The Night Parade(58)
Ellie’s hand closed around Cooper’s wrist.
David stopped struggling.
Cooper grinned. Then his head cocked slightly to one side, the bewildered look of a dog overcoming his features, and the grin fell away from his face. A vertical crease appeared between Cooper’s eyebrows. Cooper’s lower lip began to tremble, to quiver, and it was soon obvious that he was muttering something just barely audible, like someone reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
Then he screamed. It was a shrill, womanlike sound, raw enough to rupture his throat. His eyes grew wide, fearful, terrified, and his cheeks began to quiver. But not just his cheeks—his whole face began to quiver, his head shaking rapidly as if possessed by some force that was overtaxing his brain. And David wondered if that was exactly what was happening. . .
“Coop?” Tre said, his voice small and seemingly far away.
David felt Tre’s arms loosen around his chest. He seized the opportunity, throwing Tre’s arms off him and driving himself into Cooper’s chest while simultaneously clutching at the hand that held the gun. Sharp pain blossomed in his nose and radiated along the contours of his skull. There was a deafening explosion as the gun went off. David drove Cooper back against the wall; he felt the air gust out of Cooper’s lungs in one giant expulsion; a second after that, Cooper’s legs went rubbery and they both crashed to the floor.
Someone screamed.
David was quick to his feet, and had already administered a swift kick to the side of Cooper’s head before he realized he now held the gun in his hands. Cooper’s head rebounded off the wall and his eyes went foggy. His mouth worked silently, like a fish hauled out of the water gasping for air.
When David glanced up, he saw Tre’s thick, blocky silhouette rushing toward him, though seemingly in slow motion. It was as if the gun redirected itself and pulled its own trigger. The second gunshot seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Tre twisted in midleap; he spun away and crashed through the coffee table. In that millisecond, David was able to make out the look of utter shock on Tre’s tanned face; he could see the tats on his forearms and biceps in stark and terrible clarity; he could see the shimmering beads of sweat spring from Tre’s forehead and arc like cannon fire through the air in slow motion.
A moment later, the world caught up with itself. A grayish mist hung in the room, tangible as a spiderweb. David took a deep breath, and the acrid stench of gunpowder burned his sinuses. He tasted blood at the back of his throat, and when he touched his nose, he found his fingertips bloody. On the floor, Tre rolled over on the broken bits of the coffee table and moaned.
Turk reappeared in the doorway. He still held his son, but the look of shock had been wiped from his face. He now looked like a bull prepared to charge.
“Don’t move,” David said, swiveling the gun in Turk’s direction. “I’ll blow your goddamn head off.”
No one moved.
“Ellie,” he said, and motioned for her to get up off the couch. She did, but kept her eyes on Tre, who was clutching his abdomen as a dark, wet stain spread across the front of his shirt. David snared her around the wrist and pulled her close to him. Then he pointed the gun at Turk. “Get in here. Up against the wall with the others.”
“You’re a poison.” Turk’s voice was a low rumble. “You’ve come here and infected us all.”
“Do it now or I’ll shoot you in the face. Your wife, too.”
Pauline sobbed into her hands. She was still kneeling on the floor, her hair, face, and arms slick with Jimmy’s blood.
“I’ll put a bullet in her head, Turk. I swear it.”
Still cradling his dead son in his arms, Turk looked down at Pauline. “Get up,” he told her. “Stop crying and get up. Do what he says.”
She used Turk’s leg as support, hoisting herself off the floor. Blood from Jimmy’s mouth continued to spill onto the floor, black as oil. Blood had soaked Turk’s pants legs.
Once they were all in the living room, David backed toward the front door. He clutched the gun in two hands, yet still it shook. His breath whistled up the stovepipe of his throat. Ellie clung to his hip. When his foot thumped against something, he glanced down and saw it was the skull. Solomon. It spun slowly on the carpet like a top winding down.
“Don’t move and don’t follow us.” David opened the front door without taking his eyes from the roomful of people.
“Poison,” Turk said.
And then they were outside, he and Ellie, wincing against the harsh white sunlight of late afternoon. He paused midway down the driveway and pulled Ellie against him, covering one of her ears with the palm of his sweaty hand. He fired the gun at one of the Silverado’s tires, the gun bucking, the report like a whip crack. Then he shot out a second tire, hearing a faint metallic zing! as the bullet presumably rebounded off the rim.
“Run,” David said, and shoved Ellie forward.
The girl stumbled, then righted herself before breaking into a full gallop. They were on the other side of the street when a shotgun blast sheared the limb off a nearby tree. Ellie screamed. Brown leaves and splinters of wood rained down on them. David shouted for her to keep going.
27
He wasn’t sure whether they were being followed or not, but he wasn’t taking any chances. They didn’t slow down until they reached the main thoroughfare of town, and even then it was just to catch their bearings before taking off again. Ellie spotted the surplus store first, and they both sprinted across the street and around back, where the Olds was still tucked into its parking space. The car keys were in David’s pocket, so the urge to just jump in and speed off was powerful, but he knew he’d regret not grabbing his phone and whatever else he could manage from inside the store, so he darted through the partially opened door and raced across the store, knocking over a display rack as he went, until he nearly tripped over one of their sleeping bags. He gathered their bags in his arms while Ellie grabbed the shoe box of bird eggs, then together they ran back outside.