The Society (48 page)

Ignoring the searing in his hip, he hobbled along beside her until they had rounded the small corral and flattened themselves against the far side of the barn. Clouds of their breath hung in the chilly blackness as they gasped for air. Ahead and to the left of them, all was dark and quiet, but to their right, not too far away, were the lights of another house.

“What . . . happened . . . to your leg?” Patty asked between breaths.

Will needed several seconds before he could answer.

“My hip . . . well, my butt really . . . I took a bullet there . . . for the home team.”

Patty squeezed his arm.

“Be tough.”

“That was . . . amazing what you . . . did back there. Does your . . . foot hurt . . . badly?”

“It’ll hold me.” Patty inched back to the corner of the barn and peered around it. “She’s out there, just beginning to move this way.”

“I guess she decided that getting us is more important than staying with Marshall.”

“That choice is a no-brainer. If we get away, life as they have known it will be over.”

“Let’s hope so. What do you think that house is over there?”

“Probably belongs to the farmer who actually works this place.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know what his landlord does when he’s not looking like a respectable health-care provider.”

“Maybe. It’s either go there or head across the fields and try to find a way out of here.” Patty risked a second look around the corner of the barn. “Watkins is with her now. No handcuffs. We’ve really got to move.”

“You’ve got to take my sneakers.”

“I don’t—”

“No argument!”

She sighed and did as he insisted, muttering about clownshoes. Moments later, she shuddered and then began to shiver intensely. Will held her, and for a few seconds she allowed him to. Then she pulled away.

“If I had known we were actually going to make it out of that room,” he said, “I would never have taken my jacket off. Hopefully the people in that house over there will help us out. Your hands are like ice.”

“They’re okay. My head’s the problem. It’s like a kangaroo’s in there, bouncing through a minefield, setting off explosions.”

“That settles it. Let’s go meet the farmer.”

Much of their path to the house was obstructed from their pursuers by the barn. Over the final twenty-five open yards, they kept low and moved steadily ahead until they were flattened against the house. In the distance they could still hear faint snatches of Susan’s voice and see the beam of a flashlight piercing the night. They turned and were peering through the window into a small, cluttered kitchen where a grizzled man in his fifties sat at the table in overalls and a narrow-strap T-shirt, drinking beer from a bottle and watching a small countertop TV. Beside him, a disheveled, silver-haired woman sat in a wheelchair, a beer in the cup holder by her right hand.

“American Gothic,” Will whispered. “They look friendly enough. I think we should go in.”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have any other ideas?”

“We’ve got to get away from here quickly, or get inside and make a nine-one-one call.”

“I think those two will be able to help us. I’m a great judge of character by people’s faces.”

At that moment, they heard the phone start ringing inside.

“Shit!” Patty whispered.

The farmer’s conversation lasted only a few seconds. He hurried out of the kitchen and returned with a shotgun, which he held on to as he pulled on a red-and-black-checked hunting jacket, and a rifle, which he handed to his invalid wife.

“I forgot to add that sometimes I’m a
lousy
judge of character,” Will said.

They stayed pressed into the shadows and worked their way to the far end of the house. There was a broad expanse of fields, perhaps a quarter mile or more, between them and the forest.

“We’ve got to try it,” Will whispered.

At that moment, the farmer, shotgun at the ready, clunked across the back landing and made his way into the field a short distance from where they were standing. The move effectively cut them off from any kind of race to the woods.

“Now what?” Will asked.

They were peering back at the barn, expecting any instant to see Susan and Watkins come around the corral and the other corner, cutting them off even further from any escape.

“We have one chance,” Patty said.

“What?”

“The tractor. Did you see it? Just past the barn. If we can somehow get around that side of the barn and onto it, we can try and drive it around the house and down the drive.”

“What about the key?”

“People always leave the key in tractors, especially on a place as isolated as this one. And if there’s no key, I’d be surprised if I couldn’t hot-wire it.”

“Of course. How stupid of me not to think that you knew how to hot-wire a tractor? You are really a remarkable piece of work, do you know that?”

“Right now I’m a freezing cold, miserable piece of work. Let’s head back to the barn before Susan and Monstro show up. From there, maybe we can make a run at the tractor. If they leave the barn unguarded, maybe you can even find a pair of boots inside.”

“My feet are okay for the moment.”

They moved back along the shadows, shielded from the farmer by the house and from Susan and Watkins by the barn. Just a dozen or so yards ahead, washed faintly in some of the light from the old farmhouse, they could make out a split-rail fence enclosing a fairly large corral, which featured a water trough and filled hay bin. Patty put a finger to her lips and motioned in that direction. Seconds later they were crouching by the fence. Initially, Will thought the corral was empty, but then he noticed four cows standing huddled together at the far end.

“We should cut through,” Will whispered.

“You’re barefoot.”

“I’ve got socks on. Besides, I’ve stepped in shit before.”

“You really are a piece of work.”

“Maybe it’s contagious.”

They hunched down and carefully slid between the middle and highest railing into the corral. For the moment, at least, they were hidden from the barn by the shoulder-high hay bin.

“Patty, look! Talk about American Gothic.”

Propped against the far side of the bin, nearly as long as the bin was high, was a pitchfork. Just as Will seized the handle, they heard Susan’s voice, close enough to make out her words. She had come around the side of the barn and seemed to be headed directly toward them. With the submachine gun pointing their way, she was speaking on a cell phone as she moved cautiously forward.

“Quick, over there,” Patty ordered, pointing to the cows.

Keeping low enough to be partially screened by the fence, they hurried across to the massive animals and worked their way among them. There was some slight, irritated movement from the beasts, but otherwise no reaction to the intrusion. Susan had reached the far corner of the corral, no more than thirty feet away.

“Watkins, I don’t see anything out here,” she was saying. “Just cows. You watch the front of the barn. Call Sanderson and tell him it’s his ass if they get past him. Then call your people and tell them to get the hell out here now! Those two are still around here someplace. I’m positive of it. I’m going in to check on Marsh and get another flashlight. I’ll be right out. Stay sharp.”

Will pressed his face against the cow’s flank and patted her silently as she shifted nervously from one foot to another.

Easy, Bossie, easy does it. Come on, Hollister, leave. Leave!

He didn’t dare to raise up and look. To his right, Patty seemed completely concealed between two cows. An endless minute passed.
Is Susan still there?
Dammit, he never should have told her about Newcomber. He was so certain Gordo was behind everything that he just didn’t think things through.

Finally, moving with exquisite slowness, Patty crouched down, peered out under the cow to where Susan had been, and then gave him a thumbs-up sign. They crossed the corral and slipped out through a gate. Patty, now limping even more noticeably, moved close to him and took his arm with one of hers, then appropriated the pitchfork to use as a walking stick.

“If we split up,” she said, “and you go that way toward the forest and I go that way, one of us might make it.”

“No go. We’re getting out of here together. Besides, neither one of us is moving very well. We look like that painting of the Spirit of Seventy-Six, only no one’s bothered to bandage us up. Now, let’s get to the tractor. You can really hot-wire it?”

She shrugged at him modestly.

“I can try. It may be tricky in the dark.”

Rather than cross between the main house and the barn, they chose to work their way back around the barn and the small, empty corral on the other side. Taking that route, they would be in clear, easy range of the farmer, Sanderson, should he spot them, but they would be concealed from Watkins until they were no more than twenty-five yards or so from the tractor, and also from Susan when she reemerged through the back door. No matter what, they knew that there was little chance of their making it unseen to the tractor, getting it started, and avoiding the bullets of two heavily armed professional killers.

“I don’t like these odds,” Will said.

“We can do this.”

Cautiously, more than grateful for the heavy overcast, they hobbled along the vast wall of the barn until they had reached the corral. To their right, past Sanderson’s house, they could just make out the silhouette of the farmer as he patrolled the broad, grassy field that separated the working farm from the forest. To their left, well beyond the far corner of the corral, facing the entrance to the barn, stood the tractor. With five-foot wheels in back, three-foot wheels in front, and a snout like a submarine, it was larger than Will had initially appreciated—certainly large enough to tow serious attachments for threshing or plowing and also, he hoped, to generate some speed with the two of them on board. If they could somehow make it out to a paved road, there was at least a chance of piling up some distance before Susan or Watkins reached their cars and caught up.

With Will keeping an eye on Sanderson, and Patty watching for Watkins, they reached the end of the corral.

“I know it’s weird,” Will said, “but after all that’s happened, after all I’ve been through and dealt with, all of a sudden I’m scared stiff.”

“That’s because all of a sudden we have a chance. I’m thinking that these are not the people I want to have end my life.”

“Amen to that,” Will whispered, slipping his arms around her. “Well, I guess we’ve got to go for it.”

“We do.” She took his face in her hands. “You’re a hell of a guy, Will Grant—very brave and a terrific lover, too. That’s a combination I like.”

Their kiss was brief, but intensely sweet.

“How long did you say it takes to hot-wire a tractor?” he asked.

“I didn’t. Let’s hope we don’t have to find out. Listen, though, one thing—you’ve got to drive. Even in your sneakers I can’t step down very well with my right foot. If any of them get in our way, you’re probably better off trying to run them down than avoid them. Sometimes people don’t react well with something coming at them head on.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll do what I can with this.” She held up the pitchfork. “Okay, Doc, ready . . . and . . . now!”

There was no sense trying to conceal their movement any longer. Hand in hand, they loped awkwardly across the grass as rapidly as Patty could manage. Just as they reached the tractor, the dense night was pierced by a piteous, screeching wail coming from the farmhouse. Susan.

“The key,” Will said. “It’s here.”

“Thank God,” Patty muttered.

Will scrambled up onto the broad seat.

“There’s not much protection up here.”

“Try praying.”

Ahead of them, Watkins had appeared at the doorway of the barn and, without looking in their direction, started toward the commotion in the house.

Patty balanced herself on the metal step, hanging on to the seat with one hand and the pitchfork with the other.

Will turned the key, and with a brief cough, the powerful engine kicked over, thrumming loudly.

“How do I make it go forward?” he asked, suddenly panicked.

Patty, anticipating the problem, grabbed the shift lever beside the seat and snapped the huge tractor into gear.

“I was the Four-H queen in junior high!” she explained.

“Amazing.”

Watkins had swung around and was lumbering toward them, his gun drawn, when the tractor lurched forward.

“Duck down!” Patty cried. “Head right at him!”

They were gaining speed when Watkins began firing. Bullets clanged off the grill, and one splintered the top of the steering wheel. Will was crouched awkwardly on one knee, peering along the side of the engine casing, reaching overhead to steer by one hand, wondering how long he could survive a bullet between the eyes. To his right, Patty was now hanging off to the side of the tractor by one arm, completely exposed to the gunfire, the pitchfork extended forward like a lance.

“That’s it!” she hollered. “Right at him, Will! Then keep him on my side!”

For several frozen seconds, the massive killer looked confused. Then, with the tractor bearing down on him, he took several clumsy steps to his left, stumbled, and fell to one knee. Although he still had a grip on his pistol, he never got the chance to fire it again. As the tractor rolled past him, Patty drove the pitchfork straight through the softness beneath his chin and then upward, almost to the hilt, in his brain. His death was instantaneous.

“Stop, Will!” she yelled.

Will slammed down on the brake. Clambering off the tractor, Patty retrieved the pitchfork, grabbed Watkins’s gun, and was quickly back on the step as Will again accelerated.

“I think that way,” he said, pointing.

“You’re in charge.”

“Boy, am I glad that isn’t true.”

Will swung the tractor to the right in a wide arc that would take them around to the front of the house. At that instant Susan appeared on the back porch brandishing the submachine gun and screeching at them hysterically.

“You killed him, you bastards! You killed my Marsh!”