Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

There were three of them in a dirty green Ford pickup truck. Someone she didn't recognize was driving it. The two passengers were Wayne and Earl Cade.

They parked at the foot of the driveway, where it joined the access road. It was twenty yards away, but the wind was right and she could hear what they were saying.

The driver said, "Goddamnit, Wayne, we ain't got time for this."

"Henry, you listen here. I'm gonna shoot that dog there, grab up the girl, and blow up that house. It won't take but a minute. Just set here and I'll be right back."

Wayne walked toward the house. He was walking slowly and carefully, she observed, with a somewhat bowlegged gait. He had a large revolver in his hand.

He stopped in front of the porch steps. "Well, honey, here's what's gonna happen now. I'm gonna gut-shoot that dog of yourn, then I'm gonna take you and your dog back to my home place, and I'm gonna cook it on a slow fire and skin it while it's still alive. Then I'm gonna-"

"It's not my dog," she said.

"What?"

"No, this is my mother's dog. That's my dog." She pointed.

Wayne heard the sound of running claws behind him and a shout from Earl. He whipped the upper part of his body around to his right, his gun hand extended.

Magog was already airborne, but easily made a slight midcourse correction. She knew Wayne from before, knew he was a bad actor who would not, for some reason, learn his lesson, and so when she clamped her jaws down on his forearm just behind the wrist, she gave him the full twenty-six hundred foot-pounds. The pistol went flying; so did Wayne. As the other two Cade boys scrabbled in the cab of the truck to grab their weapons, Lucy called the dogs to her and disappeared into the house.

Giancarlo had just caught a largemouth bass that must have weighed a pound and a half. He detached it from the hook and ran to call his brother, who he knew was sitting in the deer blind waiting for a target for the rat rifle. He approached the tulip tree where the blind was and was all set to shout when he heard heavy, running footsteps and the voices of men in loud conversation. He stopped and remained still, the fish held in his hand.

Two men came around the curve of the trail. One held a shotgun, the other a pistol. Giancarlo heard Dan Heeney call his name from the direction of the pond. The men heard it, too. They looked up and saw Giancarlo. The man with the shotgun raised it and pointed it at him. Still clutching his fish, Giancarlo dived into the laurel. Earl fired both barrels.

Up in the blind, Zak had seen this happen, and without thinking he laid the crosshairs of his scope on Earl Cade's head and pulled the trigger.

"Oww! Goddamnit! Oww!"

"What in hell is wrong with you?" Henry Cade cried. His cousin Earl had dropped his shotgun and was doubled over holding his hand to the left side of his head.

"Something bit me or stuck me. Goddamnit, that hurts!"

"Lemme see it," said Henry, and pushed Earl's hand away. A small, round wound an inch above his left ear was bleeding slightly. Henry laughed. "Looks like a pellet hit from your own gun. Must've ricocheted off've somethin' and hit you in the head."

"Ah, shit, Henry, that never happened to me before. How in hell could a thing like that happen?"

"Well, you prob'ly never shot no little boy before neither," said Henry sagely. "C'mon, let's get ol' Wayne put together and get shut of this place. I swear, between the two of you…"

"We all're still gonna blow up that house," said Earl, kneeling down carefully to retrieve his shotgun.

"Yeah, and you better be quick about it, 'cause I think I hear sirens."

Magog sniffed him out in the laurel hell. When Lucy went in, following the dog, she found him lying on his back with his eyes closed. For a glad instant she thought that he was kidding, pretending to be asleep, but he did not stir at her voice or touch, and when she shrieked and clutched him to her, she found that he was all soaked with blood from the crown of his head to the backs of his knees.

Having been married to Marlene Ciampi for a long time, Karp had been exposed to more small-arms fire than the average attorney. Thus he had known instantly that it was the popping not of fireworks coming from the direction of the jail but of automatic weapons; hence the sound of a jailbreak. Halfway down the stairway, this impression was confirmed by an explosion that shook the courthouse and brought a blizzard of plaster dust upon him as he raced along. When he arrived at the door that led from the courthouse to the jail proper, he paused. No shots. A sound of flowing water. Shouts. A thin cry for help. He went through, down the flight of stairs, and into the dark and smoky wreckage of what had once been the jail's front desk and reception area. A figure approached through the gloom. Karp saw that it was a man wearing a blackened and torn county deputy's uniform, one of the jail guards. Peagram?

"Peagram! What happened?"

The man stared at him uncomprehendingly. "Sheriff's dead. They shot him dead."

The man swayed. Karp grabbed him before he fell and helped him sit against the wall.

"Who shot him?"

"They had machine guns. Sheriff come out with his pistol, told 'em to get outa his jail, and they just blew him away." The man put his face in his hands and started to sob.

Crashing noises. Through the murk poked a shotgun, followed by the comforting form of Trooper Blake, accompanied by a pair of McCullensburg volunteer firemen in yellow reefer coats. They moved around, looking for survivors, making a lot of noise.

"What the hell happened?" Karp asked the trooper.

"We don't exactly know, sir. Some folks out there said it was the Cades. Three truckloads of them. I guess the prisoners are gone."

"That would be my bet. Where's Captain Hendricks?"

"Chasing a couple of their trucks, I think. I was in my cruiser when I heard the shots and the explosion, so I just took a look and headed for the smoke. One of the deputies told me that Captain grabbed up all the men he could find, troopers and detectives and all, and went off after two of the trucks. They were headed north out of town on 130, probably making for Burnt Peak."

Karp felt his gut wrench. "The other truck went east on 119, didn't it?"

"Yessir, but I don't think anyone went after them. Almost all of our people are back on regular duty. We put it out on the radio-"

"They're after my daughter. Come on!"

Karp ran out of the jail, sidestepping and stumbling over wreckage, passing a stream of firemen and paramedics coming in. When he reached the street entry, he was happy to find Blake right behind him, shotgun at high port. They pushed through the growing crowd to Blake's cruiser and got in. Blake hit the lights and siren. In two minutes they were at the junction of 130 and 119, and Blake was screeching into a tight left turn, accelerating to ninety on the two-lane blacktop. Karp looked at his hands. They were filthy with plaster and soot. Blood, too, from Peagram's uniform. They were shaking. From somewhere ahead came the boom of an explosion.

They could see the column of dust and smoke through the trees as they sped up the access road in a shower of gravel. Karp leaped from the car while it was still rolling and ran toward the house. Half of it was gone, a tumble of smoking wreckage. The kitchen range sat scorched in a flower bed. The front door was lying flat on the porch. A piece of paper fluttered from a splinter of the shattered doorframe. Karp snatched it up and read: "Dad: We're going to the hospital. All safe except GC, badly shot. Earl, Wayne, another Cade, first two wounded. L."

He read it twice more, but it kept saying the same thing.

Two pictures on the wall of the waiting room, one a print of a kitten hanging by its claws ("Hang in There, Baby!") and the other the familiar Rockwell of a boy getting a needle in the butt. Cheery, but Karp was not cheered. The room was small, carpeted in blood-colored industrial, and furnished with plastic chairs, orange and white, a white couch in tatty vinyl, and a white Formica table, with two ragged People and a week-old local paper strewn on it. It was lit by three long fluorescents, one dim, one flickering. Karp was not a great believer in hell, but thought that, if it existed, hell might be like this.