by Mark Dawson
“This isn’t necessary,” he said between pants. “Just go, Bachman.”
Bachman hopped, two quick steps that closed the distance before Milton, dazed, could react. He fired out a flurry of rights and lefts. Milton covered up, but Bachman switched his aim and started to pummel his ribs and torso with short, abbreviated kicks. The air was thumped out of his lungs and pain fired out, thunderclaps of it. When Milton lowered his guard to try to block the kicks, Bachman clocked him with a huge right cross.
He staggered away.
He couldn’t trade with him.
He fell back.
#
IZZY WALKED through the empty fairground.
That’s right, Zombieland.
She tried to remember how long ago it was since she had been here. Ten years? Maybe fifteen. Her parents had taken her and Alexander here, years before, and she remembered the happy time that they had spent. The long, endless, hot days, the park just a long bowl of concrete with nowhere to shelter from the tropical sun. She remembered the synthetic taste of the hot dogs, the sugar rush from candy apples and cotton candy and the sugary soft drinks. The pictures of what Katrina had done to the park had been some of the hardest for her to bear. Her friends felt the same way. The water that had lain atop it for weeks, brackish and corrosive, was a slur upon her most cherished memories.
She looked around with a shiver of discomfort. There were the ghostly silhouettes of the rides, abandoned to nature. The Mega Zeph roller coaster, the Big Easy Ferris wheel. All the empty concession stands. She passed a wheelchair, washed out of whichever building had stored it, and left there, forgotten, to corrode.
It was humid, sticky with heat.
A jet passed overhead, its engines rumbling through the dark night.
She thought she heard voices.
She stopped, closed her eyes, and listened.
Yes. Voices.
A man, speaking. Too far away to discern the words, but the tone was evident. Confident.
She felt a knot of tension in her stomach. She tried to ignore it.
She turned in the direction of the voices and started to trot.
#
THEY WERE next to the carousel now. Milton felt it against the back of his legs, fell back against it, shuffled along, reached his hand up for the nearest chained seat, and used it to haul himself aboard. He retreated backwards, putting a line of seats between them. Bachman vaulted up easily and came on, sweeping the chairs aside, the chains rattling. Milton staggered back, through the chairs, until he felt the central spindle behind him.
Bachman closed. Milton tried to get his guard up, but his arms were sluggish.
Bachman drilled him.
He stumbled.
Bachman drilled him again.
The black curtain descended again, more pervasive, and Milton was unable to defend himself as Bachman stepped up, jackhammering a right and then a left to the head. He fired a big cross into his ribs, another blow with the point of his elbow that spun him around and dropped him, face up, across the rotten wooden floor of the carousel.
Bachman dropped down onto the ground, taking Milton’s right wrist, looping his arm beneath his shoulder and then immobilising the limb by clasping both of his hands together. He pulled the arm up, Milton’s elbow yanked towards his head, and then twisted his body to apply intense pressure to the shoulder. Milton knew the hold: it was a Kimura, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu submission move, and Bachman had cinched it in tight. The pain was indescribable. It burned through the fugue like a white hot sun. Milton knew, in a distant part of his brain, that his tendons were being stretched out and his joints pulled apart. It wouldn’t be long before the fibres snapped and his shoulder dislocated.
Somehow, on instinct alone, Milton reached around with his free hand and stabbed Bachman in the eye.
He released the lock.
Milton tried to crawl away from him. He slid off the carousel and onto the cobblestones, but, as soon as he put weight on the shoulder, he collapsed. His chin scraped against the rough stone.
There was no respite. Bachman straddled him from behind, took a fistful of his hair and crashed his forehead against the ground.
And again.
And again.
The darkness was complete now. It felt permanent. Each blow registered less and less.
Milton felt the life ebb out of him.
And then they stopped.
—felt something hard against his chest—his muscles limp, his arms dangling—
“—away from him—”
—heard the words, tried to string them together, make sense out of them—
“—the way back—”
—blinked until he could see again. He was spread across the edge of the carousel, his head lolling, looking down at the ground below—
“—and get—”
—pushed himself backwards and fell onto his backside, one of the suspended chairs bouncing against the back of his head—
He looked up.
Isadora Bartholomew had his Sig Sauer in her hand.
She was pointing it at Bachman.
“—hands up.”
Milton reached up and touched his forehead. The blood was warm and tacky against his fingers. He felt a surge of vomit and had to fight to keep it down.
Bachman was at the edge of the carousel, too, his hands half-heartedly raised to the height of his head.
“Put your hands up, now.”
“Come on.” Bachman’s voice was relaxed. “You’re not going to shoot me.”
Izzy kept the gun trained on him.
“I can see it in your eyes. Look at you. You’re scared.”
Milton pushed himself up to his knees. Dizziness buffeted him.
“There’s nothing wrong with being scared. Most people would be, a situation like this. Just listen to Milton. You don’t want to shoot me.”
“I will if you don’t keep your hands where I can fucking see them.” She jabbed the gun at him, as if that might be enough to make up for the doubt that was so evident in her voice.
Milton knew she wouldn’t shoot. He had moments to save her life.
“You’re not a killer,” Bachman said. “Look at you. You haven’t got it in you. You shouldn’t worry. Not many people do. I do. Milton does, don’t you, John? He tell you what he used to do?”
“Stay there,” she said.
“Used to be an assassin. That’s right. He tell you that? British government. Ten years. A whole decade of murdering. How many people have you killed, John? You tell her that? Fifty? A hundred?”
“Izzy,” Milton groaned.
“Me, too. Him and me, not too different. Not when you come down to it. But not you. I reckon I could just come over there and take that gun from you right now. What do you think? Could I do that?”
Bachman took a step closer to her.
Izzy backed away.
Another step.
Izzy was terrified.
Milton pushed himself upright and managed to slide down to the ground.
There were six feet between Izzy and Bachman.
Bachman took another step.
“Avi,” Milton called.
“Stay there, Milton.”
He swayed back and forth. “Want to… you want to go again?”
Now Bachman turned his head. He looked at him, an expression of amused curiosity on his face. “Look at you. You’re crazy.”
He lowered his hands and formed fists.
“Put them up,” Izzy shouted.
He turned back.
Milton had barely anything left. He could only just raise his arms. There was a crank resting on the lip of the carousel. It must have been used in the mechanical workings and left there when the park was evacuated. Milton’s fingers closed around it, the metal cold in his palm, and he lifted it up.
Bachman didn’t notice. He was walking over to Izzy. She was backing away, unable to shoot.
Moments left before he would take the gun.
M
ilton followed after them.
“Hey!”
Bachman stopped, turned, and Milton swung the crank.
It struck him on the forehead, just below the line of his scalp.
Bachman stopped, his hand drifting up to his head, frowned, and then, as his eyes rolled back into his head, he toppled over onto his side.
The crank slipped from Milton’s fingers and rang against the cobblestones. He felt an enervating wave of lethargy, and he fell to his knees and then onto his side.
The darkness fell again.
“Milton—”
The sound of sirens could be heard from Michoud Boulevard.
“—are you okay?”
He heard his name and saw the blurred tracing of Izzy’s face shimmer above him, as if he were underwater.
And then, he was.
Chapter Fifty-Six
MILTON WAITED in the manager’s office. The business of the bank continued outside, cashiers quietly and efficiently dealing with the small, shuffling lines of customers. It was a little before midday. This was his third, and final, stop of the day. Each stop had taken an hour.
He stretched out his legs. The beating that he had taken from Avi Bachman had left bruises all the way across his body. His nose had been broken, too, and three ribs. His shoulder had been dislocated. He had pushed it back into place again himself, and it had hurt like hell. Milton had never been bested like that in all his life. Bachman—or Claude Boon, his given name when the police booked him for kidnap and assault—had thrown him around like a rag doll. If it wasn’t for Izzy, he would have been killed. There was no doubt about it in his mind.
Izzy.
She had tried to persuade him to stay in town for a few weeks. He had been tempted. He had enjoyed working on the houses, and it would have been rewarding to help them get construction going again. But, he eventually decided, he didn’t want to be around when the press started to get hold of what had happened with Babineaux and the others who had been caught in his web. He had a natural aversion to publicity. It was partly a hang-up from his past, but also the sure knowledge that a low profile was better for a man like him. It was better for those around him, too. There were people in the world who would take great interest in him, were they ever to discover where he was and what he was doing. He knew that likely meant that he could never settle down. He had reconciled himself to that possibility. A peripatetic, vagabond lifestyle suited him. He could live with it.
The police had asked Milton to stay in town, too. He had given a statement, explaining how he had helped Izzy and the charity. The prosecutor would be able to lay out the details without him. Bachman was hired by someone at Babineaux Properties to kill Izzy, Milton had intervened, and he had abducted Ziggy to exact revenge.
Open and shut.
Milton had no interest in being in New Orleans for the trial. The idea of a clever lawyer skewering him on the stand, drawing out the kind of information that was much better kept secret, filled him with disquiet. And, anyway, he wasn’t needed. The main charge was the aggravated kidnapping, and Ziggy and Izzy were around to give evidence for that. Bachman hadn’t brought Ziggy across state lines, so federal charges had not been brought, but, because he had beaten him, he was looking at a felony. A serious one.
Milton had asked Izzy what Bachman was facing. She said life imprisonment in Angola with no prospect of parole and that was if he was lucky. If the feds got involved, tied him to other murders, he might be looking at the death penalty. Either way, he didn’t have much to look forward to.
The manager returned with a sheaf of papers and sat on the other side of the desk.
“Well, Mr. Smith,” he said. “It’s all in order.”
“Very good,” Milton said.
“Two hundred thousand dollars, cash. Don’t see deposits like that every day. Hoops to jump through, you know.”
“Of course. I understand.”
“Well, it’s all done. You want to tell me where you want it to go?”
“Yes. There’s a charity building houses in the Lower Ninth.”
“Build It Up? Sure. I know it.”
“There. I’d like the money to go there, please.”
“All of it?”
“Yes, please.”
The man tapped out the details. “A very good cause,” he said. “You see the news this week? They got into a dispute with the guys who wanted to build that big mall down there. Dug up all kinds of dirt. The papers are saying that those people are going to go to jail.”
“I did,” Milton said.
“And did you see it this morning? Mayor’s office is getting involved, too.”
Milton wasn’t in the mood for a discussion, although he had read the newspaper over his breakfast. “You need anything else from me?”
“No, sir. We’re all good.”
“Thank you.”
He got up. He had the final four hundred thousand dollars in his pack. He would deposit that when he got to Florida. No sense in attracting undue attention to himself. He figured that depositing all of it in New Orleans on the same day would be asking for that to happen. He had looked into the Bank Secrecy Act, and knew that each institution he used would have to file a Currency Transaction Report with the government. No way around that with deposits as big as these. He had the documentation for three separate identities, and he had opened new accounts for all of them. He had varied the amounts—$150,000 in one, $250,000 in another, $200,000 here—and he hoped that might muddy the waters.
The manager walked him to the door.
“What do you have planned for the rest of the day, sir?”
“Not too much.”
“Well, you have a good one.”
“Thanks,” Milton said. “You, too.”
#
THE BANK was only a couple of blocks from the bus station. He shrugged his pack onto his shoulders, collected his rifle, and walked there. It was another hot, sticky day, and he hoped that the bus would be air-conditioned.
The bus station was a simple affair: eight bays, a single-storey concrete building with a tinted glass front. There were a clutch of passengers in the waiting room, leery of waiting in the broil outside. Milton checked the destinations board. The bus to Miami was leaving from Bay C in ten minutes. He walked over, took his phone and headphones from his pack, put them into his pocket, and slung the pack into the cargo bay.
The driver was waiting at the door.
“Ticket?”
Milton took the one-way ticket from his pocket and handed it to him. The driver checked it, punched it, and handed it back. Milton climbed aboard. The bus was almost full, with just a handful of spare seats. The other passengers eyed him with lazy disinterest. Milton took the seat that was closest to the front. The man alongside was unshaven, wearing a denim jacket and badly patched jeans, a bandana on his head. He smelled a little ripe, like he hadn’t seen a bar of soap for a while. Milton didn’t mind. There were plenty of days, out in the wilderness, when he was just the same.
“You all right?” the man said as he settled in next to him.
“Doing okay.”
He put out a hand. “I’m Jack Wishard.”
Milton clasped it. “John Smith.”
The door shut with a whoosh of compressed air, and the driver started the engine. The silver bus, gleaming in the sunshine, pulled out of the station and edged into the busy traffic.
“Where you headed?”
“Miami.”
“Me, too. What you doing down there?”
“Nothing special. Just thought I’d go have a look. It’s been a while since I last visited.”
“What business you in, John?”
“This and that. Whatever I can find.”
“I know that kind of work.” The man reached down into a knapsack on the floor and took out a can of beer. Milton saw several others nestled in there. “Want one?”
Milton shook his head. “I’m good. But thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” The man poppe
d the top and took a long slug. He smacked his lips and sighed contentedly. “Man, I needed that. Long drive ahead, John. I do this trip once a month, go down there and see my little girl. Me and the wife split up. She went down there to her folks, took Daisy with her. Fourteen hours, every four weeks, stuck on this frickin’ bus. Best way I ever found to make it go faster, you get a little buzz on. You sure you don’t want one?”
“I’m good.”
“All right.”
The man took another long swig and then, sensing that Milton wasn’t particularly interested in conversation, looked out of the window.
The bus rolled north east on I-10, passing the abandoned Six Flags, the skeletal struts of the roller coaster picked out in the blistering sun. They passed through Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, the dense vegetation reminding him of the bayou shack where Avi Bachman’s wife had met her end.
Milton settled himself so that the pain from his injuries became a dull ache that he could almost ignore and closed his eyes. He was tired. He thought of Izzy and her family, the meals that he had enjoyed in the beautiful home that she had built, and drew satisfaction from the knowledge that they would have no need to move now. Solomon and Elsie could live and die in the Lower Nine, surrounded by old neighbours called back by the progress that was being made by their daughter. Their amazing, inspiring daughter. Milton had made mistakes, but not there. It was a good job, well done.
The bus rumbled onto the Pontchartrain Expressway across the glittering, treacherous waters of Lake Pontchartrain and headed on to Slidell, Diamondhead, and Diberville.
Milton thought of Avi Bachman. Was he a loose end? He could have put a bullet in him, tied it up for good, but Izzy was there, and what would she have thought of that? He had lifted his mask a little since he had arrived in town, but taking it off completely would have poisoned him to her forever. He couldn’t have done that. He had done the only thing that he could have done. But, still, the idea of a man like Avi Bachman, or Claude Boon—or whatever he chose to call himself—walking the earth with a grudge against him was not something that would allow for easy sleep. The thought that he was incarcerated was of some comfort.
Wishard finished his first can, closed his eyes, and started to snore. Milton opened his eyes and looked out past him at the unwinding landscape, the endless Gulf and the primeval swamp that fringed the road. They drove alongside a long, wide inlet and, as Milton watched, a big alligator roused itself from the burning rocks and slid into the muddy waters, quickly sinking out of sight.