He kept a pistol and a rifle in his office, but they could just as well have been at the bottom of the ocean.Years ago, the rear of the substation had been retrofitted with a holding cell, which had hosted more drunks than felons. Consequently, there was no rear door and the rear window was barred. Going through the front window opening, as Kyrill had done, was too risky, especially with his hunters making the street outside his office their de facto base of operations. If he did make it in and they converged on him while he was inside, he'd have no place to go. There would be a standoff, and they'd probably wheel out whatever it was that had gotten Roland, and that would be the end of that.
He also kept a second pistol in his home. As much as he wanted that weapon and, more important, as much as he yearned to see Laura and Dillon, to hold them and warn them, he could not risk leading the killers there.
So now he rested on damp sod, his back pressed against a cold headstone in the cemetery behind St. Bartholomew's. He was less than a hundred yards from Provincial, only two blocks from where Declan had used Roland Emery to announce his invasion of Fiddler Falls.Tom didn't know what to do.
Black spruce surrounded the cemetery. A few had bravely marched in to stand among the gravestones. Their scraggly branches and needles dappled the sunlight, casting the area in a gloomy twilight despite the midmorning hour.Tom thought the atmosphere was perfect for the setting. The only element missing was tendrils of fog. A light breeze hummed softly through the trees. It
was
peaceful here, and Tom felt his blood pressure ease a bit. He pulled in a deep breath, let it out slowly.
Having been flayed alive before his crucifixion, Saint Bartholomew is considered the patron saint of trappers and tanners. In Michelangelo's
The Last Judgment
on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, Bartholomew holds the knife of his martyrdom, along with his own skin. The Fiddler Falls church bearing his name was constructed in 1923, as the town grew from a Denesuliné First Nation village into a bustling burg of supply stores, saloons, and brothels. Back then the town serviced primarily miners, trappers, and adventurers intent on exploring the vast wilderness to the north, as far as the Artic. The fur and leather trade was so profitable and animals so abundant that outside every business were racks of drying furs and skins. But as far as anyone knew, none as hideous as poor Bartholomew's. Over the years, the church had closed and reopened four times, reflecting the citizenry's waxing and waning spiritual interests. It now hosted two Sunday morning services: Catholic Mass at eight and a nondenominational Protestant service at ten. Its cemetery continued to accept new residents, though their plots extended farther from the church each year.
Tom sat near its center. The headstone directly across from him bore a date from 1965:
Here lies John Wood
Enclosed in wood
OneWood
Within another.
The outer wood
Is very good:
We cannot praise
The other.
He had never strolled the graveyard, reading last words and pondering long lost lives, as Laura sometimes did. He was surprised to find so much wit here. Another headstone proclaimed:
Oh, NOW you come and visit me!
And if not wit, then poignant solemnity. One epitaph marked the resting place of an eight-year-old girl:
The Gardener cried,
“Who picked my most precious Rose?”
The answer came,
“The Master took it Home.”
Funny that he should begin to understand the appeal of ambling among the buried dead when it appeared he was so close to becoming one himself. He wondered what his epitaph would be.Was that something he was supposed to have already selected, or did that task fall to survivors? Maybe John Wood should have left instructions; he hadn't seemed too well liked. Tom hoped for something about his family and the outdoors he had loved so much.
Had loved so much!
He was already referring to himself in the past tense.
No . . . no . . . no . . .
He pushed himself up.
Not dead yet.
He turned in a circle.Woods on all sides, except where the church stood. The church. He could hide in there, decide what to do, when to do it. He moved toward it, then stopped.The roar of an engine reached him first. He lowered himself behind a headstone. The Hummer appeared on a thirty-foot stretch of Provincial, visible between the church and rectory. It screeched to a halt. Tom could see nothing through the black-tinted windows. The vehicle rolled out of sight, blocked by the church. If they inspected the church and continued into the graveyard, they would catch him for sure. He bolted north, into the trees. He paused and crouched. The Hummer appeared on the other side of the church, still rolling slowly. Had they seen him? Could they see him now, even in the shadows of the evergreens? He wondered if they were using high-tech tracking tools, something like infrared goggles or a GPS device they'd hidden on him.
Last week, when the Hummer had been parked at the service station, Tom had inspected it. In design, it resembled an extended-cab pickup: two doors on each side, servicing two rows of seats, an open bed in back.Two chairs were bolted to the floor of the bed. The pedestals appeared hydraulic or pneumatic, enabling the seats to rise and go down. Handgrips were mounted to the bed sides and cab roof. The setup reminded Tom of the trucks hunters and photographers used on safari in Africa. The windows, which appeared opaque, granted a dim view of the interior when he pushed his face up to them and cupped his hands to block out exterior light. The dash and center console were arrayed with gadgets that could not possibly be stock equipment.
The engine died and the front doors opened. Pruitt emerged from the passenger's side, the bulky video camera clutched in one hand. Bad came out of the driver's door and clanked the machine gun down on the hood. Pruitt looked past the church to the cemetery, scanned over to the woods, then up at the sky. He spoke to Bad, shaking his head.Tom imagined his complaints about how the shadows made for poor lighting conditions. Bad waved him off, picked up the G11, and walked around the front bumper. Together, they strode toward the cemetery and Tom's position in the woods. They spoke normally, like two guys just heading to a buddy's place.
“Man, I can't wake up,” Pruitt said. “I don't know why we had to get up so early.”
“Shut up, Pru. You know the plan was righteous. What else we gonna do, try to round up the whole town at once? Divide and conquer, dude.Who's up and who's not is a natural division. Props to Declan.”
“So what? We let 'em just walk into our net? I bet not everyone comes out every day.”
“Nah.We'll go get 'em after this first batch.Take our leisure, you know?”
A staticky voice issued a sharp command.
The two stopped. Bad pulled a walkie-talkie out of a breast pocket. Spoke into it.
The words coming through the tiny speaker were too fuzzy for Tom to make out.
Both men returned to the Hummer and climbed inside.The SUV roared to life, made a tight U-turn, and sped away.
Tom felt nauseated.
We'll go get 'em after this first batch.
They were going to go door-to-door, gathering the town into their makeshift prison in the community center. He had to get to Laura.
He continued through the woods another thirty feet, where the trees gave way to a big open lawn. Trudy Thatcher's property. Her house lay at the far end. It was only forty yards away, but it felt like miles and miles of exposure to Tom. Halfway across was a copse of white birches. He ran and didn't slow until he was in the center of the circle of trees. They weren't much coverage, a dozen arm-width trunks holding up a cloud of thin leaves. Still, he hoped the angles would obscure his human form and make him more difficult to spot. At least until he gathered nerve enough to cut across the rest of the yard. He scowled up at the autumn sun, no friend in a time like this.
He crouched and ran his hands along the ground. He took some comfort from the reality of the dirt sifting through his fingers, the clumps of earth, the tiny pebbles. He leaned sideways, touching his shoulder, then his head against a tree trunk. Solid objects in a world that had become unreal, nightmarish.
Movement caught his eye. Trudy was looking out a window at him, one hand holding aside a curtain. She was the town curmudgeon. At community meetings, it was Trudy who would point out the foolishness of using Fiddler Falls's meager Northern Improvement Plan proration on pothole repairs when it was a new plow the town needed. And if the council agreed, she would ask how they could even consider such an extravagant purchase when the perimeter firebreak so obviously required widening.
Eighteen years a widow, she was as tough as the caribou jerky she cured and delivered personally to stores as far south as Saskatoon and by mail to consumers “all over the stinkin'world,” as she often reminded listeners. But the visage at the window was not the indomitable scowl of which Tom had grown fond for its sheer longevity and predictability, as you might a particular lump in a favorite chair. Her eyes were wide with fear, her mouth slack, as if to pull in sharp gulps of air or let out a scream.
Tom held a finger to his lips, making sure she understood to be quiet. The curtain fell back over the window.
He glanced at her front garden, a living quilt of black currants, dewberry, fireweed, and bog violets as aesthetically pleasing as Trudy was disagreeable. Most mornings she could be found there, pruning and planting, glowering at the schoolkids walking past, admonishing them against picking her flowers, even though not a single townie young or old would dare risk her wrath for a mere bouquet.Tom had always suspected that her gardening at that time had less to do with the morning glow or the crispness of the air than it did with the steady stream of children to accost. He looked over his shoulder, back the way he had come. St. Bartholomew's blocked his view, but from Trudy's garden she would be able to see straight up Provincial Street all the way to the park.
The timing would have been perfect:Trudy had witnessed everything, maybe even the event that had ended Roland Emery's life.
So she is already involved,
Tom thought. He hoped he wasn't simply justifying his desire to seek help from her. He didn't know how she could aid his cause, but he desperately needed fresh ideas. And if she didn't already realize how awful these visitors were, he should warn her. If she tried to leave town or reach a phone or, knowing Trudy, give them a piece of her mind, they would spare her no mercy. He shot forward, out of the trees, across the yard, and leaped onto a concrete pad that served as Trudy's porch. He tried the handle. Locked, as he knew it would be. He pressed himself against the door and rapped gently. Then again, harder.
Come on,Trudy.
He thought about kicking in the door. Thought about the noise it would make. He jumped off the porch and sprinted toward the rear of the house, staying under the shadow of the eaves. He tripped on a low bush, crashed down, felt his ankle twist under him. Nerve endings jangled up his leg. He rose and hobbled around the corner. He pushed his back against the clapboards. His ankle throbbed. Just what he needed. Raising his foot relieved some of the pain, but he would have to ignore the injury to run. He would have to.
This was insane.
Maybe it really was a dream, a nightmare.
I'll wake up any minute now,
Tom thought.
But the throbbing in his ankle and the ache radiating from the back of his head told him the truth.The clapboards were hard behind his head and shoulder blades. He pressed his palms against the wood and raked his fingertips across the rough surface. He felt splinters breaking off. One slipped under his fingernail, shooting a needle of hot pain as far as his wrist.
No dream.
How did this happen? Where did the men hunting him come from?
Men?
he thought.
How old was the one named Julian? Thirteen, maybe fourteen.
Five years older than his own son, no more. Only a boy.The girl wasn't much older, and Declan had said Kyrill was seventeen. Children. How could that be? How could kids that age go so wrong?
A few years ago Laura had attended a “Future of Education” conference in Montreal. She'd returned mostly disgusted by the speakers' determination to “prepare” children for life by turning them into little adults at increasingly younger ages. Among the insanity: teaching sixth graders about sensual, not just biological, sexuality; giving fourth graders their own credit cards and mobile phones; advocating a secondary-school model for elementary schools, where the childrenâspecifically not parentsâselected their own courses of study. An article Tom had recently read warned that video and computer games gave preteens knowledge of hand-to-hand fighting, weaponry, battle strategies and tactics, and a tolerance of violence that was once the province of adulthood.
Tom had never paid much attention to extreme naysayers. He'd always thought if they had their way,
nothing
would ever changeâno medical advancements, no improvements in transportation, no expansion of democracy. And to them, anything other than the firmest hand and five hours of reading per day would result in the moral decay of today's youth.
Declan's gang was enough to sway him to the naysayers' side. He supposed an overpowering personality like Declan's would add to the process of growing up too fast, the way sugar accelerates fermentation. Tom suspected Declan sought out youths whose dispositions inclined toward his and whose minds he could mold.
But still . . . so
young
?
He pushed aside these thoughts. All he had to think about was warning Laura, then getting away. He would either take Laura and Dillon with him or, more probably, sequester them in the attic of their home, telling them not to move or make a sound regardless of what they heard.