Road of the Dead (16 page)

“Right.”

“Stay behind me.”

He stepped into the doorway and reached around the wall, searching for a light switch. After a couple of moments a pale light snapped on, revealing the gloomy interior of the hallway. It was long and high and faded with age: old walls, old carpets, old furniture. Dark portraits lined the walls—faces, figures, long-dead ancestors—the paintwork cracked and greasy. On the left of the hallway was a broad flight of stairs with scarred wooden railings and banisters. There was a door at the end of the hallway, and two more along the right-hand wall. They were all closed.

“Nice,” I said, looking around. “Very cozy.”

“Shut up, Ruben,” Cole said.

“I’m nervous.”

“I know. Just keep it to yourself, I’m trying to listen.”

I listened with him, but there wasn’t much to hear—a faint sigh of wind from outside, my thumping heart, bits of wood dropping off the door.

Cole reached back and touched my arm and we stepped cautiously through the doorway together. Although the door was wide open, the outside world suddenly seemed a long way away. We were inside now. In this house.
This
was our world for now.

As we edged along the hallway, my eyes seemed to see everything. Every little detail. The patches of damp on the walls. The threadbare carpet. The bare plaster showing on the ceiling. I could see cracked timbers and cables and sagging lead pipes. Muddy bootprints. Pinched cigarette ends. A browned apple core. There was a faint but insistent smell of gas in the air, and the air itself was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I could taste it. It tasted of stale breath and flesh and a dearth of blue sky, of inertia and gasoline and brick-dust.

“Wait,” said Cole, holding out his hand and stopping.

I stopped behind him. We were about halfway along the hallway, outside one of the doors. Cole was staring at it, listening hard, with the shotgun leveled at the handle.

“Pistol,” he whispered.

I passed him the gun. He took it with his left hand, keeping the shotgun aimed at the door. I heard him take a
breath and steady himself, and I thought he was about to burst through the door, but the next thing I knew he was spinning around—away from the door—and aiming the pistol at the top of the stairs. Floorboards creaked, and I saw a slight movement behind the railings on the landing. Cole pulled the trigger and the pistol cracked dully in the silence. Blue flame flashed, a railing splintered, and a man’s voice yelped in pain.

“The next one goes in your head,” Cole called out.

A figure appeared slowly from the shadows. It was the Teardrop Man. A trickle of blood was running down his cheek from a splinter wound under his eye. As he raised his hands and moved cautiously down the stairs, Cole passed me the shotgun.

“Watch the door,” he said. “If anyone comes out, shoot them.”

As I covered the door with the shotgun, Cole turned his attention to Teardrop. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs now, wiping the blood from his face.

“Come here,” Cole told him.

Teardrop hesitated. “I was only—”

“Shut up. Come here.”

He edged closer to Cole, his hands held out in surrender.

“Where’s Quentin?” Cole asked him.

Teardrop glanced up the stairs, nervously licking his lips.

Cole leveled the pistol at his head. “Don’t make me ask you again.”

“Upstairs,” he said shakily. “Back room.”

“Who’s with him?”

“Red and Bowerman.”

“What about the rest of them?”

“They’re all over…”

“Where? How many?”

Teardrop nodded at the door I was covering. “There’s two in there, two in the next room, two in the kitchen—”

“Where’s the kitchen?”

“End of the hall.”

“Any more?”

“Upstairs—front room.”

“How many?

“Three.”

“Outside?”

“Four or five, maybe more.” He grinned, his confidence coming back. “It’s all covered. You won’t get out.”

“Any weapons?”

“Henry’s got his revolver. Bowerman’s got a rifle. Some of the others are carrying knives. You won’t—”

Cole cut him off, cracking the pistol into his head, and he slumped to the floor and lay still.

Two down
, I thought to myself,
only another dozen or so to go.
Six downstairs, five upstairs, more out the back…I just couldn’t see how we were going to make it. I looked at Cole. He had no doubts. No doubts, no thoughts, no worries. His mind was empty. He wasn’t thinking at all.

“There’s too many of them,” I said to him. “You can’t take them all out. What are we going to do?”

“Get Quentin,” he said simply. “Once we’ve got him, the rest of them don’t mean anything.”

I stared at him, wondering how he could think so clearly without having a thought in his head.

He looked back at me, his eyes strangely content. “It’s only a game, Rube. You win or you lose. It’s not worth worrying about.”

As I followed Cole up the stairs, keeping the hallway covered with the shotgun, I did my best not to worry about anything. But it wasn’t easy. What worried me the most was that I couldn’t
stop
worrying.
What if this happens? What if that happens? What if I do something wrong?

“If anyone opens a door,” Cole had told me, “just shoot. Don’t bother aiming at anything. Just close your eyes and pull the trigger.”

It sounded so simple, but everything about it scared me to death. What if I killed somebody? What if I froze? What if I messed everything up because I was too busy worrying about messing things up?

“All right?” Cole asked me.

“Yeah, no problem.”

We got to the top of the stairs and paused on a cramped little landing. At the far end of the landing was another closed door.

Cole turned to me. “Can you still see the hallway from up here?”

“Just about.”

“Keep it covered. Don’t move till I call you in.”

I sat down on the top of the stairs and watched the hallway. It was still empty. Still scary. I looked over my shoulder at Cole. He’d moved along the landing and was standing in front of the door, securing the pistol in the back of his belt.

“The hallway, Rube,” he said gently, without turning around. “Just watch the hallway.”

I looked down at the hallway again. The doors were still closed, but I could feel something happening now. The silence had changed. It was a silence about to be broken. I tightened my grip on the shotgun. I felt something move. Then one of the doors slowly creaked open—and I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

The silence exploded as the shotgun roared, and as the deafening blast ripped through the air I was vaguely aware of another loud crash behind me—the sound of Cole smashing down the door—and then everything erupted in a hail of noise and confusion: shouting, screaming, grunting, thumping, moaning. The sound of a pistol rang out, and I was desperate to turn around and see what was happening, but I forced myself to stay where I was and keep my eyes on the hallway. Dust was rising from a crater in the wall, and the remains of an oil painting lay scattered
all over the floor, but there was nothing else to see. There were no bodies. The doors were all closed. The shotgun blast had done its job.

And now, I realized, the gun was empty. Just a useless lump of metal in my hands. And that didn’t feel good. I tried to convince myself that no one else knew it was empty, so it didn’t really matter, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Neither did the silence behind me.

It was too still now, like the hush that falls after a battle, and suddenly I didn’t want to turn around anymore. I didn’t want to see what was happening. I didn’t want to see that Cole was hurt, or worse. Because if I didn’t see it, it wouldn’t be true.

“Are you going to sit there all day?”

His voice ran through me like a surge of fresh blood, and when I turned around and saw him standing in the doorway, it felt so good I wanted to cry.

“You all right?” he said.

I nodded, unable to speak for a moment. All I could do was stare at him. He was breathing heavily, and he had a slight cut over his eye, but apart from that he looked fine. The room behind him was dim and dusty, the stale air grayed with a drift of gunsmoke. A pale yellow light shone from a table lamp, showing heavy gray curtains draped over the windows, a cumbersome leather sofa, and lots of dark wooden furniture. One of the metalheads was sprawled facedown on the sofa, the other one was curled
up in a ball just beyond the door. Across the room, one of the bikers from the bar was sitting on the floor with his back against a heavy oak door. His teeth were bared and he was clutching his leg, trying to staunch the flow of blood from a bullet wound in his thigh. From the amount of blood on the floor beneath him, I guessed he wasn’t succeeding.

I looked at Cole.

“He had a knife.” He shrugged. “I didn’t have any choice.”

“What about the others?”

“They’ll be all right.”

I nodded, looking over at the biker again. He didn’t look good. His eyes were dull. His face was white against the dark oak door, and I wondered if he was dying. And if he died, what would that mean?
Bones and dust,
I thought,
bits of nothing. Let the dead bury the dead…

A floorboard creaked, ripping the thoughts from my head, and then Cole was suddenly pulling me back from the stairs and snapping a shot at someone in the hallway. Wood thwacked, and I heard running feet, and then Cole let off another quick shot. Something shattered and a door slammed shut, and then everything went quiet again.

“We’d better move,” Cole said, still looking downstairs. “They’re not going to run forever.”

He turned around and helped me to my feet and told me to watch the stairs, then he crossed over to the wounded
biker and dragged him away from the door. The biker moaned in agony, cursing violently under his breath, but he was too weak to resist. Cole dumped him against the wall, then turned around and picked up a switchblade from the pool of blood on the floor. He wiped it clean, snapped it shut, and put it in his pocket.

“All clear?” he asked me.

I looked downstairs. “Yeah.”

He beckoned me over. I crossed the room and joined him by the door. He guided me to one side and we both stepped back against the wall, out of harm’s way.

“All right?” he asked me.

I looked at him, trying to unscramble his feelings. There were shadows in his mind, echoed images of his intent: faces, figures, movements, lines, angles, actions, motions, shapes…

None of it made any sense to me. I had no idea what he was going to do. But I knew it didn’t matter; all I had to do was trust him.

I nodded at him.

He nodded back, paused a second, then stepped away from the wall and launched a kick at the door. The air shattered and the door burst open with a sudden dull crash, and then Cole was just standing there in the splintered light, waiting for the dust to clear.

I
n the steel of Cole’s eyes I could see the faces of Bowerman, Quentin, and Red. Quentin was at the back of the room, sitting rigidly at a large oak desk, and Red was to the right of him, lurking in the alcove of a high arched window. Bowerman was standing in the middle of the room, pointing a rifle at Cole. He was drunk—his body swaying from side to side, the rifle in his hands tracing circles in the air.

When he spoke, his voice was slurred and ugly.

“Cole Ford,” he said, “I’m arresting you for possession of a firearm with criminal intent. You do not have to say any thing…ah, shit. Just gimme the gun, boy. Come on…don’t be a twat. I’m a police officer, for chrissake.” He laughed stupidly. “You’re not going to shoot
me
, are you?”

Cole raised his arm and fired the pistol. I heard a dull thwack, followed by a surprised yelp of pain, and then a
metallic clatter and a heavy thump as Bowerman dropped his rifle and fell to the floor. Cole glanced down at him, then raised his eyes and stared deeper into the room. I could feel the amber eyes staring back at him through the dusted light.

“I want to talk to you,” Cole said calmly.

There was a slight pause, then Quentin said, “You’d better come in.”

Cole waved me over and we stepped through the door together. The room was stale and dark. Heavy curtains draped the windows. The only light came from four white candles flickering palely on a dark wooden cross suspended from the ceiling.

I stood beside Cole and gazed around. Bowerman was lying on the floor just in front of us. Cole had shot him in the shoulder. There wasn’t much blood, but his eyes were glazed with pain and shock and he’d puked up all over the carpet. His rifle was lying next to him on the floor.

“Pick it up, Rube,” Cole told me.

I picked up the rifle and passed it to Cole. He pulled back the bolt and checked that the rifle was loaded, then racked it shut again and looked down at Bowerman. He was starting to struggle to his feet now. Cole watched him for a moment, then stepped forward and hit him in the head with the rifle butt. Bowerman slumped back down into a pool of beery vomit.

Cole turned his attention to Red.

“Over there,” he told him, gesturing with the rifle. “Against the wall.”

Red smiled and moved out of the alcove. When he reached the wall, Cole told him to stop.

“Take off your jacket.”

“What?” Red grinned.

“Take it off and drop it on the floor.”

Red shrugged but did as he was told. Still grinning.

“Now your pants,” Cole told him.

Red’s grin went cold. “I’m not—”

“Just do it.”

Red looked at him for a moment, his jaw set tight, then he shook his head and unbuckled his belt and lowered his pants. He started to step out of them, stooping down to his shoes, but Cole told him to stop.

“Just leave them there,” he said. “Stand up straight. Look at me.”

Red straightened up, naked hate burning in his eyes.

“Sit down,” Cole told him.

“You just said—”

“Shut up. Sit down.”

As Red sank slowly to the floor, his eyes never moved from Cole’s. “You’re a dead man, Ford,” he said quietly.

Cole looked down at him, seeming to think about it, then he shrugged to himself and looked up at Quentin. “If he moves or makes a sound, or if anyone comes through that door, I’m going to kill you—OK?”

Quentin barely nodded his head. His face was stonecold and his eyes showed nothing. He was dressed as before in his brass-buttoned soldier’s coat, only this time the coat was undone, revealing a collarless white shirt and a carved wooden crucifix on a leather string around his neck.

“Let’s see it,” Cole said to him.

Quentin raised his head a fraction. “Excuse me?”

“Your gun. Wherever it is, take it out slowly and put it on the desk.”

Quentin blinked once—the first time I’d ever seen him blink—then he reached toward a drawer under the desk.

“Slowly,” Cole warned him.

Quentin paused, then inched the drawer open and carefully lifted out an old army revolver. Holding it by the tip of the barrel, he placed it gently on the desk in front of him.

“It’s fully loaded,” he told Cole. “I keep it for vermin.”

“Rube,” Cole said, without looking at me.

As I went over and picked up the revolver, Quentin turned his eyes on me. His face remained blank, but there was an ice-cold smile under his skin that sliced through my flesh and cut right down to the bone. I lowered my eyes and stepped away from the desk, feeling strangely violated.

Cole stepped up to the desk and leaned the rifle against it. He still had the pistol in his hand.

“I know what happened,” he said to Quentin.

Quentin looked at him. “Do you?”

Cole nodded. “The hotel complex, Abbie Gorman’s house, your deal with her husband…I know it all.” He glanced over at Red, then turned back to Quentin again. “I don’t care about any of it, I just want to know what you did with Selden’s body.”

Quentin’s eyes fixed on Cole. “I’d like to help you, Mr. Ford. I really would. But, as I told you before, I’m afraid I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. All I know about John Selden is that the police are looking for him in connection with your poor sister’s death.”

Cole raised the pistol and fired a shot into the wall, missing Quentin’s head by inches. Paint and plaster erupted from the wall, peppering Quentin with a fine shower of dust, but he didn’t even flinch.

“Last chance,” Cole said to him. “The next time you lie to me I’ll put a hole in your head.”

Quentin calmly brushed the dust from his coat. He took his time—carefully picking out flakes of paint, scraping his cuff with a horny thumbnail—then finally he rubbed his palms together and placed his hands on the desk and slowly looked up at Cole. “Do you believe in vengeance, Mr. Ford?” he said.

“I don’t believe in anything.”

“How about retribution?”

“I can take it or leave it.”

“Really?” said Quentin. “And did you take it or leave it with a sinner called Billy McGinley? Or perhaps that was all your father’s doing?”

Cole’s face remained blank. “What’s your point?”

“Point? I have no point. I’m just trying to decide if you have what it takes to kill a man in cold blood.”

Cole just looked at him for a moment, then he raised his arm and leveled the pistol at Quentin’s head. Quentin kept perfectly still, ignoring the gun and staring intently into the depths of Cole’s eyes. I could feel him invading my brother’s heart—searching, probing, mining his soul—and I knew he could see Cole’s truth. He’d known it all along. If Cole had to kill him, he would. That was the reality, and that’s how Quentin accepted it—as a plain and simple reality. It wasn’t anything to fear, it was just something he had to deal with: a problem, an annoyance, a complication.

“Your sister’s death was a mistake,” he said casually. “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all. These things happen, unfortunately. People stumble into other people’s business, a contract goes awry…I’m sure you know how it is, Mr. Ford. Business is business.” He shrugged. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

“What about Selden?” Cole said. “Was he a mistake, too?”

“Only in a genetic sense. In terms of the job, he was perfect. That’s why I used him.” Quentin looked at Cole.
“Vagrant instability, Mr. Ford—it’s cheap and expendable, it doesn’t ask questions, and best of all—it’s terrifying.” He paused for a moment, gazing thoughtfully at his hands, rubbing plaster dust between his fingertips. “Of course,” he continued, “when I first found out what Selden had done, it did occur to me that perhaps I’d underestimated his instability, but now that I’ve met you and your brother I’m even more convinced that my initial judgment was correct.” He looked up from his hands and fixed his eyes on Cole. “Your sister was a fine-looking creature, Mr. Ford, but I doubt if her looks alone were enough to push Selden over the edge. Physical sexuality wasn’t John’s thing. He just liked to look. That’s why I trusted him to confront Mrs. Gorman.” He smiled coldly. “We’ll never know for sure, of course, but I think the thing that pushed Selden over the edge was the fight in your sister’s heart.” He cocked his head. “She had the same spirit as you, Mr. Ford. You all seem to have it—you, your father…even your strange little brother here.” He shot me a sideways glance, then looked back at Cole again. “If your sister had just rolled over and whimpered a little, she’d probably still be alive today.” The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. “What do you think, Mr. Ford?”

Cole answered quietly. “I think I’m seconds away from wasting you.”

“No, you’re not,” Quentin said calmly. “You need me alive. I’m the only one who knows where Selden is buried.
And you’re right, of course—his body would prove beyond doubt that he killed your sister. There was a lot of blood, a lot of scratching…a lot of other things, too.” He looked at Cole to see how much he was hurting him, but Cole was past hurting now. Quentin shrugged and went on. “That’s my problem, you see? If Selden’s body is found, the police won’t be able to ignore it. They’ll have to start looking into things. And that won’t be good for anyone.”

“Especially you,” Cole said.

Quentin nodded. “I have business commitments. People have placed a lot of trust in me. Trust and money. Important people. Connected people. I can’t afford to jeopardize their trust.”

“You mean you can’t afford to let them find out you’ve been skimming off their investment.”

Quentin shrugged. “Skimming, maximizing, distributing…it’s all a matter of semantics.”

“Not if they find out, it’s not.”

“Exactly. I’m so glad you understand. If I told you where Selden is buried, I’d be dead within weeks.”

“You’ll be dead within minutes if you don’t.”

Quentin shook his head. “I don’t think so. If you kill me, you’ll never find Selden. I can promise you that. And, besides, if you kill me, the gentlemen downstairs will rip you and your brother to pieces.” His smile sharpened. “I know you don’t care about your own thick skin, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want anything to happen to young
Ruben here, would you?” He looked at me again, and this time I saw hell in his eyes. My hell, Rachel’s hell…I could feel it happening. And so could Cole. Quentin was
making
us feel it. He was making Cole see the worst things in the world happening to me. And Cole couldn’t bear it anymore. He was losing it. Losing control.

“Imagine it, Mr. Ford,” Quentin whispered. “Imagine it happening. Imagine what
that
would do to your mother. Her only daughter’s been raped and murdered, and now her strange little boy—”

Cole lunged across the desk and rammed the pistol at Quentin’s mouth, aiming to stuff the words down his throat. But Quentin had seen it coming. It was just what he’d been waiting for. And when he moved, he moved like black lightning—his left hand grabbing Cole’s wrist and slamming it down on the desk, his right hand clubbing Cole’s head like a sledgehammer. The impact shook the air. Cole went down hard, slumped over the desk, but somehow he didn’t let go of the pistol. Quentin kept hammering Cole’s wrist on the desk—
crack, crack, crack
—then he punched him again, a wicked short jab to the side of his head, but Cole still wouldn’t let go of the pistol. With an angry shake of his head, Quentin got to his feet and raised his fist over his head and brought it down with a thundering crash on Cole’s wrist. Something cracked, and the pistol finally spilled from Cole’s hand.

I was trying to move now, trying to help Cole…but
the air was too thick. I couldn’t get through it. Everything had slowed to dream-time. Quentin was standing slowly over Cole, slowly grabbing his hair and slowly lifting his head, then slowly smashing his face into the desk—once, twice, three times. Cole was still conscious. I could see his eyes shining black through the blood. They were looking down at my side, trying to tell me something…

The gun, Rube…Quentin’s revolver…

I was still holding it. Quentin’s revolver…it was in my hand…

Use it, Rube…shoot the bastard…

The dream-time cracked. I dropped the empty shotgun and raised the heavy revolver in both hands, steadying the sights on Quentin’s head.

Cock it,
Cole told me.
It’s a revolver—you have to cock it. Pull back the hammer.

I got my thumbs on the hammer and started to pull it back…and then Quentin was suddenly gone and all I could see in the notched V of the sights was Red—bare-legged and grinning, swinging the shotgun down on my wrists.
CRACK!
A bolt of agony shot through my arms and the revolver dropped from my hands, and the next thing I knew Red was stepping up and grabbing me by the shoulders, and I was looking up into his twisted eyes, and he was smiling his smile.

“Game over,” he said.

He drew back his head and hammered it into my face.

Now I’m falling, slumping, my legs crumpling like paper tubes, and I seem to be going down sideways, and I’m thinking—
Why am I going down
sideways
?
And I know it doesn’t matter. I can hear people running, shouting, kicking, punching. I hit the floor slowly and start to roll over onto my back, but my arm flops out and I push against the floor and somehow get my elbow underneath my body, and now I’m sprawled out on my side with my head half-raised, looking across the room at Cole. The air is cloudy, misformed, moving. It throbs against my eyes. Cole is a blood-drenched sack on the floor, a thousand miles away. He’s surrounded by raging faces and frenzied fists and hundreds of pounding legs, stomping him into nothing.

A preacher man stands back and watches.

My skull is moaning. The room is darkening. The preacher man is shining his amber eyes on me…and now I’m following his light. I’m floating back through the light of his eyes, back through the airless black air, back into his preacher man’s head, and just for a moment I can see myself through his eyes—lying on the floor, my face bloodied, my eyes half-closed, my mouth hanging open.

There’s a figure standing over me. A small red man. A shotgun poised over my head.