The Ranger - Ace Atkins [88]
“Don’t go near that church,” Stagg said, resting his hand on top of the video booth. “You get gone.”
“Just how you gonna make me do that, Johnny Stagg?”
“You figure that out.”
Gowrie nodded. “What happens to my boys when we break camp? How we supposed to train? How are we supposed to live?”
“I’ll get you some money.”
“How much? You gonna compensate me for all I’ve lost?”
Stagg told him, and Gowrie crashed the car, rear-ending a tractor trailer and sending them both up into a big plume of smoke and fire. He crawled out of the booth, smoked down the cigarette, and tossed it to the concrete. “Like I said, none of this shit would’ve happened if you hadn’t sent my boys to steal them cows.”
“They were mine.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn,” Gowrie said, yelling and then smiling, breaking into a little laugh. “You kicked up a shit storm, and if you think I’m shagging ass without breaking it all apart, you are crazy as hell. What do you think we all stand for? You were to give us a base camp where we could run maneuvers and train. Now you treatin’ me like I’m some kind of criminal. I’m the only thing you got between you and that crazy soldier.”
“Acting sheriff called the state troopers two hours ago. They’re coming for you.”
Stagg stared at the dried blood across Gowrie’s T-shirt. The blood had hair in it and torn bits of flesh, some of the blood had dried on his hands and up under his fingernails. Gowrie noticed him staring and smirked, and licked his cracked ole lips.
“You mind me asking you a question?” Stagg said.
“Shoot,” Gowrie said.
“Just what do y’all train for?”
Gowrie popped a fresh cigarette in his mouth and reached on top of the video game for his leather jacket. He fired up the Vantage and blew smoke as he spoke. “I don’t mind you asking at all, Mr. Stagg.”
The smoke drifted up into the ceiling, and Gowrie slipped back into the jacket as Stagg took a step back and looked up at the two surveillance cameras over Gowrie’s shoulder. He pulled any shit and he had four boys with guns ready to kick in doors and drop this piece of shit where he stood.
Gowrie watched his eyes and craned his head and looked to each corner, the cameras, and then back at Stagg.
He grinned.
“When you and your family are having bacon and eggs and sitting pretty as you please in that great big old house you got,” Gowrie said, “you might start noticing things on the television. The battle for the Holy Land has begun, and the Beast walks among us. When airplanes begin to disappear and people you known your whole life start to vanish as they stand before you, don’t come down to Hell Creek and be asking me for any help. No, sir.”
“We have a deal?” Stagg asked.
“We’re in a war. Don’t you see it?”
Gowrie grinned a rotten smile and walked away, popping his middle finger over his shoulder as he slammed open the exit door and moved back into the purple night.
Not much past four in the morning, Quinn and Lillie headed south on Highway 45 about twenty miles into Lowndes County. Some kid had called Quinn’s cell phone, telling him that Keith Shackelford was in trouble, and Quinn was pretty sure it was a trap till Lena came on the line. And even now as they drove into the BP filling station, lit up like a beacon in the middle of acres and acres of dead cotton fields, he chambered a round in his .45, and Lillie stepped out with a shotgun, hanging down cool and loose by her leg. He scanned the parking lot, seeing a clerk counting out cigarettes by the register and a trucker taking in some diesel. Down by the air and water pumps, out back by the Dumpsters, he saw a pudgy kid with freckles and Lena sitting on a curb.
The kid got to his feet, giving Lillie cause to