Dillon had walked with the hysterical mother, who was holding her baby close. She begged him to help her get to her car. He’d stood in the middle of Main Street covering their escape, firing at Howlers that tried to jump on the woman’s car as she pulled away.
After that, out of ammunition, he’d been forced to ignore the mayhem and chaos on Main Street or he wouldn’t survive himself. He’d had to pass people fighting for their lives, some being beaten, some in tears having seen their loved ones murdered in the most horrible way. He’d turned down the first street that looked quiet, not knowing what he would do next.
Keep the money. That was number one.
Stay alive, get out of here. There had to be places without Howlers yet. He stopped to check the pistol in his belt, pushing it down so it wouldn’t show as much.
Funny, he thought, me saving a sheriff—a lawman. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do. Might end up regretting it.
He wondered if he was going a little crazy. Maybe, he thought. Seeing a car bend the corner and come toward him, he stopped walking and put the two canvas bags of cash down. People in the car stared at him as they passed. Dillon looked at them carefully. One street could be normal, while on the next Howlers were overrunning everything, dragging people out of their cars and killing them with their bare hands. He looked up the street. It looked quiet. He picked up the bags again and walked on.
He glanced into a storefront beauty parlor as he walked by. A lot of middle-aged ladies stared at him from inside the shop, their heads trapped in old-fashioned conical metal hair dryers, oblivious to what was happening. He could only imagine what it would be like when the things got in there. He put down one of the canvas moneybags and waved at the women from the street.
“Get out!” he yelled.
They looked back at him stupidly through the window. One of them touched another on the arm and gave him a look.
“Get out, I said. While you can!”
Two of the old ladies, prune-faced, burst out laughing, thinking he was a drunk. Dillon stared at them, then opened the door of the salon. It was acrid-smelling, as if they’d been frying rats on a hot plate.
“There are Howlers, here in town. Down on the main street. They’ll be up here soon. Get out!” he said. He looked at the gaggle of ladies. They all looked like his mother under the hair dryers. Almost faceless, just eyes and chins. They’d stopped laughing when they saw the pistols.
He walked into the beauty parlor. It was warm; half a dozen ladies were under the dryers and more were having their hair cut in another room. The smell was worse here, almost as bad as a dead Howler, Dillon thought. The hairdressers, all young women, had stopped cutting hair and were staring at Dillon, their mouths open in shock.
“Listen, you better get out of here before I call the cops,” a young girl said. She wore black leotards and a white blouse. She held a spray can in one hand, and was talking on her cell phone, cradled on her shoulder, as she worked.
“You have a few minutes. If you leave now, you might make it,” Dillon said to all of them. “They’ll come up here too.”
The girl put down her can of hair spray, hung up on her call, and dialed 911.
Dillon watched her and started to laugh at the stupidity of it. “Go ahead and call! They’ll be picking that phone out of your ass when they get here.” He turned around and walked out of the shop’s front door, back out into the blinding sunlight of a suddenly cloudless sparkling blue sky. They were doomed, he thought.
He turned back and looked in the salon’s window. One of the women went back to her People magazine, sneering and muttering about people needing jobs.
He hefted the moneybags and walked on. Quit being a stupid shit. No one is going to believe you til they see them. He glanced down the street. If he stayed here too long, he’d be dead meat too, he thought. He began to walk by the cars parked on the lane, looking for one that had been left open. He found one with a jean jacket left on the front seat. He put the jacket on, covering his shoulder holsters so they wouldn’t be so noticeable.
He watched an old station wagon drive by, a mother and her children in the front seat, totally oblivious of what was in front of them on Main Street. He couldn’t hijack someone’s car, not now. He was a son-of-a-bitch, but he wasn’t heartless. He thought of going back to the used car lot he’d seen, where he knew he could hot-wire something and get out of here.
Then he saw the sign down the narrow snow-filled street: All American Gun Shop. Dillon crossed the street, snow crunching under his cowboy boots. He would need ammo, and lots of it.
He saw picketers in front of the gun store. Dillon looked at them incredulously. Mostly young kids, they looked at Dillon and asked him to join the protest. He’d stared at them, the bags of money in his hands, not knowing whether to laugh or what.
“Guns kill,” a young Latin girl said to him. She saw the pistol tucked into his jeans and backed away. The girl moved back into the safety of the moving queue.
“You all better get out of here!” Dillon shouted. “And you’ll need guns and ammo! That’s what I’m doing. The Howlers are down the street, right down there, on that main drag. I just came down from there.” He put the bags of money down and spoke in an earnest tone of voice. He didn’t want the Howlers to take the young girl, or any of the kids.
The crowd of twenty or so young people looked at him wide-eyed. One of them, a tall boy with pimples and red hair, burst out laughing. Some of the others began to laugh, too.
“He’s drunk,” the red-headed boy said.
“No, I’m not neither,” Dillon said. “I said there’s Howlers right down on the main street, they’re bound to get up here too! You got to get one of these and protect yourselves!” He ripped the automatic out from where he’d tucked it in the front of his jeans.
The grins on the faces of the young people turned to fear. One of the girls screamed and backed away, held around the waist by her boyfriend who’d come down the line to protect her. All the kids backed away down the sidewalk en masse.
Dillon heard the old-school brass bell attached to the store’s door, and felt something stick him in the ribs. He knew right away it was a weapon of some kind.
“Boy, put that down,” a voice said.
Dillon turned around and looked over the top of the head of the man, who was much shorter, holding the shotgun on him. The older man had a salt and pepper flat top and wore a red flannel shirt. His eyes were blue. Dillon saw a look he recognized. He dropped the gun on the wooden sidewalk. The automatic clattered at his feet. The shotgun’s barrel was level and pointed at his stomach.
“I didn’t mean to scare anyone. I was just trying to warn them, mister,” Dillon said.
“What do you want here, boy?”
“Just some ammo, sir. And I’ll pay for it.”
The older man holding the shotgun looked down at the two canvas sacks at Dillon’s feet.
“Mister, I need that pistol back. I swear I didn’t mean no harm to anyone.”
“What do you need it for? You going to rob me?”