Introduction

Mammoth View, California is hit with the news of an attack on a summer morning. Itâs not clear what happened, but it’s bad. And it’s not over. As residents panic and leave town, the police chief and his deputy set off into the woods to investigate.

The campsite attack is the perfect coincidence for Billy Lane. Looking for the biggest score of his career, he’s targeted the local bank. The robbery does not go well, and the aftermath goes even worse. Over the next twenty-four hours, chaos descends on Mammoth View. What really happened at that campsite outside of town?

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Excerpt

CHAPTER TEN

Melvin Johnson had seen this before. In a movie. Clint Eastwood straggles into a dusty little town on a donkey. The bell’s ringing and there’s no one on the street, no one anywhere. The place appears to be abandoned . . . until, here and there, he spots scared eyes peering from curtained windows.

Melvin, standing in the middle of Main Street, surveyed the emptiness a second time, just to be sure. He didn’t have a donkey, but his brother Gordon was an ass. Heh-heh. Now he just had to find the one pair of eyes that weren’t scared. In the movie they belonged to a Mexican girl with big wahwahs. Big enough to suffocate in. That would be just fine with him. Everyone had to go one way or another.

“What do you think’s going on?” Gordon asked.

Melvin put his hand up for silence. Gordon never could enjoy a moment. He always had to ask why. Melvin started down the middle of the street. He’d seen downtown Mammoth View empty like this many times before, but that was in the dead of night. In the morning there were always people around. Always. He reached 3rd Avenue and peered around the corner. Even Benny wasn’t sitting in front of the diner. The silence lengthened; it began to make a noise of its own, a buzzing. About now was when the bell was supposed to ring. Then the crazy bell-ringer runs into the street and tells Clint that he rings the bell when somebody’s been killed. That in this town everybody’s either rich or dead. Well, Melvin wasn’t dead. It looked like he and Gordon were the only ones still breathing.

He headed for the diner, Gordon right behind him. He didn’t see anyone in there, but the door was open, and so he walked right in. Food sat uneaten on the tables. Drinks poured but untouched. He had a bite of Eggs Benedict and spat it out. Sour. He sipped an iced tea. Gordon, seeing Melvin eating, snatched a slice of bacon from a plate and swallowed it without chewing.

Melvin sat at the bar and tucked into a half-eaten sausageand-egg sandwich. Gordon joined him, spinning on the next stool. Melvin’s little brother snagged a French fry from the plate and popped it into his mouth.

“Good,” Gordon said. “Cold.”

Melvin threw a hand in the air and snapped his fingers. He looked around, mugging for his brother. “Jesus, service here sure is slow.” He cackled, snapping his fingers again and again for emphasis.

Gordon guffawed. The fry fell out of his mouth. “Seriously, Melvin, where do you think everybody went?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.” Melvin had returned to the sandwich, biting down vigorously. The sausage oozed oil from its pores, filling Melvin’s mouth.

“Everybody run because of the quake? We’ve had bigger ones before. Lots bigger.”

“Maybe the bourgeoisie scare easy.”

Gordon allowed for the possibility. The French were known to be cowards. “Maybe,” he said.

Melvin finished the sandwich and slid off the stool. He walked around the counter and pushed through the kitchen’s swinging door. The grill had been turned off, but the food hadn’t been put away. A mound of meat sat at the back of the grill, the bottom layer flattened out and stiff from overcooking. Uncracked eggs still patiently queued on the side table. There was a bowl of diced tomatoes. A block of cheese. Butter. Cooked fries sat in their baskets above the oil vat. The makings of a feast.

Melvin wasn’t hungry anymore. The sausage sandwich shifted in his stomach, and he burped. He stepped back through the swinging door and moved over to the cash register. He hit a few buttons. He crouched and eyed the lid of the cash drawer. It looked pretty solid. He pushed on it, hoping it would pop out. No luck.

He straightened up, cracked his neck, and stretched like a cat. “All right, time to make hay,” he announced. He rounded the counter and swaggered out the door. He stepped into the street. He turned to confirm that Gordon had followed him. Melvin let out a cowboy holler. “Yeee-haaaaaaa!” Cupping his hands to his mouth, he called out: “Listen up, Mammoth! There’s a new sheriff in town! Melvin Johnson is in charge!” “Yeeehaaa!”

Gordon joined in.

Melvin waited, his head swiveling, eyes darting. No one. Nothing. He raised his arms in triumph. A gunshot had woken him up this morning. A single shotgun blast, and then, a few seconds later, another short burst. He didn’t think anything of it at the time—everybody liked shooting their guns—but now he figured there might be a connection. He wondered if some desperado had swept through town, led the police on a chase out into the Meridian. Maybe everyone had gone to watch the showdown.

Melvin had wanted to be a cop when he was a kid. Like Pat Garrett or Buffalo Bob. He remembered jumping out at little Gordo, blasting away with his Fanner 50 cap gun. Gordon bawling—he hated being killed. Melvin screaming at him to fall down; those were the rules. You got shot, you fell down. He always stopped screaming whenever he heard the groan of the bedsprings in the master bedroom, but it was always too late. Daddy, tying his robe, would push into the room and slap Gordon in the head, sending him crashing to the floor. Daddy made him play right. You didn’t cry when you got shot. There was never any excuse for crying. You got shot, you fell down.

Melvin walked along the row of shops on 3rd, Gordon trailing behind. Popping into the stores, they grabbed shoes, candy bars, brochures for European travel packages, two handguns and a box of ammo. They stuffed everything in an extra-large yard bag they found behind the counter at the five-and-dime. In the liquor store, they opened a couple of Johnnie Walkers and the most expensive Paul Masson, guzzled them right there in the aisle. They moved on to the good stuff: beer.

The brothers rounded the corner on Main and headed for the dry cleaner—Gordon wanted to see how fast he could make the clothes go around on the carousel—when Melvin stopped. The bank. Why hadn’t he thought of the bank right off? Everybody’s rich or dead, he reminded himself. He peered in the glass front door, squinted like Clint. The lights were on, but nobody was home. He pulled on the handle—locked. He squinted through the glass again. Still no sign of life . . . and something else.

The vault door stood open.

Melvin was pretty sure the vault was supposed to be closed after hours, that he’d looked in there during some of their nighttime wanderings and seen it closed. Except this wasn’t after hours.

Melvin stepped back, looked left, concentrating hard. He looked right for a long time. He didn’t think this was a trick. There really was no one around. He turned back to the bank. He could feel the blood racing through his veins. He clenched his fists in an effort to control his breathing. He hopped toward the door, jerked his knee skyward, and kicked. A small, veiny crack appeared in the lower half of the glass where the heel of his boot had made contact. He tried again, causing the door’s hinges to rattle against the frame. He kicked again and again, really working up a sweat—until, shocking himself, he felt the glass pop under his foot. The door rained shards on his boot and pant leg. He’d done it! He reached in and felt around for the deadbolt, couldn’t find it. He shook the door—still locked. He looked to his left and right again. Now he and Gordon started kicking in unison. Glass fragments tumbled and skittered in the lobby like pennies from heaven.

“Okay, okay, enough already.” Melvin was tall but lean, Gordon a little taller and thicker. Still, he thought they could make it. He kicked away the jagged edges on the door, dropped into a ball, and squeezed into and through the opening. No problem. Gordon, hugging the yard bag to his stomach, pushed into the bank right behind him. They hustled to the teller counter and swung themselves over. They pulled on the cash drawers, meeting unmovable resistance with each one. Melvin couldn’t believe it. The vault’s open but the teller drawers are soldered shut? He punched randomly at one of the keypads, just like at the diner. Infuriated, he hefted a chair to smash it into a drawer, but stopped himself. He looked at the floor, his heart thumping. He put down the chair, kneeled.

Gordon came up behind him. “Oh, shit, Melvin, what did you do?”

Melvin whipped his head up. “Shut up, goddamn it. I didn’t do nothing.”

The woman in the blue blouse and short skirt lay on her back with her arms and legs splayed, ready to make snow angels. Melvin studied her bony left arm, which was locked awkwardly in a full stretch. Her boobs had flattened out and slid into her armpits. It was Alice Krendel, he realized. She looked different being dead. Prettier.

Melvin stood up. He noticed that one of Alice’s patent-leather shoes had broken. It clung to her foot by half a strap. He kicked at it, and the shoe spun away, clonking into the base of the counter. Alice’s foot wavered for a moment, died again.

“What are we going to do?” Gordon was breathing heavy.

“Nothing. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Melvin, suddenly in pain, limped around the counter toward the vault. “Goddamn it,” he said, wincing. He sat on the floor and pulled off his right boot. His foot came out smeared in blood.

Gordon watched his brother on the floor, gaped at the bloody foot. “What happened? Did you step on her?”

“Goddamn glass.” Melvin turned the boot upside down and banged it.

“Here,” Gordon said. He reached into the yard bag, extracted a pair of new red Spot-Bilt sneakers.

Melvin wiped the bottom of his foot, felt around in there for glass. He pulled off the other boot and slipped the shoes on. He stood slowly. The right foot throbbed, the bongo beat going all the way up his leg. He kicked at one of his boots—it lifted into the air, turned over, and thumped onto a well-dressed man sprawled on the floor.

Melvin froze. Where did this guy come from? There was no way they had missed him when they came in.

Gordon followed Melvin’s gaze. “Oh, shit.”

Melvin inched over to the body, looked at the face. Never seen him before.

“Is he dead?” Gordon asked.

“Well, he ain’t sleeping.”

“What do you think happened?”

Melvin tested putting weight on his wounded foot. “Must be murder-suicide,” he said.

“Shit, that’s heavy, man.”

Melvin turned to his brother. “Don’t be a zip. Somebody robbed the place.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You think they took everything?”

Melvin spun toward the front door; Gordon, startled, ducked. A car on the street finished screeching into a turn. Melvin couldn’t tell from the sound of the engine if it was getting closer or farther away.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Melvin said. The brothers ran to the door, squeezed through it, and took off down the street. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

• Why do you think the author left the cause of the hysteria vague until the end? Did it further the plot not to know the cause?

• Who is the main character in this book?

• Which character did you find the most compelling? The least compelling? Why?

• Were you surprised by the ending (the hoax) and the connection between King and Billy? Or did you see it coming?

• Project into the future: Does Chief Hicks ever work in law enforcement again?

• Project into the future: Does Billy ever give up his life of crime?

• Project into the future: Does Tori go to college or become a con woman with her dad?

• Project into the future: Do they catch the Johnsons or do they die in the wood?

• How does the setting set the tone of the story? Would the same thing happen in a small town anywhere? Is there something about the culture of Mammoth that makes their reaction unique?

Weblinks

»	Author's web site
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»	Kirkus Review of book
»	Publisher's Book Info

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