Stranger

Nineteen

“Michaela… Michaela!”

Heightened survival instincts made her move like a cat. In a flicker of movement she appeared on the stairs, aiming the shotgun at Ben’s chest.

“Easy,” I said as I grabbed a holdall. “This’s Ben. He’s OK.”

“They know I’m here?” she asked.

“And they’ll be here in around thirty seconds flat,” Ben said, his hand trembling like crazy. “I was in the editor’s office and saw the alert come up on the PD screen. I tore down through those woods like a demon.”

“Dammit to hell.” I shook my head as I grabbed the rifle from the rack. “How did they find out so fast?”

“Mel Tourney reported to old man Crowther that she thought you were acting strange.”

“Figures.”

“Christ, Greg.” Ben watched as I scooped boxes of ammo from a drawer. “What y’gonna do, shoot your way out?”

“Not if I can help it. We’ve got to run for it. Ready, Michaela?”

“When you are.” She moved to the doorway. “No sign of anybody yet.”

“I reckon it will take them a good ten minutes to assemble and drive down here.” The only road down here was a switchback track that took vehicles away from this part of the shoreline before it doubled back on itself to run alongside the lake. We might make it. Just. But there was another problem now.

“Ben, what are your plans?”

“Plans?”

“They’re going to find out that you tipped me off, buddy. That’s got to be a capital offense these days.”

“He can come with us,” Michaela said.

Quick as the old greased lightning I stuffed my file of notes and cuttings into the bag, pulled on my leather jacket, then shouldered the rifle. “Looks as if you’ve no choice, Ben.”

Michaela called out, “I see a cloud of dust… yup… around a dozen cars coming this way.”

“That’ll be the Guard; make for the boat, Ben.” Ben stood there, his fingers seeming to vibrate. He’d seized up solid. “You mean leave?”

“You can’t stay here, Ben, not now.”

“You fucking idiot, Valdiva! You’ve killed us, that’s what you’ve done! Why couldn’t you leave her wherever you found her?”

I heard the roar of approaching motors. “Ben, there isn’t time for this. Run. Just fucking run, will you?”

Michaela already tore down the path to the jetty.

“Oh, man, you’re an insane-” Ben started saying it, but I finished it by shoving him through the screen onto the porch. “Run!”

The sight of those cars barreling down the road did it for him. He followed Michaela, running so hard his arms became a blur. Me? I didn’t give my home of ten months a backward glance. With the holdall and the rifle bouncing like wild animals on my shoulder, I pounded across the dirt.

By the time I’d reached the jetty Michaela had already pulled the plug on the power cable that had been juicing the batteries. “Ben! Get the rope at the stern… No, don’t untie it, pull it up over the post.”

The Guard were maybe half a mile away, clearly visible in the low sun that glinted like gun flashes from their windshields. They swept by bushes so fast they ripped off leaves and raised dust devils that swirled around them. I knew there’d be guys standing in the backs of the pickups, rifles cocked and ready. Jesus, this was going to be tight.

I made it to the boat’s control panel in one jump that sent the whole thing tilting madly to one side.

“Careful,” Ben yelled. “You’ll tip us in.”

“Keep your heads down!” I roared at them. “They’ll blast us with everything they’ve got.”

Sweet Jesus, I hoped those batteries had taken the charge. With the sun shining on the gauge I couldn’t see whether the needle was in the red or not. One thing in our favor-you didn’t have to fire up the motor like you would a diesel or gas engine. You switched the thing on like a goddam Hoover. The downside? There’s always a downside, isn’t there? The thing had the horsepower to match.

With the electric motor rising to a hum the boat moved away from the jetty. Slow, too damn slow. These things were built for tourists to amble around the lake while sipping Chardonnay or lazily peeling an orange.

I looked back to see the jetty moving away, the water white from the boat’s propeller. Cars, pickups, a police truck with lights flashing and siren whooping raced up to the quay. Michaela and Ben squatted on their haunches watching the Guard jumping down from the pickups, then running along the jetty.

Michaela chambered a round into the shotgun and aimed.

“Keep your heads down,” I shouted at the pair. “I’ll take it out of sight ’round the headland.”

I swung the wheel over, opened the throttle as far as it would go. On the jetty those guys were in a rage. In their eyes I was a traitor, I guess. I’d disobeyed the Caucus. I’d bought a stranger onto the island just like the old cop, Finch. But I had reasons that were good reasons. So I believed, anyway.

Then the Guard blasted us. Man, whatever they had they let fly. Even though we were more than two hundred yards out in the lake I heard a frenzy of cracks and thumps.

I threw myself into the bottom of the boat, allowing the thing to steer itself. The plastic windshield turned white as milk as buckshot tore into it. Bullets hit the hull as if a lunatic with a hammer beat it with a mad rhythm. Flakes of paint swirled all around us like snow. Michaela knelt up with the shotgun.

“Aim over their heads,” Ben yelled. “I know those people.”

“So why are they trying their damnedest to kill us then?” She squeezed the trigger, sending a bunch of shot back at the jetty. I saw she had aimed high. But still low enough to make the Guard duck their heads and spoil their aim. She ducked down herself behind the gunwale. “They weren’t ready for this kind of shooting,” she called at me. “They’re armed with shotguns and handguns. They’re not going to sink us with those.”

Yeah, maybe. Even so, there were enough hits to bite chunks of plastic out of the case that housed the control panel. If a bullet sliced a cable we’d wind up drifting like a leaf on the water. It wouldn’t be long before the Guard grabbed a boat and came out to find us.

The firing from the jetty began to falter as they emptied their guns. Now was the time to see where we were headed. I risked a look and saw we were heading straight for the rocks of the headland. I swung the boat’s nose ’round and took her ’round the reef. Seconds later the tip of the headland slipped between the Guard and us.

“You can put your heads up now. They can’t see us.” I glanced back to see heads raised. Flecks of white paint salted Michaela’s dark hair. They both looked dazed. “Are you two all right?”

They said they hadn’t been hit. But I noticed Ben running trembling hands over his limbs and chest like he couldn’t believe that a slug hadn’t found its way through the hull to pierce a lung or arm.

The boat had taken a mauling. Thin jets of water squirted in through the hull where bullets had punctured us below the waterline. All being well, the pumps in the bilges should cope with that for the short trip to Lewis, that godforsaken ghost town.

Come to think of it, the place was no fair exchange for Sullivan, with its bars, diners, stores and warehouses bulging with food. But I’d made my bed, as my mother would have said. Time to go lie in it.

The only sting of regret? Yeah, there was one: looking back at the headland to see the mound of milk-white stones that marked the graves of Chelle and Mom, I knew I’d never be able to visit them again.

After a while I swung the boat so its nose pointed across the lake to Lewis. Even though the sun shone I saw what a forbidding place it was. Skeletons of blackened buildings. Ghostly dark voids behind shattered windows. Streets lousy with human skulls where a peeled human face might roll by in the breeze like a tumbleweed. Boy, oh boy. It looked like the ’burbs of hell.