“We’re big on that. What about hunting for food? A crossbow?”
“Broke a few months ago. That’s a jug of gasoline over there.”
Kells found it under a scrap of tarpaulin. It was a milk gallon carton and its contents sloshed around inside. It was not even half-full.
“Like little eyeballs in your pocket,” continued Polk. “Tracking our movements.”
Kells looked sternly at Coe. The kid looked embarrassed. He was blocking his nose by pretending to wipe it.
Kells picked up the long rifle. A sling was attached. He was incredulous. “This is a biathlon rifle.”
“I got most of them from friends. Some die, will ’em to me.”
Kells tried the bolt action. “A biathlon rifle?”
“Straight pull. Damn accurate. Pretty good stopping power, and light.”
Kells picked up the pistol, a Beretta 9mm. “You have friends who deal drugs?”
“That’s a police-only model, loads fifteen plus one. Good old Eddie Bakerfield, God rest. But it’s foreign-made — I never trusted it.”
“What’s in the paper bag?”
“Some extra rounds. Most of them fit.”
Kells nodded, reconciling himself to the situation. “Fine. How soon can you pack?”
Polk plucked an old Pan Am flight bag from behind his bed. He said, “I’ve been packed for seven years.”
“You ride with Coe.” Kells wrapped up the blanket of oily weapons and looked to Tom Duggan. “The undertaker and I will take the guns.”
Tom Duggan looked up, then rose to face Kells. He looked slightly crazed, but mainly just lost. Demons were running roughshod over his thoughts much like the marauders raiding the town. Despair over his mother’s death and fantasies of vengeance crowded his mind.
“I thought you were one of them,” he said.
Kells shook his head dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”
Tom Duggan wore the look of the dispossessed. It was a look Kells knew well.
Chapter 13
Rebecca stood alone in the shadowy function room at the end of the wide hallway, chairs up on the round tables, the bar empty of glass. For two high-school summers, she had waitressed every weekend at a country club outside Hartford, called Pleasant Valley. All she could remember of it now was the downtime after cleanup when the lights were dim, and the kids were all flirting with each other as they waited for their rides: The valets raced golf carts out on the fairways, the busboys stole swigs from behind the bar, and she and the other waitresses chatted with their legs swinging off the bar stools. There had been something very grown-up and reassuringly innocent about it at the same time, a free zone between adolescence and maturity — a safe place of limbo, as opposed to where she was now.
You have something for me, Luther Trait had said.
She pulled the gold cord on the glowing red curtain and opened the wall of windows on the last green. A flag had been left planted in the snow, a red number eighteen fluttering before a vista of sculpted white fairways and high, tamed trees. She could feel the cold pushing through the glass as she scanned the grounds for sociopaths. Hearing gunshots in the distance had been one thing. Running for her life was quite another.
She returned to the service kitchen as the coil beneath the glass kettle began to glow orange. Rebecca was boiling water for tea, though all she really wanted was something to keep her hands warm. You can’t fight criminals with cold hands. She was trying hard to stave off despair.
One of the swinging doors pushed open and Darla stepped inside, looking childlike in her matching lilac ski parka and pants. “Hi,” she said, hesitantly. Her bright blond hair stood out in stark relief to her dark eyebrows, forced and desperate like the rest of her.
Rebecca had heard Dr. Rosen on the telephone in the manager’s office earlier. I’m all right, dear. No, just some others who are also stranded.
“Plenty of water,” offered Rebecca.
Darla moved to the long prep table in the middle of the kitchen. “I just wanted to move around,” she said. “It’s like... it’s not really real, you know?”
Rebecca nodded. She did know.
“Ever been to one of those murder mystery dinners, where they kill someone between courses, and it’s kind of shocking but you just play along? I feel like I’m just playing along.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I never had a brother. I’ve never been in a fight before in my life. I don’t know why I’m not crying right now.”
Darla’s expression tightened and Rebecca had to look away. She was angry that Darla needed consoling. They all needed consoling.
“I don’t think I can fight,” Darla said. “I know you can, from reading your book. But I’d be afraid to hold a gun.”
Rebecca was about to set Darla straight on her weapons experience when she heard the motor in the distance. The engine ran faint, then loud, then faint again, like a motorcycle riding toward them up and down hills.
“Do you hear that?” said Rebecca, stepping past Darla and through the swinging doors to the function room, looking out over the course. The sound was louder there.
“The snowmobiles,” said Darla, following. “Thank God.”
Rebecca saw the sleds now, skimming over the creamy golf course, riders weaving in and out of formation.
She counted three sleds and pointed this out to Darla.
Darla said, “Maybe they found a third and brought it back.”
Rebecca studied the distant riders, their jackets and helmets. She was backing away from the window.
Darla was still rationalizing. “They might have changed their clothes...”
Rebecca turned and started through the function room to the hallway, running to the end, her boots clumping into the lounge. The others were rising and moving to the windows.
“Get back!” she yelled fearfully. “It’s not them. It’s prisoners.”
They all stared. Rebecca moved to the edge of the front-facing window as the noise of the engines grew to its loudest, revving like angry dirt bikes. Then they quieted to an idle.
The others shrank away, dropping to the floor. Rebecca knelt and peered over the sill.
One of the prisoners already had his helmet off. He was a compactly built, dark-skinned man standing astride his sled, smoky breath curling out of his mouth. He looked to be in his forties. All of them wore heavy jackets and boots. Their idling snowmobiles looked like sleek black insects.
The standing prisoner stepped off his sled and sized up the building, disappearing to the right.
Terry’s scared voice asked, “What is it? What’s happening?”
Rebecca slid down and turned her back flat to the wall, pressing her hands against the solid planking of the wood floor. “They’re looking around on foot,” she whispered.
Rebecca saw Fern lying on her side against the bottom of the sofa. Her rifle, their only weapon, was hugged to her chest.
Rebecca heard boot steps crunching in the snow. A vague shadow darkened the gloomy window light above her and she closed her eyes, waiting for it to pass. She opened her eyes and the room seemed to float before her.
The shadow was gone. It took all she had to turn and peer outside again.
The other two prisoners remained on their sleds. The one on foot was missing.
Rebecca ducked back, slanted against the wall. It was as though the lounge were hurtling through space. “They’re going to see the smoke,” she said.
“We’ve got to run,” said Bert, huddled low against the far wall with Rita.
Rebecca heard sniffling. Mia was with Robert somewhere behind the hearth.
“Maybe they’ll just go,” said Darla, a small voice. She sat near the hall steps, hands clenched to her chest.