“Things are coming along,” Nick told the committee.
“Joseph here hacksawed some lead for you.”
“Thank you, Joseph.” He took a handkerchief from Joseph that held bits of lead pipe.
“That enough?”
“I think so. We don’t need much.” Nick put the handkerchief in his pocket, and the movement sent blinding, unexpected pain knifing through his kidney. He gasped, took his hand out of his pocket, and waited for the pain to ebb.
“You best hope you’re not pissing blood tomorrow,” Joseph said.
“Anything else you need?” said another man
Nick blinked away the tears that had sprung to his eyes. “Okay,” he gasped, “okay.” He blinked again.
“I’m going to need an electrician or someone who can string wire without blowing us all up.”
“We’ll ask around.” But Nick saw his audience craning to look past him, and felt a stir in the camp. He looked over his shoulder toward the gate and saw a line of vehicles moving along the road toward the camp: a sturdy old five-ton truck, a sheriff’s department car, and a civilian pickup truck.
“Some kind of trouble,” one of the old men said. “They’s not bringing food.” Sudden anxiety for Manon and Arlette sang through Nick’s heart. He looked over the camp, saw a young woman in a kerchief silhouetted briefly between two of the miserable cotton wagons, and trotted uneasily in that direction.
The little convoy pulled up before the camp. The larger of the two trucks backed up to the gate. A big, burly man in a deputy’s khaki uniform got out of the police cruiser and raised a bullhorn to his lips.
“Our new camp is ready,” he said. “The one your men were building. And we’d like to move the first families over there this afternoon.” He consulted a clipboard. “Jerry Landis and family. Connie Conroy and daughters…”
Nick’s mouth went dry at the thought that his own name might be called, but then he recalled that he had never been asked for his name, he was on none of their lists. He reached the area where he thought he’d seen Arlette and saw a completely strange girl wearing a kerchief. He stopped dead and peered around. The camp inmates, instinctively drawn by the announcements, but fearful of the deputies’ firearms, had formed a kind of half-circle at a respectful distance from the gate. Nick thought they would be better advised to be digging themselves into slit trenches. Somewhere a woman shrieked when her name was called; Nick could hear her sobbing and calling on Jesus to help her. Nick stayed well behind the mass of people, trotted along in hopes of catching a glimpse of Manon or Arlette.
Miss Deena was walking from the crowd toward the gate. She was absolutely erect, her white-haired head held high.
Admiration for Deena warred with anxiety in Nick’s soul.
Nick finally saw Arlette and Manon together, with Jason, who was standing on top of a concrete picnic table peering over the heads of the crowd. Nick accelerated, caught up with them, put his hands on Arlette’s shoulders. “Let’s get out of sight,” he said. “Miss Deena’s going to tell them we’re not going along with them anymore. This could be nasty.”
Manon cast him an anxious look. “All right,” she said.
“Jason. Get down from there.”
Jason clambered down with a show of reluctance. His face was swelling where the deputy had kicked him. Nick shepherded them toward the back of the camp. “Let’s get under one of the cotton wagons,” he said. He wished he could hide them all in a trench. Pain knifed his kidney as he crouched down, and he gasped in pain.
Crouching in cover, Nick didn’t see the deputies’ reaction to Miss Deena’s announcement. He didn’t see the argument, or the little red-haired runt of a man who led a group of deputies sprinting for the gate. But Nick saw and heard the crowd’s reaction, saw them fall back with a kind of collective cry, then saw them run as shots began to crack out.
Nick’s heart hammered. He clutched at Manon and Arlette, held them to his breast while Jason crawled restlessly left and right, trying to get a view of what was happening. “Get your head down!” Nick told him.
Then the crowd parted, and he saw deputies with shotguns at port arms running right for him. “This way!” he yelled. “Run!” He pulled Manon and Arlette away from the deputies, from beneath the far side of the cotton wagon, then urged them to run between a pair of tents. Shots cracked out. He heard a man scream. He remembered the flash as the shotgun went off in Viondi’s face, the way the warm, bloody body had fallen into his arms. He remembered fleeing into the night, running from the light, to wherever the light would not find him.
“This way!” he cried. His heart pounded in his throat. People screamed and ran in all directions. Shots began coming from the guards posted around the camp. There was nowhere to run, but Nick knew they had to run anyway. A man with a gun loomed up in his vision, fifteen yards away. “This way!” he shouted, and ran past the cookshed into a tangle of tents and awnings. A rope caught his ankle and he crashed down into the rainsoaked earth.
Hunted. He was being hunted, and so was his family. He rose to his feet and began to run. Shots rang out behind him. People shrieked, and a whole mass of them surged across his path. He ran with them. He had lost Manon and Arlette. Desperately he called their names. He realized that the people were being driven, like cattle.
A fence loomed up in front of him, and Nick realized that he’d swung round in an arc and ended up at the front of the camp again, to the left of the gate. People flung themselves against the fence, then fell back at the sound of shots. Sobbing for breath, Nick looked for cover, found a fallen tent, and wormed his way into it.
Panic hammered in his throat. He had never felt so helpless in his life, not even when the first quake had torn the earth apart in front of the wheels of Viondi’s car.
He looked out at the world through a piece of mosquito netting that served the tent as a window. He saw the group of eighteen or twenty people, terrified and bruised and bleeding, that the deputies herded together and threw onto the five-ton truck. The deputies made no effort to search for the people they were actually after, just took whoever they could find. Nick saw Miss Deena still standing by the front gate, standing like a soldier with her back straight and her shoulders back, her gaze unflinching and defiant as the weeping people were herded past her. Too proud to run, too contemptuous of the enemy. Nick saw the little redhaired runt, the leader, stop by the gate for a moment, saw strange green eyes turn to Miss Deena. Saw the thoughtful consideration in those eyes.
Saw him raise his pistol and shoot Miss Deena in the face.
A scream of horror and rage rose to Nick’s throat. It echoed the screams of dozens of others. Then, as the gate swung shut behind him, the redhaired man took out a pocket watch and looked at it.
“Six minutes!” he said. “Good work!”
Little chimes sounded through the air. Nick recognized the tune as “Claire de Lune” and felt his blood turn to ice, his thoughts to murder.
That little man, he saw, that baby-faced killer with the shotgun eyes, was carrying Gros-Papa’s watch. Nick crawled out of his hiding-place. Frustration and baffled anger throbbed in his chest. He felt soiled, utterly disgusted with himself. He had allowed himself to be driven like an animal. Terror had ruled his mind. He hadn’t acted the part of a man. He hadn’t behaved like a father who cared for his child. He’d crawled into hiding like a worm into its hole.
Gunsmoke tainted the air. Nick wandered through the stunned, sobbing refugees till he found Manon bent under a tree and weeping. He knelt by her, put his arm around her.
“I’ve never,” Manon gasped through tears, “never imagined.”