The Rift (98 page)

Stumbling over words in his haste, Nick told his plan to the Escape Committee. Reaction seemed divided.

“Running into town like that, you could get surrounded by a thousand crackers,” said one. “It could be like John Wayne at the Alamo.”

“The Alamo was a
success,”
Nick said. “The Alamo delayed things long enough for the rest of the Texans to get their act together and win the war.”

In the end, Nick got his way. The others had no better plan to offer.

*

The shadows had grown long. People began to line up for dinner. “Best go get our sand buggers,” one of the men said, and the Escape Committee rose to their feet and began to trudge toward the cookhouse.

The silence of the early evening was broken by the sound of truck engines, revving as they rolled along the broken roads from the direction of town.

There was sudden stillness in camp as everyone paused, frozen in the midst of their motion, to listen. Nick’s pulse was suddenly loud in his ears. “They’re coming!” someone said, and suddenly everyone was moving.

“Calm, people!” It seemed to Nick as if the reluctant words had stuck to the inside of his throat, and he had to peel them off with an act of will and throw them into the air. “No running! No shouting!”

Guards surrounded the camp. What they saw had to be refugees milling around, not fighters taking their posts.

Nick made himself walk carefully to the cookhouse, where Armando Gurulé had set up the master control for the claymores. He felt strangely lightheaded, as if he might topple over at any minute. At one point he realized he’d forgotten to breathe, and when he let the breath out and took in another the air was sweeter than anything he’d tasted in his life.

He found Armando standing by the control board in the shade of the cookhouse. People were running madly through the camp, parents scooping up their children and trying to find cover. Nick hoped that to the guards this looked like a normal reaction to an approach by the deputies.

Nick stood in silence.
Just let them get close,
he thought.

Two five-ton trucks pulled off the road in front of the camp, and began backing toward the gate. Over intervening heads, tents, and awnings, Nick saw some other vehicles and some Caucasian heads bobbing around. Nick didn’t see the crop-haired runt who had Gros-Papa’s watch, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. He glanced left and right and behind and saw, glimpsed through trees and tents and awnings, deputies taking up station on the perimeter.

To Nick’s right, wrapped in plastic and blankets, were the bodies of Miss Deena and the other gunshot victim. Nick felt a chill brush his spine as he saw them. Just behind him an old woman was flipping sand bugger patties on the big outdoor grill. She frowned at her work in a business-like way and wielded her big spatula as if there weren’t a pair of bodies within thirty feet of her, and as if all hell wasn’t about to break loose any second.

“Maybe it’s a food delivery,” Armando said.

“Maybe,” Nick said. He didn’t think so.

One of the trucks backed right up to the entrance. A big, thick-knuckled uniformed deputy— the man who had made the announcements yesterday— got on the back of a truck and raised a bullhorn to his lips.

“The other camp has been completed,” he said. “And we’re moving you-all there, so that the A.M.E. can have their property back and get this mess cleaned up. I hope there is not a repetition of what happened yesterday. So what I want y’all to do is get your needcessities, make a nice line on your side of the gate, then just set there and wait for your name to be called.”

There was silence in the camp. No one showed any sign of gathering their belongings or getting into line. Then, from somewhere out on the right, Nick heard someone begin to boo, as if he was protesting a decision by the umpire at a baseball game. The voice was deep and resonant and rumbled through the air like thunder. More people began to take up the call. The sound rose from the camp as if the earth was mocking the sky. Catcalls and jeers filled the air. Some people began banging on pans or other metal objects. The clattering noise echoed from the trees, causing startled birds to take to the air. Somewhere, someone started blowing on a whistle.

Nick saw the deputy using the bullhorn again, but beneath the defiant tumult heard nothing of what the man said. He saw the man look down at someone else, lower the bullhorn, give a shrug.

They’ll move now,
Nick thought. He craned for a view, saw little over the intervening obstacles. He looked behind him, saw the old woman still minding her vegetable patties. “’Scuse me, ma’am,” he said, and stepped up onto the brick wall of the grill, balanced between air and the gridiron.

An irregular line of deputies was moving toward the front gate carrying weapons. Last time, Nick thought, they came in shooting into the air, tried to stampede everyone.

He licked his lips, looked down at Armando. “Better get ready,” he said.

Armando looked down at his control board, flipped one of the two switches that would trigger the mines.

The deputies were standing by the gate waiting for the big man, who had dropped off the gate of the truck, put down his bullhorn, and picked up a shotgun. Nick couldn’t tell if the gate had been unlocked yet or not. The leader approached the gate with a lazy stride, then made a gesture with one arm and moved his shotgun to port arms.

Any second now, Nick thought. Waves of heat rose from the grill, almost smothered him. He could feel sweat popping out on his forehead. The catcalls from the refugees rose to a crescendo.

The gate swung inward behind a line of hustling deputies. The big leader pulled trigger on his shotgun once, firing into the air. That boom triggered more noise from the camp, catcalls mixed with a rising defiant screech. The hair on the back of Nick’s neck rose at the sound, at the primal challenge that must have first sounded in Africa a million years ago, when one prehuman clan first challenged another for mastery of the savanna.

The deputies came into the camp at a run, weapons carried high. The crowd fell back, yelling and whistling. The attackers moved fast, faster than Nick had expected. Another second or two they would run right over the mines.

“Jesus!” Nick said in a burst of terror. “Fire!”

Armando threw the second switch. The mines went off with a deep concussion that staggered the earth like an aftershock— Nick swayed on his perch— and then the air was filled with weird whirring, yowling sounds, airy demons unleashed, as the mines flung their strange munitions, the screws and stones and bits of jagged metal, the nails and cable and used razor blades. Nick heard a sound like a’ tortured animal as something flew past his head.

There was an instant of silence. Nick couldn’t see anything— there was dust and debris in the air— and then there was a shot, another deep shotgun boom.

“Go!”
Nick shouted.
“Go! Now! Go, go!”

A sudden howl rose from the camp, a song of triumph and blood and vengeance, and Nick saw a wave of people charging forward into the murky air. Nick’s nerves answered with a mad song of berserk joy.

There were more shots, and Nick heard a crack close to his ear like someone snapping his fingers. With a sudden jolt of fear he realized that a bullet had just flown by his head, and that standing on the grille made him a perfect target. He swayed for a moment in sudden vertigo, then jumped to the ground to see Armando carefully turning both the switches on his control.

“If there was a misfire,” he said, “we don’t want them going
off now
.”

“Gotta get up there,” Nick said, as much to himself as Armando. There were a lot of shots now, including the sustained, stunning clamor of at least one of the deputies’ machine pistols. Nick looked around for a weapon— he hadn’t thought to provide himself with one— and saw the old lady carefully crouched down behind the brick walls of the barbecue grille, clutching her spatula as if it were a spear. It was probably the safest place to be in the whole camp.

Nick didn’t want to wrestle the old lady for her spatula, so he gave up his search for a weapon and ran forward into the melee. The dust in the air had dispersed, and Nick saw a dozen bodies lying in the dirt. Most were deputies, but some were not. The bodies of the deputies were surrounded by clumps of refugees stripping them of their weapons. A pair of deputies retreated through the gate, a wave of club-waving refugees close behind. One of the deputies was wounded and had his arm around the shoulders of the second, who was supporting him in his withdrawal while firing back into the advancing crowd with a pistol. One of the pursuers sprawled to earth, and then with a series of triumphant cries the two deputies were engulfed by the wave of attackers. Nick saw knives and cudgels rising and falling, heard bone-chilling screams from one of the fallen.

He kept going.
Don’t stop except to pick up a weapon.
That’s what he’d told everyone. The heavy air labored through his lungs.
“Keep moving!”
he gasped.
“Keep moving!”

The air was full of gunfire, but Nick couldn’t see who was shooting, or at whom. He burst free of the gate— a yell of defiance rose to his lips— and then he was in the parking lot. Some of the cars had suffered cracked windshields from the claymores’ munitions. Shotguns boomed. Nick crouched low between two cars.

Gather in the parking lot where there’s cover. Take your car keys. Start your cars and get ready to move out on a signal.

That’s what he’d told his army. But he didn’t have any car keys, he didn’t have a car; he’d have to wait for others. He leaned his back against one of the cars, tried to catch his breath, mopped sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.

“Warriors!” he shouted. “Warriors! This way!”

He wondered what was happening in the camp. Bullets snapping overhead convinced Nick that it wouldn’t be wise to stick his head up and find out.

Whoever was firing the machine pistol had stopped. That was good, at least.

Nick heard a car door slam, then the grind of a starter and the roar of the engine. Bent in a crouch, he began moving in the direction of the sound.

And then he turned around the front end of a Chevy pickup and came face-to-face with the enemy: the big deputy who had been giving the orders.

The deputy was in cover between the pickup and a Pontiac wagon. He crouched in front of the Chevy, leaning against its bumper. His hat had been knocked off, and his forehead badly gouged by one of the claymores’ weird munitions. Blood ran down his face, spattered his khaki uniform. He still carried his shotgun in both hands. His left hand was bloody where the middle finger had been shot or blown or blasted off.

At the sight of the man, Nick’s blood seemed to flash into steam. The deputy looked at Nick in surprise as Nick came running around the truck’s fender. Maybe he’d been deafened by the mines and hadn’t heard him coming. Nick could smell the man’s sweat. He screamed and lunged at the man.

The deputy lifted the shotgun in both hands to fend Nick off, and Nick grabbed the shotgun and drove into the man, knocking the startled deputy on his back. They sprawled onto the soil of the parking lot, Nick on top. He scrambled to a crouch above his enemy, his hands still gripping the gun. The barrel was slick with the deputy’s blood. The deputy writhed under Nick, trying to throw him off, bucking like a horse. Nick bore down with all his weight onto the shotgun, trying to press the gun against the deputy’s throat and strangle him.

They both gasped for breath in the hot afternoon air. Nick drove the shotgun down, toes digging into the soil, slipping on the slick grass. His sweat dripped onto the deputy’s face. The deputy blinked blood from his eyes, saw the barrel coming near his throat. His eyes widened as he saw the danger, and then Nick saw determination enter the deputy’s face; the deputy gave a long, growling exhalation as he gathered his power and began to press Nick back like a weightlifter bench-pressing a set of barbells. To Nick’s astonishment the deputy lifted him upward, pressing him into the air no matter how much weight Nick put on the shotgun.

Terror sang through Nick. If the deputy could throw him off, then he could finish Nick through superior strength.

The deputy’s body gave a heave under Nick as he positioned himself for greater effort. From the way the deputy shifted, Nick realized he had one leg between the two legs of the deputy, and with a roar he shifted his own weight, pivoting off the shotgun as if it were a high bar in gymnastics, and dropped his knee with full force into the deputy’s groin.

The deputy’s eyes popped, and his breath went out of him in a great whoosh. Instead of bearing down further on the shotgun, Nick pulled at it, trying to snatch it out of the deputy’s grip.
“Mine!”
he shouted.

The barrel of the shotgun came free from the deputy’s maimed left hand. Nick tried a final wrench to yank it entirely free, but the barrel hit the chromed front end of the Chevy, cramping Nick’s movement, and the deputy hung on with his big right hand. Nick yanked the gun back and forth, banging the weapon into the Chevy and the Pontiac wagon on the other side, until he realized that the deputy was reaching his left hand across his front, toward the pistol that was holstered at his belt.

“No!” Nick yelled. He hammered at the deputy’s wounded hand with his right fist. The deputy gave a gasp of pain and surprise and snatched his hand back. Nick gave a wrench to the shotgun, managed to break it free of the deputy’s grip.

“Mine!”
he shouted, and smashed the butt of the shotgun into the deputy’s face. The deputy gave a convulsive heave under Nick and almost threw him off. The man’s hands clawed blindly upward, trying to grab the shotgun again or defend himself. Nick slipped the gun butt into the deputy’s guard and smashed him again in the face. Blood spattered from the gouge on the man’s forehead.
“Mine!”
Nick cried.
“My gun!”
He smashed another time. The deputy arched his back and Nick drove the gun butt again into his face.

“Mine! Mine!”
The shotgun rose and fell.
“Mine! Mine, you bastard!”