Niceville (42 page)

“Please. Call me Albert.”

“If you’ll call me John.”

A polite pause.

“Would you be a drinking man, sir?’

“Well, I do enjoy a bourbon from time to time.”

Albert Lee’s cheek pulled back and his teeth glinted in a shaft of the rising sun.

“I just happen to have a flask of Napoleon with me. I’d be honored if you would join me?”

He took a hand off the wheel, reached up into an overhead compartment and brought down a fat silver flask. Merle got up from his seat, took one next to the driver’s side. Albert Lee took a sip, handed the flask back to Merle, who took one too. The cognac went down like a ribbon of blue silk soaked in liquid fire.

It warmed him to his boot heels.

He handed the flask back.

“That, Albert, is a very fine cognac.”

“I do admire my liquor, although I would never drink such on a normal driving day. But today does have sort of a different feel to it, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” said Merle.

They shared the flask back and forth for a while in friendly silence. Merle offered the man a cigarette, which he accepted, twirling it in his arthritic hands, his palms shining in the golden light, his eyes bright with humor and intelligence.

“A filter tip. We don’t see much of those here in the Belfair Range.
Down in Niceville, maybe, but not up here. Used to buy them at the Belfair Pike General Store and Saddlery, put them on the ticket, but they stopped giving out credit last year, on account of the economy.”

Merle was privately thinking that they probably stopped giving credit at the Belfair Pike General Store and Saddlery because Charlie Danziger had burned the place to the ground late Friday afternoon. However, in keeping with his
don’t rock the boat
policy and his growing suspicion that Albert Lee, although amiable, was another one of those slightly crazed Belfair Range locals, he declined to point this out.

Instead he lit up Albert’s cigarette, and then one of his own, and they both watched the countryside roll towards them, a morning mist rising up out of the fields and all the trees a hazy blue, the dim black shapes of cattle in the golden fields of canola moving in slow motion through a soft, shimmering light.

They both saw the silvery spire of a church as the sun glinted off it, a needle-sharp nick in the far horizon, and Albert, pointing with the stub of his cigarette, told Merle that was the steeple of Saint Margaret’s Church in Sallytown.

At the name, Merle’s belly tightened and he sat back, watching the church spire as if it were the tip of a knife.

Albert sensed the change.

“Don’t want to push myself in on a private affair, but could you use some help, when we get to Sallytown?”

“What sort of help?”

“Well, pretty much everybody knows you going up there to call out Mr. Abel Teague.”

“They do?” said Merle, surprised but not shocked. It would be damn unnatural if the word hadn’t gotten around.

“Yes, they do,” said Albert Lee, looking over his shoulder at him. “And many think it’s been a time coming, too. Mrs. Ruelle knows, I suspect.”

“Yes. She does.”

“I thought she looked long at you, like she was afraid she might not see you again. Were you going to follow the Irish rules?”

“He had his chance.”

A silence.

“The lady said there might be two others coming along, relatives of
hers who owed the Ruelles a debt, a Mr. Haggard and a Mr. Walker, but you are here alone, so I guess there won’t be what we used to call seconds, and anyway, Mr. Teague, he has been asked to stand before, and refused.”

“So I hear.”

They were rolling in past the edge of town, a tiny cluster of Victorian houses, still in the shadows, neat redbrick homes with narrow windows, white-painted porches, sheltering under tree-shaded avenues. They bumped and chugged along the single main street, all the stores shuttered and closed at this early hour. Merle’s heart was racing and he was making an effort to slow it down.

“The hospital is set apart from town, over on Eufaula Lane, inside an old park there, about two block up and we take a right. You never said if you wanted some help, John? I always keep something in the bus against bad men who might get on.”

He leaned to his left, reached down beside his seat, and pulled out a medium-framed revolver, stainless-steel, angular, brute-ugly but so clean it shimmered in the light.

“It’s a Forehand and Wadsworth I had from my daddy who went to the South African War. It fires a .38-caliber bullet. Not good for long-range work, but it will do pretty good for in close. I would take it as a personal favor if you were to allow me to walk along with you.”

He wheeled the bus around the corner and pulled it to a stop about a hundred feet down from the gates of a single-story flat-roofed structure made of pale yellow brick, looking very much like a blockhouse instead of a palliative care center.

The neighborhood around it was shady and old-fashioned, a few warm yellow lights showing in the windows here and there, porch lamps glimmering in the early-morning light. A dog started to bark in the distance, and from somewhere else came the sound of music. Swifts and swallows and mourning doves were calling in the leafy canopy over the street.

The palliative care center was fenced off by wrought-iron spikes eight feet tall, with a single open gate in front of the entrance. The clinic sat in the middle of a large green park studded with willows and live oaks draped in shaggy tendrils of moss, still shrouded in a heavy morning mist. The clinic had few windows, some of which were showing a cool institutional light. They could see only one set of doors, two
broad wooden slabs under a wide stone archway, in front of a circular drive.

There was a small metal sign, blue, with gilt letters, mounted on the fence near the open gate.

GATES OF GILEAD
PALLIATIVE CARE CENTER
PRIVATE NO VISITORS

Two white men in blue shirts and black trousers were sitting under the shelter of the archway, tilting back in wooden chairs, smoking cigarettes, and by the set of their heads, watching the Blue Bird as it sat there, idling, its engine wheezing and chuffing.

“I think we are expected,” said Albert, looking at the men under the arch. “What would you like to do, John?”

Merle stood up, reached for the flask on the dashboard, sipped at it, handed it to Albert Lee.

“I accept your offer of walking along with me, if you still feel like it?”

This brought a huge smile.

“Thank you. I could use some excitement.”

He took a sip, twisted the cap on tight, put it away in the compartment, and shut off the bus. He took the keys out and put them in the compartment beside the flask.

“Best to leave the keys here, in case one of us is coming back alone.”

He pushed himself up with a groan, looked at the revolver in his hand, checked to see that he had all six chambers loaded, and then looked at Merle, his eyes calm and clear, watching Merle’s hands as he slid out the magazine, checked the chamber and the magazine, loaded the magazine back in, and racked the slide, a satisfying metallic clank. They shook hands and Merle stepped down out of the bus. The two men in shirtsleeves were on their feet now, and staring hard at them.

And then something
happened
, almost as soon as his boots hit the sidewalk. Merle was standing there, fighting his adrenaline, taking in the street, the low brick building, the sleepy residential neighborhood, when, in some indefinable but powerful way, the entire street
changed
.

The comfortable old houses were engulfed in a thickening mist, their porch lights dwindling into yellow sparks and then winking out, the warm yellow windows going black. They were alone in a dense fog with only the Gates of Gilead showing dimly through the haze, a low barrow-like bulk.

The milky light of the early morning turned yellowish and sickly. The scent of spring earth and cut grass and cool morning air changed into a brackish reek, sulfur and ammonia and the stink of dead things half-buried.

The low brick building seemed to dig itself deeper into the green lawn surrounding it, and grow darker, more sealed, more remote from the normal world, like an animal pulling back into a cave. The live oaks sheltering it grew blacker, larger, and their branches creaked like old bones, their leaves rustling as if they were suddenly alive.

A palpable miasma of resentment, of menace, seemed to breathe in the air above them and slip snakelike around their bodies as they stood there in silence. The cool fluorescent light at the windows was now gone, the window slits black and closed.

The calling of birds in the trees stopped abruptly, the dog was no longer barking, there was no distant music on the wind. The morning breeze withered away into a low whispering murmur that seemed to come up from the earth under their boots.

Wherever they’d been a moment ago, they weren’t in that place anymore. Merle walked a way along the lane and turned as Albert came up and stood beside him.

“Did we just see that?”

“We saw it,” said Merle, in a tight voice, swallowing his fear. “Everything changed.”

“I know. But how?”

Merle swallowed again.

“I don’t know.”

Two man-shaped figures with shotguns were walking towards them out of the mist, tall black shadows in the fog.

“More of them,” said Albert Lee. “Maybe we should get back on the bus. This is all wrong.”

“It is,” said Merle. “But we have to finish it anyway. I won’t blame you if you want to get back inside. Just don’t pull away until it’s settled.”

Albert Lee shook his head.

“If you’re staying, I’m staying. Do we have a plan?”

“Not get shot.”

Albert straightened his back, adjusted his jacket, blew out a breath, flashed a wry smile.

“Good plan.”

They walked slowly up the street, lowering their heads as they passed under a hanging willow, keeping a good distance apart, Merle with the Colt in his right hand, down at his side, Albert with his revolver in his left hand, held at an angle. They were looking at four men at least, the two in the street in front of them, and the two waiting by the wooden doors of the hospital.

One of the shirtsleeved men turned around, opened the wooden doors and went inside, leaving the doors open. The other man, older, with a salt-and-pepper mustache and the look of a small-town sheriff, stepped out through the gate when they were twenty feet away, walked out into the middle of the road, blocking the lane, stepping a few feet in front of the other two men. They could see he had a double-barreled 12-gauge hanging down by his right side, held in one rough hand.

“State your business.”

“We’re here to see Abel Teague,” said Merle, still moving forward. He could feel Albert stepping out to his left. Depending on the choke and the shell, a 12-gauge at twenty feet had a cone of fire three feet wide.

The man frowned at them.

“He’s not seeing your kind. He never sees your kind. You read the sign?”

“Our kind?” said Merle. “What’s
our kind
?”

The man’s eyes flicked from Merle to Albert and back to Merle.

“You know what you are.”

“What are we?”

His face grew less human.

“Bounty men. You’re from her.”

“And who are you from?”

Now he looked confused by the question.

“We’re with him.”

“Abel Teague?”

“Yes. We’re with Mr. Teague.”

“And what are
you
?”

The man’s eyes grew remote, and a cold light grew there.

“We are here. We live in this place. We don’t go anywhere else. There isn’t anywhere else. We live in this place and we take care of Mr. Teague. We do his work.”

Albert spoke, in a shaky voice.

“John, I think we need to stop talking to this man.”

The man turned to watch as Albert spoke, his features seeming to shift and shimmer as he did so.

There was a long silence.

“Albert, you still with me?”

“Yes. I am.”

Merle took another step forward, set himself.

“We’re here to see Abel Teague,” he said, his anger welling up. “Step out of the way and let us go by.”

The man stared at Merle for another second, his eyes still changing, and then he lifted the shotgun, the muzzle swinging around, and Merle shot him in the middle of the forehead.

The slug took most of the top of the man’s head off. The sound slammed around in the misty parkland and a huge flock of birds—crows—rose up in a faint cloud in the mist and flew in circles, shrieking and calling.

The man went down onto his knees, the shotgun clattering away, and then he pitched forward, landing on his face with a meaty crunch.

He stayed there.

Albert had his pistol up and the sharp crack of its muzzle blast rang in Merle’s right ear.

One of the men behind the fallen man had a large black hole appear in his face, and he tumbled back and fell. The other man had his weapon raised—there was a deafening crack and a billow of blue fire exploded from the muzzle.

Merle felt hot lead pellets plucking at his neck and his left ear as the shot cloud flew past him. He stood straight up as the figure racked another shell into the chamber and shot the man four times in the head. The skull exploded outwards, black blood and bone chips flying
away in a ragged cloud, but the man stayed on his feet for another half second, still fumbling at the shotgun.

Albert stepped in and fired two rounds into the man’s chest and he finally went down. Albert leaned in, tugged the shotgun free, tossed it into the fogbank, where it struck with a muffled clatter.

He looked down at the bodies, then at Merle.

“Well, ghost or man, looks like we can kill them.”

They reloaded, kept walking, stepped past the three dead men, reached the open gate and turned into the walkway. A jet of blue flame erupted from the dark inside the open doors.

Merle felt a stinging lash of fire across the right side of his face. He heard Albert’s .38 snapping at his right shoulder.

Someone inside the doorway fell forward into the light, collapsed onto the walk, still moving, his thick arms trapped under his chest. Merle put a round into the back of the man’s skull, the explosion ringing up and down the darkened hallway.