Storm Prey

out, and then, closer, heard Shooter Chapman say, “Horse’s supposed to be good eatin.’ I saw on TV that the French eat ’em.”
    “Yeah, the fuckin’ French,” Joe Mack said, friendly. His face was white with the stress, and he could feel the words clogging in his throat.
    Then Haines said something and Lyle Mack didn’t understand quite what it was, just that Chapman and Haines were walking up. He stepped outside and saw the two men coming up to the van with its open door, his brother frozen like a statue.
    Haines glanced at the open van as he passed and said, “Hey...”
    Cappy was right there with the shotgun. He shot Haines in the face and, without looking or waiting or flinching, pumped once and shot Chapman.
    Both men went straight down. Cappy stepped out of the van, pumped again, stepped close, carefully, kicked Chapman’s foot, looked for a reaction, got none, kicked Haines. Then they all looked around, like they were sniffing the wind: looking for witnesses, listening for cars. Nothing.
    “They’re gone,” Cappy said. “No couch, no problem.”
    “Okay,” Lyle Mack said. His heart was beating so hard that he thought it might jump out of his chest. Chapman and Haines looked like big fat bloody dead dolls, crumpled on the beaten-down driveway snow. Shooter might have looked surprised, but the surprise part of his face was missing, so it was hard to tell. Mikey had a hand in his pocket and Lyle Mack could see the butt of a pistol in his fist. Joe was leaning against the barn, with a stream of spit streaming out of his mouth.
    “Look at this,” Lyle Mack said to Joe Mack. “They got guns. I bet the motherfuckers were going to kill us. Can you believe that? Can you believe it?”
    “Well, yeah,” Joe Mack said, spitting again. “They were probably thinking the same way we were.”
    They looked at the bodies for a few more seconds, and then Lyle Mack said, “Well, I’ll get the garbage bags. We won’t need the Scrubbing Bubbles. See if there’s a shovel in the barn, we should scrape up any ice that’s got blood on it.”
    Joe Mack went into the barn and found a No. 5 grain scoop, which would be okay for the snow, and scraped it away, though it was hard work; the blood just kept coming. Lyle fished the wallets out of the two men’s pockets, retrieved the money he’d given to Chapman, and passed it to Cappy. “Your two thousand. It’s my money, not theirs. I loaned it to them this morning.”
    Cappy nodded and took a drag on his Camel. Lyle said, “And don’t go throwing that Camel on the ground. You always see in cop shows where somebody finds a cigarette butt.”
    Cappy nodded again, and Joe and Lyle put on the gloves and together rolled the dead men into the contractor’s bags, while Cappy sat in the van door and watched. When they hoisted the bodies into the back of the van, thought Joe Mack, they looked exactly like dead men in garbage bags.
    “Don’t want to go driving around like this,” Cappy said.
    “No, we don’t,” Lyle Mack said. “I know a place we can dump them. I got lost one day, driving around. Way back in the sticks. Won’t find them until spring, or maybe never.”
    To his brother: “Joe Mack, you take their car, drop it off at the Target by their house.”
    They scraped up the last bit of blood, wiped the grain scoop with a horse towel, and threw the towel in another bag, along with the rubber gloves. “Burn that when we get back to the bar,” Lyle Mack said. “Take no chances.”
    “How far to the dump-off spot?” Cappy asked.
    “Eight or nine miles. Back road, nobody goes there. We can put them under this little bridge. Hardly have to get out of the van. No cops, no stops.”
    “What about the woman that saw me?” Joe Mack asked.
    “We gotta talk about that,” Lyle Mack said. He looked at Cappy.
    “What woman?” Cappy asked.

3
    SAME TIME, SAME STATION, doing it all over again.
    Weather slept less well, with the anxiety of the prior day weighing her down. Again she got up in the dark, dressed, spoke quietly with Lucas, and went down to a quick breakfast and the car. Driving down the vacant night streets, to University, along University to the hospital complex. Nothing in her mind but the babies.
    Alain Barakat waited for her, one flight up from the security door he’d opened the morning before, freezing in his parka, smoking. The place was a nightmare; dark, brutally cold. Barakat had grown up in the north of Lebanon, with beaches and