After a distance, the downward-slanting head beams seemed to bury themselves. The field ahead lay in darkness.
“Why the hell didn’t you park closer?” Shaw whispered to the driver.
“Shut up.”
“Man, they’re probably all around us.”
“They don’t attack delivery parties,” said the man on Neala’s right.
“Always a first time, Phillips.”
“I wouldn’t sweat it.”
“I still don’t see why he had to park so goddamn far away.”
“I felt like it,” the driver said. “How about shutting your face?”
Ahead, a line of six trees stood in the clearing. Neala stared at them. They were tall and thin-trunked. Their high branches, reaching into the moonlight were bare of leaves.
They shouldn’t be bare, not in summer. They should be full, their leaves fluttering in the breeze.
The trees are dead, Neala realized.
Six dead trees all in a row.
“No,” she said.
“It’s all right,” Robbins whispered.
“No, don’t take us there. Please.” She tried to hold back but the men thrust her forward.
“Just take it easy,” Robbins said.
“Please! They’re dead! I don’t want to go there. Please!”
Pain stunned her right leg as Phillips shot a knee into it. “Now hold it down, sister,” he said.
“You okay?” Robbins asked.
“No!”
“Christ, Phillips.”
“You’ve really got it bad, pal. You better watch yourself.”
“Everybody shut up,” the driver snapped.
Under the tree, they stopped.
“Lean back,” Robbins said.
“I don’t…”
Phillips shoved Neala. Her back and head hit the trunk. Phillips held her while Shaw and the driver pushed Sherri against the same tree. She heard a rattle of handcuffs. Then the driver grabbed her right arm, pulled it backward, and snapped the bracelet into place. Craning her neck, she saw that it was now cuffed to Sherri.
They stood back-to-back, hands joined, the trunk of the tree between them.
“That does it,” said the driver. He reached to his throat where something hung on a chain. He raised it to his mouth. A whistle. He blew a long, shrill note that pierced the night like the cry of a terrible bird. Then the whistle dropped from his lips. “Let’s haul ass,” he said.
Three of the men ran. The one called Robbins backed away, shaking his head. “Sorry,” he muttered. Turning, he followed the others in their race to the pickup truck. Their sprinting forms flicked through the headlights. Then they disappeared behind the brightness. Neala heard doors bump shut, heard the tailgate bang into place. The engine rumbled to life. The head beams swung sideways and away. For a while, the red taillights jiggled. Then they vanished. “Hope the fuckers rot in hell,” Sherri said.
CHAPTER SIX
The pickup stopped in front of Robbins’s house, and he jumped to the pavement.
“Take it easy,” Shaw said, trying to make up for his earlier behavior.
“You too,” Robbins said.
Timmy sat quietly beside his father.
“Say good night to Mr. Robbins,” Shaw told him.
“Night,” Timmy muttered.
“Yeah.”
The truck pulled away. Robbins unlatched his front gate. He crossed the lawn toward his dark house, and sat on the porch stairs. Folding his arms over his knees, he stared at the ground.
Damn it, there was just something about that one woman—the smaller one. He’d been making delivery runs for years, ever since he turned sixteen, and he’d never felt like this before.
He’d never felt this way about any woman. Sure, there were a few he liked well enough, and some who claimed to love him. He could take his pick, whenever he got an urge to hit the sheets. But none like this.
This woman was different. Just to sit close to her, to hold her hand, to talk with her quietly through the night…
By morning, she would be dead.
He could feel the loss, already, like a hollow in his chest.
Never to see her again.
If it were just himself, he’d go back there, maybe, and if it weren’t already too late… He could get away, all right. They’d come for Peggy, though. And Hank. And their kids.
Everybody’d have to leave. The whole family.
So why not? If they could get past the boundary, they’d be all right. He could take the woman to Los Angeles, maybe…
You’re dreaming her life away!
Leaping to his feet, he rushed across the porch and threw open the front door. His hand hit the switch. Blinking in the sudden brightness, he crossed the room to his gun case. He took down his 30-30 Winchester, picked up a box of cartridges, and ran outside.
His old Buick was parked on the street. He sped two blocks to his sister’s house, and ran to the screen door. He knocked hard, then entered.
“Peggy!”
She came out of the kitchen, worry on her round face.
“For Petesakes, Johnny…”
“I need to talk to you. Outside.”
Hank appeared in the kitchen doorway. He eyed Robbins with suspicion. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just want a word with Peg.”
Hank’s eyes narrowed. “Big secret, huh?”
“She’ll tell you all about it.” Robbins grabbed his sister’s fleshy arm and pulled her out the door. He hurried across the lawn, dragging her along.
“We’re getting out of here tonight,” he said.
“What?”
“Tonight’s run. There was a girl. I’m going back for her.”
“Johnny, no!”
“I have to.”
“Dear God! Oh dear God!”
“Listen, we’re getting out of here. All of us.”
“No!”
“I’ll get back here as soon as I can. Have Hank and the kids ready to go.”
“Hank won’t leave. You know that. He wouldn’t leave here for the world.”
“That’s his worry, then.”
“Johnny, you can’t do this to us!”
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life here? Do you, Peg? Do you want Jenny and Bill to grow up the way we did? Do you want them turned into murderers like the rest of us?”
She was crying, the tears glistening in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. “We can’t leave!”
“You will
“But Hank.”
“If he won’t come along, the hell with him. You’d be better off without him.”
“I know, but…”
“He can’t stop you.” Johnny hugged his sister tightly. “Don’t worry, okay? We’ll make it.”
She shook her head. “Don’t do this to us. Oh please, Johnny, don’t.”
“Half an hour,” he said, and climbed into his car.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Neala said.
“Just how do you plan to manage it?”
“I don’t know!” Neala’s voice cracked into a sob. She turned her hands, rattling the cuffs that held her prisoner against the tree.
“We’d better think of something quick,” Sherri said. “That whistle was some kind of a signal.”
“Maybe we can pull free.”
“Let’s give it a try.”
They worked their wrists against the barkless tree behind them.
“Mine are both awfully tight,” Sherri said.
“My left seems just a bit—”
“Oh Jesus!” Sherri gasped, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s in the tree.”
Neala looked to her right, tipping back her head.
“No, the other way. Beside us.”
She turned to the left. She raised her eyes up the weathered trunk to the high branches. At first, she saw only jagged limbs, pale in the moonlight like bones stripped of their flesh. Then one of them moved, and she realized it was a leg. A second leg dangled beside it. She followed them upward to a bare hip and torso, a head with shaggy hair. If there were breasts, she couldn’t see them. “Is he alive?” Neala whispered.