Deadfall

by Robert Liparulo

  Without another word she finished dressing his wound, gathered the spent and unused supplies, and disappeared into the store.

  Finally Declan circled around to him. He said, “Here’s the deal. Remember what I said about how your being beaten down in the dirt helped everyone else from getting too confident and getting themselves killed?”

  Tom didn’t like where this was heading.

  “Well, what really works is taking that concept as far as it can go. Know what I mean?”

  “No.” But he did.

  Declan eyed him, cold, emotionless. “In World War II, the Nazis, man, they were conquering town after town.What do you think they did to keep the townsfolk in line?”

  He thought the question was rhetorical, but Declan waited.

  Tom said, “The Nazis were willing to do things good people weren’t willing to do.”

  Declan thought about it. “True, but that’s more of a how than a what, isn’t it? What things were they willing to do?”

  “Atrocities.”

  “Rape? Murder?”

  Tom watched the other man. As organized as he seemed, as much as he appeared to possess inside knowledge of the town—as his quick confiscation of the satellite phones suggested—as well planned as this operation was, Tom believed Declan was making this part up as he went. He was drawing from his education, from his knowledge of history, not from experience. What did that mean to the town, to Tom? Inexperience led to mistakes, maybe ones that Tom or someone else could exploit. Then again, not every mistake would necessarily favor Fiddler Falls. Oops. I guess we shouldn’t have killed everybody.Kyrill, next time remind me to keep some hostages.

  “Did you know,” Declan continued, “that most of the rapes and murders were not random? The Nazis were cunning.They used scouts and informers to find out whose rape, whose murder would best break the citizens’ spirit of rebellion. In one town, maybe they needed to take an old lady, sort of the town matriarch. In another place, maybe it was a little girl, someone whose innocence and beauty represented the townspeople’s values. Every place was different, but the person selected was always someone whose agony or death cut to the bone, broke their hearts. Sometimes they would shoot the town priest or the old wise man everyone turned to for guidance. But most of the time they chose the strongest, the toughest, the most outspoken. Someone who not only had power and skills, but also knew how to motivate people. He was a leader.”

  Tom gave in. “I’m that leader?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  “What do you mean, what you’ve heard?”

  “A little bird told me.”

  Tom remembered. A few months ago, a man had come in on a floatplane. Stayed a few days at the same B&B Declan and his cronies now occupied. Took pictures, asked questions. He had said he was doing research for a series of articles on quaint small towns for Canada’s leading newsmagazine. He’d stopped by the RCMP substation to ask Tom about the town’s police services, its medical facilities, and its ability to call in emergency help in the event of a fire, weatherrelated catastrophe, or serious hunting accident. Other townies had said he’d asked questions of them as well. He closed his eyes. How many of them had unwittingly helped Declan plan this invasion of their town? It was painful enough that he had contributed. He pictured the spy. Mousy guy, kept pushing his thick-framed glasses back up his nose. His name was Jonathan Bird.

  Opening his eyes, he said, “No article in Maclean’s, then?”

  “Sorry. Jon’s a good man. A top-notch researcher. Used to be a journalist, but I pay better. His report told me that Black Lake is bigger. More people. More visitors. More cops.Too big for our purposes. And Fond-du-Lac’s too small. Just a campground, really, for a bunch of Indians.”

  “We call them First Nations up here. Or Dene.”

  Declan shrugged. “I have a binder this thick about your village.” He made a four-inch-wide C with his hand. “Says the town manager spends more time bellied up to the bar than his desk.You have a conservation officer who sometimes packs a piece, but her expertise is forest fires and hunting licenses. Ben at the hotel says she’s out in the backcountry right now. I love small towns.” He rolled his eyes. “Not really. Then there’s you.”

  Tom’s eyes dropped to the pistol in the man’s hand.

  As if to show he had other plans, Declan turned away and tucked the weapon into his pants at the small of his back. He lifted his tight Under Armour shirt and let it fall back over the gun’s grip.

  He said, “We—me and the guys—are competitive by nature. Business, extreme sports. We don’t mind people trying to best us, because it makes besting them that much sweeter.”

  At his sides, his fingers began to waggle, fast, more Beethoven than Mahler. He faced Tom, stepped toward him, turned away again. Pentup energy, anxious to do whatever it was he had planned.

  “Bad? The black guy?” Declan said. “One of the best skateboarders in the world.We’re developing a game that’ll make Tony Hawk’s look like Pong.” He turned a squinting eye on Tom’s blank expression. “You know Tony Hawk?”

  “Sorry.”

  Declan sighed. “Okay, Pru . . . Pruitt? Major Unreal player. Up there on Quake too.You do know Unreal? Quake?”

  Tom shook his head. He was thinking of Laura. Dillon.

  “Online shooter games. Hundred thousand players worldwide. Really big deal outside of Podunk towns like this. Get this . . .” Somehow, his face reflected even more self-satisfaction. “The guy’s a geek, working for, I don’t know, Radio Shack, right? Rushes home every day and gets on the computer. I’m watching the stats. He’s good. So I call him, say, ‘You wanna real job? come join my posse. See the world. Be all you can be.’” He laughed, a dry, humorless sound.

  Tom didn’t know why, but he thought it was a good idea to keep the man talking. Maybe he’d give something away Tom could use. He nodded toward the kid who’d wanted the Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga games. “And him?”

  “Kyrill . . . just a young kid, right? Seventeen. The guy wrote a video game that’s about to outsell Halo 2, another game you wouldn’t know. Exclusive to Xbox, but it still sold 3.5 million copies. By year’s end, Kyrill’s will have that beat. And he’s working on another one. I’m telling you, the kid’s brilliant. This next one’s gonna blow everybody away. It’ll change gaming forever.”

  Tom met his eyes. “What do you do?”

  He smiled. “I run the company that makes Kyrill’s games. I sponsor Bad, Pruitt, some others. I’m the money man and the mastermind.”

  He said it without irony.

  Seeming to take Tom’s silence as an incitement, he said, “Funny thing is, the most valuable people aren’t always the ones with a single extraordinary talent. It’s the person who knows how to bring them together, orchestrate them into achieving something much bigger than their individual skills could do on their own. It’s the person who recognizes talent, nurtures it, makes it work for him. Henry Ford didn’t know how to design a combustible engine, but he knew how to bring together the people who did. Vince Lombardi never played pro ball, but what a coach, huh? He knew how to motivate players and taught them how to reach their potential and work together to make great teams. My father . . .”

  He stopped. His jaw tightened, and he turned away.

  Something there.

  “Your father?”

  “Forget it.”

  His father . . . in the context of that speech, with everything else Tom knew about Declan: Seattle, moneyman, video games. His last name . . .

  “Brendan Page?”

  Declan faced him. “Yes, that Page.”

  Self-made billionaire, many times over. Into just about everything: software, telecommunications, entertainment, publishing, military equipment. Tom wasn’t into following the sordid lives of tycoons or celebrities, but you’d have to live with bears to avoid running into Brendan Page’s name. It was usually associated with negative news: allegations of price-fixing and unfair competition; outcries from family
organizations because one of his companies had planned a particularly distasteful book or a movie that pushed the limits of decency; it was often his company’s weapons that slipped into embargoed countries. True, such examples accounted for a miniscule percentage of the products Brendan Page’s companies produced, but Tom thought it interesting that so many accusations of impropriety were directed at the holdings of one man’s empire. Said something about that man. He knew nothing of Brendan Page’s family, his children. They had kept a low profile, as the children of the outrageously rich often do.

  He asked,“How does someone with your money, your family, come to . . . to this?” He gestured at the Hummer, at the town.

  Declan stared at him. “You want the George Mallory answer or something more profound?”

  When Mallory had been asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, his famous answer was “Because it’s there.” Tom thought Declan meant “Because I can.” If his motivations were that crass, how could any answer satisfy Tom’s curiosity?

  Declan continued. “Now, do you want to know the rules of the game? Or do you want to talk family?”

  ThatTom definitely did not want to do. If Declan’s research was as thorough as he had implied, he must know about Laura and Dillon. Was the question a threat to bring them into the equation, not in conversation but in person?

  “What rules?”Tom asked.

  “Actually, there aren’t any.You run, we try to kill you. No, wait.We do kill you, but you run as though you have a chance.”

  “And if I get away?”

  “You won’t.”

  “If . . .”

  Declan sighed heavily. He waved to Kyrill, the brilliant game programmer, and Bad, champion of the board. From opposite ends of the street, they obeyed, moving toward him, lugging their weapons.To Tom, he said, “Do you recognize their guns?”

  Tom eyed them again as they approached. He tilted his head toward Kyrill. “Fifty-cal sniper’s rifle. Some hunters use it.”

  “And the other one?”

  Tom shook his head.

  “It’s a variation of the Gewehr G11. Uses casingless ammo. That means it weighs the same as a fully loaded M16, six pounds, but it holds three times as many rounds.”

  Bad stepped in, heard Declan’s words, and pulled a long rectangular magazine off the top of the weapon. He held it up for Tom to appreciate. The bullets inside were square pegs. It reminded him of a PEZ dispenser.

  “When it shoots a bullet,” Declan continued, “the slug comes out of the barrel and the rest of the cartridge ignites and is gone.There’s nothing to eject in preparation for the next round.That makes it an extraordinarily fast-firing gun. The designers studied the dynamics of firing bursts of three rounds, a common pattern for automatic weapons.They found that the first shot’s recoil causes the next two bullets to go high.”

  Declan spoke in such a deadpan voice,Tom wondered if the man was capable of emotion. More troubling was his suspicion that Declan did indeed experience feelings, but the events required to tap them were both extreme and intense. He wouldn’t want to be around when Declan needed a jolt of emotion.

  Too late, he thought.

  Bad slipped the magazine back onto the gun. It ran the length of what Tom assumed was a barrel.

  “This thing fires at a rate of two thousand rounds a minute.That’s three rounds in one-tenth of a second.Three rounds before the shooter even feels a recoil, so each bullet hits its target.”

  He gestured to Bad, who glanced around, spotted a target, and aimed.

  Tom realized the gun was pointed at Beggar, one of the town’s innumerable stray dogs. The bony mutt was a block away, sniffing at the curb. Before Tom could protest, the weapon coughed, a quick, throat-clearing sound. Beggar spun and flipped, much of his motion lost in a mist of blood and fur. He hit the curb and didn’t move, not even a twitch. Tom had no doubt all three bullets had found their mark.

  Bad continued to hold his aim on the animal, ready should a fresh burst prove necessary. After a few seconds he lowered the gun.

  Declan said, “This weapon alone narrows your chances to somewhere between zero and none.” His smile was a wire drawing taut. “And it’s nothing. A Super Soaker next to what else we have.”

  Tom’s eyes moved to the burning car.

  Declan asked, “Still think you have a chance?”

  Tom looked hard into his eyes. “Always.”

  “Okay. If you somehow manage to elude us, to hide where we can’t find you or you actually make it to civilization, then you’re free.We won’t kill anyone in retaliation. Promise.”

  “What kind of head start do I get?”

  He looked at his watch. Instead of answering, he called to the girl. She came to the doorway of the general store, a folded magazine in one hand, a bitten Ho Ho in the other. There was a smear of chocolate on her lips.

  “It’s time. Go get the others.Tell Pru and Julie to make sure nobody can get out. They should have it all secure over there by now.”

  She gamboled past Tom, not offering him even the briefest glance.

  A minute later, the community center door banged open, releasing Julian, Pruitt, and Cort.

  “A head start?” Declan said, as though no time had passed since the question. “How does five minutes sound?”

  “I think an hour’s fair.You want to be fair?”

  “No, I like five minutes.”

  He swiveled his head to make eye contact with each of his five sycophants, standing in a semicircle around them. Each gave a nod, apparently already apprised of the game and its rules.

  “Ready?” he said to Tom with a wink. “Go.”

  8

  Hutch, Phil, Terry, and David found the area where Franklin had suggested they set up camp.

  “Yeah,”Terry said approvingly.

  There was a flat, grassy patch, which Hutch thought of as the stage. It was here they would make camp. Surrounding it on three sides, like side and rear theatrical curtains, were tall evergreens, mostly fir, with a smattering of birch to make it more richly textured. These trees clothed a low berm that nearly encircled the camp area, protecting it from the wind. Stage right was an opening in the trees, a trail that converged with the path leading to the helicopter meadow.

  On the open side of the campsite or stage, which faced northwest, boulders paved a gentle slope down to the Straight River. The water here was not much more than a wide, fast stream. At the base of the slope, a natural pool had formed, ideal for cleaning fish, their clothes, themselves. Upstream and downstream, the current rushed over steps of rocks, serenading the campers with one of nature’s finest songs: the low susurration of moving water.

  Adding to his appreciation of the bivouac, Hutch didn’t see a bear trail anywhere near. He did spot a few widow-makers—standing dead trees that could blow down on them if they camped too close—but the area was large enough to avoid them.

  As usual, they had brought only two tents, which cut down on gear, helped each tent stay warm at night, and ensured that a bear couldn’t drag off one of them without the others knowing about it. Hutch selected a spot to pitch the tent he and Phil would use and started clearing it of twigs, pinecones, and rocks. Phil pulled their tent from its pouch and began snapping together the flexible poles that would arc over it, giving structure to the material.Terry and David debated the merits of three possible locations.

  A scorched circle where grass and dirt gave way to rock showed the spot where previous campers had laid a fire. Following the rules of Canadian backwoods camping, the last users had broken up the pit, redistributing the perimeter stones into the surrounding landscape. Even the ashes and unconsumed wood had been scattered, either by the campers or the weather.

  Having camped together for seven years, the four men worked mostly in silence, but efficiently. In forty minutes they had erected the tents, built a fire pit, gathered kindling, and hung the food from a high branch away from foraging animals.

  Phil headed for the naturally refrigerate
d river, a case of beer in hand. As he descended the slope, he opened a can.

  “We heard that!” David called. He had draped his earbuds over his shoulders.

  “Hear this,” Phil answered, but no sound followed, thankfully.

  Hutch knelt before the pit and wedged a thick branch into the rocks so it angled up over the center. He dug into a nylon sack, removed a well-used teakettle, and hung it off the tip of the branch.

  Phil came huffing back up the slope. “I’m not looking forward to those freeze-dried meals,” he said.

  “I think you’ll be surprised,” David said.

  “Man, even that crap’s good eating for me these days.” Terry shook his head sadly. “Used to eat at Elway’s twice a week.”

  “Oh yeah, they got good grub,” Phil agreed. “Pricey, but man . . .”

  Terry smiled. “The valets knew my Jag. They’d run in to tell the maître d’ I’d arrived before I’d even get to them. I tipped them a twenty and they’d keep the car right there, outside the door. The bankruptcy trustee wouldn’t let me keep that car, too much equity. I don’t think Elway’s would keep the car I’m driving now right out front.”

  “Could be worse,” Phil said. “Look at me.”

  Terry gave him a dismissive wave. “Buy an exercise bike.You’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t have a job,” Phil reminded him. He pulled off his glasses and began cleaning them with his shirttail. “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs. Fat and broke. Does it get any worse?”

  “Lighten up,” Hutch said. He returned to the loose tree stump he had found earlier to sit on. “Who said, ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope’?”

  “Terence,” David answered.

  He had turned Hutch into a quotation geek back in fifth grade. It drove the other two batty.

  “Terry?” Phil said, an unsure smile on his face.

  “The ancient Roman playwright.”

  “Yeah, but you know the kind of plays he wrote?” Hutch asked.

  David nodded, knowingly.