This stopped him. Then he said, “Why is it that people like you got food, and I don’t have any?”
“I’ve got some hidden in the forest.”
Buzz nodded, then grinned, even as tears thickened further in his eyes. “We knew you had it.” He seemed to dwell on something for a few moments. He came out of his reverie with a businesslike squaring of his shoulders. “We might have a deal, Glenda. Get Maynard’s flashlight. It’s attached to his belt.”
She knelt beside the dead sheriff and unclipped his police flashlight. Her hands shook so badly she could hardly manage the small task. She wondered if Jake was dead somewhere in the woods.
“You’ve got to promise that you won’t kill us if I give you food.”
“I promise.” He flicked his head toward the woods and said, “Move.”
She spoke to Hanna. “Honey, it’s going to be all right. We’ll just do what Buzz says and this will all be over.”
“You listen to your mama, sweetheart. Uncle Buzz ain’t going to hurt you.” Buzz’s slightly licentious tone reminded Glenda of how Buzz had come on to Hanna at Marblehill when she was twelve years old.
She walked ahead of them into the forest, hating to turn her back on the whole situation, cursing herself for being so stupid. She feared that at any moment she would hear a gunshot behind her, and that would be it; Hanna’s short life would be over. She prayed to God, but she couldn’t sense Him right now.
They walked to the end of the yard out past the shed. As she passed the shed and was heading toward the dead sycamores, she heard a noise—the slide of a foot along the dead grass behind the shed, the soft whisper of shoulders shifting inside a T-shirt—and, turning, saw Jake emerge from the shadows, Leigh’s pistol held up straight in both hands, just like she had taught him, his face so scared in the moonlight that his pale blue eyes bulged.
“You let my sister go or I’ll blow your head off, Buzz.”
Her first instinct was to curse him for being such a fool, and for now endangering his own life; but when Buzz jerked to a stop and flicked his head a fraction to the left, and his eyes narrowed with sudden tension, and fresh sweat popped out of his pores like water out of a newly divined well, she thought that, yes, she had to learn to trust Jake, and that she couldn’t do this by herself, not in a world gone mad with hunger and darkness. She was going to have to count on her children.
“Easy there, son,” said Buzz. “I can’t believe your mama gave you a gun.”
“Let my sister go or you’re a dead man.”
“Son, I guess it comes down to nerve. Who’s got more of it? Me or you?”
Jake fired straight into the air, and Buzz’s nerve crumbled.
“Let my sister go, or the next one’s for you.”
“Easy, boy, you don’t want to have an accident.”
He let Hanna go. Hanna hurried to Glenda. Glenda took her in her arms and stroked her hair.
“Now put the gun on the ground,” said Jake.
“Jake, that’s the only weapon I have. You don’t want to leave a man defenseless with the shroud up there.”
“I said, put the gun on the ground. I’m giving you a chance here, Buzz.”
Buzz hesitated for close to five seconds, and in the light of the Moon Glenda saw the frantic thinking that was going on behind his eyes. Despite this scrutiny of his options, he at last put the gun down and stood up slowly.
“Now beat it,” said Jake.
Buzz lifted both arms into the air and backed away. “It’s okay, son, I’m on my way.”
“Shoot him, Jake,” said Hanna. “Don’t let him get away.”
“Don’t you listen to your sister, Jake. Miss, I apologize for what I done to you.”
“Jake, just shoot him. He’s going to come back.”
“Mom?”
“Let him go.”
“But, Mom,” said Hanna, “he’s going to come back, I know he is.”
“Buzz, I’m real sorry I had to kill your brother.” And the tears came back because she really couldn’t believe she had killed a cop.
“The Lord will make His judgment, ma’am.”
“Shoot him, Jake!”
But Jake didn’t shoot.
And Buzz finally disappeared into the dark woods.
Ten minutes later, as they were carrying food back to the house, they heard his truck out on the highway, its bump and rattle a sound that now terrified Glenda.
Back in the house, she foned Gerry, and he answered on the third ring.
“I wouldn’t stay in the area,” he said. “You don’t know Buzz the way I do. He’s a vindictive son of a bitch. When I was a regular at the Crossroads, there was barely a night that went by when he didn’t get in a fight. Hanna’s right. You should have killed him when you had the chance. Revenge is one of his main motivating principles. And now you’ve gone and killed his brother. In self-defense, admittedly, but that’s something Buzz isn’t going to understand.”
“But where would we go?” asked Glenda.
“I’m told there’s still limited cell-phone service in certain parts of the United States.”
“We’re getting partial service here, but it’s a bit sketchy.”
“See if you can phone Neil on his cell. Tell him what’s happened. Maybe you can go down to Coral Cables. Do you have anywhere to recharge the car?”
“The nursing home pump is still working. At least the last time I was there.”
She followed her husband’s advice. She recharged her cell phone by shining a flashlight at it for a few minutes, then tried Neil.
She tried throughout the night, but kept getting service interruption messages.
A little after midnight, service resumed and she was at last able to get through. It turned out he wasn’t in Coral Gables at all. He was at an Air Force base, Homestead.
The change in Neil’s voice took her by surprise. He usually spoke so confidently, as if he had the world in the palm of his hand. But now he sounded distracted. And more than distracted… what was the word?
Yes… he sounded
“I’m working on a new approach.” But his words lacked confidence. She heard what sounded like gunfire in the background. “A virus. It actually works on a kind of interesting principle. It attacks the Tarsalan genetic component of the xenophyta directly, but… I… Jesus, Glenda, you shot a cop?”
And she explained to him how Maynard wasn’t really a cop anymore but just a kind of feudal lord. Then she began to explain about Buzz.
“That idiot Gerry brought to Marblehill a few years back?” he asked.
“That’s him.” Then she explained that Buzz was a vindictive son of a bitch.
“Look…” Neil cut her off, as if the zany details of her war with the sheriff and his brother were beside the point. “I want you and the kids heading to Marblehill. One thing this whole exercise in futility has taught me… it’s all about family. I’ve got some airmen stocking the place. And guarding it. We’ve got a bit of a situation down here at Homestead. And if this virus thing… if it doesn’t pan out… me, Louise, and the girls will be heading up to Marblehill. I’ve got enough food up there to last a year. And I’ve got the place well stocked with medicine…. How’s Hanna? How’s she managing the heat?”
“She’s getting bad, Neil.”
She told him about the prescriptions she had taken from the nursing home, and that they weren’t Hanna’s regular prescriptions, and of how Hanna was buzzed most of the time and wheezing constantly.
“You remember Greg Bard?” asked Neil. “He was a friend of Ian Hamilton’s. I think you met him at Melissa’s christening.”
“The Air Force colonel?”
“Right. He’s getting things arranged for Marblehill.”
“So there’s going to be other families?”
“No. Just the airmen and us. Greg’s a helluva guy. I’ll make sure he knows about Hanna. What’s she
