Bad Men

“Yeah, well, then you understand. He always did have a lot of bitterness inside him. What happened to his brother just added a little extra piss to his vinegar, if you’ll excuse the phrase. Pardon me saying it, but it didn’t look like there was anything wrong with his truck.”

Macy shook her head. “When he was coming up the road, it seemed like he was surrounded by gray smoke. Then it just sort of…faded away. It was real odd.”

She turned to Amerling but he was looking away, staring at the road Carl Lubey had just taken, as if hoping to see some trace of the smoke for himself.

“I’d best be getting back,” he said. He stomped his cigarette out on the ground, then picked up the butt and put it in the pocket of his jacket. “Mail won’t sort itself.”

They drove in silence for a time, until Macy said, “I couldn’t see the Site from the top of the tower. That’s what they call it, isn’t it, the Site?”

Amerling took a moment to reply.

“Trees keep it hidden.”

“Even in winter?”

“Even in winter. There’s a lot of evergreens out here.”

“It’s over to the south, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, but you can’t get there by car, and even on foot you need to know where you’re going. At this time of year, with the light fading so early, I’m not even sure I could find it.”

“Another time, then,” said Macy.

“Sure,” Amerling lied. “Another time.”

Moloch saw Dexter staring back at him in the rearview. Leonie and Dexter sat up front, Braun behind them, and Moloch farther back. There was a hollow panel in the floor, big enough for a man to lie in, if necessary, although if he was there for longer than a couple of minutes, he’d probably suffocate. Moloch knew it was for weapons, maybe even drugs. It was a last resort for him in the event of a police search, and nothing more.

“You okay?” asked Dexter.

Moloch nodded. They had been traveling for about three hours, and his back ached. They had passed the toll booth at the New Hampshire state line shortly after nine and entered Maine. The traffic was light, most of it headed south toward Boston. They took the Kittery exit, and pulled up outside the Kittery Trading Post. Braun and Leonie went inside, leaving Moloch to rage alone silently.

As they had drawn closer and closer to Maine, Moloch had felt a pain building in his head. He found himself drifting into sleep, his eyes closing and his chin nodding to his chest, until a charge like a jolt of electricity forced him back into waking once again. But in those glancing moments of semirest, his body racked by exhaustion, he was tormented by visions, images of pasts both known and unknown, at once familiar and strange.

He saw himself as a small boy, hands pressed against the window of a black car as it pulled away from a suburban house, the boy’s bicycle momentarily forgotten, his fingers brushing the glass as the car sped up, a man struggling in the backseat, his eyes wide with panic, two men holding him down. The man’s hand reached out, as if somehow the boy could save him, but nobody could save him.

Dad?

No, not Dad, not really, but the closest he had come to finding one, a foster father and a foster mother on a street of identical houses, each with a small square of green lawn, its quiet disturbed only by the hiss of sprinklers and, now, the noise of the car as it pulled away from the curb.

Inside the house, the woman was crying. She lay slumped in a corner of the kitchen, blood running from her nose and mouth. She had been baking a cake, and now flour and broken eggs covered the floor around her. The boy went to her, and she took him in her arms and held him to her.

The next day, more men came, and they were forced to leave the house. The boy fled with his not-mother, moving from town to town, watching her as she grew more and more desperate, descending into some terrible dark place all her own, where men came and pounded on her body and left piles of ragged bills on the dresser when they were done. And the boy wondered, as he grew older: Who am I, and where have I come from, if I am not of this woman?

Then there were other women-mothers, sisters, daughters-flashing before him, and he heard half-familiar names spoken. He was in a house by a lake. He was on a streetcar, a man holding his hand.

He was on the island, and his voice was whispering: Know me, wife.

Moloch jerked into wakefulness again. Dexter was now reading a newspaper. Moloch closed his eyes again.

This is not my past. It is a past, but it is not mine. I am more than this.

The island returned to him and he smelled the sea and the pines, and he heard a sound as of a moth tapping on glass, struggling to escape the darkness.

Or to return to it.

The others returned about a half hour later. They had bought warm clothing, waterproofs, and a selection of minor weaponry: knives, mainly; a handheld ax; and a hunting bow for Dexter. As for guns, they already had what they needed.

Powell handed Dexter the bow case. Dexter opened it and removed the big bow contained within.