Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

But that didn’t slow me down, because those sounds were coming from my brother. I crossed the porch and hit the scrubby grass in a dead run. Russell was down on his knees, his screams gone now, grunting as two guys worked him over with switchman’s clubs. I tackled the first one before he saw me coming and rammed him against the Nash. His head hit the fender with a sickening thud, and that spelled lights out . By the time I grabbed the switchman’s club from his hands and turned to face his partner, Russ had already gone to work.

Bark peeled as Russ shouldered his attacker against a thick eucalyptus. Then he moved in low, hooking to the belly like Dempsey, punching so hard I thought the stranger would spit up his liver. The guy was finished before he dropped, but Russ was just getting started. His left hand whipped back, fingers closing around the trench knife that hung at his side.

It took everything I had in me to grab Russ and pull him away before he could turn that German steel loose. Even so, the stranger shrank away like a dead man. His long black overcoat gathered around him as he collapsed, as if he were sinking through a trapdoor. Another second and he wasn’t moving. Neither was the guy by the Nash.

We didn’t need to yank their wallets to find out they were private cops set with the task of rousting squatters for a local bank, but we yanked their wallets anyway. They had thirty bucks between them. Toss in the Nash, and it amounted to a fair night’s work. We dragged them inside the dead man’s house and trussed them up. Then we closed the door behind us, and we left the two of them in that house with its feral smell, and the ashes of the last newspaper I’d ever read, and a busted bathroom mirror that tossed moonlight at the shadows.

Outside, the wind was dying off. The moon was brighter now. Pale, watching. The bats were out, circling in its cold glow, gobbling any insects that dared to flap wings.

I started the Nash and we backed out of the driveway. The headlight glow spilled across the front of the old house, and we left it behind us in the darkness.

It was time to move on.

Once we were clear of Fresno, we made a quick stop to search the car. There was nothing much up front — a couple salami sandwiches in a paper bag, a couple bottles of bootleg beer, and a map in the glove compartment that was folded up in a jumble. A town up north was circled in red, but its name — New Anvik — didn’t ring a bell. Besides, any destination we might set would come later. At the moment all we wanted to do was put some distance between us and the dead man’s house.

But first we’d finish checking the Nash. The real jackpot was locked in the truck — a pump-action shotgun and a couple boxes of 00 buckshot shells. I guess it was just dumb luck the bank muscle had opted to start things off with clubs instead of the trench gun. We wouldn’t make the same mistake. We stowed the Winchester in the backseat, tossed an old blanket over it, and headed north.

We blew through Merced and Modesto. Outside Stockton, we snatched a new license plate for the Nash. Breathing a little easier, we ate some burgers at a trucker’s joint on the Delta just as the sun rose in a blue sky. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the sun, and it made me feel better . . . even kind of sleepy. We parked down by the water and I dozed a little, listening to birds call as a gentle breeze combed through the cattails.

Russ went for a walk. At least, that’s what I thought he was doing. When I awoke I went looking for him, following a deer run that cut through the cattails. The first thing I found was a broken wine bottle, the last of that Armenian bootleg. And then I found Russ. He was down by the water where it was quiet, sitting there all alone. The sun beat down on him and he stared up at it . . . at least, that’s what his good eye was doing. But whatever my brother saw, I was certain he was seeing it with the eye that wasn’t there anymore . . . the angry red socket that was scarred over like a ravaged coffin lid.

The scar twitched and heaved. Even now, I can’t imagine what Russ saw in his mind’s eye. I only know that it was the last thing he thought he’d ever see, because he had that Winchester shotgun propped under his chin and his thumb was twitching on the trigger.

As gently as I could, I took away the gun. Russ didn’t say a single word. Wherever he was, there weren’t any words at all. I didn’t have any words, either. But my hand closed around my brother’s, and together we walked back to the stolen Nash.

I opened the glove compartment and grabbed the map. Unfolding it, the first thing I saw was that little town circled in red, a place called New Anvik. It lay to the northeast, just a few hours away . . . if we were lucky, anyway. Lots of pines and mountains up there, and summer cabins that would be shuttered for the season. The way I figured it, we could find a place to hole up in the sticks and get some breathing room. Then I could figure out what to do about Russ.

My brother didn’t say a word as I drove. He just stared ahead, his one eye glazed as if a spider had spun cobwebs around his brain. A couple hours north of Sacramento the Nash overheated. I barely got it over to the side of the road, but I knew instantly we couldn’t linger there. One look at us and even the stupidest cop would start asking questions. So I wrapped the guns in a blanket, handed Russ a sack with the sandwiches and the beer, and we started walking.

A gravel road cut away from the main one, and we followed it through a field. Eventually we hit some railroad tracks and trailed them north. The air was still. The sun shone down but the light it cast was flat and cold, so barren it didn’t even glint off the railroad tracks. The only way to stay warm was to keep moving. That’s what we did. Our boots thudded over ties and gravel, and we didn’t move slowly. I set the pace, and Russ kept it.

The landscape was spare — fields rimmed by pine. We hoofed it a couple of miles and didn’t see a single house. But with guns in our possession and little else, I was still wary of any kind of law . . . even a local yokel. I felt a little safer when the train tracks cut into a wall of pine. The ground within was as red as rusty iron, and the little forest seemed to hold a month’s worth of frosty mornings. Which was another way of saying it was like a pine icebox in there, so we didn’t slacken our pace. Instead, we doubled it.

The red earth disappeared beneath a carpet of rusty needles, muffling our footsteps as we moved deeper into the forest. The only other sounds were our breaths, which by now were just short of ragged. A sour scent greeted us about a quarter mile in — the same feral crawlspace scent we’d breathed for a week running at the dead man’s house. The stink burned my lungs, and I have to admit that sucking it down made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. We found its source soon enough — a dead boar lay to one side of the tracks, body mangled and partially devoured by god knows what, bristly coat heavy with frost as if its slayer had left it on ice for another meal.

I stared down at the carcass, but not for long. Fate might be pushing us, but there was no time to consider it. Not now. I wasn’t going to gut the dead animal, spill its entrails, and give them a read. Not the way we were moving. The way I saw it we’d already placed our bet . . . wherever we were headed. And the chips could fall where they may.

So we skirted the dead boar and kept walking. Not far ahead, the forest opened on a circle of light. It was dull light, the kind only found in the shank of an afternoon, but it was light just the same.

Russell’s lone eye narrowed as we stepped into it, and I got the feeling the cobwebs in his brain were melting away. A railway station lay ahead, just a little more than a stone’s throw distant. The platform was empty, and a lone Ford was parked in the lot outside the office. If the place was as empty as it looked, we might be able to muscle our way in and steal whatever the station agent had in the cash drawer, maybe snatch a bag of mail from the warehouse . . . then keep moving. But all that was gravy. The main thing I wanted was the key to that Ford.