John Connolly - The Reapers

Angel thought. “I blame myself.”

Louis paused. “Is that true?”

“No,” said Angel as he sneezed again. “I do blame you.”

WILLIE BREW AND THE Detective crossed the bridge and followed the road for a hundred yards or so until they came to an intersection. Well, you could call it an intersection, but as far as Willie was concerned it was two roads going exactly nowhere, one heading east to west, the other continuing south. Neither of them looked too inviting, but then any strip that didn’t have a convenience store, a couple of fast-food outlets, and maybe a bar or two barely qualified as a road in Willie’s book.

“Who are these guys, exactly?” asked Willie. The question had been troubling him since they had reached the bridge. He’d only been up in this godforsaken part of the world for an hour, and already he’d seen two dead bodies and, according to the Detective, the dead men had probably been on their side, which suggested to Willie that the odds in their favor had started to shrink. Now the rest of what passed for a rescue mission had disappeared, and the Detective had appeared more disappointed than surprised at their absence. None of this was making Willie feel any more at ease, and he began to wonder if Arno hadn’t been wise to stay where he was, and if he shouldn’t have stayed right there with him.

At that moment, the biggest truck Willie had ever seen in his life appeared from the west. It was jet black, and its tires were so huge that even to stand on them and use them as a means of jumping to the ground was to risk breaking an ankle on impact. As it drew closer, Willie could see that the truck also seemed to be without its windshield, and both of its headlights were busted. The bench seats in the cab were big enough to seat four adults comfortably, but currently they seemed to be seating three men uncomfortably, especially since two of those men were wide enough to qualify as illegal structures if they stayed in the same place for too long. The man squashed between them, who was no Slim Jim himself, wore a look of beatific calm, as if this situation was not only familiar to him, but entirely welcome, despite the rain.

“Shit,” said Willie, involuntarily. Suddenly, the Browning looked very small in his hand. The gun didn’t look like it would have enough stopping power to make any of these men pause in their tracks. It would be like firing marshmallows at a trio of charging elephants.

“Relax,” said the Detective. “They’re with us.”

He didn’t sound particularly happy about it.

The truck came to a halt barely five feet from where they were. Until that point, it had been traveling so fast that Willie wasn’t sure it was going to stop at all. Seen from up close, the two big guys looked mad as hell, and it seemed for a few crucial seconds that they were just going to drive right over the Mustang, crushing it beneath the wheels of their truck as they proceeded in the direction of whomever had incurred their wrath. Willie rated that particular individual’s chances of survival at somewhere between minimal and extinct.

The Detective got out of the Mustang. Willie did likewise. The two big men climbed out of either side of the cab, using a footplate behind the wheels to jump down. Willie couldn’t be certain, but he thought he felt the ground shake when they landed.

“Meet Tony and Paulie Fulci,” said the Detective softly. “The guy in the middle is Jackie Garner. He’s the sane one, although it’s a relative term.”

Willie hadn’t heard of Jackie Garner, but he’d heard of the Fulcis. Angel had spoken of them in the tones usually reserved for forces of nature like hurricanes or earthquakes, the message being that, in common with such meteorological and seismic events, it was a pretty good idea to stay as far away from them as possible. As things stood, Willie was not far away from the Fulcis at all, and therefore had somehow entered a mobile disaster zone.

“What happened to your truck?” asked the Detective.

“Some guys happened,” said Paulie. He jerked a thumb in Jackie’s direction. “He didn’t help, though.”

“We’ve been through all this,” said Jackie. “It was a misunderstanding.”

“Yeah, well…” said Paulie. Clearly, the whole affair still rankled.

“Where are the guys in question?” asked the Detective.

There was some awkward shuffling of feet.

“One of them ain’t doing so good,” said Tony.

“How not good?”

“He’s out cold. I ain’t so sure he’s going to wake up again either. I hit him kind of hard.”

“And the others?”

“Other,” corrected Jackie. “There were two of them.”

“He ain’t doing so good either,” said Tony. His embarrassment deepened. “Actually, he ain’t never going to do good again. It was kind of an accident,” he concluded lamely.

To his credit, Willie thought, the Detective maintained an impassive façade.

“Did you find out anything useful from them before they started not doing so good?” he asked.

Tony shook his head and stared at the ground.

“We know how they’re staying in contact, though,” said Jackie Garner. “They got radios in their trucks.” He thought for a moment. “There’s some bad news there, too, though,” he continued.

“Yeah?” said the Detective wearily.

“I answered one of their calls.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I thought I could find stuff out.”

“And did you?”

“I found out that I’m not a mimic.”

“Funny, Jackie.”

“Sorry, man. I wasn’t thinking.”

“So they know we’re here.”

“I guess so.”

The Detective turned away from the three men. Willie said nothing. It was like being back in Nam. This was another fuck-up, playing out right before his eyes. He was starting to feel weary now, and he was drenched. He also assumed that things were going to get worse before they got better.

Then they heard it, the noise breaking the awkward silence. There was a vehicle approaching. Instantly, the Detective began to move.

“Willie, get the Mustang out of sight,” he said. “Take it toward the bridge. Paulie, get in the cab of the truck. Head east, but slowly. Let them see you. Jackie, Tony, into the trees with me. If it looks like they’re on their way to church, don’t shoot.”

Nobody argued with him or questioned him. They did exactly as they were told. Willie got into the Mustang, turned it in a tight circle, and headed back the way he had come, pausing only when the intersection was out of sight. Then he killed the engine and waited. He was struggling to breathe, even though he hadn’t exerted himself physically. He wondered if he was having a heart attack. He flexed his left arm to make sure that it wasn’t going numb. He was sure that was one of the signs. The arm seemed to be moving okay. He adjusted the rearview mirror and kept his eyes on the road behind him. The Browning now lay on the passenger seat. He had one hand on the ignition key, the other hand on the stick. Anyone came around that corner that he didn’t recognize and he was out of there. He would make a run for it. There would be nothing else for it.

Then the shooting started.

The Detective had taken up a position to the west of the road, Tony Fulci and Jackie to the east. A Bronco came into view, and the three men aimed their weapons. At the sight of Paulie pulling away in the big truck, the driver of the Bronco increased his speed. There was a man beside him in the passenger seat, a shotgun held across his body. A third man stood in the bed of the truck, leaning on the roof of the cab with a rifle in his hands as he tried to draw a bead on Paulie’s rear window.

There was no warning. Two holes appeared almost simultaneously in the Bronco’s windshield and the driver slumped over the wheel, his head striking the glass and smearing the blood that had splashed upon it. Instantly the truck began to swerve to the right. The passenger leaned over to try to arrest the turn, while the shooter in the bed held on to the crash bar for dear life. More shots came, pockmarking the windshield, and the truck veered off the road and crashed down the eastern slope. It struck a pine tree, the bull bars on the front minimizing the damage even as the rifleman was flung from the bed and landed heavily on the grass. He lay there, unmoving.