'Barry?'
He opened his eyes groggily.
'Barry?'
There was a hint of panic, a touch of fear, in Maureen's voice that drove away the sleepiness and caused him to sit up instantly, wide awake. The sun was streaming through a part in the curtains, and when he looked at the clock, he saw that it was after nine. He'd been asleep nearly twelve hours.
He glanced over to see Maureen standing by the side of the bed, holding up a copy of the Carbon Weekly Standard. Her hands were shaking, and the rustle of the newspaper sounded strangely amplified in the silent house.
He was filled with a sense of dread, and he reached out and took the paper from her, reading the banner headline:
CHILD POISONED, BONITA VISTA BLAMED
'It says there's going to be a rally tonight. The people of Corban , the parents of Corban , are planning to meet outside the gates of Bonita Vista at eight to protest the poisonings.'
Barry read through the article. The rally was being organized by Claude Richards, the father of Weston, and it was his goal to intimidate the guilty parties within Bonita Vista--the people who had made the decision to lay out the poison and the people who had actually done the deed--into giving themselves up.
He wanted to put pressure on the homeowners' association and all of the residents, a tactic that each of the individuals quoted in the article as well as the newspaper itself seemed to support wholeheartedly.
Surprisingly, there was no quote from the sheriff, and Barry wondered where Hitman would stand on this, whose side he would take. No matter how great his loyalty to Bonita Vista, no matter how much he was being paid off, there was no way he could turn a blind eye to a killing. Not of a child. Not in a small town. Not if he wanted to keep his job.
'I don't like the sound of this 'rally,'' he said, handing back the paper.
'Me either. I see a bunch of drunk bubbas bringing their shotguns and talking themselves into mob violence.'
'There's nothing scarier than groupthink,' Barry agreed.
'So what should we do?'
'What can we do?'
Maureen sat down on the bed next to him. 'I thought we could take a trip. There's probably more national parks within driving distance of this place than anywhere else in the country, and we haven't been to any of them. Why don't we drive out, find someplace to stay in Cedar City, and go to Bryce or Zion or Cedar Breaks.'
'You've really been thinking about this.'
'I've been looking through our Triple A book,' she admitted. She took his hand. 'I don't want to be here tonight. I have a bad feeling about it.'
He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss.
'I'm serious. There's the potential for danger here.'
'From which side?'
'I don't know. It doesn't matter. I just don't want to be here when it happens.'
Barry sighed. 'I don't think anything will happen--'
'How can you say that!'
'We have a gate with an armed guard. And even Hitman can't ignore something like this. The sheriff'll make sure things don't get out of hand.'
Maureen laughed shortly. 'Right.'
He was about to argue that their home was far enough up the hill that even if the Corban protesters got through the gate and went on some kind of rampage, the mob would probably be stopped or spent by the time they reached their place Rampage --but he stopped himself. What the hell was he doing? What was he thinking? After everything he'd seen, after everything he knew or suspected, was he honestly arguing for the probability of normalcy reasserting itself? This wasn't a normal situation, this wasn't a normal place. Normal logic did not apply. Shit, if he didn't know better, he'd think that he'd been influenced or corrupted, bombarded with association mind rays or magical spells to make him more complacent and compliant and agreeable to the party line.
'You're right,' Barry admitted.
'So we'll go?'
'Yeah,' he said. 'After breakfast, after I take a shower. Just pack enough for overnight, though. We're coming back tomorrow.'
'To survey the damage?'
'Hopefully not.'
She kissed him. 'You're a good man, Charlie Brown.' She stood up.
'Go take your shower.'
'Want to join me?'
'Tonight,' she promised.
Barry had finished his shower and was up in the kitchen pouring himself some coffee when he heard a loud knock at the front door. Maureen, already downstairs, answered it and a moment later called his name.
He moved around the corner and looked over the railing to see Mike enter the living room, newspaper in hand. 'Hey!' Barry called, walking downstairs. 'How's it going?'
Mike held up a copy of the Standard. 'I assume you saw this?'
Barry nodded.
'They're calling it a 'rally,'' Mike said angrily, 'trying to make it sound like some sort of happy high school thing. It's a planned assault is what it is, an attack on us. They want to get enough people together so that they can storm the gates and ... I don't know what.'
'That's why we're leaving,' Barry said. 'Mo wants us to spend the night in Cedar City just in case things get too hairy.'
'I don't...' Mike shook his head, confused. 'What are you talking about?'
'I have a bad feeling about this,' Maureen said. 'I don't claim to be psychic or anything, but I just think we need to get out of here.
Something's wrong. Something's going to happen.'
'Yeah, something's going to happen. They're going to vandalize our property. You'll come back to smashed windows and shot-up car tires and ... who knows what all.'
'Exactly. That's why we don't want to be here when it happens.' Mike turned toward Barry. 'What's the matter with you?' he asked. 'This is your home. This is your property. You can't tell me you wouldn't stay and fight a fire to save your house. Hell, we'd all be up on our roofs with hoses, wetting down everything in sight.'
Barry nodded reluctantly.
'Same thing here. I know the association is fucked up, but we have no choice but to back them on this. Besides, this is what the association is supposed to be doing. Protecting Bonita Vista, standing up for the residents.'
'There wouldn't even be this rally if the association hadn't...' He looked into Mike's eyes. 'If those kids hadn't been poisoned.'
'It's a deal with the devil,' Mike admitted. 'But we have no choice.
Whether we like it or not, those Corbanites see this as an us-versus-them situation. And we're 'them.''
Barry tried to smile. ''What do you think they'll do? Burn down our houses?'
'Vigilante justice is not exactly unheard of in this part of the world, and, yes, that is something I think they might try to do.'
'Me, too,' Maureen said. 'That's why I don't want to be here. You can't fight a mob, you can't reason with a horde of angry stirred-up people, particularly ones whose children have been killed.'
'I understand your feelings,' Mike said to her. He turned to Barry.
'But why are you going? Because you fear for your personal safety?
That's okay if it is; that's a legitimate reason. But if you're doing this to get back at the association, because you think it'll somehow hurt them, then you're wrong. You read that article. They blame us, all of us, not just the
