But if this was a delusion it was certainly an elaborate, consistent one. Every time she woke up—she never allowed herself to sleep too many hours at once, only catnaps—it was the same: quiet skies, vacant houses, empty streets, furtive, scurrying survivors who trusted no one, and—
What's that?
Sister Carole froze as her ears picked up a sound outside. Music. She hurried in a crouch to the front door and peered through the sidelight. A car. A convertible. Someone was out driving in—
She ducked when she saw who was in it. She recognized that cowboy hat. She didn't have to see their earrings to know who—what—they were.
They were headed east. Good. They'd find a little surprise waiting for them down the road.
As it did every so often, the horror of what her life had become caught up to Carole then, and she slumped to the floor of the Bennett house and began to sob.
Why? Why had God allowed this to happen to her, to His Church, to His world?
Better question: Why had she allowed these awful events to change her so? She had been a Sister of Mercy.
<Mercy! Do you hear that, Carole? A Sister of MERCY!>
She had taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, had vowed to devote her life to teaching and doing the Lord's work. But now there was no money, no one worth losing her virginity to, no Mother Superior or Church to be obedient to, and no students left to teach.
All she had left was the Lord's work.
<Believe me you, Carole, I'd hardly be calling the making of plastic explosive and the other horrible things you've been doing the Lord's work. It's killing! It's a SIN!>
Maybe Bernadette's voice was right. Maybe she would go to hell for what she was doing. But somebody had to make those rotten cowboys pay.
COWBOYS . . .
"Shit! Goddam shit!"
Stan's raging voice and the sudden braking of the car yanked Al from the edge of a doze. A few beers, nice warm sunlight... he'd been on his way to catching a Z or two. He opened his eyes.
To, what the fu—"
Then he saw him. Or, rather, it. Dead ahead. Dead ahead. A body, hanging by its feet from a utility pole.
"Oh, shit," Kenny said from beside him. "Another one."
Jackie turned off the music. The sudden silence was creepy.
Al squinted at the body. "Who is it?"
"I dunno," Stan said. Then he looked back at Al from under the wide brim of his cowboy hat. "Whyn't you go see."
Al swallowed. He'd turned out to be the best climber, so he'd wound up the second-story man of the team. But he didn't want to make this climb.
"What's the use?" Al said. "Whoever he is, he's dead."
"See if he's one of us," Stan said.
"Ain't it always one of us?"
"Then see which one of us it is, okay?"
Stan had been pissing Al off today with his hot-shit 'tude. He was posse leader, yeah, but give it a rest now and then, okay? But this time he was right: somebody had to go see who'd got unlucky last night.
Al hopped over the door and headed for the pole. What a pain in the ass. The rope around the dead guy's feet was looped over the first climbing spike. He shimmied up to it and got creosote all over himself in the process. The stuff was a bitch to get off. And besides, it made his skin itch. On the way up he'd kept the pole between himself and the body. Now it was time to look. He swallowed. He'd seen one of these strung-up guys up close before and—
He spotted the earring, a blood-splattered silvery crescent moon dangling on a fine chain from the brown-crusted earlobe, an exact replica of the one dangling from Al's left ear, only this one was dangling the wrong way.
"Yep," he said, loud so's the car could hear it. "It's one of us."
"Damn!" Stan's voice. "Anyone we know?"
Stan and the rest jumped out of the car and stared up at him.
Al squinted at the face but with the gag stuck in its mouth, and the head so encrusted with clotted blood and crawling with buzzing, feeding flies darting in and out of the gaping wound in the throat, he couldn't make out no features.
"Can't tell."
"Well, cut him down then."
This was the part Al hated most of all. It seemed almost like a sin. Not that he'd ever been religious or nothing, but someday, if he didn't watch his ass, this could be him.
He pulled his K-Bar from its scabbard and sawed at the rope above the knot on the climbing spike. It frayed, jerked a couple of times, then parted. He closed his eyes as the body tumbled downward. He hummed Metallica's "Sandman" to blot out the sound it made when it hit the pavement. He especially hated the sick, wet plop of the head if it landed first. Which this one did.
"Looks like Benny Gonzales," Jackie said.
Kenny was nodding. "Yep. No doubt about it. That's Benny. Shit."
They dragged his body over to the curb and drove on, but the party mood was gone.
"I'd love to catch the bastards who're doin this shit," Stan said as he drove. "They've gotta be close by around here somewhere."
"They could be anywhere," Al said. "They found Benny back there, killed him there—you saw that puddle of blood under him—and left him. Then they cut out."
"They're huntin us like we're huntin them," Jackie said.
"But I wanna be the one to catch 'em," Kenny said.
Jackie sneered. "Yeah? And what would you do if you did?"
Kenny said nothing, and Al knew that was the answer. Nothing. He'd bring them in and turn them over. The bloodsuckers didn't like you screwing with their cattle.
But something had to be done. Lots of the cattle they roped in called Al and company traitors and collaborators and worse. Lately it looked like some of them had gone beyond name-calling and graduated to throat-slitting.
Benny Gonzales was the fifth one in a month.