I LEFT THE JOHN DEERE behind and went on. I was no tractor thief and didn’t have the confidence to try to drive a vehicle the size of a Tyrannosaurus rex anyhow. But I did miss having a ride. I was seven hours hoofing it through the hot, dry grass along the side of the Denver-Boulder Turnpike. I walked until I was footsore and weary and then walked some more.
The state troopers and the prisoners from the supermax weren’t to be found on the eight lanes of pike that day. Maybe, after yesterday’s escape, it was decided there was too much risk in trying to use them as a road crew. Or—and this struck me as more likely—maybe they didn’t see the point. After last night’s rainfall, the road was a trough filled with brassy spokes of sharpest crystal. All of yesterday’s sweeping hadn’t accomplished anything.
I wasn’t alone on the road. I saw lots of folks picking over abandoned cars, looking for loot. But this time no one bothered me. It was a quiet walk, no cars going by, no planes droning in the sky, no one to talk to, almost no sound at all except the buzzing of flies. To this day there are probably more flies feasting in the wrecks along those eighteen miles of the pike than there are human beings in all of Colorado.
As I was coming down the off-ramp in Boulder, I heard a boom that gave my heart a leap. People sometimes compare thunder to cannon fire. This was less like hearing a cannon go off and more like what you’d hear if you were shot from one. The sky was an expanse of filmy blue haze. At first it seemed there wasn’t a cloud in it. Then I spied what was almost like the ghost of a cloud, a towering blue mound so big it would’ve made an aircraft carrier look like a kayak. Only it hardly seemed to be there at all. It was like a halfhearted sketch of a cloud, lightly penciled in over the peaks. The afternoon heat was mounting, though, and I thought we would get pounded again at the end of the day, harder than ever. It wasn’t just that single blaring crash of thunder that made me think another storm was building. It was the almost airless quality to the late afternoon, a feeling like no matter how deeply I inhaled, my heart and lungs were never getting a full supply of oxygen.
The crews from Staples and McDonald’s were gone, and the football field was abandoned. A few earthmovers had been scattered about, and the field itself had been blanketed with a layer of dry yellow sod, concealing the recent dead. Numbered white posts stood in ranks, all they had for grave markers. I’m sure there were enough dead in Boulder to plant the field thrice over, but the project seemed to have been discontinued. The whole town was hushed and still, almost no one out on the sidewalks. There was a terrible sense of the place steeling itself for the next and worst blow.
That clamped-down air of silence went on for block after block, but there was nothing quiet about Jackdaw Street. Andropov had the radio and the TV going, top volume, just like when I left. You could hear it from the end of the street. That was interesting enough on its own. Power was out all over town, but he had his own source of juice: a genny or just a lot of batteries.
That wasn’t the only sound on the street. Elder Bent’s house throbbed with carefree song. They were singing what at first sounded like a religious hymn but after a more careful listen turned out to be Peter Cetera’s “Glory of Love.” What a strange thing, to hear voices lifted in joy after a long hot day of walking with nothing to listen to except the idiot harmonic of the flies.
As I closed in on my house, I saw Templeton watching from the open bay door of his garage. He had come right up to the edge of the shadows but, as always, had held up there, knowing how sick the sunlight would make him. He had his cape over his shoulders, and when he saw me coming, he spread his arms out to either side and showed me his fangs. I made a cross with my fingers, and he obediently retreated into the gloom.
I stood in the street looking at Ursula’s house, thinking how nice it would be to go in there and sit on the couch and rest my feet. Maybe she would bring me some sun tea. Later, when the evening was cool, I could stretch out with Yolanda and slip the silver bracelet off my wrist and on to hers.
Then I considered the boarded-up windows of Andropov’s apartment, shaking from the noise behind them. I thought about the fat, surly Russian calling next door to tell Elder Bent that old ’Onysuck was going to make trouble for him with the FBI. I thought about the way the former chemist had come in burning rubber right before the first thunderstorm hit, the way he’d grabbed Martina by the arm and manhandled her into the house while she protested. Then there was what I’d seen in his bathroom when I peered through the window around the side of the house: plastic tubing, glass beakers, a gallon jug of some clear chemical solution. I wondered what part of Russia he was from, if he had emigrated from anywhere near Georgia.
There was another boom of thunder, loud enough to make the air quiver. If I thought it over long enough, I could probably devise a sly way to lure him out of his first-floor apartment so I could slip in while he wasn’t around and have another look in his bathroom. Then again, if I waited another night and he knew I was around, he might come for me himself.
I decided subterfuge was overrated and that it was better, as Admiral Lord Nelson supposedly said, to “go right at ’em!” I sank to one knee, took the water bottles out of my knapsack and lined them up on the curb. Then I began to collect fistfuls of crystal spikes. I piled them in until the bag was two-thirds full and as heavy as a sack of marbles. I zipped it shut, hefted it once to get the feel of it, and went up the steps to Andropov’s porch.
I booted the door once, twice, a third time, hard enough to jolt it in the frame. I roared, “Immigration, Ivan, open up! Donald Trump says we got to drag your ass back to Siberia! Either you let us in or we’ll kick the door off its hinges!”
I stepped to the side and pressed myself against the wall.
The door flew open, and Andropov stuck his fat, sagging face out. “I immigrate my cock to your hole, you lesbeen beetch—” he started, but he didn’t get any further than that.
I brought the sack down on the top of his head with both hands, and he collapsed to one knee, which was where I wanted him. I brought my own knee up into the center of his face and connected with the bony crunch of a snapping nose. He groaned and dropped to all fours. He had a big, rusty wrench in one hand that I didn’t intend to give him a chance to use. I brought the heel of one cowboy boot down on his knuckles and heard bones split. He screamed and let go.
I scooped up the wrench and stepped over him, into the front hall. It was dark and bare and had a sour smell of mildew and body odor. The green flower-print wallpaper was peeling away to show the water-stained plaster beneath.