The Third Hill North of Town (41 page)

He rocked back in his seat, cursing, but then froze as he gazed through his windshield. His mother was only a few yards away, standing next to Elijah Hunter on the hilltop. The boy was holding Julianna’s arm with one hand and shielding his eyes with the other.

“MOM!” Gabriel howled, fumbling for the weapons on the floor of the passenger seat. “MOM!”

Mary Hunter was the first one out of the station wagon. She saw the Tate boy yank open the driver’s door to the Volkswagen on the side of the road but paid him no mind; all she cared about was reaching her son ahead of Gabriel Dapper. The dome light in Gabriel’s Cadillac popped on as Gabriel threw his own door open in the cornfield; the big man was yelling for his mother as he clambered out of his vehicle.

“NO, GABRIEL!” Mary screamed, running into the cornfield. She could hear Sam right at her heels. “GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, ELIJAH! HE’S GOT A GUN!”

 

Blinded by the headlights of the car facing them in the cornfield, Julianna stumbled a little and Elijah took hold of her arm to steady her. They could hear car doors opening and a man roaring, “MOM!” over and over again.

“I think I know that voice,” Julianna muttered, puzzled. “But I can’t quite place it, can you?”

“NO, GABRIEL!”

A woman’s cries sliced through the man’s, and the sense of unreality Elijah was already feeling increased a thousandfold.

“Mom?” he whispered, shielding his eyes with his free hand in an attempt to see what was going on. “MOM!”

“GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, ELIJAH! HE’S GOT A GUN!”

 

Who the hell ARE all these people?
Jon Tate wondered, clawing his way back out of the Volkswagen with Ronnie Buckley’s and Bonnor Tucker’s revolvers in his hands.
Where are the cops?

Elijah and Julianna were standing in the glare of a car’s high beams, and a small black woman and a thin black man were running through the cornfield toward them. An elderly, paunchy white man and an old black woman—both of whom seemed uncertain what to do—were getting out of the station wagon on the road beside the Volkswagen. And standing by the car in the cornfield was a huge shadow of a man, matching scream for scream with the running black woman. Elijah dragged Julianna to the ground as Jon watched, and the big man inexplicably spun around to face Jon and raised his right arm over his head a moment later. Jon—thinking he saw a gun in the man’s other hand—brought up one of his own revolvers in a panic just as his opponent in the cornfield made an exaggerated throwing motion.

Jon froze as something came flying through the air, straight at him.
What the hell is THAT?

 

Mary Hunter screamed a warning to her son, and Elijah instantly seized Julianna and dragged her to the ground.

“LET GO OF MY MOTHER!” Gabriel bellowed, threatening the boy with a pistol. “GODDAMMIT! LET HER GO RIGHT NOW!”

A sixth sense warned him to look back at the road, and in the glow of the station wagon’s taillights he could see Jon Tate standing by the Volkswagen. The young man had a gun in each hand, and it didn’t take a lot of imagination to guess what he intended to do with them. Gabriel instinctively pulled the cord on one of the German potato masher grenades and heaved it across the field at Jon, praying it would buy him enough time to save Julianna.

 

Julianna Dapper was more than a bit confused.

“Get off me, Ben!” she demanded, struggling to get out from under her friend’s weight on the ground. “I can’t breathe!”

“He’s got a gun, Julianna!” Elijah snapped. “Please stop fighting me!”

Julianna froze at the word “gun,” incapacitated by a flash of memory.
Rufus has a gun!
she thought in terror.
He’s going to kill us all!

 

Jon heard the dark projectile whiz by him, missing by just a few inches. It sailed into the open door of Chuck Stockton’s beloved Volkswagen Beetle, ten feet behind him, and Jon gasped in shock, not knowing what had nearly taken his head off but assuming it was a large rock.

Jesus, that had some serious torque on it!
he thought, belatedly dropping into a crouch in case the man threw something else.

 

Squinting through the high beams, Elijah saw the big man in the cornfield throw something at Jon Tate, saw Jon duck into a protective crouch after the missile rocketed past his head. There was an instant to wonder why the man hadn’t just used his gun on Jon instead, but then the interior of the Volkswagen erupted in a ball of fire. Elijah watched in horror as a second, almost simultaneous explosion from the gas tank flung Jon facedown on the road, his arms and legs spread wide like a skydiver. The older man and woman who were farther away from the blast than Jon both reeled backward in terror, covering their ears with their hands as the Beetle was engulfed in hellish flames.

“JON!” Elijah wailed. “JON!”

Unthinking, he leapt to his feet, staring numbly across the field at the unmoving body of Jon Tate.

“No, Ben!” Julianna cried, scrambling to her feet, too. “Rufus will kill you!”

 

Mary and Sam Hunter had nearly reached their son when the Volkswagen blew up behind them. Both of the Hunters spun around in shock at the explosion, not believing what they were seeing.

“Dear God in heaven!” Mary cried, clutching at Sam as they gaped at the twenty-foot-high plume of flame in the road above the wreckage of the Beetle.

The glitter of broken glass was all over the road, surrounding the still body of Jon Tate, and shrapnel had shattered the windshield of the station wagon. Mary Hunter shook herself, recovering, and twirled around again, just in time to see Gabriel Dapper bringing the Mauser to bear on her son.

“NO, GABRIEL!” she shrieked, already knowing she was too late to make any difference.

Julianna heard someone scream “NO, GABRIEL!” and her past and present collided with the force of two atoms in her psyche. The man in front of her who had been Rufus Tarwater suddenly became her own son, Gabriel, and his well-loved face set her mind spinning dizzily, like a poorly designed top. Her body, however, still moved without hesitation—as if it didn’t care whether it was the property of a teenaged girl or a middle-aged woman; as if it knew exactly what it was doing and the price it was being asked to pay; as if it belonged to a single united soul named Julianna, who wasn’t about to let someone else pay that price for her.

“NO, SON!” she screamed aloud, instantly hurling herself between the man and the boy.

 

Elijah saw the barrel of the gun pointed at his own heart, saw Julianna dart between him and the man with the gun. He shoved her out of the line of fire but she sprang in front of him again, and he grabbed at her desperately, trying to shield her with his own body.

“LET HER GO!” Gabriel roared. “GODDAMN YOU, LET HER
GO
!”

Julianna broke free of Elijah’s grip just as a gunshot rang out on the hilltop. Julianna staggered backward and fell at his feet like a drunkard.

“Julianna!” Elijah cried. There was a small, neat hole in her green dress, right beneath her breasts. He cried her name once again before dropping beside her.

“GET AWAY FROM HER!” Gabriel bellowed in rage and horror. “GET AWAY FROM MY MOTHER!”

He was still holding the Mauser in his hand but he didn’t seem to realize it was no longer pointed at Elijah. The second potato masher was in his other hand, but it, too, was forgotten.

“Sweet Christ,” he whispered, staring blankly at the scene before him.

“Oh, Jesus,” Elijah sobbed as Julianna convulsed in pain.

Julianna, gasping, reached out and clutched Elijah’s hands, and in the light from Gabriel’s high beams both Elijah and Gabriel could see the front of her dress had turned red.

“Is Jon okay?” she panted. “Is he alive?”

Elijah glanced over at Jon’s body on the road and shook his head, choking on his tears. “I don’t think so.”

The bullet Gabriel had fired into his mother’s body was somehow inside of Gabriel himself now; he could feel it working its way toward his heart. The anguish on Elijah Hunter’s face and the desperation with which Julianna was holding Elijah’s hands told him more clearly than anything else could have that the boy he had just tried to shoot was not a killer and a kidnapper after all, but only a boy.

“Oh, Jesus,” Gabriel panted, running forward and falling on his knees beside his mother. He dropped his gun and the grenade on the ground and gathered Julianna’s head into his lap.

Mary and Sam Hunter were struck dumb by the sight before them. The man who had just attempted to kill their son had discarded his weapons and was now seated less than a foot away from his intended victim; Gabriel’s left knee was actually in contact with Elijah’s right thigh. Mary’s first impulse was to grab Elijah by the shoulders and drag him away from this bizarre tableau, but the vivid grief etched into his face stopped her. Mary’s breath caught in her throat as her son’s eyes met her own and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out his name again.

“How badly is Julianna hurt?” Edgar Reilly yelled from across the cornfield, where he was hovering over the motionless body of Jon Tate. “I’m coming as quickly as I can!”

Mary didn’t know if there was anything Edgar could do for the Tate boy, but it was obvious to her that nobody on earth was going to be able to save the woman on the ground at her feet. Julianna Dapper herself was apparently of the same opinion; she shook her head in Gabriel’s lap.

“Tell him to stay with Jon,” Julianna murmured to Gabriel.

Gabriel—who knew a mortal wound, too, when he saw one—was beyond responding. He wanted to do what his mother had asked of him, but all he could manage was to raise his head and look toward the road in mute misery. Mary pressed Sam’s hand and Sam left at once to relay Julianna’s message to Edgar. There were sirens in the distance as Sam passed Mary Taylor in the cornfield. Gabriel pressed his forehead against Julianna’s, and then broke down completely.

“Hush, son,” Julianna whispered. “It’s all right. It’s all my fault.” She blinked, gazing up at the sky. “The stars are so pretty tonight, aren’t they, Ben? We should wake up Michael and Seth.”

Gabriel made a bewildered noise and Elijah tried to explain.

“She means me,” Elijah murmured. “She thinks my name is Ben.”

Julianna sighed. “Your name
is
Ben, you ninny,” she breathed. “Honestly, you may need psychiatric help.”

Mary Taylor, her elderly knees popping, was suddenly kneeling at Julianna’s other side. “Julianna? Oh, honey, I can’t believe it’s really you! It’s me, Mary Taylor, Ben Taylor’s mama. Do you remember me?”

Julianna searched the older woman’s face for a long moment and then smiled in delighted recognition. “Hi, Mrs. Taylor!” she said. “Look, I’ve . . . brought Ben back . . . home, good as new!”

Tears spilled down Mary Taylor’s wrinkled face. “Thank you so much, honey,” she rasped, caressing Julianna’s cheek. She glanced across Julianna’s body at Elijah and her lips trembled as their eyes met. “I’ve been missing him something awful.”

“It took us . . . took us forever to . . . to get here,” Julianna gasped. “I’m sorry we’re late.” She turned her head and blinked again, and the timbre of her voice shifted abruptly. “Look, Elijah.”

The grieving boy followed her gaze, barely noticing she’d called him by his correct name. A second later he cried out with immense relief: Jon Tate was on his feet and headed their way, supported by Sam and the older man Elijah had noticed earlier. The revolvers Jon had retrieved from the Volkswagen were now tucked awkwardly in Sam’s belt, leaving his hands free to help Jon walk.

“Is that . . . your daddy . . . with Jon?” Julianna asked Elijah. “You’re the . . . spitting image of him.” She loosened one of her hands and reached up to stroke Gabriel’s face; he blubbered uncontrollably as she ran her hand over the stubble on his jaw.