With a single slap on the rump, McCutchen gave Chester permission to roam for whatever winter grass the horse could find on the backside of the hill. Chancho and his friends weren’t going anywhere till morning. Positioned on a knob overlooking the rest of New York Hill, McCutchen watched a weak electric light dance about inside one of the empty homes for several minutes.

Finally it went out. The surface of the hill could have just as easily been covered in scrub oak and mesquite as luxurious homes. The heavens faded until the night turned as dark as death’s closet. He tore jerky between his teeth and sat. His inability to number the nights he’d spent like this made him tired.

His years of tracking bandits and lowlifes across the Texas wilderness hadn’t prepared him for the things he’d seen recently, the worst of it after the sun went down. Ignorance had been bliss for a time. But once the nightmares came to life they couldn’t be kept under the bed. Even now he wondered what demon threats veiled by darkness awaited his discovery.

He tore another strip of jerky and closed his eyes while he chewed. The lack of moon and stars was a mercy. Without the ability to see, no reason remained to keep trying. And he was too old to waste energy on futile endeavors. He’d learned years ago that things can always get worse. The dead were proof. If he ever failed to prepare for it, he’d join them. But fretting and preparation were two different things. Or maybe he was simply adjusting to the idea of death, like his father had in the end.

He stretched out and leaned against his saddle. Funny, he thought. Several nights ago his knowledge of the demons had filled the darkness with fear, until eventually the darkness became a relief. At the moment, he figured Chancho’s lack of knowledge was filling his darkness with the same fear.

Some things are better left in the dark, mi amigo.

As McCutchen floated off to sleep, a distant echo burrowed inside his head. His eyes instinctively shot open, his fingers gripping his Colt. For a moment he lay still, unsure of what had awoken him. Then his waking mind heard the same sound—the combustion engine of an automobile wafting up the hill from the west. Company men.

Either this was an unfortunate coincidence, or someone else had heard the same donkey bray he’d heard echo across the lake. One way or the other, they’d take as kindly to trespassers as a hound to three-pound ticks, especially after working so hard to keep news of the contagion from panicking the populous.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Why should he care? If Chancho Villarreal and some friends wanted to keep sticking their noses where they didn’t belong, why should he keep bailing them out?

He couldn’t shake the look in Doc Quick’s eyes the day his father had died, the mixture of rage and regret—the same uneasiness he’d learned to recognize in himself. Without words the Doc had blamed someone or something. He’d assumed it had been the illness, the wicked depravity of God’s own creation unleashed on itself.

But then what was Chancho up to? He shook his head, grunting as he stood. Why come here after a sick woman’s dying words? Unless it was to find something. Stooping to pick up his saddle, he whistled for Chester. McCutchen needed to know what that something could be. Headlights flashed over a mile away, then disappeared amidst the rugged terrain. To find out, he’d have to keep the bumbling Chancho Villarreal alive, at least for now.

Vezzoni had been asleep in his recliner when the call came in over the radio, not the telephone. Never a good sign. He growled into the receiver, “What is it now?” He let go of the button. After seconds of crackling static, a response rose above the white noise.

“Visitors, sir… Big Lake…” The signal broke up and Vezzoni ground the stub of an extinct cigar between his teeth. “…sounded like a donkey.”

Vezzoni closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He’d already wrapped his wounds for the night. The left side of his head and shoulders had been chewed up like steak in the jaws of a mongrel—a gift from Doc Quick. And now Angel Tucci. He pressed the button. “Lay low. Meet me west of the hill. I’m coming now.” He let off and waited for acknowledgement. Got nothing but static. “Not a damn peep, you hear me! Wait until I arrive!”

This time the static subsided enough for him to hear an echo as both men barked in response, “Yessir!” He slammed the receiver down.

“Honey?” His wife’s voice accused him from the bedroom.

The way she added a question mark to the end of every accusation infuriated him. “Go back to bed, Marta. I’ll be working late.” He didn’t wait to hear her reprimand. Kicking open the back door, he clutched his winter coat and let the door slam shut behind him. He waited until he’d reached the safety of his office, a converted barn, before stringing together a tapestry of Italian curses.

Finally, he shook out his shoulders and cleared his mind. He radioed Picard from his desk, telling his right hand to be waiting outside in five, and to bring a plus one—anyone he thought up for a nighttime graveside. Living just east of Ranger, it would take the three men over an hour via the cattle path they used for a road to reach New York Hill and join up with the two scouts on duty.

The five of them should be plenty to get the jump on Angel, the grappa-running midget. Vezzoni had wanted a shot at the dirty albino for over a year, since getting stunned by a cheap sucker punch. Public embarrassment would have been better, but a quiet burial would suffice. Prize-winning booze or not, the pressure had gotten too high around Thurber.

Lifting the lid to the box behind the back seat, he loaded two gun belts, a few shotguns and the experimental night goggles he’d recently gotten hold of. This would be a good test of their abilities. Pausing to run through a mental checklist, he grunted and slammed the box shut. He jammed his fedora on his head and jumped behind the wheel. After cranking the Single-Six to life, he primed the lights, gave it gas and popped the clutch. Peppering the side of the barn with gravel, he bounced onto the road and hit the carbide lights.

After Doc busted up his Company T, along with his face, he’d upgraded to the 1920 Packard as a signal. People so high up Vezzoni hadn’t even known they’d existed a month ago had started calling for his head. Since he wasn’t willing to part with it yet, he redoubled his presence and uglied his temper. Nobody called his efficiency into question. Besides, the T didn’t suit him. The cabin cramped his shoulders.

For twenty years he’d served the Company, multiplied their production and profits ten times over. Motivated their worthless rabble of a workforce. Given them the licenses to his inventions. Now they threatened him over a damn outbreak caused by their own damn insistence to run a laboratory too damn close to live mining operations. Idiots.

He slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop less than three feet in front of a tall, lanky Frenchman dressed in a wool pea coat. He stood motionless for another second before walking around. A second man had scampered clear before the Packard got within ten yards. Vezzoni laughed as Picard climbed in the passenger side. “Never can get you to flinch.”

Picard shrugged. “Maybe I’m just slow.”

“Now where did the rabbit run?”

A second man crawled in the back, slamming the door behind him.

“Watch the glass,” Vezzoni roared while casting a sideways grin at Picard.

“Sorry, sir.”

He stomped the gas and turned onto a rugged path heading east.

“Who’s the service for tonight, boss?” Picard dangled a cigarette from his lips while he flicked his lighter to life.

“A little angel named Tucci.”

“Ha.” Picard puffed, slipping the lighter beneath his coat with nearly imperceptible movements. “Make sure he whips up a final batch. Damn fine grappa.”

“And you call yourself French.” Vezzoni nudged him, his wide shoulders already encroaching into the passenger side.

Picard sniffed. “These are desperate times.”

“Indeed they are, my friend. Indeed.” Vezzoni tried to itch the skin beneath his bandages, but stopped after making the tingling worse. He stretched his neck and shoulders until he was facing the back seat. “Hey, Rabbit, you like donkeys?”

“How many did you say?”

“Four.”

“I’ll be damned if Angel Tucci ain’t the only one packing donkeys around here, but that midget doesn’t have three friends to pull together.”

“Why would he be running shine out here now?”

McCutchen stood motionless on a roof with his back against the chimney. The conversation between Vezzoni and his goons should have been his main focus. Instead, the flatlands of Thurber held him transfixed. For the first time since accepting his grim assignment, he’d come close enough to the epicenter at night to witness the inexplicable—flickering lights. Signs of life, in a town that should have been completely dead.

A gravelly voice rose from the sidewalk directly below him. “You tell me.”

Shaken, McCutchen struggled to focus. Why hadn’t he confirmed the effects of the contagion? Finally turning his back on the ghosts of Thurber, he focused on the voices. He’d never met the superintendent of the mines, a man named Vezzoni. But the ire in the gravelly voice indicated he was the man in charge.

“I got no idea, honest.”

“No side operation run out of an abandoned home?”

A gust rustled McCutchen’s duster and washed away the rest of the argument. No matter. He’d wait until just before they made their move and take away their element of surprise. Then they’d be equal-numbered and out-maneuvered. On a night like tonight, the odds were favorable that no one would even get shot. He certainly wouldn’t.

Through the corner of his eye he glanced again toward the Thurber flat. How could people have survived the contagion right at its heart? If the sickness hadn’t killed ‘em, the infected— The wind shifted back in his direction.

“...see if these goggles work. Which one?”

“The brick one.”

“You sure?”

“I seen a lamp through the winder. At first I wasn’t sure. I could see ‘em standing in the middle of the road one minute, then the next they was gone. It’s so damn dark—”

“Stop your yammering.”

“Yessir.”

“Hmmm, interesting. These things actually make it brighter, but they block your peripheral.”

“Sir?”

“Bah. Rabbit, you’re with me. Picard, you take these imbeciles. You men know what’s at stake here. Word gets out and it’s all our asses.”

A swirling gust from the north tugged at McCutchen’s hat. He tightened the strap around the back of his neck and closed his eyes. The infected. The infected were living in Thurber, but how?

McCutchen clutched the top of the chimney for balance, but lost his grip. The surface was covered in a cold slime—pisquachie. Damn it all, he’d chosen a buzzard roost. Again the wind picked up, swirling around him and tipping him further off balance. He shifted a boot too loudly on the surface of the cedar shakes.

“What was that?”

Blasting him from the other direction, the wind forced him to hands and knees. But the heat of his skin slicked the frozen surface of the manure-covered shingles, creating a ski slope out of the steep pitch. Slipping several feet, he rolled onto his back and caught the gutter with his boots.

“Someone’s on the roof.”

“It’s a trap. Shut up and scatter!”

McCutchen swore. Before he could lift himself up, a rifle crack split the curtain of night wide open. The roar reverberated from the inside of the house beneath him. Swears in a potpourri of languages swarmed from the porch like hornets out of a pipe, as Vezzoni and his men poured into the street and scattered.

His mind equally as frantic, McCutchen scrambled for a purchase before finally giving up. He clutched the gutter with both hands and swung over the edge of the roof. Dropping to the ground below, he caught a glimpse into the darkened house.

 A second flare of gunpowder lit up a face blacker than the night. As his boots hit the ground, the bark of the rifle flooded the front porch with wave after wave of gunfire. Beneath the echo of the sundering blasts he heard a constant angry mumbling. Nanette.