Showdown (45 page)

“Samuel?” The name echoed around him. What were they doing to him?

“Samuel!”

He tore at the shelves, sweeping potatoes and onions onto the floor. He yanked the spud roots from the crack and pried his right eye to the thin opening.

A large tin garbage can blocked half his view on the right. The alley lay vacant on his left. Fifty yards ahead tall evergreens bent in the wind under a gray sky.

The morning air carried the sound to him again, and Johnny knew they were doing something to Samuel out on the front street. Something that made the small boy scream.

He beat against the boards on both sides of the crack. The planks were rotted nearly clean through.

Dirt drifted into his eyes. He brushed at it, and then in a fit of frustration he threw himself at the slit.

With a
crack
the rotted board caved out and hot wind blasted into the cellar. Johnny jumped back, surprised that he'd broken the board.

A sharp report chased by a shriek rode the wind. Johnny dove at the opening and pulled desperately at the rotting boards. They came away in clumps. He pulled four down and clambered though the opening into the alley.

He jerked his head each way. The alley was empty. He edged along the back wall to the south corner of the saloon, dropped to his knees, and crept between Smither's Saloon and the convenience store, trembling.

Five yards from the end, he eased down on his belly and snaked along the ground. Then Johnny poked his head around the corner and looked out to where the blacktop split the town of Paradise in two.

The whole town had gathered, right out there on the asphalt, kneeling in a large semicircle with their backs to Johnny. Claude Bowers and his son Peter were dressed in the same overalls they'd worn for a week. Paula was there, on the edge closest to Johnny. Crying. Katie knelt ten feet from Paula, glaring at her with contempt, draped in a weasel or bear or some other fur.

Father Yordon knelt on the far side, his head hung low, his hands folded like he was giving a blessing for the gathering. The rest of the people knelt into the wind, facing Steve. The only missing character in this gathering was Black. No sign of Billy's black-clad preacher.

Steve Smither stood in the center of the circle with arms spread. He had a whip in his right hand, and he was gloating at something on the pavement.

From his perspective hugging the dirt, Johnny couldn't see over their heads to see what Steve was looking at. Very slowly, with quivering muscles, Johnny pushed himself to his knees.

They'd stripped Samuel's shirt off. He knelt with his head bowed to the black pavement, facing away from Steve. His shoulders and arms were bleeding. Long streaks of red and blue on his back.

Johnny's vision swam.

Steve lunged forward with the whip. A black streak lashed through the air and cracked just above the boy's back. A thin red gash opened on Samuel's white skin, as if he were a painting and the artist had flipped a red brush over the canvas.

The boy jerked without screaming. Then settled back to his knees. His soft sobs reached Johnny's ears.

Johnny
collapsed face down. He started to push himself up and immediately thought better of it. What if they saw him? Would they beat him like they were beating Samuel? Would they strip him and whip him?

Samuel's quiet cry rose into the wind. But not a scream like before. And no crack of the whip. Johnny lifted his head.

Samuel had struggled to his feet. The young boy stood with the wind at his back, his legs spread and slightly bent at the knees. He was calling out in a thin voice.

“Father . . .”

The words sliced into Johnny's heart like a razor.

“Father, please . . . please help me . . .”

Johnny glanced at the mountains. The lookout jutted from the rocky face like a gray shoe far above them. Beyond it . . .

“Father! Fatherrr! Please, Father! Save me!”

Samuel was wailing now.

The frail boy sucked at the air with a dreadful groaning sound and then shrieked again. “Don't let me die! Don't . . .” He was sobbing now, screaming between gasps. “Please, please, I'm just a boy . . .”

Tears streamed from Johnny's eyes. He began to groan softly, and he knew they might hear him, but he didn't care anymore. He wanted to die. A thought forced its way into his mind.

Why didn't Samuel run?

Samuel stood on the road at least five paces from Steve and the rest of them. The Starlight Theater's remains hid the path leading to the mountain behind. The boy had a way of escape. He had to know that he could reach the theater and lose himself in the hills before the mob caught him.

But Samuel did not run.

He stood there and begged the empty sky to save him. In long weeping wails he cried to the wind until Johnny thought his heart would burst.

The people knelt in their semicircle, unmoved. Steve still gloated, Yordon still bobbed his head. Only Paula wept—possibly for Samuel, possibly for herself.

“Whip him, Stevie,” Katie said.

The whip flashed. Samuel fell. His body smacked onto the asphalt like a slab of meat. The fall took the wind from him and he twisted in agony. Then his soft groans carried to Johnny again.

“Father, please. Father, please!”

Anguish. Such anguish.

Johnny clenched his eyes and pushed himself back, keeping his belly low. He turned first to his right and then to his left, undecided where to go, only knowing that he had to get away.

Away from where the people watched the boy rolling before them with mild interest, like chicken farmers watching another rooster go under the ax.
Why do they flop like that, honey? Why? I don't know, they all do.

Then Johnny staggered to his feet, covered his ears against Samuel's wails, and ran for the trees.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

THE MONASTERY

Tuesday morning

RAUL SAT on his haunches ten yards from the edge, rocking back and forth, a monk committed to a mantra. He'd watched David's endless pacing along the lookout for an hour. In the beginning he'd attempted several approaches of consolation.

“Samuel's a strong boy,” he said, and David just wept harder, leaning against a lone tree whose roots had found purchase on the rock surface. “Trust God,” he said. “He gave us these books. Trust the books, David. In the end, love will prevail.” But David just whirled to him.

“He's my son! Every
moment
is the end!”

Raul had changed tactics then. Never mind that a wrong turn now could wreak havoc throughout the earth; the pain of this one moment seemed to supersede any such risk.

“Go down and save him, David! Together, we could.”

“You don't understand,” David groaned.

“You're his father, man! What else is there to understand? We'll burn the town to the ground!”

“I can't!” David's cry sounded guttural and horrid, and it struck Raul that he was tormenting the man with such absurd statements. If Thomas and Samuel couldn't stop Black, surely a troop of unarmed monks would only walk to their deaths.

But how could a father stand by while his son was brutalized? David would give his life for Samuel without a second thought. There was more here than Raul knew. More than this simple agreement they'd made to trust the books.

“Samuel!” David groaned loudly. “My son, my son, Samuel!” He tore at his hair with both hands and stepped up to the very edge, sobbing. For a terrifying moment, Raul thought he would leap from the cliff. But he just stood there, moaning in the wind for a long time.

“Please tell me that you know what you're doing, sir! Just tell me that there is a way out of this madness.”

But David refused to respond. He hadn't spoken since. He only paced from the tree to a large boulder thirty feet away, bursting into tears so often that Raul wondered where the tears could possibly come from.

After an hour, just as a numbness settled in Raul's mind, the first wail reached them from Paradise, like an arrow shot from the valley below. They both jerked their heads toward the sound.

Raul caught his breath. Could it be a bird? Yes, it could
. . .

The cry sounded again, and Raul began to tremble. The sound came from Paradise. From Samuel. Samuel was crying out in Paradise.

David threw himself to his knees and gripped his hair with both hands. His mouth stretched in anguish, but only small sounds broke through his swollen throat.

The next cry carried words, surprisingly clear on the morning air:
“Father!
Fatherrr! Please, Father! Save me!”

David fell apart then. He simply fell to his side and lay there on the ground, still clutching his head. The cries came again and again. But the father did nothing,
could
do nothing. He only wept, face twisted and body quaking.

Raul rocked, crying. He had never imagined such pain was possible, that any living soul could endure so much sorrow and manage to keep their organs from hemorrhaging.

For the first time in his memory, he wanted to die. He wanted everything to end.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

PARADISE

Tuesday

JOHNNY TORE into the hills without caring where he was going as long as it was away from the terrifying sounds in Paradise.

But he couldn't escape them. They drifted through the trees, and they filled his mind, pushing him faster and farther.

Maybe he should have gone home instead of running out here. Surely his mother wasn't part of this. He'd been so overcome by the horror on Main Street that he didn't look for her among the others.

Johnny pulled up, his breathing ragged. Something had changed. He looked around, lost. Tall pines leaned in the gusting wind. The sky seemed darker.

What had changed?

Samuel had stopped wailing.

Johnny whipped his head back to the town. Samuel wasn't crying—maybe they'd let him go. He turned back downhill.

Samuel's faint voice was calling to him. Or at least to his memory.

You and I, Johnny. We'll fix this town.

Johnny found his bearings and cut through the trees, toward Smither's Saloon. His mind played back Samuel's voice, soft and sweet.

In the end we will prevail, Johnny
.

Prevail, Samuel? Where did you learn words like that?
I've got news for you.
We're not prevailing here.

He burst through the trees behind the saloon, slid to a stop, and listened carefully over the pounding of his heart. A muffled cry came from his right, in the direction of the church.

He hurried for the back of Katie's Nails and Tan and leaned against the back wall to catch his breath. Laughter drifted over the wind. Lead by Steve's, Johnny thought.

A
smack
and a
grunt
.

Chills broke over Johnny's skull. He eased around the building, slipped under the steps that led to Katie's side entrance, and pried his eyes through the gaps that faced the street.

The mob stood on the church's front lawn and crowded the steps. They had Samuel on the concrete porch in front of the double oak doors. His body sagged between Claude and Chris, who held him by an arm.

Johnny could see his blond head roll to one side, but the people blocked his view of Samuel's body. A man Johnny thought might be Dr. Malone reached out and slapped the boy somewhere on his body.

Johnny withdrew and slumped to his haunches against the wall. Another
thud
, another
grunt.
He buried his head between his knees and began to sob quietly.

He could hear the sounds when his ears weren't covered by his arms. More thudding blows, more helpless cries, and then mostly garbled shouting and laughter. A dozen times Johnny wanted to run, almost did run. But he couldn't move.

The air grew quiet for a while. Maybe now they were letting him go.

Johnny poked his head around the corner and peered through the gap again. He could see Samuel now, from head to foot.

They held Samuel up against the solid oak doors, with his arms spread and his head lolling on his chest. Johnny watched in horror as Roland strolled up casually and slugged Samuel in the stomach with his fist. Samuel grunted, and the boy turned around.

Johnny's friend walked to the circle's edge and stood next to a woman who stared ahead, face whitewashed and barely recognizable, but there,within five paces of Samuel's sagging body. The woman was Johnny's mother. Every muscle in Johnny's body froze at the sight. He knelt under the steps, eyes wide, heart slamming madly, unable to move. His mind insisted that he had to get away.

Mom?

Wanna trip, baby?

Steve Smither stepped into the circle, gripping one of his sharp stakes low like a spear. A grin split his jaw and he braced himself.

The rest of the mob stood perfectly still, expressionless. The wind whipped their hair to the south.

Steve lowered his head and stared at Samuel. Johnny tried to pull away then—he really did. But his muscles . . .

Samuel's eyes suddenly opened, bright and blue, and he stared past the crowd, directly at Johnny.

Steve Smither lunged forward and shoved his stake at the boy's side, up under his rib cage into his chest.

It sounded like a plunger. Samuel gasped and raised to his toes, face white with shock. Blood poured from the wound, over Steve's fists, and to the ground.

Then the boy screamed.

But this time Samuel's scream was different. A blinding white light rushed from his mouth. Johnny watched in amazement as the shaft of light blazed over the heads of the gathered killers. It cut down the middle of the town, over the charred remains of the car that Claude had burned, and smashed into Smither's Saloon.

The building imploded in a ball of dust. But no sound.

Only Samuel's scream, which wasn't stopping.

The beam of light sliced to the right, leveling buildings in the same puff of dust as it touched them. Katie's Nails and Tan vanished. All Right Convenience was vaporized. The old Starlight Theater, already a black skeleton, turned to white powder and settled flat.