The Dead Town

“The Riders call Him the Trail Boss in the Sky.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Loreen Rudolph told me. You were at the other end of the kitchen, checking out the contents of all those cookie jars faster than the kids could.”

“Have you ever known anyone with five cookie jars? Anyway, for over two hundred years, Deucalion has been on Victor’s trail, and he won the round in New Orleans. I think he’ll win this round, too, the entire fight. He’s on a divine mission. It’s his destiny to stop Victor and undo everything Victor does, so this is going to turn out okay.”

No snowplows were on the streets. The replicants of the city employees were engaged in other activities, mostly murder.

Carson drove past a park where walkway lampposts dwindled along a serpentine path, the snow like white- hot sparks immediately around each lamp but like pale gray falling ashes in the gloom between them, and past the last post lay a black nothingness that felt as vast as the ominous dark of an ocean on a moonless night.

“The thing is,” she said, “this is Deucalion’s mission. We’re supporting players. We don’t have to live for him to fulfill his destiny.”

“Well,” Michael said, “I’m putting my trust in the Trail Boss.”

Only a few pedestrians were on the sidewalks, heads bent into the endless skeins of snow, and Carson looked them over as she passed them, wondering if they were ordinary men and women or instead might be dark beasts slouching into the world from a subterranean manger where demons were born.

When Carson turned left off Cody onto Russell Street, she saw one of the blue-and-white trucks parked at the curb, engine running, crystallized exhaust smoking from the tailpipe. She coasted past it.

Michael confirmed what she thought she had seen: “No one in the cab. Go around the block.”

She went around to Cody, turned onto Russell again, parked fifty feet behind the truck, and doused the headlights. They watched the vehicle for a few minutes. The pale exhaust feathered up into the night like a procession of spirits answering some celestial trumpet that only they could hear.

“Why would they leave the truck unattended?” she wondered.

“And they wouldn’t herd their silver-beaded zombies into it in such a public place. Alleyways, back entrances … that’s where they’d want to load up.”

“Check it?”

“Let’s check it.”

No businesses remained open in this block. Traffic was even lighter than it had been before they stopped at the Samples house. Russell Street looked as lonely as a trail through some arctic wasteland, so they boldly carried the Urban Snipers.

The night had grown colder, the snowflakes icier.

The cab of the truck was still unoccupied, but two dead men were sprawled in the cargo hold. Not men. Replicants. This was clearly Deucalion’s work.

Closing the cargo-space door, Michael said, “I already have another idea.”

“Your last one didn’t get us killed, so let’s hear this one.”

“Instead of us trying to find a truck to follow until Deucalion attacks it, we switch our gear from the Jeep to this and cruise until our monster buddy comes to kill the crew.”

“Let’s hope he recognizes us before he breaks our necks.”

Chapter 26

The sad piano music followed them through the house and all the way into Officer Bozeman’s two-car garage. The garage contained no cars, but there were a Ford Expedition, a motorcycle, and in front of the cycle a snowmobile on an open trailer, just as Nummy O’Bannon had told Mr. Lyss there would be.

“Peaches, every time I think you’re as useless as a two-legged cat, you come through for us. You’re all right.”

This praise greatly pleased Nummy until he realized they were stealing another vehicle, just one without wheels this time. He was being praised for helping Mr. Lyss to steal.

“Sir, when that there lottery ticket in your wallet wins big, it’ll be good if you pay for the Boze’s snowmobile then.”

“Hell and all, who would I pay? Bozeman is dead in the kitchen. His wife is dead and buried. They never had kids. I’m damn well not going to pay his monster look-alike so it can make the next mortgage payment and just sit on its ass playing morbid piano.” He poked Nummy in the chest with one finger. “You’ve got this fixation about always paying for things.” He poked Nummy again. “It’s not just because you’re a moron. It’s psychological.” He poked Nummy a third time. “It’s neurotic is what it is. Sick. It’s deeply sick. Sick and damn annoying. Nobody pays for everything. I guess I should pay for the air I breathe! For the sounds I hear! For all the things I can see because I’ve got eyes! Who do I write those checks to, hmmmmm? Who?”

Nummy was pleased that Mr. Lyss had begun to understand. He said, “You want to tithe? Grandmama she always tithed to St. John’s over on Bear Claw Lane, so if you want to tithe where she did, then that would be good.”

Mr. Lyss just stared at Nummy while the piano got even sadder. Then he threw his hands in the air as if shouting hallelujah and tossing away all his cares. “I give up. How can I expect you to learn some street smarts when you don’t have any other smarts of any damn kind? Can a donkey waltz? Can a monkey sing opera? Can a cow jump over the freaking moon?”

Nummy didn’t know what to say because he didn’t understand any of those questions. They didn’t make sense to him.

Fortunately, Mr. Lyss didn’t try to shake answers out of Nummy, like he sometimes did. Instead, the old man climbed into the open roofless trailer with the snowmobile and began examining the controls, all the while muttering to himself.

Nummy shuffled around the garage, looking at the tools hanging on the walls, the workbench with all its little drawers, several gasoline-company signs the Boze collected, and the spiderwebs here and there in corners. He didn’t like spiders at all. Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web was okay, she was nice, but she wasn’t a real spider, she was a story spider with a good heart. He hoped it was too cold for spiders now because real ones didn’t have good hearts.

Once, more years back than he could count, he came upon a web where a fly was stuck and a spider was eating it alive. Nummy felt awful for the fly because it didn’t know webs were sticky, it just didn’t know, it made one mistake, and now it was being eaten. The fly was hardly alive. Nummy was too late to save it. He turned away but couldn’t stop feeling awful for the fly. He felt awful all that day, way back when. And later that evening, he realized why he was upset about the fly’s suffering. The little fly was dumb, and the spider was smart, making its sticky web, and so the dumb fly never had a chance. When he figured that out, Nummy told Grandmama about the fly, and he cried while he told her.

Grandmama listened to every word, she never cut him short, and then she said the fly wouldn’t want Nummy to cry for it. She said the fly led a happy life, just as free as any bird, exploring all day and always delighted by what it saw in the world, playing fly games, no need to work because it ate crumbs and other things that were free, and it didn’t have to have a house with all the upkeep that required. Meanwhile, the spider was always spinning webs, scheming, either working or lying in wait, which was just another kind of work. The spider couldn’t fly. It crouched in corners while flies flew. The spider could only watch flying things and envy them. The spider lived in shadows, darkness, but the fly’s life was full of light. Because it only ate flies and such, never a cookie crumb or a dropped bit of a candy bar, the spider never tasted anything sweet. The spider was proud about how smart it was, but when you really thought about the situation, the fly had all the fun. And even though the fly came to a terrible end, it didn’t know that such a thing could happen to it, and therefore it lived without worry. Because the spider knew what it did to flies, it also knew that some other creature might do the same to it, some toad or frog or bird. So the fly lived without worry and free and flying, while the ever-working spider lived in fear and shadows, crouched and wary or scuttling for cover.