“Now fucking move.”
Ray began to walk, pulling weakly at his clothing to recover himself, keeping the low hill on his left, between him and the house and barn. He left the gravel road and went into the grass, followed by Cyrus, the rest strung out in a line leading back to the cars. It was impossible to know how many there were in the dark. As they moved around the hill the music got fainter. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he could begin to make out junked farm equipment shrouded by tall grass, broken bottles catching the flashes of lightning. A pile of tires loomed and then retreated, and then they were walking through the trees.
The music and party noise grew clearer as they made their way past the hill and into another stand of trees closer to the house. The men with Cyrus spread out as they came to the edge of the overgrown lawn, and everyone slowed. Ray dropped to his knees next to a scarred dogwood that bowed over to almost touch the ground. There was a clink of glass behind him, but when he turned all he could see was Cyrus carrying a double-barreled shotgun and some indistinct shapes of men among the trees. Ray’s own harsh breathing filled his head, and his heart hammered.
Ahead was the house, and beyond that the white barn. Men were sitting on the steps of the house and wandering in and out of the barn. There was a row of parked bikes, a white pickup. He could see more cars out on the other side of the barn and tried to pick out the Charger. The inside of the barn was bright with lights, and the music threw clattering echoes off the house and trees. A song about skinheads. Women danced in cut- off shirts that showed pouched bellies and waved plastic cups in thick hands studded with rings. A man threw a bottle out into the darkness, and it broke against the trees nearby. There was a fire in a barrel, and a shirtless man staggered out of the barn and fell hard in the gravel. Someone kicked him and he rolled. Ray could smell dope and wood smoke and gasoline.
Ray turned his head and caught Cyrus striding out of the woods to stand in the sharp white glare from the floodlights on the side of the barn. The old man laid the shotgun down and stripped off his leather jacket and a dark T-shirt and bared his wiry torso, crossed with ropy veins and vivid tattoos: crossed swords, a helmeted Viking with a battle- ax, pit bulls on chains, and the words CRY HAVOC, inked liked a headline across his narrow chest. He picked up the shotgun, broke it open and checked the loads, and then stood unnoticed in the wash of sound and light from the party.
No sign of anyone who might be Scott. A man came out of the barn, turned his back to Ray, and sat on a bike. He had long gray hair and wore colors. Ray looked right and saw Cyrus turn to call something to the men in the trees. One of the other men was pointing off into the dark near the house and cradling what looked like an AK- 47. A fat, sweating man hunched in the shadows and reached into the cardboard box Ray had seen earlier. He pulled out a bottle and handed it to someone behind him.
Ray was breathing hard, his mouth dry. He thought about Ho and Tina and Manny and the man who wanted him dead. Who might right now be one of the indistinct figures moving in the barn, obscured by the haze from cigarettes and dope.
The man on the bike stood on the starter, and the engine bucked and roared. At that instant a bottle arced from behind Ray, a flaming rag tied around the neck. Everyone looked up, the bikers, the dancers, the man on the ground, his mouth bleeding. The bottle seemed to hang in the air a long time and then hit the barn and broke over the wide doors, showering flame on two men drinking beer in the open doorway. The man on the bike tried to get off, the bike toppling and taking him down with it, pinning his right leg. Another bottle broke on the side of the barn, there were screams inside, and Ray turned to see Cyrus shoulder the shotgun and unload both barrels toward the men on the steps of the house.
There were more shots from the trees, and men and women were screaming and running. A Molotov hit the porch, and a man in a black T-shirt was engulfed in flames and ran out into the night. Someone in the barn began to fire a big revolver wildly into the trees, and the slugs splattered against the bark. Cyrus was pounding his chest and bellowing, his cracked voice rumbling and breaking, screaming that all these fuckers had to get out of his yard, his voice sometimes lost under the screaming of women, the ragged popping of the guns, and the strangled cough of motorcycle starters.
Ray dropped low and began to claw his way back toward the hill. He heard two more booming shots from the shotgun, answering fire from the barn and the house. When he reached a wide oak he stood in the lee of the massive trunk and looked back at the farm house. The men Cyrus had brought stood behind trees and along the side of the house. One of them threw something at an open window, and it broke open against the sill, dumping flaming liquid inside and outside of the house. The barn was already burning hard, and the guy with the AK was firing into the flames. Even hidden back in the trees, Ray could feel on his face the heat from the fire.
Cyrus was standing out in the clearing over the guy pinned under the bike. The meth cooker’s eyes reflected the yellow light from the burning barn as he brought the butt of the gun down on the man’s head hard and fast while the trapped biker feebly tried to protect himself with one curled arm. Some of the people from the barn had reached the cars, and Ray heard more engines cranking and the guttural blat of motorcycles firing up. He hadn’t seen the Charger yet, but he wanted to get away. There was a terrible, shattered screaming from somewhere inside the house and sobs echoing from the dark. He saw pale figures disappearing into the darkness on the far side of the barn. The music was still playing somehow inside the barn, a wailing solo guitar that sounded as if a blowtorch had been turned on it.
He ran bent over, as if through rain. The moon had come out of the clouds, and he could see the grass as a dim blue and the black lines of trees. The sounds of the shots and the fire and screaming faded, and for a while all he could hear was his breath-ing and the sounds of his boots in the grass. When he broke out of the trees he turned to look behind him, and the low mass of the hill blocked his view. The sky was bright with firelight as if the hill were a volcano erupting, bleeding fire and smoke into the night sky.
He heard something moving through the grass and lifted his head just in time for a massive body to collide with him. The air was knocked from his lungs, and he tumbled over onto his side and scraped his arm open against a stiff bush bristling with thorns. The other man was sobbing, his eyes black and unreadable in the darkness. Ray lurched up onto his knees, and the man swung at him with a knife that caught the blue light of the moon so that Ray fell back again trying to stay out of his way. The other man had silver hair and a long face, and he pushed off a tree stump to stand over Ray with the knife. He feinted as Ray held an arm up, making short stabbing motions like a man looking for an opening to harpoon a fish. Ray fell back again, trying to work his arm behind him to free his pistol from his waistband, but the man stepped on his leg, and Ray cried out with the pain and pulled forward with an involuntary jerk.
“Hey!”
They both turned to see Cyrus, his gun leveled. Ray let himself drop back, and the old double- barrel lit up the clearing for an instant so that Ray could see the man, the trees standing spaced like pickets in the dark, the broken stump and the bush he was tangled in, each leaf standing out for a millisecond before the it was dark again and Ray was night- blind. He could feel blood and flesh hit his chest and arms, and the biker with the silver hair fell back, his legs jerking.