Deadout (34 page)

He backed up against the plastic strips. Then he turned and plunged through them. I saw his blurred figure staggering through the doorway, silhouetted once more against the daylight. There was a moment that felt like silence, but I realized it wasn't, because as the door closed behind him, the sound of the bees lessened even more and the room lightened considerably as the bees crowding against the mesh quickly dispersed.

I wondered where they had gone. Then from outside I heard a hoarse, horrible, agonized scream.

There were only a couple of bees still with me in the unit, but with Pug-face gone, they turned their attention to me.

I tried to swat them, listening to Pug-face's screams punctuated by gagging and coughing.

One of the bees got me right where the pheromone had splashed my forearm. It paid the ultimate price, but I paid, too, a searing pain shooting up my arm, making me feel momentarily faint. Suddenly, I was that much more determined to fend off the other one. I connected once with the back of my hand, bouncing it off the plastic curtain, but it came back at me almost instantaneously, recovering before it even hit the floor. I whipped off my shirt, waving it in front of me, doused with pheromone. When the bee came at me again, it connected with the shirt.

Maybe I trapped it, or maybe it was content to unload its payload into the pheromone-soaked folds of cloth, but I wrapped it up and crushed it underfoot. For a moment, I was alone, catching my breath and listening to Pug-face's screams faltering outside. I looked down and saw dampness on my arm and my stomach.

The alarm pheromone. That's what they were after. That's what was driving them. Glancing up at the holes in the ceiling, I knew it was only a matter of time before they came after me, too.

I went to the small sink in the corner and soaped and rinsed my arm and stomach, then again, then once more. When I was confident I had removed as much of the pheromone as possible, I dried off with paper towels from the dispenser. As Pug-face's screams faded into a muffled moan, I jerked open the drawer Annalisa had gone to before and found Julie's patchouli. I pried off the plastic spout and poured half the bottle onto my arm and smeared it around. Then poured the rest onto my stomach. The air filled with the aroma of it. I'd never liked the smell, and at this dosage it was nauseating.

I took a deep breath anyway. Then I picked up the server and went outside.

Pug-face was on the ground twenty feet away, covered in a thick layer of bees. Thousands more were zipping through the air above him, as if waiting for a spot to open up so they could stab him as well. The sky had grown dark, and the air felt heavy with the threat of rain.

Pug-face's car was forty feet past his body, the driver's side door ajar, the engine running.

My Glock was at the bottom of the steps to the lab.

I paused, ready to dive back inside and come up with another plan.

But the bees seemed content to concentrate on Pug-face. I stooped to pick up the gun, paused again, then started walking a slow, wide arc around his body, no sudden movements, toward the car. When I was halfway there, I looked back at the hive boxes mounted on the outside of the lab unit, encased in some sort of white plastic. Bees were still coming out of them. Pug-face stirred, moaning and twitching his hand, eliciting an angry rise in pitch and volume from the bees that covered him. The pile seemed to constrict around him, and even through the bees I could see him shudder.

I stopped for a moment, thinking I should do something. But I knew I'd be lucky to save myself.

He had tried to kill me several times, I told myself. I kept walking, slowly and deliberately, through air thick with patchouli and angry bees, resisting the urge to swat or run or scream in horror.

When I reached the car, I slid in behind the wheel and pulled the door closed. Letting out a long breath, I noticed a bee crawling on my arm. I lowered the window and flicked it out. Then I closed the window and drove through the open gate.

 

63

The smell of patchouli was smothering, but it took a strong and deliberate act of will to open the door knowing I was just across the road from that mass of bees. I had parked so the driver's side door of Pug-face's car was two feet away from the Jeep's, just enough space to slide from one to the other. I craned my head to look up through the windshield, searching for any sign of bees. When I was satisfied there were none, I threw open the door and jumped into my car.

Safely inside, I took two slow breaths. A smattering of fat raindrops landed on the windshield with a suddenness that made me jump.

As I drove out. I looked through the gate across the road at Pug-face's lifeless body, still black with bees. My arm had a welt the size of a plum, and I thought about how he'd gone down. I fought off a shiver and gave the car a little more gas.

*   *   *

Things were still uncertain with Nola, and being around her and Annalisa together was bound to be awkward. But pulling up in front of the A-frame, I looked forward to being comforted by two women who cared about me, who would praise me for having returned victorious with the spoils of war against overwhelming odds, and who would soothe the pain of experiences too awful to mention.

Unfortunately, no one was there.

I put the server on the floor next to the dining room table and went into the living room. No one. For some reason, I didn't want to yell. I checked each room, letting my gun lead the way.

The place was empty.

I took out my phone, but before I could call, the phone vibrated in my hand with a text from Nola.

DOYLE, IT'S NOLA. WE ARE AT GAY HEAD CLIFFS. WE NEED YOU. COME QUICK.

I called her, but the line went straight to voice mail. I texted, “What's going on?” but got nothing back. I called Annalisa, and her phone vibrated on the table. I called Jimmy Frank, but his line went straight to voice mail, too. Same thing with Moose. I left them both messages and thought about calling 911, but I didn't know if it was an emergency, and I didn't know who would be on the other end of that call.

The shotgun was gone, and I didn't know if that was good news or bad.

*   *   *

The cliffs were in Aquinnah, at the western tip of the island, five miles away. The clouds seemed to be scraping the treetops and as I got back in the car, the rain started up again.

It bothered me that I didn't know what I was driving into. It bothered me that I couldn't contact Nola, and that she'd sent that text, then not replied, with everything that was going on. That didn't seem like Nola. It made me suspect even more strongly that she was under some sort of duress.

The rain was getting heavier and the sky darker. I could barely see the lighthouse as it finally rose over the treetops on my right. Then the light pulsed and swept around. I pushed the car a little faster. Then I was there.

In front of me, the road curved into a wide loop with a large grassy area in the middle. At the far end of it were the gift shops and snack bar, and the path to the observation area. During the summer season it would be packed, the loop necessary to keep the tourists' cars moving in an orderly line. In the off-season it was desolate, especially in the rain. Everything was closed and no one was around. I was driving through the last intersection before the loop when the rain started coming down harder. Something about the lighthouse caught my eye, but I couldn't tell what.

In my rearview, lightning flashed in the black clouds, and beneath them, a flatbed tow truck was driving up slowly behind me. On the side street to the right was a black SUV with tinted windows, a wisp of exhaust drifting away from it. To the left was another one.

I tapped the brakes hard, and I heard a strange popping sound. A subtle vibration ran through the car. At first I thought it was a mechanical problem. Then I saw a small pothole in the rain-soaked road ten feet in front of me, a curl of smoke rising from it. My eyes returned to the lighthouse, this time finding what had drawn them earlier. A sniper. But this was no precision tool; from the hole in the asphalt, it looked more like a fifty-cal. I stomped on the gas, rocketing forward as the back windshield exploded. In the rearview, I could see one of the SUVs from the side streets speeding up behind me. The other one was coming up the other side of the loop, on a course that would meet me head on.

I was approaching the far end of the loop—wondering if I should try to cut across the grass, thread the needle and get past both cars—when the car shook violently and seemed to rise up off the road. The hood buckled, and for an instant I thought I'd hit something. Then I saw the hole in the hood and realized something had hit me.

Luckily, the airbag hadn't deployed, but the car was dead, drifting forward at a couple of miles per hour. The car behind me was closing fast, and the other one was screaming around the curve toward me. I threw open the car door and spilled out onto the road just as another round punched through the car, shattering the rear passenger window and the front driver's side window, shredding the headrest in between. Tiny cubes of glass showered down on me, mixing with the heavy rain that soaked me almost instantly.

I rolled to my feet, the glass cutting into my hands and knees, and I started running. The angle away from the two cars took me toward the steps leading past the gift shops and snack stand, toward the observation area. It also left me totally exposed to the sniper. I tried to vary my stride, resisting the urge to run flat out. The rain was coming down even heavier now, the wind picking up, but I still felt the breeze when a sniper round zipped past my face. To my left, a patch of grass turned into a jet of mud, squirting up into the air. I took two more strides, then dove for the steps as another round slammed into the metal trash can. At the top of the steps was a wide path that led through the little shops to a restaurant before curving up to the observation area.

Looking back as I ran, I saw the car behind me bouncing up the grass next to the steps. The sky had continued to darken, gloomy day turning to dark night. As I ran up the path, lightning flashed all around me. Headlights captured me from the left, casting my shadow across the wall to my right. I skidded to a halt, torn by indecision, maybe by something else. As I blinked and shook my head, I was skewered by a second pair of headlights as the second car bounced up the steps behind me.

An arm came out the passenger's side window, a hand holding a gun. As I jumped out of the way, a pair of bullets slammed into my shadow on the wall in front of me. I stumbled sideways, my feet slipping in the rain but staying under me as I scrambled along the path, toward the lookout area on top of the cliff. I was running out of path, running out of options, the prospects of panic and death solidifying in the back of my mind.

Away from the shelter of the building, the wind took on a new magnitude. The rain was blowing sideways, pelting my skin where it hit. The observation area was completely exposed, a twenty- by sixty-foot rectangle of broken macadam and gravel surrounded by a simple rail fence. In the center was a stone pylon, five feet tall, with coin-operated binoculars on top.

The second car was still barreling toward me, two men following on foot, presumably from the car that had come up the steps. On one side I was hemmed in by the cliff, and on the other by an expanse of thick, low brush. I had decided to take my chances with the brush and was turning in that direction when I felt a hot breath on my neck and one of the fence rails snapped in two and fell out of its mounting.

Somehow, I had briefly forgotten about the sniper on the lighthouse. The light was visible now in the darkness, sweeping across everything, taunting me, showing me all the places I was vulnerable to it. I dove behind the rock pylon, huddling behind it as the rain came down. It protected me from the sniper, but left me completely exposed to my pursuers.

I was bleeding from a dozen small cuts from the broken glass, little rivulets of blood diluting in the rain into a pink sheen. The car coming up the path had clipped one of the fence posts, slowing it down the slightest bit, giving me another few moments of life.

I tried to will myself a way out, to conjure the mental energy to think of something to do and the physical energy to do it. But I knew I was going to die, and at that moment, it didn't seem so bad. I reminded myself that the bad guys would get away with whatever they were doing, that people would get hurt. I told myself I couldn't live with that. Then I remembered I wouldn't have to. I reached for my gun, thinking I could go down shooting, maybe take a couple with me.

Then, through the downpour, I caught a whiff of the patchouli coming off me and my mind flashed on Pug-face, lying there dead, covered with bees, helpless and exposed to the world. I pictured myself bleeding out in the rain, a hole in my head, some asshole nudging my body with the wet toe of his shoe.

Then I thought about Nola, the feel of her body in my arms, her lips on mine. Maybe I just needed to catch my breath, or to let my mind clear, but when I thought about never feeling those lips again, I sprung to my feet and started running.

Toward the cliff.

 

64

I didn't zig or zag. It was past the time for that. I ran flat out, pumping my legs and trying not to think about the bullets whizzing past me.

Another rail in the fence splintered and collapsed, and I angled toward it; face-planting a hurdle would be bad enough at the best of times, I was determined not to do it while being chased by bad guys with guns. I crossed the fence without breaking stride, out onto a swath of low, dense brush. The cliff was getting close, and I didn't know what I expected to happen next. I pumped my legs and lifted my feet high so I didn't trip. Another volley of bullets zipped past me, unpleasantly reminiscent of the bees that had gotten Pug-face. I hoped I hadn't already been shot, that I wasn't a dead man running, unaware that the fight was already over.

The cliff was coming up faster than I expected. In a flash of lightning, I saw myself outlined on the ground. It caused me to slow a step, and that may have saved my life. I was about to push off, to try to get as much distance from the cliff as possible, but I remembered I wasn't trying to clear the cliff. I wasn't trying to jump out to the water. My only hope lay in staying close, dropping and sliding down the cliff as much as possible.