“They’re just being built better,” Otto said. “No disrespect to either of you, but you think too much. Murray hit it right on the head. Sometimes the most obvious answer is just that, the answer.”
“Occam’s razor does seem to apply,” Amos said.
“What’s that?” Otto asked.
Amos smiled. “Never mind. It just means you’re probably right.”
All three of their heads turned as a little boy appeared in the open doorway to the kitchen. He couldn’t have been more than seven, maybe eight-he wore a cowboy hat, gun holsters on his hips, chaps with fringe and a slightly crooked black mask-the full-on Lone Ranger costume. Otto tensed at the sight of the six-shooters in the boy’s hands, but each had a barrel capped with bright orange plastic. Cap guns. Toys.
“Hold it right there, pardners,” the boy said. He made his little voice all gravelly, trying to sound tough, but he just sounded cute.
Otto laughed. “Oh, we’re holding it, Lone Ranger. Is there a problem?”
“Not if you keep your hands where I can see ’em, mister.”
Otto raised his hands to shoulder height, palms out. “You’ll get no trouble from me, Ranger. No trouble ’tall.”
The boy nodded, the very picture of seriousness. “Well, let’s just keep it that way, and we’ll all get along reallllll nice like.”
Missy bounced down the stairs, making far more noise than should have been possible out of a tiny, six-year-old body.
“My sister will take real good care of y’all,” the boy said. “I got me some business to attend ta.”
“Be safe, Ranger,” Otto said.
“Cute kid,” Amos said as the boy slid back into the kitchen and shut the door behind him. They heard him banging around, yelling at imaginary robbers.
But something about the boy gave Margaret a bad feeling. They’d rushed things, been sloppy-they hadn’t even checked to see how many people were in the family. The father was gone. One brother. Was there another? Any sisters?
“Mommy won’t wake up,” Missy said. “I’ve been trying for a couple of days, but she won’t wake up. And she smells funny.”
Margaret felt a coldness flush through her stomach.
The girl took a step forward. “Are you from the gov-ren-ment?”
Amos slowly stood up.
Otto calmly walked between the girl and Margaret. “Yes, honey, we’re from the government. How did you know?”
“Because my brother said you would come.”
Margaret wanted out of there. Now. They had come for the girl, but it never crossed their minds that someone else in the house might be infected.
“Oh, no,” Amos said. “Do you smell natural gas?”
Margaret did, suddenly and strong, coming from the kitchen.
“Get the girl out of here,” Otto said. His voice was quiet, calm, but totally commanding. “Do it now.”
Margaret stood and ran the three steps to Missy, then hesitated. She didn’t want to touch the little girl-what if she had those things? What if they were wrong, and she was contagious?
“Margaret,” Otto hissed. “Get her out of here.”
She ignored her instincts and picked the girl up, her skin crawling as she did. She took one step toward the door, but before she could take another, the kitchen door opened.
The little boy walked out, holding a cap gun in each hand. The smell of gas billowed out of the kitchen.
He still wore the cowboy hat, but not the mask. He only had one eye. The other socket held a misshapen blue lump, under the skin, that had pushed out his eyelids and eyebrow to obscene proportions. The lump stretched the eyelid out and open, showing a blackish, gnarled textured skin underneath. Whatever it was, it had grown between the boy’s eye and his eyelids-his eye was back there somewhere, behind that… thing.
“You’ve been bad,” the little boy said. “I’m going to have to gun…you… down. ”
He raised the cap guns.
Amos raced past Margaret, heading for the door. She turned and ran with him, still carrying the girl. Heavy footsteps told her that Agent Otto was right behind her.
Margaret ran out the door as she heard the caps firing, the boy pulling the trigger over and over again. She made it out the front porch and was down the steps when the gas finally ignited.
It wasn’t a big explosion, so much as a really large whuff. It didn’t even blow out the windows like on TV, just gave them a good rattle. She kept running and felt the heat on her back-just because it didn’t explode didn’t mean it wasn’t hot, didn’t mean the house wasn’t burning, and didn’t mean the little boy wasn’t already engulfed in flames.
40.
Perry loaded up his plate and managed to hop to the couch without spilling any of the rice-Ragu concoction. He slumped into the waiting cushions, winced at the waves of pain that shot through his leg, then gripped his fork and dug into the meal, not knowing if it would be his last.
The Ragu wasn’t thick enough to make the rice clump, so it was more like a heavy soup than Spanish rice. But it was still tasty, and it quelled his stomach’s grumbling. He shoveled it in as if he’d never seen food before in his life. Man, wouldn’t a Quarter Pounder and some supersize fries hit the spot right now? Or Hostess cupcakes. Or a Baby Ruth bar. Or a big old steak and some broccoli with a nice white-cheese sauce. No, scratch all of the above, a bajillion soft tacos from Taco Hell would be the most satisfying thing on the planet. Cram ’em down with Fire Sauce and a bottomless cup of Mountain Dew. It wasn’t that his rice was bad, but the texture just didn’t ring of solid food, and his stomach longed to be filled like a water balloon on a steamy-hot summer day.
Summer. Now that would have been a nice season to die. His timing, as usual, was terrible. He could have contracted this “illness” in the spring, or in the summer, or at least in the fall. All three seasons were unbelievably beautiful in Michigan. Trees everywhere either bursting with new-growth greenery or exploding in the spectacular, jewel-reflection colors that heralded the coming winter. Dying in summer would have been good-Michigan is just so green once you get outside the cities and towns, out onto the innumerable country roads. The highways to northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula are a black slash of pavement cutting through an endless sea of forest and farmland that sprawls out on either side.
Farmland, forest, swamps, water…the three-hour drive from Mount Pleasant to Cheboygan was interrupted by little more than roadkill and highway-stop towns like Gaylord that presented a splotch of buildings and cars before they were gone, fading away in the rearview mirror like the vestiges of a tasteless dream that dissipates into the buttery solution of delicious sleep.
Summer was warm, at least early summer. Later on in the season, the true nature of Michigan’s swamps revealed themselves in sweltering humidity, clammy sweat, swarms of mosquitoes and blackflies. But even that posed little problem, as you were never more than five or ten minutes’ drive from a lake. Back home, swimming in Mullet Lake, cool water leaching away the oppressive heat. Sun blasting down, turning white bodies red and leaving streamers in the eye from where it bounced off the surface like a million infinitely bright, tiny supernovas.
As perfect as summer could be, winter was equally oppressive. Sure, it was beautiful in its own right, with snow-covered trees, sprawling fields converted to expanses of white nothingness bordered by woods and dotted with farmhouses snugly nestled into the landscape. But beauty didn’t hold much over substance when that substance was freeze-your-balls-off cold. Up north the winters were spectacular. Down in the southern part of the state, where population expansion never ceased, the forests and fields were only something he glimpsed on the way to work. Here, winter made life miserable. Cold. Freezing. Wet. Icy. And even the snow looked dirty, pushed to the side of the road in mangy, gravel-embedded slush piles. Sometimes the trees were bedecked with an inch of snow on every last branch and twig, but most of the time they were barren, brown dead and lifeless. That’s why he’d always wanted to make sure he was cremated when he died-he couldn’t imagine spending eternity in the frozen soil of a Michigan winter.