The Dead Run Page 14

  Probably.

  Hubby had moved to the passenger seat, and he didn’t have the keys, wouldn’t be able to mow them down. It was a decent plan. Galvan tightened his grip, prepared to lunge.

  Then the ground began to tremble. By Galvan’s feet, and directly beneath the car.

  And twenty yards west of where Payaso stood.

  And in three separate spots along the winding road.

  Thank god, Galvan thought, well aware of how incredibly fucked up that sounded.

  CHAPTER 20

  The cop took his time getting out of the car—like all cops everywhere, Nichols thought wryly. He was a big, towheaded lunk, probably no more than two or three years out of the academy, and he sat there behind his steering wheel, running Cantwell’s plates and enjoying his air-conditioning and making them wait.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Cantwell hissed, and for a second Nichols thought she was talking to the other cop. “Go over there and talk to him.”

  “If I open the door, he’ll be on the loudspeaker ordering me to stay in my vehicle before I get a foot on the ground. They drum that into you, believe me.” He gave her the hairy eyeball. “There are ways of doing things.”

  “But you’re a cop! And this is—”

  “An emergency. I know.” Nichols glanced in the mirror. “It’s protocol. He’ll be here in a second.”

  “We don’t have a second.”

  And she was off.

  Nichols had to give her credit. Not only did Cantwell get both feet on the ground, she was halfway to the roller by the time Officer Lunkhead got his hands around the radio.

  “Ma’am, return to your vehicle immediately.”

  “This is an emergency,” Ruth called, without so much as breaking her stride. Nichols heaved a sigh and heaved his bulk up out of the low-slung Audi.

  Officer Lunkhead mirrored him, emerging from the cruiser, left hand pointing them back to the car, right resting atop the service revolver on his hip.

  “I’m gonna need you to go back to your vehicle, ma’am. Right now. Sir—do not come any closer! I need both of you back in the car right now.” Everything by the books: repeat yourself, speak in commands, use the first person, lean on the verb need, leave no room for discussion. Officer Lunkhead must have graduated at the top of his class.

  Nichols raised his hands to chest height. “I’m a cop,” he called out. “Sheriff Nichols, Del Verde County.” The badge was in his jacket’s breast pocket, and Nichols reached for it without thinking, the way he had a million times before.

  “Hands where I can see them!” Officer Lunkhead barked. He drew his gun, wrapped both hands around it, and advanced.

  Christ on a cracker. This was turning into a grade-A clusterfuck.

  Nichols obliged, showed the guy his palms again. “Just going for my badge,” he said, trying to project a calm, we’re-all-on-the-same-team tone.

  The trooper ignored him, swung the weapon toward Ruth. “Down on the ground!” he yelled. “Now!”

  She threw a look at Nichols and obeyed haltingly, hands fluttering in the air as she lowered herself, knees first, into the dust.

  “Hands interlaced behind your head!”

  He watched her comply, eye-checking Nichols all the while, the gun darting from one to the other.

  “Can I show you my badge now, Officer . . .” Nichols peered at the name adorning the uniform. “Lautner?”

  The sound of his own name appeared to startle the kid.

  He reached for his cuffs, and then the sheriff’s arm.

  Whoops.

  “No, you may not! Hands behind your back!”

  “We’re in pursuit of a suspect,” Nichols heard himself say as he let Lautner clamp the bracelet around his left wrist, turn him backward, cuff it to the right. “Driving an early-nineties brown sedan, wearing a fedora, severe facial scarring. My department has him fleeing one murder and on his way to commit another, Lautner. That mean anything to you? Can you call it in, at least?”

  He looked over his shoulder, trained every ounce of authority he could muster on the dumb son of a bitch. “Stop and think, son. You want to throw away your career? Because that’s exactly what you’re doing. Now uncuff me, and let’s start over.”

  Lautner jerked the bracelets upward, forcing Nichols to bend forward, and leaned over him.

  “My career’ll be just fine,” he said, and slammed the sheriff against the hood of the Audi, cheek to blazing metal.

  Ruth lifted her head and followed Lautner with her eyes as he stalked toward her, boots kicking up a trail of dust.

  “Funny you mention murder,” he said, “because that’s what the both of y’all are under arrest for. We got eyewitnesses who saw your little red fuckmobile leaving the scene. And as for your department, Sheriff, they haven’t heard a peep outta you in hours.”

  He snorted a wad of phlegm into his throat and spat it on the ground, inches from Cantwell’s head. “That’s right, I know exactly who y’all are, and I don’t wanna see no goddamn badges. Yours ain’t worth the tin it’s made from.”

  He was strutting now. Like a rooster in a henhouse, Nichols thought, remembering what that felt like.

  Cantwell spoke through gritted teeth and the hair falling into her face.

  “You’re making a mistake,” she said, chest heaving so hard Nichols could see her back expand and contract. Her hands were behind her head, all right, but they weren’t interlaced, the way Lautner had demanded.

  They were balled into fists.

  And one looked bigger than the other.

  Nichols caught a glint of metal from between her knuckles, surmised Cantwell’s plan.

  Thatagirl.

  He concentrated all his energy on his abdominal muscles and started to pull himself upright, inch by inch, as slowly and quietly as possible.

  Lautner was above her now, straddling Cantwell’s waist, hands on his hips, taking a beat before stooping and lowering a knee onto her back and cuffing her, everything still by the books except the cock-of-the-walk crowing.

  “Tell it to the judge,” he said. “Ain’t nothing either one of y’all can say that’s worth a hill of beans to me, so you might as well jes’ shut your mouth.”

  It was one way to administer Miranda rights, Nichols supposed.

  Lautner holstered his piece and shifted his weight, getting ready to drop the immobilizing knee.

  That was when Ruth flipped onto her back, unballed her fist. Clenched in her hand was a sleek metal canister Nichols knew well; he’d handed out hundreds of them at the women’s self-defense classes he taught on the department’s behalf. She pressed her thumb against the nozzle and an incapacitating chemical blend shot skyward, with considerable force.

  Cantwell had the fancy version, the triple-action combo of tear gas, UV dye, and oleoresin capsicum. The OC slammed an attacker’s eyes shut and caused uncontrollable choking, while the tear gas provoked disorientation and waterworks.

  Swift kick to the nuts sold separately.

  Officer Lautner toppled to the ground, clutching and crying and gasping. Cantwell scrambled out from underneath before he fell and dashed toward Nichols. He was already running to her.

  “Get the keys and the gun,” he ordered, marching over to Lautner and dropping to his knees, shins pinning the convulsing lawman’s neck.

  Cantwell had them in an instant; Nichols rose and turned to let her work the lock. When he heard the click and felt the pressure encircling his wrists abate, he beckoned for the gun.

  Cantwell hesitated for a split second, and Lautner’s anguished wail floated between them like a wraith.

  “I’m not crazy,” Nichols reminded her. “I’m not gonna shoot him.” Cantwell forked over the piece.

  The sheriff halved the distance to the cruiser in eight paces, lined up his shot, and squeezed. The fr
ont right tire caught the bullet in its teeth, gasped as its life seeped away.

  Cantwell had the Audi running by the time Nichols got there, and they were back on the road before he could close the door. He stashed Lautner’s gun in the glove box, patted himself down, pulled out Cantwell’s phone, jabbed at it.

  The doctor was still breathing hard. “Who’re you calling?” she demanded.

  Nichols’s throat was suddenly so parched that he could barely speak. He swallowed hard, worked the spit around in his mouth, listened to the ringing of the phone in his ear and the heavy thumping sound his blood made as it rushed back and forth from his brain.

  “The only cop I know I can still trust,” he told her as they shot across the endless plains.

  CHAPTER 21

  Aaron Seth lowered himself slowly into the tub, disappearing beneath the crimson warmth an inch at a time until only an oval-shaped portion of his face floated above the surface.

  He took a deep breath and began the process of emptying his mind. He tried to picture his father, whom he had not seen in sixty years, focusing on his face as one might the flame of a candle. He presumed that Cucuy was lying in a similar tub, that both of them needed to be immersed in the same medium in order to communicate, but the truth was that Seth had no idea. There was much that he still did not know, many things he simply took on faith.

  Soon there would be no need. His father’s vast and ancient store of knowledge would flow into him; powers he could not yet fathom would remake his very essence, and Aaron Seth would use them to remake the world. This was the path he had forged, through discipline and fortitude. Doubt and shadow had threatened, but Seth had not faltered.

  Faith had sustained him.

  This humble church, this modest flock, was a bulwark. An oasis in the wilderness. Their belief had humbled Aaron Seth; they were his lambs.

  Without their sacrifices, the New World could not be born.

  The gods had always demanded blood. If there was anything Seth had learned and learned well at his father’s feet—anything the Line of Priests had carried intact out of the rubble of the Old World—it was that.

  And if the New World was built on anything, it was abject denial of this fact. Mankind had layered lie upon lie, until the fierce, beating truth had been buried, and then forgotten.

  God did not die for man, as they had told themselves with such fervor, praying to spilled blood instead of with it. That was a distortion of all that was sacred, a caricature of everything their forefathers had known.

  God did not die for man.

  Man died for god.

  That was the way of the world, whether man embraced it or ran away screaming. Man was but a vessel. His holy destiny—his and hers—was to be consumed. It was a testament to the New World’s utter terror that its religion was founded on such childish perversions of the truth. The body and blood of Christ, the priests told the worshippers, handing out wafers and wine. It was as ludicrous as livestock claiming dominion over their farmers.

  All that would change. When Aaron Seth was god—when the final sacrifices had been made and his kingdom had been realized—the cowering would end. The lies would fall away. Man would be restored to his former glory, his natural place in the world.

  Worthy is the lamb.

  But that was yet to come. Seth willed these thoughts of the future away, envisioned them floating off like clouds chased by a sudden wind, leaving his mind clear and blue.

  Father, he thought. He focused on the beating of his own heart, the sound amplified by the liquid in which he lay. He projected the word again, in time with the rhythm of his pulse.

  Father. Father.

  I am here, Cucuy replied, the voice seeming to radiate from within Seth’s head. Have you made arrangements to receive my gift?

  I have, Father. You need only tell me where to send my men.

  A dagger of pain shot through Seth’s mind as his father strained toward an answer, the great power of Cucuy’s mind bifurcating as he reached out in two directions at once.

  He is sheathed in darkness, the old man replied at last, and the pressure mounting inside Seth’s head lessened as if someone had turned a wheel. But he remains safe. This one is strong. As he must be. For I grow weak.

  The words made Seth shiver in his carefully heated bath. Never before had he heard his father speak of frailty.

  An acute awareness of his own physicality flooded Seth’s consciousness. It was a coarse, temporal shell, this flesh he occupied. The smell of decay seemed suddenly to waft from it. From him.

  You could never be weak, Father, Seth answered, the words sounding insipid even to him. He was relieved when Cucuy ignored them.

  My power has preserved this body for five hundred years, but no more. Your hour is at hand. And if we fail, my son? Do you know what will befall us if we fail?

  We will not fail, Father.

  Do you think I have not failed before? You are a fool, to be so sure. Nor can you fathom the consequences with your feeble, newborn mind. But you are my final hope. My last child. Sired in the waning hours of my potency.

  Seth waited, calm in the face of his father’s scorn. He did not take it personally; it was not a rebuke, any more than Cucuy was a man. Seth had been given life by something terrible and great and ancient, and one did not presume to understand divine plans, just as one did not stare into the sun. Seth was to his father as ordinary men were to Seth: simply a lesser form of life.

  For now.

  The silence between them lasted several minutes, and Seth knew that his father was reaching out, across vast swaths of space and time, to discern the location of the beating heart, the man who carried it, the four who flanked him.

  He has found the Jaguar Trail. An ancient path. This omen bodes well.

  Seth took that in. It was a smugglers’ lane today, one of the countless tiny capillaries through which the flow of illicit commerce was conducted. He would inform Knowles, and the True Natives could divide themselves among the trail’s hidden end points. Meet the Messenger as soon as assistance was permitted.

  Two of his company have fallen, but the Messenger has not been swayed.

  Another pause, and Seth waited for more. There was much he wanted to know. The ritual by which he would assume his father’s power had to be executed according to precise dictates. Seth had studied them for years and still feared he did not fully understand.

  But one did not ask. One listened. Seth concentrated on his breathing, his father’s presence. The connection between them.

  Suddenly, a spasm of pain racked his body, from head to toe. Seth thrashed in his tub, and waves of blood splashed over its walls, oozed slowly across the polished floor.

  His father was pulling away, breaking the bond with an abruptness Seth experienced as violent, wrenching agony—as if his own body were being pulled apart.

  It had never happened before, and through the electric fury of his pain, Seth was able to discern his father’s, knew it was just as intense.

  Why would he do this? Seth screamed into the sudden void.

  And then, What could have happened?

  The last transmission from the Ancient One’s mind—barely discernible, like a radio station fading out of range—did not so much answer Seth’s question as breed a host of new ones.

  That smell . . . it cannot be . . .

  CHAPTER 22

  Get behind me!” Galvan barked, herding the two dazed girls into his shadow, machete fisted in his hand.

  Their fake mother and fake father were back in the car now, the box in the woman’s lap, keys jangling in her palm. They had their prize and were blind to all else, the churning earth below them making no impression, the stink of danger wafting right past their nostrils.

  The key turned in her hand, a flash of metal in the sun. The engine wheezed, flopped back to sleep.

 
From the roiling dirt directly underneath the driver’s seat, a slender chute of arm emerged, and then a rounded shoulder.

  Galvan steeled himself, dropped into a ready crouch. A Billie Holiday song spun crazily through his jukebox mind—Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root—and Galvan, dizzy with adrenaline, answered back.

  You think that’s strange, wait’ll you get a load of this goddamn Mexican garden.

  No disrespect, Lady Day.

  Another twist of the driver’s wrist, another starburst of refracted sunlight. The engine groaned to life and Fake Mom lifted her foot off the brake pedal, prepared to drop it on the gas. A routine inside the routine, minute and automated, something she’d done seventeen thousand times and never wasted a thought on once. Just a part of being alive.

  Until now.

  The hand fluttering up from the ground became a fist. The elbow bent, the whole arm like a snake coiling, prepared to strike. Galvan felt a chill slam through him, flashed on an old TV ad—When I bite into a Peppermint Pattie, it’s like I’m on a mountain slope, with the wind whipping through my hair—then snapped back to reality or whatever this was in time to see the dead girl punch through the corroded floor of the station wagon, metal crumbling like aged fucking parchment.

  The driver’s foot never reached the gas. She screeched and kicked, the box clutched to her chest, as her attacker scrabbled at the car’s floor, tearing and rending, pushing her way inside with a strength Galvan could hardly believe. The girl was still waist-deep in her grave, and although it was very much beside the point, Galvan couldn’t help but note that this particular once-young once-lady was nowhere near the looker her Gutierrez-munching cohorts had been. A thick rope of braided hair swished back and forth like a rat’s tail as she fought toward her prize, and a silver-dollar-sized birthmark covered half her cheek.

  Guess some virgins had no choice in the matter.

  Fake Dad was stomping at her with his work boot, one arm leveraged against the ceiling of the car, his legs straddling the gearshift. Fake Mom was curled up on her seat now, legs tucked under her ass as if this dead girl being born, this atrocity pushing itself out of the earth’s womb, was a household pest, a mouse you could hide from atop a table.