The river might as well be a million miles away, because the adrenaline is flowing through Oswald now—mingling with the psychotic anger—fueling the thick muscles in his left arm and shoulder. He yanks back on the scrawny Kornblum with countless foot-pounds of energy, nearly ripping the seat clean off the Dockers.

  The two of them tumble backward. Kornblum flails, and Oswald loses his balance.

  The chicken truck arrives just as the two men are unexpectedly careening backward into its path. The old man slams on the brakes, swerving to avoid the melee. The poultry wagon is old and loose and corroded, and the force of the sudden stop nearly rips the spindles off the side braces. It goes into a skid.

  Half the chicken crates go launching into the air.

  Trooper Ganz hits the brakes. The prowler screeches, and the g-forces shove him into the dash.

  He bangs his forehead on the visor. It’s not a bad smack but enough of a thump to knock him senseless for a brief instant while chicken crates tumble and topple across the span twenty yards ahead of him.

  Some of the crates have broken open on impact, a flock of dirty, nervous fowls now flapping and clucking madly across the bridge—a rainbow of different breeds, including dark Brahmas and big Jersey Giants. Some of them scatter. Others flutter and flap furiously into the air, feathers flying every which way, the younger ones trying in vain to wing themselves to freedom. It looks like a storm of fluff.

  Ganz loses his cool. All the training—the countless hours of study at the Academy, the years of ride-alongs and apprenticeship—it all fails him. He claws at the door. He claws for his 12-gauge.

  In the back of his mind Ganz knows that procedure dictates he should call in the ten code, get some backup, take this step by step, but his forehead is throbbing and there’s a guy out there with a gun and chickens are landing on the Crown Victoria’s roof.

  He shoves the driver’s door open and sticks the 12-gauge out like an umbrella.

  “ILLINOIS STATE POLICE!”

  Ganz fires a single warning blast up into the sky, the boom cracking the air like thunder.

  The heavy-grain load tears through an errant chicken flapping overhead.

  12.

  Feathers erupt everywhere. Ganz staggers backward, engulfed in a blizzard of filthy, smelly chicken feathers, blood, and offal. He inhales some of the rancid fluff, then spits, and wipes his face. He can barely see, and his ears ring from the concussion blast. Squawking chickens engulf him.

  Ahead of him, poultry pours frantically out of the crates like a wave of mangy pastel dander. The smell is tremendous, horrible, pervasive.

  Ganz coughs and crouches back down behind the open door of the prowler.

  His heart races as he scrambles for the radio mike, a terrible feeling washing over him. His sidearm is still snapped, the safety still on. Goddamn it, the safety’s still on!

  He thumbs the SEND button: “Twenty-four! Come in! This is Baker-nineteen!”

  The radio sizzles and crackles: “Copy that, nineteen, go ahead.”

  Ganz tries to reply but he’s got chicken detritus in his mouth. He spits out feathers. “Got a ten-thirty-one on Derleth Bridge! You copy that twenty-four?!”

  “Copy—”

  A spurt of static piercing the transmission: “Wayne, this is Smitty—”

  Ganz squeezes the mike. “Smitty, I need some backup! What’s your twenty?”

  “We’re in the area, over on Pike’s Mill, whattya got going?”

  “Got a subject armed on the bridge, hostage type situation looks like!”

  The voice crackles: “On our way!”

  Oswald crouches down behind the rear of the chicken truck, a flapping Rhode Island hen on his shoulder, indignantly shitting on him. He barks into the Bluetooth. “GERBIL! GERBIL—!! YOU STILL THERE?!”

  “You don’t have to do this!” Kornblum, on his knees, all crumpled up, looks like he’s praying. “Really! It’s not necessary—”

  Oswald tightens his grip on the wussy’s nape. “HOLD STILL, KORNBLUTH!”

  The Bluetooth fizzes. “Whattya want me to do?”

  “Okay, listen. I want you to—

  BOOM!

  Another warning shot, thirty feet away, rattles up into the sky, sending feathers like a fragment bomb in all directions. Oswald flinches, coughing feathers, spitting into the wind. He thumbs the hammer back on the .44 and drags Kornblum around the side of the idling truck.

  The air is filled with feathers and chicken spoor and rising sirens—more county Mounties coming, from somewhere in the vicinity, roaring toward the scene—and it all makes Oswald’s scalp crawl.

  He slams Kornblum against the truck’s rear wheel and peers around the corner.

  The trooper’s Crown Victoria—lights spinning—is canted across the bridge-way, maybe forty feet away, engulfed in chickens. The trooper crouches behind his open driver’s door. The top of his 12-gauge is visible like a stovepipe sticking out above the shattered window.

  Suddenly the trooper’s amplified voice pierces the din of chickens and sirens: “SIR, I’M GOING TO ASK YOU TO PUT THE GUN DOWN!”

  Kornblum wriggles against the truck, trying to extricate himself. “My wife hired you, didn’t she—my wife put you up to this!”

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Oswald’s iron grip tightens. “AND HOLD STILL, GODDAMNIT!”

  Gerbil’s voice: “Got another bogey coming up fast on the Iowa side!”

  “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do—” Oswald quickly scans the length of bridge behind him, weighing his options. “—we’re gonna make a break for the quarry side!”

  The amplified voice: “SIR, I’M GONNA RECOMMEND YOU GO AHEAD AND COMPLY—OR THINGS ARE GOING TO GET VERY UNPLEASANT AROUND HERE!”

  Oswald glances over his shoulder and hisses into the Bluetooth. “Gerbil, listen to me, listen, get to the S-10, get to the truck!”

  “I’m way ahead of you,” the reply crackles, “I’m halfway there!”

  “Then meet me at the top of the hill.”

  “What hill?”

  “Northeast side of the quarry!”

  Oswald yanks Kornblum, then starts dragging the flailing mental patient around the back of the poultry truck, through a fog bank of feathers.

  In the distance, just beyond the west end of the bridge, at the top of a bluff, the quarry building rises out of the trees. A mammoth cinder-block edifice the color of rotting teeth, it has a huge rusted-iron entrance gate. Ashy smoke pours out of its scorched chimney, and a giant conveyor crane dominates the horizon behind it.

  Oswald starts dragging Kornblum toward the quarry side of the bridge.

  The amplified voice behind them: “SIR, YOU’RE FORCING ME TO GET UGLY HERE!”

  “Stay down!” Oswald yells at his hostage, dragging him along so violently he nearly pulls the man out of his shoes. “And cover your ears!”

  The trooper’s voice: “I’M GONNA HAVE TO GIVE YOU JUST FIVE SECONDS TO COMPLY!—”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Oswald sees the Sirocco of dust coming up the access road to the west. The flashing chaser lights of the second police car are just visible skimming the tops of the river grass and foliage. Maybe a hundred yards and closing fast.

  “—ONE!—”

  Kornblum’s shirt pops its seams, and he suddenly wiggles free. He stumbles to the pavement, lets out a gasp, and then starts crawling toward the ledge.

  “—TWO!—”

  Oswald lurches after the shithead. He reaches down and gets a hand around the guy’s belt, and then lifts him off the ground.

  “—THREE!—”

  For a frenzied instant, Kornblum keeps trying to flee, his arms and legs cartoonishly churning in place like he’s on an invisible treadmill. Oswald summons all his strength. He hefts the man into the air with a grunt, then staggers toward the end of the bridge, carrying Kornblum by the belt like a bail of dead hay.

  “—FOUR!—”

  Right then, as Oswald reaches the end of the bridge, a lot of things start happening all at once: Oswald raises the .44 with his free hand, aiming it at the air above the second cruiser as it thunders toward the bridge, and the amplified voice announces that time has run out, and that’s when Oswald starts squeezing the trigger in rapid bursts, triggering a sudden storm of gunfire from all directions.

  High above the quarry, Gerbil Goldstein sees everything from behind the wheel of the S-10 as she punches the brakes and sends the pickup into a skid.

  The truck smacks a guardrail, then skids to a stop next to a derelict radio tower. Through her open passenger window Gerbil has a good view of Derelith Bridge down there in the sun, maybe seventy feet below the bluff, as well as the quarry building to her left, and the vast canyon of limestone to her right, the layers of sediment gleaming a slimy gray in the wan daylight.

  “THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!” she screams into the cell, which is still gripped in her sweaty palm. She doesn’t expect an answer, though, considering all the pop-gun noises coming through the phone, crackling in her ear, booming in the sky above her.

  Through the truck’s window she gets a bird’s eye view of the OK Corral down on the west end of the bridge. She hears the gunfire and she sees puffs of gun smoke rising up in profusion. She sees the police cruisers with their doors banging open, the arrhythmic flash of heavy-gauge shotguns. She also sees chickens everywhere, chickens flapping up against the sky, chickens swarming off the edges of the bridge like Lemmings.

  On the west side, the quarry men are coming out of their lairs along the base of the building, yelling, pointing. And for a moment, Gerbil is transfixed by the gathering crowd of laborers.

  Then she finally realizes what they’re pointing at: Oswald has grabbed hold of the giant shovel at the base of the crane, and the shovel is moving, rising up, levitating Oswald and his hostage up the conveyor (along with the shovel’s payload of limestone).

  Gerbil’s voice is barely a whisper: “Oh my God, oh my God—don’t tell me—you’re not—you’re not—oh my God—you are.”

  Oswald has a death hold on the bottom of the shovel—Kornblum wriggling in his arms—as the giant scoop lifts both men into the air.

  It’s a remarkable sight—the two men dangling off the shovel, legs flailing—while the gunfire continues tracing through the cloud of dust below them, ricocheting off the iron truss-work in florets of sparks.

  From her vantage point at the top of the quarry, Gerbil is stricken momentarily dumb by the spectacle. She gapes open-mouthed. She clutches the cell phone, the housing still pressed to her ear.

  She sees Oswald and the wriggling idiot reach the top of the crane.

  “Oh my God, no, no, no, no.”

  Seventy-five feet above the mountain of limestone, the shovel suddenly lurches forward. The scoop tips, and Oswald and Kornblum are unceremoniously dumped into a vast pile of calcium carbonate.

  13.

  “TONTO?! CAN YOU HEAR ME?! YOU THERE?! YOU COPY?!” Gerbil hollers into her walkie. It has taken her less than ninety seconds to commandeer the truck down the hill, and now the pickup is scudding around a hairpin at the base of the limestone mountain.

  More sirens rise in the distance, warbling on the river winds. More troopers are circling the quarry, closing in. Gerbil stomps the brakes, and the S-10 grates to a stop against a drift of moon-dust.

  Twenty feet away, the gray sand is shifting, puckering, imploding in on itself, as a pair of amorphous blobs emerge like afterbirth oozing out of a womb.

  “OZZY?!”

  Gerbil throws open the door and leaps out of the S-10 with a small SIG Sauer nine-millimeter semi-auto gripped in her right hand. She feels ridiculous and ostentatious holding the weapon—she has no idea how to fire a gun, nor does she harbor any desire to start.

  She hustles over to the base of the hillock with both hands clutched around the grip, feeling like an idiot imitating an actor imitating a gangster—pointing the barrel at the undulating sand.

  “UHHHHK—!” Oswald bursts out of the mineral mountain first, coughing and hacking and wheezing, his dark skin frosted with ash, as though some makeup artist had gone a little berserk with the theatrical face powder. He gasps and heaves for air, his lips coated with limestone, as he blurts out a few labored words: “Don’t—let—that dickhead—get away!”

  Ten feet away, Kornblum claws his way out of the powder in hacking convulsions. He, too, looks clown-like in all the gray face powder.

  Gerbil holds the nine-millimeter on the asshole but keeps yammering at Oswald. “I hate to break up this little party but they’re coming. We gotta split!”

  “I know I know I know—” Oswald tries to stand but the coughing weighs him down, keeps him on his hands and knees heaving up a gorge full of rock dust.

  “Khhhaa—ahhhhk—aahhhhg!!” Kornblum, also on his hands and knees, is trying to speak, trying to plead for mercy, but his scrawny body is shuddering too violently—each racking cough making him hunch like a cat with a nasty furball stuck in its throat.

  “I’m serious, Ozzy. We really need to boogy.”

  “Okay, okay. Stop nagging.” Oswald manages to struggle to his feet, grabbing Kornblum by the nape and then pulling him toward the pickup truck.

  They toss the shit-heel into the S-10’s cab, in the middle of the bench seat, the stick shift between his skinny legs. Oswald squeezes into the passenger side, and Gerbil dives behind the wheel.

  The engine is still running, and Gerbil yanks the stick back against the asshole’s damp crotch, and then floors it, the rear wheels digging into the dust.

  The pickup fishtails out of the yard, engine screaming, Kornblum doubling over in pain from the pressure of the shift lever pressing on his scrotum.

  The next twenty minutes last an eternity for Kornblum, hunched down between the two lunatics, his lungs burning, his eyes stinging with tears and rock dust. The pickup hurls around tight corners, barrels through a state park, roars down a wooded river road, and rumbles across another bridge, evading an armada of state police and unmarked police cars. Kornblum doesn’t say a word. All he can do is close his eyes, and curse himself for even trying to commit suicide in public, and pray that the madness will end soon.

  “The fuck was I thinking?!” the big guy says at one point, his massive arms crossed in a petulant, pouty posture across his barrel chest as the truck booms across a rickety, ancient covered bridge.

  “I told you it was the stupidest thing I ever heard,” the crazy girl comments, banging the shift lever against Kornblum’s genitals. “You can’t save people like this, especially these pricks who don’t want saving!”

  “Just drive!”

  “And besides, you can’t predict when they’re gonna try it.”

  “They told me—”

  “I don’t care what some state shrink told you! You can’t depend on these flakes!”

  Kornblum just closes his eyes and tells himself it’ll all be over soon—either in a fiery crash or when the cops finally blow them all away.

  By the time the S-10 reaches Lomax, Illinois, the steel-gray ribbon of Highway 116 gradually materializes off in the heat rays to the east, stitching through a patchwork of soybean fields. The sirens have dwindled, and the girl has dialed back on the speed enough to blend into the countryside—just another wayward pickup of psychotic vigilantes hauling a terrified suicide-risk with a shift knob pressing against his balls. After an awkward silence, the big guy starts unbuttoning his filthy denim shirt. “Goddamn thing is killing me,” he grumbles and loosens a big orthopedic girdle snapped around his midsection.

  Kornblum tries not to stare. The Indian looks like he has old injuries under his new ones—yellow-stained gauze around his torso, butterfly bandages on his neck. But the most troubling sign is the bare spot on the back of his skull, a four-square-inch patch of shaved scalp, stained with old Betadine and bristling with stitches and nubby hairs just growing back. Is this guy an escapee from some godforsaken mental institution? Some kind of lobotomy experiment? He lets out a pained breath and turns to Kornblum. “Look, here’s the deal: You ain’t gonna kill yourself. You understand?”

  “I don’t—I mean—I didn’t—” Kornblum grasps for the words.

  “Shut up and listen!” the big man orders, grabbing a fist full of Kornblum’s dusty tennis shirt. “You’re not gonna try it again—or you’ll be in a world of hurt!”

  “Yes, okay, I understand.” Kornblum nods his head with the sincerity of a weather vane bobbing in the wind. “I won’t try that again.”

  The girl behind the wheel lets out an incredulous snort. “Oh great, that’s a relief.”

  The big guy lets go of Kornblum and gives his girlfriend a look. “Gerbil.”

  The girl shakes her head. “You think you can trust somebody has a death wish?”

  The big guy looks at Kornblum. “Can I trust you?”

  Kornblum looks at the Indian, a little taken aback by the sudden tenderness in his voice. It’s almost as though the big bull of a man actually cares about Kornblum’s future. Stomach clenching with emotion, eyes welling up, Kornblum licks his chapped lips. “Yes, I swear to God, you can trust me, absolutely, I will never ever try something like that again, I promise you.”

  The big guy’s voice softens. “Name’s Andrew, right?”

  Kornblum nods vigorously.

  The big guy looks at him with a sad smile. “You mind if I call you Andy?”

  “Please do.” A tear starts tracking slowly down Andrew R. Kornblum’s cheek.

  “Okay, Andy, here’s the thing. Next time you hit rock bottom, I want you to think about two things. Can you promise me you’ll do that?”

  “Yes... absolutely.”

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  “I promise, I promise... next time I promise I’ll think about two things.”

  “Do you know what those two things are, Andy?”

  Kornblum wipes his eyes. “Um... no. Actually, I don’t.”

  “Here.” The big guy pulls a threadbare old bandana from his back pocket. He hands it over to Kornblum, and then he glances at the girl behind the wheel. “Pull over for a second, Gerbil, will ya?”