Winner Take All

by T. Davis Bunn

  “You’re the one running to somebody else’s clock, man.” Sephus Jones shook Marcus’ head. “Don’t you pass out on me, you hear? The boss man says you gotta stay awake for this performance, else he docks my pay.”

  The fat little man stepped forward, and Marcus realized he was still wearing a tie. And a vest. He squatted in the sand by Marcus’ head, drawing so close Marcus could see he was speaking into a mobile phone.

  “This is Reiner. All is as you instructed.” He listened a moment, then said to Sephus, “Make him look.”

  The man holding his chin could not stop grinning. “And people say I’m the sicko.”

  Sephus twisted Marcus’ head to the left. His grip was a probe of titanium and fury. Marcus groaned at the pain, and then again at the sight that awaited him.

  Kirsten lay beside him. Her legs and wrists were tied together and then staked. She was utterly immobile. Marcus blinked fiercely, trying to see if she was breathing.

  Then he focused beyond her, and saw the sea.

  “All right,” the little man said. “Let him go.”

  Sephus remained over him a moment longer, savoring the pain he saw in Marcus’ gaze. “Looks to me like you and your dolly made the wrong dude mad.”

  The hand compressed his jaw further still, until he could feel the ligaments plucked out taut and screaming. Then it was gone. One moment pain white as desert light, the next and the little man was there. Looking down at him through ridiculous blue spectacles. “There is someone here who wants a word.” He mashed the phone to Marcus’ ear.

  The languid voice started in, “For a time I was genuinely morose over missing this final performance of yours.”

  Marcus worked his mouth. Open and shut. A breath in and out. Sorting through the pains and the fears. “Kedrick Lloyd.”

  “Ah, excellent. You are both awake and aware. I am so glad. Everything seems to be working to my design. Behold my grandest creation, a symphony of sight and sound and operatic tragedy. You will watch your intrusive young woman perish, then expire yourself. Is it not marvelous?”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “You know, I understand Beethoven’s plight for the very first time, how it must have felt when the poor deaf man could not hear his own creations being performed. Bitterly frustrating, yet at the same time the void holds a certain savor. Were I there, I would most certainly discover some imperfection. Humans are defined by their failings, particularly when it comes to creative effort. But from this distance, I can close my eyes and see the flawless unfolding of my revenge.”

  “The DA knows.”

  “Of course she does. But my lawyers, that is, my new lawyers, will confound her feeble testimony. Who will a jury believe, a third-rate courtroom turncoat or the ailing board member of the New York Metropolitan Opera? No, my dear boy, there is a grand distance between what is known and what is provable.”

  “Your men blew up the boat and killed Charlie Hayes.”

  “Most regrettable, that. But knowing as I do what the poor man faced, I take comfort from the fact that he might well have thanked me.”

  “What about the baby?”

  “Have you learned nothing? Your meddling over the child is what landed you and your paramour in this predicament. But never mind. I shall savor this night as I have few things in the past year of madness and agony. Tonight, even the tide charts work to my favor. Adieu, Marcus Glenwood. Do try and stay awake for the entire performance.”

  CHAPTER

  ———

  57

  MARCUS STARTED AWAKE. Something had drawn him from the semiconscious state of thudding agony and the distant wash of waves. He had difficulty opening his eyes, which frightened him into full alertness. He straightened his head and understood. His temple was leaking blood, and it had matted with the sand and caked against his eyelid. He twisted his facial muscles and blinked hard and finally pried his right eyelid free.

  “Stars.”

  The word was so soft, Marcus had difficulty separating it from the pounding in his skull. He turned his head fully to the left. “Kirsten?”

  “Marcus.” She did not turn her head to meet his gaze. Instead, her eyes stared straight up at the sky. “It is you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see the stars, but where is the smoke?”

  “Kirsten, try your bonds.”

  “You didn’t need to do it this way.”

  “Try and focus. Please. This is …” A wind too feeble to touch them pierced the clouds. Moonlight illuminated a face pale as the sand upon which she lay. She was blinking very fast. Each blink pressed out another tear. “Kirsten, we’re going to get out of this.”

  “Where are the others?”

  His hands were wet from where he had torn the skin off his wrists, trying to work free of his bonds before passing out. No matter how hard he pulled and struggled, there was no give to the stakes. He could feel the grit crusted to the fold of his eye and his mouth. “Kirsten, look at me.”

  “There have to be others.” She blinked and spilled more rivulets. “Will they hurt me again?”

  The voice was not hers. Nor the expression. Nor the eyes. “Kirsten, please, darling, wake up.”

  Her face rolled toward him. Her eyes attacked him. Deep as pits and luminous with old pain. “You’re Marcus.”

  “That’s right, darling. And I love you.”

  “But you weren’t there.”

  “No. I wasn’t.”

  The tears slipped out to gather on her nose and drip like slow pain. “Why are you here now?”

  He tried to keep his voice steady. “Kirsten, look at my hands. Lift your head. That’s right. No, up there. There, you see?”

  She squinted hard. “You’re tied up.”

  “Darling, listen to me. This is now. Do you understand? The men are not here.”

  She rolled onto her back, offering herself to the night. “But I see the stars, Marcus. Look, and the smoke. Are they coming back now?”

  “Kirsten. No, don’t go to sleep. Darling, you have to wake up!”

  But she was gone from him. Marcus lifted himself as high as he could. And shouted to the dark. “Help! Anybody!”

  He screamed again, on and on, until he felt something tear inside his head.

  When he woke up, the pain was so intense he thought all the crashing came from his brain. Slowly Marcus sifted through the agony and realized the noise was mostly the ocean. He needed even longer to recognize that the ocean had moved.

  Then he came fully awake as the next wave lapped over his left arm and leg.

  He turned his head. The sky had cleared while he had been out. The moonlight was strong enough for him to see the next wave as silver-white. Kirsten’s face was drenched and her hair sodden. The retreating water swept entirely over her body. “Kirsten!”

  Her face was utterly immobile. The moonlight turned her pale as a bound specter. He shouted her name again. A third time. He stopped as another wave rose and crashed. The sight frightened him more than his immobile fingers. More than how Kirsten’s chest did not seem to be moving.

  The next wave looked huge. It rushed up toward him, covering his left limbs and sloshing over his chest. The water on his arm and leg felt lukewarm. But he could not feel anything in his hand or his foot. He twisted his neck so he could see his hand and tried to move his fingers. They remained locked into a half-curled position.

  Marcus shut his eyes as the water rushed up and over him. This time the current was strong enough to fling the water across his chest and up the length of his right arm. He lifted his head from the stream and felt the froth flow back and away. The wet sand made a scrunching sound as he lowered his head and turned back to Kirsten.

  A strand of seaweed was now wrapped across her cheek and one eye. The sight was obscene. And deathly still.

  “WAKE UP!”

  The effort of his scream clenched his entire body, pulling his limbs in tight. He dropped down, filled his lungs, clenched himself up tigh
t, and screamed again.

  Kirsten did not move.

  But the stake holding his left arm did.

  Marcus arched his entire body in an effort to swivel his head up so that he could see the stake. Then down, another panting breath, then back in the other direction. Yes. The left-hand stake was definitely canted more sharply than the right. He turned back, which was good, because he caught sight of an even bigger wave. One that crashed almost directly on top of Kirsten and broke over him so hard he choked. He gasped and fought for breath as the wave receded, blinking away the sting in his eyes.

  Kirsten was still not moving.

  He struggled against the stake, pressing himself far beyond the borders of pain. He did not care if he broke his arm, his shoulder, his back. He shouted out the pain that ripped through his shoulder and elbow. Down for a few moaning breaths, then he turned his head away as the next wave crashed. Not because of the water. Because he couldn’t bear to see it wash over her.

  But this time, when the water receded, he felt the stake tremble.

  His fingers were unable to feel the rope, much less clutch it. Marcus heaved and bellowed. Panted and groaned. He held his breath through another wave. Heaved again.

  Slowly, with the sucking sound of being pulled from a living wound, the stake came free.

  He curled away from the next wave. The water only made his joints and bones ache more. Where he had torn the skin around his ankles and wrists, the salty wash felt like hot acid.

  His fingers refused to make a fist. He curled his left hand limply around the stake and punched his arm down into the sand by his side. Again. He lifted his hand up to his face, then clenched his eyes against the next wave. Blinking away the salt sting, he saw the stake’s blunt end was now caught into the ropes at his wrist. He turned and reached and jammed the stake into the sand by his right arm’s pinion. He dug and groaned and coughed through two waves, pulling as hard as he could all the time.

  His right arm came free.

  He sat up. His fingers were thick as sausages and utterly numb. He clamped the pair of staves together between his palms and attacked the sand by his left foot. With his feet spread-eagled it was a gymnast’s trick to reach it at all. His groin hurt worse than his wrists from the strain.

  His left foot pulled free.

  The stave holding his right foot seemed to take the longest of all. Now he could not stop himself from looking over and staring at Kirsten’s immobile form. Each new wave formed a foamy moonlight shroud. Marcus ripped out the final stave.

  He crawled over to Kirsten and flicked the seaweed from her face. “Please, sweetheart, open your eyes.” He dropped his face close to hers, then to the chest, praying for a sign, a breath, a heartbeat. All he heard was the next wave.

  He crawled to her hands. He heaved and roared and plucked the stave free. Down to her feet. Again.

  He moved to her left side, so that his back took the next wave’s force instead of her head. He dug his numb hands under her and wept anew at the realization that he did not have the strength to lift her.

  “Kirsten, help me, please.” He bent over her face, used the flesh of his palms to pry back her jaw. He fitted his lips to hers. She tasted of salt and impossible cold. He breathed. He held his mouth pinned there as the next wave crashed over them. Release. Breathed again. A third time. Another wave. And he knew they had to move.

  He pushed and rolled her because there was nothing else to be done. The weight of her was an impossible task. He lifted and yelled and heaved and shoved her a yard farther up. Again. Over and over until they were both completely covered with sand and debris.

  He did not know how long he continued with the gasping, weeping effort. Aeons. But he did not stop until the sand which formed their outermost cover was utterly dry, a frosting that shimmered in the moonlight. He remained on his knees above her, swaying slightly. Mouthing her name. Begging her to wake up.

  She groaned.

  The sound was so soft he could scarcely believe it at all. Then she shifted slightly, and took a deeper breath. Shuddered. Groaned again.

  Only then did he realize his head was throbbing worse than his arms. The pain seemed to sweep up all at once, a wave so strong it could divorce itself from the sea and still be capable of crashing him to the beach, thrusting him down, then plucking him away.

  CHAPTER

  ———

  58

  HE AWOKE with a cry of pain. Everything hurt him. Even opening his eyes was a gritty torment.

  The sun was a vexatious flame, magnified by the ocean to torch the entire eastern sea. A tugging pulled at his stretched and torn shoulder. He cried out again.

  “Your hands.”

  The words were more shivered than spoken. He blinked against the sand and salt caking his face. Kirsten was seated by his side. She held his left arm in both hands, and she gnawed at the knot with her teeth. Her entire frame shook with almost constant tremors. But she worked the knot like a ferret.

  “So cold.”

  But it’s blistering hot, he wanted to say. Yet when he could not make his mouth form the words, he decided it really didn’t matter. She was there, she was awake. Her hair was matted and bloody, her face powdered by white sand like a broken Kabuki doll. Her eyes were red and watering, her limbs and body filthy with dried mud and seaweed. But fully there.

  “I was dreaming,” she said.

  I know, Marcus wanted to say. But he found it difficult even to nod.

  “It was awful.” A more violent tremor ran through her. She paused at working on his knot long enough to stare directly into the sun. Her face looked sugar-frosted. Gradually the tremors subsided. She looked back at him. A single tear tracked its way unnoticed across her sandy pallor. Her voice rasped with thirst and wear. “You were there, Marcus. In my dream. You made the bad ones go away.”

  She went back to work on his knot. Seabirds scissored across the gold-blue sky. Their caws threatened to split his skull. The waves worked his brain like liquid drills. Even the sun’s heat was noisy.

  She spat out a length of rope. “There.”

  The pain in his fingers was so unexpectedly fierce he reared his head back and howled.

  She gripped the hand to her chest and pummeled the swollen digits. “Marcus, oh Marcus.”

  He wanted to beg her to stop. But before he could manage the words, he heard his name called again. In the distance. A faint hallooing almost lost to the waves and the rising wind.

  Kirsten rose then, staggering and falling back to her knees. “Here!”

  “Marcus!”

  Dale was the first over the dunes. Followed by a pair of patrolmen, one of whom stopped long enough to call and shout back behind them.

  Kirsten was crying as Dale raced over. “His hand.”

  Dale stared at them. The stricken look he shared with the oncoming policemen was enough to make Marcus hurt even worse.

  This time Kirsten shrieked the words. “Cut the ropes!”

  Dale dropped to the sand beside them. “Give me a knife.”

  She was sobbing so hard now she could not make the words. She made do by pushing Dale’s hands away from her and toward Marcus. As he cut Marcus’ three remaining bonds, Dale kept glancing over at her, sitting there beside him, her powdered face streaked and mottled, her own bound hands and feet of no concern whatsoever.

  When the bond was cut to his right hand, Marcus had no choice but to give himself over to the shrilly piercing agony. He would have begged Dale not to open two more wounds at his ankles, but he could make no audible plea. Then it was too late.

  When he managed to refocus, he saw that a policeman had dropped to the sand beside Kirsten and sawed off her own bonds. Marcus crawled the distance between them on his elbows and knees. She met him with an embrace even the agony of his joints could not diminish. Her sand-encrusted lips scraped across his face. He felt the pressure of her fingertips on the wound to his forehead. Not even this pain mattered. Not then.

  In the distanc
e there was a faint halloo. Dale called back, “Over here!”

  More footsteps and huffing breaths signaled the arrival of others. The first words out of Wilma Blain’s mouth were “Bring this pair a drink of water.”

  Only then did one of his other pains separate enough for Marcus to give it a name. He groaned beneath the sudden weight of his thirst. Kirsten trembled in his arms and whimpered.

  Wilma Blain’s voice rose to where she sent the seagulls soaring and calling their alarm. “Now!”

  CHAPTER

  ———

  59

  KIRSTEN LET MARCUS DRIFT while they were poked and prodded by the medical team. At Wilma Blain’s command, they had been settled into the most secure corner of the Wilmington hospital’s ER unit. When they asked where she hurt, Kirsten had to smile. Her face felt as though it would crack beneath its shell of sunbaked salt and sand. Everywhere, she wanted to say, but that would only slow them down further. And the clock was marching on.

  The police strutted along the corridor, their radios crackling. Just beyond the cubicle’s curtain Wilma Blain talked on her mobile phone. She waited while the nurse swabbed Marcus’ forehead and the doctor injected a local anesthetic and began stitching. The doctor snipped away the unused thread and dropped his utensils into the metal pan. He inspected his handiwork, then turned to Marcus’ hands and feet. The pain was obviously diminishing, or perhaps it was merely that his fatigue offered a comfort all its own. Whatever the reason, Marcus watched the doctor’s actions with the detached disinterest of an onlooker.

  “Can you make a fist for me, Mr. Glenwood? Excellent. Let’s try this hand. Good. Does that hurt? Yes, I suppose it must.” The doctor moved down to Marcus’ legs, thumped the filthy pant’s leg with his little hammer, nodded at the response. He lifted one foot and ran the hammer’s handle up from the heel and across the arch. The doctor’s pale features and scraggly goatee only accented his youth. “Curl your toes for me. Good. Well, there’s no evidence of severe atrophy so far as I can tell from a cursory examination.”