Red Highway (20 page)

In the bedroom on the second story, Alex was standing square in the window, describing a broad to-and-fro arc with his Thompson across the stretch of grass between their house and the one next door. His spent cartridges plinked to the floor in a steady chorus of bouncing brass. Return fire flashed in the darkness below like strings of exploding Christmas tree lights. Only six more shopping days till Christmas, he thought wryly as he sent a sustained burst in the direction of the street.

Annabelle, squeezed close to the wall in her bedcovers, screamed loud and long, stopping at intervals only long enough to take a breath. Her movie magazine lay in tatters on the floor, where it had landed after having been shot off the night table by a lawman's errant bullet. Her husband, enveloped in darkness and clinging gunsmoke, looked more to her like a demon released from the hell her family deacon used to preach about than the personable young rake she had married. She felt she was on the wrong side.

“Damn place is like a fortress.” Farnum dropped his submachine gun to knee-level in order to bring the circulation back into his arms, then raised it again and blasted at Ballard's bedroom window. Beneath and through the din of battle, the big pointer remained standing at the end of his chain, barking and yelping at the team of invaders. The special agent cursed him between bursts.

“Where are those men with the gas?” He screamed the question into the ear of the man nearest him.

“'Round the corner, with the rest of the hicks,” was the reply.

“Get 'em.”

The subordinate scrambled to his feet and went running off in that direction, crouching beneath the crossfire.

Except for the two who had joined the sheriff's deputies for the assault on the second story, and the one Farnum had sent off to get the tear gas, all the federal men were firing into the bedroom of the Tri-State Terror.
What the hell's holding him up?
thought Farnum as he blasted away, feeling the heat of the machine gun's barrel through the wooden forward grip.

The agent returned with one of the deputies, who held a short, wire-barreled shotgunlike weapon cradled in his big hands. They huddled around the chief.

Farnum pointed at the bullet-smashed window. “Lob a canister through there and run like hell.”

The man grunted, leveled the wire barrel at the window, and squeezed the trigger. Pom! Something big erupted from the muzzle and went sailing over the sill into the shadowy chamber. The two agents and the deputy straightened and leaped backward just as fresh fire opened up from one of the converted Lugers. When they stopped running at the edge of the yard, volumes of yellowish smoke came billowing out through the window, curling and expanding as it overflowed the dimensions of the bedroom. Someone was coughing at the center of the cloud.

Farnum stood back facing the front door just yards from the infernal smoke and motioned his men to spread out. “Get ready,” he snapped.

Alex heard the strange whumping noise from around the corner and wondered what it was. He could still detect the rapid brrrp of Virgil's pistols, so he decided that everything was all right in that direction. As for himself, he was doing all right, since most of the men below were armed only with shotguns, and by the time their fire reached his level, the pellets had spread out so that they weren't too much of a threat.

He had caught a tiny bit of lead in his right forearm, but it was little more than a bee sting to him as he concentrated upon keeping the deputies back beyond effective shotgun range. Now and then a federal man got in a good burst with a Thompson which was lethal enough at any range, but, since it was almost impossible to aim a machine gun beyond the space of a few yards, Alex felt pretty safe. The window, which he had shoved upward to begin the battle, hadn't even been broken. Now if only Annabelle would stop screaming, he could maybe lay down a good enough pattern of fire to back off the lawmen long enough for him to escape.

He whirled and snapped his wife a furious glance through the enveloping darkness. “Shut up, damn it! How do you expect me to concentrate if—” He was just turning back to rejoin the battle when a bucketload of .45-caliber lead slammed into his chest. He screamed, staggered backward, wavered on unsteady legs, and pitched forward out through the window. His body did a single somersault in the air and splatted facedown on the wet grass. His machine gun came down afterward, bouncing twice against the wall before it landed clattering in the paved driveway. Annabelle stopped screaming as if someone had flipped a switch.

The gray steel tear-gas canister zinged through the window as Virgil was reloading one of his pistols. It hit the floor and bounded end over end, leading a spiral of yellow smoke from a fissure in its top. The room was hazy with the gas by the time Virgil dived after the offending object, seeking to sling it back outside. He scrabbled around on his hands and knees, groping for it, his eyes stinging, his throat threatening to turn itself inside out. The wound in his arm throbbed painfully as new blood washed over the sticky fluid that had dried over his right side. He began coughing horribly and staggered to his feet, grasping his reloaded gun from the smoke-enshrouded floor. “We got to clear out!” he choked, groping for the door.

The space between the bed and the floor was airless, an almost tangible slab of smoke crammed into it. Hazel had crawled out and was blindly attempting to stand up. It wasn't easy. Her face and eyes burned and the moist parts of her body were aflame, the panic born of pain making her slip and slide, driving splinters deep into her bare hands and feet from the plank floor. She heard the doorknob rattle, felt the rush of fresh air invade the room, and dragged herself laboriously to her feet, calling unintelligibly into the thickening fog. “Virgil! Where are you? Are you here? Virgil?” She clawed the empty air.

The fresh air in the hallway was delicious. Virgil stood there a moment, drawing in lungfuls of it, then ran for the kitchen, his stockinged feet padding on the worn linoleum. He was thinking about the black Pontiac parked in the garage, loaded with machine guns and shotguns, tank full of gas. Hazel would be all right; the law never touched women. He'd come back later and get her. Then Mexico. Maybe Alex would be along too, if he escaped tonight.

When he got to the kitchen and the back door, he found it shot apart, hanging precariously on its smashed hinges, more bullets coming through even as he took note of it. The lawmen were here too. Their machine guns rattled away as if they knew what they were shooting at. Every few seconds, the full-throated roar of a shotgun would sound, its impact splintering what remained of the sideboards and rattling the crockery in the kitchen. Virgil about-faced and headed back down the hallway in the direction of the front door. Tear gas was seeping in from the bedroom in greater volumes than before, meaning that another canister had been fired. He hurried past.

Hazel ran through the smoke-enshrouded doorway and collided with Virgil. Her eyes were red and swollen and her black hair was plastered damply against her head. Her transparent negligee clung immodestly to her body. “Virgil!” she cried. “Don't go out there! They'll kill you!” She clung desperately to him.

He struggled with her. The gaping wound in his shoulder had sapped his strength. “Out of my way! I'll be back for you!”

She held on. “We've got the money! We can get lawyers! Virgil, there's no need to run!”

“Get away!” Virgil shoved her away with a mighty effort. She staggered backward and fell down. He leaped over her and bolted for the front door. He paused with his hand on the knob and looked back at her. “Lawyers ain't for guys like me,” he said, and held up the big Luger. “
This
is my way.” He studied her a moment longer, then swung open the door and dived out.

Hazel looked up and saw Annabelle standing at the top of the staircase. She looked like a ghost, her eyes large and dull, her soaked flannel nightgown held about her neck in one gaunt hand. “Alex's gone,” she said simply, as new gunfire exploded from the front.

The machine guns of the federal agents were trained on the low veranda when the door opened. There was a pause, during which Farnum caught his breath and held it, his fine nostrils quivering spasmodically. The rain sizzled loudly on the grass and shrubs. Then a gray figure fluttered into sight and leaped over the wooden porch railing. “Fire!” Farnum led the fussilade by a microsecond. The wooden steps flew apart in a flurry of mud and splinters. The dim figure staggered and fell forward onto his hands and knees.
We got him
, he thought.
We got him, we got him, we got him
.

Virgil coughed and shook his head. The grass felt damp, and some of it was his blood. His rib cage was smashed, the splintered bones drawing in and out with each breath. He sucked in a chestful of air, grasped his gun more tightly, and threw himself up off the ground.
You bastards, you dirty bastards, I'm gonna survive
. He ripped off two short bursts and ran.

“He's headed out—on a getaway!” One of the younger agents jerked off a desperate blast at the fleeing figure. It missed a step, weaved for a few paces, and picked up momentum.

He was past the garage now, and was rapidly closing the gap between himself and the maze of suburban dwellings. Streaks of fire flashed through the curtain of night, picking at the ground around the fugitive, slamming into the trunks of trees, whanging through the garage's solid doors, ricocheting off the street and sidewalk. The explosions echoed up and down the residential block like a symphony of oversize kettle drums.

“Get the sonuvabitch!” screamed Farnum.
What the hell is holding him up?
He squinted through the rain, trying to keep his eyes on the ghostly figure racing toward the back of the house next door. Once he thought he saw him slump forward again, then get up and run on. In the next instant he was gone, hidden by the corner of the neighboring dwelling.

“We got him!” shouted a trenched-coated agent standing in the middle of the street. He was the one who had uttered the same words not twenty minutes before.

“Did you see him fall?” Farnum retorted.

“Yes, sir. Right there. By that house.”

“Get the hell down there and take a look.” He felt a hand on his arm and started around. It was Sheriff McCracken.

“We got Kern,” he told the agent curtly. “Think there's any more in there?”

Farnum was watching the movements of the agent's flashlight near the corner of the next house. “Get some more gas in there and we'll see. Use it up.”

“All of it?”

“Fill it to the top.” He brought his collar up around his ears.

The sheriff nodded and moved off.

The agent with the flashlight returned, shaking his head. “Nothing, sir. He's gone.” He had to shout to be heard over the bam of the tear-gas rifles.

Smoke began to billow from the smashed windows. Farnum watched it intently. “All right. We'll look for him.” The young agent sniffed his approval and left to assist the other lawmen.

Two women came out onto the porch, coughing and holding their hands aloft. The men gathered around them cautiously, guns raised.

Farnum ran his eyes over the scene, now thrown into faint illumination by the overlapping circles of light from porch lights on both sides of the street. He took in the smashed walls and ragged windows, studied the damaged trees and the bullet-chewed front lawn, finally spotted the broken body in the puddle of blood and water, and went up to talk with the captured women. The weather was lousy.

The side door of the shop gave way with a feeble kick. Virgil stumbled over the threshold and found himself in complete darkness, the night closing in on him like the walls of a vise. Water streamed from his clothes and spattered on the plank floor. Or was it blood? Blood from his two busted legs. That bastard Nelson Garver.

He made his way through the building, feet dragging, the humming in his ears becoming unbearable. He gripped the pistol tighter in his hands.
You're in a lot of trouble, son
. The voice was soft, almost paternal.
An armed robbery charge like this will get you sent up, you know that?
That damned bartender. One hundred and fifty jugs of Oklahoma White Lightning bought at a bargain, and then he goes and files a charge against him for armed robbery. He bumped into something hard and cursed.

The back part of the shop was open, free of obstacles and dangerous projections. Virgil staggered to the center. He felt something soft against his knees, reached down and felt it with his hands. Then he grunted and threw himself headlong across the bed.

That sonuvabitch with a face like a ferret.
We're gonna find you a place to stay. Ain't that nice?
Virgil tried to spit in the narrow, sneering face that floated before him, but his mouth was dry. The best he could do was hiss.

Hit the small towns, the one-street burgs
. Who could have expected Roscoe Hunter to run out like that? Roy was right. You never know when they're gonna be tearing up the streets in those big cities. They killed Boyd in Kansas City. I told him not to wear that damn vest.

It was getting darker. How can it get darker when it's pitch-black already? Worth thinking about. Damn sheet's getting wet. Roof must leak. Sticky, too. That bastard Nelson Garver. The bed began to move, and Virgil knew he was lying between the front and back seats of a Saxon six.
Missouri comin' up
.

The pistol felt heavy in his hand.
Some gun, huh?
Thompson submachine gun, .45 caliber, 1600 rounds per minute. Really make the cops run with this one. It fell to the floor with a thump. Get it later.

It's not just the banks
. Hazel looked at him, her face a mixture of anger and anguish.
You've escaped from three prisons. You're wanted for the murders of three men … Virgil, isn't that enough?
No, Hazel, not nearly enough.

It came while he was reliving the Dawes bank job, between watching Floyd Moss guarding the outside with his sawed-off shotgun and noticing that old constable, Ed Fellows, coming over from Fred Benson's service station. He felt cold for a second, unbearably cold—and then, suddenly, he was warm. This, he thought, must be the moment. But he never finished the thought. It sure was warm.