'How do you know?' Barbara asked.
'Heard it on my radio,' Lee said.
'You've got a radio that works?’
'Down in my car.'
'Sure!' Pete said. 'Car radios. They'll still work.’
'What else did you hear?' Barbara asked.
'Not much. I had to get back into the building. The car was no good as a defensive position, so…'
'But they said for sure the National Guard will be here tomorrow?' Pete asked. He seemed very excited.'That's right.'
'Jeez, Barbara. Maybe we should stay here. You know?'
'Not me. I can't wait till tomorrow. Besides, how do we know the Guard will really show up when it's supposed to? It'd be crazy to wait that long on the chance that things'll be safer. I mean, we're only a few miles from home. An hour or so, that's all it'll take.'
'On the other hand,' Lee said, 'you might not make it at all.'
'I'll take my chances,' Barbara told him.
'See that?' Earl said. 'She's going, with or without a gun.'
'I don't want a gun,' Barbara repeated.
'I do,' Earl said. 'Come on, Lee. You afraid won't bring it back?'
'That's not…'
'I'll buy one of 'em off you? Okay? I'll give you five hundred bucks for the forty-five.' Lee shook his head. 'Six hundred.'
'We both know you don't have any money, Earl.’
'Maybe not on me…'
'I'm going,' Barbara said. 'Thanks again for the lunch, Lee.'
'Welcome.'
'Pete, are you coming?'
'Just hang on a minute,' Earl said. 'Nobody's going anywhere. We're in the middle of some negotiations here.'
Barbara smirked. 'Negotiations, my butt. You haven't got any money.'
'How much have you got?'
'Not nearly enough. Maybe five bucks.'
'Pete?'
'Six or seven, guess.'
'Heather?'
'I'm not paying nothing,' Heather told him. 'I'm staying right here.'
'Okay,' Earl said. 'Okay. So, we don't buy it with money. What'll you take for the forty-five, Lee?'
Lee was beginning to look annoyed. 'I won't take anything for it. I'm not selling.'
'What'll you take to let us borrow it just for…, say, three or four days? I mean, we only need it for an hour or two, but I'm not sure when we'll be able to get it back to you.'
'Forget it,' Lee said.
'How about an hour with Banner?' Grinning at Barbara, Earl patted her shoulder.
She swatted his hand away.
'Hey! Watch the merchandise!'
'Keep your hands off her!' Pete snapped.
'Yeah, yeah, sure, don't wet your pants. How about it, Lee? Look at her. A fair trade - you get an hour in the sack with Banner, and we get the loan of your forty-five.' Lee met her eyes. My God, he's thinking it over.
'No,' she said. Her voice sounded hollow and seemed to ring in her ears.
'How about it, Lee? A deal?'
'She said no.'
'What if she changes her mind?'
'Cut it out,' Pete warned. 'Shut up.'
'She isn't gonna do something like that.'
'Maybe she is and maybe she isn't. Lee's gonna let us have the gun if she comes across.'
'No.' Lee shook his head. He seemed less sure of himself than before. After a moment, he added, 'Not unless she wants to’
'Look at him, Barbara. He's a handsome guy, isn't he? A real hunk. Wouldn't you like to have him put it to you?'
'Stop it,' she said.
'I'm pretty sure she must be a virgin, Lee. Everything mint condition, if you know what I mean.' He faced Barbara 'Is that the problem? You wanta save it for…?'
'She asked you to stop,' Lee said. 'So stop. I'm not going for this. I'm not about to have you brow-beat her into doing something against her will.'
'Ah, don't be such a Boy Scout.'
'Knock it off, Earl!' Pete yelled.
'I'll do it,' Heather said.
The room suddenly went silent.
Everyone turned to Heather, who was kneeling on the couch looking at them over her shoulder. 'I'll do it,' she said. Then she climbed off the sofa and turned around and looked at Lee. A corner of her mouth trembled. 'How about it.'?'
Lee looked flustered. 'I'm sorry. This is all…I don't how this got started, exactly, but I don't want any part of Earl's crazy scheme if he thinks I'm going to trade one of my guns for… for sex… with you or anybody else.'
Heather gaped at him. She blinked. She looked like she couldn't believe her ears. Then she muttered, 'What's wrong with me?'
'Nothing. Nothing's wrong with you. This is all a mistake.
'Wasn't a mistake when it was Barbara.' He shook his head. 'I wasn't going to…'
'She didn't want you, or you would've.’
'That's not true,' he said.
The hell it's not, Barbara thought. If I'd said yes…
'So why not me?' Heather blurted. 'Am I so disgusting…?'
'You're not. You're very attractive.'
'Screw it,' Earl said. 'He's just trying to spare your feelings.
It's Banner or nothing. Right, Lee?'
'It's nothing,' he said.
Barbara gripped Pete's arm. 'Let's get out of here. Right now.'
Whirling around, Earl blurted in her face, 'We need that gun, Banner! You wanta get us killed out there? Fuck the guy and we walk out with a gun! What's your pussy worth, for…!'
Pete grabbed Earl by the front of his shirt.
'Stop it!' Lee shouted and reached for Earl.
The blast of a gunshot slammed through the room.
Lee's head jerked as if it had been struck in the side by a baseball bat. His lips flopped. Spit flew from his mouth. The bullet came out the left side of his head an inch above his ear, throwing out a heavy red splash. He went sideways as if chasing it, tripped on his own feet, and crashed to the floor. Heather took aim with the rifle and put another shot into him.
'No!' Barbara yelled.
'Good job!' shouted Earl. 'Way to go, Heather! Now we get both his guns.'
'The dirty rotten son of a bitch,' Heather muttered, scowling at Lee's sprawled body.
Still holding Pete's arm, Barbara staggered backward on flimsy legs. She stopped when her buttocks bumped softly against the wall. Oh God, she thought. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. She gonna shoot me next? 'Got just what he deserved,' Earl said. 'You're terrific, Heather. Not only beautiful, but damn smart!' He knelt beside the body. 'Don't know what we would've done without you,' he said. Nodding and smiling at her, he pulled the forty-five out of the back of Lee's jeans. 'Thanks to you, Heather, we'll have a real fighting chance out in the streets.'
'Is he dead?' Heather asked. Her voice sounded strangely flat, as if she was speaking from a trance.
'You killed him deader than hell,' Earl said. 'I couldn't have done better myself.'
'He was a rotten son of a bitch,' Heather said.
'Yeah. Sure was. Who else do you think we oughta shoot?’
'Her.' Heather swung the muzzle toward Barbara.
'No!' Barbara yelled.
She heard Pete yell, too, and felt him shove her out of the way. As she stumbled, she watched Earl jab the forty-five at Heather and fire. The noise was low and heavy and didn't stop. He was pulling the trigger very fast. The black pistol jumped in his hands, spitting brass out its side, smoke and fire out its front. Slug after slug punched Heather. They hit her in the chest and breasts, poking holes through her blouse, flinging out gouts of blood, shoving her backward. She dropped the rifle and sat down hard on the sofa. Barbara's ears rang. Shreds of white smoke drifted silently through the air. 'God!' Earl cried out. 'I had to do it! Did you see her? Did you see what she did? I had to do it!' Earl's voice sounded very far away. Barbara could barely hear it through the ringing. He was standing in front of her, looking from her to Pete. 'You're my witnesses, right? You saw what happened. I had to shoot her. She flipped out. No telling who she was gonna
shoot next. Right?'
Pete muttered, 'Guess.'
Barbara nodded her head.
'Damn right,' Earl said. Pointing the pistol toward the floor, he pushed a button to release its magazine. His hands started to shake. Badly. Then more than his hands. He stood there with his shoulders hunched, arms tight against his sides, chin jumping up and down - shuddering all over like a wet, naked man standing in a blizzard. Finally, the magazine came sliding down out of the pistol's handle. He fumbled it and it fell to the floor. He stared down at it.
'Why'd she do it?' he asked. He looked at Barbara. 'She shot him. He was a good guy. He helped us. What the hell did she want to go and shoot him for? Does that make any sense? Was she nuts?'
'You… said he deserved it,' Barbara muttered.
'Yeah. That was after. Anyway, I didn't mean it. Had to say something.' He held the pistol toward her. 'You want it?'
'No. Huh-uh.'
'I'll take it,' Pete said. Earl handed the pistol to him. 'Better reload,' Earl said, and turned away. Turned toward Heather.
'Jesus,' he muttered. 'Jesus, look at her.'
Heather sat slumped against the back cushion, her mouth open, her arms limp by her sides, the rifle across her body, her legs apart and stretched out underneath the coffee table. Her face was spattered with blood. From the shoulders down her dress was sodden. She looked like she'd caught a bucket full to the brim with red paint square in the chest. And that woman's blood is under all that somewhere, Barbara thought. The woman the cat killed. She couldn't think of the woman's name. She couldn't think of the cat's name, either. That's Heather, though, she told herself. I know that's Heather. But what's her last name?
Doesn't matter, she decided. I don't have to know.
'I did that to her,' Earl said. 'Can you believe it? Jesus. I did that to her.'
Pete bent over the table and picked up the full magazine. He shoved it up the handle of the Colt, then jacked a fresh round into the chamber.
'She flipped out,' he said. 'Maybe we all had something to do with it, don't know.’
'We did,' Barbara said.
'Yeah, guess so.’
'One way or another.’
'Yeah,' Pete said.
Earl shook his head. 'I'm the one that blew her out of her socks.'
'We helped,' Barbara said. 'She was… so jealous… of me.'
'It's almost like we led her right up to the brink,' Pete said.
'I think she saw us in the pool.'
'What'd you do in the pool?' Earl asked.
'Kissed,' Barbara said, looking him in the eyes. 'That's all?'
'It was plenty,' Pete said. 'We wouldn't have done it with her watching. Not if we'd known.'
'She had a thing for Pete,' Barbara explained.
'Maybe she didn't see us.'
'But what if she did? And then, on top of that, Lee won't… sleep with her.'
'She just lost her marbles and I had to shoot her,' Earl said. 'That's all there is to it. She went nuts. Doesn't make any sense to blame anybody but her.'
'Maybe not,' Barbara muttered. 'God, I don't know.'
'What should we do about all this?' Pete asked.
'Nothing,' Earl said. 'Let's just get out of here. Get the rifle, Barbara.'
'I don't want it.'
'Shit. I'll get it.' He stepped toward the end of the coffee table. 'Just don't shoot me, Pete. You aren't gonna shoot me if go for it, are you?'
'You aren't gonna try and shoot us, are you?' Pete asked.
'Gimme a break.’
'So we can't testify.'
'Are you kidding? I'm gonna want you to testify. You can tell 'em how it was self-defense.'
'Yeah,' Pete said.
'It was self-defense,' Earl said, and picked up the rifle. 'No telling who she was gonna shoot next. I had to put her down. It was her or us. Isn't that so, Banner?'
'I guess so. Yeah.'
'Okay. Okay. Now let's take whatever we need and get the hell out of here.'
'Take what?' Barbara asked, frowning.
'The ammo, for starters. And anything else we want.'
'We can't steal from him.'
'If you think we're walking outa here without the guns and ammo, you're crazier than Heather.'
'I'm not a thief,' she said.
'You don't have to be. Leave it to me and Pete. Anyhow, it isn't really stealing - he's dead.'
'It's still stealing.'
'Right, sure. Screw that. You and your morals, Banner. If you weren't such a damn prude, Lee'd be balling you right now in the other room instead of lying here with his brains on the floor. And Heather'd still be alive.'
'Oh, suddenly now it is my fault?'
'Not saying it's your fault. Just saying none of it would've hit the fan if you'd done what I said and let him fuck you.'
'Go to hell.'
'Leave her alone,' Pete said. 'You had no business trying to push her into something like that in the first place.'
'He was gonna go for it.'
'We didn't need a gun that badly.'
'Oh, no? You might just be singing a different tune, Pizza face, if we get out there and run into trouble. Anyway, we've got 'em now. No thanks to Banner. Now, let's get what we need and hit the road. Startin' to stink in here.'
***
He'd made Sheila call out that they should go away, that she was fine and didn't need help and wanted to be left alone. But they had come, anyway. Two men and a woman. Earlier, Stanley had warned Sheila about 'oddballs' and 'creepy types' he'd seen roaming the neighborhood. It had been a lie to keep her from shouting for help. But these three fit the bill perfectly. Too perfectly. They are real, aren't they? he wondered. I might be nuts, but don't hallucinate. They've gotta be real, he told himself as he watched their approach from his hiding place in the rubble. Not only could he see them, but he could hear them: their voices, the crunch of their footsteps, the heavy breathing of the big guy. He could smell the woman's cigarette. If that wasn't enough to prove they weren't some sort of phantoms concocted by his imagination, he'd heard Sheila calling to them, answering them, telling them to go away. So she was aware of them, too; they had to be real. Unless I'm imagining all of this, Stanley thought including Sheila. The notion made him smile. Then it sent a chill through him. What was that story?
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Shit. This better be nothing like that! It's not, he told himself. This is real. I know what's real and what isn't. If this isn't real, he thought, when did it stop being real. Maybe I never got out of my house - the quake brought the place down on top of me and I'm out of this stuff, none of it, everything's been in my head. Or maybe I'm still asleep by the pool over at the Benson place - in which case the early stuff really happened but this about coming back to Sheila is only a dream, and…
'Watch out,' Sheila called. 'There's a guy named Stan. He was just here a few minutes ago. Do you see him?'
He ducked as the three strangers raised their heads and scanned the area.
'We don't see nobody,' one of the men said. 'You included. Where are ya?'
'Make sure Stan isn't around. I don't think he's too stable. He… he cut me on purpose. That's why I screamed like I did.'
'Don't look like he stuck around for us,' the same guy said.
'Can't say blame him,' said the woman who was with the men. 'Where are you?'
'Follow my voice.’
'Keep talking.'
Stanley raised himself enough to see past the side of the pile. The three were walking slowly through the debris, side by side but spread out.
'I'm down through a hole in the floor,' Sheila said.
They were making their way through what was left of Sheila's kitchen, so it wouldn't be long before they found her. When she sees what they look like, Stanley thought, she'll wish she'd kept her mouth shut in the first place. The big one looked like a grizzly bear masquerading as an outlaw biker. He wore a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt and sagging blue jeans. A great, hairy loaf of fat hung out
below the bottom of his T-shirt. In spite of his size, hair and filth, however, he didn't seem nearly as strange as his smaller friend. That one was hairless. From what Stanley could see, he didn't even have eyebrows. He wore high, black leather boots and black leather pants. Instead of a belt, he had rusty strands of barbed wire wrapped around his waist. He wore no shirt. His skin was dead white, and his tiny eyes looked pink. What fucking rock did he crawl out from under? Stanley wondered. While the big one lumbered through the ruins of the house, the smaller one walked lightly and fluidly as if he were performing some sort of slow, weird ballet. He made Stanley's skin crawl. The gal looked skinny and mean. She might've been as bald as the spook a few days ago, but now her scalp was a sloping field of black stubble. Her eyebrows looked like black, upturned slashes. Her small eyes seemed to crowd the sides of her nose. Her thin, sneering lips pinched a cigarette. Her chin came to a point. She's not so bad, Stanley thought, and smiled. Just get rid of the head, she's fine. Drooping from shoulder straps was a gray tank top that ended at her midriff. She had a good, dark tan. Her breasts weren't much larger than tennis balls, but they had a nice bounce to them when she moved, and Stanley liked how her nipples pushed out against her shirt. The shirt was cut off just below her ribcage. She looked flat and sleek below it. She had a golden ring in her belly button. Her jeans hung very low, and she didn't wear a belt - barbed wire or otherwise. They'll tug right down, Stanley thought.
He watched her, and she was the one who found Sheila. 'Over here, boys.' Squatting down, she tossed her cigarette aside. 'Fine time to take a bath,' she said. It sounded like a complaint, not a quip. Turning her head, she called, 'You boys are in for a treat.'
They came up on each side of her.
'Hey, now,' the big one said. 'Ain't this a pretty picture?'
'Will you help me get out?' Sheila asked. Stanley thought she sounded a bit tense.
'That's what we're here for,' the man said. 'Why else'd we be here, if it wasn't to help?'
'Go on and climb down there, Crash,' the woman said. 'Give her a hand.'
'You bet.' Before he could move, the hairless one clapped a hand on his shoulder.
'What's the hurry? Know what mean?'
'Please,' Sheila said. 'Help me. I can't get out. I've been down here ever since the quake. These two beams… I just can't get out from under them.'