The Dead Run (24 page)

He pulled something black and baseball-sized from his pocket, tossed it in the air, and caught it in his fist.

“This right here's what's called an M67 tactical grenade. I dunno if you bean-eating cocksuckers habla the inglés, but let me tell you, I toss this puppy over there and a whole lotta y'all will go home a whole lot lighter.”

From behind the van stepped five more Natives, locked and loaded.

Where are their bikes?
Nichols wondered, scanning the horizon, seeing nothing.
They must've ditched them, grabbed a ride back with a passing big rig or a club truck or something.

He had to hand it to Kurt Knowles. Never woulda thought to find stealth ops in the True Native playbook. The one thing you could usually count on with bikers was hearing them coming a mile away. Dumb, loud, and powerful were their MO, ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But it stood to reason that today would be the day the dice came up cockeyed.

“We got your van up and running, too,” Knowles went on, shit-eating grin plastered across his face.

Right on cue, the engine gunned, and the lights flashed on. Nichols stole a look at Fuentes, saw his jaw set in defiance.

This was going to be a fucking bloodbath, with that attitude.

Knowles wasn't done. “I know you're prob'ly thinkin' you got the keys right in your pocket, señor, but hell, that don't make much difference to grease monkeys like us.”

“What do you want?” called Nichols, fed up with the bluster and wanting to preempt Fuentes and his hotheadedness. They'd have been taking fire already if the Natives weren't looking to make a deal; might as well get all the cards on the table.

“I was just getting to that,” said Knowles, stepping over the fallen bodies and treating his audience to another smile. “Him. And him. And her. And you.”

Galvan.

Fuentes.

Cantwell.

Nichols.

“Fuck you,” Fuentes replied, stepping forward, gun in hand. “And fuck your grenade. You'll never take us alive.”

He turned his head, grabbed his nuts, and spit.

Nichols watched the bullet of saliva arc through the air, hoping it was the last fluid the ground would drink today.

Those hopes took a body blow as a familiar shit-brown sedan crested the horizon.

Everybody turned to stare. The driver touched two fingers to the brim of his fedora, as if in greeting, and rumbled toward them like he had all the time in the world.

 

CHAPTER 42

S
herry felt the car stop, heard the footsteps, held her breath.

She didn't want out this time. She wanted to stay right where she was, curled against Eric in the dark womb of the trunk, forever.

If she died—suffocated, starved, simply gave up the habit of being alive—that was fine. Nothing that could happen in here was as bad as what surely would out there. And peace was peace, regardless of the terms on which it came. You could only struggle for so long.

The monster stood inches away now; Sherry could smell him through the metal. Charred clothes and sweat, muscle and musk. Animal lust and very human cruelty.

“I'm gonna open this trunk now, Sherry,” he intoned. “If you give me any trouble, I'll take this tire iron and smash in your boyfriend's skull. We clear?”

Sherry assented meekly, in a voice she could barely hear, and then the purple, orange, and pink light of the setting sun flooded her field of vision. The monster, backlit and shadowed, reached for her, grabbed her by the arm, and swung her to her feet.

“You, I don't need,” he told Eric, and reached into his pocket for a small leather pouch. Before Sherry had time to panic about what it might contain, Buchanan extracted a slim metal rod and inserted it into the handcuff's keyhole. The bracelet encircling Eric's hand clicked open. Buchanan pushed him back into the trunk, fingers to chest, and slammed it shut.

“I don't need him,” he said again, and turned his wolf eyes on Sherry. “He can live or he can die. It's up to you.”

Buchanan raised his eyebrows—or, rather, the scarred swath of forehead where his eyebrows should have been—and Sherry nodded her obedience.

“All right, then. Party time.” He clamped a huge hand around the back of her neck, turned Sherry a hundred-odd degrees, and started trudging into the desert. Sherry looked up, and her eyes widened as she saw what she was marching toward.

Hell on earth.

Two groups of armed men, weapons trained at each other. Every last one grim faced, ready to die. One army clustered around a van. The other, black-clad, defending the skeletal wreckage of a smoking, overturned car. Bodies already littering the ground. A half-dressed girl Sherry's age trapped in the clutches of a leathery giant.

A hostage, just like herself.

And stranded in the middle of it all—like people without a country, ballast swirling in the whirlpool of war—were Ruth and the sheriff, and a one-armed man whose face was smeared thickly with blood.

Buchanan frog-marched Sherry toward the van. Of course, his lot was cast with these men—the takers of girl hostages, the bad guys. The ones about to kill her friends.

She stumbled, eyes roving the scene, foot finding a rock. Buchanan's grip on her neck tightened. Moving without Eric felt awkward, wrong; she'd grown accustomed to the tug at her wrist, the weight at her shoulder—so much so that she could feel the ghost of his presence now.
Like those phantom itches amputees get in their missing limbs,
she thought, and cast another gaze at the one-armed man.

He was watching her, too. A look of consternation on his face.

They locked eyes, and Sherry froze in her tracks. There was something familiar about him—intensely and mysteriously so. Was he a member of Seth's flock? Somebody she'd seen around town?

Buchanan brooked no pauses. He prodded and pushed her on, until Sherry was standing beside the other girl and her enormous captor—nearly Buchanan's height and twice his girth.

All eyes, Sherry realized, were on her and Buchanan. Their presence here had changed the stakes, somehow.

It was not a reassuring thought.

Ruth Cantwell broke into a dash, only to be restrained by the man by her side, the apparent leader of the squad in black. Sherry's name died on her lips, without a sound. Their eyes met, but the anguish in Cantwell's was too much, and Sherry tore herself away, sought out the sheriff instead.

There was no sustenance to be gleaned there. Nichols's face looked hewn from granite, as if he'd already resigned himself to tragedy.

Meanwhile, the one-armed man continued to stare at her, his eyes twin magnets. As if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. As if the only thing worth looking at, here at world's end, was Sherry Richards.

“Kurt,” Buchanan grunted in greeting, shouldering in beside the mammoth biker.

The guy looked Sherry up and down. “Who's this?”

“This right here's the best leverage we got.” He nodded his chin at the drama unfolding across the way. “See what I mean?”

Cantwell shook free of the leader's grip on her elbow. “Tell them to stand down!” she demanded. “Nichols! Tell him!” And then the sheriff was in motion, walking toward her—whether to back her up or calm her down, Sherry couldn't be sure.

“Best leverage we got,” Buchanan repeated. “The Messenger's daughter.”

Sherry twisted out of his grip and spun to face him.

“What?”

The monster leered at her, his mottled face contorting into something like a smile. “What's the matter, sweetheart? Don't you recognize your dear old dad?”

Buchanan raised his voice and called across the field.

“Red rover, red rover. Send Galvan right over.”

He thrust Sherry forward and shook her like a rag doll.

“Now, tough guy. Or I'll break your daughter's neck.”

The one-armed man. They locked eyes again, and this time Sherry looked through the blood and the grime and saw him.
Knew
him, fully and deeply, as the man whose presence had sustained her and whose absence had destroyed her life. Who'd walked her to school each morning, picked her up each afternoon, protected her from monsters, taught her how to swim. Whose calm constancy and unwavering love had been the counterweight to Melinda's flights of fury and devotion, her manic binges of piety, her bottomless, depressive free falls.

He was the only thing she'd ever really believed in, and she had never really stopped. Even when believing in Jess Galvan had felt as naive as believing in Santa Claus. She had ignored her mother's vitriol, her reckless slander. Known, in some essential and untouchable way, that her father had never intended to leave her. That he was fighting his way back, and that someday he would succeed, no matter what the odds. That he would come for her, and life would change.

They stared at each other, across twenty feet that might as well have been ten thousand, and Sherry thought,
Oh God, Dad, not like this.

 

CHAPTER 43

S
herry!” Galvan bellowed as the tears leaked from his eyes. “Baby! Are you okay?”

He stepped toward her, tripped over Pescador's body, and pitched onto his forehead.

Nichols's face loomed into view, and the next thing Galvan knew he was upright, stump-arm draped across the sheriff's shoulders.

Son of a bitch was right. He could help me.

“
That's
your daughter.” It sounded more like a statement than a question, but Galvan yessed his head just in case, and they both stared across the plain at her.

“Isn't she beautiful?” he murmured—and when the words hit the air, Galvan realized how fucking softheaded they sounded. How off. Like he didn't have the faintest idea what was going on.

Get it. The fuck. Together.

Before. It's. Too. Late.

“Who is he?” Galvan demanded, turning to Nichols and flexing every muscle he could think of—seeing which ones he could bring under his control, what power he could wring from them. It felt like a supreme effort just to keep his brains from dribbling out his ears, his intestines from plummeting out his asshole. But somehow—magically, tragically, miraculously, hideously—Galvan's daughter was standing before him for the first time in two years, four months, and seventeen days. And she needed him.

Still needed him.

Galvan could have flown if he had to.

“Marshall Buchanan. He's Seth's muscle,” Nichols said at his ear. “One nasty piece of work.”

“And who's Seth?”

Nichols's scrutiny was skin-prickling.

“What
do
you know?” the sheriff asked finally.

“All I know—”

The scumbag holding Sherry shouted again, interrupting a sentence Jess had no idea how to finish anyway. “I'm waiting, Galvan. But I'm not waiting long. Bring over the heart, and you have my word, I won't hurt either one of you.”

“All I know . . . ,” Galvan began again, sweeping the ground with his eyes until he found the box.

The goddamn infernal box.

“Hand me that,” he said, pointing. Nichols complied, stepped out from under Galvan's arm and bent and scooped it like a fumbled football.
Little bit of grace to the guy,
thought Galvan.
Probably an ex-jock
.

Save your attention for what matters, Jess.

“All I know is, I don't know a goddamn thing. They told me to carry this box across the desert, and that's what I did. Told me to hand it over to the guy that met me.” He looked down at Pescador's body and saw a column of black smoke twirling from it. “That'd be him.”

“What did—”

“He didn't ask so nice.” Galvan scowled at Buchanan, imagining what it would be like to rip his spine out through his mouth. “And now I guess I gotta give it to that cocksucker.”

He took a step forward, then stopped when Nichols clamped a hand over his arm.

“What's in it?”

Galvan eyed him for a moment. “See for yourself.”

He pressed the box to his side with the bad arm, pried the lid off with the good hand. He didn't look down at it; instead, he watched Nichols's face.

Needed to remember what a normal fuckin' reaction looked like.

The sheriff didn't disappoint. His eyes saucered, and Galvan had to close the box to jar him back to reality.

Such as it was.

It took Nichols a few more seconds to summon speech.

“You can't give that to him. I don't know what it is, but—”

“The hell I can't. There's only one thing I care about in the world, Nichols, and that's my baby girl.”

He looked past the sheriff, at Buchanan.

“I'm comin' over,” he announced.

Galvan put his head down, started walking.

Footsteps, behind him, coming fast. Galvan spun, expecting Nichols, prepared to drop him if need be.

But no. It was the woman, the one who'd tried to call off the Mexicans when she saw Sherry.

“So am I,” she called.

Galvan waited for Buchanan to object, but the big man stood impassive.

“I'm Ruth Cantwell,” she told Galvan, catching up to him and then slowing her pace to match his agonized shuffle. “I'm Sherry's friend. Maybe she told you about me.”

“Glad she has one,” he grunted.

“You're supposed to be in prison.”

“That ain't the way I see it.” He tossed her a look. “You'll get her outta here? Take her home?”

“I'll try. But what about—”

“I'm in this 'til the end.”

He didn't know how true it was until he heard it.

They were almost there. Galvan could see the salt water streaming down Sherry's cheeks. He wanted nothing more than to fold her into a hug, take away the pain, make everything all right. The way he used to, back when the world was simple and the beating hearts of slaughtered virgins didn't have to be delivered to the sons of ancient priests.

Back when all that mattered was keeping Sherry safe, the family provided for, and that was terrifying enough.

“Hey, baby.”

She broke free of Buchanan and threw herself into his arms. For an instant, all Galvan's troubles melted away. This was happiness. A dream fulfilled.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered into the hollow of her neck.

“Daddy. I'm—”

And then, with a jerk, she was gone—pulled to her captor's side.

Galvan stared at him and boiled with rage.

“All right, you've got me. Let her go.”

Buchanan's eyes were like twin blue volcanoes. “I think you misunderstood my offer. I told you I wouldn't hurt her. Not that I'd let her go. I need her, tough guy. To keep
you
in line.”

He pivoted. “Knowles, get rid of that little blond piece of ass, and put them both in the van. Set up the cage, and make sure it's locked tight. This one's an escape artist.”

“You got it.” He slapped Betty hard on the ass. “Your lucky day, sweet cheeks. Get outta here.”

Betty didn't waste a second. She put her head down and sprinted. Reached the highway, banked onto the blacktop, and kept going.

The biker watched her go, then stepped forward and reached for Sherry.

Before he could lay a finger on her, Galvan's hand shot out and chopped him across the throat. Knowles gasped and dropped to his knees, clutching at his windpipe. At full strength, Galvan would have crushed it with a blow like that. But full strength was miles off right now. He'd need a goddamn team of Sherpas to find his way back there.

“Don't put your fuckin' mitts on her again,” he told Knowles, looking past the downed biker at the tribe's beta males, the cowards who'd held him down for Pescador's machete. “Any of you. Don't test me.”

He turned back to Buchanan, demanded his eyes. “Let Sherry go, and I'll do whatever you want. Give you my word.”

But it was useless. A bargain without a chip, and an appeal to the better nature of a man whose soul was rotten to the core.

Besides, muscle wasn't supposed to think. Just follow orders.

As muscle yourself, you oughta understand that, Jess
.

Buchanan didn't bother to reply. He'd turned his attention to the other woman. Sherry's friend. Galvan couldn't remember her name for the life of him.

“Howdy again, doc. Just don't know when you're not wanted, do you?” Buchanan slow-grinned and snapped his fingers at the bikers. “Throw her back there, too.”

He raised his voice and called across the field. “Haul your carcass over here, Nichols. That's an order. The rest of you, we have no quarrel. Go with God—unless you'd rather go
to
God.”

Galvan looked to the Mexican jefe, Fuentes. Watched him paw the ground with the toe of his boot and knew it was all over. Dude had gotten what he wanted; Pescador was good and dead, and his own hands were nice and clean. Maybe Nichols was his buddy, but Fuentes's men weren't risking their under-gunned, outmaneuvered asses in a firefight to save the guy. They'd been sloppy—lost their vehicle and watched their appetite for destruction vanish along with it. Just been going through the motions since.

Nichols knew it, too. He gave Fuentes a curt nod, letting him save face; dropped his head; and started walking toward the van.

At least I can sit with my daughter,
Galvan thought as the bikers massed around them, herding him and the box and Sherry and the doctor toward the steel cage at the vehicle's rear.

Nobody touched Sherry—nobody touched any of them. Galvan had taught the dirtbags that much, at least. Showed them he still had a little fight left in him.

Like any dying animal.

Buchanan was the last to speak to him, as Galvan boarded the bus and wedged himself onto one of the two narrow, prison-transport-style benches inside—after Ruth and Sherry, with Nichols still to come.

Aaron Seth's muscle splayed a mammoth hand over the box, and for an instant Galvan expected him to rip it away. To claim it for his own, as so many had tried to.

But no. The soldier was disciplined. “Remember,” he intoned, “what's inside there is keeping all of you alive. Do what you're told, this doesn't have to end in blood.”

And off he strode, in the direction of his car. They watched him through the slivered-open doors: a lone figure framed beneath a swollen orange sun.

“Eric,” breathed Sherry, her face half lost to shadow. “Eric's still in there.”

Ruth Cantwell took her hand. “We'll get him back.”

Galvan was too spent to ask. He could feel the adrenaline withdrawing from his system, the pain it served to blot out flooding back.

Nichols piled in last, and a pair of Natives locked the doors. The four of them were plunged into near-total darkness, the only relief arriving via slim rays of sunset filtering in through the distant front windshield, past the half-dozen True Natives sprawled across the front rows and the crosshatching of the cage.

The compartment's twin fold-down benches were narrow, but Galvan's knees still touched Nichols's across from him. Sherry leaned into her father's chest and held the doctor's hand across the aisle.

The box sat on Galvan's lap. He could feel the heartbeat faintly, like the tick of a clock.

Or the tick of a bomb.

The engine turned over, and the van pulled out. A few seconds later, the driver cranked up the radio, and some shit-kicking good ol' boy started warbling a tale of whiskey, guns, remorse. The Natives whooped and sang along. Monitoring the chitchat of their captives did not seem to be of paramount concern.

Luckily for them, Galvan didn't have a thought in his head worth sharing. The storm that was coming was coming. You couldn't plan for it, any more than you could map out a strategy for avoiding lightning.

At least, Galvan couldn't. Not now.

Sherry pressed herself against him harder, as if wanting to climb into his rib cage and hide there, and Galvan held her close. Her terror was a palpable thing.

Galvan remembered it well. Fucking Melinda. What a shit show that woman's life was. If he'd been anything in his life worth being proud of, it was a rock for Sherry. A port in the storm.

For as long as he'd been able.

Please, Jesus, let me be that for her again. She doesn't deserve this. I'm the one to blame . . .

The chain of events might have been unclear, but the fact was unassailable; he felt it in his bones. Something he'd done, something he'd failed to do, had put her here, in the middle of this hell.

He wasn't Sherry's rock anymore. He was her hard place.

He couldn't live with that.

Couldn't die like that, either.

The only thing to do was make it right.

Yeah, Jess. There's an idea.

He hugged her harder. Started to whisper
Everything's going to be all right,
but the words caught in his throat, and Galvan swallowed them back down. His mind went blank. The van chugged on, the silence and the music growing more oppressive with each second.

Galvan squeezed his eyes shut and reopened them.

“Anybody know any good knock-knock jokes?” he asked, seized with a morbid need to lighten the mood.

“Cut the shit,” Nichols growled, as if he'd been waiting for the opportunity to pounce. “Do you have any idea what's about to happen?”

“Is it gonna come as a major shock if I say I got no fuckin' idea?” He rested his head against the back wall and sighed. “Enlighten me, huckleberry.”

The sheriff mirrored Galvan's posture, skull meeting metal with a dull thud. “Something bad.”

“You mean before or after this Aaron Seth peckerwood eats his Happy Meal and turns into a god?”

He rubbed Sherry's shoulder, suddenly self-conscious. “Pardon my language, sweetheart.”

Cantwell sprang to her feet, head bowed beneath the low ceiling. “Let me see it.”

Galvan pulled the box closer. “I don't think that's such a good idea, doc.” He studied her in the weak, shifting light. “Why?”

“I need to see it to believe.”

“Trust me. Or ask Nichols.”

The sheriff nodded.

Cantwell sat down heavily, as if pushed by invisible hands. “It's all true, then,” she muttered. “The legends. The Virgin Army.”

“Oh yeah, they're real as fuck. Take it from me.”

She shook her head slowly. “It isn't possible.”

Galvan stared into the blackness, bored with this conversation. “And yet, I spent the day watching them tear my friends apart. You got anything useful to add here, doc? A plan, maybe? A real good knock-knock joke? Or are we just making chitchat?”

The doctor pogoed up again, unable to stay still. “Destroy it.”

“Nope.”

“Let me.”

“You willing to die? Because you're talking about the only thing keeping us alive right now.”