Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04] Read online

  An automatic touch to his breast pocket, and he scowled when he realized he’d left his good pen on his desk.

  “Damn,” he muttered, turned and headed back.

  Stopping halfway across the room when he stepped on something, looked down, and backed away.

  There was a leaf on the carpet.

  Dead, and trembling.

  * * * *

  5

  Casey sat on the front porch, cigarette in his right hand, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, and wondered, not for the first time, what it was about this island that allowed such warm afternoons so late in the year, yet let the temperature take a relative nosedive once the sun had set over the mainland. Maybe it had something to do with the Gulf Stream, maybe something to do with the water that remained warm most of the year and kept the sea breeze warm as well. Or maybe, he thought with a lopsided smile, he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

  The house’s shadow had finally reached across Midway Road, the sun low enough not to reflect in the windows on the other side of the street. The air was still. Lightly chilled. With no inhabited houses nearby, the neighborhood was dark, and silent. Motionless.

  It was getting on time for supper, but he wasn’t about to move. Despite an ice pack and some chewed aspirin, his shoulder was still sore to the touch, and darkly bruised, but not nearly as bruised as his ego. He hadn’t stopped beating himself over the head since he’d returned, a constant berating for being so blind stupid as to not see that car, and for practically running away when all Reverend Baylor had wanted to do was lend him a hand.

  Stupid; really, really stupid.

  Not to mention the still churning anger over what had happened in the Weekly office, and afterward, with that smug deputy sheriff. If he had had any brains at all, had had a lick of sense, he would have insisted the deputy go check on the old man, not taking no for an answer. And he should have gone with him, instead of taking off like that. Hell, for that matter, he should have stayed with Hull for a while, let the guy vent a little if he’d needed to, or checked the man himself to be sure he wasn’t hurt.

  But he had left—don’t get involved—he had given his conscience a pat on the head by dutifully talking to the law, then stopped at the liquor store for his beer, and compounded his nonsense by good God almighty hitting a car backing out a driveway. A minister’s car, yet.

  “A minister’s car,” he whispered, and shook his head.

  Some days it just didn’t pay to get out of bed.

  Some days it just didn’t pay to get half-baked ideas like testing himself to see if he could still function around people.

  Some days it was hardly worth taking a breath at all.

  “Oh, now, there you go,” he said sourly to the self-pity waiting to pounce. He had had enough of that already, and except in a dream now and then, he’d hoped he’d gotten over it.

  Right, he thought; sure.

  He recognized the signs: the time of day, the stillness of the air, the retreat of the sun ... the darkening of his mood. A beer would go down good about now, but he held off deliberately. One now, when he really craved it, and it would be one a little while later, one a little while after that, another and another until the fridge was empty, and he was crawling into bed.

  A hangover in the morning, and it wouldn’t stop the dreams.

  Tempting, though; awfully damn tempting.

  * * * *

  lying in a hospital bed a thousand miles north, bones broken and muscles torn and drugs to soothe the pain, but Lord there wasn’t enough to prevent him from seeing that ghost-white car gliding out of the fire, the dead in the streets, the explosions and the rain and the open mouths, screaming, the open mouths, demanding answers, the children . . . the dying children. . . and listening to the sound of hoofbeats on the road.

  * * * *

  He crushed the cigarette under his heel and closed his eyes. Only for a moment.

  The sputtering sound of a small motor made him sit up; the twilight bright beam of a single headlamp made him wonder; and when he saw what it was, he couldn’t help a grin.

  An old red scooter, and it moved very slowly.

  With a silent groan, he pushed stiffly out of the chair and opened the screen door, leaned against the frame with his arms folded, and watched as Junior Raybourn putted up the road, passed the house and, to Casey’s mild bemusement, made a slow wide turn before parking at the curb at the foot of the walk. Junior wore a screaming red helmet, aviator goggles, an old high school football jacket, heavy pants, heavy boots, and padding on his knees and elbows.

  But he never wore gloves.

  He cut off the engine and sat for a few seconds, head cocked to one side as if listening to the echoes. Bouncing slightly on his seat. Fingers dancing across the handlebars as though he were playing a piano.

  Casey watched, but said nothing. He knew enough not to speak yet, because Junior didn’t much care for conversation; it confused him sometimes, and sometimes made him cry—no tears, just pursed trembling lips and a hound dog sadness around his large dark eyes. He was, as far as Casey could tell, Senior Raybourn’s only child, if a man nearing forty could still be called a child. He had no idea what had happened to the mother or what had caused Junior’s condition; he only knew that Junior and his father lived on Draper, the street behind Casey, one house down, and that Junior worked at Betsy’s and sometimes ran errands on that scooter of his. Never traveling more than twenty-five miles an hour, hugging the curb all the way.

  Not once in two years had they ever come calling.

  On the other hand, he had never gone to their place either, or even, when he was at the Teach, passed a word with the old man.

  Finally Junior stood and very carefully took off his helmet and goggles and placed them on the seat. His hair was short and shot with white, his features broad, his skin much darker than his father’s. Long legs, long torso; a whippet of a man, and just as skittish. A second while he examined the sky, then pulled a bright red wool cap from his jacket pocket, and pulled it on. Smoothing it with his palms. Folding it up in front and measuring with his fingers to be sure it was even all around. Finally he unlatched the rear compartment and took out a large paper shopping bag, stared at it for a moment, then clasped it gingerly to his chest. When he walked slowly toward the house, his gait was awkward, small steps, then widening his stance as if he were a fat man distributing shifting weight.

  Halfway to the house he realized Casey was there, and he stopped. Blinked very slowly, his lower lip out.

  It took Casey a while to realize what was wrong—him. Standing at the top of the steps, practically looming over the yard. A smile to dispel menace, and he slipped his hands into his pockets and stepped down to the walk.

  “Evening, Mr. Raybourn.” Friendly, and soft.

  Junior nodded quickly and hurried the rest of the way, stopping just before he collided with Casey. He held out the bag, nodded again when Casey took it without looking inside. He didn’t have to; he could smell herbs, spices, chicken.

  “Mrs. Nazario,” Junior said, looking at the sky, not Casey. His left arm was bent so his fingers could stroke his left shoulder. “She said. She said I should tell you.” He shifted his weight awkwardly from foot to foot. Nervous now, afraid he’d forget. “She said. She said sorry she was that way with you. Today. At the place where I work.” He swallowed hard, sniffed, fingers at his shoulder looking as if they were plucking guitar strings. “She said you was to eat that.” He nodded at the bag. “For supper.”

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Raybourn.”

  Junior grinned. “She said. She told me. This week is Thanksgiving, you know.”

  “I do know that, Mr. Raybourn, yes.”

  “She said you was, if you could, you was to come to Betsy’s for dinner.” He grinned again, still staring at the sky, fingers leaving his shoulder, strumming the air. “Thanksgiving dinner. We have real special food then. She said. You was to come. That’s—” He frowned, bit down
on his lower lip. “Day after tomorrow.”

  “Well, you know, that’s very kind of her, Mr. Raybourn. I’ll—”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head rapidly. “No, my name is Junior. Call me Junior. Mr. Raybourn. He’s my daddy, don’t work with me, I work all by myself. I got the scooter, you know. It’s Junior’s scooter. My name is Junior.”

  “Okay, sure. Then you call me Casey, okay?”

  Junior shifted his weight again, scanned the sky, the roof, nodding as he thought about it. “Okay.”

  Casey smiled. “Great. And thank Mrs. Nazario for me, will you please?”

  “Yes, sir, I surely will.” Junior took a step back. “I have to take my scooter now. Suppertime.”

  Casey nodded, and held out his hand.

  Junior stared at it, fearfully, suspiciously, before reaching out to take it with a firm grip. He shook it once, nodded sharply... and suddenly moaned soft and deep in his throat.

  No, Casey thought; Lord, no.

  A brief intense blast of cold, followed immediately by heat close to furnace fire.

  Junior snatched his hand away and rubbed it hard against his chest, a wide-eyed stare while his lips worked, a tic in one cheek, one eye blinking.

  “Junior—”

  “Scary,” Junior said and hustled away. “Scary.”

  Casey didn’t try to stop him, didn’t try to explain because he wasn’t sure himself what had happened. Only knew that he had felt that cold before, and that heat; only knew that some had claimed, in the life he had left behind, that he had used it to bring a man—

  “No,” he whispered angrily, and went back inside, only half listening to the scooter fade down the road. The next time he saw him, he would tell Junior a good one, the best lie he could come up with that would make sense to the man. Or maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all. Ignore it. Forget it.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said harshly to the empty house. Not angrily now; wearily. “Son of a bitch. Just... leave me alone.”

  He ate the meal, he had a beer, he walked upstairs to fetch a fresh pack of cigarettes from his bedroom and stopped in the hall, looked into the storeroom.

  The closet door was open.

  Not just a little.

  It was open wide.

  * * * *

  3

  1

  D

  eep autumn; Wednesday; early afternoon.

  Reed Turner sits on a bench in a riverside park. Not much of a park actually; barely wider than the road that runs behind it, and high enough above him that drivers probably couldn’t even see him there, under huge trees whose limbs are almost as fat as their trunks. One day before Thanksgiving, and his jacket is folded on the seat beside him. Crazy. It’s crazy. Just a week ago he and Cora had been in Atlanta, and though it wasn’t exactly cold there, it had been damn chilly. Here, not all that far away, it felt warm enough to be late spring. Crazy.

  The South hadn’t turned out to be anything like he’d thought, like he’d read about, like he’d seen on TV.

  But then, nothing was anymore.

  He scratches a cheek that needs a shave; after a vigorous push through tangled hair that needs washing, he spreads his arms along the back of the bench, stretches out his legs, watches the sluggish water drift past him, toward the sea. He’s been here for almost two hours and hasn’t seen a single boat come up from the port at the river’s mouth. Yesterday, at this same spot, a cabin cruiser had grumbled west, half a dozen people on deck, holding drinks, listening to music, dressed as if they were going to dinner at a restaurant so fancy he couldn’t begin to imagine what it looked like inside.

  Cora had sneered at them, telling him they were obviously pretending nothing was wrong.

  “They should see what we’ve seen,” she’d said bitterly. “Stupid bastards, they don’t care.”

  But maybe, he thinks now, they have seen and they don’t want to see anymore.

  Atlanta had not been fun. A week before they arrived, the city had been torn up by outsider gangs hunting for fresh turf. It had taken what was left of the Georgia National Guard and some help from Alabama to drive them out, blood and bodies left behind, and every paper he read made some kind of hand-wringing reference to the Civil War and General Sherman. They’d left after only one day, afraid of the roadblocks and checkpoints, the uniforms, and the stares.

  Savannah, so far, has been quiet.

  It is, he thinks, like being in another time. The old houses, the once in a while passing of a riverboat, the trees large and heavy-limbed, the cobblestones, the way the people he’d talked to so far didn’t seem to care about the skirmishes in eastern Europe, the war in the Pacific, the wars he’d stopped counting in Africa and the Middle East.

  For that matter, he doesn’t much care now, either. He has more important things to worry about.

  He thinks ... he fears that Cora is going to leave him.

  Since the middle of September she’s been making comments about the futility of their search. Not her usual sarcasm; bitter now, and venomous. The last time they believed they were on the right track was last spring, early April. Since then, they’ve been going on the strength of his dreams. His dreams, not hers.

  Last night she said, “Walking on water? You saw him walking on water? Tell me again, Turner. One more time.”

  He didn’t want to. He recognized the tone, the expression, the set of her lips. Belief turned to doubt had finally curdled into mockery.

  “I don’t know where I am,” he told her anyway, “but I’m standing beside this huge bird, and I can smell stuff— fish and oil and... and sea air and ... and like it smells around mudflats, you know? I’m looking over a hill of some kind, really low, and I can see him ... I know, okay? I know it sounds dumb, but it looks like he’s walking on water, out to some kind of island.”

  He’d glared at her, daring her to make fun, but all she’d done was give him a look—pity or disgust, he couldn’t figure out—and walked away, back to the cheesy motel room they’d rented. With, she reminded him, the money she made doing the waitress thing. Her money, not his; his dream, not hers.

  He watches the river, eyes half closed. She wants to stop. She’s had it, she doesn’t care anymore, she wants a place to stay that has more than one room, that has more than a view of a beat-up highway, that doesn’t smell of all the people who have slept there before.

  He pulls his arms to his sides, grips the edge of the bench seat. Is it his fault there were all those islands out there? How the hell was he supposed to know that? It was why, at her insistence, they had gone inland, to Atlanta. She was sick of the ocean, sick of water, sick of everything that even hinted at something nautical.

  And the night they fled the chaos, he had had the dream again, and only with a promise, a swearing, that if they didn’t find him by Thanksgiving he’d give it up would she go with him on the road one more time.

  Two more days.

  When he’d looked at a local map and saw all those islands off the Georgia coast, he’d almost cried.

  Two more days, and it’ll be over, and he’ll lose her, because after all this time, in spite of his promise, he knows he can’t stop.

  And she can.

  She will.

  He sits up, lowers his head, lets his hands dangle between his knees, feels the sun on the back of his neck, and thinks, angrily, Jesus Christ, it’s practically winter, why the hell isn’t it cold?

  Nothing’s right anymore. Not even the weather.

  His eyes close. He rocks slowly back and forth. For the first time in months he thinks of his mother, of his nearly always drunk father who never hit him, just pretended he was sober, of the house in Maple Landing, burned to the ground, vanishing into the surrounding forest weed by weed, sapling by sapling. Of his friends, all of them dead; of his family, all of them dead; of the people he didn’t really like, all of them dead. Of the houses he’s seen here, many of them painted or trimmed with an odd shade of blue—to keep the ghosts away.

  It
may work for these people; it doesn’t work for him.

  He rocks back and forth, listening to the river, and the traffic above and behind him.

  Suddenly, so suddenly his eyes snap open, he realizes that he’s tired. Worse than tired. And he knows this to be true: that without Cora, no matter how he feels, he won’t go on.

  The chase is over.