29
The two troop commanders from North Georgia held a very short conversation on a Tac frequency, then both squalled to a halt at widely separated county sheriff’s offices, mutually agreed upon on the air. They finished their initial conversation via Ma Bell.
“You believe in ghosts, Carl?” Al asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I got mixed feelings about it.”
“The number of men missing, you counted them up?”
“Yeah. I know what you’re driving at. 666—right? ”
Al Johnson looked at the local deputy, who was looking strangely at him. “You real sure you want to hear this?”
“I think I need to go to the bathroom,” the deputy said.
“Good idea.”
When the deputy had left the room, quietly closing the door behind him, Al said, “Listen to me, Carl. The FBI’s been working on this Brotherhood thing for months. You remember Carson, out of Waycross?”
“Yeah. I heard he went hard underground. Haven’t heard anything out of him in a long time, though.”
“You won’t. He’s dead.”
“What!”
“The lab boys are still working on what they think is his body. But they’re pretty sure it’s Carson. It’s my understanding you were about to be notified of a joint federal/state strike in Edmund County. It’s due to go down next month.”
“But you think that’ll be too late?”
“That’s a big 10–4. How many men did you bring up with you?”
“Two. You?”
“Same.”
“Where in Edmund County were they going to hit?”
“That, partner, is something I don’t know. It pissed me off that I had to learn all I know from the grapevine, so to speak.”
“I do know the feeling. Sometimes I get the impression that certain hotdogs look down on us plain ol’ highway cops.”
“Another big 10–4. Kind of like some of us do local deputies, Carl?”
Carl laughed. “Yeah, I heard that.”
“So where is your missing Kyle supposed to be holed up?”
“At the old Bowers Plantation home. You know it?”
“Yeah. Big ol’ spooky place. I’ll meet you in Palma.”
“See you.”
* * *
The men removed two doors from rooms and nailed those over the splintered door leading to the ground level. The trio of women had warned them all of the empty jugs and other crates down there—crates that looked just like the one Anne’s grandfather had risen out of.
“I wonder who those hands once belonged to?” Karen asked.
“And where are Lige’s eyes?” Louisa asked.
“And what happens next?” Mimi asked.
As if in reply, a crude arrow hummed through an open window and imbedded itself in the soft back of a sofa.
“Didn’t take them long,” Kyle said, pulling the arrow out and looking at it. “Keep all candles out. Don’t expose yourselves to the windows.”
And then Lucas grinned as his brother’s voice cut through the night.
“Let’s talk, Lucas,” Ira yelled. “You’re beat and you know it. But we can make a deal. How about it?”
“This ought to be interesting,” Kyle said.
Lucas walked to a window and stood with his back to the wall, staying out of the open window. “What have you got in mind, Ira?”
“Come outside and we’ll talk. I guarantee you’ll be safe.”
Lucas laughed at that. “I may be a city boy, brother, but I’m not stupid. We’ll talk this way.”
“Come on, Lucas. Don’t you trust your own flesh and blood?”
“Say what you have to say, Ira. And cut the bullshit.”
“You disappoint me, brother. I’m offering you your life.”
“I’m still very much alive, Ira,” Lucas reminded him.
“But as they say, brother, the night is young.”
Lucas whispered to Kyle. “I get the feeling he’s stalling.”
“Yeah. I’m going to inspect the guard posts. He’s up to something. Keep him talking.”
Kyle disappeared into the darkness of the house.
“What kind of deal, Ira?”
“It don’t have to be you, brother. Just a member of the family. It don’t make any difference how far back the relation goes, just a member of the family will do.”
“He’s talking about me,” Anne said. “We’re very distantly related.”
“Yeah, I know,” Lucas said.
“And the Jews,” Lucas recognized his uncle’s voice. “Them, too.”
“That’s all you got to do, brother,” Ira called. “Just send them out and the rest of you leave. Simple as that.”
“I think we’ll all stay together,” Lucas called.
“Then you’re a damn fool, brother!”
At the north end of the house, Kyle waited by a window, a short spear in his hands. He had detected movement in the darkness, and suspected the Brotherhood was slipping up on them; perhaps attempting to get one or two people inside the house.
Kyle had other ideas.
He could hear Lucas still talking to his nutty brother. He could tell Jim/Ira was getting angry, on the edge of losing control. Good. That would be just fine.
A shoe or boot scraped on the veranda. Kyle tensed, big hands gripping the spear. His eyes could just make out the shape of a man standing in front of the open window Kyle had opened.
Kyle jammed the spear hard, the butcher knife sinking deep into human flesh.
The man screamed in pain as the blade ripped into his stomach. Kyle pulled the blade out and jammed it again. This time the blade caught the man in the chest. He howled and coughed and fell off the veranda.
Kyle heard the wang of a bow string releasing. He cut his eyes to Paul, then to a smushing/cracking noise. A man had taken the steel-tipped arrow through the side of his face, just where the jaw connected, the arrow driving all the way through. The man’s mouth made horrible sounds, indecipherable as the arrow prevented the jaw from working. He ran into the night, dropping his club.
The man’s “Uhh, uhh, uhhing,” faded as he ran further from the house.
“They’re in the house!” Jan yelled.
“Stand firm,” Kyle told Paul
“I will,” the man said, a sureness in his voice.
Kyle collided with a man in the hall. He recoiled as he recognized the man.
Highway Patrolman Lancer.
“Die!” Lancer said.
“No way, buddy! ” Kyle said. He jammed stiffened fingers into the man’s throat, hit the man with a short hard left, slammed a right into the man’s belly, and brought his knee up into the man’s face as he doubled over. Lancer’s nose smashed and blood squirted. Kyle kicked him in the face twice as he was going down. Then, for added insurance, Kyle kicked him hard in the throat. Even if the man lived through his crushed throat, he was out of action for the duration.
Kyle heard the throaty roar of the chain saw being jerked to life. With that thing roaring and slicing, Kyle could stop worrying about the front of the house.
“You son of a bitch!” Joe Bowers snarled at Lucas. Using a homemade battering ram, the men of the Brotherhood had splintered the front door.
Lucas lifted the chain saw and cut his uncle’s jaw off.
Teeth, bone, and blood flew in all directions as the spinning teeth of the chain mangled the man’s face.
Turning, Lucas lifted the saw just as a man raised a club to hit him.
The man’s arm, from the elbow down, spun away to spat wetly against a wall. The man howled in pain and disbelief.
Lucas laid the roaring chain saw on top of a man’s head and held it there. The teeth bit through the skull, tried to die out sputtering, and Lucas triggered more gas. The teeth sliced the man in half, angling off and spinning out just above the man’s hip. Human organs, blood, and shards of bone blew about the room.
Coming up with the spinning teeth, Lucas cut into a man’s crotch, struggling to hold the saw at full power as the teeth bit and sawed upward. Screams of pure anguish filled the room. The floor of the den was slick with blood.
What was left of the Brotherhood members who had battered their way into the front of the house ran howling in fright out the front door, tripping and stumbling and falling over each other in their haste to escape the awesome weapon.
Jackie and Johnny and Carla and Ruth and Peter were all over a man, kicking and punching and biting and pounding the man with clubs. He soon lay unconscious on the floor, his face beaten beyond recognition.
Harry lay on the floor, his one good hand locked into the throat of a man with a bulldog’s tenacity. He felt the throat collapse under his fingers. The man fell away, choking to death.
George had not had a fistfight since high school, and he had lost his last fight. But he was winning this one. The man stood and duked it out with two members of the Brotherhood, his fists pumping like a prize fighter. If the men had been expecting an easy win, they were very much surprised. George knocked one down with a hard fist to the temple and grabbed the second man, shoving him across the room. His daughter, Betty, grabbed a spear and held it in young hands, the knife on the end at an angle. Her father propelled the man onto the spear, the blade cutting through his spine.
Tracy dumped a pot of boiling water over a man’s head, then used the empty pot to beat another man’s skull in.
David Siekmann jerked one member of the Brotherhood off his feet and held him like a grizzly bear might, literally crushing his rib cage. As the man’s eyes bugged out and he cried in pain, David said, “You don’t like Jews? Well, I don’t like you, either.” He broke the man’s back and let him slump to the floor
Then it was over. Those of the Brotherhood remaining in the house ran in all directions. Running in fear and shock and surprise.
Lucas looked around the room, now faintly lit by candles. He laid the chain saw down on the floor and flexed his arms, relieving the strain.
The room looked like a slaughterhouse at quitting time.
“We’re winning, folks,” he announced. “We’re winning.”