The Carrion Birds (24 page)

R
ay
saw the red glow of the oil fire where it lay flat and orange as an eclipse
along the horizon, all of it dark in the night and the thin band of light where
the well burned. Ray drove his father’s truck, the harsh smell of oil all over
his hands and the deep carbon scent of fire floating around in the cab.

He slowed as one of the county cruisers flew by,
heading south, the bubble lights going around and the silent pull of the wind as
the car went by in a wash of air. Ahead the dim aura of light showed above
Coronado.

Any hope for his future now gone with the death of
his father and the rejection he’d felt from Billy. Ray didn’t know the boy like
he’d thought he would after all these years. What had he expected? What had he
thought the boy would do? Had he thought Billy would just run into his arms like
in some happy movie? Well, that just wasn’t how it was, or ever would be. Not
for Ray.

On the seat next to him was a double-barreled
shotgun he’d taken from his father’s house, the metal gleaming from the years
Gus had spent caring for the thing, disassembling it and wiping at it with a rag
he kept especially for that purpose. Ray had found the shotgun in the hallway
closet, where it had always been.

Farther back he found the thin, aged cardboard
boxes. Three of them there, each one containing a different shell, number-eight
shot for quail, number-six for duck, and number-two for mule deer or antelope.
He pulled a selection of shells from each of the boxes, feeding them down into
his pockets as he went.

“Are you about to do something stupid?” he said.
Speaking to himself as he went on down the road, remembering a night years ago
when Marianne had asked him the same question. The oil gone from the land and
Memo still new to their lives. Ray just kneeling there at the closet with his
hands held down on the Ruger and the clip slid out far enough that he could see
how many bullets were inside.

A month later she’d be dead and he’d go on to do a
hundred other things he couldn’t take back and that he’d always regret. His
father was one of them now and he looked over at the shotgun and thought how his
life had gone wrong all those years before and there was no stopping it now.

On his hip he felt the pager giving off a steady
vibration. He pulled it up and looked at the number again. He was sure Memo must
have heard by now about the Sullivan house, and maybe even about Sanchez, either
on the news or listening in over the police scanner. Ray didn’t care. Memo’s
business wasn’t Ray’s anymore, not in the way it used to be, and those drugs
could just rot under the desert soil for all it mattered to Ray.

In his rearview he saw the glimmer of red and blue
as the cruiser disappeared into the night behind him. He put down the window and
threw the pager out. He didn’t want anything to do with it now and he could feel
a storm brewing inside him he could do little to quiet. No plan at all for his
future except for the road ahead and where it led.

K
elly
felt the wind shift. The heat moving over onto them till the air boiled against
their skin, and Hastings raised a hand and started to back slow toward the
cruiser. The black smoke overhead disappeared into the night, and the rush of
the fire coming off the wells spilled up into the sky as if out of a jet
engine.

“Christ,” Hastings said, his hand held up toward
the flames, shielding his face from the heat.

Kelly backed away, watching how the fire billowed
up. Flames rising thirty feet into the air and snapping at the black clouds of
oil being burned, the skeleton of the well now only a thin cage of metal around
it all, pulsing red with heat where it came exposed and naked from the fire.

None of it felt right to her and she backed away
toward the cruiser with the rush of the flames heard in her ears like a high
wind cutting across a mountain ridge. Where were the protesters, the oil workers
with their signs and picket lines? The whole landscape completely empty and only
her and Hastings backing away as the heat rolled over on top of them. The
volunteer firefighters not there as she’d hoped they would be. Probably still
pulling their boots on.

Pierce had gotten her on the radio as soon as she’d
come out of the bar, his voice breathless as he told her about the calls coming
in from all over the valley. The tower of black smoke climbing dark into the
last pale strands of sun over the Tate Bulger well to the southeast.

The heat on them and Kelly making it back to the
cruiser first, her fist jamming the transmission into reverse as Hastings took
his seat. They spun back along the access road, the well spitting flame before
them and the sand beneath their tires kicked up through their headlights as
Kelly tried to keep them out of the heat.

Nothing was right about any of it and when she got
Pierce on the radio, she asked for his position.

“Just where you told me to be,” came the
response.

“You’re not too close?”

“I’m a block up from the bar, I can see the front
door and I can see if anyone leaves.”

“Good,” Kelly said. “Stay there, we’ll be back as
soon as we can.”

Tollville and Tom Herrera waiting for her in her
office, listening in the whole while. A fear inside her, and a feeling of
helplessness about the things she wanted to protect but could not. Several miles
to the north she saw the blaze of the fire engine’s lights traveling down the
highway to meet them.

“There’s no way they’ll be able to stop this thing,
is there?” Hastings said.

“No,” Kelly said. “This isn’t the type of thing you
can stop. It’ll burn itself out soon enough. Until then it’s just a matter of
letting it go.”

T
hrough the department windows, Tom heard a distant sound he couldn’t
quite figure. Something like a wrecking ball tearing through cement and rebar,
metal on stone. Stepping close to the window, he stared out into the night, his
reflection looking back at him out of the pane. The echo hanging in the air for
a moment before all went silent again. He turned from the window, watching as
his ghost turned away as well.

Upstairs he knew Claire was probably working. She’d
be putting in a full day, trying to make up for what she’d missed. He thought
about her now and what she’d offered, to simply drive back with him to his
place, to leave all this behind. He’d had his chance to say something to
Tollville, to reveal everything, the bodies adding up and the origins of it all.
Only he hadn’t wanted to in that moment, knew now that perhaps there would never
be a perfect time. His own cousin, Ray, at the heart of it all.

In the office Tom saw Tollville watching him where
he stood next to the windows. Tollville waited, his head half turned, listening
for anything more. Neither of them with any idea what had happened until Deputy
Pierce’s voice sprang up on the radio, fluttering between excitement and fear,
followed closely by the echo of gunfire reverberating up the street.

A
ll
sense of control had left Ray. With a penny he’d taken the plates from the truck
and then scraped off the VIN, throwing the plates into a nearby Dumpster with
all of the paperwork from the glove. He’d tied the wheel of his father’s truck
straight with his belt, securing it all down, then depressed the accelerator
with a spare piece of timber he’d found in the bed. And then he’d just let the
truck go.

The big truck, weighing a half ton or more, sped
out of the side street, across the intersection, and rammed Dario’s bar
headfirst, pitching forward on its front axle as if it were a boat punching
through the first big swell of surf, breaking through the spray. Glass and brick
and metal, all of it suspended for a moment in the air. The back axle of the
truck hanging for a moment before it rocked to the ground in a crush of metal.
The deadening sound lingering, tactile and solid as he brought the shotgun
around, his pace quickening as he crossed Main.

He came on toward the bar, two number-six shells in
the belly of the gun and the Ruger loose in his waistband. The front of the bar
now just a pile of rubble. The hood of the truck sitting about five feet inside
the barroom with the front tires pushed over what remained of the outer wall.
Brick dust everywhere and the sound of men coughing.

Ray climbed up over the rubble and entered the bar.
The spark of an overhead electrical fixture cast a muted light everywhere about
the place. Like lightning through a sandstorm. Dario’s men now regaining their
feet with nothing but the fine claylike brick dust all around them in the
air.

Ray opened up with the barrel of the shotgun and
took three men down in one blast, the birdshot playing heavy into all of them.
Each number-six shell carrying with it a little over two hundred lead BBs. The
men falling back against the wall, or landing full on the floor, guns still in
hands. Blood beginning to show on their faces and clothes from every little ball
that had found skin.

Ray pulled the trigger again. Firing into the
clouded room. Firing after the sound of men breathing. The echo of the gun
swallowing anything that remained.

When Ray found cover near the broken remnants of
the wood bar, they were firing at him out of the settling dust. Splintering up
the bar as the bullets dug in. It was impossible to see anything through the
brick smoke and the men went on firing blindly while Ray thought about what he
needed to do.

He broke the shotgun open and fingered out the two
shells, steaming and warm in his hand. He let them fall to the ground. With the
Ruger he fired shots into the corners of the room until the magazine was spent
and there was just the dull click of the hammer hitting against the empty
chamber. The remaining guns opened up on him immediately. With the Ruger left
behind him, he moved down around the back of the bar with the shotgun in both
hands, keeping low.

Deep in his pocket he found two of the double-aught
shells and played them into the barrel. Each one big enough to take down a mule
deer.

He tried to steady himself there at the end of the
bar with the taste of gun smoke bitter in his mouth and the chalk-dry smell of
the brick dust billowing in through his nostrils. Gunfire was still coming from
somewhere in front of him. He marked the shooters and rose up and pulled the
trigger, releasing both barrels. Ray heard the solid thump of the buck finding
human contact. A man called out and then slowly whimpered to a stop.

I
n the
back room of the bar Dario took out the .45 he kept in the drawer of his desk.
The sound of gunfire coming in under the door as steady as smoke filling a room
in a fire, creeping upward into the room until every bit could be felt crawling
down his throat. He stood from the desk, watching the door. Every burst of
gunfire rattling at the wood as the walls pulsed inward with every blast.

A crazed smile on his face, half-desperate in its
making, thin and sharp as the first crease of skin beneath a knife blade. A
shroud thrown over the air like death’s own cloak come down on him. He crossed
the room now, watching the door and anticipating every new shot before it came.
His expectant gaze caught between where he wanted to be and where he knew he
needed to be in the next minute or so. The steady kick of the shotgun outside
his door and the jitter it sent rolling through his nerves like some sort of
electric shock.

Not a single window in the room, and the door
leading out into the main bar his only option. He took the vest from the file
cabinet in the corner and strapped it to his chest beneath his suit jacket.
Gunfire dying back till there was only the eeriness of the silence that
followed.

T
here
was a long pause over the radio as Kelly and Hastings sat in the cruiser, the
volume all the way up, and the rush of flame somewhere beyond them in the
darkness. No sound but the hiss of the radio, speckled all over with static and
the crush of their own breathing.

“Pierce,” Kelly said, calling his name several more
times, and then the sound of gunfire once more and the silence that
followed.

“He’s so fucking scared he’s got his hand held down
on the button and he’s not letting up,” Hastings said.

Kelly swore. She turned the ignition over and
slammed the transmission down into reverse. The headlights in front of them
still focused on the flames that licked out of the black smoke, popping as they
snapped upright and then fell away.

She called Pierce’s name once more before giving
the car gas. The wheels spinning in the dust and the cruiser rocketing back over
the dirt road leading to the highway.

The town fire truck swerving out of their way as
they came off the road, their tires dragging a cloud of dust onto the
asphalt.

T
here
was no going back, and Ray went from body to body, looking for any sign of life.
Eight men total in the room, Ray turned each of them over as he came to them,
searching for Dario. Two of the eight were still alive, one with his arm pinned
beneath the truck tire, bone showing and the blood welling from an artery.
Another winged by buckshot on his left side. The shallow breathing of a
punctured lung, with a smear of blood peppered on his lips as he tried to suck
more air than he had the strength to take. Neither of them able to form words
when Ray knelt and asked them about Dario, the blood loss already showing in the
paleness of their skin and the blue-tinged curves of their lips.

Ray shot both at close range. The sound of those
two solitary shots hanging there in the air for a long time as he waited for the
dust to clear. Sure at any moment he would hear the sound of sirens.

He dug out the steaming shells and loaded two more.
Turning, he saw the door to the office. The door locked when he reached out a
hand to try the knob.