Robert McCammon - The Five

The Five

Copyright 2011 by The McCammon Corporation.

All rights reserved.

Dust jacket illustration Copyright 2011 by Vincent Chong.

All rights reserved.

Interior design Copyright 2011 by Desert Isle Design, LLC.

All rights reserved.

Electronic ISBN

9781596064379

Subterranean Press

PO Box 190106

Burton, MI 48519

www.subterraneanpress.com

DEATH OF A BAND

ONE.

Nomad decided he would have to kill the waitress.

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How he would do it, he didnt know. But it would have to be done soon, because in another minute he was going to go off like that dude in The Thing whose alien blood bubbled and shrieked under the touch of a hot wire. His neck was going to grow six feet long and spikes would shoot out of his arms before he tore the room apart. The waitress was cheerful and talky. Nomad hated cheerful and talky. He wasnt a particularly good guy, nor a very bad one. He was a musician.

Besides, he wasnt worth a damn before noon, and here he was at ten in the morning sitting in a booth at a Dennys restaurant just off I-35 at Round Rock, about twenty miles north of Austin. Everything was too bright for him in here. Everything was yellow and red and the sun was blasting between the blinds of the east-facing windows. His sunglasses helped a little, but underneath them his eyes were tired. And now here came the fucking waitress again, her third swoop past in as many minutes. She was an old hippie chick somewhere in the human wasteland of her late forties, he figured. She looked like shed been somebodys groupie, back in the day. She was too thin and too old to be wearing her copper-colored hair in braids like some kind of Pippi Longstocking wannabe. She was bringing the coffee pot, she in her goldenrod yellow uniform, smiling, a big-toothed goddess of breakfast. Her nametag said Hi Im Laurie .

Oh, my God, Nomad said, to no one in particular.

Fill em up? Laurie asked, coffee pot poised.

There were various noises of assent. Thanks, Mike said, when his cup was brimmed, and then Laurie answered, No problem, and Nomad looked at the ketchup bottle as a weapon of murder because shed just stepped on the nuts of one of his worst pet peeves. Where that damned No Problem had started he didnt know, but he wished he had two minutes in a locked room with the sonofabitch whod first said it. Like a waitress or waiter was saying Oh its no problem that youre asking me to do something that Im fucking paid to do, and that is part of my job description, and that if I didnt do I would be kicked in the ass out the door by whoever pays me to do it. Oh no, its no problem at all.

Then Laurie took a long look at all of them, at Nomad and Ariel and Terry in the first booth and Mike and Berke in the one just behind, and she gave a lopsided little grin and came up with the familiar question: Are yall in a band ?

Nomad, whose given name was John Charles, did not rate breakfast at the top of his daily needs. Some of the others liked it. Mike and Terry did, especially, and had wanted to stop here before they headed up to Waco. Usually they stopped at a barbecue joint just outside Austin called Smittys, where the one-eyed ex-Marine cook put eggs and beef hash in a blender with hellacious homemade hot sauce and called it a Texas Tornado, but Smitty had closed up shop at the first of the summer and so Dennys got the vote. They had never been in here before and had never met Laurie, but of course she knew. Probably because if there were thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar players in Nashville there had to be fourteen hundred and sixty-three bands in and around Austin, so seeing musicians sitting in a Dennys was no biggie. But more clues were the bracelets of green vines and music notesthe opening bars of Amazing Gracetattooed around Ariel Colliers wrists, or maybe Terry Spitzenhams soul patch and shaved skull, or Mike Daviss heavily-tattooed arms, or Berke Bonneveys silver nose ring and in general her do-not-fuck-with-me attitude, or Nomads own shoulder-length black hair, sunglasses designed to shut out the world, and his dark demeanor.

Take all that together and you had either a band or a freak show, and some would say there was very little difference.

We are, Ariel answered, and she offered the waitress the encouragement of a direct gaze and a smile, which Nomad had known was coming because Arielsweet, simple childcould never turn her face from a stranger.

Whats your name? Your bands name, I mean?

The Five, Ariel said.

There was just the briefest of pauses, and then Laurie wrinkled her brow and cocked her head to one side as if shed missed part of that. The five what ?

Aces, Mike mumbled, into his coffee cup.

Asses, Berke corrected.

But Lauries attention was still on Ariel, as if she knew Ariel was probably the only person in this group who wouldnt steer her into a ditch.

Just The Five, Ariel said. We wanted to keep it easy to remember.

Oh, yeah. Like the Fab Five, right?

Fab Four, Terry spoke up. The sunlight sparked off his round-lensed wire-rimmed glasses, which were suitably Lennonesque. That was the Beatles.

Right, right. Laurie nodded, and again she swept her eyes across the assembled Five, in all their glory of an early-morning saddle-up and an impending ride into the great unknown. How come there are six of you? She motioned with the coffee pot toward the place next to Berke where the sixth member had been sitting until about ninety seconds ago.

Hes the manager, Ariel replied.

The slave driver, Mike said. Keeper of the keys and the money bags.

The boss , huh? Laurie asked. Well, I guess everybodys got to have one. She caught sight of another customer flagging her down for a refill, and she said, Scuse me, and moved away.

Terry started back in where hed left off on his pancakes. Berke worked on buttered toast and a glass of water. Mike ate his scrambled eggs, Ariel sipped her apple juice and Nomad parted the window blinds a fraction so he could peer out against the glare into the parking lot.

The Little Genius was out there, talking on his cellphone. George Emerson by name, road manager, sound mixer, crisis mender, argument mediator, bean counter, and what have you. He was standing by their van, a battleship-gray 1995 Ford Econoline, three doors, with a U-Haul trailer hooked up behind. He was intent on his conversation, and hed lit a cigarette. Nomad watched him, as he talked and smoked. George was five feet, six inches tall, had curly light brown hairlosing it on the crown a little bit, to be honestand he wore horn-rimmed glasses and his usual button-down pale blue short-sleeved shirt and chinos. God only knew why George wore brown loafers with shiny pennies in them. Maybe it was for the shock effect. George was strolling back and forth now as he talked, trailing a plume of smoke. Not only was he a little genius, he was a little locomotive.

I think I canI think I canI think

Yall playin here tonight?

Laurie had returned, toothy and bright and braidy. She had posed this question to Ariel, who said, We were at the Saxon Pub last night. Tonight were at Common Grounds in Waco.

Yall are from around here, then?

Yeah, weve been living herehow long, Terry?

Years and years, Terry answered.

Our tours just started up, Ariel said, in anticipation of Lauries next question. That was the first show.