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Patchy fog clung to the road, the cruiser slid from
the tarmac and onto the long, muddy drive, dark, no lights, the engine a quiet
purr as she drew the car along in a slow drift.
Three men crowded the front seat, each alike with set
mouths and hard eyes. None expected to see Benny alive, but they'd be happy
enough to avenge his death.
Clouds made an eerie sky, drifting around a dying
moon. Behind them in the east the sky was brightening. In another half an hour
or so there would be plenty of light to see by. To shoot by, if need be. Plenty
of light.
Still a hundred yards from the house, Ron killed the
engine and they got out, checked their weapons and started up the road.
Arms over his face, body drawn up in a protective
fetal position, a naked Benny leaped through the window. The pane shattered, the
frame ripped from decaying yellow pine and it all followed him into the
over-grown and frost ravaged yard. The flash and boom of the light, double
barrel shotgun was only a moment too slow to do more than give Benny a slight
wound. Angry bees. he looked up in a daze, certain bees were swarming around him
by the dawn's early light.
Grampa snarled, 'Chrisake, wake the freek up, you
ogana-brained putz, before the bim makes hamburger of you.'
By instinct he rolled hard, came up in a crouching
run. The shotgun destroyed the sweet peace of the dawn twice more before he made
it to the shelter of the trees and the Uohali-Red Sun.
One kick and Two Swords sent him flying, mud splashing
up in high waves. One spurt caught Two Swords from crotch to Mohawk. He spat out
a mouthful. One eye glittered at the motorcycle and the ornery brat riding it,
the other closed in fury.
"What the frik's the use?" He bared his
teeth and stepped away from the mud. It collapsed in a heap with a soft spat.
The Uohali roared past the cruiser, mud and
grass slashed across the finish. Ron cursed a blue streak. "Just had the
dammed thing washed and waxed, too," he said in a low grumble to Boone and
John.
Naked but for the shotgun against one emaciated
shoulder, Misty's husband trotted out of the house and into the yard. He stepped
on something and yelped. The gun dropped. Cursing Misty, the gun, the weather,
Schertzer retreated to a path that wend its way through the piles of burst
garbage bags and the rusting carcasses of long dead vehicles decorating his
lawn.
Ron put a hand next to his mouth and shouted,
"Hold on, Schertzer."
The man stumbled over the skull of what had once been
his pit bull. As savage in death as it had been in life, the jaws fell open and
a canine tooth jabbed through Schertzer's sole. He gave a shrill scream, twisted
with the agility of a man who had known real, life-threatening danger, and the
windshield of the cruiser disintegrated with the force of a pumpkin ball slug.
Boone swallowed carefully and raised his head above
the dashboard. John peered in through the side window to ascertain the damage
and grinned at the look of shocked horror on Boone's face.
"He shot at us. Daddy, he shot at us!"
"Yeah. No shit, junior." Ron snorted.
"Just had the dammed thing washed. Shit." Muddy water soaked through
the front of his pants and shirt, clung to his face. Schertzer was opening the
breech, dumping the spent shells and trying to load more.
And here they were, laying around like mo-rons, ha-ha.
"Schertzer, drop it." Ron sent a slug
through the corroded aluminum roof of the shack.
The naked man yelped and dived for cover. The shotgun
held at 'arms,' Schertzer darted from the house to the right of the men. He
leaped, stumbled, shrilled a scream that ended in a splash of muddy water.
Ron trotted heavily to the banks of the drainage
ditch, left hand clutching over his pounding heart. Something long and thick and
ugly came out of the waters and stabbed at Schertzer's skinny buttocks. He
shrieked and the gun flew from his hands and sank into the dank and polluted
waters of the ditch.
Clawing and hollering, he lunged at the bank. Chunks
of muddy sod came off in his hands and he plopped back in. The thing that bit
him drifted away on the sluggish current.
Squatting atop the bank, Ron pointed an accusing
finger at Schertzer. "My God, Bull, did you see what happened to him? Did
you see the size of that water moccasin?" He whistled long and low in
admiration of the size of the snake. "Wow. I bet it'd make it on Guinness
Book of World Records. Yes-sir, I do believe it."
Rubbing his wounded bottom, the man in question jerked
his gaze from the banks up to Ron, his eyes wide and shocked. "I'm bit, I'm
bit," he shrieked and tried again to claw his way up the banks.
He fell back and wept, clutching at the bruised and
weeping spot on his rump. "You gotta help me, Ron. Please, Ron." He
whimpered, felt the blood boiling away in his veins, his nerves burn and scorch,
his flesh bloating with the poison.
Ron stood. He pursed his lips and glanced at the men
flanking him.
"Weeeel, now," he drawled, "I do like
to think of myself as being a Christian man, Bruce. Least ways, I do now. I kind
of look on this like it was divine justice. God taking His revenge on you for
murdering that poor boy last year."
Boone looked down at Schertzer, anger and contempt hot
in his eyes. "Where's the body?"
Schertzer cursed them through his tears.
John looked on, horror dawning in his eyes. "Ron,
you can't just-"
"Stay out of it, Son."
"I never did nothing," Schertzer screamed at
John. "You gotta make them help me. Please, Mister, help me. Don't let me
die like this." Bruce fell to his knees and raised his hand, the other
feeling carefully around in the mud for the shotgun. His hand touched something
cold and wriggling and he shot to his feet with a scream and burst into tears of
real fear.
Ron turned on quiet feet and walked away. Boone took
John's arm, dragging him from the spot.
"The orchard. In the orchard you fat
bastard," Schertzer screamed. He collapsed on the bank and burst into
tears. "What's left of the feller's under that Brown Turkey fig down in the
orchard. Oh, God, Deputy, I'm burnin' up. You got to help me."
Ron spun, a pair of handcuffs flashed in the watery
light of a new-born sun.
The cuffs plopped into the soft dirt by his arm.
Shertzer drew back, repelled at the sight of them.
"Put 'em on, Schertzer, and I'll see to it you go
where you need to."
He found a pecan branch and tested it to be certain
the worms hadn't been at it, and with a sigh over the already ruined state of
his clothing, lay on the bank.
With both hands Schertzer latched onto the branch and
clambered out.
"By the bye," Ron said with a laugh,
"It was a stick, not a snake."
Hands doubled into a fist, the man swung at Ron. John
shouted a warning. Ron ducked the clumsy blow and drove his elbow into
Schertzer's bony groin.
Schertzer wailed a long, piercing scream, curled up in
a fetal position on the grass and emptied his stomach of the fried pork rinds
and beer he feasted on for breakfast.
With a grunt of contempt, Boone hauled him up by the
throat and shied him at the cruiser.
"You puke on my back seat," Ron warned him,
"and I promise you, it will go back down the way it came up. Hear?"
Schertzer heard.
"Where's your Misty?"
"H-House." Schertzer shivered. "She
made me do it. I swear, Donnelly. I-I-I'll confess . . . anything you want to
know, man. She done it lots a times." He whimpered. "Meaner 'n cat
shit." His eyes widened to round half dollars and Schertzer yelped,
"NO!" vomit spewed on the seat and floor of the cruiser.
"And I just had the dammed thing cleaned
too." Ron tore off his cap and slammed it in the mud.
Before any of the men could react, something hard and
sharp stabbed into Ron's fleshy sides.
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