Off Season - Jack Ketchum [59]
And then the kids. One of them with his head about fifteen feet from his body. Another one, outside, with no head left at all. That one looked like a heavy-caliber bullet. So did the woman, if you could call that thing that stunk like last week’s empty milk carton a woman. Willis shook his head. What you had here was a fucking battlefield next to a bunker. Somebody around here was as crazy as a whore in the Vatican.
He’d known the old Parks place since he was a kid. Old Man Parks would have slipped a disk if somebody’d told him that something like this had happened even in the city, in New York or someplace, much less here on his own land. Good for him he was safely tucked under ground ten years now. He had all the pure moral strength in the world, old Parks did, and he’d brought up Joe and Hanna pretty much the same way he’d been raised by his father before him. You didn’t cuss, you didn’t drink, and you didn’t whack the wife.
Of course Hanna’d been slapped around some by that character Bailey she’d married, but as far as anybody knew she’d never slapped back. The old man would have killed her if she had. And then Hanna and Phil Bailey had a couple of kids, who lived in Portland and never even used the place nowadays, only rented it out when they could, and Willis couldn’t help but feel that somehow that had led to this, to death and slaughter in the driveway. The new age. In three generations you could slip the tether of the past with no more trouble than it took to drink a Pepsi. Some folks could, anyway. Those who had the money. He tossed the cigarette away and lit another.
He saw the headlights rake the trees and heard Peters’ heavy Chrysler rumbling over the old dirt road. The boss is gonna have himself a time over this one, he thought. Better get to looking busy. He walked to the open trunk of the Dodge and threw his flashlight beam inside. Look but don’t touch, he told himself. You lay a finger on anything here, and Peters will see you get your head shaved for it.
When Peters’ car pulled into the drive, Willis looked up and clicked off the flashlight and walked to the car. Sam Shearing was looking real tired in the driver’s seat. Funny how Peters always seemed to have so much energy. He was strictly heart-attack city with all that weight on him and had a mild coronary to his credit already—everybody knew that—but the old bastard never let up. Well, good for him. He smiled.
“Rough night, George,” he said. “Real rough. You gotta see this place!”
Peters got out of the car. “What we got here, Dale?” he said. Willis had a closer look at him. He looks okay, he thought, he really does. And you can bet they got him out of bed on this one.
“Hell, the place is lousy with bodies,” he said.
“What kind of bodies?”
“You name it, George, we got ‘em. They had a helluva weenie roast out back there. Not what you’d want to see at the ball park, either.”
“Kids?”
“Yeah, I think we found some of those kids you been looking for. Sure do.”
They walked to the house, Willis leading at a brisk pace. Peters stood in front of the black Dodge and looked around. They had kids, all right. One with his head split open, one with his head—or was it her head?—pretty near gone. “Jesus,” he said.
“There’s more inside,” said Willis.
Peters turned to Shearing, who looked wide awake now but not much the better for it. “Sam,” he said, “I want you to get me a couple more cars out here. And get me the coroner, too. Anybody left alive in there, Willis?” The question was pro forma; he already knew the answer to that one.
“Not a soul. You still might want the ambulance, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“There’s somebody walking ‘round minus a hand. Don’t know where the fellow is but the hand’s on the floor. Big damn ugly thing, too.”
“Okay. Get the ambulance too, Sam. And