“I need some sleep,” Harry said.
“You said it.”
“Why don’t we sleep until around one and then get up and figure out what the hell we’re gonna do?” Harry said.
She wanted nothing more than to take a hot shower and collapse on the bed. “Sounds good.”
“Hey Jill?”
“Hey Harry.”
“Thanks for sticking around up there. You could’ve taken the truck and bolted, but you didn’t. For all you knew I was dead in that cabin.”
“I wouldn’t leave a friend behind,” she said.
“You would’ve made a good Marine.”
She gave him a tired salute and he grinned. Jill took out her key card and unlocked her room. Harry unlocked his and slipped behind the door.
The room had a lush burgundy rug, with bedspreads done in hunter green and white. An ice bucket with a stack of wrapped plastic cups sat on the dresser.
She entered the room and faced the bed, admiring a pen and ink sketch of Buffalo’s Central Railroad Terminal depicting a steam locomotive pulling away from the monster train station, a fifteen-story tower in the background that served as New York Central’s offices.
She peered at herself in the dresser mirror. Like Harry, her face was smeared with smoke, only lighter gray, for she hadn’t actually been inside the burning cabin. A spiral of hair stuck straight up and she smelled like a combination of campfire and stale sweat.
And me without my deodorant.
She forced a laugh, which quickly snowballed into a sob, wet tears dribbling down her cheeks.
Donna was dead, Matt was in all likelihood dead and they still had to contend with Rafferty and the others. Rafferty had probably killed Matt. Jill thought it was naïve to think that a devil like Rafferty would show any mercy, especially to someone who had done him harm.
She sniffed, wiping away tears with her right hand and feeling about as attractive as a bag lady. She looked in the mirror; her tears had made tracks down her cheeks, cutting through the dirt and smoke.
“Jill, you look like some sort of crazy raccoon,” she said, and broke into laughter.
She needed a shower, both to cleanse the dirt from her body and refresh her.
After stripping off her clothes, she took a hot shower, scrubbing her skin pink and clean. When she was done, she towel-dried her hair, wrapped another towel around her body and curled up on the bed.
She fell asleep instantly.
Jill heard hollow rapping on the door, and rose from the bed, still fuzzy and half asleep. She was almost to the door when she looked back and saw her towel in a pile on the floor.
“Who is it?”
“Harry. I’ve got food!”
“Hang on.”
She put her clothes on, still damp with sweat and smelling of smoke. She looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand; it read one twenty. Harry was early.
Once she was dressed, she went to the door and peered through the fisheye lens, knowing it was silly but not taking any chances after the nightmare that was last night.
It was Harry, pacing back and forth, a brown grocery bag cradled in one arm. She slid the chain over, turned the lock and pulled the door open.
Harry said, “There you are. I was getting worried.”
“I was fine.”
“You took a while to answer.”
“I was also naked.”
“Oh shit, I mean, I’m sorry, I mean—”
“Don’t worry about it, Harry. What you got there?”
“Oh, this.” He came in and set the bag on the dresser, then began to unpack it, whistling the theme to
The Andy Griffith Show
. He pulled out two Styrofoam containers, two take-out bowls with plastic lids and two twenty-ounce Pepsis.
“You like turkey?” He said.
“I’m here with you, aren’t I?”
“Smart-ass,” he said, grinning.
They feasted on roasted turkey sandwiches, served on crusty French bread and dripping with spicy mustard. Jill only ate half of hers, for Harry had also bought a mound of curly-q fries and a bowl of minestrone soup with each sandwich.
Harry cleaned out his containers to the last crumb. When he opened his mouth to speak, a belch rumbled out, and he slapped his hand over his mouth. Jill laughed. Harry rolled his eyes as if to say,
What did I do?
“I called Liza.”
“How’s she doing?” Jill said.
Harry licked mustard off his fingers. “She saw through my story. I told her I was going to the cabin to make some repairs before hunting season came along. I wound up telling her everything that happened. Can’t get nothing past that woman.”
“You shouldn’t be lying to your wife, anyway.”
“Oh, I don’t. Not often, anyway.”
She had been bottling up a thought and finally said to Harry, “We have to go after Matt.”
“I’ve been thinking about that too.”
“Then you think he’s alive then?”
“Yeah. And let me tell you why.” He cleared his throat. “Rafferty’s a real son of a bitch, agreed?”
Jill nodded.
No argument there.
“Matt almost killed him. Probably the only person who’s come close.”
“How do you know he’s alive? Rafferty, I mean.”
“He organized that attack. They wouldn’t have come after us like that without his okay. He’s their leader, and he rules with an iron fist. I’m positive he’s alive.”
Jill threw the garbage from lunch in the trash can and went to the mirror. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling here and there, trying to bring it to some type of order. It looked like a mess of coiled springs, the curls taking on a life of their own.
She turned to Harry. “He’s got him locked up somewhere. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”
“I think you’re right. He’ll try to make an example out of Matt.”
“We have to get him out.”
“I agree, but I don’t think they’ll give us a warm welcome. How do you propose we get him out?”
“Can you get more weapons?”
“Liza can bring them.”
“Then get her on the phone.”
Hard concrete pressed against his cheek. Matt lifted his head. He opened his eyes to a harsh, white light.
What the hell happened?
It came to him slowly, like remembering a vivid nightmare upon awaking. He had gone into the burning cabin after Harry and swallowed more smoke than most firemen do in a career.
He sat up and looked around. He was in a jail cell. The accommodations weren’t exactly five star: a look at the bed revealed a thin, yellowed mattress, and from the smell of it, the toilet had backed up long ago and never been fixed.
He stood up and moved to the bed, rubbing his temples, trying to ease the splitter of a headache that ran down the center of his head. He coughed, spat some blackish phlegm on to the floor.
After a moment on the bed, he approached the bars and scanned the cell block. He wanted to get an idea of the layout. It was rectangular in shape. At the right end was the door to the interrogation room where he’d been taken after his families’ death. In the center of the block another door, and still another at the far right end. That one probably led into the station.
He sat down on the bed.
A door creaked open and the click of shoes echoed on the concrete floor. Rafferty appeared in front of the cell. He folded his arms and looked down on Matt with a self-righteous grin.
“How do you like the place?” Rafferty asked.
“It isn’t the Hilton.”
“I see you’ve got the cell with the air freshener. I like to leave the toilet like that to discourage people from returning.”
The sight of him standing there acting like the king of the world made Matt want to gag. “I should’ve finished you off when I had the chance.”
“When I was lying there I heard you and your bitch of a girlfriend talking. You mentioned cutting off my head. That would’ve done it, but you were in too much of a hurry.”
A cockroach scuttled across the floor, bumped into Matt’s foot and darted away in the opposite direction.
“I have to give you and your friends credit. You killed nine of us. I don’t think that’s ever been done before.”
“I’ll kill more of you before I’m done.”
“Tough talk. Like I said, I give you credit, but you’ll still have to die. The girl and the fat one too. We got the blonde, though, didn’t we?”
Until now, Matt had kept his head down for most of the conversation to avoid Rafferty’s smug expression, but now he raised his head and looked into Rafferty’s eyes. “She was worth a hundred of you.”
“When will you accept the fact we’re superior to you? I survived wounds that would’ve killed a man.”
“Just how did you find us?”
“The local yokels know everyone up there. All it took was one of my officers asking some questions at the local minimart. Plus, like I said, I heard you two talking about your escape at the apartment.”
Matt stood up, deciding that he didn’t want Rafferty having the upper hand, standing over him and looking down. He stopped two feet short of the bars and looked up at Rafferty, who was a good six-five to Matt’s six feet.
If Rafferty were a man, Matt could’ve taken him, despite the size advantage. He had a paunch, and his pants were too tight, clinging to his thighs. Had there not been a demon under that skin, Rafferty would be nothing more than a slow, flabby middle-aged man.
“Why did you pick my family?”
“We needed to feed. You know, I liked killing your father. He screamed like a woman.”
“Just like that? You kill for the hell of it?”
“No. I told you we’re superior to you. It’s not just for the hell of it. It’s a need to hunt, to kill, to eat.”
“So basically it’s hunger.”
“More than hunger. It’s a drive. Did you ever want sex so bad you were about to explode? I mean, say you hadn’t done it in six months and your woman starts teasing you?”
“So you’re reduced to base urges? I don’t see how that makes you superior to us. We can control urges.”
“I could kill you with one bite to the throat. Or maybe the back of the neck, snap your spine.”
“In that case big cats would be superior to men. I’m sure a tiger could do the same thing to me.”
Rafferty frowned. “Enough of this! I’ve got plans for you and the other two. I’ll dare them to come help you, and they will. Your kind is always rushing to help each other. It’s pathetic if you ask me.”
“That’s what makes
us
superior, asshole.”
“You won’t be talking so tough when you find out what I’ve got in store for you.” He pulled his nightstick from his belt and raked it across the bars. “Sleep tight, sweetheart,” he said, and strolled down the hallway.
The bastard was planning something to draw Harry and Jill in and Matt had to warn them before they walked into an ambush. He couldn’t let them die, especially after what happened to Donna. Dying ten times would be preferable to letting any harm come to Jill.
Maybe she and Harry took off, headed farther south, or maybe they crossed the Peace Bridge into Ontario, Matt thought. At least they would be safe, and that gave him some comfort.
But he knew different. Harry and Jill were made of good stuff (as his father was fond of saying about people he admired). They would come for him, and that troubled him.
What was Rafferty planning?
C
HAPTER
30
“That man’s gonna be the death of me.”
Liza finished packing the weapons into the trunk of her sister’s Honda Accord, including two shotguns, an M-16 rifle, and some C-4 with the necessary blasting caps and radio detonator. There was also Harry’s blue steel forty-four and enough ammunition to arm a third world nation. If her sister knew what was being stowed in her car, she would get her tit in the wringer about it right quick. Liza told her she was taking the car to do some grocery shopping.
She had the Accord parked in their garage, connected to the gun shop by a breezeway. The wind chirped through a hole in the concrete near the garage door and climbed up Liza’s leg, chilling her. Harry was fond of calling the breezes snow snakes because they crawled up your leg in winter and nipped you on the ass.
She closed the trunk and hugged herself, shivering. Her circulation was poor to begin with, and she never went anywhere without a cardigan, even in the summer.
I was never cold like this when I was a girl. Getting old is really hell,
she thought
.
It didn’t help that the temperature had gone from the nineties and sweltering to the chilly fifties in the space of two days. The dampness made it feel like someone was twisting corkscrews through her kneecaps.
Getting old
was
hell.
She slammed the trunk and hobbled over to the door.
Harry’s favorite red-and-green flannel shirt, a pair of socks and Wrangler jeans rested on the passenger seat. She patted around her rib cage, feeling the blunt hardness of a thirty-eight comforting her like an old friend.
Old Harry had really gotten himself in deep now, and when she met him, she never bargained for what
she
was getting into.
He started ranting about the hidden monsters shortly after they were married, and she seriously thought about a divorce. He made her promise to be careful when she went out and gave her a thirty-eight revolver to carry. That wasn’t a problem because her father taught her how to shoot back on their farm in Indiana when she was a girl.
After about six months of warnings to watch out for “Them,” one day she packed her suitcases and waited for him to come home from the gun shop. She showed him the packed bags and told him she would be on the next Greyhound back to Indiana if he didn’t stop. That was the end of it. Harry didn’t mention another word about “Them.”
She quietly wondered about his sanity until she saw one herself.
That same summer she threatened to leave him (was it ’63 or ’64? It was before he went to Vietnam), she was walking to the drugstore to pick up cough syrup for Harry. He had developed a summer cold and was hacking like he had TB.
She had to travel the alley between a hardware store and the Laundromat on her way to Glosser’s, and she remembered the icy chill that danced over her back. She saw a flicker, amber lights in the darkness, like a jack-o-lantern.
The smell nearly flattened her. It was like sulfur and under it the stench of feces, blood and entrails. There had been a meat-packing plant five miles from their farm. It smelled now like it had then when there was a hog slaughter, and she remembered sitting on the porch with Zelda, perfume-soaked handkerchiefs over their noses.
She stood frozen by fear and morbid curiosity, wondering exactly what had happened in that alley.
The chain-link fence at the back of the alley jingled, the moonlight catching the beast as it reached the top. It had a corpse slung over its shoulder, the skin bleached out from blood loss. It looked right at her and damned if it didn’t smile before leaping the fence and disappearing into the night with its quarry.
She ran all the way home.
She had arrived at the house huffing and puffing, with Harry wondering where his cough syrup had gone. She told him Glosser’s had closed early and he gave her a quizzical look and dismissed the issue for the moment.
The next morning she told him what she had seen, and apologized for not believing him. He had smiled, patted her hand and said, “That’s okay, I don’t blame you.” He could’ve gloated and said, “I told you so,” but he didn’t, and she loved him for that.
She had a feeling Harry was up to something involving the beasties, and he confirmed her suspicions this morning, calling to tell her the story of the siege at the cabin. She’d known his tale about him doing repairs at the cabin was bull chips, because Harry never did any work up there until a week before shotgun season. He was never good at slipping things past her.
Harry told her one of his friends was missing, and the other had died during the fight. The cabin was a total loss, and they needed weapons to go after Rafferty and stop the Harvest.
There were no second thoughts about bringing them the guns; it was automatic.
She clicked the garage door remote and the door creaked on its tracks. The plan was for her to meet Harry at the old Buffalo Tool and Die Works two blocks from the hotel. After delivering the weapons she was to return to the gun shop.
Harry had wanted her to stay at the hotel, but she responded, “Then who’s gonna run the shop?” Harry knew it was better not to argue with her when she got like that.
She pulled out of the driveway and turned left, heading for the entrance to the 190 South.
The shivers returned again.
Rafferty watched the old woman pull out of the driveway, confident she did not see him following. His vehicle of choice was a beige ‘83 Buick, impounded from a drunk driver who never returned to pick it up.
He knew she would lead him to Crowe’s friends if he trailed her. Instinct at work again.
She was a nice little bargaining chip, as well. Taking her would not be a problem.
He stayed five car lengths back, able to take his time for traffic was light and he didn’t have to worry about some jackass cutting in front of him and ruining his line of sight.
He trailed her to the ramp for the 190 South, the expressway that ran through the heart of downtown Buffalo.
Content with himself, he smiled, leaned back and drove, a man at ease.
Liza pulled the Honda into the lot of the old Die Works. It must have been the shipping and receiving dock, for there were four rusted roll-up doors, one of them spray-painted with the words
GOODYEAR CREW
. Liza had heard about them on the news, a gang that had terrorized most of the eastside, dealing drugs and shaking down neighbors for protection money.
She was flanked on both sides by sawtooth-style buildings, and the six-story main manufacturing complex towered in front of her. The lot only had access on one side, where she had entered through a busted chain-link gate. Because there were walls on three sides, the area could only be viewed from behind; that made it perfect for keeping prying eyes out.
She pulled up farther into the wasteland.
Empty syringes and glass vials littered the ground. The whole lot had become a microcosm of the inner city. Decay, garbage and a dreary hopelessness had settled over the old plant. Manufacturing jobs that once paid sixteen or eighteen dollars an hour were long gone, much like the days when you could walk these streets without worrying about taking a bullet.
There were old tires stacked in a heap, a washing machine with bullet holes in the side, an orange recliner with a spring popping out, and even a child’s doll with a bleached-out pink dress. It was a sad, broken-down area.
She engaged the electric locks, and after waiting a very long five minutes, a Chevy pickup pulled in, Harry driving and a sweet young thing in his passenger seat that had to be Jill.
They killed the engine and got out, Liza doing the same, stepping over broken glass and crack vials. She and Harry met halfway and she smoothed her hand across his cheek.
“How are you, you old fool?” she said.
“Still alive and kickin’.”
He kissed her on the lips.
“No time for that. Your goodies are in the trunk,” Liza said.
He introduced her to Jill and they shook hands.
“Not getting fresh with the old boy, are you?”
“He
is
awfully handsome.”
“Will you two cut it out?” Harry said, a blush creeping into his cheeks. He opened the Honda’s trunk and pulled out a green duffel bag. Then he dragged it over to the pickup and hoisted it into the bed.
He stopped long enough to peer across the lot, toward the opening at the chain-link fence, where Liza had entered the property.
She noticed him staring at something.
“What are you looking at?”
“Was that beige car there when you pulled in?”
When she turned around, the driver swerved out of his spot and sped away, the tires squealing.
“My guess is you were followed. That looked like an unmarked cop car.”
“You shouldn’t go home. Stay with us,” Jill said.
“Nonsense, missy. I’ve got a store to run, and I’m not letting anyone stop me from running it, cop or no cop.”
Harry said, “Stay with us.”
“Hogwash. I can handle myself,” Liza said.
“But—”
She lowered her voice and glared at him. “Harold.”
“Dammit, Liza.”
“Dammit yourself. Now listen to me, both of you.”
She approached Harry and placed her hands on his cheeks, tilting his head so he looked down at her. “You two worry about yourselves. If you don’t stop them, a lot of people are going to die. They don’t want me, anyhow. I fully expect both of you to come out of this alive, got it?”
“Sheesh,” Harry said.
“I don’t want you to do this, Harry, but someone has to. It won’t be any worse than worrying if you were lying dead in some Vietnam rice paddy. Just get out alive.”
“Promise me on Harvest night you’ll either leave or lock yourself in the bunker.”
“Another bunker?” Jill said.
“Under the gun shop. Built like a brick shithouse. No way would they get in there.”
“I promise,” she said.
She pressed herself against him and he hugged her. The body had softened and expanded with age, but she still relished the strength in Harry’s arms, the way he embraced her. That was something that would never burn out or grow old.
He let her go, and she squeezed Jill hard. She looked surprised, as if she hadn’t expected a tough old broad to give her a hug.
She climbed back into the Honda and lowered the window.
“Careful going home. This ain’t exactly Beverly Hills,” Harry said.
“Don’t worry. I’m packing.”
She tooted the horn and pulled out of the lot, immediately looking for a beige car.
She had been foolish, allowing herself to be followed to the meeting, and by a cop, no less.
On the ride back to the gun shop, she checked the rearview mirror every few seconds, scanning the road for the beige car. The only vehicle behind her the whole way home was a titanic white Cadillac.
Still, her stomach quivered.
A fine mist tapped on the windshield, and the wipers beat it away. The cold had seeped into her bones, gnawing on them like a pit bull with a T-bone in its jaws. She had the heater going full tilt, but she still shivered.
It was as if the cold was buried deep in the bones, and no amount of external heat could penetrate to warm her.
Once again, the thought of her own carelessness, of being followed, entered her mind, an unwanted guest that wouldn’t leave. She prided herself on the fact that she was always quick to spot a bullshit artist or a con man, and her lapse in watchfulness made her wonder if she was losing something with age.
No one put one over on Liza Pierce.
Then why did you let that car trail you?
It didn’t matter now, for the damage was done.
She pulled into the garage fifteen minutes later, and while in the breezeway, she made sure to lock the door to the garage. She did the same in the house, checking all the locks and closing all the miniblinds.
She patted her breast to assure herself the thirty-eight was still there.
Still feeling chilled, she turned the thermostat up to seventy, the furnace coughing out a dry, dusty smell indicative of the first lighting.
She still felt frozen, so she boiled some water and made herself a cup of Earl Grey. Lord, it was chilly! And not even September yet.
It was when she sat in her recliner that the cold became the least of her problems.
She heard footsteps on the kitchen floor.
She stood up and whirled around to see Ed Rafferty standing three feet behind her chair.
He moved fast, grabbing her wrist before she could take a step to get away.