The Nightrunners Part 1

THE NIGHTRUNNERS.

by Joe R. Lansdale.

INTRODUCTION.

by Dean R. Koontz.

I am thankful for many things. I am thankful that gnarly oak fungus is not a human disease. I am thankful that the Department of Motor Vehicles will grant a driver's license without requiring that the applicant eat a live reptile. I am thankful that stairs lead up and down at the same time and that escalators do not. I am thankful that it is not a Western tradition to drink horse blood on Christmas Eve. I am thankful that socks are not made of barbed wire and that hailstones are seldom the size of apartment buildings. And I am thankful that Joe Lansdale decided to become a writer.

He swears that he once wanted to be a tater baron. For those who have no ear for Texas idiom, a tater baron is a farmer who makes a fortune raising and selling potatoes - an oil baron with roots. Joe had a piece of land, a good mule or two, a few bags of potato seeds (or whatever the devil they plant in order to grow the things), and plenty of determination.

If he'd had a bit more luck in agriculture, we might know him today as the main supplier of spuds to McDonald's and Burger King. Misfortune smiled on him, however, and potatodom's loss is fiction's gain.

Joe was poor once, so his dreams of making a fast fortune in the potato industry are, though irrational, understandable. Those of us who have been poor are driven by a need for security that no one from a middle-cla.s.s or wealthy family can ever understand.

Fortunately, although Joe was raised poor, his parents loved him, and they knew how to convey that love and warm him with it. He speaks of them with great affection; listening to him, one understands where he got the love of people that is apparent in the best of his fiction. "My father," Joe once told me, "was uneducated, and he could never earn much even though he worked hard But what mattered was that he was a fine man, just the finest there could be, and if I never become a big-name writer, I'd count myself a success if I wound up being halt as good a man as he was."

And he's sincere about that. You don't have to be around Joe a long time to realize that he means what he says and that, unlike many writers, he is not carrying a two-ton ego. Joe's one of those rare fellows who understands in his bones that selling a short story to Twilight Zone is not equivalent to the work done by leading cancer researchers and that selling a novel to Bantam, while desirable and exciting, ranks more than a notch or two below the achievements of Mother Teresa. You might be surprised, dear readers, to discover how many writers lack a reasonable perspective on their careers; they labor under the serious misapprehension that they are more important to the future of the world than all the rest of humankind combined. Joe is proud of his writing-and rightfully so; it's good-but he is incapable of forgetting that publication credits will never be as important as being a good husband, a good father, a good friend, and a good neighbor.

The funny thing is, truly first-rate work is seldom produced by those writers who campaign for awards, who have no doubt that their words will be in all the literature textbooks of the future, and who publicly compare themselves favorably with the old masters of the novel. On the other hand, the both-feet-firmly-on-the-ground Joes of this world frequently give us tales that are the essence of good writing. Maybe that's because the ain't-I-just-wonderful types are focused entirely on themselves, while the Joes are interested in other people and therefore are able to create characters that are real and convincing. And while the ain't-I-just-wonderful types are writing about Important Issues of which they know nothing, the Joes are writing about the mundane issues of daily existence in ways that illuminate them and move us, because the Joes understand that the mundane issues are also the eternal ones of life and death and hope and love and courage and meaning.

All of which is not to say that Joe Lansdale takes his work less seriously than he should.

On the contrary, he cares deeply about his craft and his art, and that care is evident in his fiction.

I remember the night I picked up Joe Lansdale's The Magic Wagon and was at once enthralled by Billy Bob Daniels, Old Albert, Rot Toe the Wrestling Chimpanzee, the body in the box, and Buster Fogg. It was the strangest Western I'd ever read, full of creepy-crawly stuff as well as gunfighters, straddling genres with authority, and it dealt with the human condition in a profound yet unpretentious manner that any sensible writer would envy. In a fair world The Magic Wagon would have fallen into the hands of a publisher with the money and foresight to trumpet the Lansdale virtues to the world, and it might have become to the 1980s what True Grit was to its decade. Certainly, at the very least, if published as a mainstream novel with fanfare, The Magic Wagon would have made everyone aware that this man's ascension to the top ranks of Name Writers is not a matter of i/but of when. This is not a fair world, however, and The Magic Wagon was published without fanfare by Doubleday as just another entry in its long-running line of Westerns. We should praise the editor who had the taste to recognize the value of that book- while reviling the system that condemned it to oblivion on its initial release.

Oblivion will not be the fate of future Lansdale novels. The only thing more certain than his eventual fame is tomorrow's sunrise. I suspect, however, that he is going to be one of those writers who takes a long time to build, who has to find his own readers.h.i.+p with little a.s.sistance from his publishers. Many publishers don't really want to help writers build a following; instead they want to discover overnight successes who sell big from book one. The U.S. publis.h.i.+ng industry stays busy spending fortunes on the latest illiterate Great Finds, who nearly always prove to have little talent and less staying power.

While great riches and brief glory go to each year's newest sensations, real writers like Toe keep working steadily, getting better all the time; happily, the slow-track types frequently survive and ultimately prosper, while the overnight successes vanish into the great publis.h.i.+ng swamp from which most of them should never have been dredged up in the first place. That's all right. Among the countless writers who have been slow-builders struggling against the industry's indifference, we can count John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, Robert Heinlein, and d.i.c.k Francis, which is about the best company anyone could want.

The Nightrunners is early Lansdale. It is not as smooth or as polished or as strongly conceived as The Magic Wagon because this is a writer who grows book by book. Toe gets into some cold, dark places here, and perhaps he's nastier in this one than he really needed to be; restraint was something he was still learning when he wrote it. Is it entertaining? Oh, definitely. Will you get your money's worth? More than. This book has raw power. It is alive with the enthusiasm of a young writer going up against the blank page and getting one h.e.l.l of a kick out of the challenge. It grabs you and carries you right along. Lansdale is so original that none of us can guess what new territory he will explore in his future books, but if we can't be sure where the wily varmint is going next, we can pick up The Nightrunners and at least find out where he's been. And where he's been is more interesting than anywhere a lot of other writers can ever hope to go.

I am thankful for many things. I am thankful that there are no known weather conditions in which dogs will spontaneously explode. I am thankful that Walt Disney gave us Mickey Mouse instead of Mickey c.o.c.kroach. I am thankful that the Hare Krishnas do not possess a nuclear a.r.s.enal. And I am thankful that Joe Lansdale decided to become a writer.

PROLOGUE:.

A Black Shark Sails.

the Concrete Seas.

October 29.

"Well, yes! we are barbarians, and barbarians we wish to remain. It does us honor. It is we who will rejuvenate the world. The present world is near its end. Our only task is to sack it."

-Adolf Hitler.

Midnight. Black as the heart of Satan.

They came rolling out of the darkness in a black '66 Chevy; eating up Highway 59 North like so much juicy, grey taffy. In the thickness of night, the car, all by its lonesome out there, seemed like a time machine from an evil future. Its lights were gold scalpels ripping apart the delicate womb of night, pus.h.i.+ng forward through the viscera and allowing it to heal tightly behind it. The engine, smoothly tuned and souped-up heavy, moaned with s.a.d.i.s.tic pleasure.

Just two hours earlier, fifty miles outside of Houston, the Chevy had struck at a white Plymouth like a barracuda going for the belly of a tender white fish. The '73 Plymouth had been doing 60 miles an hour. It was in its own lane coming toward the Chevy, minding its own business, when the black demon crossed the stripe and its horn bellowed out through the murk. It wasn't a sound of warning, but a brazen peal of authority: "Get out of the way, white fish, the road is mine!"

The Plymouth, driven by a Houston insurance salesman named Jim Higgins, made a sudden jerk to the right and hit the shoulder, spewed up gravel, dirt, gra.s.s and a few careless crickets who should have been playing their fiddles somewhere else other than the edge of the highway.

Higgins had trouble with the vibrating steering wheel, but he stayed with it. His teeth clacked together and his b.u.t.t bounced in the seat, but he managed the Plymouth back on the road.

Higgins, who thought 60 miles an hour was adventurous, now floorboarded the Plymouth on up to 80. He let it ride there until the Chevy's taillights were pea-size, then nonexistent, but even then he only slowed to 70. He kept it there all the way to the edge of Houston where one of the city's finest pulled him over and gave him a ticket.

Higgins was almost glad to see the cop. It took the edge off the chill he was having. He nearly told the cop about the Chevy, but thought: "Naw, he'll just think I'm bulls.h.i.+tting him to get out of the ticket, and he might make it tough on me," so he was silent. He took the ticket and drove home.

Later that night he awoke screaming. Told his wife, Margret, that he had dreamed a black Chevy was bearing down on him, spurting fire and smoke from beneath its hood, and that inside the car, faces pressed against the winds.h.i.+eld, were leering demons from h.e.l.l.

At about the same time Jim Higgins was signing his speeding ticket, highway patrolman Vernice Trawler clocked the black Chevy at 90 miles an hour. Trawler's location was thirteen miles outside of Livingston, Texas. He blew out of his roadside hideaway with a blast of siren and rotating cherries, left half of his tires in smudge and smoke. Already the black Chevy was disappearing over the hill. The yellow line, blood-red in the glow of the Chevy's taillights, seemed to suck up behind the car.

Trawler gave his position over the radio, floorboarded the patrol car up to 70 ... 80 ... 90 ... 95 ... Now he could see the Chevy. It hardly seemed to touch ground.

"Sonofab.i.t.c.hes," Trawler swore aloud. He was nearing the 100 mark now. When he caught up with this b.a.s.t.a.r.d it was going to be Ticket City.

Then suddenly, the Chevy seemed to toss out anchor. It broke down against the night, slacked to 70 ... 60 ... 50 ... 40 in rabbitlike hops.

"d.a.m.n fine car," Trawler admitted aloud.

The Chevy pulled over to the shoulder, spewed up gravel and stopped.

Trawler pulled up behind it, wished suddenly that his partner wasn't out with the flu.

(Now why should I think that? Trawler considered. Why should that occur to me?) Trawler's flas.h.i.+ng red light threw a strobe show across the Chevy's back gla.s.s, showed him three heads in the back seat and two in the front.

The driver's door opened. A teenager with clean-cut features, s.h.a.ggy blond hair and a too-white face stepped out of the car. He was wearing jeans, a jeans jacket and a grey sweats.h.i.+rt underneath. He had on blue tennis shoes - tenny runners, Trawler's son called them.

Trawler sighed. Working by himself was uncomfortable, even if the worst he'd ever encountered were drunks and head-on collisions. This was just a kid-just a couple years older than his own. A carload of kids, out for a joyride in a souped-up car.

Nonetheless, Trawler loosened his gun in his holster, picked up his ticket book and got out, wary, but not really expecting trouble.

The blond kid was smiling. When Trawler was halfway to him, the kid said, "Guess I'm in for it, huh?"'

"Didn't you see the lights?" Trawler asked. "Hear the sirens?"

"No sir."

"You don't use your rearview mirror?"

The kid shrugged.

Trawler flashed his flashlight into the Chevy, In the front seat sat a scrawny kid with brown, greasy hair down in his eyes. The kid looked back at Trawler, a slight smile on his face.

Drunk, maybe, Trawler thought.

Trawler moved the flash to the back seat where he could see a dark-haired girl of about seventeen sitting between the two boys. She was attractive, looked Mexican. The boy on her left was stocky and square-jawed with hardly any expression. The other was basketball-player tall with cadaverous features molded out of pimply, puttylike flesh and topped with a generous amount of carrot-colored hair.

Trawler barely heard when the boy answered his question.

"What was that?"

"The rearview mirror, sir. I didn't see you in it. I mean, I wasn't looking at first, sir."

Trawler had preferred the shrug. Now that the boy had decided to answer the question, the sir he was using had acquired a grating quality. It got on Trawler's nerves.

"Let me see your license, son."

"Yes, sir."

Why is this kid grinning like an idiot? Trawler wondered. Drinking?

The boy took his wallet from his back pocket, folded it open, fished out his license and reached it to Trawler with two fingers.

Just as Trawler was about to take it, the kid fumbled and the license fell to the ground.

"Pick that up, please," Trawler said.

The boy bent down, and as he did, Trawler heard the front pa.s.senger door open and saw the greasy-haired kid rise out of the car and twist across the roof of the Chevy with something in his hands-a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun he had pulled from beneath the seat.

Even so, Trawler knew he had the kid dead to rights, for as soon as he heard the door squeak, his hand reached for his gun, and Trawler knew that he was fast, fast, fast . .

What he didn't expect was the blond kid to come up from the ground with an uppercut to the groin and throw off his timing by a split second. A split second that made all the difference in the world. It was the kid's edge on Trawler's draw.

The shotgun had no pattern. It was loaded with slugs; straight-flying projectiles with incredible velocity. The shotgun fell into place against the roof of the Chevy and the sound of its blast filled up the night.

Trawler never heard it.

Just before his brain exploded, Trawler's last electric-fast thought was of a million black and grey fragments flying to him from all directions, like the vengeful flies of Beelzebub about to light.

PART ONE:.

A Ripple of Fin.

October 29-31.

Evil communications corrupt good manners.

-Corinthians 15:33.

And it came to pa.s.s ... that Pharaoh dreamed. And ... his spirit was troubled; and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof: and the Pharaoh told them his dream....

-Genesis 41:1-8.

pre*cog*ni*tion n. Knowledge of something in advance of its occurrence.

-The American Heritage Dictionary Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing. . .

-Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"

ONE.

Montgomery Jones looked at his watch. One A.M. They were nearly to their destination and already Becky was having the dreams again.

Well, he hadn't expected a mere change of scenery to correct that, but right here, near the end of their trip, at the true beginning of their vacation -if that was the proper word-he took it as a bad omen.

Becky slept fitfully in the back seat, tossing and turning, making noises in her throat that reminded him of an old dog his dad had owned. "Chasing rabbits in his sleep, Monty," his dad used to say as the sleeping dog kicked and whined.

Montgomery knew Becky wasn't chasing rabbits, however. Something was chasing her; the dark side of a memory.

He hoped this trip would help dilute those memories. He knew that it would not eliminate them. Like smallpox scars they would remain, but perhaps they could be doctored into a benign state of existence.

He hoped.

Montgomery turned on the winds.h.i.+eld wipers as rivulets of rain gathered on the gla.s.s.

Less than five minutes ago the sky had been black and crisp and full of s.h.i.+mmering, ice-blue stars. But that was East Texas weather for you. As the old tired joke went, "If you don't like the weather here, wait a minute."

To the best of his memory, he had the directions right, and this was the road coming up.

He turned the VW Rabbit off the blacktop and onto a narrow path of red clay that ambled its way into the forest of crowding pines.

"You've got plenty of privacy there," Dean had said. "No one to bother you. Not a house within three miles. Swell place. Relaxing. Quiet. Becky'll love it, and you will too.

Do you good. Pines all around, a lake out back, plenty of fresh air. Swell place."