Hopkinsville looked like an abandoned movie set. I walked beneath a string of unlit Christmas lights supporting a tinseled noel sign; every other lamppost sported a cluster of red-ribboned bells, surrounded by circles of bulbs. There was some evidence of chaos; few cars were parked at the curb, most angled into storefronts or telephone poles or each other. There were signs of struggle. Parts of the street were littered with pieces of wood; rolled against one curb was a baseball bat with Jim Rice’s autograph stamped on it. One Custer-like area on the opposite side of the street was peppered with spent rifle shells. A neatly ironic cone of white bones lay near each pile of shells.
As the line of houses and stores enclosed me, my uneasiness grew over the disappearance of my desert companion. Now my averted vision deceived me: a figure crouched on the flat roof of the hardware store turned out to be a corner post anchoring telephone and electrical wires. On the opposite side of the street I saw someone regarding me coyly through the closed drapes of a store window. It was a mannequin dressed to the nines in top hat and tails; a sign next to it said order early! new year’s eve is coming!
I walked on, my right hand hovering over the shotgun.
I passed more bones. I wondered if the population of Hopkinsville could be censused by seven hundred piles of human skeleton.
Halfway up the street was a drugstore. I stopped in front of it. The front door was held open by a doorstop. The druggist must have opened it that last night to let in the cool desert air. The shade of his awning felt good. The interior of the store would feel even better. But I hesitated to go in.
The red burn on my arms and on the back of my neck helped change my mind. I unhitched my shotgun and cautiously entered.
It was dark inside. There were three aisles. I checked them one by one, my heart pounding. At the end of the third I nearly fired into a life-size cardboard cutout of Vanna White. She held a tub of tanning cream.
I went to Vanna White’s aisle and found a good sunscreen and a tube of ointment for sunburn.
I thought fleetingly of leaving money on the counter, remembering all the last-man-on-Earth movies I’ve seen, but good sense overcame cinematic convention and I hurried from the store, shotgun poised. Only outside, safe, under the drugstore awning, did I take a full breath.
I looked up to see the figure that had followed me in the desert regarding me from across the street.
I could not see him clearly. He stood in the porch shadow of a gem store called The Sleeping Lion, and, when I looked up, he retreated into the open door and shut it behind him.
I could not tell if it was man or beast.
I noticed how long the shadows were.
I checked my watch; it was now seven-thirty. The sun would be down in less than an hour. I had sixty minutes to find a safe place, barricade myself in, and wait out the night.
Keeping my eyes on the front of the gem store, I moved up the street. A grocery was ahead. I thought of the meat locker. It would have a good, strong door. It would also have a good, strong odor, but the natural coolness of the enclosure probably would have prevented rotting of the meat stored in there thus far, and I should be able to spend the night in reasonable comfort. It would be easy to defend, and the residual coolness certainly wouldn’t hurt my sunburn.
I stopped in front of the market, waiting unthinking for the automatic doors to open for me. Finally I realized my foolishness and pushed the ungiving door inward. I looked back to the gem store and saw nothing.
It was stuffy inside. The tall front windows gave good illumination, but the back of the store withered into dim shadow. There were ten numbered aisles, including a center-divided frozen-food case that ran from front to rear.
I checked the aisles one by one: bread aisle, canned fruits and vegetables, baking goods, paper products.
The meat case would be in the back, through the swinging white doors.
I started down the beer and soda aisle, picking out a six-pack of Coors and putting it under my arm.
I heard the front doors of the store whisper open behind me.
In front of me, at the end of the dim back of the store, something rushed at me.
I dropped the beer. I dropped the shotgun at the same time. A long, dark sleekness was in the air over me, angling down. It resolved from dim shadow to sharp angles: teeth and red mouth, huge yellow eyes.
Behind me came two loud rapid blasts.
The wolf dropped in front of me.
I turned to discover my rescuer, but he had vanished behind a paper towel display at the front of the aisle. I heard quick steps, another loud gunshot, followed by two more. There was a scream of animal rage. I heard claws running on linoleum, then another shot. Growling segued to agonized rasping, mingled with a tearing sound I knew to be the mindless lapping of blood.
Two gunshots sounded.
There was silence.
I recovered my shotgun and stood. One of the Coors had burst open, fizzing beer against its pack mates. There was a scuffle in the back of the store, a pause, then sounds of pursuit up the front. I stood frozen between the two ends of the aisle, trying to follow the battle with my ears.
“Are you sure it’s loaded?”
I jerked the shotgun toward the form standing at the front of the aisle. It was backlit by the store windows and I couldn’t make out the features.
“It’s loaded,” I said, holding the shotgun steady.
“Know how to use it?”
“I do.”
The form walked slowly toward me. “Sure?”
“Yes.”
He was perhaps a yard and a half from me now, and he thrust his hand out and had my shotgun before I could react. He laughed and gave it back to me stock first. I noticed he held his own rifle loosely in his other hand.
“Where you from?” he asked.
“Emory,” I told him, and he looked at me questioningly. He had a lean face and body, hair cut short. He looked to be forty.
He said, “I know New England when I hear it.”
“My name is Jason Blake. I’m a writer from Connecticut.”
His manner unaccountably softened. “Well, that’s all right,” he said. He reached down to take one of the unopened Coors from the floor, wincing at the warmth as it went down his throat. “I liked the way you followed me with your eyes out there in the desert.” He gestured at the dead wolf at my feet. “You kill any yet?”
I told him about Cave.
He seemed to approve. “Bastard did the right thing.” He measured a short distance between two of his fingers. “I came this close to getting cut by one of them yesterday. Would have done the same thing myself, only not trusted anybody else to do the shooting.” He turned away from me, then abruptly turned back and thrust his hand out for me to shake. His eyes were clear light blue. “I’m Pettis,” he said. “We could use your gun.”
CHAPTER 13
Open House
I followed Pettis out of the supermarket. The sun was perched on the high wire of the horizon. In twenty minutes it would fall into night.
Pettis led me up the block past a dry cleaner’s and the post office, then turned into the small court that fronted the town’s hotel, a picturesque reproduction of an Old West boarding house. Hitching posts curbed the parking spaces, and there were swinging doors into the lobby. Inside, there was lots of varnished Ponderosa pine.
We walked past the abandoned front desk through the dining room. Bubble windows were set in the high- raftered ceiling, shafting dim ovals of twilight onto the polished floor. I held my shotgun up. Pettis seemed unconcerned, swinging his rifle at his side.
