The breach of the shotgun now contains a shell, and the three-round magazine holds one other. The dead historian had three spare shells in his backpack. Asher loads two rounds in the magazine.
He should have brought such a weapon to Zipporah when he first decided to write his manifesto. A pistol has served him well; but the power of the shotgun is a special thrill.
Of the two prisoners in the church, it’s likely that Colson will be the first to lose hope, because he is young and racked with grief and because Ophelia is one tough bitch. If the boy’s spirit dies in despair, making him ready for the death of his body, perhaps even Ophelia will fall into hopelessness if she is forced to watch young Colson take a slug from this shotgun in his face at point-blank range.
54
Escaping from the church, Colson saw the river undulating like a silver serpent of infinite length. He and his father had followed it into this town. He was tempted to run to the water, fling himself into those swift currents, and keep afloat as he was carried downstream and away—to where didn’t matter, to anywhere that Asher Optime wasn’t. Although this desire shamed him, it was compelling; he might have succumbed to it if Ophelia Poole had not grabbed him by the arm.
“Gotta scout this place,” she whispered, “find where he is. Or maybe the keys to the Land Rover are in it.”
“They won’t be in it.”
“They have to be somewhere.”
The light was diminishing in value from gold to copper and deceived the eye almost as much as did the long shadows. Colson followed Ophelia, hurrying from one point of cover to another, the river to the right, the backs of buildings to the left, heading for the Land Rover that was parked next to the saloon.
Step by step, Colson felt watched. He sensed—or imagined—a finger curled around the trigger of a pistol in the possession of the green-eyed observer.
In the rising wind, the dead town rattled, creaked, groaned, murmured, and muttered in an imitation of life, so it was possible to believe that the distant fall of bricks, when it had occurred, might not have drawn Optime’s attention.
The Land Rover proved to be locked.
At the back of the saloon the windows were boarded over. One cracked and weathered door had been fitted to a new frame with modern hinges and a lever handle.
Colson didn’t want Ophelia to open it. However, if she wasn’t fearless, she was at least bold. She tried the door, and it was not locked, and she opened it.
Beyond lay darkness as deep as if the coming night were stored in there and waiting to emerge. Because Colson and Ophelia were backlighted by the dying day, there should have been an immediate response from Optime if he waited inside.
Ophelia hooded the Tac Light with one hand and switched it on. Warily, she crossed the threshold. Colson followed, closing the door behind him, stepping into a back room, where the maniac evidently stored supplies. At a glance, nothing here was of use to them.
A doorless doorway led to another darkness, to what had been the public room of the saloon.
Approaching it, Ophelia whispered, “He’s not here. There’d be the glow of a gas lantern.”
Colson figured that if she’d been certain Optime was gone, she wouldn’t have whispered. Nevertheless, he stayed close behind her.
The bar was still here, from behind which Ezra Enoch Fielding had served P. H. Best beer and harder liquor, while elsewhere in the room drunken gamblers cheated one another at poker and sometimes were shot dead. During the smallpox epidemic, the place had been commandeered to serve as an infirmary. Colson might have imagined the air of menace that flooded the room, but he suspected it was real. Many people had died here either of violence or disease. If spirits of the dead could cling to a place—he wasn’t sure about that—then this building might be haunted by more than a few angry ghosts who, if they manifested, would have horrific gunshot wounds or be covered in a pox rash of pus-filled blisters.
On a crudely made trestle table stood a gas lantern not lit at the moment. Colson’s and his father’s backpacks were slung by their straps from two chairs, and much of the contents were strewn across the plank-top table. In this context, revealed by the hooded beam of the Tac Light, the familiar items appeared exotic, even mysterious, almost like artifacts of an alien civilization.
Although they explored this place with the expectation of a violent encounter, the shotgun blast startled them, and they both cried out, pivoting toward the front door. The report came from elsewhere in Zipporah, but not from a great distance.
“That’s my dad’s gun. I was with him a lot of times when he practiced with it.”