The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (35 page)

“They had no pity. I did not faint. Everything was different. Usually,
empathy for others only carries us so far. It’s how we
survive—it’s
why
we survive. But I understood them now. I
should have hated them, but I didn’t.
“I made it back to my house just before the storm hit. I took off my
clothes and bathed as the windows creaked at the pressure from outside. The
bathwater was black with the dust and soil within minutes. Then the storm
passed and I left the filthy tub and shook the dust from my clothes, and
dressed. I got into my car and drove away.”
He was mad, she decided. He could believe what he wanted. “Where are you
going?”
He didn’t answer for a long while. The footsteps upstairs were now
intermittent. She heard the sink turn on and off.
“I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m still here. I
don’t know why this life has been granted to me. I can think of only one
reason, though it makes little sense.”
Silence again. Darcy asked him what the reason was.
“Ultimately, how can a person imagine his own death? We may not be the
center of the universe, but we are the center of our own consciousness.
And to imagine an end to that consciousness? This is
not possible. We die, but we do not die. No one can imagine it. And so it
cannot happen. They tried to kill me, yet I live.”
What egocentric grandness, she thought. “You do look rather alive to me.
If it’s any consolation.”
“You can mock me if you wish, young lady. I have been mocked before. I
have suffered worse than whatever that man and his gun have planned. I do not
fear his plans.”
“Well, I’m not ashamed to say that I
do
fear them. There has
to be some way for us to get out of here.”
Then he closed his eyes and hung his head, as if sleeping.
“Excuse me? Judge Underhill, excuse me? Those of us who aren’t
immortal would like a hand devising our escape, Your Honor.”
He opened his eyes but would not look at her. “I’ve been driving
for days. I only want to sleep.” He closed his eyes and the shallow rise
and fall of his chest was the only evidence that he was indeed alive.
Darcy heard the flush of a toilet. She prayed that Brickbat’s procedure
would be an unsuccessful one. She begged for the onset of gangrene, she
implored the aid of invisible bacteria. Or perhaps the drunk surgeon would snip
an artery by mistake.
It was dank and her head throbbed and within minutes the old man was snoring.
Then the light burned out.

XXVI.

W
hit opened his eyes and was blind once
again. He tried to move his arms, yet the world narrowly bent around him, a
malleable prison confining him. His nails made odd sounds as they tried to claw
through, his fingers slick with sweat. The air was scant and he tried to inhale
with dry gulps.
Jesus, had they buried him? Was he underground? Terror seized him as he
thrashed about. He screamed for someone to dig him out, let him out, help him.
He called his brother’s name. Memories of the night in the farmhouse
flashed before him. He didn’t remember being shot himself, but he did
remember seeing Jason fall. Again.
He finally realized he was in an automobile as it pulled to a stop. Voices that
had seemed like tiny, mostly forgotten memories scurrying in the furthest
corners of his mind were louder now, not memories at all but persons close by.
Muffled by this death shroud and maybe by something else, a wall. He needed to
break through.
“Let me out of this! I can’t breathe!”
On and on for nearly a minute and then he stopped. He was panting but he tried
to listen to the voices from the cabin.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t hear that,” one of them said.
“What in the goddamn hell …?”
The first voice came in louder now: “Who’s back there? I said,
who’s back there?”
“Get me out of this!” Whit screamed.
“I can’t breathe!”
The voices were quieter again, conspiratorial or maybe terrified. Seconds
later, the sound of two doors opening. Footsteps on dry earth. A metallic yawn
and its echo. Then silence.
“Let me out!” He kicked and thrashed, but all he did was roll onto
his side. His entire body was wet with sweat. “I can’t
breathe!”
“Says he can’t breathe.”
“He’s not
supposed
to breathe!”
“God almighty.”
“How in the goddamn hell—”
“Which one you think it is?”
“Let me out, goddamn you!”
Finally, he heard them walking toward him, tinny footsteps light with fear.
“All right, hold still.” An unseen hand pulled at the covering over
Whit’s face. There was a sudden burst of light along with the whisper of
a blade being pulled against cotton, and then a gasp, and a face Whit saw too
briefly to be sure was really there.
With his elbows pressed into his chest, Whit managed to poke his two hands
through the opening and tear it wider. Air like shovelfuls of snow fell on him.
It was divine. He gasped, burning his lungs with it. The world he was staring
at was the corrugated roof of a truck, but he focused on the wonderful texture
of the air and the feeling coursing through his limbs. The truck’s engine
was still on, the world beneath him purring with life.
After he had regained his breath, he sat up and saw two cops staring at him
from the far corner of the truck, by the open back doors. The cop was able to
meet Whit’s stare for only a moment before conceding defeat and turning
white. His fall was cushioned by one of the other bodies on the floor.
His partner stood frozen, unsure whether he should rally to his
colleague’s aid. He made the sign of the cross. Whit wasn’t yet
sure what to do, so he echoed the man’s gesture.
“Man, it was hot in there.”
“You’re … you’re not …”
A wood railing ran the length of the interior, and Whit used it to pull himself
up. He could stand in the truck, but he needed to duck his head. “Your
buddy okay?”
“Um …” The conscious cop was
middle-aged, with a round, cheerful face and the unimposing physique of a man
who spent most of his time at a desk. He hesitantly knelt down to inspect his
partner. As he did so, Whit reached forward and grabbed the handle of the
cop’s sidearm. He pulled, but it was latched, the gun nestled in there
pretty good, and the cop’s head turned while Whit was tugging at it. The
officer didn’t think to fight back, just knelt there staring in
amazement. Finally, the revolver came free and Whit backed up a step, pointing
it at him.
“Just stay down there a minute. I’m not going to hurt you. Which of
these is my brother?”
The cop’s eyes were blank, and it took him a moment. “Your brother
ain’t here. We found you and three other fellas, but none of ’em
was him.”
“You aren’t lying to me?”
The cop shook his head. The poor man did seem incapable of dishonesty at the
moment. More important, Whit didn’t want to unwrap three bodies on the
off chance that one of them was his brother’s. Had Jason abandoned him?
Had his brother survived the shots and escaped?
“Where are we?”
“Sedalia. Just a few miles from the house where we found you.” The
cop touched his own forehead, staring at Whit’s. “So that
ain’t really a—?”
Whit asked what day it was, and learned that only hours had passed since his
passing. He felt neither the confusion of his first resurrection nor the sense
of encroaching dread and dismay of the second; this time he mainly was relieved
to realize that he’d survived that hellish scene at the farmhouse. Or
perhaps
survived
wasn’t the right word. But, hell, here he was.
The other cop began to stir, so Whit pointed his gun at the first to warn him
off, then reached down and relieved the awakening officer of his revolver. He
stuffed it into his pants pocket. The officer looked up at him, then clamped
his eyes shut again.
“Cuff yourselves to that railing,” Whit told them. “And hand
me the cuffs’ keys.” As the cops obeyed, Whit asked where their
colleagues were.
“We were behind some squad cars, but they pulled away. Must not’ve
seen us pull over.”
He asked them again if there was anyone else outside and the cops
shook their heads. Still, the others would realize
eventually that their caravan had diminished.
And with that Whit heard another engine approaching. Both cops were sitting
now, their right hands up and attached to the railing, and behind them the back
doors stood just slightly open. Whit glimpsed a car coming toward them. It
looked familiar, but Whit had been in many cars during the past year. The
engine grew loud as it approached and then came the sound of tires skidding to
a stop behind the truck. Sunlight glared off its windshield.
His brother’s fedora-topped head emerged from the driver’s side of the
Terraplane, and submachine-gun fire rang out as Jason shot at the van’s
tires. The truck sagged and the cops flinched beside Whit, who kicked open one
of the doors. He raised his empty hand where his brother could see it.
“Come out real slow!” Jason commanded.
“Jason, it’s me!”
A two-second pause. “Finally decided to wake up, huh?”
Whit jumped out of the back and Jason was walking toward him, a Thompson
smoking in his arms. He looked bathed and very put-together, though his shirt
was dirty and wrinkled.
“You let ’em put me in a goddamn hearse?”
“Sorry. There were seven of them and one of me. I made the best play
available.” Jason peeked in at the captives. “Howdy, boys.”
One of the cops waved back with his uncuffed hand.
“They say there were some squad cars,” Whit said.
“Yeah, just in front. Probably going to turn around any minute now. In
fact”—he stepped back and gazed down the long
highway—“that might be them. Let’s go.”
Jason hurried behind the wheel of the Terraplane as Whit got into the backseat.
Jason reached back and handed Whit the Thompson. “Plenty more guns in
that case,” he said. “But that’s the only tommy, and we
don’t have any extra drums.”
Whit rolled down the rear windows and faced backward as Jason pulled the car
around, clouds of dirt obscuring Whit’s view of the squad cars, which
were only a few hundred yards away now. Jason pressed the gas to the floor.
“They’re stopping at the truck,”
Whit said.
“Good. That buys us about thirty seconds or so, depending on how stupid
they are.”
The Terraplane’s speedometer was topping out at eighty. It was a fine
ride; the shocks were strong and the brothers didn’t much feel it when
Jason drove over rocks or clumps of earth that had blown onto the road. Jason
had filled the tank just before they staked out the farmhouse. Still, given
their past automotive luck, they easily could blow out a tire or overheat the
radiator. Normally on getaways they had spare tires and extra cans of gasoline
and boxes of tools, not to mention roofing nails and tacks to throw on the road
behind them, and multiple gunmen. Worst was the lack of a git detailing all the
side roads and cat roads, listing the landmarks, distances, and average travel
times. They knew where the nearest highway was, yes, but still it was like
walking into a bank that they’d cased only from the outside. This was how
thieves got caught.
Jason hadn’t been impressed by the look of the police Fords, but at least
one was keeping up with them fairly well. He couldn’t tell if the other
two cops were still behind it or if the drivers had taken side routes to head
them off.
“Where’s Darcy?” Whit asked.
“Gone. I woke up and it was just me and four dead bodies, including
yours.”
“What about Brickbat?”
“Gone, too.”
“Did he …?”
“Yes. Both of us.”
“I don’t remember being hit.” Whit had taken his eyes off the
Ford and was scanning his own body, confused by the lack of bullet holes or
gaping wounds. He didn’t even see any blood. “Maybe I was just
unconscious.”
“Afraid not. He got you square in the forehead.”
Whit leaned forward to get a look at himself in Jason’s rearview.
“Oh, Jesus!” He gingerly touched the hole, then pulled his finger
away. He was still leaning forward, obscuring Jason’s view of the
trailing Ford, when Jason saw something straight ahead.
“Oh, hell. Sit down!” Jason hit the brakes, hard.
A police Ford raced out of the Sanders farmhouse driveway and
pulled into the middle of the road, right in front of
them. Off the two-lane road were narrow dirt skidways, and between those and
the farmland on either side were ditches that Jason would never clear. He
pulled left of the cop onto a skidway, the speedometer’s needle swinging
back to thirty, the fastest he could go while navigating such a tiny channel.
Yet it was so slow that he and the cop made eye contact as the cop’s head
was raised above the Ford’s roofline. Jason could see the old smallpox
scars on the man’s face. The cop fired.
The front passenger window spat itself at Jason, his fedora knocked at a slant.
He ducked down and the Terraplane sped along, gravel and dirt scraping beneath
the wheels. By the time Jason lifted his head and saw that he was still aimed
straight and not headed into a ditch, Whit was leaning through the back right
window and firing with the Thompson. Jason edged back onto the asphalt.
“Were we hit?” he yelled once they were away. He straightened his
fedora and glass shards spilled from the brim. He glanced down and the seat
glittered at him; if he so much as shifted, they’d embed themselves in
his skin.
Whit leaned his head out the window. “Yes. Two in the body, but I
don’t think they got anything important. Wheels are okay. I got his
radiator, and his wheels.”
“We’ll be on the highway in a minute.” Hopefully they had
already encountered every police officer in this county. “I say we stick
to that till we get closer to Jefferson City—I know the side roads there,
and we can get off the highway and switch cars.”
“How far is that?”
“Half hour, maybe.”
“That’s a very risky half hour,” Whit said. Surely the cops
would get word out to the neighboring jurisdictions; the question was how
quickly the wire would hum.
“I’m willing to consider any alternative strategies.”
Whit offered none, instead taking stock of his arsenal and deciding which
weapon he’d use once the Thompson was empty. The Firefly Brothers
maintained their barely tolerable distance from the two police Fords for the
five minutes it took to reach the highway interchange. Jason saw that the short
connecting road on his right had been laid at a harsh
angle.
He waited as long as he could before he started braking for the turn.
Then the cops pulled a quality maneuver he hadn’t been expecting. While
one Ford pulled onto the entry path for the highway, the other continued
straight on the country road, fast as ever. Which meant that as Jason carefully
took the hard turn the second Ford pulled alongside on his left, closing the
gap enough to fire a few shots. The Terraplane’s roof seemed to shudder,
and what Jason hoped was only a headlight exploded in front. More shots, but
then the Ford had made its pass and Jason was on the highway.
Two lanes in each direction, separated by a grass median. One Ford was still
tailing them, but the other would be farther behind now, once he turned around.
Whit leaned out the window and inspected the damage again, pronouncing it
minimal. There were no holes in the hood, no gaseous clouds escaping from the
radiator. The Terraplane was zipping along.
The Ford behind them was no closer than before. Because this stretch of highway
was vacant, the cops fired some desperation shots. With the air rushing past at
eighty miles an hour, the gunfire sounded farther away than it was. After maybe
ten missed shots, the cops stopped firing. Then they remembered to turn on
their siren.
In another minute, Jason came upon a few other cars. Drivers gave him dirty
looks as Jason veered between lanes, and some of them seemed to notice the
bullet holes in the Terraplane. At least the cops wouldn’t fire with
civilians around. Jason pulled the brim of his fedora lower and told Whit to
avoid displaying his bullet wound if possible; the last thing they needed was
for some old codger to pass out at the wheel and sideswipe them.
Twenty minutes passed this way, long stretches of empty highway in which the
police would assert their relevance by firing a few helpless shots, broken up
by brief maneuvers through pockets of traffic. They were nearing Jefferson City
when Jason noticed a horizontal line in the distance. It was black, though it
glowed red and blue.
“They’ve got the highway blocked.”
Half a dozen squad cars were parked across the two lanes and the skidways. The
cops had set up just past a right-hand exit so other traffic could get off, but
if Jason tried to do the same he’d waltz into a shooting gallery.
He told Whit to hang on and he started braking, then
swung the Terraplane hard to the left. They drove onto the grass median and now
the car’s shocks didn’t seem so impressive. But the axle managed to
remain intact and the tires did not burst. Jason turned again and hit the gas,
and they were on the opposite side of the highway. He narrowly avoided being
clipped by a long touring car, whose owner leaned on his horn in outrage. There
was another car on Jason’s right, hemming him in on the left lane. One of
his pursuers was pulling a U and was almost behind him again, but the other
Sedalia squad car had instead stopped on the median a few hundred yards back.
As Jason sped in the direction from which he’d come, he was about to pass
that cop at a distance of barely twenty feet. He saw this too late.