by Steven Gould
"Hey!" he yelled. "I told you what you wanted to know!"
I said soothingly, "Yes, you did. But did you want me to shock you again, to get you here? That was the alternative."
I took the shock stick out of my pocket again. "Now. All I want you to do is tell them that you convinced me they were following you, that you're on my side, and I've agreed to another meeting out at Sam Coulton's place. Uh, nobody's moved in there, have they?"
"Hell no. Eight people died there. The cousin who ended up with it wants to sell but nobody is interested."
"Okay. Tell them it's set for three o'clock."
He looked at his watch. "That'll only give them an hour to get out there."
"So it will." I flipped open his phone and found the entry and dialed it.
He did it as I'd told him and, after he told them when and where, he said, "So, I'll see you-" He tilted the phone in his hand and stared at it. "They hung up."
I held my hand out for the phone.
His fingers closed around it and I lifted the shock tube.
"Hey, it's my phone."
"Sure," I said.
He relaxed and I jumped, only two feet to the side, and kicked the phone out of his hand. It really flew, high, higher, and came down in the brush thirty feet away.
He was clutching his hand to his chest and swearing. I walked over, picked up a fist-sized rock, and hit the phone three times.
I set his gun and ammunition and the Mace and handcuffs on the fragments of plastic and circuit board. "See the highway?" I said pointing at the distant gray line.
He held up his good hand and flipped me the bird.
"I bet you can walk it in about two hours."
I jumped away.
I was on my back, under Sam's couch, my nose just clearing the cotton batten and steel leaf springs. If I'd been one inch thicker, it wouldn't have worked.
I heard their footsteps first, but just barely. Didn't hear a car so I presumed they'd parked their vehicle somewhere off the road, out of earshot. They came sooner that I expected, but I'd been there for thirty minutes and was reasonably confident that they hadn't felt me arrive.
Not unless they'd been camping within range.
The door was locked but they opened it. Didn't know if they had a key or if they'd picked it but they didn't force it- that would've given the game away.
They checked the house carefully, though, opening closets and cabinets, peeking up into the attic crawlspace. I'd been planning on waiting up there, myself, but it was like an oven so I'd checked the couch on a whim.
Fortunately, they didn't.
"What about the grounds? He could be out there."
Young voice, American English, nervous, it seemed.
"Relax," said the other, older, more confident. There was something faintly European in his accent. A trace of Scandinavian-like a young Max von Sydow. "If he's already here he'll still have to show himself when Vigil arrives."
"Kemp should be here."
"We kill jumpers. We're not jumpers ourselves! How's he supposed to get here from New Jersey in time?"
"I'd just feel better. He's had more experience, right? With grown jumpers? All I've ever dealt with are the kids."
"Well, yes-only Roland's group has more experience."
"Christ. Roland. Now that's one scary paladin."
The older man breathed out sharply, an exasperated sound. "Go watch out the back but be careful. Don't show yourself. Don't scare him off. He could approach on foot, but don't forget he knows this house. He could jump in. This one… if we get him, well, it will reflect well on us. Roland has been reading the reports and he's not pleased."
I barely heard the footsteps as the other man moved off.
I'd give them that-they were stealthy bastards.
Only two of them. Only two of them in the area, then. They'd have sent more if there'd been more. I just had that feeling.
All I've ever dealt with are the kids. Huh. I remembered the man in the car, back in Lechlade, when I was five. I remembered the night when I was nine. Go after 'em when they're young enough and they're easy.
All right, fuckers, time to pick on someone your own size.
By rolling my head to the side I could see under the skirting at the base of the couch. Across the carpet I could just see partway up his boots, brown, soft soled, back near the hallway, where he could look out both the front windows and also step back out of sight when someone showed up.
I didn't change posture as I jumped, staying down on the floor, jabbing the shock stick up into the back of his thigh. He got off a shot but was unable to aim, and the cables and spikes smashed one of the front windows as he fell over. For good measure I jabbed him again in the side, then, hearing footsteps, I jumped away, to the old stable across the graveled front yard.
He didn't use the door-he jumped out through the smashed window, then rolled sideways across the porch to his feet. He charged across the yard like a winger heading out of the scrum for the goal, changing directions randomly to avoid the opposing players. He had one of those guns, the spike and cable projectors, a hand on the handle and the other cradling the barrel.
I timed him, though, and on his next change of direction, I jumped, jabbing with the shock stick.
His foot caught me in the stomach and I was still rising in the air when I jumped away.
I came down in the Empty Quarter, stunned, unable to move. I was trying to inhale but it wasn't working. I jabbed at my diaphragm with my fingers and then it caught, like a motor, and my first breath turned into a raging, hacking cough.
Damn, he's fast.
He reminded me of the brown belt who'd taken first at Birmingham. I looked around for the shock stick but it was gone, probably lying on the ground back at Sam's place.
I jumped to the Hole, still coughing, intending to get the spike gun, the one I'd taken from Mateo in La Crucecita, but I saw the baseball bat instead.
Right.
I jumped back to the living room. The first man was still down, but he was fumbling with the gun-he'd opened the breech and was pulling out the spent cartridge. An unfired one lay on his stomach, ready to be inserted.
I took one sideways step and smashed the gun away with the bat, swinging up, underhanded. The gun smashed against the far wall but he never stopped moving and suddenly there was a knife in his hand, like it'd sprouted there.
I brought the bat back down on the return swing, smashing into his extended hand. The knife stuck in the floor, quivering, and he yelled.
The yell did it. I'd heard that yell before.
He'd been there, that night.
I'd shot him with the paintball gun in the bollocks twice and I'd hit him multiple times in the face with the barrel of the gun. I could see faint scars.
I backhanded him in the face with the bat. Junior was at the door, the gun rising. I remembered what Dad had told me so long ago: Don't let anyone even point a weapon at you.
I jumped to the porch, behind him, but this time I was expecting the foot that lashed out toward me and I twisted aside as I brought the bat down on the back of his extended knee.
I heard something pop in the joint and he screamed, but he still tried to turn, to bring the gun to bear through the doorway, but the bat got there first, smashing the barrel up and back and… it went off.
Both spikes came up through his jaw, one ripping through the carotid artery on his left side, spraying blood as he fell back. His legs spasmed once, twice, and he lay still.
I felt my stomach heave and I knew I was going to be sick, but then, halfway off the porch, hunched over, I stopped myself. I straightened up and took two deep breaths through my nose, then turned around and made myself look.
He bled quite a lot. Sam's heir, the distant cousin, had put new carpet in. He wasn't going to be happy.
I jumped past the body and the spreading stain.
The older man, the one who'd been there that night, wasn't breathing. A trickle of blood ran out of one ear.
His eyes were wide and staring and one pupil was noticeably larger than the other.
"Good." I said it aloud and it echoed in the room, louder than I expected, and harsher.
I swam at the beach in Oaxaca, Bahia Chacacual, fighting higher surf than usual. There must've been a storm farther south, down Guatemala way, to send these swells north. I found myself rubbing my face under the water and realized I was still trying to get the blood off.
If it's not off now, it's not coming off. Get over it.
I bodysurfed back to shore and jumped up into the jungle where my showers were. It was all too easy to remember E.V. standing here, slippery, warm, and naked, and I cut the shower short.
Her coat still lay at the foot of the bed.
I jumped into New York City at rush hour and rode the train down to Trenton, walking through the streets with all the commuters. Mr. Kelson's body was lying in state at the Gruerio Funeral Home until the services on Saturday. My plan was to leave the coat and let her discover it but when the attendant ushered me into the chapel, she was sitting there.
The attendant stepped back outside and I went up to the front row and sat on the far end of the bench. The casket was open but I had no desire to view the departed.
"I brought your coat."
She was looking at me, her eyes wide, the comers of her mouth hooked down.
"Won't they come back? Won't they know you're here?"
I shrugged. "I took the train. I'll leave on the train. I won't jump from anywhere near here. Unless I have to."
She turned away and covered her face with both hands. I kept expecting her to say something, but she didn't.
"You could've trusted me," I finally said. "The result would've been almost exactly the same. Only we-"
She didn't respond. After a moment I got up and walked to the door.
That's when she said, "I'm glad you brought the coat. It was his." She jerked her head toward the casket. "He never gave it to me but I started wearing it when it no longer dragged on the floor. And he never said a word."
I took a wandering route back to the station, looping east, far from her house, and took the train to Philadelphia.
When it clanked passed Croydon, I jumped away to the Hole.
On the train, people all around, I'd pushed forward, numb.
Now I couldn't even move. I stood hunched over, between the table and the bed, my mouth half open. I was standing with my back to the plywood gallery.
Oh.
I made myself turn, walk forward, and sit on the edge of the bed.
The light was already on so E.V.'s face, as I'd sketched it in Regent's Park, was there, relaxed, innocent-unmarred, unmarked by tragedy, by horror. The shape of her collarbone, the dip of the sweater's neckline, the tracery of lace at the edge of her bra, the outline of her breasts.
And her eyes.
Those eyes would never look at me like that again.
I tore it into pieces and then I tore those pieces and then I tore those pieces. I ended up with a pile of coin-sized scraps on the table, flecks of art stock. My traitor hands started sorting them, looking for fragments that matched, like a jigsaw puzzle.
In the Empty Quarter I made a fire of dead mesquite out in the middle of the wash, adding more and more wood until it was like a pyre.
When the flames were taller than me, I threw the fragments of the sketch into the fire and watched them vanish almost immediately-flame, ash, and then sparks drifting into the sky.
Triangulation.
Honesty is the best policy, that's what they say, but it was a disaster for me. I should never have mentioned Borrcgo Springs. But I had plenty of warning. They drove around listening. Waiting for me to jump so they could figure out where my lair was.
The sheep farmers had started throwing coyotes down my shaft again and I was getting ready to make another visit, though this time I was considering taking the baseball bat.
I'd jumped to a ridge near Fish Creek campground with my binoculars, trying to catch the Keyhoe brothers on their ATVs, when a truck kicking up a dust trail in the wash below suddenly swerved and braked.
I stepped behind a boulder and took a look with the binoculars.
Three men. Kemp and the big man from Oaxaca and someone I didn't know. They'd felt the jump. They were looking up the ridge.
I walked away, down the other side of the ridge toward the gypsum mine. I was considering just walking away until I was at least eight miles out of range, but I didn't know what direction they'd drive their truck.
And anyway, if they were this close, they'd already felt me jump from the Hole multiple times. They were probably taking bearings, triangulating.
I jumped away, to the park headquarters, then to the Keyhoe ranch, where I smashed a window and riled up the dogs, then jumped away to New York and had a hot dog in Battery Park.
After thirty minutes I sighed heavily.
Time to move.
On the outskirts of Rennes I found a farmer with a shed to rent. It was dry with a good roof and a stone floor well off the damp ground and he took a year's rent in cash without asking for an ID of any kind.
"Dmuges?"
"Bien sur que nonl"
Drugs indeed!
I jumped back to the Hole and transferred the wall of sketches, my dresser, and the weapons I'd taken from them so far. I looked at everything else-the batteries, the generator, the lights, the bed, and the furniture and decided against it. I hesitated over the shelf of self-study materials, then 1 shook my head.
I jumped to San Diego and stole six barbecue canisters of propane gas from a gas distributor and brought them back.
Then I spent three hours doing nothing but jumping from one end of the Hole to the other end.
If the bastards didn't feel that, then what good were they?
Every hour I jumped to the surface, right above the Hole. It wouldn't feel much different to them compared to underground, unless they were already there, but they weren't.
But I heard them coming.
I walked away, back into the boulders, and made my way up the hill. I had my binoculars and the baseball bat, and I was ready to play.
There were six of them in two different all-wheel-drive trucks and when they left the vehicles they fanned out in two groups of three. They looked inward, toward each other, and I realized it was a way to watch each other's back, because if your enemy could materialize in your midst, you had to look everywhere.
I waited until the two groups were well apart and took out one of Kemp's group, smashing his knee, taking advantage of his fast reflexes and hitting him as he lashed out.
Both Kemp and his other teammate fired their spikes toward me, but they missed because I'd jumped away, and they missed their teammate because he'd fallen on his ass.
I snagged Kemp by the collar while he was reloading, and dropped him in the Hole. When he twisted and fired at me, I jumped to the other end of the cave where I'd left my own equipment.
My spikes and cable caught him across his chest and pinned him to the plywood wall. It was ironic. That was the sheet that still said "Sensitives" on it, though the sketches were in France now.
He was struggling out from under the cable and I wondered if the charge was gone. Or if he was just tough. I fired another, lower, across his thighs, and saw him spasm. I put another across his chest and arms, and then another, shoulder high.
He carried his knife in a sleeve sheath, a mechanical thing that popped it into his hand. He had a shock stick in his back pocket and six cartridges for his gun in the loops of his belt. I took his cell phone and his wallet, too, and put them on the table.
There were three different IDs. None of them for Kemp. I guess I'd made it too hot for him under that name. I took a jump back to the surface, and then to the metal ladder leading down into the mine. It stank-the dead coyotes were still there-but I didn't mind somehow.
I returned to Kemp and jabbed him with the shock stick.
Oh, good. I'd been thinking he had
some sort of immunity. The plywood, thick, three-quarter-inch stuff, flexed like cardboard.
While he spasmed, I got a chair and straddled it, arms resting across the back.
His twitching lessened and I said, "Paladin. Hmph. That's an odd name for someone who goes around killing children."
I had his full attention suddenly. He hadn't been looking particularly good but when I said that he went pasty white.
"Am I not supposed to know that?" I asked innocently. "Which part am I not supposed to know? That you guys are paladins? Or that you spend most of your time offing little kids?"
He was staring at me like he'd made a mistake, like he'd thought I was one thing, and he'd discovered I was another. "Listen, boy-"
I jabbed him in the stomach with the shock stick, jumping forward past the chair.
As he went into another set of convulsions, I walked back around to the chair. "We got off on the wrong foot, I think. Probably when you killed my parents. Maybe you thought I didn't like my parents but I gotta tell you, you were wrong about that. Then there was Sam and Consuelo… now I'm confused. Why did you kill them? Wouldn't it have been better to leave them alive, to see if I'd make contact again? Would Roland have done it that way?"
He began thrashing again, but it wasn't the shock stick. He was trying to get out of the cables. Was it the mention of Roland's name? This time I kicked him in the bollocks.
"Christ, would you settle down!" I shouted. He was having trouble breathing and he was making little groaning sounds. I pointed at his groin. "Oh, yeah. And then you had to go and mess with my love life! That was really the last straw."
I looked back over at my books, the schoolwork, the novels I loved.
"I used to be a nice kid. Probably the kind of kid you're used to, the kind of kid who dies nice and quiet when you show up with your knives and spiky guns and cables and shock sticks and all."
I jumped away, back to the other side of the cave, where it led out to the vertical shaft. They'd broken open the grating and I could hear them coming down the ladder.