“Wait,” Inkman said. “Please wait.”
He kept his right leg stiff, gripping his knee, sliding his hand down to his shin.
The muzzle of the MAC 10 poked into his cheek, stopping him. Inkman froze as Clock reached down and pulled Inkman’s pant leg over his right ankle, finding the holster inside his boot.
Relieved of his gun, Inkman dropped to one knee, hands over his head, suppliant. He looked up at the face of the black man from the inn, changed only by a few days’ growth of beard and angrily glowing eyes.
Clock hurled Inkman’s handgun into the trees. “Get up,” he said.
Inkman stood, snow sticking to his pant knees. Even in the grip of fear, Inkman was confident he could scheme his way out of anything. Just keep Clock talking.
He spoke slowly as his shortness of breath required. “Fitting,” he said. “That I staged a revolution here... and you overthrew it.”
Clock said nothing, but neither did he shoot him.
“Too fitting,” concluded Inkman. “How did you know I was here? Or have you been following me ever since...”
Rotors beat in the distance, helicopters approaching in the night sky.
Inkman went on, “Why wouldn’t you have stopped me before? You wouldn’t have allowed this to happen... unless you wanted the country to go through mis? A public-policy lesson? A vaccination shot against future biowarfare?”
“Your problem is, you’re not as smart as you think you are,” said Clock. “You should have taken your lumps and crawled away.”
Confusion fueled Inkman’s pitiful defiance. “I want back what you took from me.”
“You’ll take what’s coming to you,” said Clock. “What’s been coming to you for a long time.”
Three gunshots cracked at close range. Inkman yelled and jerked backward, but it was Clock who had been struck: two shots off his vest, one in his left arm.
As Clock twisted, Inkman wasted not a moment turning and running into the trees. He drew no fire. After scooting across a few rows, he stopped to get his bearings, kneeling low and trembling. He was trying to figure out in which direction his handgun had been thrown.
Kells rushed into a row of six-footers for cover. Inkman had scrambled off to the left and the third gunman was somewhere along the right. Inkman had seemed as surprised by the gunshots as Kells was. There was pain in his left arm but he was more concerned that spilled blood would mark his tracks in the snow.
He crouched still a few more moments, listening for footsteps, branch snaps, breathing.
The snow in the narrow lanes was soft and unbroken. He realized he had to get moving and cross the shooter’s tracks before the shooter crossed his.
Kells hurried along, gun out, eyes and ears alert. He ducked through gaps between tree rows, moving fast but sure.
Crunching snow in the direction of the smaller trees. Boot steps, moving fast. Through the branches he saw a body fleeing the farm, plodding up the short rise toward a barn.
It was Inkman, running away. The sight invigorated Kells. No longer on the defensive, he moved confidently from lane to lane.
He found the opposing tracks in a low row. He knew Inkman’s tread and this pattern was different. He set off after them at top speed, weaving in and out of rows. He knew that the gunman must have crossed his telltale tracks by now.
A form moved to Kells’s right, two rows over. He slowed and waited, pushing into the next lane, crouching at the end of the row.
Boots rushed along the adjacent lane, coming toward Kells, then right past him. Kells rose fast and burst into the shooter’s lane in a flurry of snow.
The convict spun and fired high. Kells was on his knees and let the gunfire sweep the lane above his head once before firing up at the man’s legs and arms. The convict flailed and twin guns jumped out of his hands and he fell backward, settling deep into the snow.
Kells got to his feet. It was another of the Marielitos, the man’s mouth curled in pain as his wet eyes stared up. “El Reloj,” he said.
The Marielito watched the snow falling out of the sky and whispered to himself in Spanish. Kells dropped the MAC 10 and pulled the revolvers from the holsters crisscrossing the man’s vest.
The barn was a short walk up a low rise. Cows lowed plaintively as the helicopters beat overhead, searchlights focused on the center of town.
Kells crossed the white tableau with a gun in each hand.
It was a cow barn, long and dirt-floored, doors open at both ends. Inkman had released the jerseys in an attempt to slow Kells, but the cows just moaned past him, looking for food.
Inkman was staggering toward the opposite end of the barn. The air was thick with bovine sweat and dung as Kells advanced over the dirt. He raised both arms, the good one higher than the bad one, aiming at Inkman’s back and calling his name.
Inkman stopped, swaying in the doorway. Below him stretched acres of wide-open, snow-coated meadows. He turned and faced Kells, exhausted, showing him an open hand.
“Wait,” Inkman said.
The revolvers fired, and then there was only one man standing in the barn.
Chapter 35
A carousel of romances creaked as Trait brushed past it to the library window, looking at the town hall in flames across the common. The M60 rattled proudly against the cracking of the smaller arms, but it should never have come to this. Defending their own turf was failure in itself.
The new library reeked of old paper. It was dark but for the flames from the general store casting flickering light through the side windows, shadows shifting and creeping in the stacks. The warden leaned heavily against the front counter. Near him, a library calendar sleeved in a clear plastic standee highlighted a Saturday evening reading by bestselling author Rebecca Loden.
“What are we doing here?” asked the warden. “You’re trapped.”
Bullets cracked the front window, fluttering a white shade as Trait paced, gun in hand, head screaming. “Shut up,” he said. He was trying to think.
If Clock had taken the Inkman bait, then all they had to contend with here were a few civilians. The launchers would scare off the first wave of army helicopters. Maybe he could retreat to the prison with a few remaining men. Maybe there was some ricin left over—
The floor shuddered and books dropped off the shelves. Trait realized a missile had struck one of the buildings. He sensed it was not a blow for his side.
“You are no longer the leader of this revolution,” said Warden James. “You are its victim.”
Trait turned on him, eyes flashing. He crossed the library to the front desk and brought the butt of his gun across the warden’s face.
The warden dropped to the floor. He lay still a moment before rolling onto his back.
“One more word,” said Trait, brandishing the gun above him.
The warden’s face, shaded by old and new contusions, remained defiant. “You just keep trading one locked closet for another.”
Trait thought of his E-Unit cell. All the dreams he had dreamed there. All the journeys he had taken.
The front door opened onto Post Road and the common, and Trait was a few moments too slow in turning.
The man who entered wore all white: a bleached coat, pants, boots, gloves, and hood. He was crouched low, a small bow and arrow poised in his hands, the bowstring pulled taut to his nose. The nocked arrow was aimed at Trait’s face. Trait’s gun was aimed at the stranger’s heart.
“Drop it!” yelled Trait.
But the intruder froze and held his crouch as the door opened wide on the fire-brightened snow and the gunplay behind him. The flames of the general store painted a white man with blunt features under a sloppy beard. He slowly rose to full height, lowering the bow to his chest, revealing his face while keeping the arrow point aimed dead at Trait’s eyes.