Chapter 61
After learning that their little brother had been last seen headed for Traitor during the storm the night before, Chad’s brothers had started to worry. The phones were still out and no one they spoke to had any idea what had happened to him. And although a second storm was due to hit, they decided to drive up over the old mountain road in a pickup loaded with chainsaws and extra gas.
Chad hadn’t drifted far out into the bay before deciding he wasn’t going to leave Ann behind. When he got back to shore Ann and the sheriff were nowhere to be found. He’d discovered blood on the ground and tracked it from the boat ramp up to the highway. He was limping down the middle of the highway when his brothers found him, shivering and barely able to speak.
Ann was discovered by the side of the highway-semi-consciousness, talking deliriously about a hobo who was trying to kill her. She was wrapped in a blanket and taken to her aunt’s house where she was set next to a blazing fire. A doctor who happened to be down visiting relatives had come over and treated the infected wound in Ann’s leg. He insisted that she still needed to get to a hospital as soon as possible. If the highway was not passable by morning, some locals planned to take her to the hospital in Buoy City by boat. The sheriff was still missing.
Ann recalled only fragments of what happened after Cyclops left her lying on Raven Point. She remembered how cold she was, of the persistent howling of dogs on the trail above her. The skin of her throat felt as if it had been burned and she probed it with the tips of her fingers, expecting bandages but not finding any. When she looked up she saw Aunt Kate beaming down at her.
“How do you feel now, Ann?”
“Better…I’m really thirsty.”
“I think your fever has finally broken. And they say the highway is going to open up.”
Ann heard some shuffling and pulled back the blanket from her face. Chad and his brothers were sitting around a table playing a quiet game of cards. Chad’s left eye was swollen shut but he looked up and smiled when he saw her face. She recognized his shorter blond hair.
“Hey.”
“Hey Chad.'
“Where did you go?” she asked Kate. “Chad said he visited you earlier, then went by again later and you weren’t home. I thought something had happened to you.”
“Mrs. Nathan came by the check on me early in the morning. She’s got a generator, you know, and insisted I go stay at her house for a few hours. Some people went out looking for you. I was worried sick. What happened?”
“You must let her rest,” the doctor said, rising from his chair. He was very tired himself and anxious to go back to bed.
Chapter 62
As they headed east the air became warmer and drier. He could smell dust and dried hay and knew it would only be another hour before the train would stop at a grain silo where they’d get off. He knew from experience there weren’t any railroad bulls to worry about, but if some of the local famers were in a mood, they might get shot at or have dogs set on them for sport.
Cyclops thumbed the cork off a small bottle and drank. The last time he’d crossed this line of his iron web he’d just been freshly robbed and beaten by a group of hobos in Baker City and left to die. He’d come to when the next train came through and managed to haul himself inside a boxcar even with a broken arm and several mashed fingers. And it wasn’t until later that he discovered his attackers had hopped the same train that night instead of taking his money and getting drunk like he’d heard them talking about. Before the train reached Salt Lake he’d killed them all.
Sheriff Dawkins lay on some molding hay, not sleeping but just gazing out of the boxcar at the landscape sliding past. His appearance had already changed a lot, Cyclops noted. In the short time they’d spent on the rails, the sheriff’s clothes were going baggy and his thinning body was becoming brown and muscular and he’d already acquired an impressive collection of recent scars. As the nicotine fits died away he also seemed more relaxed and reflective. His sense of smell had started to return and he’d begun seeing with his nose like Cyclops had taught him.
“What are you going to do to the kid when we find him?” The sheriff asked. But he already knew.
Cyclops pulled his curtain of hair aside and looked at him. “You got something in mind?”
“No.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t think about it too much. If he’s too dumb to know how to disappear then the money he stole shouldn’t be hard to find either. Son of a bitch has got a real pair on him if you want my opinion. Too bad they’ll be the first things he watches me take from him.”
The sheriff sat up and rubbed his face where the flies kept tickling him. “I’ve known that kid since he was young. Other than having a smart mouth he was never really much trouble. I guess I rode him kind of hard though. But I had to do something so I could get up to his house once in a while and talk to his folks. His older sister had some nice curves on her and I’ll be damned if she didn’t know what she was doing to me.”
Cyclops nodded and took another drink. He didn’t offer any to the sheriff. He was beginning to tire of his company, of listening to him talk about his obsession with young women. But that was the way it always went when you joined the life. Some things took longer than others to fade away.
