John Connolly - The Reapers

Louis’s gun spoke, and a hole blew dark blood from Griggs’s chest. Louis walked forward, his finger pulling the trigger again, and the second shot hit Griggs in the side of the neck as he fell backward, almost taking Alderman Rector with him. Alderman fired the little.22, but the shot went wild and took out the windowpane to the right of Louis. The gun in Louis’s hand was no longer shaking, and the next three shots impacted in a tight circle no bigger than a man’s closed fist in the center of Alderman’s torso. Alderman dropped his gun and turned, his right hand clutching at the wounds in his body as he tried to support himself against the wall. He managed a couple of steps before his legs crumpled and he fell flat on his stomach. He moaned at the pressure on the wounds, then started to crawl along the floor, pulling himself with his hands, pushing with his feet against Griggs’s corpse. He heard footsteps behind him. Louis fired the last bullet into Alderman’s back, and he stopped moving.

Louis stared at the gun in his hand. He was breathing fast, and his heart was beating so hard that it hurt. He went back to his room, dressed, and packed his bag. It didn’t take him long, for he had never really unpacked it, understanding that the time would come when, if he survived, he would have to move again. He reloaded the.38, just in case these men had not come alone, then stepped over the two bodies and walked to the end of the hall. He opened the door and listened, then cast an eye over the yard below. There was no movement. A beat-up Ford was parked below, both of its front doors open, but there was nobody inside.

Louis ran down the stairs and turned the corner, just in time to catch a man’s fist across his left temple. He collapsed to the ground, blinded by the pain. Even as he fell he tried to raise the.38, but a boot connected with his hand and forced it to the ground, stamping on his fingers until he was forced to release his grip. Hands grabbed hold of his shirtfront and hauled him to his feet, then pushed him around the corner until he felt the first step against the back of his calves. He sat down and saw clearly, for the first time, the man who had attacked him. He was six feet tall and white, his hair cut short like that of a cop, or a soldier. He wore a dark suit, a black tie, and a white shirt. Some of Louis’s blood had landed on the material, staining it.

Behind him stood Gabriel.

Louis’s eyes were watering, but he did not want the men to think that he was crying.

“They’re dead,” he said.

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “Of course they are.”

“You followed them here.”

“I learned that they were on their way.”

“And you didn’t stop them.”

“I had faith in you. I was right. You didn’t need anyone else. You could take care of them yourself.”

Louis heard sirens calling in the distance, drawing closer.

“How long do you think you will be able to evade the police?” asked Gabriel. “One day? Two?”

Louis did not reply.

“My offer still stands,” said Gabriel. “In fact, more so than before, after tonight’s little demonstration of your abilities. What do you say? The gas chamber at San Quentin, or me? Quickly, now. Time is wasting.”

Louis watched Gabriel carefully, wondering how he had come to be here at just the right time, understanding that tonight had been a test but not certain how much of it Gabriel had orchestrated. Someone must have told those men where he was. Someone had betrayed him to them. Then again, it could have been a coincidence.

But Gabriel was here. He had known those men were coming, and he had waited to see what would transpire. Now he was offering help, and Louis did not know if he could trust him.

And Gabriel stared back at him, and knew his thoughts.

Louis stood. He nodded at Gabriel, picked up his bag, and followed him to the car. The driver picked up the.38, and Louis never saw it again. By the time the police arrived they were already heading north, and the boy who had worked at the eatery, the one who had left two men dead on Mr Vasich’s floor, ceased to be, except in some small, hidden corner of his own soul.

THEY DROVE NORTH JUST after breakfast. Nobody followed them. As they left the city, Louis employed all the skills of evasion that he had learned-sudden stops, doubling back on himself, the use of dead ends and meandering roads through residential areas-yet he discerned no pattern among the vehicles in his wake, and neither did Angel. In the end, both were content that they had left the city unencumbered by unwanted attention

Their conversation of the previous night was not mentioned. It would serve no purpose to disinter it now. Instead, they behaved as they always did, interspersing periods of silence with comments on music, on business, or on whatever happened to strike them at the time.

“Philadelphia,” said Angel. “City of Brotherly Love, my ass. You remember Jack Wade?”

“Cactus Jack.”

“Hey, that’s unkind. He had a skin condition. Nothing he could do about it. Anyway, he once tried to help an old lady across the street in Philly and she kneed him in the balls. Took his wallet, too, he said.”

“It is one unfriendly city,” Louis agreed.

Angel watched the scenery go by. “What’s over there?” he asked.

“Where?”

“East. Is that Massachusetts?”

“Vermont.”

“Least it’s not New Hampshire. I always worry that someone’s going to take a pot shot at us from the trees when we drive through New Hampshire.”

“They do breed ’em tough there.”

“Tough, and kind of dumb. You know, they refused to pass a law requiring people to wear seat belts?”

“I read that somewhere.”

“You rent a car in New Hampshire, you start it up, and it doesn’t make that ‘beep-beep-beep’ noise if you forget to put on your seat belt.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, instead, if you try to put it on, a voice calls you a pussy and tells you to grow a pair.”

“Live free or die, man.”

“I think that was referring to the forces of tyranny and oppression, not some guy who misjudges the brake time on his Prius.”

“Cheap gas, though.”

“Cheap gas. Cheap liquor. Easy availability of weapons.”

“Yeah,” said Louis. “Hard to see how that could go wrong.”

They left the interstate close to Champlain. At Mooers, they took a right and headed through the Forks, then crossed the Great Chazy River, which was little more than a stream at that point. The towns all blended into one: there were volunteer fire departments, cemeteries, old abandoned filling stations at intersections, now replaced by glowing edifices at the town limits, the vintage pumps still standing like ancient soldiers guarding long-forgotten memorials. Some places looked more prosperous than others, but it was a relative term; everywhere, it seemed, they saw things for sale: cars, houses, businesses, stores with paper on the windows, no hint now left of their former purpose. Too many homes had wounded paintwork, too many lawns were littered with the entrails of vehicles, cannibalized for parts, and the discarded limbs of broken furniture. They passed through places that were hardly there at all: some towns seemed to exist only as a figment of some planner’s imagination, like a joke on the map, a punchline to a gag that had never been told. Halloween jack-o’-lanterns glowed on porches and in yards. Ghosts danced around an old elm tree, the wind picking at their sheeted forms.

They stopped for a coffee at Dick’s Country Store and Music Oasis at Churubusco, mainly because they liked its advertising: “500 Guitars, 1000 Guns.” Angel figured that somebody had to be kidding, but Dick’s was for real: to the right of the door was a little convenience store with a fridge full of bait worms, and to the left were two separate entrances. The first led into a guitar and musical instrument shop that seemed to be staffed by the usual benevolent guitar heads and amp aficionados. A young man with long dark hair sat on the floor, trying out a black Gibson guitar, his fingers picking a loose melody in the fading afternoon light. The second door, meanwhile, led into a pair of linked rooms filled with shotguns, pistols, knives, and ammunition, and was staffed by a pair of serious-looking men, one young, one old. A sign warned that a New York state pistol permit was required to even handle a gun. Beside it, a heavyset woman was filling out the paperwork for a four-hundred-dollar pistol.