The Brotherhood of the Wheel (18 page)

“
Eww
gross, Mom!” Gabby said, making a finger-down-her-throat motion. “Do you have to do that?”

“It's perfectly natural,” Stacy said, and then grinned. “I did it for both of you.” Ira and Gabby laughed and groaned at the same time.

“Gag me!” Ira said, laughing. “Mom-boob, yuck!”

Paul wasn't laughing. He and the trucker made eye contact. Paul pulled his eyes away and looked at his family. “Uh, guys, maybe we should go eat somewhere else. It's not that much farther to Frankfort, and we can eat dinner with Maw-maw and Gran-Poppa if we make good time.”

“Paul?” Stacy said, frowning. “What's gotten into you? Everyone's hungry, sweetheart.”

“I just…” Paul began, and then his parental software kicked in, overriding his instincts, in this case. No reason to express these fears or concerns, to worry his family. He had no good reason to explain that he wanted to grab Stacy by the arm and shout for her and the kids to get to the minivan as quickly as they could and lock the doors … no rational explanation. No, it was nothing. Nothing. “Never mind,” he said. “You're right. Let's eat and get back on the road.”

“Y'all might want to reconsider that, folks.” It was the trucker; he was carrying a chair from his table and setting it down at the edge of their booth. He had an oblong canvas bag in his other hand. He sat in the chair, putting himself between the Waclaws and the rest of the restaurant. The bag disappeared under the table. He looked at Paul and Stacy. “You need to get your kids out of this place right now, folks. It ain't safe, and you don't got much time. Please.”

Paul looked over the trucker's shoulder and noticed an agitation among the other patrons and the staff at the trucker's actions. Whispering, furtive movements. He looked back into the truck driver's face and saw green eyes full of concern, with a hint of urgency and fear. Stacy was saying something to the man.

“Sir, you need to go back to your table before we have to get someone over here. You're scaring our children.”

“Ma'am, they should be scared,” Jimmie said. “Y'all need to get up and get out of here right now.”

Stacy looked at Paul and nodded toward Jimmie. “Paul?” she said.

Paul took the cue. “Look, I don't know what your problem is,” he said, “but you—”

“You ever hear of the Zodiac?” Jimmie interrupted him.

“Like the horoscope?” Paul asked

“Like the killer,” Jimmie said. “There was a serial killer in San Francisco in the sixties and seventies called the Zodiac. He killed a lot of people, claimed to have killed even more. He was never caught. There have been copycats, too, lots of them.”

“Dad?” Ira said, starting to look a little scared.

Jimmie kept going. Myrtle, the waitress, was headed back to the table now with a tray of water glasses. “The reason Zodiac was never caught,” Jimmie said, looking from one frightened, confused face to another, “was because Zodiac wasn't a ‘he.' Zodiac was a group of people, a club of murderers. They use the highways as their hunting grounds, their bone yard. They are very well organized, and they are not the only club like that out on the Road.”

“Sir.” Paul locked eyes with Jimmie. “That's enough. I need you to go, right now, or I'm having someone call 911.”

“I wish you could,” Jimmie said. “They have cell-phone jammers going in here. That symbol on the sign out front—the circle with the cross overlapping it—it's not for a compass, it's crosshairs, it's the Zodiac's symbol. This place is a hunting lodge for serial killers, and you, your family, and me are up the creek without a paddle if we don't get out of here right now.”

Stacy was silent, holding the baby. Both the kids were silent, too. They all looked at Paul.

“If I'm a nut, then you walk out that door right now,” Jimmie said, looking from one member of the Waclaw family to the next. He was starting to sweat a little. “No harm done to anyone, right? But if I'm telling you the truth … and I am…” Jimmie looked into Paul's eyes. “You saw how they looked at your wife, your baby? What's your gut telling you right now?”

“This fella bothering you folks, hon?” Myrtle drawled, looking at Paul. “'Cause I can get a few of the cooks and busboys to get him out of here if he is.”

Paul looked at Myrtle, with her dead, red eyes—like a rat's eyes. Then he looked back at Jimmie. The realization came to Paul that, besides his wife and kids, this trucker was the only person in the whole restaurant with eyes that had anything resembling human life behind them.

Jimmie nodded slightly to Paul. “Let me get y'all out of here,” he said softly. “Please.”

“No, that's okay,” Paul said, looking up at Myrtle and forcing a polite smile. “This nice fella just told us about a little antiques place up the road, and we're going to head up there now. The kids weren't hungry, anyway. Thanks, though. I'll drop you a tip for your trouble.”

There was silence. Every other patron in the Compass Point had stopped talking, as if their conversations had only been window dressing. Every single one of them heard what Paul had said, softly, to the waitress.

“Well sheeeeee-it,” Myrtle said, her eyes slitting like a reptile's. “We were gonna give you a decent last meal with a little something extra in it to make you and the bitch and rug rats easier to handle, but noooo—have to go the hard way.” She let the tray of glasses hit the floor without batting an eye. Paul, Stacy, and the kids jumped at the clatter. “Bunch of fuckin' snobs with your fancy-ass clothes and your laughing like you're better'n regular folks.” Myrtle glared at Stacy and the kids. “I'm gonna flay your fucking little ankle-biters, you stuck-up bitch, you hear me? Skin 'em alive!”

In her hand, which had been holding the tray, Myrtle gripped a small, silver-plated pistol. She pointed it at the baby in Stacy's arms, and her eyes came to life. Jimmie was on his feet, between the family and the waitress and the patrons, his pistol in one hand and the 12-gauge, pointed toward the ceiling, in the other. He aimed the pistol at Myrtle's head and cocked the trigger.

“You point that gun away from that little girl, or I swear to God I'll blow a hole in that evil head of yours,” Jimmie said through gritted teeth. “Back off!”

Myrtle sneered at Jimmie, and then her rat eyes flicked to his raised shotgun, and she saw the Crusaders' cross on the grip. Her eyes widened. She stepped back toward the center of the room. The gun moved from the baby to Jimmie. “Templar!” she hissed, “Templar! He's a fucking Templar!”

Paul had no idea what a Templar was, but the waitress's call galvanized the other patrons and the staff of the Compass Point to action. “Templar…” the patrons hissed. “Temmmmplaaaaarrrr…”

Weapons appeared, almost out of thin air—knives, retractable metal batons, guns. Two men who looked as if they were some type of utility workers, in coveralls, took out a hand ax and what looked like a battery-powered, circular surgical saw from their toolboxes, respectively. A couple—a normal-looking man and woman a moment ago, holding hands and snuggling—now brandished a terrifying hypodermic needle full of an unknown substance and a chemical-soaked cloth that the man retrieved from a plastic baggie. Rough-looking men in dirty white shirts and aprons, hairnets covering their heads, exited from the kitchen. Some of them brandished baseball bats; others had shotguns of their own. One busboy had a samurai sword, the kind you might buy at a pawnshop or on the Home Shopping Network at three in the morning. He also wore a belt adorned with small, mummified human heads. The other waitress on duty—a slightly younger, stockier blond iteration of Myrtle—had a large butcher knife that she brandished as she cracked her gum and blew a pink bubble. The blonde moved to the door of the restaurant, flipped the O
PEN
sign to C
LOSED
with her free hand, locked the door, and lowered the blinds, covering the glass door's view of outside.

The patrons and the staff began to form a circle around the Waclaws and Jimmie. Jimmie took a step forward, bringing the shotgun down to cover the killers to his left—between them and the door—and kept his pistol centered on Myrtle.

“Everyone up,” Jimmie said to the family. “Stay behind me. Stay together. We're getting out of here.”

“The hell you are, Templar!” Myrtle spat. “You're all alone, fat man, and you're sweating. You scared? You could still run. Give us the sweet meat and you can go on your way.”

Jimmie risked a look back at Paul and his family. They were up, out of the booth, huddled behind him. They all took a step to the left, toward the door. The pack of killers slid left with them and moved forward a step in the process.

“Oh, yeah,” Jimmie said, evenly. “I'm scared. I'm pissing my pants at you jackals. I'm swooning so much, my hand might twitch a little when I shoot you and only blow a hole through your throat instead of your head, lady, so keep talking. We're all walking out that door, all of us.”

“No,” a deep, muffled voice said above the thud of heavy boots. The pack of killers parted as a final figure appeared out of the kitchen. “You're not.” The voice came from behind a thick black hood, almost square in shape, like a grocery bag. The hood had large eye slits, and behind them were polarized sunglasses. The man in the hood was huge, well over six feet, and he moved with a fluid, confident power. He was wearing dirty jeans and black combat boots. His muscled arms were bare save for black leather gloves and the full-sleeve tattoos of neo-Nazi symbols and slogans. His massive gut and barrel chest were covered with a black T-shirt, and a black tabard—a sleeveless jerkin, like the ones knights of old wore over their armor. The tabard fell below his knees. It was banded by a belt that held a military-style pistol holster, a sheathed hunting knife, and a coil of what looked to be clothesline. On the chest of the tabard, the Black Knight bore his grisly coat of arms in red—the crosshair circle that was on the Compass Point's sign—the Zodiac's mark.

Jimmie's nostrils flared at the bitter stench of hot urine. One of the Waclaws had peed himself, probably the kids. He didn't blame them. The idea crossed his mind for a bit, too. He swallowed and moved the pistol to aim at the Black Knight's chest. He tried to muster a dry chuckle. “What are you dolled up for? You the restaurant's mascot? Like the guy in the rat costume?”

“You can't kill all of us, Templar,” the Black Knight rumbled. “You will get off a few shots, if you're lucky, and you know that. You knew that coming in here. Then we will devour you, crush you, break you. You will die on this floor alone and for nothing, and then we will play with your charges for a long, long time.”

Some of the killers laughed. Others clapped with glee or whistled and hooted as if their driver had just won at Indy. One of the cooks punched the jukebox buttons. The box hummed and clicked.

“I swear, on all that's holy, you will go down first,” Jimmie said to the Black Knight. His palm was wet on the grip of the .380. Sweat burned his eyes. To his left, he saw the pack moving forward. He fanned the sawed-off shotgun back and forth, and they stopped.

“Of course you do,” the Black Knight said, his voice even and calm behind the hood. “I am a Lodge Master, my victims are legion, Templar. In the afterlife, each one of them will be my slave in paradise. I have no fear of death. Can you say the same?”

Jimmie thought of Layla, Peyton, and the baby and he was dizzy with fear for a moment, just a moment. He thought of running; any sane person would run, beg, plead for his life right now. But he knew these things that hid behind people masks would never, ever let him go. Then he heard the sniffle of one of the Waclaw children, making the same sound Peyton made when she was sick or scared, and the fear was put away, far away. He felt a flush of anger settle over him like a mantle of fever. The jukebox began to play “The Old Man Down the Road,” by John Fogerty.

Jimmie glanced over his shoulder at the Waclaws, then back at the Black Knight. “Here's what's going to happen,” he said, his voice strong and unafraid. “I'm going to shoot up that door with the shotgun. If we're lucky, those dumbasses will keep standing between it and this twelve-gauge. You and your family run like hell and don't look back, y'hear me?” Paul nodded, but the trucker these maniacs called Templar couldn't see it. “And, you, asshole,” Jimmie said to the Black Knight as he began to squeeze the trigger, “git your ass ready for paradise.”

The door to the Compass Point exploded. Parts of the wall on either side of the door evaporated as well in the explosion. Glass and debris flew everywhere. Jimmie was as shocked as everyone else. He hadn't fired the shotgun yet. Was that a grenade? The killers in front of the door were tossed everywhere, screaming, bleeding, some expiring. There was the gravel-throated roar of an engine, a motorcycle, and through the smoke and the heady gasoline-oil smell, through explosive residue and the dying screams of evil men, a rider drove his bike, a T5 Blackie, into the Compass Point. The rider was dressed in jeans and boots, with a black leather riding jacket and an MC cut over it. He wore an open-faced helmet and a steel mask that bore the grinning face of a Japanese demon. The rider stopped a few feet in, resting his foot on the glass-and-blood-soaked floor. He released the left handlebar and fanned the assembled killers with a clattering MP9 machine gun. The squat little gun was slung over his shoulder and close to his chest. Jimmie swore he heard laughter behind the steel demon's face above the bark of the MP, the music, and the shouting.

Jimmie pumped a few rounds from the pistol into the Black Knight, who was going for his own gun. The hulking nightmare jerked backward and fell. Jimmie was almost a hundred percent sure the Lodge Master had on Kevlar, but he was down for a second.

“Go, go, go!” Jimmie shouted to Paul and his family. The Waclaws stayed low and ran for the demolished front of the Compass Point. Jimmie moved with them, covering them as best he could. One of the cooks was aiming a shotgun at the kid on the bike. Jimmie fired his shotgun first, and the cook and several other killers went down, bellowing in pain from the buckshot. A bullet whined past Jimmie and hit the cash register on the shredded counter by the nonexistent door.