“Henry! Henry ; it’s me , Bill Eppers”
Eppers had his Glock 22 drawn as he walked up the highway. All the businesses were closed for Christmas. The parking lots emptied. He found a couple of stray vehicles and checked their doors, shined his Maglite through the windows, looking for keys dangling in the ignition. He wanted to get lost. But he didn’t want to do it on foot. He didn’t want people seeing him, either. Walking like some dipshit who missed the bus. He didn’t know exactly when it happened, but the freaks had come to town. The Fuel ’N Snacks blowup might’ve been the signal for it, like a starter’s pistol going off. Because the highway was filling up fast with folks he’d never seen before. And they were armed and showing no mercy. He watched one of them take a machete to Pauline Hildebrand while she was complaining about the smoke drifting across her porch. Chopped her down— Swack! Swack !—standing there in her housecoat and pink hair rollers. Eppers thought about shooting him, but the chopper had friends. More friends than Eppers had at the moment. And he wasn’t about to die for the shitty little salary the city paid him. Yet a man has his pride. Between dying and hiding there was running, and that was what he planned to do.
He met Henry coming out of the Ace Hardware.
“Henry!” he shouted again.
This time Henry looked at him.
Eppers drew up alongside him, dipping the Glock out of sight. Henry had his arms full, carrying a Poulan Pro gas chain saw and a ten-pound sledgehammer. Eppers glanced backward into the unlit Ace store, spotted the kicked-in entrance, the puddle of glass topping the snow. He’d never pegged Henry Genz for a looter, but you never knew what people were capable of under stress. He kept the Glock behind him, resting his finger on the trigger.
“What’s going on, Henry?”
“I don’t know.”
They walked into the open lot. Eppers swept his eyes back and forth, searching for Henry’s pickup truck, and marking the killers as they roamed the highway. They were oblivious to them for now. But he knew that might change.
He noticed Henry’s torn filthy raincoat. His face looked raw and forlorn. Blood was dribbling from his scalp, around his ear, down his neck into his collar. He didn’t seem to care. The sight of it clicked in Eppers’s brain.
The craziness didn’t start at the Fuel ’N Snacks.
It started at Henry’s, at the Totem this morning, with the dead dog and the fire and the eye painted in blood.
Henry was in a state of shock.
“Are you injured or something?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Okay, well, let’s find your ride and I’ll take you to the hospital.”
“I can’t go to the hospital. I have things to do.”
“Where’d you park?”
Henry stopped walking.
Snowflakes fell on their shoulders. The two men squinted in smoky wind.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Eppers said. “Where’s your damn truck?”
A thin grin creased Henry’s lips.
“I parked it at the Fuel ’N Snacks.”
“At the Fuel ’N Snacks—”
Eppers took a giant step back, swung the Glock up, and leveled it at Henry’s right eye.
“Drop that shit! Do it now!”
Henry kept smiling.
He released the chain saw and hammer; his jacket billowed, and Eppers saw the shotgun hanging there in his armpit, its cut- down butt wrapped in blue grip tape like a kid’s hockey stick.
“Son of a bitch,” Eppers said quietly.
Henry raised his arms higher.
Eppers wanted to cap him. But he couldn’t. He didn’t want to draw the attention of citizens who might be watching from their homes. More importantly, the freaks on the road might zero in on him. He needed a ride.
“I’ll dump your brains on the sidewalk. You got that, asshole?”
“Got it,” Henry said.
“Slowly, with your left hand, lay the shotgun on the ground.”
Henry reached under his arm. He grasped the sawed-off and pulled until the cord holding it snapped. He squatted. His kneecaps popped loudly.
“You ran away,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s why you didn’t die.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“I know what it’s like to be a coward. The shame—”
“Put your weapon on the ice.”
“Never passes.”
Henry lowered the shotgun to the ground. His left hand stayed on it. He stared at Eppers. His right hand descended.
“Don’t move!”
“I’m going to give you my keys.”
His right hand disappeared in the pocket of the raincoat. Keys jingled.
“You can go now,” Henry said.
Eppers watched the pocketed hand.
Henry pulled the trigger on the shotgun. The recoil sent the
sawed-off skittering over the ice. Buckshot sprayed Eppers’s shins and feet. He fell. He held on to the Glock though. Henry, still squatting, snatched the sledgehammer and rose up. Eppers fired, but Henry wasn’t standing for long. He was coming down again. The bullet missed. The ten-pound sledgehammer mashed Eppers’s wrist flat.
Eppers screamed.
Henry picked the Glock off the ice. He tucked it into his waistband.
Eppers tried to crawl away on his back. But his legs burned. His feet burned. Snow slid over his belt and crammed into his ass crack. His right hand dragged along next to him like a dead dog on a leash. He was crying. Snow landed in his mouth.
A boot pinned his shirttail.
“You’re going to dump my brains on the sidewalk,” Henry said.
Eppers thrashed his head from side to side. He saw snow, fire, shadows crisscrossing the highway. He saw a red Camaro with a missing wheel rolling to a stop in front of a motel. He didn’t want to see the sledgehammer rising. He closed his eyes and saw black. He smelled smoke and gasoline.
There was a flash.
And then the black got bigger and sucked him down.