Their Ford had been rammed by the fire truck and hurled through the storefront’s plate-glass window and into the interior of AG Edwards. The front of the fire truck, having followed their car, was sitting beside it. Both vehicles were wedged into the debris. A steel beam in the ceiling had sheared the fire truck’s cab clean off.
The Ford had struck several people with desks along the storefront, killing them instantly. Dillon turned around in the backseat; he saw the smashed-out gaping hole the two vehicles had punched out. He could see Howlers jumping off the fire truck’s back end, which was sticking out into the street.
One of his men had been decapitated by a stop sign that had come through the Ford’s front windshield. In a surreal picture, the head was still wobbling about on the seat next to Dillon like a slowing top. Someone was screaming. The driver, he guessed, because Dillon could see the black man was rocking back and forth in agony, his big head ticking violently. The screaming was horrible. The driver, his left foot and left thigh impaled on a gas line, was trying to undo his seat belt. Dillon got control of his own shock and did a quick check of his body. He moved his arms, then his legs; everything was working.
One of the Howlers was approaching the Ford. The Howler got close in and put his face up to the bashed-in front windshield. The dead man next to Dillon still wore his ski mask. Dillon tore it off, then took the pistol out of the dead man’s hand. The driver had stopped screaming; it was quiet in the car. Dillon was the only one left alive. The severed head was sitting on one of the moneybags, the head’s eyes wide open. Dillon knocked it off with the back of his hand. The head’s face, even in death, seemed to sense the ironic turn of events.
Grabbing one of the canvas moneybags, Dillon tried the door on his left. Immediately a hand was grabbing for him. A child’s hand caught him by the ankle and began to drag him out of the Ford. It felt as if a powerful machine had caught hold of his leg. He saw the kid’s head through the Ford’s window, raised his pistol and fired.
The kid flew backwards into a dead stockbroker, still holding his phone where he’d died. The stockbroker’s legs had been cleanly amputated; he’d been knocked into the front of the Ford and rammed between a random desk and a wall. Pieces of his intestines had been pushed up through his mouth and were spilling onto the Ford’s hood, and yet the dead man was holding his cell phone as if he were alive and in mid conversation.
Dillon crawled out of the half-open car door. He brought out two of the moneybags from the bank. He reached into the back of the Ford and got his shotgun, which was lying on the floor. He searched one of the Texan’s pockets for ammo and found an extra full clip for a Glock.
In the smashed-up office the Howlers were milling around, looking about as if they were lost. Two of them were beating a young secretary to death, punching her with tremendous force, their blows crushing her face. Several people from the brokerage were sitting at their desks injured or trying to help each other get over the debris and out into the street.
Dillon looked at the two bags of money. He couldn’t carry both and wield his shotgun at the same time. He swore under his breath. “Hey, asshole.”
One of the milling Howlers looked up. It started to shriek, then howl. It made for Dillon, the Ford between them. The Howler, about twenty and clad in Cal-Trans overalls, climbed over the top of the Ford, taking the direct route. Dillon waited for him to come over the Ford’s roof. He shot him as soon as he came over the top, blowing him backwards. Several Howlers came up over the Ford in the same manner. Dillon fired again and again; three Howlers dropped from the shotgun’s blasts. The rest of the group came up at him, the same way, over the top of the Ford, just as he expected.
They’re so stupid!
“Stupid fuckers,” Dillon said out loud. He dropped the shotgun, now empty and pulled out the two pistols he had holstered before he’d walked into the bank. He began to fire.
The last Howler—another kid, only about ten—dropped at his feet as the pistols clicked empty. Dead Howlers rolled off the top of the Ford and onto the floor of the destroyed brokerage office. He picked up a section of gas line and smashed the kid in the head, killing him.
The heavy smell of cordite mixed with stinking Howler blood, but the Howlers were all dead and he had the two bags of money at his feet. “It was me or the money, motherfuckers!” he shouted, the adrenalin pumping through him so hard he felt high.
One of the stockbrokers—fat, still alive, his white shirt stained with blood—looked at him from the smashed water cooler where he’d been standing talking about George Clooney’s new girlfriend on his phone, and how he’d “like to do her, too.” He was frozen with fear but miraculously untouched, his belly sagging over his belt. CNBC was playing on a TV on the wall above him as if nothing had happened.
“You better clear out,” Dillon said to the fat man. “There’s probably more of them.”
The man—in shock—nodded, finally moving his head and dropping his phone.
Dillon picked up the two heavy canvas bags of money, each stamped with “Bank Of America on its sides, and walked out of the hole in the storefront office and into the chaos on the street.
* * *
“Dad, I want you to meet Gary Summers,” Rebecca said. She was standing next to Gary and smiling.
Mr. Stewart looked at the kid from behind the counter and smiled back. “Any friend of Rebecca’s is a friend of mine,” he said.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Rebecca said. “Come on in and I’ll show you the store.”
Gary followed. “I didn’t lock my bike,” he said.
Rebecca looked at her father and they both laughed.
“Son, you don’t have to lock you bike here in Timberline. And people don’t steal much from in front of gun stores, usually.”
Gary took one more look back at his $2,000 mountain bike. It was his prize possession, and he wasn’t sure.
Rebecca grabbed him by the hand and pulled him up to the long counter. “We got more pistols than any gun store in the Sierras,” she said, looking down at the huge assortment of handguns. “That’s why those people outside are mad at us.”
Summers didn’t know what to say. He looked up from the counter and saw that Rebecca’s father was looking down on the arsenal proudly.
“You an auto man, or revolver?” Stewart asked.
“Auto, I guess?” Gary said, not sure what the man meant; all his knowledge of firearms had come from video games or TV shows.
“I thought so,” Stewart said. He took out a Smith and Wesson 1918 Colt 45 and put it out on the counter on a piece of green felt. “Now that pistol, right here—and I don’t care what anyone says about the Glocks—This is the one I’d take to a gunfight,” Rebecca’s father said.
Gary looked at the thing. His parents had been horrified when he’d asked for a GI Joe once for his birthday. He reached for the pistol and picked it up. It was cold and slightly oily to the touch, and heavier than he expected. The pimpled grip felt oddly sensual. He’d never touched any kind of firearm in his life.
“How do you—load it?” Gary asked, fascinated. “Down here, right?”
Mr. Stewart and Rebecca were both too polite to register their shock at his ignorance.
“We got a shooting range downstairs in the basement. Want to try it?” Rebecca suggested. It was best to get him up to speed with firearms as soon as possible, before he said anything else that might put her dad off.
“Sure,” Summers said.
Rebecca winked at her father. It was a signal they used for inside jokes and for city-people ways, which were always strange.