well, faces stricken-John and Vince Tribucci, Webb Edwards, Verne Mullins-but none of them had moved from their places. The whimperings of the women and children intensified the atmosphere of horror which now pervaded the church.
Kubion said, “When I say something I mean it, you’d all better get that straight right now, the next one that makes a funny move I’ll shoot his face off. Okay-one of you’s the doctor, which one?”
“Here,” Edwards said.
“Get out here and tend to the Reverend.”
“I don’t have my bag. I’ll need-”
“You’ll need nothing. Get out here.”
Edwards went to where Reverend Keyes lay inert on the floor, knelt beside him, and examined the bullet-torn hand; it was still bleeding heavily. He used his belt as a tourniquet, his handkerchief to swab the wound.
Kubion said, “He got a key on him to the church doors?”
“I don’t know,” Edwards answered woodenly.
“Well look through his pockets and find out!”
Edwards probed quickly, gently, through the minister’s dark-gray suit and discovered a ring of keys. He held them up. Kubion made a tossing motion, and Edwards flipped the key ring underhand, as carefully as he would have thrown a ball to a three-year-old child. Making the catch with his left hand, Kubion turned and pulled the entrance doors nearly closed. He probed at the latch on one with three of the keys, found one that fitted, and then dropped the ring into the pocket of his coat. He faced the congregation again.
“Couple of you pick the Reverend up and put him on one of the benches.”
Coopersmith came forward, and Harry Chilton stepped out. With Edwards’ help, they lifted Keyes gently and laid him supine in the nearest pew.
“The rest of you men-shut those women and kids up,” Kubion said. “I want it quiet in, here, I want every one of you to hear what I’m going to say, and I don’t want to have to say it more than once, you got that?”
While husbands and parents did what they had been ordered to do, Coopersmith retreated a few steps and glanced over his shoulder to where Ellen was sitting; she was motionless, hands pressed against her white cheeks, her eyes round and glistening wet with tears. He saw Ann Tribucci sitting near Ellen, one arm wrapped in an unconsciously-or perhaps consciously-protective way around the huge convexity that was her unborn child, her other hand holding tightly to one of her husband’s. John Tribucci’s face, unlike most of the others, was as stiff and empty of expression as a store mannequin’s.
Kubion said as the congregation quieted, “That’s better. Here it is, then, plain and simple: we’re here because we’re taking over the valley and everybody in it and once we’ve got complete control we’re going to loot it, building by building. Money and expensive jewelry, that’s all we’re interested in, and if you people cooperate that’s all we’ll take, nobody else will get hurt.”
He paused to let the concept sink in fully. Then: “All right, now some details. When I’m done talking one of us will come around with a sack and you put your wallets and purses into it and anything else you’ve got in your pockets, don’t hold anything out, turn your pockets. After that’s done we’ll want a list of names of everybody who lives in the valley that’s not here right now, I mean everybody, because we’re going to go round them up one by one after we leave here and if we find anybody whose name isn’t on the list he’s dead. You can forget about the Markhams and the Donnellys and Matt Hughes and Peggy Tyler; we’ve-”
Agnes Tyler’s shrill, near hysterical voice cried, “Peggy? Peggy? Oh my God I should have known something was wrong, I should have known that telephone call last night was a lie!” She was standing, one hand clutching her breast, eyes like a pair of too-ripe grapes pressed into a lump of gray dough. “You’ve hurt her, you’ve hurt my daughter….”
Kubion looked at her and said, “Somebody shut that bitch the hell up.”
Beside her, Verne Mullins took hold of her shoulders and eased her down again. Agnes buried her face in her hands and began moaning softly. Coopersmith said in a carefully expressionless voice, “What do you mean we can forget about those people? What have you done to them?”
Kubion’s gaze shifted to him. “Nothing to any of them, old man-except Hughes. We’ll bring them in later.”
“Except Hughes?”
“He’s dead,” Kubion said, and the smile transformed on his mouth and made it look like an open wound. His voice was savage with impatience. “I killed him last night and he’s dead, you’ll all be dead you stupid hicks unless you shut up and listen to me and do what I say I don’t want any more questions I don’t want any more crap you understand me!”
The aura of horror had reached the point of tangibility now: it could be felt, it could be tasted, it lay like a pall of invisible mist inside the church. No one moved, no one made a sound; even the children and Agnes Tyler were silent. The Reverend Mr. Keyes shot in his own church, the valley about to be taken over and looted, Matt Hughes- their mayor, their friend, their benefactor-inexplicably murdered, all their lives suddenly in the hands of three armed men and one of whom was nothing less than a psychotic: they were literally petrified with fear.
Coopersmith swallowed against the rage and revulsion which burned in his throat, struggling to maintain calm and a clear head, and looked at each of the other two men, the ones with the rifles. Neither of them had made a single motion since their entrance; they were like wooden sentinels. But there was sanity in their faces, and the big heavy one was sweating copiously, and the fair-haired one, despite a guarded, stoic expression, appeared to be tensely uneasy as well. Why were they a part of this? he thought.
Merciful God, why any of this?
Kubion was smiling again, and when he spoke his voice was once more controlled, matter-of-fact. “Now like I said, once we have the list of names two of us will go round up the other people and bring them back here, and when everybody is in the church we go to work on the buildings-just two of us, the other one will be out front with a rifle, watching. We figure it’ll take us most of today to get the job done, but when we’re finished we might not be leaving right away, we might stay one day or two or even three before we go, and the way we’ll go is on snowmobiles so don’t get the idea we’re trapped in the valley until the pass is open. But you’ll wait until it’s cleared, you’ll stay in here until the day after Christmas. We’ll bring in some food later and some water and you’ll be nice and comfortable as long as you don’t try any stupid tricks. The important thing for you to remember is that you won’t know when we’ll be leaving, you won’t know when we’re gone, and if you try to break down the front doors or knock out a window before the day after Christmas and we’re still here, we’ll kill everybody we see. Clear? All of that clear?
Figures in stone.
Kubion said, “Good, we’re going to get along fine now; you keep on sitting there like you are now and we’re going to get along just fine.” He looked at the heavy, dull-faced rifleman and made a gesture with his free hand. Loxner came over and put the weapon down against the wall, moving mechanically, using his left arm as if it were stiff and sore; then he took a folded flour sack from under his coat and walked up the center aisle. Coopersmith watched him as he passed down to the end of the right front pew; his damp face contained what might have been a kind of masked fear of his own.
When Coopersmith faced front again, he saw that the fair-haired rifleman had also set his weapon against the wall and had produced a pencil and a pad of paper. Kubion said, “Names now, everybody not here and where they live in the village.” His eyes rested on Coopersmith. “You, old man, start it off. Who’s not here?”
Coopersmith hesitated. Then, because there was nothing else he could do, he began in a leaden voice to recite. And all the while he was talking the same cold, voracious thought kept running through his mind: I wish I had my gun now because I would kill you, I think God forgive me I would kill you right where you stand, right here in church, and sleep tonight with a clear conscience…
Two
When Brodie and Loxner had preceded him out of the church and gone halfway along the front walk-holding the rifle barrels down against their legs as he had instructed them to do-Kubion stepped out and shut the doors and locked them. His watch said that it was one fifteen. Very good: fifty-five minutes, five minutes less than he had
