Widow Town (32 page)

Gray stood and walked past him, fragments of bone crunching beneath his feet. He passed the card over the electronic eye beside the handle and felt a click. He opened the door and looked around the corner at a set of steps leading up to a vacant landing.

“Let’s go,” he said over his shoulder and held the door open.

They filed past the dying man on the floor. Rachel came last and paused, turning Ken’s face away toward the wall. The pumping blood was arcing out of Adam’s ruined legs slower and slower. He reached toward her with one hand, trying to grasp her shoe and failing. Rachel leaned toward him and spit into his face before stepping on his hand and continuing down the hall. She moved past Gray without a look and began to climb the stairs.

Gray watched Adam reach toward his missing lower half, shock finally overwhelming him, his fingers feeling the tattered stumps and sharp femurs. With a final look, Gray let the door swing shut and moved pas
t the women toward the landing.

Joslyn had picked up his knife and offered it to him as he passed but he motioned to Lynn instead.

“Give it to her,” he whispered.

Lynn took the weapon and nodded once when Gray put a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m all right.”

“Are you sure?”

“Never better.” She gave him a wavering smile.

He climbed to the top of the stairs and waited,
listening over the ringing in his ears. He eased one eye around the corner.

Another hallway, this one shorter, ran two
dozen steps and ended in a set of stairs leading up and out of sight behind a wall. Two doors, identical to the ones below them, were set in the right side of the hall. The space seemed deserted.

Gray drew the remaining Tin-S
nipper out, holding it at his side. He scanned the passage, searching for a camera and spotted one hanging above the first tread of the stairs. After two more cautious steps he paused by the last door and turned to the landing.

“I think we’re okay,” he said.

A sharp bang came from the door beside him.

He flinched, spinning and bringing his arm up, ready to release the bearing at the slightest movement. The pounding came again from inside the door and then a voice, high and unmistakably feminine saying words he couldn’t understand.

“Siri,” he said, stepping forward.

With a swipe of the card, the doo
r released and he opened it, ready to slam it back shut if it was some kind of trick. Siri leaned against the doorjamb inside, her dark hair hanging in sweated strips around her flushed face. One hand was bleeding from the bottom of her palm and the other held her swollen belly.

“Sheriff?”

“Siri, thank God.”

He moved to her side as a cloudburst of pain cr
umpled her face, and caught her as her left leg trembled then gave out. The floor was wet beneath his boots and when he looked down he saw the front of Siri’s pants were soaked a darker blue than the rest of her outfit.

“My water broke two hours ago,” she managed, bringing her face up to his. Her eyebrows knitted together and her mouth opened in a soundless cry as she nearly doubled over. “The contractions are less than a minute apart.”

Gray helped her to the Spartan bed and eased her down as the rest of the women filed into the room.

Lynn kneeled beside them as Rachel and Joslyn continued to comfort their boys. Over the quiet crying of Joslyn’s son, Siri’s jerking inhalations filled the air.

“She’s having the baby,” Gray said, proppi
ng a pillow behind Siri’s head.

“We have to g
et her out of here,” Lynn said.

“No time. The fire’s almost here and we don’t know where Darrin is. She’s
going to have to have it here.”

“Mac, we don’t know if the smoke from the fire will seep down in
to these rooms. What if the air gets cut off or it gets too hot.”

“It’s the chance we have to take. Barder was planning on staying here so if he was confident that it woul
d be safe, that’s all we have.”

Siri moaned and began to shiver. Lynn stood and spread out a thin
blanket over the shaking woman.

“He
killed him, Sheriff. Darrin killed Joe,” Siri whispered before she gasped for breath again.

Gray found her hand, hot beyond fever.

“I know, kiddo. I know. I’m sorry.” He watched Siri close her eyes, nodding once as sweat poured in delicate streams from her temples. He let her hand go and wrapped the blanket up in her palm for something to grip.

“If the baby comes, you’ll have to deliver it,” Gray
murmured to Lynn, standing and taking a step toward the door.

“What?
Mac, I don’t know how to deliver a baby, I’m not a doctor! Wait, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“I have to find Darrin before he finds us. We’re completely vulnerable here. We have no weapons other than this grenade and that knife.”

“We can lock the door,” Lynn began.

“And if he figures out we’re in here, which he will, all he needs to do is get a gun, open the do
or and pick us off one by one.”

“Mac
—”

“Listen.” He lowered his voice. “We will die in here if I don’t deal with him first. If I find a gun
or ammo for the one I’ve got, I’ll come right back.”

Lynn watched him, her eyes filming over and then clearing. Her lips clenche
d white and she shook her head.

“Damn you, Mac.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know. Go.”

“Have someone stand by the door with the knife. I’ll knock twice before I come back in. If there’s no knock, stab whoever comes through that door in the throat.”

Lynn nodded
, gripping the knife tighter in her good hand. He looked her face over once more, committing it to memory though he didn’t need to.

“H
ey Adam, get your ass up here!”

The yell stiffened them all where they stood. Even Siri quieted and let a silent breath of pain slither out between her clenched teeth, her eyes bulging. Gray turned to the door, expecting Darrin to step into view any second, his surprised expression erupting over his handsome features at the sight of the prisoners all gathered where they shouldn’t be.

Without a word, Gray turned and strode to the open door, peering out while holding the Tin-Snipper ready in his left hand. The hall was still devoid of life, but Darrin’s voice rang down the nearby stairway again, clear and sharp with its command.

“Adam, quit fucking around down there. You better not be bothering the pregnant one, he said
not to touch her until after she gives birth.”

Gray hefted the small grenade, weighing it and his choices before covering his mouth with one hand and turning his head away from the stairwell.

“Coming,” he barked, trying to make his voice amorphous. There was a pause and then a scuffle of feet at the top of the stairs. Then nothing.

He moved down the hallway and stopped beside the stairs, readying himself. Every muscle ached. Every bone burned beneath his skin. A pale light spilled down the stairway, giving the shadows a liquid quality. They lay in ashen tangles amidst the dark, and he tried to blend with them as he took the steps upward.

The stairway he’d fallen down had seemed to go on forever when he’d tipped into it. Now it was only ten steps, the treads covered in gritty dirt that snapped beneath his boots. He winced but continued at a steady pace, keeping his vision locked on the hatch above him, waiting for Darrin’s form to darken it and fire a round into his chest as he realized that it wasn’t his brother coming to meet him. He moved upward, the air growing warmer with each step. The hoarse roaring, like static from another room in a house, became louder as he climbed. The fire was nearer and from what he could see of the silo, the air had thickened with its noxious breath. He came even with the submarine hatch and crouched, looking over the rim of the floor.

Darrin stood with his back to him a short ways off,
gazing out of the open man-door to the yard that was filled with sulfurous-looking smoke. The air glowed yellow and it carried the quality of a failing fall evening instead of a late August afternoon. The younger man leaned against the doorway as if admiring a stirring sunset instead of the raging destruction that was coming toward them. In one hand he held a pistol, pointed at the floor. Grit crunched beneath Gray’s boot and he hesitated, waiting for Darrin to spin around. Instead, he spoke.

“It’s beautiful, Adam. It’s all burning away. There’ll be nothing but charred remains
left behind it. It’s cleansing; clean in a way that only belongs to nature. Speaking of burning, where did you put the big bastard’s body?”

Gray climbed silently from the stairway and wound
his arm up, throwing the Tin-Snipper as Darrin pivoted. It flew across the distance between them and Darrin caught sight of it just as it was nearing the space beside him. He dove in the opposite direction, hurling himself to the ground at it struck the steel wall and was lost to Gray as the snipper exploded in a flare of thunder. Gray ducked, shielding himself behind the propped hatch door. The silo repeated the explosion until it was a fading whisper of itself and deadly, tinkling shrapnel peppered the walls, leaving holes where it punched through.

Gray rose, searching the floor for another weapon but saw nothing that would suffice.
His hands. They would have to do if there was any breath left in the murderer. He strode through the smoke, moving fast, watching for shadows that might leap toward him, but none did. He edged the pile of grain, feet cracking the wheat that housed life for the next season. Cordite smeared the air and where he thought Darrin should lay dying, there was only a matted pool of blood, boats of seed floating between its shores.

He had only a moment to realize his mistake, following the trail of crimso
n where it led beneath the pile of chaff.

The wheat burst apart as Darrin launched himself from it. A myriad of
grain flew, mimicking the Tin-Snipper’s display, and in the center a devil grin of malice plastered across the killer’s face. Blood coursed from his arms but the hands that latched onto Gray’s neck were solid stone, cement come to life. He fell back under the younger man’s weight, pressing down, the thumbs at his neck finding arteries and digging into them.

His head cracked against the floor hard enough to send flickering
gray spots to the sides of his vision like a spilled bag of marbles rolling away to darkness. He blinked and brought his knees up, creating valuable space between him and Darrin’s smothering bodyweight. The other man’s face was inches from his own, blood-flecked teeth white against the yellow air. Gray threaded his hand and arm between Darrin’s wrists, then the other before scissoring them downward. Darrin’s hands slid free of his throat and he breathed in, tasting the tainted air and welcoming it like water in the desert. With an up thrust of his neck, he bashed his forehead against Darrin’s. Once, again, a third time, until an unfocused look clouded the young man’s eyes.

With a grunt, Gray rolled him over, switching their
positions, and brought an elbow down to Darrin’s nose. It broke with a sound like a pine knot popping in a fire. Blood spewed from both nostrils and the bone within slanted the once regal feature far to the left. Gray rained blows down upon him, some landing, some blocked by the younger man’s upraised forearms. There were cuts and missing chunks of skin on his arms where the Snipper had tasted him with its many tongues. Gray postured up and sliced an elbow down between Darrin’s outstretched hands, connecting with his forehead. A splotchy bruise rose and split open on his scalp and just as Gray thought the other man was dropping into unconsciousness, Darrin grasped a handful of wheat and dust and threw it into his eyes.

A
thousand biting insects were in his vision. He swiped at his face, trying not to rub the sharp grains deeper, trying not to scrape his iris and corneas raw. Darrin sat up and struck him below the jaw with an open hand and his throat closed like a shutter being thrown. He choked and fell sideways as Darrin shifted his weight.

The younger man scrambled toward him and drove a knee into his side where the gunshot dribbled fresh blood. Gray screamed
, a sound like a strangled bird coming from his mouth, and clawed at him, raking a runner of red down the side of his neck, but Darrin struck him again, his knee a wrecking ball of bone. Gray blinked, his eyesight like looking through a windowpane left to the weather for years without cleaning. Darrin’s shape stood and moved a short distance away, bending over as if to look for something. Gray rolled to his stomach and pressed himself onto his hands and knees.

“You got me a bit there,
Sheriff,” Darrin said before hawking and spitting a ball of blood onto the floor. “Definitely a better fighter than your shithead deputy was. He died flopping on the floor and pissing his pants. Take that thought with you into the nether.”

Gray’s vision watered and then cleared enough for him to see Darrin pick up the pistol from an inch of seed. Launching himself up like a sprinter coming off the blocks, he ran the three steps between them as Darrin tried to bring the weapon to bear. He caught the younger man’s wrist and swung it high over his head, a pulse of three shots erupting from its barrel
into empty space, before bringing it down over his knee.

Darrin’s arm broke, both bones folding over so that
it bent in three places instead of two.

The pistol escaped his gr
ip and bounced, disappearing into the wheat pile once again. Darrin let out a moaning grunt and pulled a cylinder from behind his back with his functioning arm, a long needle-like tip springing from one end. Gray shoved him backward, running with him toward the wall and the waiting grain elevator that leaned there.

Gray slammed him into one of the large bins that scooped up the seed and Darrin strained forward, stabbing the pointed weapon at his face.
The tip of the needle traced a line of fire across Gray’s cheek and he turned, wrapping his hand around Darrin’s wrist. He wrenched the younger man’s hand at a painful angle and stared into his defiant eyes. Slowly the weapon rolled out of his grasp and Gray ripped it away.

With a flick of his hand,
he spun the cylinder around and plunged its tip it into Darrin’s chest.

There was a muffled, wet snap and Darrin’s eyelids widened, his eyes rolling up into his head. Gray looked down at the handle and saw that his thumb rested on a smooth button set within the weapon’s grip. Darrin’s legs jittered once and then his knees folded beneath him and Gray let him drop to the floor where he tipped face-first into the wheat.
He landed on the weapon’s handle and several shimmering points poked from his back, glazed with blood. Darrin’s body shuddered once and then lay still.

“You really are something,
Sheriff.”

Gray spun away from the corpse and watched
Vincent Barder enter through the open man door. Smoke whirled around him in wreaths of yellow and a manic grin cut the bottom of his face. He held an oblong black tube in both hands with a stubby handle attached to one end. A light blinked in a green dot on its far side. The man’s injured leg was wrapped in a white, elastic bandage stained red at its center and he limped slightly before stopping a dozen yards away.

“I’m surprised Darrin wasn’t able to best you, he’s wily and tougher than my other two boys. Was, I suppose I should say. I’m assuming you killed Adam as well
since you’ve made it this far.”

Gray said nothing and shifted his eyes to where Darrin’s pistol
had vanished beneath the seed.

“I wouldn’t make any
sudden moves, Sheriff. This is a tranquilizer that shoots accurately within a hundred yards. I’ve taken the liberty of loading it with darts holding lethal doses of tetrodotoxin. If one strikes you, you’ll be dead in under a minute.”

“How did you get up here?”

“Oh Sheriff, do you think I would build such an elaborate underground system without making sure I had more than one way out or in? By the way, that was a nice trick with the knife down in the operating room, I didn’t check your boots, something I won’t overlook again. Nonetheless it wasn’t something I couldn’t fix with some bandages, pain killers, and a little snifter of adrenaline.”