Until You Are Dead Read online

  The two glanced at each other, thrown off a bit by that.

  The tall one grinned meanly, not sweating at all in the heat even in his dark suit, and said, "Wise guys, putting down the big city. Smart guys. Chess players." He aimed his predatory smile at Andrew, who was staring up at him without fear but with a trace of uneasiness. "You're Andrew," the tall man said, "and you, old man, you're his grandfather, Willis."

  "Who are you?" Andrew asked.

  Without hesitation the tall man said, "I'm Freddy Clark. My friend here's called Zinc."

  Willis didn't like it that they'd given their names so readily.

  "They used to call me Snake," Zinc said, "then some yardbird that couldn't talk right made it sound like Zinc and I was stuck with it. Prison's like that."

  In the corner of his vision Willis saw Andrew stiffen.

  "What we know that you didn't ask us about," Freddy said, "is that Andrew here is staying a month at the farm till school starts, like he's done the last two summers. You grow a little corn here, but you lease out most of this land to a big co-op. And except for Andrew's visits, you live all alone in that dump of a house since your wife died six years ago." Freddy and Zinc traded grins, proud of the fruits of their research. "Oh, and you weren't home five years ago on July fifteenth."

  "That last I wouldn't know about," Willis said, wondering who these two were, but knowing they were the worst kind of trouble. When the trouble came, maybe there'd be some way to get Andrew clear of it.

  "The important thing is, we know," Zinc said. He popped a stick of gum in his mouth, tossing the wrapper to the breeze, and began chewing rapidly and grinning, now and then displaying the wad of gum on his tongue. He glanced around at the weathered old frame house, the leaning barn with only traces of red paint on it, the old green John Deere tractor sitting near the perfectly aligned rows of head-high cornstalks. "You about to plow or harvest with that thing?" Zinc asked, pointing at the tractor.

  Freddy laughed at his friend's ignorance and winked. "You gotta forgive us, old man. We're city boys and don't know country ways."

  "Yup, I could tell that right off."

  Freddy cocked his head to the side and seemed to consider whether he'd been insulted. Apparently he decided not to take offense. "We came here to get something," he said.

  "What I wish you'd get," Willis said, "is to the point." Not really so sure he wanted to hear the point, only that he wanted to know where he stood so he could formulate some kind of plan, even if it was a desperate one.

  "Teaching the boy how to play chess?" Zinc asked. "He doesn't need much teaching," Willis said. "He's always been the sort that thinks ahead."

  "Runs in the family, I'll bet," Freddy said with a sneer. "Sorta."

  "Nothin' runs in my family but noses," Zinc said.

  "Wanna play a game?" Andrew asked hopefully, as if perhaps a friendly game of chess would somehow set things straight with these intruders.

  "No," Freddy said, "but chess is a good game. It teaches you to think, like your grandpa said. Making plans, that's what life's all about. Thinking ahead is what separates winners from losers."

  "Right now," Willis said, "let's think back to when I wasn't home five years ago on July fifteenth."

  "Okay," Freddy said. "That's when the money from the Hopkinstown Bank robbery was buried in your cornfield."

  "You guys the bank robbers?" Andrew blurted out in awe.

  "Not us," Zinc said. "That ain't our game."

  "But we did get acquainted with certain people in a certain institution whose game it was," Freddy said. "And under a kind of pressure, they told us where they hid the Hopkinstown Bank money when they were on the run after the robbery. They're still in the institution, and will be for the next fifteen years, but here we are."

  "We came for the money," Zinc said. "We been thinking and dreaming about it for a long time. We ain't gonna leave without it."

  "Just in case somebody should happen to come by this godforsaken dump," Freddy said, "we're your nephews from the city, come for a visit. Got that, Uncle?"

  "Sure."

  "What about you, kid?"

  "I've got it, sir — cousin."

  Zinc stared at him curiously, flexing a bicep and scratching it simultaneously. "He got that right?" he asked Freddy.

  "Once removed or something," Freddy said. "Directions to the money say it's buried fifty feet due north of a big tree, some hundred paces from the northeast corner of the house." He glared at Willis. "The thing is, I don't see any tree there. Nothing but corn."

  "Lightning struck the tree four years ago and killed it, and I cut down what was left."

  "A tree big as we were told, there must be a stump or something in there among that corn," Freddy said.

  "No, I pulled the stump out with the tractor. That ground's been turned four times since then. I'd never be able to find exactly where that tree was now, even if I went looking for it."

  "If we were in the big city," Zinc said, "I'd start doing things to the boy, and you'd find where that tree was in a hurry."

  "In a New York minute," Freddy said. "But we're here in the heart of America where hard work's what people worship, so what's gonna happen is this, old man: You, Bobby Fischer there, and me and Zinc are gonna to some digging in the cornfield. We're gonna dig until we find the money."

  "Hey! Looka the size of that fly!" Zinc yelled, and swatted at a huge black fly that had set down on his forearm. He watched the fly drone away, then stared at Willis in astonishment. "There one of them nuclear plants around here?"

  "It's only a horsefly," Andrew said.

  Zinc looked around. "I don't see no horses."

  "They hang around cows and such," Freddy said. "I learned about them on a National Geographic special on TV."

  "No cows around here, either," Zinc said.

  "The wind carried it here from the next farm," Willis said, "where there's livestock."

  "Long way," Freddy said.

  "It mighta flapped its wings some," Zinc offered. "Or soared like an eagle."

  "Well, us being city boys," Freddy said, "we've got no calluses, so you two'll do most of the digging. There shovels in that barn?"

  "Sure," Willis said. "A pick, too." He didn't see how it would hurt to feign cooperation. Maybe the city cousins would let down their guard and make a mistake.

  Freddy drew an automatic pistol from beneath his suitcoat. He left the coat unbuttoned and it flapped in the breeze, flashing a blue silk lining.

  "Let's go dig," Willis said to Andrew, who was staring wide-eyed at the gun.

  "What's gonna happen after we find the money?" Andrew asked.

  Freddy motioned at the chessboard with the gun barrel. "Me and Zinc'll finish the game."

  "Kid's a thinker, ain't he?" Zinc said, amused.

  "Thinks toohard, though," Freddy said. "He's liable to have chronic headaches when he grows up." He winked at Zinc.

  Andrew sidled over to Willis and gripped his hand. Willis felt something in his throat swell as they trudged toward the barn, with Freddy walking slightly ahead and to the side, half turned to face them so he could keep the gun leveled at Andrew. Zinc was walking behind them. Willis figured he had a gun, too. The only weapon Willis had was a twelve-gauge Ithaca shotgun locked away inside the house.

  Willis squinted into the wind as he noticed several barn swallows wheeling above the open loft door. They tried to enter the barn but the wind had picked up to the point where they couldn't control themselves on the currents of air and they were whisked from sight.

  "I got something in my eye!" Zinc shouted. "I hate this damned part of the country!"

  The dark clouds had moved in over the farm now and seemed very low. Suddenly torrents of rain began to fall. "What next?" Zinc yelled.

  "Shut up!" Freddy shouted, using his free hand to turn up his collar.

  "I'm getting friggin' soaked, Freddy!"

  "Good! The rain'll make the ground softer so we can dig easier."

  Then
, just as suddenly, the rain stopped.

  Hail began falling, not evenly like the rain, but erratically, so that it lay in heaps on the ground in golf-ball-size nuggets of ice.

  Freddy had lowered his head, shielding his balding pate with his hand, all the while staring coldly at Willis over the barrel of the gun.

  The hail stopped, and so did the wind.

  "I never seen anything like that," Zinc said uneasily.

  A pale, greenish light lay over everything, as if the dimmed sunlight was reflecting the green of the cornfields. The motionless air seemed thick enough to feel, like silk against flesh. There was no movement, no sound.

  "Grampa!" Andrew cried, and pointed.

  Willis saw a black funnel of swirling wind dip from the low clouds and sweep across the far edge of the cornfield. Dirt and cornstalks flew wildly as it touched down, skipped in a cloud of dust to the other side of the road, then back again. It was moving in their direction.

  "What the hell's that?" Zinc screamed.

  "Cyclone!" Freddy shouted.

  "Tornado!" Willis corrected.

  Zinc had shuffled around to face them, a silver revolver dangling at his side in his right hand. His thick features were knotted in confusion. "Whadda we do?"

  "Let's get in the barn!" Freddy yelled. Fear raised his voice an octave and glittered in his eyes.

  "That'd be suicide," Willis said.

  The wind was with them again, pressing hard against them so they had to lean into it. As they watched, the tractor began to roll, then gained speed as if someone were driving it, and disappeared into the high corn. The big Chrysler the two men arrived in was broadside to the wind and began to rock violently on its soft suspension.

  "There's a storm shelter there by the house," Willis said, holding Andrew tight to him, "but it's only big enough for two!"

  Andrew looked up at him, realizing what was going to happen. He began to scream.

  Zinc bolted and ran for the raised, square wooden door set in concrete six inches above the ground. He flipped open the door and leaped inside, the door slamming behind him in the wind.

  Andrew's screams were like the wail of an emergency siren.

  "Stay where you are!" Freddy yelled, waving the gun at them.

  "You can't leave us out here!" Willis pleaded.

  "Just like a good ol' boy to give shelter to his city cousins!" Freddy said, grinning like death in his terror as he held the gun on them and backed to the wooden door.

  "For God's sake, man! We'll be blown into the next state!"

  "He better not have locked this thing!" Freddy said with sudden panic, as he tugged the door up and open and flung himself inside out of the wind.

  Immediately Willis scooped up Andrew, who'd become silent, and sprinted for the house.

  Inside, he opened a window to equalize pressure in case the tornado hit, then ran to the door to the fruit cellar, opened it, and scrambled down into the small, musty space, shoving Andrew ahead of him.

  The tornado ripped and roared above them, threatening to reach down with a finger of whirling destruction and pry them from their meager shelter.

  They stayed there, huddled together, until the angry howl of the tornado had given way to silence.

  When they emerged from the cellar and ventured back outside, Willis saw that the tornado had cut a wide swath across the south end of the cornfield, following almost exactly the same course as the one that had struck a few years ago. Usually when tornados blew through, they stayed on the other side of the highway; something about rising air from the river a mile to the west. Quite a few shingles had been blown off the house roof, and one of the barn doors was open and hanging crookedly on its remaining hinge. If the tractor was okay, that was the extent of the damage.

  "What are we gonna do now, Grampa?" Andrew asked. He no longer seemed frightened.

  "Phone lines'll be down because of the tornado," Willis said, "so we can't call. Guess the thing to do is get the truck outa the barn and drive into town and fetch the sheriff, if he's not too busy. Then we'll drive back here, get what's left of them two fellas outa the well, and try to find enough of the chess set so we can finish our game."

  Andrew said, "I think I remember where all the pieces were."

  Explosive Cargo

  It don't matter a whit to me. Nothing does. I wasn't supposed to be hauling that load. The schedule had me bobtailing my Kenworth tractor back to Saint Louis instead of pulling 60,000 pounds in a new trailer on a special run to Philadelphia. It's all the same to me. The trucking company knows it and that's why they gave me the unscheduled run. Because I don't live by any schedule or set of rules. They say Ruddy Kane don't give a damn if the sun drifts away like a red balloon, that he don't care for anything or anybody, including himself. They're pure right.

  A big flatbed hauling steel pipe in the opposite direction on the divided highway had told me over the GB that it was clear of bears over his shoulder all the way to Allenville, so I was cutting a fat path, holding the big Kenworth well over the legal limit and damn near pushing the pesky four-wheelers into the slow lane where they belonged so I could pass. You get no argument out of anyone you outweigh by over thirty tons.

  Just past the Route 19 cloverleaf I saw the hitchhiker, standing well up on a grade that I had to gear down to climb. He was a square-shouldered guy with a blondish beard, wearing a long-sleeved old army fatigue jacket despite the eighty-plus heat. One of his feet was propped up on a beat-looking black suitcase painted red at the corners. As I passed, he braced himself against the coming backwash of the big truck and made a sweeping motion with his thumb, already looking past me for the next vehicle. The company's got a rule against picking up hitchhikers. I pulled two quick blasts out of the air horn and let the grade help me slow so I could steer onto the shoulder and wait.

  He had almost a half a mile to run with the old suitcase, and I sat watching him in the right-hand mirror. A string of four-wheelers swished by me on the left and headed like bright-colored darts toward the crest of the rise. The big diesel under the hood rumbled like it wanted to give chase.

  The hitchhiker was breathing hard when he reached the truck. Even over the rumble of the diesel I could hear him panting as he opened the passenger-side door and hoisted his suitcase up onto the floor. The cab's seat was higher than he'd thought, and I reached over and grabbed him by the wrist to help him in. He seemed to resent that as he pulled the door shut with a slam and settled back in the upholstery. I dropped the Kenworth into low range and steered back onto the highway, working through the gears as I took the rest of the grade.

  "Ruddy Kane," I said by way of introduction. "Where you headed?"

  "Far as you're goin' in this direction."

  He hadn't given me his name. That should have clued me. Up close he was a scruffy-looking little guy with a twice-broke nose and a U-shaped scar on his forehead. Too bad he couldn't grow that beard over the rest of his face.

  "I'll be turnin' north at Seventy-seven," I told him.

  "My name's Brogan," he said, as if he'd thought it over. I nodded like Brogan was everybody's name. "I'm headin' east to get a job."

  "What do you do?"

  "Most anything."

  What he was best at was being vague. I caught a faint mildewed odor from his wrinkled fatigue jacket and faded denim Levis, and I recognized what that scent might mean. I'd slept outside on the ground before.

  The hell with it. None of my business.

  "You had supper yet?" I asked Brogan.

  He looked sharply at me and shook his head no.

  "Place up there around the next curve I usually stop at," I told him. "Dale's Speed Grill. They serve top hamburgers fast and so are the waitresses."

  Brogan said nothing, dug his hands into the baggy pockets of his jacket.

  We took the curve and I saw the big neon hamburger on the roof of Dale's, bright red and green in the fast-fading light. The restaurant was small and kind of dumpy-looking, but it was neat and clean insi
de, and almost everyone who traveled this highway regularly made it their meal stop if they were in the area.

  I slowed the Kenworth, waited for a station wagon to pass, and edged into the right lane. There were half a dozen road rigs parked in Dale's big graveled lot, and a Highway Patrol car nosed up against the side of the low building.

  Brogan's hands came out of his jacket pockets. The right one held a revolver. I couldn't say I was surprised.

  "Keep right on drivin'," Brogan said.

  I hit the accelerator and glanced at him as I shifted gears. "To where?"

  "Wherever I tell you."

  He pressed the barrel of the gun into my ribs to show me he was sincere. I saw Dale's bright neon hamburger fall away and disappear in the right outside mirror.

  "The law on you?" I asked.

  Brogan looked at me from beneath the curved scar on his forehead. You could've chilled beer with his eyes. "You don't need to know nothin' except how to drive this hunk of iron."

  I made high range and considered. "And when you don't need me for that anymore, you don't need me at all."

  He held the gun out where it would attract my eyes. "You scared, Mr. Driver?"

  "Some." I concentrated on my driving with half my mind while the other half wondered just who this mildewed little desperado thought he was.

  "Stick to the speed limit!" he ordered, purposely working the pistol barrel on my ribs to produce pain. I edged back to within the law.

  "Somethin' you oughta know," I told him. "I'm haulin' explosives. Quick-dry cement and blasting powder for a big engineering project in Pennsylvania."

  Brogan shrugged. "If it wasn't safe, you wouldn't be haulin' it."

  "It's safe as long as I'm on smooth highway. Otherwise it could blow a fifty-foot crater in the ground. I thought you should know that in case you got plans to take this rig anywhere it's not supposed to go."

  Brogan's grin was yellow in the glare of oncoming headlights, crooked in contrast to his pale level eyes. "I'll tell you when it's time for you to know my plans. This thing got plenty of fuel?"

  "I topped the tanks just before I picked you up," I told him. "That should add to the explosion if anything goes wrong."