Kells and Tom Duggan left and Rebecca stood at the front door, looking past the driveway to the sliver of street. The snow fell in silence and nothing moved. She shut the door on the white yard and locked it behind her.
Chapter 24
Tom Duggan led Kells along the abandoned train route in to town. The railway was canopied with trees, narrow and straight. With their three-day beards and sullied clothes they looked like tramps who didn’t know the trains had stopped running.
There was no high ground from which to spy or mount an ambush on Gilchrist Common. The only way to view it was to go there. Post Road ran straight through it, starting with the general store and library, and ending at Duggan’s Funeral Home and the police station. The loop around the common itself was optional. The land sagged behind the buildings along the bend, the school, town hall, and church. That was where Tom Duggan figured to make their approach.
It was mid-morning by the time they reached the inn, a quarter mile outside the center. From behind a snow-frosted evergreen, they watched men in parkas unloading storage from Fern’s garage onto waiting sleds. One con carried an armful of rifles.
“They’re pulling back,” said Kells. “Moving everything into the center of town.”
A man with a rifle on his hip stood under the oak near Fern’s country swing. He turned his back to the road and Kells and Tom Duggan withdrew deeper into the trees.
They skirted the western perimeter where the land dipped to the farms below. Stout Scotch pines provided cover near the top of the rise, Kells staying close to the backs of the buildings, watching for convicts.
The barking frightened Tom Duggan. He was worried about being scented and betrayed. It grew more spirited as they approached. “What do we do?” he asked.
“Where are they?”
The dogs sounded like they were on the other side of the church, to the left. “There were never dogs here before.”
“They’d be on us now. Must be tied up.” Kells looked at the backs of the buildings. Tom Duggan had never viewed Gilchrist Common from this perspective. “We need to get inside one of these buildings.”
Tom Duggan looked down the lane and settled on the building he knew best.
“There’s a dirt room in back of the church. They buried the dead there before the town was incorporated, stored munitions there during the Revolutionary War. It’s where I keep my digging tools now. The old door doesn’t lock. Stairs lead right up into the sacristy.”
Kells nodded and followed him along the crest of the rise, past the back of the town hall, moving toward the dogs. The barking turned to howling, though its intensity began to wane. Tom Duggan could finally see them, dark German shepherds racing around the cemetery left of the church. About ten of them were penned there, strong, black beasts snapping at the air behind the spiked iron fence, baring their teeth and trampling the graveyard snow.
The narrow lane behind the buildings was clear on both sides. The square wooden door was now twenty steps away.
Tom Duggan ran for it. The old knob turned and the hinge squeaked as usual and the familiar scent of machine oil and earthy musk wafted out of the dark cellar.
Kells was at his side. The dogs were whimpering now, crying and no longer howling. They stood on the fence, dancing on their hind legs and pawing at the spikes. No more ferocity, just dogs whining to be let out.
They entered the cellar. Tom Duggan tugged the noisy door shut and they stood in earthen darkness. “Guard dogs,” said Kells.
“What are they doing here?”
“I don’t know. But they seemed to like us.”
No movement above. Light outlined the ceiling trapdoor and Tom Duggan led Kells past his workbench to the stairs. Their boots croaked guiltily on the wood planks.
Tom Duggan lingered in the downcast light as Kells eased open the trapdoor and moved to the front of the church. When no other noise followed Kells’s boot treads, he surfaced.
There was a long vestment closet in the sacristy and an old bowl sink and stacks of printed announcements. Tom Duggan ventured out past the backdrop wall and onto the modest altar overlooking the empty pews. Kells was halfway down the center aisle. Muddy paw prints stained the red carpet and the church reeked of wet dog. It was like the yellow snow on the graves outside. The desecration gnawed at Tom Duggan.
Special collections from the prison-enriched congregation paid for the new stained-glass windows, four to each side wall and two tall lancets on either side of the double front doors. The colored glass impeded the view of the town center — Tom Duggan hadn’t considered this — but the hinge windows opened at the bottom for ventilation, and even better, the front windows featured clear pieces of glass mixed in with the stained ones. He joined Kells near the doors.
The flakes were coming down wetter and smaller outside, a slow, white rain over Gilchrist Common. For just an instant Tom Duggan saw the town center as it had always been — the row of storefronts from the police station to the general store, the high flagpole, the snow-washed gazebo — everything normal and fixed. Then two slow-moving men in heavy coats approached with rifles in their hands, shuffling along the sidewalk.
Kells ducked and moved to the left of the church and Tom Duggan followed. They looked out from the honey-tinted glass of Jesus’ feet.
The cons had paused at the front of the cemetery fence. The dogs turned ferocious again, racing around the small stone markers, jaws snapping hungrily. The men barked back at them and continued on in the direction of the Masonic Hall.
Kells pried open the bottom of the window. The barking had tailed off again as the dogs returned their attention to the church, whining and jumping over one another at the rear fence.
Kells made a grunt of interest and they walked back to the front windows. A sled from the inn skied along Post Road, moving right to left, past the library and the bank and stopping to unload at the police station. The brick station was the center of activity. Three figures lurked on its cleared front steps, guarding the entrance, too far away for Tom Duggan to make out faces or weapons. At the curb in front was a beaten pickup with a large machine gun mounted on its bed.
Duggan’s Funeral Home was across the corner from the station. A bulldozer was working on his front lawn, plugging up the street with mounds of snow, frozen sod and all.
The loop road was recently plowed, and a large van was parked directly across the street from the church. Bold red letters on its sliding door spelled CAW.
“They must have cut the prison broadcast,” said Kells. “They’re hunkering down here in the center. They brought the TV van back for safekeeping.” Kells stood back from the window. “I’m going to take it out.”
“You’re not going out there,” said Tom Duggan.
But Kells had a way of announcing things that precluded debate. “I can eliminate their broadcast capability.”
“What if someone’s inside?”
Kells was unsnapping his parka. He had the taser on his belt. He moved it to his coat pocket.
“What about me?” asked Tom Duggan.
Kells pulled his ski mask on, then rolled it up to look like a wool cap. “Just wait here and tell me when I’m clear to go.”
Tom Duggan looked outside again. There was plenty of activity in the center but none near the church. The van would block him from sight. The only worry was another two-man patrol.
“Clear,” said Tom Duggan.
A gust of snow and the door closed and Tom Duggan was alone.
He watched Kells cross the road to the van, head down, shoulders hunched, walking slow. From behind, he easily passed for a prisoner.
He knocked on the van door, two sharp raps. Tom Duggan heard a garbled exchange of words. Kells stood waiting for what seemed like a long time, then the door slid open. Kells nodded up to the form inside — a black man, wearing earmuffs and a long, loose coat — then jabbed him with the taser and jumped inside.