The Slab (41 page)

Nick had anticipated armed resistance, but not on this level. From listening to Nick’s comments in her ear, he had the sense that his friend would rather be out here with them, where things were happening, than back at the car with the principal. But Haynes was his job and he had to stay with the man no matter what.

Mikey Zee himself had yet to shoot anyone. He carried his favorite big gun, a gas-operated, semi-auto Benelli Super 90 M3 12 gauge with the shoulder stock/pistol grip combination, and the more he was out here, breathing in the sharp-edged smoke and listening to the lead fly past him like so many mosquitoes, the more he longed to unload it on somebody.

He poked his head above the edge of the big track loader and saw someone running across in front of them, pistol in his hand, firing one shot after another toward them. Good enough, he thought, raising the Benelli to his shoulder. He led the runner and fired. The runner stopped as if he’d encountered a brick wall, jerked to his right, and the middle part of him disintegrated in a fine mist, black in the smoky light. Mikey liked the shotgun’s kick against him, like a punch to the shoulder, and liked the way it had done its job. Nick hadn’t promised this would be as fun as it was turning out.

“Another one down,” he said.

“Copy that, Mikey,” Nick replied.

The track loader’s massive blade struck the front surface of yet another old RV, and whatever else Nick might have said was lost in the squeal and shriek of twisted metal.

***

When he was out from underneath the double-wide, Billy ran across an open stretch of Slab toward a trailer where a short wall had been built around a picnic/patio area with what looked like found bricks and desert stones all piled up around a base of old tires. There were fucking tires everywhere on the Slab, used to mark “property” lines, driveways, picnic spots—anything that might need marking. Sometimes on a summer’s day all you could smell was old rubber cooking in the desert sun.

He leapt the wall and crouched behind it, his Glock out, looking back toward the double-wide and the trailer from which someone had fired on him. He held the gun sideways, even though Ken had repeatedly warned him against it, because it just looked so awesome in The Matrix. Ken claimed that it might be fine for one shot but accuracy would suffer if he had to fire multiple shots at that angle. Maybe yes, Billy thought, maybe no. But Ken wasn’t here now.

There’s something hinky about that trailer, he thought. There hadn’t been any gunfire in the immediate vicinity, so it was almost like whoever was inside there—and he was sure no one had come out yet—was waiting for him, or for a uniform, since he didn’t even think they’d have been able to get a good look at him in the dark. And if they fire at any uniform that comes around, he reasoned, that must mean they’re up to something. He wondered if there was a way to get a better look inside that trailer without getting his head blown off.

For now, though—as long as no one popped out from the vehicle he had his back to—he was relatively safe behind this wall, shadowed by the big RV from the moonlight and the flames that licked ever higher into the sky a slab or two over. He’d just stay here for a bit, catch his breath, and shoot anyone who showed himself.

Lucy Alvarez was running out of patience. She knew where those guys were, still hiding inside the trailer she’d seen them enter hours ago. One had come out, and she’d nailed him. Maybe he was dead, maybe just wounded, but she’d put the hurt on him and that was good. But it left three to go, and that was not good. The whole freaking world was falling apart, it sounded like. Flames brightened the night, guns were going off everywhere, and occasional crashes like the world’s biggest demolition derby sounded over everything else. Earlier she had thought there was no way she’d get her revenge and not have to pay the price in jail time, or maybe even the death penalty. But the way things sounded up on the Slab, on this night, of all nights, she stood a good chance of being able to murder four men in cold blood and just walk away from it all.

But she had to drive them out of that trailer, or go into it herself. That latter option held limited appeal. If she had more bullets—or if she knew how many bullets she had, or even how to find out—she could just start shooting into the walls of the trailer, figuring that her shots would penetrate its thin skin and either cause some damage or chase them out.

On the other hand, maybe creating the impression that she could do that would serve just as well, she thought. There was that one window facing off this way, after all. She hadn’t seen anyone at the window for a while, but if the intent was terror, then that might not matter. The biggest drawback she could think of was that shooting through the window might pinpoint her own location for them—because she had to shoot uphill, a shot through the window would likely go above everybody’s head and into, or through, the ceiling. From that they’d know about where she was hiding, and with more people and more ammo they might be able to finally finish their ungodly hunt.

Hell with it, she thought. It was a chance worth taking. She took careful aim, blew out her breath, held steady, and squeezed the trigger firmly. As before, the gun sounded very loud to her, even though the night was full of gunshots and the general din from the Slab. But the bullet sailed true, shattering the small window in this end of the trailer. She heard a shouted curse, but there was no immediate visible response.

A moment later, she heard a gunshot, loud, from the direction of the trailer. But she didn’t see a muzzle blast, just a bright flash of light inside, through the window.

She was lowering the weapon when the door burst open and men piled out, crouching to minimize the targets they presented, and carrying guns of their own. As quickly as she could, she raised the rifle and fired again, but her shot went high. She pulled the trigger once more. It clicked on an empty chamber.

“There she is!” one of them shouted. Suddenly the air around her was alive with the buzz and whine of bullets, thudding into the dirt and chopping bits of brush. She dropped the rifle and ran, back down the slope, the way she had come from. She had no goal in mind, just away, anywhere away from them until she could regroup and arm herself again.

It didn’t take them long to realize what she was doing and to give chase. A moment later, she could hear them crashing through the brush, coming toward her. She didn’t know if they had flashlights, or simply followed her by moonlight or by the sounds she made. They were back there, that was all that mattered.

After running blindly for a few minutes, she realized that there was someplace she could go, someone on the Slab who would offer shelter and probably had a gun of his own. A friend of her brothers.

Eddie Trujillo would help her.

***

When the bullet shattered the glass window of Rock’s trailer and ripped up through the roof, Kelly had just polished off the last of Rock’s beers and was about to stand up to throw the bottle out the door, in the general direction in which he’d last seen Vic Bradford trying to crawl toward the loving arms of his wife.

But he dropped back into his seat as glass sprayed and metal tore. “That’s her,” he said. “Got to be.”

“All the gunfire around here tonight, it could be anyone,” Terrance countered.

“No one else would target us,” Kelly said. “Let’s go put an end to this.”

“You go,” Rock said. “I don’t want it anymore. None of it. Go ahead, just don’t come back. I don’t want to see you as long as I live, Kelly.”

“I can arrange that,” Kelly said. He snatched up his rifle, knowing there was already a round in the chamber, and squeezed the trigger. The slug tore through Rock’s throat and blew out the back of his neck with a spray of blood. Rock dropped face down on the trailer’s formerly immaculate floor, and made gurgling noises. But Kelly didn’t hang around to listen to him die, much as he’d have liked to.

“Get going,” he said to Terrance. “We’ve got to kill that bitch.”

***

By the time Ken Butler reached the first of the slabs, there was almost nothing left of it.

The earth moving machines had flattened every dwelling that had stood there, fifteen or sixteen of them, Ken thought. Rubble was strewn over the concrete surface, but the smaller machines scooted this way and that, scraping up the smoldering mounds and shoving it off the slab into the desert brush beyond.

The two bigger track loaders idled at the edge of the slab, their headlights shining toward the second one. Most of the shotgun-toting guards stood behind the machines, guns trained across the narrow dirt space toward the welcoming committee that waited for them.

The majority of the Slab’s residents were out now. Many wept openly, women and men alike. Others, men mostly, and most of those elderly, in their late sixties or seventies, held guns: hunting rifles and small handguns, .22s and the like, that were no match for the military quality of the shotguns that faced them. Their bullets would likely not even penetrate the flak jackets their opponents wore. But they lined up at the edge of the second slab, a human wall, bravely facing the smaller but better-equipped force that had already felled a number of them. Ken had seen some of the bodies, and even now, as he watched, saw the bulk of a man who could only be Jim Trainor, the Slab’s fattest male resident, scooped up with the remains of someone’s home and pushed off the concrete.

Dogs, at least a dozen of them, barked at the noisy machines, but even they had learned to keep their distance. Some of them sat and scratched or whimpered, noses in the dirt and tails up, for their lost owners. A kid who couldn’t have been more than eleven stood with a couple of the dogs, fumbling with a rifle nearly as big as he was.

Ken forced his way through to the front of the line and called across to Haynes’s goons. “You men have got to stand down!” he shouted. “I’m the law here and I’m tellin’ you to put down those weapons and shut off those vehicles!”

One of the goons took a half-step forward. He was a burly guy with upper arms the size of one of Ken’s thighs. Even the shotgun looked small in his hands. “Can’t do it, Lieutenant!” he called. “Mr. Haynes owns the land. He has a paper from his attorney saying he’s got a legal right to evict trespassers from it.”

“Not by committing murder,” Ken replied. “There’s no law says you can do that.”

“Every shot we’ve fired has been in self-defense,” the goon called. “And in defense of our employer’s private property!”

“We’ll let the courts decide that,” Ken said. “But in the meantime, I want you men to put down those weapons.”

The goon looked at him across the dirt divide, as if from the other side of a bottomless chasm, without a bridge in sight. Finally, he shrugged and turned back to the drivers sitting in the big machines. He cocked a thumb toward the second slab, and the operators put their loaders into gear and started forward.

Ken fought back a moment of panic. He couldn’t tell these people not to defend their homes. But they had little or no chance against those well-trained men with their modern weapons and giant equipment. And to throw away their lives for a few hundred square feet of land they didn’t even own, instead of just picking up their few possessions and moving elsewhere, seemed the height of lunacy to him. Looking at the faces that surrounded him, he saw their determination displayed in every crease and wrinkle of sun-leathered skin. These were people who faced the desert every day, who summered in hundred-and-ten degree heat that would melt softer, more civilized folks, who lived life on their own terms instead of society’s.

There was a bloodbath coming, and nothing he could do would stop it.

At least, nothing he could do alone. What was it Penny had said as he’d left? Something about not trying to do everything by himself. That was the way he had lived his whole life, certainly since Shannon had died, and maybe even before that.

He pushed his way back out through the throng of people willing to stand together against their common enemy, and broke into a run once he was free of them.

Halfway across the second slab, on his way back to Hal Shipp’s RV, he spotted Billy Cobb crouched behind a low wall, his Glock held out sideways, elbow locked. He looked like an idiot, and if he fired the gun that way, he’d be as likely to snap his elbow as hit his target. Looking at him, Ken’s run slowed to a walk and the fury ebbed back into him like a rising tide.

He closed to within a few feet without Billy noticing. “Billy,” he said.

Billy’s head swiveled toward him. “Ken, am I glad to see you! This whole place has gone nuts. I’ve been tryin’ to do what I can, but someone in a trailer over there took some shots at me.”

Ken kept walking, closing the gap. He wasn’t even thinking clearly now, just feeling, remembering the terror that Mindy Sesno had felt in her final moments and the rage that had filled him back at her house.

“You killed her,” he said, his voice low and menacing.

Billy gave him back a look of newborn innocence that just infuriated him all the more. “What are you talking about, Ken? Who’s been killed?”

“Mindy,” Ken said, and now he finally stopped his forward advance, just on the other side of the low wall from the deputy. Close enough to smell Billy, the acrid tang of his sweat, tainted by fear.

“No,” he insisted. “I didn’t do any such—”

“Yes,” Ken said, and Billy stopped arguing. He stood, bringing the gun to waist height, not with as much subtlety as he probably thought.

Ken gave him no chance to use it. He let his left hand take the weight of his shotgun and jabbed with his right, his fist driving into Billy’s gut as if trying to reach right through the deputy. Billy made a whooshing sound as the wind blew out of him. Ken dropped the shotgun on the pavement then, and followed up with a left jab to Billy’s jaw. The wedding ring he still wore, Shannon’s gift to him, caught flesh and tore it, spraying blood.

Billy rocked back against the trailer behind him, shook his head and brought his pistol up again. Ken reached forward and caught Billy’s gun hand and pulled it toward him, yanking Billy off balance. With the gun safely pointed past him Ken gripped the weapon beneath the barrel and twisted up. Billy grabbed Ken’s throat with his left hand, trying to choke him, but Ken’s pressure on his right hand brought tears to the younger man’s eyes and he let go of the gun before his fingers broke. Ken threw the gun to the ground and punched Billy again, staggering him and breaking his grip on Ken’s neck.