There was a little logging road, and according to Vanilla it went down behind Kincaid and Clinton’s property. I took it, bumped along, almost got stuck a couple of times, made my way to where the road stopped amid what looked like the results of a nuclear strike but was in fact the end product of logging. In the moonlight, I could imagine the snow as nuclear ash, all the world dead and turned to powder.
Off to the south, that myth dissolved. The woods were thick there. Out there without lights, the moon behind cloud cover, all I could see were vague tree shapes, nature’s own palisades rising thick and wild against the dark sky.
I got out with the. 38 Super and my flashlight and went crunching over the frozen leaves and pine needles to the trunk of the car and opened it up, removed the shotgun, and laid it on the roof. I opened the toolbox, got the snips, and removed a little strap-on headlight like the kind you use to read in bed so as not to wake up your partner. I turned it on and slipped it over the wool cap on my head. It wasn’t a big light, but it was a good enough light. I turned off the flashlight and put it in my coat pocket. I got a machete from the toolbox and the ammunition out of the trunk and stuffed my pockets with it. I made sure I had the Super’s spare ammo clips where I could get to them quickly. The shotgun had a strap, so I slung it over my shoulder.
I took a pee.
I picked up a wad of snow and made a snowball in my gloved hand and threw it at a stump of a tree. I missed.
I hoped that wasn’t an omen.
I was ready as I was going to be.
Way Vanilla had explained it, I had to go through the woods there, had to find my own trail, of which there were a few, and if I kept going south, I’d come to the high wall that led to the grounds of the estate. How to get over the wall was another matter, but Vanilla felt that since there were high woods on my side of the wall, on property other than their own, the logging company’s property, I could maybe find access that way.
I didn’t think that far ahead. If I did I’d turn around whimpering and head back to the car.
I tried several times to find a path but couldn’t. The woods were thick and dead winter vines were twisted up between the trees like ancient fencing. Worse, I was no longer exactly sure which way was south. It was too damn dark, and among the trees I couldn’t see anything but the whiteness of the snow and the occasional glare of moonlight on dangles of ice.
I made an attempt to follow my instincts, knowing full well that could get me in deep doo-doo, but I went ahead with it.
Hacking my way through the undergrowth, following the little beam of my head-strap light, I fought my way forward. At some point, I came upon a path through the trees and I followed that. It finally veered off to the right. I reluctantly abandoned it and started hacking again. I kept moving forward, inch by inch. I figured by the time I got through this mess and arrived, it would be two weeks from Tuesday.
Even in the cold weather, wearing all those clothes and hacking away, I was steamed and had to pause to cool it. I opened my coat and leaned against a tree. I was glad Leonard and I had been doing more workouts as of late. I had dropped a few pounds and my wind was better. Still, I was tired.
I reached up and turned off the head-strap lamp, leaned against the tree in darkness. I thought about Leonard. I thought about how long I had known him. I thought about all we had gone through. Here I was in the deep woods hacking through twisted dead winter vines and brush, and he was lying up in the hospital without me. That didn’t seem right.
For a moment I considered going back, driving to the hospital to be with him. But then I thought about what Devil Red had done. I thought about how I had been sympathetic toward their killing of those who hurt their loved ones. And then I thought about what they had done to Vanilla and so many others, made them Prostitutes of Death. I was better than they were. I was much better.
I reached up and turned the light on again, and started forward.
In a very short time I saw a glow ahead of me. It was faint and blurry in the misty night. As I neared, I realized it was not a small light, but a large light that spread to my left and right, and that it was shining between the trunks of the trees. I kept going, and finally came to a thinning of the pines and saw a wall ahead of me. It was at least twenty feet high. The light was seeping over it.
Okay.
Now we separate the men from the mice.
Squeak. Squeak.