Tom Duggan deferred to Kells, backlit by the window overlooking the snow graves. “They’ll have to evacuate both towns before moving into Gilchrist. That will take time. We have a window of maybe ten hours.”
Tom Duggan said, “We also learned their security setup. We were inside the center of town. We know where their manpower and firepower are concentrated.”
“Of the forty or so cons left,” said Kells, “at least half of them are out manning the barricades. A few others are out riding around burning down houses. That leaves less than twenty inside the center of town itself.”
Rebecca was dizzy with relief. “Then it’ll be easy for the army to come in and take them out.”
Tom Duggan’s face was serious and still. His were eyes of purposefulness, not victory. “They’re vulnerable,” he said.
Kells said, “We’re going back in. We’re going to hit the center of town at nightfall.”
Bewilderment, then anger clouding out joy. Kells, she could understand. But not Tom Duggan.
Kells said, “This has never been about the other towns.”
“Yes, it has,” said Rebecca. “Yes, it has.”
“This has been about this town, about us, and about them.”
“That’s crazy,” said Rebecca. “You ended it. You just ended it.”
Kells shook his head sternly. “Polk,” he said. “Fern. Mrs. Duggan.”
Rebecca was growing frantic. “No!” she said. “Shooting your way into town isn’t going to do anything for Polk or your mother. It is over!”
Tom Duggan was nodding, standing near his mother’s crystal lamp. “It might not mean anything to you,” he said, “but I was there. I saw them crawling all over the common like it was their own. If they were in your house, and you were tied up and forced to watch diem tear down everything you worked to build, all the time thinking, ‘If only I could get free...’ We just got free. I don’t want the government to finish this. They were going to give us up. I want to end this myself. Maybe I’ve got more at stake than the rest of you.”
“You don’t,” said Kells.
“Those prisoners need to know what it’s like. To lose everything. To be humbled.”
Dr. Rosen was standing before the mantel. There was a mirror there, and he was looking at himself in it. He turned toward Tom Duggan and Kells. Rebecca almost reached after him.
“I want to go with you,” Dr. Rosen said.
Rebecca got to her feet. “This is crazy!” She felt betrayed. “It’s over! Don’t you understand? You don’t have to fight! No one has to fight!”
Dr. Rosen went to stand with the others. He looked pained, like a tired drunk lacking the sense to sleep it off. “They can’t go alone,” he said, then turned to Kells. “I’ll go so long as the boy doesn’t have to.”
Coe looked shocked. His youthful fascination with the takeover had long since faded. He looked older now, and younger at the same time. He looked relieved.
“The kid stays here,” said Kells. “Mia, too.”
No one looked at Rebecca. Her face was flushed. She was all alone. She was desperate, searching for excuses.
“What if they can’t clear out the towns in time?” she said. “What if Trait calls in the ricin too early?”
Kells said, “I can have them kill the telephone service from the outside.”
“But there are cell phones. Pagers.”
“They can move satellites if they need to.”
“The television,” she said weakly, knowing the feed had been cut.
“That’s been taken care of.”
It was Kells’s censure that she felt most piercingly. “It’s over,” she said, pleading with him. “Why can’t you just let it be over?”
No one moved until Kells started away. “I have a phone call to make.”
Tom Duggan and Dr. Rosen went out after him, and Mia came to her side. “Why didn’t you tell them?” she said. “Why didn’t you say Grue called?”
Rebecca just shook her head. She couldn’t even speak anymore. There were two Rebeccas, one who was angry, one who was scared. Right now the one who was scared was in full control. All she had to do was hide for a few more hours and she would be safe.
She was all alone in the parlor when Kells approached her, as she feared he would. He wore a flak jacket over his sweater now, a Micro Uzi hanging from his shoulder.
“Dr. Rosen said Grue called.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It won’t matter in a few more hours.”
“What makes you think you’d be any safer here?”
She was beyond reason and she knew it. “A few more hours,” she repeated.
“We need you.”
She shook her head. She was trying not to cry.
“Instead of taking control, you’re giving up all control. If we end this thing, then it’s ours. We claim it. We give it meaning.”
“There is no meaning. There’s no meaning to any of this.”
“You’re still the writer here, aren’t you? Still hanging back and observing, believing you can never be touched. Trying to outrun this vague fear that’s chasing you. Spinning your fragile little fictions, these morality tales parroting empty truths. People standing up and fighting simply because that’s the right thing to do. Only, as we see here, that’s not exactly how it works. You lack the conviction of your characters.”
She would not be shamed into action. “That sort of thing may work with Tom Duggan and Dr. Rosen—”
“You think I’m running some sort of game? Have you spent so much time making up cardboard heroes that you don’t recognize plainspoken valor? I show people the path, either they walk it or they don’t. You want to tag along and just make notes. You’re like a thief, stealing lives for your books, then casting yourself as the hero. How did I become your villain here and not Trait?”
She was indignant, burning. “I am never going to write about this.”
“Sure you will. You’re a thief, that’s what you do. But when you betray the rest of us in print, don’t make this into anything more or less than it was. Others will want to forget, they’ll want to deny what really happened here. People like yourself. They want to go on believing their freedom is actually free.”
She sensed as much disappointment as anger from him, which wounded her more. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Is that what you want me to say?”
“I was just a guy doing a job,” he said, starting away. “Write that.”
The fifth night
Chapter 26
Luther Trait was in the police station when the first shots were fired. He took an AR-15 rifle from the front table and was out on the front steps before the tarp was off the M60.
Gunfire burst about the common. The first thing he noticed was that the guard dogs were loose. Their black, bodies were sharp against the whitened scene, legs working hard in the deep snow. Two remained near the cemetery, tearing at a screaming con.
The Marielitos rushed down the walkway from the funeral home, ready for a fight.
Trait advanced along the curved road, scanning the common for rebels. Two snarling German shepherds were cut down, but no rounds landed anywhere near him. The random pistol cracks and rifle bursts lacked the cadence of an exchange.
Then loud reports blasted behind him. Quintano, the head of the Mexican Mafia, fired the pickup-mounted M60. The bam-bam-bam-bam flipped a dog near the gazebo. But lacking human targets, the M60 fire stopped. The yelling and the barking died away.
Silence fell with the snow. Trait paused before the Masonic Hall, awaiting a second wave of attack, or perhaps even the first.
One of the ex-cons was running toward him, pointing back at the church with his gun. “The dogs!” he yelled.