A Gathering of Crows (11 page)

Trish heard her spine snap as he took her breath away.

***

Clutching a 12-gauge shotgun, Paul Crowley stood in his backyard and squinted, peering into the darkness. The air was chilly, and Paul shivered as the breeze rushed over him. He was clad in a dirty pair of jeans and a loose-fitting, faded John Deere T-shirt with mustard stains on it. The stains were fresh— leftovers from his dinner, which he’d eaten in front of the television again, sitting in the recliner and watching a nature program on PBS.

Paul didn’t care much for PBS’s liberal bias, but he enjoyed shows about wildlife and nature, and since he didn’t have cable or satellite, PBS was his only option. Tonight’s program had been about crows. Paul didn’t have much use for the damned things. Nasty little creatures. They carried the West Nile virus and other diseases. In the spring, they rooted through his garden and ate up all the seeds he’d planted. In the fall and winter, they fluttered around in the woods, making a fuss and alerting wild game to his presence. Paul had missed shots at plenty of deer and wild turkeys over the years thanks to motor mouthed, obnoxious crows. When he’d been a boy, Paul’s daddy had told him that a group of crows could kill and eat a newborn lamb. Maybe that was why a group of crows was called a murder. He’d been surprised to learn from the program that crows could imitate a human’s voice. Apparently, they were highly intelligent and cunning. Paul didn’t care. Just because they were smart didn’t mean they were any less of a nuisance.

He’d fallen asleep in the recliner during a segment about scientists training crows to pick up trash, and had slept until the sound of his dogs’ barking woke him, causing Paul to jerk upright and almost tumble out of the chair. That might have been bad. He certainly wasn’t old yet—at least, not what he considered old—but living alone; had he broken a leg or hip or knocked himself out, there’d have been no one to find him.

Since his retirement seven years earlier, Paul had spent every day out in the woods with his six bear dogs. They were mutts—crossbreed mixes of black and tans, beagles, German shepherds and Karelians, mostly. He loved the dogs and they loved and respected him. Each day, except on Christmas, Thanksgiving and Sundays, Paul got up at the crack of dawn, loaded the dogs into his pickup truck and headed up into the mountains. During bear season, he hunted. When black bears weren’t in season, he allowed the dogs to track and run them. They did this all day long, usually returning home just before sundown. Paul enjoyed it, and all of the walking across ridges and hills kept him in great shape. It kept the dogs healthy, too. Each one was equipped with a radio collar and GPS device so he could track them if they got lost in the mountains—which they often did, especially if a mother bear or her cubs gave them a long chase.

He knew the dogs better than he knew most people. He’d come to recognize the subtle changes in their barks and what the differences in tone meant, and that was how he knew upon waking that the dogs were upset by something. He’d stood there in the living room, yawning and blinking and wondering how long the power had been out, and realized that the dogs weren’t just distressed. They were absolutely terrified.

Wondering what had gotten them so riled up, Paul had hurried through his darkened home, grabbed the 12-gauge and rushed outside just as the dogs fell quiet. He checked the pen and found them huddling together at the back, trembling and frightened, their pink tongues lolling as they panted. He whispered soothing words to them and then crept around the property. He couldn’t find anything amiss. There were no signs of a trespasser—no footprints in the wet grass or evidence indicating someone had tried to break into the house. He was just about to go inside when the disturbance erupted again. This time, instead of the dogs howling in fright, it was his fellow townspeople. The cries and screams seemed to be coming from all four directions at once. An occasional gunshot peppered the commotion. Curiously, there were no sounds of car engines or screeching tires or sirens. “I don’t like this,” Paul told the cowering dogs. “I don’t like this one bit. Sounds like somebody’s done snapped and gone on a killing spree, like you see on the news. You boys stay here. I’ll go have a look.”

He tiptoed around to the front of the house and glanced both ways. As far as he could tell, the electrical outage wasn’t confined to his street or block. It seemed to have affected the entire town. The yells and other noises seemed distant, but as he stood there listening, they slowly began to draw closer.

Paul ran back into the house, found his cell phone and started to dial 911, only to discover that the phone wasn’t working. He stared at the blank, lifeless screen and then tossed it onto the counter in frustration. He hurried into the living room and went to the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves he’d built into one wall. They were lined with paperback and hardcover books—western novels by Ray Slater, Ed Gorman, Al Sarrantonio, Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour, history books about Vietnam, World Wars I and II, and the Korean Conflict, and nature books, including a massive, two-volume field guide to North American fish and game. In between the books were framed pictures of his wife (taken away from him by pancreatic cancer two months before his retirement) and their son and daughter-in-law (all grown now and living on the West Coast). A few dusty knickknacks occupied other empty spaces. On top of the shelf was a radio that played extreme weather alerts for Brinkley Springs from the National Weather Service, bulletins from the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, and announcements from local law enforcement and emergency-response crews. He’d bought it on sale at the Radio Shack in Beckley several years before, and it had proven invaluable time and time again, especially during the winter months. One of Paul’s favorite features was the battery back-up, which kept the radio functioning during a power outage.

Except it wasn’t working now. Like the cell phone, the emergency radio sat lifeless.

“Well, if that don’t beat all. Cheap piece of Chinese junk. Don’t nothing work anymore the way things used to.”

Muttering to himself, Paul stalked back out of the house as the noises outside grew louder. Someone ran down the sidewalk as the screen door slammed shut behind him, but Paul couldn’t see who it was. He wondered if they were running to something or away from something. He noticed that the dogs were still cowering in their kennel. Hefting the shotgun, he approached it again. Being in their proximity made him feel more assured.

“That you, Paul?”

Startled, he jumped at the voice, nearly dropping the 12-gauge before he recognized the speaker as Gus Pheasant, who lived next door. Gus owned the local garage, along with his brother, Greg. Although both men were twenty years younger than Paul, he liked them very much and often got together with them in the evenings. Greg was divorced and Gus had never married, so they had their bachelorhood in common. They’d often invited Axel Perry— another widower—to join them, but the old man never did. Paul got the impression that Axel liked to be alone. It was a shame. He didn’t know what he was missing. Although he would have never said it aloud, Paul found that spending time with them made his own evenings a little less lonely. He liked the gruff companionship, liked playing cards and drinking a few beers and arguing sports and politics and women.

“Yeah,” he called, “it’s me, Gus. What in the hell is going on?”

“I don’t rightly know. Sounds like World War Three’s done started though, don’t it?”

Gus stepped out of the shadows. He looked shaken. His complexion was pale and his eyes were wide and frightened. His hair stuck up askew, and his pajamas were soaked with sweat and stuck to his body, including his prodigious beer gut. Paul’s gaze settled on Gus’s feet. The man wore a pair of fuzzy Spider-Man slippers. The costumed character’s big red head adorned the toe of each and seemed to stare up at Paul.

“Gus, what in the world are you wearing?”

The mechanic glanced down at his feet and then shrugged, clearly embarrassed.

“Oh, shoot. Forgot I had those on. I rushed out of the house so quick . . .”

“What are they?”

“Bedroom slippers.”

“I can see that. But they seem a little—”

“I didn’t buy them,” Gus interrupted. “Lacey Rogers bought them for me.”

“Lacey Rogers is eight years old, Gus.”

“I know that. Do you really think these are the type of slippers an adult would buy for me?”

“Well, what’s Lacey Rogers doing buying you a present, anyway? That don’t seem right.”

“Remember last year when they did the Secret Santa thing at church?”

Paul nodded. Each member of the congregation had pulled a slip of paper out of the offering plate. Written on the slip was the name of a fellow parishioner. They then purchased a gift—under twenty dollars—for that person. Paul’s Secret Santa had been Jean Sullivan, who’d bought him two pairs of wool socks for hunting.

“Lacey pulled my name,” Gus explained. “Her parents said she picked these out herself down at the Wal-Mart. I couldn’t very well return them, now could I?”

“No, I don’t guess so. That would have broke her little heart.”

“Exactly. And I have to say, they do keep my feet warm at night.”

“Well, you look like a damned fool.” Paul’s voice was gruff, but his grin nearly split his face in half.

“Your phone working?” Gus asked, clearly anxious to change the subject.

Paul shook his head. “Nope. Ain’t nothing working. My cell phone and emergency radio are dead, too. The cell I can understand. Service ain’t never been that reliable around here. But the radio should still be working. It’s got a battery back-up. I don’t understand why it would quit like that.”

“Same here,” Gus confirmed. “It ain’t just your radio. Everything in my place is dead. It’s like something fried all of the electronics. Hell, I couldn’t even get my damned flashlight to work. How’s that for weird?”

“It’s something, alright.”

“What do you suppose it means?”

“I don’t rightly know,” Paul said, “but whatever it is, it ain’t good.”

Another gunshot echoed across town, followed by an explosion.

“Holy mother of God,” Paul said, jumping. “What was that?”

“I don’t know. All I know is it’s been a weird day and it just keeps getting stranger.”

“How do you mean?”

Gus paused. “Well, first there was this Amish fella come riding into town on a horse and buggy. Real pretty horse. Very gentle, but very big. She’d be a prize mare. He’s got her tied up down by the river tonight. He asked me and Greg if there was a hotel in town and we sent him over to Esther’s place.”

“Amish?” Paul grunted. He’d known a few Brethren in his life—Amish, Mennonites and Moldavians. All of them had been good people. Hard workers. Very handy with a hammer and a saw. “I don’t see how that would be connected to what’s happing now, though.”

“I don’t reckon it is, but you never know. Maybe it’s—”

Paul paused as a man ran by them, weaving around parked cars on the street and tottering back and forth. Paul recognized him as one of the cashiers at the local convenience store, but he didn’t know the man’s name. At first, Paul assumed the guy must be drunk, but then he noticed the man’s torn trouser leg and the blood on his calf, and realized he was injured.

“Hey,” Gus called, apparently not knowing the cashier’s name either. “You okay, fella? What’s going on?”

The fleeing man didn’t stop. He shuffled past them, not even bothering to look in their direction as he answered. “Dark men . . . they’re going house to house . . . killing folks. Killing everybody. Even the pets.”

Paul took a step forward. “What do you mean?”

“No time! If you’re smart, you’ll run now. I mean it. They’re killing everyone.”

“Who?”

“The dark men. Run!”

“What was that explosion?” Paul asked.

“Someone shot the propane tank behind the fire hall. Now get going, if you know what’s good for you. I ain’t waiting around for the dark men.”

“Hey! Just wait a goddamn minute, fella. We don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

Without another word, the man fled on, trailing dark spots of blood on the asphalt. Gus and Paul looked at each other.

“Dark men?” Gus arched one eyebrow. “What do you suppose he meant by that?”

“I don’t know. Black folks, maybe?”

Gus shook his head. “No. I’ve talked to him plenty of times down at the shop. He’s brought his car in to be serviced, though I can’t remember his name. He seemed like a nice enough guy. Never struck me as a racist.”

“Just because a fella ain’t telling nigger jokes or wearing a Klan robe don’t mean they’re not racist.

You can never tell.”

“I still don’t buy it,” Gus said. “And besides, even if he was racist, it still doesn’t make any sense. Why would a bunch of black folks want to shoot up Brinkley Springs?”

“Not saying they are. I’m just trying to figure out what he meant. He said dark men.”

“Well, if we stand out here long enough, I reckon we’re liable to find out the hard way what he meant.”

Paul nodded. “I suspect you’re right. Not sure what to do, though. Don’t hear any sirens or anything. Just screaming.”

They paused, listening. Gus shuddered.

“I hope my brother is okay.”

“Where is Greg, anyway?” Paul asked him.

“At home sleeping, I guess. Wish I could call him and find out.”

Paul glanced at his cowering dogs and then out into the street. The breeze shifted, bringing with it the unmistakable smell of smoke. It made his eyes water. He hesitated, weighing his options. On the one hand, he should stay here and look after the dogs and his belongings. The fleeing cashier had mentioned that pets were being killed. But on the other hand, it sounded like there were a lot of people out there who needed help. People that he knew. Some that he’d known his whole life. It didn’t seem right to hunker down here while they were in trouble. He turned back to Gus.