Little Low gave this question the answer it deserved by stepping out from behind a tree and using a junk of firewood to split Silverado Man’s skull. He was approximately Lowell’s height and weight. After Low dressed in Silverado Man’s clothes, the brothers wrapped the body in a tarp and put it in the back of their new vehicle. They transferred the dead cop’s music and drove to a hunting cabin that they had stocked for a rainy day long before. On the way, they burned through the rest of the CDs, agreeing that this James McMurtry fellow was probably a communist, but Hank III was the total package.
Once at the cabin, they alternated between the radio and the police scanner they kept there, hoping to glean intelligence concerning the police response to their escape.
Initially, Lowell found the complete inattention to said escape unnerving. By the second day, however, the snowballing events of the Aurora phenomenon—which explained the lady judge’s rough treatment of the Coughlin cop and the crap on her face—were so encompassing and cataclysmic that Lowell’s apprehension evaporated. Who had time for two country outlaws amid mass riots, plane crashes, nuclear meltdowns, and people incinerating chicks in their sleep?
On Monday, as Frank Geary was planning his assault on the women’s prison, Lowell was reclining on the moldy couch in the hunting cabin, gnawing on deer jerky and visualizing their own next moves. Though the authorities were currently in disarray, they would be reestablished in some form or another before long. Moreover, if things turned out the way they appeared to be headed, those authorities would likely be all-rooster, which meant that it would be the Wild West—hang em now, hang em high, ask questions later. The Griner brothers wouldn’t stay forgotten forever, and when they were remembered, the jackboots would be polished and primed to kick ass.
The news on the radio had initially caused Maynard to fall into gloom. “Is this the end of fuckin, Lowell?” he’d asked.
A little blue at the thought himself, Low had replied that they’d think of something… as if there might be some alternative. He was thinking of some old song about how birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it.
His older brother’s mood had improved, however, at the discovery of a jigsaw puzzle in a cabinet. Now Maynard, in his camo underwear, on his knees by the coffee table, was drinking a Schlitz and working away on it. The puzzle showed Krazy Kat with his finger in a socket, getting electrocuted. Maynard enjoyed puzzles as long as they weren’t too hard. (This was another reason why Lowell had felt good about his brother’s possible prison future. They had a shit-ton of puzzles in prison.) The picture of Krazy Kat in the center was pretty much done, but the pale green wall surrounding the figure was giving May fits. He complained it all looked the same, which was cheating.
“We need to clean up,” Lowell announced.
“I told you,” Maynard said, “I put that old boy’s head inside a hollow log and dropped the rest of him down a hole.” (Low’s older brother broke down bodies the way other folks broke down turkeys. It was eccentric, but it seemed to bring May satisfaction.)
“That’s a start, May, but it’s not enough. We need to clean up even better while everything is still fucked up. A clean sweep, so to speak.”
Maynard finished his beer, pitched the can away. “How do we do that?”
“We burn down the Dooling Sheriff’s Department to start with. That’ll take care of the evidence,” Lowell explained. “That’s big numero uno.”
His brother’s slack-faced expression of puzzlement suggested elaboration was necessary.
“Our drugs, May. They got everthing in the bust. We burn those up, they got nothing solid.” Lowell could envision it—just wonderful. He had never known how much he wanted to obliterate a police station. “Then, just to make sure we’ve got our t’s crossed, we make a visit to the prison up there and deal with Kitty McDavid.” Low sawed a finger across his unshaven neck to show his brother exactly how that deal would go down.
“Aw, she’s probly asleep.”
Low had considered this. “What if the scientists figure out how to wake them all up?”
“Maybe her memory will be wiped out even if they do. You know, amnesia, like on Days of Our Lives.”
“And what if it’s not, May? When does anything work out as convenient as that? The McDavid cunt can put us away for the rest of our lives. That ain’t even the important thing. She snitched, that’s the important thing. She needs to go for that, wakin or sleepin.”
“You really think we can get to her?” asked Maynard.
In truth, Lowell didn’t know, but he thought they had a shot. Fortune favored the brave—he’d seen that in a movie, or maybe on a TV show. And what better chance would they have? Practically half the world was asleep, and the rest of it was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. “Come on. Clock’s ticking, May. No time like the present. Plus, it’ll be dark soon. Always a better time to move around.”
“Where do we go first?” Maynard asked.
Lowell didn’t hesitate. “To see Fritz.”
Fritz Meshaum had done some engine and detailing work for Lowell Griner, and had also moved some blow. In exchange, Lowell had connected the Kraut with a few gunrunners. Fritz, besides being a stellar mechanic and an excellent detailer, had a bee in his hat about the federal government, so he was always eager for opportunities to enhance his personal arsenal of heavy weaponry. When the inevitable day came that the FBI decided to capture all of the nation’s shanty-dwelling asshole mechanics and ship them off to Guantánamo, Fritz would have to defend himself, and to the death, if need be. Each time Lowell saw him, Fritzie had to show off one cannon or another, and brag about how well it could vaporize someone. (The hilarious part: it was widely rumored that Fritz had been beaten within an inch of his life by a dogcatcher. He was tough, was li’l Fritz.) The last time Lowell had seen him, the bearded gnome had gleefully displayed his latest toy: an actual goddam bazooka. Russian surplus.
Low needed to get into the women’s prison to assassinate a snitch. That was the sort of mission where a bazooka could actually come in handy.
Jared and Gerda Holden had not known each other well—Gerda was in her first year of middle school and Jared was in high school—but he knew her from dinners when the two families got together. Sometimes they played video games in the basement, and Jared always let her win a couple. A lot of bad had happened since the Aurora outbreak, but this was the first time Jared had seen a person shot.
“She must be dead, right, Dad?” He and Clint were in the bathroom of the administrative wing. Some of Gerda’s blood had splattered Jared’s face and shirt. “From the fall on top of the shot?”
“I don’t know,” Clint said. He was leaning against the tiled wall.
His son, patting water from his face with a paper towel, found Clint’s eyes in the mirror over the sink.
“Probably,” Clint said. “Yes. Based on what you’ve told me happened, she’s almost certainly dead.”
“And the guy, too? The doctor? Flickinger?”
“Yes. Him, too, probably.”
“All because of this woman? This Evie person?”
“Yes,” Clint said. “Because of her. We have to keep her safe. From the police and from anyone else. I know it seems crazy. She could be the key to understanding what’s happened, the key to turning it around, and—just trust me, okay, Jared?”
“Okay, Dad. But one of the guards, that Rand guy, he said she’s, like—magic?”