Bad Radio (32 page)

S
calding water drilled into my face and chest and ran out of my open mouth as I panted and leaned against the tiles in the shower with my outspread hands. Steam curled and rolled up the opaque and beaded glass door and then out into the foggy bathroom.

The hot water was dissolving the scabs sealing up the twin gunshot wounds in my chest and back, allowing long translucent red trails to snake down my body. The one from my chest was a fascinating, ever-changing river, the other a mystery revealed only by the dilute whorls of blood eddying around my feet.

I’ve been shot before, but never in the chest. I took a 9mm from a P08 Parabellum, as the Germans called the Luger, in the thigh, and at the time it was the worst injury I’d ever had, despite being essentially a deep cut.

The bullet missed the bone and went clean out the other side and even stopped bleeding in about ten minutes. I had never been so proud of a scar before in my life.

When I fell in the pit in Warsaw, it took all my scars away from me, which was fine, except that it screwed me out of a Purple Heart. Turns out you need to be able to produce a wound for that.

The water started to run cold, waking me from my reverie. I made an effort to focus and clear my head, letting the frigid water bite into me until I reconnected with the present. I shut off the water and wondered how long I had been standing there. I still felt weak, but the kind of weak you feel after recovering from a high fever, not the kind you should feel when recovering from a near-fatal gunshot wound.

More than ever, my body felt alien to me, a thing of single-minded purpose that had nothing to do with my own.

My clothes were ruined, so I just wadded them up and threw them in the corner. I put on a fresh set from my duffel bag and packed away the toiletries that I had left out this morning. I had a feeling that Anne and I were never coming back to this house.

I entered the kitchen cautiously, but this time there were no guns pointed at me. Mazie was nowhere to be seen, but at least the rifle was back in the corner where it belonged. I dropped the duffel on the table. Anne took one look, nodded to me, and left to pack her things as well.

Greg spoke first. “Mazie went to her room. I think she’s in shock.”

“That makes two of us.”

“She’s not a bad person, Abe. She just can’t face the fact that she’s lost her whole family. I can understand that, even if you can’t.” He dropped his eyes. “We took a vote. Mazie and I are going to try to get more information from Valerie. We’re not going with you. Even if we don’t learn anything else, I can’t just leave her here, tied up and alone.”

“I understand. How about you, Chuck?”

“If there’s a chance that taking out the Mother will get rid of all the bags at once, then that’s what we have to do. I mean, it’s a no-brainer, right? No matter how many bags you kill, she’s just going to make more. So, I’m coming with you.”

“I thought you didn’t trust me.”

“I don’t. But I figure that I can still drop you to the ground with a good shot if I have to. Plus, you could have attacked us last night, or in the kitchen when your secret got out, and you didn’t. I guess that’s worth something. Besides, I like the idea of having one of the monsters on my team for a change.”

He gave me a grin, and I couldn’t help but smile in return. “Fair enough. Greg, before we part ways, tell me where to find the Mother.”

Greg’s eyes went to the ceiling in a now-familiar gesture. Pain crossed his features as the question reminded him of what he had to do to pay for the information I was asking for. “The quarry. Chuck knows where it is.”

“Thank you. Good luck tonight, and be safe.” We shook hands.

“You, too.”

“Grab anything you need, Chuck. We’re leaving in ten.”

We waited at the front door while Greg took armfuls of frozen food up the stairs and then came back down for more. Even from this far away I could clearly hear frantic moaning and crunching and sucking noises from upstairs that never paused or slowed. When Chuck came in with his gear, we left the house without a word.

Low and dark, the oppressive clouds squatted over us, blotting out the sun as far as the horizon in every direction. Even now, during the day, the sunlight picked up a sickly greenish tint as it filtered down between the swirling bands of opaque thunderheads, lending a shadowy aquatic feeling to everything. The wind pushed hard and then shrieked away, plucking leaves and trash off the ground and hurling it at us in random tantrums.

We piled into the Range Rover, relieved at the sudden silence as the heavy doors sealed tight. “Where to, Chuck?”

Chuck was in the back seat in the middle, where he could look out the windshield between the front seats. “North. Keller Mining owns a whole section up there, with a couple of pits and a bunch of warehouses and cutting outfits for the granite. Most people in town work for Keller. Should be pretty deserted today, being a Saturday. When you get out of the subdivision, go right.”

As we drove, Anne turned on the radio. There were only two channels out here, and both of them were playing the same recorded message in Piotr’s dulcet tones. The broadcast had that low, whining distortion under it that you hear in weather broadcasts during a storm.

“Attention, Belmont. Please stay in your homes until further notice. Severe weather is expected tonight, so don’t get out on the roads. Emergency vehicles need them clear. Television and telephone service interruptions have been reported, but rest assured that we’re working on it. Keep safe, and God bless.”

Anne killed the radio when the message started up again. “You think that’ll work?”

I shrugged. “Well enough. He doesn’t actually need to lock the town down, he just needs the roads clear enough to transport the hostages needed to finish his pit. Even if there’s a mass panic later, the traffic alone will bottle everyone up once it hits the only road out of town. Throw a couple of squad cars across that road, and the population leakage should be pretty minimal.”

“Some people are bound to get out,” said Chuck. “They could bring help eventually. What’s he going to do about that?”

“Nothing, I’d imagine. The way he was talking on the phone, I don’t think he’s planning on their being an afterwards to worry about.”

“You and Henry keep saying things like that,” said Anne. “What exactly do you think he’s doing?”

“I don’t really know. We used to spend hours talking about it after the first time, when we were trying to figure out what was going on, and what to do with the altar pieces that we found. Here’s what we know for sure from Piotr’s journal.

“He thought that whatever he was doing back in the war was going to avenge his family and his country on Germany. So, at the least, he figured on taking out an entire country.

“None of Piotr’s notes that were taped into the ritual book mentioned the expected results, but I can tell you something that stood out. Henry knows more than a little about rituals and blood sacrifices, and this whole pool-of-blood thing is way out of scale for anything he’s ever heard of.

“It’s a drop of blood, or a cup of blood, or at the very most, a sacrificial human being. And that’s to do something significant. Something at the upper limit of possibility as far as Henry knows. But hundreds of people and thousands of gallons of blood? Henry says that’s not just a matter of scale. It’s something completely unknown.”

Anne shivered and turned away from me to look out the window. I could see the fear on her face, reflected in the glass.

We were silent after that, just driving through town, feeling the Rover rock and shudder under sudden gusts of wind, and passing by people in their front yards nailing boards across windows and hauling lawn furniture indoors.

When we hit Main Street, there were still a few people out carrying bags of bottled water and cans of gas, with the occasional line in front of a grocery store. Boards were rapidly going up over plate glass here as well.

Anne tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at a pair of empty prison buses parked in front of the police station. The prison and state names on the sides of the huge gray vehicles weren’t local, and weren’t all the same. Though the buses were slightly different in design, they did share all the same key features. Iron bars covered the windows, and a steel-mesh door separated the passenger section from the guard section up front.

Men were milling around the front of the station and leaning up against the buses. They had machetes in their hands and were faceless behind riot helmets with dark face shields. They took no notice of us as we drove past.

“Hey, Chuck, you guys have a prison up here?”

“Nope, I didn’t even know we had any buses.”

“Did you see the helmets?” said Anne.

I nodded. “Yeah, and half of those guys were wearing body armor, too. No headshots and no gutting.”

Anne looked worried. “That’s going to be a real problem for us if your idea about the Mother doesn’t work out.”

I watched the clouds roll over each other in a slow boil. “I wouldn’t worry about it. If my idea about the Mother doesn’t work out, we’ll be dead long before we have to worry about these guys.”

38

W
e drove past the Keller Mining Company without stopping. The plant entrance was closed, and there were guards posted behind the sliding chain-link fence gates. They were wearing riot helmets and Kevlar vests, and they weren’t doing anything but standing and staring through the gate. The employee parking lot behind them was a vast, empty concrete field.

Chuck craned his head around and watched the entrance recede into the distance. The guard’s heads did not turn to track us as we passed.

“The actual quarries are on the other side of the cutting houses where the slabs are finished. Most places just cut the stone out of the ground and ship it, but we finish it here at the plant. Countertops, pavers, steps, pretty much anything that can be pre-cut and shipped. We don’t sell the raw stone.”

“We? You work there?”

“Yeah. Pretty much everyone goes right from high school to the plant. Not much else out here, especially not if you want a living wage. I work on the pumps and shit that supply water to the gang saws and the thermalling gear. It’s not too bad. I pay my bills and I still have all my fingers. Can’t ask for more than that.” He stuck his arm between the seats and pointed. “Pull off the road over here. We can hike back behind the plant and get into the quarries that way.”

We swayed in unison as the Rover bounced off the raised asphalt onto the low scrub that dominated the landscape. Scraping and squeaking filled the cabin as I drove over the tough, woody bushes.

Everything was greener than I had expected out here in the dry western flatlands, with ankle-high weeds and low trees with wide, fat canopies. I put the largest tree between the truck and the highway, but it ended up looking more like a picnic scene than camouflage.

We got out of the car and dug through our gear for weapons. Chuck threaded a black nylon hip holster through his belt and dropped in his Taurus. He also stuffed an extra clip into the back pocket of his jeans. Anne unrolled Dominic’s blanket and pulled out the drum-fed shotgun that he had given her.