Walking dead ak-7

by Greg Rucka

  I went through the boat as quickly as I could, starting with the room furthest from us and working back toward the living room we'd entered. The furthest room was the bedroom, and I got lucky in there, finding a roll of duct tape in a bureau drawer, along with some other heavy bondage equipment, including manacles for the wrists and ankles. I bled my way back to Mesick, still lying on the carpeted floor of the living room, and secured him with them, setting his wrists behind his back.

  I gathered the two halves of my eyeglasses, took them and the duct tape to the bathroom. It was off the single hallway, to the left, and I stumbled into it, dropped them on the counter, and began yanking out the drawers and opening the cabinets, searching for a first aid kit. The best I managed was a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and it popped out of my grip when I tried to take it, my hands now thoroughly coated with my own blood. I sat myself on the closed toilet and tried to stop the bleeding.

  The cut on my right forearm, his initial cut, seemed the worst of the ones I'd received, had split skin and fat and muscle, almost to bone. I could still move my fingers, and I figured that counted for something, that I'd been spared major nerve and tendon damage. The cut across my left palm was messy, but I'd gotten very lucky, and it looked like all that hit was the tip of the blade, and that just barely. A fraction deeper and I could've lost the use of the hand. The abdominal slash I couldn't be sure about, and didn't want to risk the required twisting for a further examination. Nothing seemed to be spilling out of my guts other than blood.

  I used the rubbing alcohol first, pouring it straight over my wounds to wash and, maybe, hopefully, sterilize them, at least somewhat. Then I tore strips of duct tape and tried to put myself back together. I had pretty good luck on my arm, able to use my left hand to pinch the wound closed as I lay the strip down, then drawing it tight. It was harder going with my palm and side.

  When I was finished, I just sat there, leaning against the wall. The delayed pain had begun creeping in, and for several minutes it felt as if I was doing nothing but sinking in it. Spots of light danced about in my vision, and I knew I was close to passing out, realized I was hyperventilating. With effort, I got my breathing back under control.

  There was noise coming from the living room, the sound of Mesick, conscious again, thrashing against his restraints.

  With effort and the aid of the bathroom counter, I pulled myself back to my feet. The dancing lights returned as soon as I was upright, and I froze, drawing controlled breaths. They passed faster than they had before, but I took the warning seriously, and when I started moving again, I kept it slow and deliberate.

  He was worming his way toward the kitchenette, using his bound feet to push himself along on his back. When he saw me, he froze, shocked, and I knew he'd thought I'd gone, that he was alone.

  I stepped over Mesick without a comment, to where I'd set the knife on the countertop of the kitchenette. Then I turned to him and, knowing it would hurt, bent and took hold of the restraints at his ankles, using them to haul him back to the middle of the living room floor. I did everything I could to keep the pain I was causing myself from my face.

  I looked down at Theunis Mesick with his knife in my hand and said, "You were wrong about Arzu."

  It was a complete non sequitur as far as he was concerned. His mouth worked for a moment, trying to process my English, perhaps. "What?"

  "You were wrong about Arzu. You said he didn't give out your name. Remember?"

  He nodded, just the barest tilting of his chin. I had him confused, and worried, which was exactly what I was hoping for.

  "He gave it to me," I said, running my thumb lightly along the edge of the knife for added effect. It was theatrical to the point of farce, but if I was going to play the part, I figured I'd best play it to the hilt, as it were. "He gave it to me just before I killed him."

  Theatrical it may have been, but it sure as hell worked. Theunis Mesick's eyes snapped open enough to give me a generous view of their whites, my blurred vision making them appear to have no iris at all. His mouth worked even more frantically, and he tried the worm-crawl again, pushing himself backward. I smiled while I watched him do it. After a few seconds, I began to follow him, taking my time.

  It didn't take long for him to realize there was nowhere for him to go.

  "What?" he shrieked at me. "What do you want?"

  "I want to kill you," I told him. "I'll settle for information."

  "Anything! Anything, don't kill me!"

  "Arzu sent you a girl, almost a month ago. A Georgian girl. Black hair, skinny. Young. Fourteen."

  "Ja, her, ja! I remember!"

  I looked at the knife, made a point of studying its curve in the light. I asked the question softly, loading it with menace. "Where is she?"

  "I don't have her anymore! I don't have her!" He looked at me hopefully. "I give you another girl, fine, ja? I give you another girl, a younger girl!"

  Still with the blade as before, I stared him into silence.

  "I don't want another girl," I told him. "I want that girl."

  "She's gone! I don't have her!"

  "You know where she went."

  "America! I take her there, give her to a man there!"

  "Someone you've dealt with before?"

  "Ja, for Arzu I have done it before, two, three times! Same man!"

  "Then you'll know where I can find him," I said.

  Misery crossed the fear in his face. "I don't know where he is! I call a number, get a message where to be meeting, when to do it!"

  "You know where you took the girl. You're going to tell me that."

  "I can't," Theunis Mesick said. "I can't."

  "You can," I told him. "If you want to live."

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-six It was still dark when I reached Schiphol Airport. The darkness had served me well on the way, hiding me in the back of the too-expensive cab I'd hired to take me out of Amsterdam, but once inside the airport, there was no such luxury. I zipped my windbreaker closed before subjecting myself to the lights, and my jeans were dark enough that the blood on them maybe wouldn't look too much like blood.

  As a connoisseur of airports-by necessity, if not by choice-Schiphol was one of the best I'd ever encountered, at least where amenities were concerned. The problem was the hour; nothing would open until seven in the morning, which meant a wait before I could resume further repair work on myself. The duct tape was doing a reasonable job holding my forearm closed, but I was still leaking from my side and hand. Of the two, my palm was faring better, but the cut in my side was beginning to really worry me.

  I made my way to a very clean and frighteningly well-lit bathroom, locked myself into one of the stalls, and once more found myself seated on a toilet. Using what was left of the duct tape, I tried to repair my eyeglasses, and ended up with something that looked like a nerd cliche. When I put them on, they sat at an angle, and threatened an immediate headache.

  With the BlackBerry, I called into the mailbox of the singles' service in London. There was a message from Alena, left in Georgian. They were safely in Ireland, she said, and left a contact number. I did my best to commit it to memory, then hung up and switched to the laptop. Schiphol had wireless available, and the signal, though weak, penetrated the bathroom. I searched up a flight, booked Anthony Shephard on Aer Lingus to Dublin, departing in four hours.

  Then I put everything away and struggled to keep from falling asleep until the shops opened. At seven, I was waiting outside of a store called Etos in the Schiphol Plaza. Mostly Etos seemed to sell perfumes and other beauty supplies, but they had a selection of first aid items, and I pretty much bought one of everything that I thought might be useful, and a small pack of what passed for superglue in the Netherlands. There were several stores selling clothes on the plaza, as well, including an H amp;M that catered only to women, and a Nike store. Nike wasn't going to work for me; the way I was feeling, and, no doubt, the way I was looking, I'd need more help than that.

  I went
with a shop specializing in menswear, called Paolo Salotto, used Anthony Shephard's American Express card to get myself a complete makeover-suit, slacks, penny loafers, two ties, and two dress shirts. Then I took everything I'd bought back to the bathroom, hanging the new clothes on a stall door. I stripped off my shirt and worked at the sink with the mirror there, and it was still early enough that I had a fair amount of privacy. The abdominal cut had split further apart, and I used some of the sterile gauze I'd bought to examine the site. Mesick had gone deeper than I'd realized; I only hoped he hadn't broken the muscle wall. I bathed the wound again, this time with some of the Betadine I'd purchased, packed fresh sterile gauze into the wound, then taped everything down.

  I cleaned the incision on my palm much the same way, but this time used the superglue to close the incision.

  While I was working on my forearm, a fellow traveler came in to use the facilities. There had been a few before him, but this time, while he was washing his hands off to my right, he made a comment to me in Dutch, clearly as concerned as he was curious.

  "It was a rough night," I told him with a big smile.

  He laughed, shook his head.

  I'm pretty sure he called me a tourist. I packed my bloodstained clothes in the plastic bag that had held my Etos purchases, then dumped it in a trash can in the plaza, on my way to the gate. Well before hitting the security checkpoint, I removed and stowed my broken glasses. Between that and my expensive new suit, no one stopped me.

  Waiting to board, I called the number Alena had left, got Bridgett before the first ring was out.

  "I'm arriving Dublin, Aer Lingus, flight 603," I told her. "Flight gets in at a quarter past eleven."

  "Bully for you," she said. "We'll see you when you get here."

  "I'm not good to drive," I told her. "I need someone to pick me up."

  "Oh Jesus."

  "It's not that bad," I lied. "I'll see you when I get there."

  I managed to stay awake through boarding, even into my seat.

  I was asleep before the plane left the gate.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-seven Most of the Logans, I had been told, came from the North of Ireland, County Antrim, but at some point before Bridgett's great-great-grandfather had voyaged across the water to New York, a handful had made their way to the South, to County Galway. That was where Bridgett had taken Alena, to a farmhouse still owned by a distant cousin, south of Ballygar, some 130 kilometers west of Dublin.

  "He rents it out," Bridgett told me in the car. She drove the way she'd always done, far too fast, even though the rented Ford clearly hadn't been built for it. At least she was staying on the correct side of the road. "We've got it for as long as we need."

  "You left Alena there alone?" I asked. I was feeling lightheaded, and it took me a couple of seconds to formulate the question.

  "You say it like I had a fucking choice in the matter, Atticus. That bitch doesn't give choices, she makes up her mind and that's pretty much it. I swear to God, I tell her left, she says right just to be contrary."

  "Miata."

  "Yeah, she didn't want to leave the dog. The dog's company, by the way, I enjoy considerably more than hers."

  I couldn't think of anything to say, and so stayed quiet. It was warm and the road vibration was comforting. I could feel myself starting to nod off again.

  Bridgett glanced over at me, frowning. "How bad is it?"

  "He took her to Nevada," I said. "Gave me the location of the handoff I'll head there next."

  "I'm not sure you're heading anywhere next. You don't look good."

  "You don't like my tie?" I asked, and laughed, because I thought I was being very clever.

  "You're in shock."

  I considered that, or at least tried to. It seemed reasonable. I'd had to use the lavatory on the plane twice in flight to repack the wound on my side. Absorbent though the gauze was, I'd been in danger of soaking through my expensive new shirt. The idea of walking through Dublin customs as a bloodstain spread out from my middle hadn't seemed a very good one.

  "I lost a lot of blood," I said, slowly. "Think I'm still leaking."

  "You need a doctor."

  I shook my head. My mouth was dry, maybe because I was going shocky, maybe from sleep-induced cottonmouth. I was thirsty. "Too many questions."

  "Answering questions is better than being dead."

  "I'll be all right. Just need a safe place for a day or two. Just to get repaired. Get some sleep."

  "'Repaired'? You sound like you're a fucking car."

  "Vroom vroom," I said. The house was an old stone cottage, weathered and small, its front door painted bright red, and the same color had been applied to the shutters fastened open at the windows. A dry stone fence marked the property from the narrow road, a fast-moving stream flowing just beyond, crossed by a metal grate bridge. The actual farmland itself was overgrown and unkept, disused.

  "Seamus makes more renting the place to tourists than working the land," Bridgett explained.

  "Seamus is your cousin."

  "Seamus is my cousin, yes."

  "Seamus," I said.

  "We're Irish, fuck off," Bridgett said. She parked the Ford with its nose facing the road, yanked the parking brake.

  The red door opened, Alena moving into it, concealing her right side behind the frame for a moment before stepping out. She had a shotgun with her, double-barreled, more suited for downing birds than people, but if it worked for Dick Cheney, it would sure as hell work for her. I got out of the car carefully. Bridgett had already grabbed my bag.

  "He was stabbed," Bridgett told Alena.

  "Cut, not stabbed," I corrected. "Stabbed would've been worse."

  Alena's mouth tightened to a line, her lips losing their color.

  "He's in shock. He's going to decompensate."

  She held out a hand for me, and I reached for it, but she took me by my elbow instead.

  "Nice shotgun," I mumbled.

  "It's what was here." Alena guided me through the door. It was considerably darker inside, the windows small, the lights low-wattage. Alena led me to a bedroom, and I started to remove my suit coat, but she stopped me, growling a warning.

  "Where?" she asked.

  "Left palm, right upper forearm, left oblique," I managed. "Left oblique's still bleeding."

  "Stop moving." She came around behind me, carefully began tugging the sleeve off my arm. Bridgett had moved into the doorway, watching, and I heard paws on the dark hardwood, saw Miata peer around her knee at me.

  "Hey, buddy," I told him.

  Alena helped me with the shirt, and I saw that I'd leaked through it despite all my precautions. She told me to lie down, and I did so for what seemed like the first time in three days, felt my whole body shudder, almost a spasm, as muscles I hadn't known were clenched suddenly relaxed.

  "Make yourself useful," Alena told Bridgett, shoving a pillow beneath my legs to elevate them. "Water, towels."

  "Bitch," Bridgett said, cheerfully, but left the doorway. Miata hesitated, then came into the bedroom and lay down beside the bed.

  "You could make an effort," I told Alena.

  "She's just standing there, she shouldn't need to be told to help," Alena said. "This one on your side I don't like. You are tearing it when you move."

  "We should probably do something about that."

  She knelt down on her haunches, putting the wound at eye level, careful not to touch it. "Only blood?"

  "Far as I know."

  "So maybe the peritoneum was not perforated." She hissed softly. "I don't want to risk infection, or further infection. We need to sterilize, and we'll need to stitch it."

  "Can you do that yourself?" Bridgett had a couple of towels over one arm, was carrying a porcelain bowl with a matching porcelain pitcher resting in it.

  "I don't know nothin' about birthin' no babies," I said.

  Both women glared at me.

  "Nothing," I said. "Never mind."

  Bridgett han
ded Alena a small bottle of antibacterial hand wash. "This help?"

  "We need things," Alena said, taking the bottle. She squirted a generous amount onto her hands, began rubbing them vigorously together. "Ringer's solution and a catheter. Betadine or some other sterile wash. Saline, a lot of it. Needle-nose pliers. Thin needle, thin thread, silk is ideal. Antibiotics if we can get them, a Z-Pak would be best."

  "I should be able to get all that in Galway. Everything but the Ringer's, at least."

  "Then what are you waiting for?"

  "Fucking," said Bridgett. "Bitch." It was dark in the room when Bridgett returned, to find Alena sitting beside me, still holding the towel she was using as a bandage to apply pressure to the wound. I'd either slept or passed out since Bridgett had left, depending on whether one wanted to be charitable.

  Bridgett flipped on the lights, then moved to the foot of the bed to dump out the contents of the plastic shopping bag she was carrying. Alena stopped her.

  "Show me."

  The look Bridgett gave her would've dropped a charging rhino. With a deliberation verging on surliness, she began removing items from the bag, one at a time. Alena told her where she wanted each set down. When she produced two bags of Ringer's solution and a catheter, Alena actually made a noise of approval.

  "Did I get everything, ma'am?" Bridgett asked.

  "We're going to need more light," Alena replied. "And a candle or lighter."

  It took Bridgett a couple of minutes to gather the items and then return, during which time Alena left the bandage at my side to use the antiseptic wash on my arm and hook up the first bag of Ringer's. Bridgett returned as the catheter was going in, and she winced visibly at the sight. She asked Alena where she wanted the lamp she was carrying, placed it as directed.

  In my daze, I realized something.

  "When was the last time you did this?"

  "Long time ago. Afghanistan." She actually smiled at me. "The vet in Poti was a good reminder."

  "You are motherfucking kidding me," Bridgett said. "Let's take him to the goddamn hospital!"