Bill Pronzini: Snowbound

The looter took another step, and another.

Aim for the head or body? What did the Army tell you about something like this? Can’t remember, can’t think — make a decision! Body then, larger target, center on the chest, the heart.

Another step.

All right, steady now, steady. Slow, even pressure on the trigger. Squeeze it, don’t pull it, when the time comes.

The looter came to a standstill.

Not yet! He doesn’t see me, he’s not looking here. Wait. Last possible moment, one shot. Come on, you, come on, come on.

Moving again-one step, two.

Steady.

Twenty yards now, any second now.

Steady steady steady.

And the looter stopped again, jerkily this time. His body started to dip into a crouch, the pump gun swinging hard across in front of him.

He’s seen me, Cain thought-and let his finger compress the trigger.

The recoil jumped the automatic’s barrel off his forearm, the roar seemed to hammer deafeningly in his ears. He snapped the muzzle down again, trying to rebrace it-but the man was falling, Cain realized this with a kind of fascination and watched him fall as though in cinematic slow motion, one foot coming up, leg bending, body turning and then arching backward, falling with the shotgun still held in his hands, striking the yielding snow on his back, the pump jarring loose finally and rolling up over his head and away; the body settling, becoming still, lying there in twisted repose.

Cain leaned heavily against his left arm, weakness in his legs, weakness in the pit of his stomach. The illusion of slow motion vanished, and he thought: My God, my God, dully. He did not move from his position, staring at the sprawled figure in the snow beyond. Breath shuddered and rattled in his throat. The chill of it, the numbing wind against his face, sharpened his thoughts again: you did it, okay you did it, and now you’ve got to do it again. His eyes probed the parking lot, the church’s facade, the area behind him to the west. Empty darkness.

He rubbed harshly at his face, stepped out bent-bodied, and went quickly, gun extended, toward the motionless body. The looter lay on his back, and when Cain came up to him he could see the sightlessly open eyes, the grimaced mouth, blood on the mouth, blood on the coat front. Dead-yes. Heart-shot. He backed around the body, swallowing a faint ascendance of nausea, and approached the car at which the looter had crouched.

The door still stood partially open. Nausea surged again when Cain squatted and looked inside and saw what the looter had reacted to: the body of the third man behind the wheel, the blood, the haft of the pocketknife-dead in there all this time. The psycho had done it, no doubt of that, and that was all the explanation he needed; details were meaningless. All that had meaning now was not one but two of the terrorists were dead, and in all probability Tribucci as well, and it was only the psycho and himself who were left. Just the two of them, one against one.

Sure-one against one.

Well suppose he sought help, suppose with the way things were now he went up to the church doors and tried to break them open or shouted for some of the men inside to break them open, told them what the situation was… No, that was foolish thinking. He didn’t know where the psycho was, and he would make a fine target up there on the steps. And the threat of a stampede was a real one, you couldn’t predict the actions of each and every one of seventy-five trapped people once the doors to freedom were open to them.

He’d have to do it alone, then; nothing had changed, nothing could change. Remain here at the church, guard the entrance, and begin the waiting all over again. Back around the south corner? Or right here in the lot? The lot-behind the car nearest the front doors. The surface snow was full of tracks now, and without that problem to worry about, the lot was the more tactical location. From here he could see both front corners, and Sierra Street, and most of the village to the north, and all of the lot, and the open incline leading up into the trees beyond the lake roads’ fork.

Rising up, Cain ran in a low stiff crouch to that nearest car, an old finned Mercury. The flurries were less heavy now, and the force of the wind seemed to have abated somewhat; the darkness harbored nothing that he could see. He knelt in the snow at the right rear fin-and almost immediately he could feel the chill penetrating his trousers and the heavy skirt of his overcoat. He could feel, too, the aching cold-tightness of muscles and joints throughout his body and the beginnings of enervation in his limbs. It was as if the freezing night were sucking strength out of him like sweat through the pores of his skin.

Make it soon, damn you, he thought. Make it soon.

Crouched beside an evergreen shrub on Shasta Street, a half block off Sierra, Kubion watched skull-grinning as Brodie died in the church parking lot.

He had come across Sierra and made a rapid, though guarded, check of the Sport Shop, front and rear; then he’d recrossed the street at Modoc and gone up to Shasta, into it laterally through thickly concealing darkness. When he reached the shrub, he paused to reconnoiter the church and the short length of Shasta to the west. It was while he had been doing that that Brodie came out of one of the yards in the next block and ran across to the fir tree at the edge of the church property.

Going to the church all right, Kubion had thought. Got him a shotgun or a rifle, some piece in a snowstorm but he’s running scared, and the first thing he’ll do when he gets over there is go to the car looking for Loxner. Fifty yards closer and you wouldn’t go anywhere you fairy son of a bitch, but maybe it was better this way maybe he’d flush any other stupid hero hicks hiding in the area. Big black blowfly, that’s what Brodie was, big black blowfly circling around and when he landed he was going to get squashed flat, spill his guts all over the goddamn snow.

Brodie had stepped out from under the tree, and through the gusting snowfall Kubion’s slitted eyes had followed his progress to the church and to the car. Surprise! Surprise, Vic! Oh Jesus his face must have been something to see right then, trying to figure out when and how it happened well I did it just after we took over the church, I put the knife in him while you were walking away with your back turned, the whispering told me it was time; one stroke clean when Duff was leaning over the seat to get the flour sack and he never made a sound and you thought all along he was alive, you could see him sitting behind the wheel all the while and you thought he was alive and he was just another dead lump of shit…

The grin had stretched Kubion’s cold-cracked lips as Brodie turned and started back toward the church. Now what, blowfly? Now what? And that was when he saw the brief muzzle flash from the church corner; Brodie falling, staying down without moving. Kubion stood up against the shrub, head craned forward; nothing changed in his face, the skull grin remained fixed. Seconds later the shadows at the corner separated, and he watched the figure of the man materialize.

Mothering bastard! Hick got him hick killed him; where did he get the gun? Well fuck that, he had it and he’d picked Brodie off with it, one shot lucky shot and Brodie was dead, he’d wanted Brodie for himself but it was okay this way too-okay, okay. Kubion kept staring over at the lot, saw the hick check the car and then come back and take a position behind another car and not show himself again. So-digging in out there this time, where he could cover all approaches and the church doors. No way to slip up on him but that was okay too because he knew exactly where the hick was and that the hick was armed and that there probably weren’t any others or they would’ve come into the lot, or else he’d have gone to them to report if they were too far away to know what had happened with Brodie. Right on, he was right on top again ten feet tall; no more screwing up from here on in, no more screwing up.