Bad Men

And if people came in, and they weren’t too careful, then they might get to play with the Gray Girl.

She was the worst, but there were others too, and the area around the tower and the cross belonged to them. To go in there now would be like standing in front of a train. The train wouldn’t mean to hit you, wouldn’t have any intention of hurting you, but if you got in its way, it would kill you as it hurtled toward its destination. That was what the woods now felt like to Richie: a dark tunnel, with a train rushing through it, ready to smash anything in its path.

But the shore was still safe, and there were trees beneath which to shelter. Except tonight the snow had started to fall really heavily, heavier than Richie had ever seen it fall before, and the wind had grown very strong and had blown the snow into Richie’s eyes. He had sought cover in one of the old observation towers, a little one by the road, hoping to wait out the bad weather. Then the boat had come. He could barely make it out until it got close to shore, but he heard the men as they reached land.

And suddenly, he was afraid.

He wanted to go home.

He left the shelter of the tower just as the black man appeared and saw him.

Tell’s voice brought Willard back. He could no longer perceive Moloch and the others, for they had now ascended the slope, but he thought that he could still catch glimpses of their flashlight beams through the snow. There was a pain in Willard’s belly. It made him want to curl up in a ball, like a little child. His eyes stung and he felt tears creep down his cheeks.

“I said, you want to stow these away?”

Willard wiped his face hurriedly as Tell handed him a stack of life jackets. He pointed to the storage chest at the stern of the little boat.

“In there.”

Willard took the jackets in his arms, then knelt down to store them. Behind him, he heard Tell rummaging in his pack, then sensed the little man moving close behind him. He looked over his shoulder and into the barrel of the pistol. Tell’s own gun, a Colt.45, was still in his belt. The gun in his hand was a one-shot.22, silenced to hell and back.

No noise, that was Moloch’s instruction to Tell. No noise and no pain.

“You’re a crazy bastard, you know that?” said Tell. “You gave us all the fucking creeps.”

Willard didn’t blink as the trigger was pulled.

“He’s a dummy,” said Dexter.

Powell looked at him.

“What did you say?”

“The guy’s a dummy,” repeated Dexter. “He’s handicapped.”

Richie stood across the road from them, but didn’t move. Powell squinted against the snow and saw the man’s face, except now that he looked, the man seemed younger, more a kid than an adult. But Dexter was right. The kid, or man, or whatever the hell he was, was retarded.

“What are we going to do with him?” asked Powell.

“Take him back to the boat, I guess,” said Scarfe. “Let Tell keep an eye on him until we got to go, then turn him loose.”

He heard a scrabbling sound behind him, and turned to see Moloch hauling himself up the last stretch of trail with the aid of a sapling.

Moloch looked at Richie, and Richie stared back.

“Bad men,” said Richie.

“What did he say?” asked Powell.

Richie began to walk quickly away, but they could hear him muttering to himself.

“He recognized me,” said Moloch.

“The fuck could he do that? Dex said he was a dummy.”

“I don’t know how. TV maybe. Stop him.”

Dexter and Powell began to move after him, but the snow was thicker up here on the exposed road, and they struggled and slipped as they tried to catch up with him.

“Hey, wait up!” called Dexter, but Richie kept his head down, his face set determinedly. It was the face he wore when other boys taunted him, or tried to show him pictures of naked ladies.

It was the face he wore when he was afraid, and trying not to cry.

“Bad men,” he whispered to himself. “Badmenbadmenbadmen.”

Behind him, he heard the black man swear loudly as he stumbled.

Richie started to run.

Carl Lubey was beginning to panic. He had tried everything he knew and there was still no sign of life from the truck. As a last resort, he’d decided to change the battery. He was lifting the spare from the back of the garage when the radio in the truck exploded into life, almost deafening him with the last bars of “Freebird.” The radio was permanently tuned to the island’s amateur station, run by Dickie Norcross out of his attic, except Dickie broadcast only between the hours of two and six, and it was now well past Dickie’s good-bye time.

“And that one’s going out to all the folks on the island who are battening down the hatches for a hard night ahead,” said the disc jockey’s voice. It sounded strangely familiar to Carl. It wasn’t Dickie Norcross, not by a long shot. Dickie had a kind of high-pitched voice, and tended to limit his voice-overs to birthday greetings and obituaries. This was a woman’s voice.

“Especially Carl Lubey over there in the deep, dark forest, who’s having trouble with his truck. Ain’t ya, Carlie?”