Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (14 page)

Joe Rob drove up to the
sun-bleached barn and stopped ten yards in front of it. Its wide doorless mouth
yawned in shadow. The noon air was close, windless. He killed the Mustang’s
engine, and the growling guitar riff of Stevie Ray’s “Cold Shot” died with a
haunting echo. The farmhouse was twenty-some-odd yards to his right, its
paneless windows like eyeless sockets and its sagging porch like the limp
tongue of a dead animal.

He sat stone-still behind the
wheel, his eyes searching for the enemy. The only living thing he saw was a
crow perched on the apex of the barn’s roof. With the sawed-off shotgun hidden
under his hunting jacket, he stepped out of the car and stood behind the meager
cover of the driver’s door.

“Here I am!” he shouted. The echo
of his voice was hollow and eerily forlorn.

The crow launched itself off the
roof and beat its wings against the glaring sky.

“Skeeter! I’m here, man!” Joe Rob
hollered.  “Where the fuck are you?”

No response.

“Come on, you cocksuckers! Don’t be
shy. You want me? Here I am!”

Above, in the tall rectangular
opening of the barn loft, a man came forward from the shadowy interior and into
the bright light of the midday sun. Fate Porch aimed a shotgun down at Joe Rob
and said, “Get away from the car.”

Joe Rob stood his ground. “Where’s
my friend?”

“He’s here,” Porch said.

“Let him go, then you and me will
settle up.”

“That ain’t how it works, boy. If
you want him, you’ll have to kill me and my boys to get him.”

“Is that right?” Joe Rob smiled. 
“Well, send ’em on out and let’s get to it, old man. I already killed that
crazy fuck Odell. I might as well send the rest of you assholes to hell too.
Well? Where are they?”

“Yonder they come.” Fate Porch
nodded at the dirt road in the distance behind Joe Rob.

Joe Rob glanced over his shoulder
and saw the black Firebird speeding up the rutted, weed-choked drive from the
road, then he looked back up at Fate Porch and at the shotgun barrel pointing
down at him, its muzzle looking amazingly big, almost like one of those
megaphone-muzzled blunderbusses of olden times. He knew it was some devious
trick of his perception, probably perpetrated by the coke-and-speed cocktail
he’d snarfed up at Candyman’s trailer. It wasn’t fear. He knew no fear. Even
with the Firebird coming up on his flank and with the shotgun drawn down on him
from above in the rectangular evil eye of the barn, he wasn’t afraid. He
knew
he was in control of the situation. He was the one calling the shots. The
pigskin was in his hands and he was going to ram it down their throats. His
best runs on the gridiron had started with this same on-top-of-the-game
feeling. Sometimes you just
knew
you were headed for paydirt and that
nothing could stop you. This was one of those times. But something else had
been thrown into the mix. Something he didn’t stop to analyze, but noted only
in passing. It was as if some switch in his brain had been flipped and the
world all at once went weird. Everything within his field of vision was
suddenly glazed with an aura of darkness. A halo of dark light surrounded Fate
Porch’s big head. The blunderbuss muzzle of his shotgun also glowed with that
same black light. He looked back at the approaching Firebird. Its flat-black
primer-coated body had a dark halo of its own. Then, unbidden, a black light
went on in Joe Rob’s skull and he nodded and said, “Ah, dark things.”

And he knew it was time to light it
up.

He said, “You fucked up, old man.
You should never divide your forces like that.” He took a step backward and
brought the sawed-off double-barrel Remington out from under his jacket, easily
clearing the top of the door with it, and fired both barrels at the old man,
who fired his shotgun at the same time. Joe Rob had never been kicked by a
mule, but when the butt of the sawed-off recoiled into his shoulder because he
had rushed the shot before firmly bracing the weapon there, he had a damn good
idea what a mule’s kick would feel like. It hurt like hell, but it also felt
good having that much power at your command.

The blast of Fate’s buckshot
shattered the half-mast window of driver’s door and blew out the side mirror,
and Joe Rob felt a rough tug on the left sleeve of his jacket. He dropped the
sawed-off and drew the .45 from his belt. The surprised old man had fallen back
into the loft. Joe Rob didn’t know how bad the old fart was hit, but he knew
both barrels couldn’t have missed him completely. With Fate out of the picture,
at least temporarily, Joe Rob was free to turn his full attention to the two
fucks in the Firebird.

***

“He shot Diddy!” Cowboy hollered.
“Goddammit, Luther!”

Luther jammed on the brakes and the
Firebird fishtailed to a halt behind the Mustang. “Shoot him,” Luther barked as
he swung his door open and grabbed the Desert Eagle Magnum off the dash. But
before he had a chance to get out of the car, the Campbell boy aimed and fired
his pistol at Luther’s head. The windshield exploded and a hail of glass blew
into Luther’s face, momentarily blinding him. Splinters of glass set his face
on fire with biting pain.

Cowboy fell out of the car,
knocking his hat off against the edge of the door. In a full-blown rage and
desperate to get Campbell in his gunsights, he jacked himself off the ground
and waved his gun in the general direction of the Mustang in front of him. But
he didn’t see his target. He glanced over at Luther, who was sitting, stunned,
behind the wheel, his face studded with bloody fragments of glass.  “Luther!”
he yelled.

    A second pistol shot punched
through the passenger door and zinged past Cowboy’s left arm. Then he saw
Campbell standing in front of the Firebird, holding his pistol with both hands
and lining up a shot at his head. Cowboy ducked, accidentally discharging his
gun and sending a round uselessly into the ground. He crouched behind the door,
afraid to raise his head. “This is fucked,” he gasped. “Luther! Get up. Shoot
the sumbitch.”   

Luther had a hand to his face,
tentatively touching the shards of glass embedded in his flesh. He looked
around at Cowboy. His eyes were the eyes of a stunned cow, dazed and stupid.

“Luther! Move! He’s killin’ us.”

Luther blinked his eyes several times,
then seemed to regain his senses. He raised his Desert Eagle and fired wildly
through the shattered windshield. Three quick shots. But at least he was
shooting.

Cowboy scrambled on his hands and
knees to the rear of the Firebird, then rose to a crouch with his gun pointing
forward. He saw Campbell drawing a bead on his brother, leaning against the
Mustang, his arm stretched across the roof and his pistol propped and steady.
If he got this shot off, Luther was sure as hell dead.

Cowboy straightened up and fired at
Campbell’s head.
Pop, pop, pop.
He rushed the shots but they were enough
to spoil the sumbitch’s kill-shot and make him duck behind his car.
Now we
got him.

“See where he is?” Cowboy asked his
brother.

Luther nodded, then finally got his
ass in gear and slipped out of the car, staying low and handling his .357 like
he knew what to do with it.

“Let’s get him,” snarled Cowboy,
thinking to himself that he sounded just like Elvis when he said it. Now this
was more like it. This was how it was supposed to be. The sumbitch was going to
die in the dirt, shot full of holes and shitting his britches.

***

Fate sat up cradling his shotgun,
then hugged it to his chest. Its stock was slick with blood. He looked down at
his belly. His overalls were drenched with blood, and his abdomen throbbed with
fiery pain.

The little bastard had caught him
off guard when he came out with a shotgun of his own and fired without
hesitation. Twin barrels booming. Hit low. But probably not torn up too bad.
Good thing there was enough distance to scatter the shot and soften the hit.
More than a hundred pellets of lead at close range could damn near cut a man in
half.

Pistol shots outside. Breaking
glass. Cowboy yelling.

“Goddamn,” Fate muttered. “Hope
them boys can handle that peckerwood.”

He tried to get up, but his legs
wouldn’t cooperate and he fell on his ass. Using the shotgun as a crutch, he
tried again, this time making it to his feet. His gut hurt like two kinds of
hell, but he managed to stay upright. He glanced over at the Partain boy
hanging from the rusty chain. The kid’s eyes were open but Fate got the idea
the boy wasn’t seeing much of anything. The boy looked addle-brained for sure.

Fate hobbled over to the loft’s
doorway and looked out, squinting against the bright sun. Down on the ground
the gun battle was not over. The Campbell boy was crouched down in front of his
car, his gun hand propped on the hood. His shaved head glaring in the sunlight,
Cowboy was coming out from behind the Firebird, swaggering like John Wayne, and
Luther was sliding out of the driver’s seat, his gun at the ready.

“Let’s get him,” Cowboy said,
striding big as you please into the line of fire. Couldn’t he see the boy had
him in his sights?

“Watch out, Lem!” Fate yelled,
using his son’s given name because it was shorter and quicker than shouting
Cowboy.

Cowboy shot his gaze up at Fate,
then froze with his gun still out there at the end of his outstretched arm.
Fate tried to bring his shotgun up to get a shot off at Campbell, but when he
lifted it off the loft floor, his legs collapsed with the loss of support and
he went down again, cursing.

Two shots echoed outside. Then
another. And another.

“Lord God,” Fate said through
clenched teeth as he crawled to the glaring opening to look down, desperate to
see if Cowboy had been shot.

***

When the skinhead walked into the
sightline of his .45 semi-automatic, Joe Rob grinned and squeezed off two shots
that slammed squarely into the guy’s upper chest and the skinhead flew
backward, his mouth open in a silent scream and his eyes bugging out of his
skull.

A second later the other Porch
brother, coming around on Joe Rob’s right and crouching behind the Mustang’s
rear bumper, snapped off a shot that zinged past his right ear. Joe Rob dove
for the ground and rolled to his left, then sprang to his feet by the right
front fender, putting the Mustang between himself and the remaining shooter.
Another shot blew a hole in the passenger-door’s window, spiderwebbing the
glass around the hole.

Joe Rob hit the deck. Lying flat on
his belly and holding his gun straight out in front of him, he watched and
waited for Luther to move out from behind the left rear tire. A .45 slug to the
ankle would surely bring the guy down and set him up for a killing body-shot or
a head-shot. But the guy had the same idea. He also went to ground, and fired
under the car as soon as he saw Joe Rob. The round ripped into the Mustang’s
chassis just inches in front of Joe Rob’s head. Joe Rob got off a shot almost
simultaneously, and the left rear tire went flat with a whistling groan. Luther
rolled out of sight behind the rim of the deflated steel-belted radial.

Joe Rob couldn’t see him, but he
heard his feet pounding the ground and he knew the bastard was on the move,
running away from the Mustang. He pushed up from the ground and stood. He saw
the top of Luther’s head over the roof of the Firebird and he fired at it and
missed. Luther returned fire. Three shots, one pinging off the Mustang’s roof
and the other two hitting nothing but air. The guy couldn’t shoot for shit.

Staying low and leaning his back
against the side of his car, Joe Rob switched the .45 to his left hand and
pulled his .357 with his right. He popped up and fired the Magnum, putting two
slugs through the remnants of the Firebird’s windshield and another through the
window of the passenger door. He didn’t know which shot did the trick, but one
of them clearly did, because Luther let out a yowl as he spun around and went
down behind the Firebird’s rear bumper.

Joe Rob ran. With the explosive
speed that had made him a remarkable running back on the football field, he
sprinted past the two cars and cut right with both pistols raised and ready to
shoot. It was a near ninety-degree cut his old coach would have been proud of.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a pickup truck coming up the drive, but he
ignored it and locked his eyes on Luther Porch, who was on his back, bleeding
from his left shoulder and waving his pistol around in an erratic attempt to
draw a bead on Joe Rob.

Luther fired just as Joe Rob dug in
his heels and stopped on a dime and a quarter. It was a wild-ass shot, not even
close.

The driver of the pickup started
blowing his damn horn in staccato toots. Joe Rob leveled both his pistols on
Luther Porch and cut loose, pumping four, five, six shots into the son of a
bitch. Luther’s body stopped twitching on the fifth shot. The sixth and final
shot demolished his right eye and went on to do untold damage to his brain.

The pickup lurched to a stop and
Luke Chaney jumped out of the cab with a pistol in his hand.

Joe Rob brought his two guns around
and aimed them at Chaney’s chest.

***

“God-Almighty-shit-fire,” Fate
Porch said. Whether he was actually addressing the Lord and daring Him to shit
fire, he couldn’t have said, though he was surely angry enough now to call the
Lord out and tempt His infernal wrath. What kind of God would make a man
witness the killing of his sons? The last of his seed.

It had happened so fast, he hardly
knew what he was seeing. His eyesight was failing and his belly was aching and
bleeding to beat the band, but he saw enough to know his boys were all gone.
That Campbell boy was a demon from hell, no two ways about that. And all Fate
could do was watch because the demon was out of shotgun range.