Rise of the Governor (32 page)

“Sonny!” The bald man calls out to another accomplice at the precise same moment Philip hears the footsteps creaking across the hundred-year-old hardwood floor out in the front parlor. Philip keeps the shotgun raised and aimed, but shoots a quick side glance back over his shoulder. Brian and Penny huddle in the shadows directly behind Philip, maybe five feet off his heels.

Two more figures have suddenly appeared behind Brian and Penny, making the little girl jump.

“Got it covered, Tommy!” says one of the figures as the steel-plated barrel of a large-caliber revolver—maybe a .357 Magnum, maybe an Army .45—becomes visible for all to see, pressing against the back of Brian Blake's skull. Brian stiffens like a cornered animal.

“Hold on now,” Philip says.

In his peripheral vision, he can see that the two figures holding guns on Brian and Penny are a man and a woman … although he would use the word
woman
loosely in this case. The gal clutching a piece of Penny's collar is an androgynous marionette of skin and bones, clad in leather pants and layers of mesh, with lampblack eyeliner, spikey hair, and the slightly greenish pallor of a junkie. She nervously taps the barrel of a .38 police special against the shank of her beanpole thigh.

The man next to her—the one apparently named Sonny—also looks as though he's no stranger to the needle. His sunken eyes stare out from a pockmarked mask of ignorance and meanness, his emaciated form clad in army-surplus rags.

“I want to thank you, brother,” the bald man says, shoving his nine-millimeter back into its belt sheath, acting like the showdown has now officially ended. “You dug up quite a spot here. I'll give you that.” He goes over to the sink and calmly helps himself to the jug of well water sitting on the counter, quaffing down an entire glassful. “This'll do nicely as a home base.”

“That's all well and good,” Philip says, not making any move to lower his faux weapon. “Only problem is, we can't take on any more people.”

“That's okay, brother.”

“Then what exactly are you planning to…? What are your intentions?”

“Our
intentions
?” The bald man enunciates the word with mock profundity. “Our intentions are to take this place from y'all.”

Somebody that Philip can't see snickers with great amusement.

Philip's brain is a fractured chessboard, pieces moving now in herky-jerky motion. He knows that it's likely that these hardened road rats mean to kill him and everybody else in the house. He knows they're parasites, and they've most likely been circling the place like buzzards for weeks—Brian wasn't hearing things, it turns out.

Even now, Philip can hear others outside—low voices, twigs snapping—and he does the quick mental arithmetic: There are at least six of them, maybe more, and at least four vehicles, and each one seems to be heavily armed, with plenty of ammo—Philip can see mags and speed-loaders clipped to some of the belts—but the one thing they seem to lack that maybe, just maybe, Philip can work with, is the appearance of intelligence. Even the big bald guy—who seems to be the honcho—has the look of a dull stoner in his eyes. There won't be any appeals to mercy, no appeals to the better angels here. Philip has only one chance at survival.

“You mind if I say something?” he asks. “Before y'all do anything rash.”

The bald man raises his glass as though giving a toast. “You got the floor, friend.”

“We got two ways this can go down, is all I'm trying to say.”

This seems to pique the bald man's curiosity. He sets down his glass and turns to Philip. “Only two ways?”

“One way is, we start blazing and I can tell you how that's gonna play out.”

“Do tell.”

“Your folks will overpower us and that'll be that, but the only thing is, I promise you one thing and—I'll be honest with you—I've never been so sure of anything in my life.”

“And what's that?”

“No matter what, I know that I'll be able to get off a single shot, and I say this with no disrespect, but I will make damn sure that the overwhelmin' majority of these steel beads go into the top half of your body. Now, sir, do you want to hear option two?”

The bald man has lost his sense of humor. “Keep talkin'.”

“Option two is you let us walk outta here alive, and you take our place with our compliments, and nobody has to clean up no messes and you get to keep the top half of your body.”

*   *   *

For quite a while, things proceed in a very orderly fashion (on the bald man's orders). The junkie couple—in his stricken brain, Philip is coming to think of them as Sonny and Cher—simply back away slowly from Brian and Penny, allowing Brian to lift the child off the floor and carry her across the front parlor to the door.

The agreement—if you can call it that—is for Philip and his group to simply walk away from the villa, leaving all their things, and that's that. Brian watches Philip backing out of the house with the shotgun still raised.
Thank God for that piece of shit antique
. Nick follows. The two of them join Brian and Penny in the doorway, and Brian nudges the door open with Penny in his arms.

They shuffle outside, the shotgun still aimed at the intruders inside.

A number of things flood Brian's senses—the cool wind, the pale light of dawn rising behind the orchards, the silhouettes of two additional gunmen on either flank of the house, the cars angled with their high beams still on like theatrical spotlights heralding the next act of a nightmarish play.

The bald man's voice calls out from inside: “Boys! Let 'em pass!”

The two accomplices outside, dressed in ragged military fatigues and wielding heavy artillery—each man cradles a sawed-off pistol-grip shotgun—watch with the baleful interest of predatory birds as Brian carefully transfers Penny onto his shoulders, piggyback style. Philip whispers low, “Stay close, and follow me. They still mean to kill us. Just do what I say.”

Brian follows Philip—who is still bare-chested and still has that ridiculous gun raised commando-style—across the yard, past one of the watchful gunmen, and toward the neighboring grove of peach trees.

*   *   *

It takes an excruciating amount of time for Philip to get everybody across the property and into the shadows of the closest orchard—mere seconds by the clock, but an eternity for Brian Blake—because now the methodical transfer of ownership has begun to fall apart.

Brian can hear troubling things behind him as he hurriedly carries Penny toward the tree line. Brian is still barefoot, and the soles of his feet sting from the brambles and stones. Voices raised in anger drift out of the villa, footsteps, movement across the front porch.

The first shot rings out just as Philip and his group are plunging into the trees. The blast shatters the air, and chews through a branch six inches from Brian's right shoulder, spitting bark at the side of his face and making Penny yelp. Philip shoves Brian—still with Penny on his back—forward into the deeper shadows. “RUN!” he orders them. “RUN, BRIAN! NOW!”

*   *   *

For Brian Blake, the next five minutes pass with the chaotic blur of a dream. He hears more gunfire behind him, bullets sizzling through the foliage as he hurtles through the woods, the watery light of dawn not yet driving away the deeper shadows of the orchards. Brian's bare feet—getting more and more chewed up by the second—dig into the soft undercarpet of leaves and fruit slime, his brain sparking with roman candles of panic. Penny bounces along on his back, hyperventilating with terror. Brian has no idea how far to go, where to go, or when he can stop. He just keeps churning deeper into the shadows of the orchard.

He crosses about two hundred yards of wooded shadows before reaching a huge deadfall of rotting timber, and he ducks behind it.

Gasping to get air into his lungs, his breath visible in the chilled atmosphere, his heart thumping in his ears, he gently shrugs Penny off his back. He sits her down next to him in the weeds.

“Stay down low, kiddo,” he whispers. “And be very, very, very quiet—quiet as a mouse.”

The orchard vibrates with movement in all directions—the gunfire momentarily ceasing—and Brian risks peering over the top of the deadfall to get a better view. Through thick columns of peach trees, Brian can see a figure about a hundred yards away, coming toward him.

Brian's eyes have adjusted to the wan shadows well enough to see that it's one of the dudes from outside the house, the pistol-grip shotgun jutting up and ready to rock. Others are threading through the trees behind him, a shadowy figure coming toward the dude at a right angle.

Ducking back behind the rotted timbers, Brian frantically weighs his options. If he runs, they'll hear him. If he stays put, they'll stumble upon him for sure. Where the hell is Philip? Where is Nick?

Right then, Brian hears the rhythmic snapping of twigs in another part of the grove speeding up, somebody moving quickly toward the gunman.

Peering over the top of the deadfall, Brian sees the silhouette of his brother—fifty yards away—creeping low through the undergrowth, coming at a right angle toward the shooter. Brian's spine goes cold with dread, his stomach clenching.

Nick Parsons appears in the shadows on the other side of the gunman with a rock in his hand. He pauses and then hurls the stone—which is the size of a grapefruit—a hundred feet across the orchard.

It bangs off a tree, making an enormous clapping sound, which startles the gunman.

The dude whirls and squeezes off a wild shot at the noise, the sonic boom waking up the orchard and making Penny jump. Brian ducks down, but not before witnessing, almost simultaneously, a blur of movement streaking toward the gunman before the dude even has a chance to pump another shell into the breech.

Philip Blake bursts out of the foliage with the old double-barrel already in midswing. The petrified wooden stock strikes the gunman square on the back of his skull, hitting him so hard that he nearly flies out of his jackboots. The pistol-grip shotgun flies. The gunman lurches and sprawls to the mossy earth.

Brian looks away, covering Penny's eyes, as Philip quickly—savagely—finishes the job with four more tremendous blows to the fallen gunman's skull.

*   *   *

Now the balance of power subtly shifts. Philip finds a throw-down pistol—a snub-nose .38—behind the fallen gunman's belt. A pocketful of shells and a speed-loader give Philip and Nick another boost. Brian watches all this from the deadfall fifty yards away.

A surge of relief courses through Brian, a glimmer of hope. They can get away now. They can start over. They can survive another day.

But when Brian signals to his brother from behind the deadfall, and Philip and Nick come over to the hiding place, the look on Philip's face in the pale light sends a sharp dagger of panic through Brian's gut. “We're gonna take these motherfuckers out,” he says. “Each and every last one of them.”

“But Philip, what if we just—”

“We're gonna get this place back, it's ours, and they're going down.”

“But—”

“Listen to me.” Something about the way Philip locks his eyes on to Brian's makes Brian's skin crawl. “I need you to keep my daughter out of harm's way, no matter what. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“Yeah, but—”

“That's all I need you to do.”

“Okay.”

“Just keep her safe. Look at me. Can you do that for me?”

Brian nods. “Yeah. Absolutely, Philip. I will. Just don't go and get yourself killed.”

Philip doesn't say anything, doesn't react, just stares as he pumps a shell into the pistol-grip 20-gauge, then gives Nick a look.

*   *   *

In a matter of moments, the two men have sprung back into action, vanishing into the grove of trees, leaving Brian to sit in the weeds, weaponless, petrified with fear, frantic with indecision, his bare feet bleeding. Did Philip want him to stay put? Was that the plan?

A gunshot thunders. Brian jumps. Another one answers, the echo boomeranging across the cold heavens above the treetops. Brian clenches his fists hard enough to draw blood. Is he supposed to sit here?

He pulls Penny close as another gunshot rings out, closer, the muffled, strangled sound of a watery death gasp reverberating after it. Brian's thoughts begin to race again, the tremors rocking through him.

Footsteps crunch toward the hiding place. Brian ventures another quick peek over the top of the timbers, and he sees the creepy bald dude with the nine-millimeter Glock weaving quickly through the trees, coming this way, his scarred face burning with killing rage. The crumpled body of the skinny kid named Shorty lies in the mud a hundred feet to the north, half his head blown away.

Another blast makes Brian duck down, his heart in his throat. He's not sure if the bald man is down or if the blast just came from the bald man's weapon.

“Come on, kiddo,” Brian says to a nearly catatonic Penny, who is curled up in the undergrowth, covering her head. “We gotta get outta here.”

He pries her out of the weeds and takes her hand—it's too dangerous to carry her anymore—and he drags her away from the firefight.

*   *   *

They creep along behind the shadows of peach trees, staying under the cover of thickets, avoiding the footpaths radiating through the orchards. The bottoms of his feet almost numbed now by the pain and the cold, Brian can still hear voices behind him, scattered gunfire, and then nothing.

For a long time, Brian hears nothing but wind in the branches, and maybe a series of frantic footsteps now and again, he's not sure, his heart is beating too loudly in his ears. But he keeps going.

He gets another hundred yards or so before ducking down behind an old broken-down hay wagon. Catching his breath, he holds Penny close. “You okay, kiddo?”