After America (23 page)

His eyes went wide when he recognized her, but it was Dalby he should have been watching. The quiet gray-suited man moved up beside the prisoner and swung a hard, vicious sword-hand strike into his nose. Richardson screamed as he went over backward, a few drops of crimson blood spraying the slimy whitewashed brickwork.

“Righty oh, then,” Dalby said softly, turning to one of the guards, who hadn’t reacted in the slightest to the assault.

“I could just murder a cup of tea. I don’t suppose you could fetch us a brew, do you, lad? I fear we may be some time down here. What about you, miss?” he asked Caitlin.

She regarded Richardson without obvious emotion in spite of the bloodlust roaring through her head. His eyes were huge with terror.

“Got any coffee?” she asked.

Texas Administrative Division

Miguel slept through the night until just before dawn. He awoke wishing he hadn’t. Nightmares had haunted him almost from the moment he’d closed his eyes, visions of his family dying while he stood in the middle of the slaughter unable to move, unable to lift as much as a finger to stop it while the road agents laughed and pointed at him, mocking his impotence. When he finally stirred in the dim gray light, he felt as though he had been awake for days. There was no gift of forgetting. He did not wake up thinking himself home in his own bed, even for the briefest of moments, lying next to Mariela, waiting for the first of the children’s footfalls to thunder through the house. He simply woke from dreams of loss and horror into the reality.

Sofia twitched and mumbled in her sleep on the bedroll next to his where they lay behind the counter. He resisted the urge to stroke her head, to calm her thoughts. She cried while she slept or during the day when she didn’t think he would notice. He suspected she was trying to keep up a brave front for his benefit. As troubled as her dreams would be, however, he preferred her to sleep. They would have another long day in the saddle.

He lay still for a minute, then stretched carefully before inching away from his daughter and standing. He had taken off his jacket and his boots but remained dressed in the clothes he had worn yesterday. They both did. He leaned over and picked up Sofia’s bear, which was lying on the floor a short distance from her. After tucking it in next to her, he moved away quietly. The pop of his knees and a cracking back told him that his body would not thank him for the night on a hard floor. His sore ribs, combined with the cold air, made breathing a chore. Whatever aches and pains he may have felt in his body, they were nothing compared with the agonies of his soul, a torment that he had no choice but to ignore.

To add to the discomfort of an aching back and stiff legs, Miguel’s bladder was full, but he took the time to pull on his boots and gather his weapons before pushing quietly through the front door of Leona’s general store. The sun was peeking over the eastern horizon, washing everything in a soft yellow light that only emphasized the sense of abandonment as he walked down to the intersection at the top of the main road.

As he looked back over the ghost town, burned-out husks of buildings glinted where the dawn’s rays struck broken glass or exposed metal and dewdrops glistened like a billion diamonds on grass that had grown wild and high in untended fields and gardens. Certain he was not being observed, he finally relieved himself at the side of the road by the fence where they had secured the horses overnight. Red Dog joined him at the fence, wagging her tail and panting in anticipation of breakfast.

Wiping his hands on the dewy grass and then his jeans, Miguel took a minute to breathe in the chilled air as his gut cramps and chest pains abated. The cry of a night heron drew his attention back toward the main road through town, and he saw the hunched, almost stocky-looking gray and white bird lift off from the wreck of a house a hundred yards down. A flash of red and white zipping from the cover of the ruins gave away the fox that had been stalking it. A rumbling growl began at the back of the dog’s throat, but Miguel silenced her with a simple command.

“Quiet, dog. Even the fox must eat, yes?” he said. “And better a useless heron or prairie chicken than some farmer’s egg layer.”

He heard the screen door bang open as Sofia emerged from the store. She, too, had pulled on her boots, and she was carrying her Remington. Her face looked puffy and pale, and she rubbed eyes that seemed to be rimmed by dark shadows.

“I didn’t know where you were,” she said almost resentfully. “I don’t like it in there on my own.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “If you look after the horses, I will see to breakfast.”

She seemed grateful for something to do. If her night had been anything like his, she would be looking for a distraction. The horses would provide one. By the time they had been brushed and had their hooves picked and cleaned and their legs massaged and rubbed down, she would have done at least an hour’s work.

“Keep the dogs with you and your rifle close to hand,” he said. “I shall not be far.”

She gave him a brief, fierce hug as they passed, which made Miguel feel a little better. He had to admit that he didn’t care for the ice-cold blankness of yesterday.

He returned to the store, intending to search the cellar properly before he prepared any food. There seemed to be quite a treasure trove down there, but they would have to choose what they took carefully. They did not have the capacity to load up a wagon train, and even if they had, it would have slowed them down too much. He could not shake the conviction that they had to cross a lot of ground very quickly to get Sofia away from the agents.

The cowboy shivered as he reentered the shop. The remains had not bothered him the night before, but now, in the light of day, something like a cold eel slithered up his spine, raising gooseflesh on his arms and causing him to shudder with an unspecified sense of dread. He regarded those taken by the Wave with some trepidation, as though the empty clothes, stiffened and black with the leavings of those who had worn them, might suddenly inflate with their specters and rise from the floor to admonish him—or worse—for living when they had died.

“Madre de Dios,”
Miguel muttered to himself, momentarily forgetting his own frequent commands to his family to always speak in English. “Get a grip, you ignorant fool,” he said more forcefully.

Still, he could not help glancing back over his shoulder to where the dogs sat patiently guarding Sofia as she brushed down his horse in the warming light of morning. The animals seemed not at all perturbed, and he consoled himself that although he was not a stupid and superstitious peon, he had heard it said by such types that dogs were especially attuned to the spirit world and to those who passed, by accident or design, from the place of shadows in the world of real things. If spirits there were in this empty store, Blue Dog and Red Dog were unaware of them. They sat, grinning stupidly, awaiting a feast of canned franks or loose meat.

Tamping down on the very strong urge to step back out into the bright, clean light, Miguel stroked his saddle gun in the oversized holster at his hip and stepped farther into the crypt.

He stopped.

Why had he called it that?

The same shiver seized his whole body this time, and he could feel goose bumps spreading all over both arms and legs. Even his ass tingled with a strengthening sense of free-floating dread.

Miguel Pieraro remained fixed where he stood, and darkness gradually seemed to swirl up like mist from the shadowed recesses of the aisles at the rear of the store. He was certain that were he to turn around, the Disappeared would be standing there, yellow teeth grinning at him through rotted lips, bony claws reaching out to seize him and carry him off to wherever the Devil had taken their souls on the morning of March 14, 2003.

When the dogs began barking, he nearly filled his pants.

The two men were on horses, which wasn’t unusual. The fact that they wore white business shirts with clip-on name tags and black ties under their navy blue Columbia windbreakers definitely was. They had been advancing down Leona Road on two chestnut-colored horses until they’d encountered his daughter leveling the business end of her Remington 700 at them. Now they weren’t going anywhere. They sat very still in their saddles with their hands in the air. The dogs had taken up guard positions on either side of Sofia and hunkered down on their front legs as their wiry fur bristled and their lips skinned back from cruel-looking fangs.

Miguel lowered his weapon as he emerged from the store and recognized them as Mormons. Another two just like them had come by the ranch almost a year earlier, and at the time he had been struck by the incongruity of their dress. It was a sort of uniform, he knew, and he could think of nobody else who would be dressed in such a fashion this morning in East Texas.

“Sofia,” he called out. “It is all right. You can put the gun down.”

He was gratified to see that his daughter did not take her eyes off the men even as she lowered the muzzle of the rifle.

“Good day to you, gentlemen,” he said, projecting his voice down the empty street. He still held his Winchester, but casually, one-handed, pointing it down into the dust. The saddle gun lay heavy and reassuring at his hip. The riders, he noted, made no effort to place their weapons within easier reach. They each appeared to have modern military-style rifles slung across their backs, and he could see no evidence of a quick-draw saddle gun such as his own Lupara.

“Good morning to you, sir,” one of them called back, waving with what looked like forced cheer. “Do you homestead around here, or are you passing through?”

“Around here,” he answered with some care. There was no reason to explain to these men what he and his daughter were doing on the trail. “But I am traveling north. Yourselves?”

“We head north as well. To Kansas City, with a herd of beef cattle.”

“Advance riders?” he asked, walking out to meet them in the center of the road.

Sofia turned slightly at the hip to watch him as he walked toward them, her gun pointed down but her finger still firm on the trigger. Miguel could see no sign of a big herd anywhere near town. His horses had trotted up to the fence line of the property where he had secured them for the night. They snorted and whinnied at the new arrivals while the dogs remained on guard on either side of his daughter. Should trouble develop, they would fly at the men’s horses with fangs bared. The chance meeting did not feel dangerous, though, despite an air of strain about the men.

“Our main group is some miles back. Near Elwood,” said the second rider, who had not spoken before. “We’ve ridden up to see whether there is pasture and shelter for them here at Leona, or whether it might be best to push on for Centerville. My name is Willem D’Age, and this is Cooper Aronson. Besides driving cattle we are witnesses for the Lord and …”

Miguel waved him off before he could get into his sales pitch.

“I am Catholic,” he said. “For what it’s worth. That will do me fine for now.”

“And on Judgment Day?” Aronson asked.

Miguel gestured to the ruins of Leona behind him. “Some might think that Judgment Day has come and gone and left us all in its wake, my friend.”

The Mormons nodded somberly.

“Indeed,” said D’Age, letting a moment pass before continuing. “So you would know this area well, then, Mister …”

“Pieraro. Miguel Pieraro,” he answered before walking nearer, extending a hand, which Aronson bent down to shake. “I am a rancher under the Federal Mandate. This is my daughter, Sofia.”

The two men bowed their heads and removed their hats, each of them greeting her politely in turn. She nodded brusquely but said nothing.

The two riders exchanged a glance as they replaced their hats.

“You run longhorns?” D’Age asked.

Miguel shook his head. “Bedak Whitetails. My family made it to Australia after the Wave. I have always worked with cattle and was sent to a property tending Whitetails after we were released from camp. They are a good breed. Well suited to this land.”

“But you are some distance from your land today, Mister Pieraro,” D’Age said, leaving the obvious question unspoken.

Miguel nodded and answered by spitting in the dust.

“Road agents,” he said without further explanation. Both men were sweating and high-colored in spite of the morning being cool. The color seemed to drain from the face of the one calling himself D’Age.

Aronson, the taller, leaner of the pair, cleared his throat awkwardly. “And your family?”

Miguel shook his head as he felt great weights and precarious burdens shift around somewhere inside him.

“I’m his family,” Sofia said, and left it at that.

“I am sorry,” Aronson said. “Some evil has befallen you?” His companion muttered condolences, too, shaking his head.

“Some,” said Miguel.

Before dismounting, the riders appeared to consider something between themselves without actually exchanging any words. D’Age shook hands with Miguel while the other man led their horses over to the nearest fence line, where he tied them up. Miguel was surprised to see tears welling in D’Age’s eyes.

“I am very sorry,” he said again quietly. “Very sorry,” he added while half bowing in a strangely formal gesture toward Sofia.

The girl smiled, but the warmth didn’t reach her eyes. She didn’t come and stand by her father, however, as much as Miguel could tell she wanted to. She knew not to present a small target by grouping together like that. Aronson knocked the dust from his hat by slapping it on his thigh as he walked back from the fence line.

“I’m afraid we have had our own problem with road agents,” he said. Miguel noticed that D’Age seemed to stiffen and bunch his jaw muscles tightly as Aronson continued.

“Raiders hit us outside of Trinity,” he said. “Near Lake Livingston. Took our supplies, a good number of cattle …”

Miguel waited for them to finish. There was obviously more.

“And some of our people,” Aronson confessed at last, forcing out the words like squeezing pus from a wound.

“Your women,” Miguel said flatly.