The White Road

To his right, a road curved up into a copse of trees. Cyrus parked his car out of sight then, his stomach tense with excitement, proceeded up the hill. He cleared the trees and passed a ruined shed to his left, the white house now glowing before him, the dying sunlight reflecting from its glass. Soon, the marsh too would be aflame, the waters ru

Red, mostly.

Mary Mason lay on her back on the grass, staring at the sky. She had seen the hunched man toss the device into her car, the slow fuse burning, and had guessed what it was, but she felt paralyzed, unable to move her hands to stem the bleeding let alone pull herself away from the car.

She was weakening.

She was dying.

She felt something brush her leg, and managed to move her head slightly. A long trail of blood marked the big man’s painful progress toward her. He was almost beside her now, hauling himself along by his ragged and bloodied fingernails. He reached out to her and grasped her hand, then pressed it against the wound in her side. She gasped in pain, but he forced her to maintain the pressure.

Then, slowly, he began to drag her by the collar of her shirt toward the grass. She screamed aloud once, but still she tried to keep her hand pressed to the wound until at last he could pull her no farther. He lay against the old tree in her yard, her head resting on his legs and his hand upon her hand, keeping the pressure on, the expanse of its trunk shielding them both from the car when the device exploded moments later, shattering the glass in the automobile and the windows in her house and sending a blast of heat rolling over the lawn and the tips of her toes.

“Hold on,” said Bear. His breath rattled in his throat. “Hold on now. They’ll be coming soon.”

Roger Bowen sat in a corner of Tommy Condon’s pub on Charleston’s Church Street, sipping on a beer. On the table before him lay his cell phone. He was waiting for the call to confirm that the preacher was safe and on his way north to Canada. Bowen checked his watch as two men in their late twenties passed by, joshing and pushing each other. The one nearest stumbled against Bowen’s table, sending his cell phone tumbling onto the floor. Bowen rose up in fury as the young man apologized and replaced the phone on the table.

“You fucking asshole,” hissed Bowen.

“Hey, take it easy,” said the guy. “I said I was sorry.”

They left shaking their heads. Bowen watched them climb into a car outside and drive away.

Two minutes later, the phone on his table rang.

In the seconds before he pressed Receive, it might have struck him that the phone was a little heavier than he remembered, and that the fall to the floor had maybe scuffed it some.

He hit the green button and put the phone to his ear, just in time for the explosion to tear the side of his head off.

Cyrus Nairn stood in front of the house, clutching a map and looking puzzled. Cyrus wasn’t much of an actor, but he figured that he didn’t have to be. There was no movement from the house. He walked to the screen door and stared into the hallway beyond. The door was well oiled, and opened silently. He moved slowly inside, checking the rooms as he went, ensuring that each one was empty, wary of the dog, until at last he reached the kitchen.

The big man stood at the kitchen table, drinking soy milk from a carton. He wore a T-shirt that read “Klan Killer.” He looked at Cyrus in surprise. His hand was already moving to the gun on the table when Cyrus fired and the carton exploded in a shower of milk and blood and the big man tumbled backward, breaking a chair as he fell. Cyrus stood over him and watched as the emptiness entered his eyes.

From behind the house, he heard the barking of a dog. It was young and stupid, and Cyrus’s only concern about it was that, in the house, its barking might have given the woman warning. Carefully, he glanced out of the kitchen window and saw the woman strolling in her yard close by the edge of the marsh, the dog beside her. He walked to the back door and slipped out as soon as he was certain that the woman was out of sight. Then, skirting the side of the house and staying close to the walls, he found her once again. She was in the long grass, moving away from the house, picking wildflowers. He could see the swelling at her belly, and some of his desire cooled. Cyrus liked to play with them before he finished them off. He had never tried playing with a pregnant woman before and something told him that he wouldn’t enjoy it, but Cyrus was always open to new experiences. The woman rose and stretched, holding her hand to her back, and Cyrus retreated back into the shadows. She was pretty, he thought, her face very pale, accentuated by her red hair. He drew a breath and tried to calm himself. When he looked again, she was strolling farther into the long grass and the evening shimmering of the waters, the dog racing ahead of her. Cyrus debated waiting for her to return to the house but he was afraid that somebody might come up that curving road and see his car, and then he would be trapped. No, there was cover out there, trees and long grass, and the rushes would hide him when he took her.

Cyrus unsheathed the knife at his waist and, holding it close to his thigh, moved after the woman.

The Cessna banked, then made a slow descent toward the Ambajejus Lake. It bounced a little on the water when it landed before drawing to a gradual halt, its wings tilting slightly as it approached the old jetty. The man at the controls of the Cessna was called Gerry Szelog and the only thing he had been paid for this flight was fuel money. That was okay, though, because Gerry was a believer, and believers did as they were asked and wanted nothing in return. In the past Szelog’s Cessna had transported guns, fugitives, and in one case, the body of a woman reporter who had poked her nose where she had no business poking it and who now lay at the bottom of the Carolina Shoals. Szelog had scouted out the lake a couple of days earlier by taking a flight with the Katahdin Air Service that operated out of Spencer Cove. He’d also checked their hours to ensure that the pilots from Katahdin would not be around to ask questions when he came in to land.

The Cessna stopped and a man appeared from behind one of the trees on the shore. Szelog could see that he wore blue overalls that billowed slightly as he ran toward the plane. This would be Farren, the man responsible for the arrangements at this end. Szelog climbed out of the little cockpit, then hopped down onto the jetty to meet the advancing man.

“Right on schedule,” said Szelog, removing his shades.

He stopped.

The man standing before him wasn’t Farren, because Farren was supposed to be white. This man was black. He also had a gun in his hand.

“Yeah,” said the man. “You could say you’re dead on time.”

It took a few moments for Cyrus to figure out why the woman appeared to be in a world of her own, otherwise she would surely have heard the gunshot. She paused at the edge of a stream and reached into a small pouch at her waist, withdrawing the Discman and forwarding through the tracks. When she found the tune she was looking for, she replaced the device and continued on her way, skirting the trees, the dog racing ahead of her. The dog had paused once or twice and looked back toward Cyrus as he made his way, hunched, through the long grass, but Cyrus was moving slowly and the young dog’s eyesight was not good enough to pick him out from the swaying grass. Cyrus’s feet, and the ends of his jeans, were soaking wet. It felt uncomfortable to him but then he thought of the prison, and the stale stench of his cell, and decided that being wet wasn’t so bad after all. The woman rounded the edge of the copse and almost disappeared from sight, but Cyrus could still see her pale blue dress moving between the trunks and the low branches. The trees would provide him with the cover he needed.