Off Season - Jack Ketchum [58]
He pulled open the chamber and tried the trigger. It seemed fine, unharmed by the fall. He put it into his belt and moved silently into the kitchen. As gently as possible, so as to make no sound, he opened each of the drawers, looking for a flashlight. He found one and tried it. On the dim side but it would do. He left the drawers open and tiptoed to the door. He looked around. The way was clear.
While he walked to the car he fished the keys out of his pocket and found the one for the trunk. He opened it quickly and switched on the flashlight, holding the beam close to the base of the compartment so there would be no spill. He gathered up every cartridge he could find and then killed the beam and moved back against the house, into the shadows. He loaded the pistol and put all the spare cartridges into one pocket and the keys into the other.
He decided to take the long route around the fire, keeping in the shadows. He’d noticed this afternoon that there was a trail back there that led down to the stream, and he thought they would probably keep to that, at least for a little while. And they’d be moving relatively slowly, with Laura half-comatose, holding them back. Thanks, Laura, he thought.
By his reckoning there were seven kids left and two of the women and the three men, one of the men somewhere behind him in the woods and another badly hurt—minus a good left hand and a couple quarts of blood from the look of the living room. He could take out the two men and the women and two of the kids if he was lucky and fast enough and made every shot pay, and as long as the third didn’t come climbing up his asshole he just might pull it off.
For a moment he wished he’d brought the poker or the axe in the woodshed. But the axe is no longer in the woodshed, he thought. They have it now. They’ve got it all—all but this, he thought, his hand on the pistol. Those last five kids were still going to be a problem, no question about it. But if he was good and fast he could blow hell out of every last one of them. And that was what he intended to do.
The first one dead would be for Carla. He pulled the pistol out of his belt and moved off into the woods, nearly invisible, wrapped in the cool cerements of darkness.
3:30 A.M.
State Trooper Dale Willis got out of his car, propped his big feet in front of him, and leaned against the door. He lit a smoke. He just did not feel comfortable sitting in the car, no way. Whatever had gone on here was finished—or that was how it looked, anyway—and Peters was on his way over with Sam Shearing. But Jesus! The place was a sight, and it had not been over long. He felt better standing outside. You never knew.
That thing back there on the fire. It was hard to believe it was even human. He knew damn well it was, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept. Some things were just beyond acceptance. Death was like that, especially this kind of death. Death and taxes, he thought. He remembered a teacher back in grade school who used to give them that inevitable-asdeath-and-taxes routine. What they didn’t know back in grade school was enough to make you shit turquoise.
One thing for sure, they didn’t know about this. He glanced over at the fire.
Come on baby light my fire.
You sick bastard.
It had been the smoke from the smoldering fire that first brought him around. Then he’d seen the auto lights burning and the house all lit up like a Christmas tree. Then he saw the rest of it. He’d missed the action by no more than half an hour. Some action, he thought. Whoever was responsible—well, he didn’t want to meet those guys stretched out in an automobile, that was for sure.
Willis had seen corpses before—the highway was full of them. Burned, crushed. Hell, he’d even seen one guy with the dead limb of a tree poked right through his windshield and into the