The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [155]
Della screamed again and Bobby gripped his gun tightly. He could see the other driver, clearly drunk, kegs of beer and a generator still loaded into the box, airborne with every rough bounce. With a grin, he backed up, and Bobby prepared for another hit, but the driver redirected the front of his truck toward the mansion’s gate and slammed down on the accelerator. The crowd roared approval, even halting their own mayhem to watch.
The gate stopped the truck with a horrible crunch, but as the Ford backed up, Bobby could see a significant bulge in the black iron bars. The truck slammed into it again. Again. Again. The Whole Foogees cheered each assault with increasing volume.
And then, with a long, low rev, a ramping of rpms, the totaled front end of the other pickup screeched and sprung forward and rammed a final time into the gate, tearing the upper right side of it from its hinge. An exuberant crowd rushed forward, dozens of them crawling over the smoking truck and crippled fence on all fours, like spiders, like insects, a metamorphosed army of giant ants.
62
THE WOMAN HAD BLOOD down her face in long lines—strands of blood, strings of it, tendrils of dark red, and she was crying as she passed Wayne on the sidewalk, not noticing him, not responding to his nonspecific offer of help. The sound of it was still distant, but Wayne could hear the chanting, screaming, yelling, smashing, honking—a riot—growing louder with each step, and he knew he was going to have to walk into it, pass through some hell to find Nada.
He had been walking east for hours, following the torn pages from Denny’s map, past looters and loiterers, empty stores, desperate families waiting out the blackout on stoops, and a few cops, who paid no attention to them or to him. Block after block, he never heard a laugh, never saw a smile. A National Guard truck passed him, going in the other direction, toward the fires. A woman cheered. A man cursed.
Following the sounds of tumult, he finally reached Jameson’s address, a big house at the end of a big park, engulfed in confusion and panic. Hundreds of people were swarming over a smashed black truck and onto the grounds of the estate. Another pickup was nearby, at an angle to the curb, its rear end dented to hell. Closer to the lake, a police car turned the corner, its Mars lights bathing the chaos in impotent strobes of blue. Nobody got out.
Touching the fabric of his khakis, Wayne put a hand on the small knife and gun in his pocket and advanced carefully into the riot. Rocks flew over his head, bouncing off bricks and gutters, and every time one struck a window of the big house, the crowd cheered. Wayne lifted himself onto the truck and pushed himself through the narrow opening where the gate had separated from the fence. People were running, dancing, spinning across the yard, most without purpose. Some had approached the sloping entrance to what looked like an underground garage, blocking the driveway, pounding on the metal door. A dozen people were cooling themselves in a large stone fountain.
In the midst of an angry rampage, they were the first smiling faces Wayne had seen since arriving in Chicago in Denny’s truck.
Flashlight beams cut through the dusk above his head like machetes through thicket. More people were flooding onto the grounds, boosting one another over the intact sections of fence, hurdling and hurtling themselves onto the estate. Wayne was jostled. He put his hand inside his pocket, protecting the gun.
Then, a familiar face. A familiar form. A familiar posture. He was tall and wide and he was walking up to the house, to a door that had been torn from the frame. Wayne had already watched four or five people storm inside, but this guy was different.