a green goosedown parka to zip Drummer up in as a makeshift bassinet. A pair of man-sized leather gloves were also set aside for later.
As Mary fed Drummer, she continually squeezed a tennis ball in her right hand to warm up the sinews. Her strength in that hand was about a third of what it normally was, her fingers cold and numb. Nerve damage, she thought. She could feel the twitching of the ravaged muscles down in the forearm wound; the damned dog had come close to gnawing an artery open, and if that had happened, she'd be dead by now. The thigh wound was the real bitch, though. It needed fifty or sixty stitches and a hell of a lot better antiseptic than what she'd found in Rocky Road's bathroom. But just as long as it stayed crusted over, she could make herself keep going.
The telephone rang as she was changing Drummer's diaper. It stopped after twelve rings, was quiet for five minutes, and then rang eight more times.
'Somebody's curious,' she told Drummer as she swabbed him clean with a Handi Wipe. 'Somebody wants to know why the boy didn't come out to the school bus, or why Rocky Road's not clocked in at work yet. Yes somebody does, yes him does!'
She started moving a little faster.
The telephone rang again at eight-forty as Mary was loading up the Cherokee in the garage. It went silent, and Mary continued the task. She loaded her suitcase and a garbage bag full of food from the kitchen: the rest of the sliced ham, a pack of bologna, a loaf of wheat bread, a jug of orange juice and a few apples, a box of oat bran cereal and a big bag of Fritos corn chips. She found a bottle each of mineral supplement tablets and vitamins that might've choked a horse. She swallowed two of both. When she was packed and ready to take Drummer out, she paused for a minute to make herself a bowl of Wheat Chex and drink down a Coke.
She was standing in the kitchen, finishing the cereal, when she glanced through a window and saw a pig car coming slowly up the drive.
It pulled up in front of the house, and a pig wearing a dark blue parka got out. The car had CEDAR COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT on its side. By the time the pig – who was maybe in his early twenties, just a kid – reached the front door and rang the buzzer, Mary had loaded one of the remaining rifles from the gun cabinet.
She stood around a corner from the door, waiting. The pig rang the buzzer again, then knocked with a gloved fist. 'Hey, Mitch!' he called, his breath showing in the frosty air. 'Where you at, boy?'
Go away, Mary thought. Her leg had started hurting her again, a deep biting ache.
'Mitch? You to home?'
The pig backed away from the door. He stood looking around for a minute, his hands on his hips, and then Mary watched him start to walk to the right. She went to another window, where she could track him. He walked to the back door and peered in, his breath fogging the glass. He knocked again, harder. 'Emma? Anybody?'
Nobody here you want to meet, she thought.
The pig tried the back door's knob. Worked it left and right. Then she watched him turn his head and look toward the barn.
He called 'Mitch?' and then he began walking away from the house, his boots crunching in the icy snow on his way to where the bodies and the van were.
Mary stood at the back door, the rifle in her hands. She decided to let him find Mitch and Emma.
The pig opened the barn's door and walked inside.
She waited, her eyes glittering with a kind of lust.
It didn't take long. The pig came running out. He staggered, stopped, bent over, and threw up onto the snow. Then he started running again, his long legs pumping and his face ghastly.
Mary unlocked the door and stepped out into the chill. The pig saw her, came to a skidding halt, and started reaching for his pistol. The holster's flap was snapped down, and as the pig's gloved fingers fumbled to unsnap it, Mary Terror flexed her numb hand, took aim, and shot him in the stomach at a range of thirty feet. He was knocked backward to the ground, the breath bursting white from his mouth and nostrils. As the pig rolled over and tried to struggle to his knees, Mary fired a second shot that took away a chunk of his left shoulder in a mist of steamy blood. The third bullet got him in the lower back as he was crawling across the crimson snow.
He jerked a few times, like a fish on a hook. And then he lay still, facedown, his arms splayed out in an attitude of crucifixion.
Mary breathed deeply of the cold air, savoring its sting in her lungs. Then she went back into the kitchen, set the rifle down, and finished the last two spoonfuls of Wheat Chex. She drank the milk, and followed it with the final swig of Coke. She limped to the bedroom, where she put on the corduroy coat and the gloves, then picked up Drummer in the folds of the goosedown parka. 'Pretty boy, yes you are!' she said as she carried him to the kitchen. 'Mama's pretty little boy!' She kissed his cheek, a surge of love rising within her like a glowing radiance. She looked out the back door again, verifying that the pig had not moved. Then she put Drummer into the Cherokee, cranked open the garage door, and slid behind the wheel.
She pulled out of the garage, past the pig car and down the driveway. Then she turned right on the road that led back to I-80 and the route west. Her shoulder bag was on the floorboard, full of Pampers and formula and holding her Magnum and the new Smith Wesson revolver to replace the lost Colt. She felt so much better this morning. Still weak, yes, but so much better. It must be the vitamins, she decided. Got some iron in her blood, and that made all the difference.
Or maybe it was the power of love, she thought as she glanced on the seat beside her at her beautiful baby.
The list of names and phone numbers was in her pocket, along with the bloodstained Sierra Club newsletter article. To the west the sky was a dark purple haze, the land white as a peace dove.
It was a morning rich with love.
The Cherokee went on, aimed toward California, freighted with firepower and madness.
2: Strip Naked
Checkout time was noon. At ten thirty-six the rust-eaten Cutlass with a Nebraska tag pulled out of the Liberty Motor Lodge's parking lot. The red-haired woman behind the wheel turned right, onto the ramp that merged into the westbound lanes of I-80. The Cutlass's passenger, a pallid woman with a bandaged hand and hellfire in her eyes, wore a dark gray sweater banded with green stripes. She kept an ice pack pressed against her left hand, and she chewed on her raw and swollen lower lip.
The miles clicked off. Snow flurries spun from the gloom, the headlights of cars on and their wipers going. The Cutlass's wipers shrieked with a noise like a banshee party, and the car's engine chugged like a boiler with spark plugs. In Des Moines, eighty miles farther west, Didi and Laura stopped at a Wendy's and got the works: burgers, fries, salad bar, and coffee. As Laura ate with no thought of manners and an eye on the clock, Didi went to the pay phone and looked up pawnbrokers in the Yellow Pages. She tore the page out, rejoined Laura, and they finished their food.
The clerk at Honest Joe's, on McKinley Avenue, examined the diamond through his loupe and asked to see some identification. They took the stone back and went on. The female clerk at Rossi's Pawn on 9th Street wouldn't talk to them without seeing proof of ownership. At the dismal, aptly named Junk 'n Stuff Pawnshop on Army Post Road, a man who made Laura think of John Carradine's head stuck on Dom DeLuise's body looked at the diamond and laughed like a chain saw. 'Get real! It's paste, lady!'
'Thank you.' Laura picked up the diamond and Didi followed her toward the door.
'Hey, hey, hey! Don't go away mad! Hold up a sec!'
Laura paused. The fat man with the thin, wrinkled prune of a face motioned her back with a ring-studded paw. 'Come on, let's dicker a little bit.'
'I don't have time for that.'
'What, you're in a hurry?' He frowned, looking at her bandaged hand. 'I think you're bleedin', lady.'
Spots of red had seeped through the bandages. Laura said, 'I cut myself.' She drew up her spine straight and tall and walked back to the counter. 'My husband paid over three thousand dollars for this diamond eight years ago. I've got the certification. I know it's not paste, so don't give me that crap.'
'Yeah?' He grinned. No horse had bigger or yellower teeth. 'So let's see the certification, then.'
Laura didn't move. She didn't speak either.
'Uh-huh. So let's see a driver's license.'
'My purse was stolen,' Laura said.
'Oh, yeah!' He nodded, drumming his fingers on the countertop. 'Where'd you steal the rock from,
