The Julian Year Page 23

  The girl reached into her jacket pocket and took out a revolver. Arlowe would have believed it a toy if the others hadn’t pulled out guns of their own.

  He raised one hand and opened the cash drawer with the other. “I ain’t got much, but you’re welcome to take it all.”

  The Greek aimed his weapon at Arlowe’s head. “We already told you where we want to go. Take us there.”

  Looking down the long barrel of the man’s revolver, Arlowe swallowed. “I’ll just get my coat.” He put on a royal-blue slicker and led them outside. As the rain pelted his face, he tried to figure out what a gun-toting bunch of weirdoes wanted with Charlene. Maybe she had escaped from a cult or something. Their number held significance for him: Special Forces operated with five-man teams. As they followed him onto the muddy side yard, it occurred to him that they had reason to wear sunglasses on a rainy day.

  They’re possessed.

  “Now watch your step,” he said as they circled the building, “I don’t want you to slip in this mud and hurt yourselves.” He led them into the RV park. “Are you friends of Miss Milhouse or family?”

  It felt like a stupid question, one his captors didn’t even answer. Lightning flashed in the sky, and they followed a wet dirt path between several motor homes. Thunder rolled after the lightning. They cleared the park, and a cabin appeared through the trees ahead, a light blue Volvo parked before it.

  “Well, that’s it,” Arlowe said. “And that’s Miss Milhouse’s car. I reckon you can go knock on the door yourselves. I’ll just go back to my office. You know where to go if you need anything.”

  The girl aimed her gun at him. She appeared even creepier with her straight dark hair plastered to the sides of her pale face. The three men and the woman approached the cabin, spreading out at the same time. The woman circled the cabin, disappeared from view, and reemerged on the other side. Arlowe knew she had discovered no door or windows in the back.

  Now the four of them moved closer to the front, two on each side. Arlowe wanted to call out and warn Charlene she was in danger, but he was in danger too. He didn’t doubt the little girl holding the gun on him would pull the trigger if he moved or raised his voice.

  The Caucasian man, who had a beer belly, ducked low as he climbed the steps below the front window. Facing Arlowe and the girl, he pressed his back against the cabin next to the double glass doors. He took off his sunglasses and pocketed them. Arlowe shuddered. Even through the rain, he saw the man’s glowing red eyes, like two oversized ball bearings. The man rapped on the nearest glass door and waited.

  Raindrops rolled off the tip of Arlowe’s nose. He felt helpless.

  The man knocked again. When there was no answer, he looked at his companions, who nodded. He approached the doors, aiming his handgun at them and peering inside. After a moment he beckoned his comrades forward, and they trotted up the steps behind him. He turned the gleaming gold handle on one door, which opened.

  Seconds later, the glass in the doors exploded. At first Arlowe thought one of the freaks had shot the glass out, but the shards twirled away from the cabin. Then the doorframes and the window blew out, followed by the cabin’s front wall. The four possessed people flew backward, their bodies unraveling as debris tore them to pieces that rained down on the mud, and a fireball blew the roof apart and rose into the sky.

  The double blast shook the ground, and Arlowe raised his arms straight out at his sides to maintain his balance. Flames licked at the rain.

  The girl wobbled and almost dropped her gun. Arlowe seized her by her forearms and hurled her backward into a gray maple tree trunk. She dropped her gun before falling to the earth, where her sunglasses fell off, revealing her glowing red eyes. Arlowe was already running for the gun when she snatched it, but he kicked it out of her hand. Smoldering debris continued to fall around them.

  Grateful for his steel-toed shoes, Arlowe kicked her in the face, dislocating her jaw. The impact slammed her head against the trunk, and she blinked with a dazed expression. Then she leapt to her feet and ran toward the gun.

  Arlowe grabbed her long hair and swung her in a circle, using her weight and momentum against her. He released her, and she soared in the opposite direction and crashed to the ground.

  Arlowe bolted for the gun, but he didn’t know where it had landed, and at sixty-three, he wasn’t exactly an Olympic sprinter.

  Soggy footsteps pocked the ground behind him, and he could have sworn the girl was running on all fours, like a wild animal.

  He reached the approximate area where the gun had landed but saw no sign of it in the brush. As he glanced around, leaning closer to the ground with his heart pounding, the girl landed on his back. Wrapping her delicate arms around his neck, she growled like a beast. Arlowe gripped one of her arms and tottered forward, hoping to flip her over his head. Instead, he drove his left shoulder into the mud and she rolled off him.

  On her hands and knees, the girl padded the ground, searching for the gun.

  Gasping, Arlowe stood upright and spotted the black metal weapon right at his feet. He hunched over and picked it up. It felt cold and heavy.

  The girl looked at him, and in the different light her eyes appeared to be glass, not metal. She dove at him with her teeth bared, and he squeezed the trigger. Her body jerked in the air like a bobcat struck with a tranquilizer dart. As soon as she hit the ground he fired twice more, and she stopped moving.

  I did it. I killed the goddamned thing.

  Staggering back through the RV camp with the cabin burning behind him, Arlowe wondered how the freaks had known Charlene was staying here. He also wondered where she had learned to set booby traps like that.

  When he reached the office, five people stood waiting at the end of the driveway, all of them wearing sunglasses.

  Rachel sped down the twisting mountain road at eighty miles an hour as rain pounded the roof of the orange Ford Fiesta Joanie had given her, the windshield wipers going full tilt. She hoped she had parked the Volvo far enough away from the cabin so it would survive the homemade explosives she had planted. A book of matches taped to the bottom of the door and a nail file taped to the floor had served as the detonator. She hoped she had taken out as many of the fiends as possible.

  Cars and trucks traveling at the same speed cluttered the road ahead, spraying water in all directions and making it impossible to maneuver into the lead. Rachel couldn’t even check the rearview mirror for pursuing vehicles because of the danger that taking her eyes off the road for two seconds posed. She had grown accustomed to the wet weather in Cascade Locks but not at this speed.

  A pickup moved alongside her on the left. Glancing out her side window, she saw a pair of glowing red eyes staring down at her from the truck’s passenger side. Her heart skipped a beat, and she lowered her window, allowing the downpour to strike her face.

  Before she could even tell if the MacNeil had a weapon, she seized the .22 from her passenger seat, aimed it out the window while steering with her other hand, and squeezed the trigger three times. One shot shattered the truck window, another splintered its windshield into a fractured spiderweb, and the third drilled through the fiend’s throat, causing him to flail his arms as blood streamed out the window. The pickup swerved out of control, then righted itself. Horns honked behind them. Seeing red eyes in the truck’s cabin, Rachel knew she hadn’t hit the driver.

  The Fiesta almost struck the guardrail on Rachel’s right, and she grabbed the steering wheel with her gun hand, hooking it with her thumb. More horns honked. No sooner had she gotten the car under control than the truck slammed into the Fiesta’s rear, sending her toward the guardrail again. This time the car hit the aluminum railing, producing sparks. She steered back into her lane, and the truck pulled alongside her again. The cars behind them had slowed to a safer speed.

  The MacNeil she had shot flopped dead against his door. Spotting a bulky black object in the driver’s hand, she shifted the .22 into her other hand, extended her arm out her windo
w, and fired three more times, taking out the driver’s window and striking him in his shoulder and his cheek. Stepping on the gas, she pulled ahead of the truck, which drifted into the lane behind her. It veered from side to side, then crashed into the guardrail and disappeared over the ledge.

  Two down, Rachel thought. How many more to go?

  Twenty minutes later the road leveled out, and Rachel drove onto the Historic Columbia River Highway, parallel to Interstate 84. Surrounded by the granite cliffs of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, which rose thousands of feet into the air, and level with the river close on her right, she felt adrenaline coursing through her veins. The Fiesta cleared the rain, and the sun beamed down on her, glittering off the river’s surface. She located a pair of sunglasses on the sun visor and put them on.

  If you can’t beat them, join them.

  In the rearview mirror, two white dots appeared far behind her. She knew even before she could identify the white Camaro and the bronze Duster that their drivers were coming after her. This time, she had few other cars to worry about, and now she had her Glock beside her. Cascade Locks was a great city for buying guns.

  Tipping her head forward, Rachel floored it and the Fiesta accelerated to eighty-five . . . ninety . . . ninety-five. The road before her streaked into a blur, and the vibration of the steering wheel shook her hands. She raced around one car, then another, and saw open highway before her.

  There’s never a cop around when you need one, she thought, accelerating to one hundred miles an hour. Not bad for a little car.

  The Camaro and the Duster matched her speed and passed the same two cars, gaining on her.

  “Damn you!” She didn’t dare go any faster and even slowed down a little, dropping to ninety.

  The pursuing vehicles closed the gap.

  Rachel’s gaze darted from the rearview mirror to the road ahead of her to the speedometer. She slowed to eighty, then seventy-five.

  The vehicles caught up.

  Let them come, she thought.

  She swerved into the left lane, preventing the Duster from passing her, then swerved right, blocking the Camaro. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw the Camaro tailgating her. The vehicle increased its speed, crashing into the Fiesta and rocking Rachel forward. The Duster moved up on her left, and she jerked the steering wheel in that direction, cutting it off.

  Now the Duster slammed into the Fiesta, and Rachel cried out from frustration as much as from the impact. She lost control of the car, and it wobbled across the center line as the Camaro tried to pass on her right. The sound of metal scraping the asphalt caused her to shudder. When the Camaro slammed into her again, she believed its driver had no choice, which didn’t make the impact any less jarring. In her rearview mirror, she saw the back of her car disappear beneath the pursuing vehicle.

  The Duster moved up behind her, and just as she prepared to swerve left, the Camaro rammed her. The impact hurtled the Fiesta forward. At least the Duster was behind her again. The Camaro sped up, closing in on her once more.

  Testing her ability to steer at this speed with her left hand alone, Rachel snatched the Glock from the passenger seat, twisted around, and fired two shots at her back window, shattering it. Old newspapers flew out of the car, their pages flapping like the wings of birds. Unhindered by the smudged glass, Rachel saw two pairs of glowing red eyes in the car behind her.

  She squeezed the trigger multiple times, the gunshots deafening even over the roar of the Fiesta’s engine, and decimated the Camaro’s windshield. She swung back to the steering wheel, corrected her trajectory, and checked the rearview mirror in time to see the Camaro disappear off the roadway, creating a great splash in the river.

  Behind her, the Duster swerved from lane to lane, and it occurred to her that with her back window gone, her pursuer had a clear view of the back of her head without the glare of sunlight on glass. She swerved into the other lane and swerved back, moving opposite the Duster. The sound of gunfire caused her to stiffen.

  Light reflected at her in the distance ahead. As Rachel weaved from lane to lane, preventing the Duster from pulling alongside her, she realized that a vehicle was heading toward her, driving the wrong way. Even at her decreased speed, the van grew larger fast. For a moment she stopped swerving, and the Duster fell into line behind her. When the Duster’s passenger failed to fire, she guessed he didn’t intend to. Instead, he dropped back. The van raced forward.

  The drivers intended to ram her from both directions, crushing her in a two-way kamikaze attack.

  They want me dead bad.

  With her eyes wide and her body turning numb, Rachel forced herself to wait seconds that felt like minutes. The van filled her vision, and the Duster closed in on her once more.

  Forcing her eyes shut, she jerked the steering wheel to the right. Brakes squealed behind her and metal screamed against metal. Her stomach flattened beneath her skin like a pancake as the Fiesta flew off the highway’s edge at an angle so steep she fell forward against her shoulder strap. She opened her eyes, and through her sunglasses the sunlight on the choppy brown river appeared golden and peaceful.

  Thirty-two

  The Fiesta slammed into the water with such force that Rachel thought the vehicle had crashed into rocks. The shock wave caused the car to rock backward, then forward, and the current spun it around. She gasped and pressed her palms against the inside roof as the car turned over and dove underwater.

  The engine stopped running, and the only sound was water gushing inside. She lost all sense of direction, and when she unbuckled her seat belt, her right shoulder struck the dashboard. The car rolled sideways, the current turning it in circles.

  Setting her feet on the passenger door, she pressed the button for the window and lowered it, allowing frigid water to pour down on her and fill the car. At first the pressure of the incoming water forced her to her knees, and she fought to stand again. The freezing water reached her hips. The spinning sensation slowed as the car filled, and she realized the Fiesta had resumed sinking. She knew the river was at least forty feet deep, and the thought of trying to swim the equivalent of a four-story building in a strong current caused her heart to race.

  When the car had completely filled it rolled over again, right side up. Gripping the frame of the open window, Rachel pulled herself halfway out of the submerged vehicle, and the current did the rest. The roof of the car clipped her right foot as the car sank.

  The current dragged and spun her sideways, buffeting her and turning her end over end, slamming her in the ribs, chest, and face. She expected the assault to stop, but it didn’t, and she understood how unlikely it was that she would reach the surface alive.

  Holding her breath, Rachel remembered to open her mouth just enough to allow some oxygen to escape. She managed to get her legs below her and kicked with all her strength. Only when she used her arms as well did she rise. Through the brown water, she saw the glow of sunlight overhead, but it was impossible to tell how far it was to the surface. The current toggled her head like a boxer working the speed bag, water beat at her ears, and she closed her eyes.

  Pull, kick, pull, kick, pull, kick . . .

  The current dragged her sideways again. Opening her eyes, she couldn’t find the sunlight. Then she rolled over and there it appeared.

  Pull, kick, pull, kick, pull, kick . . .

  Her lungs burned and her muscles ached. Inch by agonizing inch she rose, battling the turbulence. Rachel expelled the last of the oxygen from her mouth and clamped her jaws together to prevent water from entering her mouth. Her movements slowed and the water dragged her sideways. Balling her hands into fists at her sides, she dug deep inside herself and found a little more strength.

  Pull . . . kick . . . pull . . . kick . . .

  The glow above intensified. As she continued to rise, she saw a shadow in the middle of the light.

  An angel . . .

  Rachel kicked harder and pulled herself toward the surface. The angel wait
ed for her, beckoning. A different kind of turbulence assailed her as she closed the gap between herself and the surface—a force pushing her down as surely as a hand on her forehead. Her eyeballs throbbed in their sockets, and she felt intense pressure behind her nose and over her throat.

  Kickpullkickpullkick—

  Just when she thought her brain might explode, her head burst through the water and she sucked in air. A motorized roar churned the waves around her, batting water into her face with a stinging sensation, and the most powerful wind she had ever experienced pushed her back underwater, where she flailed her arms. Again she bobbed to the surface, as desperate now as she had been deep below the surface.

  The current dragged her away from the helicopter’s wind force, and as she kicked to stay afloat she discerned a soldier descending from the chopper on a rescue cable. As the cable lowered the man closer to the water, the helicopter turned and passed overhead. The soldier reached out for Rachel, and she held out one hand. They missed each other, and the current jerked Rachel away again.

  Rachel continued to kick, desperate to keep her face above water. The helicopter followed her, and the soldier caught her by her collar this time. Turning, she grabbed his arm with both hands, and he yanked her out of the water. Cold wind assaulted her. She clung to the soldier, and he secured a harness around her, then gestured to another soldier leaning out of the chopper. A winch wound the cable, raising them high above the water. Their bodies rotated in the air, and Rachel glimpsed the scattered, smoldering remains of the vehicles and MacNeils on the highway.

  A shadow fell over her, and she looked up at the helicopter’s underbelly. The open hatch swallowed them. Inside the aircraft darkness engulfed her, and another soldier, silhouetted by light shining through a window, grabbed her harness and pulled her so that her wet sneakers touched the floor. Then he unhooked her harness.