Mary stood at the back door, the rifle in her hands. She decided to let him find Mitch and Emma.
The pig opened the barn's door and walked inside.
She waited, her eyes glittering with a kind of lust.
It didn't take long. The pig came running out. He staggered, stopped, bent over, and threw up onto the snow. Then he started running again, his long legs pumping and his face ghastly.
Mary unlocked the door and stepped out into the chill. The pig saw her, came to a skidding halt, and started reaching for his pistol. The holster's flap was snapped down, and as the pig's gloved fingers fumbled to unsnap it, Mary Terror flexed her numb hand, took aim, and shot him in the stomach at a range of thirty feet. He was knocked backward to the ground, the breath bursting white from his mouth and nostrils. As the pig rolled over and tried to struggle to his knees, Mary fired a second shot that took away a chunk of his left shoulder in a mist of steamy blood. The third bullet got him in the lower back as he was crawling across the crimson snow.
He jerked a few times, like a fish on a hook. And then he lay still, facedown, his arms splayed out in an attitude of crucifixion.
Mary breathed deeply of the cold air, savoring its sting in her lungs. Then she went back into the kitchen, set the rifle down, and finished the last two spoonfuls of Wheat Chex. She drank the milk, and followed it with the final swig of Coke. She limped to the bedroom, where she put on the corduroy coat and the gloves, then picked up Drummer in the folds of the goosedown parka. "Pretty boy, yes you are!" she said as she carried him to the kitchen. "Mama's pretty little boy!" She kissed his cheek, a surge of love rising within her like a glowing radiance. She looked out the back door again, verifying that the pig had not moved. Then she put Drummer into the Cherokee, cranked open the garage door, and slid behind the wheel.
She pulled out of the garage, past the pig car and down the driveway. Then she turned right on the road that led back to I-80 and the route west. Her shoulder bag was on the floorboard, full of Pampers and formula and holding her Magnum and the new Smith Wesson revolver to replace the lost Colt. She felt so much better this morning. Still weak, yes, but so much better. It must be the vitamins, she decided. Got some iron in her blood, and that made all the difference.
Or maybe it was the power of love, she thought as she glanced on the seat beside her at her beautiful baby.
The list of names and phone numbers was in her pocket, along with the bloodstained Sierra Club newsletter article. To the west the sky was a dark purple haze, the land white as a peace dove.
It was a morning rich with love.
The Cherokee went on, aimed toward California, freighted with firepower and madness.
2: Strip Naked
Checkout time was noon. At ten thirty-six the rust-eaten Cutlass with a Nebraska tag pulled out of the Liberty Motor Lodge's parking lot. The red-haired woman behind the wheel turned right, onto the ramp that merged into the westbound lanes of I-80. The Cutlass's passenger, a pallid woman with a bandaged hand and hellfire in her eyes, wore a dark gray sweater banded with green stripes. She kept an ice pack pressed against her left hand, and she chewed on her raw and swollen lower lip.
The miles clicked off. Snow flurries spun from the gloom, the headlights of cars on and their wipers going. The Cutlass's wipers shrieked with a noise like a banshee party, and the car's engine chugged like a boiler with spark plugs. In Des Moines, eighty miles farther west, Didi and Laura stopped at a Wendy's and got the works: burgers, fries, salad bar, and coffee. As Laura ate with no thought of manners and an eye on the clock, Didi went to the pay phone and looked up pawnbrokers in the Yellow Pages. She tore the page out, rejoined Laura, and they finished their food.
The clerk at Honest Joe's, on McKinley Avenue, examined the diamond through his loupe and asked to see some identification. They took the stone back and went on. The female clerk at Rossi's Pawn on 9th Street wouldn't talk to them without seeing proof of ownership. At the dismal, aptly named Junk 'n Stuff Pawnshop on Army Post Road, a man who made Laura think of John Carradine's head stuck on Dom DeLuise's body looked at the diamond and laughed like a chain saw. "Get real! It's paste, lady!"
"Thank you." Laura picked up the diamond and Didi followed her toward the door.
"Hey, hey, hey! Don't go away mad! Hold up a sec!"
Laura paused. The fat man with the thin, wrinkled prune of a face motioned her back with a ring-studded paw. "Come on, let's dicker a little bit."
"I don't have time for that."
"What, you're in a hurry?" He frowned, looking at her bandaged hand. "I think you're bleedin', lady."
Spots of red had seeped through the bandages. Laura said, "I cut myself." She drew up her spine straight and tall and walked back to the counter. "My husband paid over three thousand dollars for this diamond eight years ago. I've got the certification. I know it's not paste, so don't give me that crap."
"Yeah?" He grinned. No horse had bigger or yellower teeth. "So let's see the certification, then."
Laura didn't move. She didn't speak either.
"Uh-huh. So let's see a driver's license."
"My purse was stolen," Laura said.
"Oh, yeah!" He nodded, drumming his fingers on the countertop. "Where'd you steal the rock from, ladies?"
"Let's go," Didi urged.
"You're undercover cops, right?" the man asked. "Tryin' to sting my ass?" He snorted. "Yeah, I can smell cops a mile off! Comin' in here with a phony southern accent! You people won't stop roustin' me, will you?"
"Let's go." Didi grasped Laura's arm.
She almost turned away. Almost. But her hand was killing her and they were down to the last of their cash, a gloomier day she'd never seen, and Mary Terror was out there somewhere with David. She felt her frayed temper snap, and the next thing she felt was her hand reaching up under her sweater. She grasped the handle of the automatic in the waistband of her jeans, and she brought the gun up and pointed it at the man's horse teeth.
"I'll take a thousand dollars for my diamond," Laura said. "No dickering."
The man's grin hung by a lip.
"Oh God!" Didi wailed. "Don't kill him like you did that other one, Bonnie! Don't blow the brains out of his head!"
The man trembled and lifted his arms. He had on cuff links that looked like little gold nuggets.
"Open the cash register," Laura told him. "You just bought a diamond."
He hustled to obey, and when the register was open he started counting out the cash. "Bonnie gets crazy sometimes," Didi said as she went to the front door and turned over the WE'RE OPEN sign to SORRY WE'RE CLOSED. There was nobody on the street anywhere, the wind and the snow keeping saner people indoors. "She shot a guy through the head in Nebraska yesterday. Trigger crazy is what she is."
"You want big bills?" the man gasped. "You want hundreds?"
"Whatever," Didi answered. "Come on, hurry it up!"
"I've only… I've only got… got six hundred dollars in the register. Got some more in the safe. Back there." He nodded toward a door with an OFFICE sign on it.
"Six hundred's enough," Didi said. "Take the money, Bonnie. Got to get us to Michigan, doesn't it?" She took the automatic from Laura as Didi pocketed the cash. "Anybody else in here?"
"Wanda Jane's in the back. She's the bookkeeper."
"Okay, go on through that door real nice and slow."
The man started to walk, but Laura said, "Wait. Take the diamond. You bought it." Didi flashed her a glance of disapproval, and the scared clerk just stood there not knowing what to do. "Take it," Laura said, and at last he did.
In the office, a wizened woman with butch-cut gray hair was smoking a cigarette, sitting in a smoke haze and talking on the telephone as she watched a soap opera on a portable TV. Didi didn't have to speak; the man's face and the pistol did all the talking. Wanda Jane croaked, "Jumpin' Jesus! Hal, I think we're bein' -" Didi put her hand down on the phone's prongs, cutting the connection.