. And sure, Wintry was no fool, he'd heard the stories, heard that she'd killed her husband, but at that moment it didn't matter. He'd said yes, and in the morning, when he watched her leave, watched her until she had descended the mountain and was little more than a speck, he decided that if she did kill her man, he must have deserved it. And maybe he would too, but he could think of worse ways to die than at the hands of the woman he loved.

Burning, for example.

Grimacing, he turns to look at the Sheriff, whose face is almost the same shade as his son's, and nods. For a moment it doesn't seem as if the man understands what Wintry's trying to tell him, so he adds, "Take him."

The Sheriff reaches out with the kind of look a man not used to holding babies might have when presented with one. But he takes his son in his arms, anguish rippling across his face, and brings the boy close to his chest.

"Let's go," he says, as firmly as a voice broken by tears will allow him.

But Wintry doesn't move. Instead he glances down into the corner by the door, where the man he wants to see, the man he came here to see is still sitting.

"Just a sec," he says to Tom, and leans over the man with no eyes.

"He's gone," the Sheriff says quietly, and there's a certainty to his voice that only the man who killed him can have.

"He welshed then," Wintry murmurs. "Didn't do what he promised he'd do."

"If I were you I wouldn't be surprised. The devil doesn't keep his promises."

Wintry straightens, a hard black knot of bitterness caught in his throat. With a sigh, he leads the way out into the sunshine, still taking it slow out of respect for Sheriff Tom's grief.
It ain't fair. Ain't fair at all
. He's real sorry for Tom, that's for sure, but he's sorry for himself too and impatient to be done with it all.

It feels like hours before they reach the end of the path, and here they stop.

"Thanks," the Sheriff says. "For..." He shakes his head, brings the boy's head close to his chest with one grubby, bloodstained hand. His eyes are filled with the kind of agony Wintry knows all too well.

Sheriff Tom blinks, as if to dismiss further conversation, or acknowledgment of his gratitude, and moves around the front of the truck, to where the sun through the overhanging leaves makes dancing patterns on the road, and he motions for Wintry to open the side door. Kyle's head begins to turn, as if he wants to see what Wintry's up to, or where he's going to be stowed, and the Sheriff gently puts a hand on the boy's chin, directs his gaze back to the gold star on his father's uniform. The light breeze ruffles the boy's hair, making him seem alive. But anyone who might come along this road need only look at Sheriff Tom's face to know the truth about the situation.

And then the sound of an engine getting closer tells Wintry that someone is coming along. He hopes, for the Sheriff's sake, that whoever it is doesn't stop to offer help, or ask questions. But then, this is Milestone, and people rarely do. Can't rightly be afraid of death if you've never had to look at it, which is why most folks in this town don't look anywhere but inside themselves.

"Wintry..."

It's Wintry's turn to apologize for being distracted by the car. "Car comin'," he says, and sets about opening the door for Tom. "We best hurry ourselves outta the road."

He feels a cold lance in his side at the thought that maybe the kid—Brody—managed to get his hands on a car and is racing to put them out of their misery once and for all. Wintry wouldn't mind, but he figures that's more than the Sheriff deserves.

"Best hurry," he says again.

The sound of the car grows louder. Should be just past the bend now, and it's coming real fast. Wintry's hand is on the door, on the handle, and has it cracked, just a little, when the engine roars, making him turn to look once more.

It's a red Buick. He recognizes it as Doctor Hendricks car, and as it gets closer, still going way too fast, sunlight flashing across the windshield, Wintry sees that he was right. There, hunched behind the wheel, is the doctor himself.

"It's the Doc," he tells Tom. "But I don't think—"

Even from back here, Wintry realizes two things: Hendricks either doesn't see them, or doesn't care. Whatever the case, he's not stopping. And in a matter of seconds, the men standing in the way are going to be road kill.

He has time for one thought only:
This is where it ends
, and it is not a frightening thought. He has never feared death, and that's just as well because here it comes now, bearing down on him, the Buick's silver grille like grinning teeth about to yawn open and swallow them all wide, the headlights wide like the terrified eyes of the pale man behind the wheel.

The sound of the engine fills the world.

The Sheriff cries out a warning. There is a hand on Wintry's arm. He ignores the pain it causes, grabs hold of the Sheriff's wrist, turns and thrusts the man, still cradling his boy, clear across the road, where the lawman staggers and falls flat on his ass on the verge of the slight embankment leading down into the woods. Kyle tumbles away from him, lands sprawled on his back in the grass, shoes pointing straight up at the sky.

"Wintry!"

There is nothing but red in his vision.

See you soon baby
.

Wintry bends low, as if he's going in for a football tackle, head lowered, eyes forward, shoulders angled forward. He does not wait to die. With his last breath rushing from his mouth in a strangled cry, he rushes to meet it.

* * *

"Didn't used to be this hard," Cadaver says, easing himself onto a stool. "Didn't used to be like this at all. Guess I'm either losin' my touch or people are gettin' smarter."

"The hell happened to you?" Gracie asks, her hands flat on the counter, eyes cold.

"The boy is dead."

"Shame."

Cadaver raises his head, and smiles at her, though the absence of eyes and the raw bloody holes where they should be negate any semblance of humor from it. "You almost sound like you mean it."

"Who says I don't?"

"I don't know, but if you're lookin' for character witnesses, you're runnin' kind of low. 'Specially with you killin' 'em an all."

"Vess would have told them."

"Could be they already know."

Gracie leans in, teeth clenched, red-veined eyes wide. "The only way they'd know is if
you
told them."

"Yeah." He nods slowly, picks a speck of soot from the counter and inspects it, which, considering he's blind, or at least should be, would seem amusing to Gracie under different circumstances. But she's far from amused. In fact, she'd love nothing more than to rip the old guy's head clean off his shoulders and preserve it in a pickle jar as a warning to future customers not to fuck with her. But of course, there won't
be
any future customers. She's getting gone and Cadaver's her ticket, so for now at least, she has no choice but to let him keep that rotten head of his, and to bide her time.

Gracie's hands become claws on the polished mahogany. "You dirty son of a bitch.
Why?
"

"Because you ain't the only one who wants out, and I've been plyin' my wares an awful lot longer than you have. Comes a time when it has to end, you see, when you start goin' to bed at night and instead of seein' nothin' you start seein' the faces of people you used to care about—"

"I don't believe I'm hearing this."

Cadaver ignores the interruption. "—Then you realize, one mornin' while your busy materializin' in people's livin' rooms right when they're desperate enough to say yes to Hell itself if it means they get more time, that there might be salvation for you after all, an escape route you never believed existed. And then you start to
want
it, start plannin', until at last the time comes when you have no more faith in what you do, only in what you can do to be done with it all."

"You've got to be kiddin' me."

"For me that time is now."

Gracie brings her face close to the old man's, stares hard into his dead eye sockets. "Not before you get me out it isn't."

"I'm not a welsher. You'll get what I promised if your side of the bargain is met. All of 'em, you said, correct?"

She nods, struggling to restrain herself from raking his sallow face with her nails.

"Well then," Cadaver says, rising from the chair with a tip of an imaginary hat. "Let's hope the Sheriff doesn't live to see another sunset." He turns and walks toward the door. "Or you'll be watching a million of them from behind these windows."

* * *

I'm winded, and not altogether sure what I'm seeing is actually happening. Could be I'm dreaming it all. Since finding Kyle strung up in Hill's house, everything seems just the slightest bit off kilter. When I move my eyes, the world takes its time following.

But the sound, the earth-shattering explosion as steel meets flesh meets steel is enough to let me know there can be no mistaking this as reality. I saw Hendricks as the car approached, hunched over the wheel, shoulders raised as if he was manning a jackhammer. He was talking to himself, the sun making the tears in his eyes sparkle, face contorted in agony, the roots of which I'll never know. Maybe it was simply the knowledge that he was about to kill someone.

And that look stayed on his face until Wintry let out a roar, fists held at his sides, and rushed forward like a bull, head and shoulders ramming into the car as if he hoped to stop it. I swear he almost did. The car seemed to stagger a little. There was smoke from the wheels, a horrible sharp screech before the car slammed into the wounded giant, crushing him against the front of my truck, his upper body snapping back like a jack-in-the-box. Blood flew. Flesh was torn away. But that wasn't the end of it. The speed and the interruption Wintry presented to its passage didn't stop the car. It's front wheels reared up as if it was going to simply drive on over my truck. It didn't make it. Gravity intervened. Hendricks' car stalled and rolled back down on all four tires, the Buick bouncing on its chassis, but in doing so, crushed whatever was left of the big man beneath it.

The impact was so severe, I expected to see it had ejected the doctor from his car, but though the windshield was obliterated, he's still in the driver seat, though what's sitting there isn't recognizable as anything human.

Can I call this an accident or assume it's the result of another of Cadaver's little bargains? Guess it doesn't matter. The only thing that does is lying three feet away from me, spread-eagled, head cocked at an unnatural angle.

I have to leave here, but my truck isn't going to move. There's steam gushing out from beneath the crumpled hood and oil pissing from beneath it. It's done, as is Hendricks' Buick, so I guess I'm walking, unless someone comes along who doesn't feel compelled to use their car as a weapon. And in Milestone, at least over the past few hours, such people are rare.

I stand up, check on Kyle to make sure he's as comfortable as he needs to be, that he's not just lying there like a buck waiting to be skinned, then I look at the road, at the twisted metal, the blood, the chaos.

Wintry's gone, and though I know I should mourn him, I reckon he's exactly where he wanted to be. At least his suffering's over.

I step out onto the asphalt.

Though my truck's a wreck, the front end doesn't look all that bad.

There's a slim chance the stereo still works.

* * *

Blue smoke, sad eyes. The smell of fresh blood and motor oil.

"Did you know?" I ask her.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I tried. You wouldn't listen."