But Burly was ranting, “Get over there and see what she has in her goddamn pack!”
Menckley eyed the trees bordering the land, alive with flame shadow. “What about Clock?”
His fear resonated with Rebecca. It was the cons’ belief in the fictional Clock that gave him real power. In the same way his imagined omnipotence excused the cons’ failure to contain him, Grue was — to Rebecca — a mystical ghoul tracking her through the snow of her literary guilt, rather than just a man: a vicious killer, but still a living, breathing, fallible man. Her demonization of Grue in part relieved her of the responsibility of facing a mere mortal, endowing him with the force of all her fears.
The fearful side of her began to retreat. The angry side — the smarter side — was emerging.
She looked at the stable. Pockets of flame had burst to life in the dried hay bales, borne on cinders drifting in through the open front wall. The horses reared and kicked the wooden stalls.
Burly was pointing his gun at Menckley now. The two cons were yelling at each other, loud enough to be heard deep into the woods. The farmhouse was now fully engulfed, time slipping away like the smoke sailing into the night sky. Finally, with a howl of protest, Menckley doused his torch and shuffled toward her.
Burly’s gun was trained on her again as Menckley reached the pack, just a few feet away. Menckley eyed her with apprehension and distaste. His face was a waxy swirl of scar tissue glistening with sweat.
Snowflakes became water on Rebecca’s cheeks. She knew she had to make something happen here.
“It’s over,” she told him.
Menckley squinted at her, looking up from the pack. “What’s over?”
“The army is on their way. Clock found out the ricin towns. This place will be swarming with FBI agents in another hour. Don’t you two have a radio?”
Menckley straightened, looking at her with distrust. “We have a radio.”
“Check it then. Why else would I be running around freezing my ass off out here?”
Menckley eyed her a second longer, then turned back to call to Burly. “She says that we should—”
Burly yelled and twisted, dropping to the snow as the rifle report echoed off the mountains.
Menckley screamed. Burly lay still before the consumed farmhouse. Menckley whipped around and looked frantically into the trees.
The noise shocked Rebecca but she was primed for action. She lunged forward and tore the ice axe from her laptop case with one pull. From her knees she brought it around low, burying the pick blade deep in the meat of Menckley’s upper left thigh.
He howled and fell to one side. He gripped his leg just above the exposed blade and started to crawl, looking feverishly for Clock.
Rebecca, too, searched the farmland now, the horses neighing crazily behind her. She found a figure advancing from the street, nearing the light of the blaze. There was a rifle outlined in his hands. It was not Clock, and it was not Grue.
It was Coe. The flames oranged him, his eyes darting from the man he had killed to the flaming house to the scarred man trying to pull himself away. Then finally to Rebecca.
“I saw the glow from the window...” he began.
“Don’t,” Rebecca said, meaning Don’t waste time. She moved quickly to the impression her revolver had left in the snow. “Where’s Mia?”
“Back at the house.” Coe was dazed but wired. “She wanted me to go.”
Rebecca gave up her search, realizing she could have Burly’s gun instead.
“You’re going right back to her.”
“No,” Coe said. “I’m coming with you. You don’t even know the way back to town.”
She realized he was right.
Menckley had given up escape, and instead now lay cowering from Coe, pleading for his life. Coe watched him, perplexed.
The arrow silenced Menckley. A whittled wooden shaft with crow feathers and a sharp stone point entered his neck just above his clavicle, lodging there as his eyes went wide and blood spurted into the snow.
Coe spun, firing into the trees. Rebecca gave a quick, crazed glance that way — then started toward the stable at a run.
The horses were going wild as fire took the inside walls. The smoke was thick and gray as Rebecca fought her way along the stalls, throwing open doors and getting out of the way.
The farmhouse started collapsing just as she got clear, showering her with cinders. The crazed horses scattered, all except two, bucking and dancing in confusion. Two horses without saddle or bridle.
The ash cloud provided their cover. Coe helped throw her onto the jibing black colt, and after two attempts mounted the snorting palomino, the rifle slung over his shoulder.
Rebecca crouched for balance, gripping the colt’s neck and mane. The flames moved things in the trees behind them and she did not trust the shadows. She was as spooked as her horse. Only at the last second did she realize her laptop case was still lying in the snow.
When the rest of the farmhouse slumped forward, the burning timber crushed the thin box into which she had emptied the past year of her life.
And the horses broke. Rebecca held on, hands, thighs, and heels, seeing nothing but white and black. At least one arrow whizzed past her head. The horses kicked hard through the deep snow, fleeing to the street.
Chapter 28
Kells, Tom Duggan, and Dr. Rosen stood before one of the old telegraph poles across the street from the abandoned inn. They were trying to figure out how to blackout the center of town — how to bring down the live power and phone lines safely without electrocuting themselves. The wooden pole was too deep in the frozen earth to uproot. Kells was about to head to the inn garage for a ladder when he heard the horse hooves. He drew his gun, Tom Duggan and Dr. Rosen doing the same.
Rebecca’s colt reared at the sight of the men. She swung off him, her legs weak from gripping. Coe dismounted onto the packed snow behind her. The horses were as glad to have them off their backs as Rebecca and Coe were to be off them.
The men lowered their weapons. Kells was the first to meet her.
“They’re waiting for you in town,” she said, breathless but relieved. “They know you’re coming.”
“How?”
“Grue saw you leave. He called nine one one.”
“Grue?” Kells said, looking past her down the road.
“He might have taken another horse.” She turned and looked back now, as did Coe. “We ran into the arsonists.” She hurriedly told them the rest. At the end of it, Kells looked proud. “What will you do?” she asked.
The others waited for his response. Kells moved a step or two back away from them, his face unreadable. Then he spun and opened up his Micro Uzi on the crossbar of the telegraph pole.
The rounds chewed the brittle wood and the wires snapped and gave way, sparking and falling to the snow.
A quarter mile ahead of them, beyond the trees at the turn in the road, the dim aura of artificial light winked out like a snuffed candle.
Rebecca turned at the sound of the hooves. The horses were galloping back the way they came. They disappeared around the darkness of the bend, and as the gun burst echoed off the mountains, silence returned, more gravid than before.
Kells lowered his weapon. “We’re going in,” he said. “The circumstances haven’t really changed. Only they’re expecting three now — not five.”
He looked to Rebecca and Coe. “Right,” Rebecca confirmed. “Five.”
Kells nodded confidently. “We’ll let them steep in darkness a minute before starting in.”
The others remained quiet. Rebecca was quietest of all, listening for Grue’s galloping hooves. The inn loomed on the roadside like a dark sarcophagus sealed in ice. The country swing was coated with snow like the white dust of a thousand years. Rebecca spotted something small moving at the foot of the sprawling oak that formed one leg of the swing. It was Ruby, Fern’s cat, working diligently atop the frozen crust. Excited, Rebecca looked closer — only to find Ruby picking meat off a dead woodpecker’s carcass, watching Rebecca with bright, hungry eyes.