Vengeance is Mine (27 page)
Authors: Reavis Z Wortham
“Where'd Pepper go?'
I felt sorry for Mr. Landers. His one job was to keep us at the house, but Pepper disappeared like a puff of smoke the second he turned around. “She's gone to help Mr. Tony.”
“Who?”
“The guy who's renting the Ordway place.”
“But that's where all the shootin's coming from.”
“Don't I know it.”
The lights in the house came back to life. Mr. Landers' eyes widened when the wind brought a long string of shots. “Good God, that sounded like machine gun fire. I haven't heard anything like that since I was in the Pacific.” He opened the screen door. “The electricity is back on. Now, you stay right there and I'll go call Ned.”
I waited until he was back in the house, then I took off into the pasture Mr. Landers shared with the Ordway property. Only a few seconds later, everything behind me went dark again, but the lightning storm let me see enough to run toward the Ordway barn. I figured that's where Pepper was headed, and it was as good a place as any to see what was happening from the hay loft.
She'd be there all right, because we thought alike.
Sheriff Griffin saw Cody's El Camino parked near a dark, unfamiliar house and rolled to a stop beside the car. Bolts of electricity in the low clouds overhead punctuated the gunfire a short distance away. A soft glow through one window told him somebody was home. He flicked his headlights on for a moment to let them know he was there.
Landers stepped outside and painted his flashlight over the new arrival. “Stay right there, feller.” The next flash revealed a shotgun in the man's arms, and a pistol stuck in his waistband.
Griffin paused. “It's me. Sheriff Griffin.”
“I don't know that. You ain't in no sheriff's car.”
A quick sprinkle of rain fell, driven sideways by a gust of wind.
“Look, I'm the sheriff. I'm in my personal car. Shine your light here and you'll see my badge.”
The beam moved downward and settled there. “All right. Get out sheriff, and tell me what's going on.”
Relieved, Griffin stepped out and flinched as nearby gunshots echoed. “That's what I'd like to know.”
“We tried to call Ned Parker again, but all the lines is busy. There's automatic fire over behind us at the Ordway place. I had Ned's grandkids here for a little bit, but them little shits snuck off and I don't know where they went.”
Griffin's gut tightened with excitement. This might be it. Agrioli might have gotten his hands on a machine gun to take out the Parkers and Washington. He rubbed his palms together to bleed off nervous energy. “Any idea who's doing all the shooting?”
“Not sure.” Landers stayed on the porch, keeping the house between them and the small war not far away. “Cody was here for a second, so I know he's around. Ned might be too for all I know. Past that, I can't tell you. One of them kids said a feller named Tony lives there.”
Griffin thought hard, feeling even better now that he knew the Parkers were under fire. Driving away would be the smart thing to do until the battle was over, but he couldn't leave well enough alone. “Is there a way to get around back of that house?”
“Sure 'nough. Go through that gate over yonder and follow the fence a ways. It'll carry you around to the barn back behind the Ordway house.”
“Much obliged. I'll be back in a little bit.” Griffin lifted a pump shotgun from the backseat and jogged through the gate.
Sighing and hoping not to catch a stray bullet, Landers left the porch and crossed the yard in a crouch he'd perfected on Guadalcanal over two decades earlier. “Damn city people, don't even know enough to close the gate behind 'em.”
A bullet whistled by overhead.
“Time to get to the storm cellar.”
Both the .45 and .38 were empty, the Thompson lay on the floor, still smoking but useless. That left the Ruger .22 pistol in his pocket. Not enough to do the job, and surely not enough to maintain a standoff.
For a moment, the only sounds Tony heard over the ringing in his ears were thunder and the shrieks of a dying man in the kitchen. The Thompson had broken the back of their initial assault before it ran dry, but it severely damaged his hearing.
Blood ran down his back, soaking his left leg that refused to respond properly. He staggered back to the safe area beside the staircase and considered the second floor as a refuge, but it would leave no escape if they fired the house.
The front door banged against the wall and Tony expected another frontal assault. It was only the wind, but in the next flash of light, he saw Top's forgotten .22 leaning against the corner. Tony grabbed the slender rifle, and dragged himself back to the door under the stairs, leaving a trail of blood. Yanking it open, he stared into absolute darkness. A shout outside was followed by the rattle of gunfire as he pulled the door closed behind him.
Taking the Zippo from his pants pocket, he flicked the wheel with his thumb. The flame immediately drove the darkness into the corners and he saw the trap door cut into the bottom of the makeshift closet.
If nothing else, it would let him drop underneath the house. He opened it to find a ladder leading into darkness. The moonshiner's tunnel.
An escape plan formed in his mind, and a bloody grin arrived through the pain. He scrambled underground.
Tony was still in the fight.
The Machine stood outside the house with his back against the kitchen wall. On the other side, the last of Ray Marco's men, the one Johnny Machine shot beside the hog pen, tied off a tourniquet on his useless arm and leaned his head against the wall. “Shit that hurts! I can't believe you shot me.”
“You're lucky you're still alive, so shut up about it.”
“Whadda we do?”
“Wait a minute.” The Machine peered around the corner, expecting another barrage from the Thompson. A body lay half in and half out of the utility porch. Half his head gone, Nicky's riddled corpse was draped over the man's legs. The room smelled of blood and gunpowder. “Lemme think.”
He regretted shooting the man beside him. He needed someone to send in ahead to soak up some of that machinegun fire. He decided to use what he had. “Can you move?”
“Yeah, but my arm's broke and I'm dizzy.” He coughed. “The bullet's in my lung. I can taste blood.”
The Machine's eyes glittered. He was deep into his element, and loving every second. This was why they called him Johnny Machine. “You'll be fine. Here's what we do. I start shooting for cover, and you go in and make an immediate right through the door. That'll get us inside, and then we can flank this son-of-a-bitch.”
“You'll cover me good?”
“Sure.” The Machine surely expected to, but then again, what was the loss of one shot-up stranger? At the very least he'd locate Agrioli, once he opened up on the guy.
Gunfire came from the front of the house. The Machine hoped it was another frontal assault by Michael and some of the other guys. “Hey, what's your name?”
“Stanley.”
“All right, Stanley, how many of you were there?”
“Seven in all.”
“You all came in one
car
?”
“It was crowded.”
Johnny Machine chuckled. The sound was madness amid the carnage. “That was you guys standing on the side of the road a little while ago. I hope some of them are still alive.”
Stanley coughed, feeling warm blood in his mouth. “Marco might be.”
“I'll bet Michael is too. Nobody can kill him. All right, you ready?”
Stanley stood on shaky legs.
“Now, go!” The Machine leaned into the doorway and gave Stanley's shoulder a rough shove. He opened up with his pistol, shooting as fast he could pull the trigger.
Moving awkwardly, Stanley blundered into the darkness and fell to his knees, expecting to hear the machine gun roar once again, and to feel the impact of a dozen bullets. Instead, there was no return fire. Using his one good hand, he crawled into the dining room and collapsed on the floor, momentarily losing his weapon. He fumbled for it, found the butt, and rolled against a wall.
Lightning exposed the room. It was clear.
Footsteps crunching on glass told Stanley that The Machine was creeping into the kitchen. “That you?”
The Machine crouched beside the bullet-riddled Frigidaire. “If you mean me, yeah.”
“I think Agrioli's dead.”
“We ain't that lucky. You stay right there and keep thinking. This guy's a cat, and he still has a lot of lives left.”
Leaning against the car and using the engine block for cover, John and Cody couldn't believe their eyes at the sight of Ned walking up the sandy drive. His attention was fixed somewhere beyond the house. Strobes of lightning illuminated the hanging loosely at his side.
Cody tried to wave him back. “Ned! Are you crazy! Get down!”
Gunshots flickered from behind the chest-high stack of firewood near the house as Michael and Marco sent bullets buzzing through the air like angry insects. The gangster's momentum failed when the lawmen arrived, forcing them toward the barn and away from escape.
John brought his shotgun to bear and fired three times, the booming reports rolling over the yard. The pellets splintered the dry wood, driving the shooters down. He shucked the empties and the hulls rattled onto the fenders with a hollow sound. Cody ducked and glanced over his shoulder, hoping to see Ned under cover behind a tree.
Instead, he stopped to aim his pistol in that peculiar manner of his that always reminded Cody of William S. Hart from the silent movie era. The men behind the firewood rose to shoot again. Ned fired over and over again, and John's shotgun boomed at the same time. The men fell back.
On one knee, the big deputy thumbed shells into the shotgun's magazine. “I ain't never seen nothin' like that!”
“He's lost his mind.”
Almost casually, Ned joined them beside the car. He pushed the extractor rod on his pistol with a finger and the empties fell at his feet. “Y'all get up. We got trouble.” His eyes focused on the stacked firewood as he shoved fresh rounds into the cylinder.
Stunned, Cody looked up at the old constable backlit by flickers of light in the dying storm. “What are you talking about?”
John peeked over the hood. A man dragging himself across the porch threw a wild shot toward the car. John aimed and fired. The buckshot hit with devastating effect, plucking at the man's shirt and hair.
Ned snapped the cylinder closed. “Them two guys who was shootin' at us are runnin' for the barn.”
“So?”
“So I seen Top and Pepper run in there a minute ago.”
“That's why you were walking out in the open?”
“I was?” Ned blinked in surprise, startled that he was so near the house. “Why, I had to do something so they wouldn't see them kids.”
“Y'all gonna get us all killed.” John stood and shouldered the shotgun, aiming toward the house. “Tell me when you're ready.”
“Up here!”
I hadn't no more than ducked in the pitch-black barn when Pepper called to me from the hay loft. I looked up, but it was too dark to find her. “I figured you'd be up there.”
“The ladder's on the feed crib.”
“I know where it is.”
I felt around for a moment and found one of the worn rungs. It wasn't nothing but a piece of two by four nailed crossways between the wall studs. I was up quick as a squirrel. The Johnson grass hay on the loft floor was old and full of dust stirred up by the wind whistling through the eaves.
There was more shooting. I hadn't much more than registered the flashes when a bright bolt slashed overhead and I saw two men with their backs to us behind a stack of old firewood.
They were shooting at what I thought was a sheriff's car. Somebody shot back. A ricochet wailed off overhead, and then another. They don't sound like they do on television. Ricochets kind of have a nasty vibrating tone to them.
I shuddered. “Who-all's down there?”
Pepper squatted to see under the limbs of a nearby oak tree. “Shit, I don't know. I hope Mr. Tony's all right.”
I thought about how many gunshots we'd already heard. “Well, they're still shootin', so I guess he ain't dead. But why are them people after him, I wonder?”
Pepper was quiet for a long minute because she didn't have an answer to that question, but then she backed into me and whispered. “Shit. Two of 'em ran in under us.”
The lightning wasn't as strong as it had been, and we couldn't make out any details. But right behind them came two more men. I didn't think they were anyone we knew.
Pepper froze as solid as a rabbit under a bush.
I did the same, but for another reason. I felt that dizzying sense I had earlier in Mr. Tony's house, only this time it was stronger. I saw arrows of light shooting toward me from all different directions like the spokes on a wheel, only this time they met in the middle of the barn.
With a shock I knew that my dream about hubs and spokes was all about those men with guns, coming straight toward the Ordway place. My damned Poisoned Gift was finally revealed, but too late once again.
Pepper yanked my arm, pulling me back into this world. “Quiet!” she hissed.
“What?”
“You were making noises like you do when you have nightmares. It sounded like you were saying âcome in, come in.'”
“It was no such of a thing. I was seeing lights.”
“Shhh.”
We got quiet.
The electricity came back on yet again in the Ordway house, the lights startling. The yellow glow illuminated bodies lying on the porch.
“What do you think's happening?” John asked.
Ned shook his head. “I couldn't guess, but I'm gonna go after them kids. I don't care who's inside right now. Them two men in the barn are my concern.”
Cody agreed. “John, you stay out here and keep an eye on the house best you can, until help shows up. I bet there's cars on the way right now. Me'n Ned will go thataway through the gate, and see what we can do. Then you can bring some men when they get here and help us out.”
“You're liable to get shot.”
“So are you.”
Ned patted his pockets. There was enough ammunition for one more reload. “Y'all keep an eye on the house until I get through the gate. They won't be able to see me then, and you can come on up, Cody.”
“Run.”
“Son, my running days are over.” Ned patted his round belly where a bullet only months before had almost killed him. Throwing a glance toward the house, Ned moved in what he considered a jog toward the gate behind the tall wood pile.
When he disappeared into the darkness, Cody slapped John's shoulder, remembering that he did the same thing when Tom Bell stayed behind to cover for him down in Mexico. He wished the old man were there now with his BAR. “Be careful.”
John didn't take his eyes off the house. “You too.”
Cody was barely through the gate when gunfire crackled once again in the house.