AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Then he rolled on his side and vomited in the grass.
I WIPED HIS MOUTH with my handkerchief and brushed the hair out of his eyes. “You can’t leave me, Clete,” I said.
“Who said I am?”
“You were talking out of your head,” I said. “Vietnam is yesterday’s box score. Forget Vietnam and everything that happened over there.”
“I was talking about ’Nam? I don’t think I was. I was having a dream, that’s all.”
“We have to go, partner. Can you make it?”
“Go where?”
“To hook up with Gretchen and Alf. We need to nail these guys as they come out of the orchard. We still have Surrette to deal with.”
He widened his eyes as though trying to bring the world back into focus. “Dave, I know I dropped at least three of those assholes. This is what you’re not hearing. There are a lot more of them than you think. I saw them coming through the grass.”
“There’s no grass out there, Clete. You’re losing it. Come on, get up!”
He pulled the AR-15 off my shoulder and tried to stand, then fell sideways, like a drunk. “I think I’m a couple of quarts down.”
“That’s okay. You’re doing fine,” I said. I got his arm over my shoulders again and hooked one hand under the back of his belt and pulled him up. “We’ve been in a lot worse shape than this.”
“When?”
I couldn’t think of the instance. We headed across the lawn into the shadow of the stone house. I could see Gretchen and Alafair coming toward us. In the background, the lake was green-black, the rocks in the shallows illuminated with a strange light that had no source, the wind blowing whitecaps onto the shore, each as defined as a brushstroke in an oil painting.
“Things are happening here that aren’t real, Dave,” Clete said. “It scares the hell out of me.”
“We don’t have anything to be afraid of,” I said.
I think he tried to laugh. I held him tighter, pulling up on his belt, my knees starting to fail.
GRETCHEN WAS HOLDING the Mauser bolt-action with one hand across her shoulder. She grabbed Clete’s other arm. “Let’s get him into your truck,” she said.
“Screw that,” Clete said.
“Do what I tell you, big boy,” she said.
“We’re cut off, Dave,” Alafair said. “They’ve got a couple of vehicles parked across the drive.”
“Is there anybody in those sailboats?” I said.
“I couldn’t raise anyone. I went down there twice,” she said. “Somebody cut the phone line to the bar.”
“Surrette?” I said.
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?” she said.
“Did y’all see an orange pickup on the road, one with a camper in the bed?” I said.
“We
saw some headlights stop on the road,” Gretchen said. “You think that’s Wyatt Dixon’s truck?”
“I guess he doesn’t own the only orange pickup in West Montana,” I said.
“We have too many hurt people here. We’ve got to get off the dime,” she said.
