Chase laughed. Inwardly. Well, what can you do? Addly was an honest old fatass. However, he could tell his goal was more to get away from his uncle’s arguments than to answer him. And when he yawned, unconcealed, in the faces of those fine old men, Chase couldn’t help himself. He drew up a chair to Goback’s esteemed company of patriarchs.
“I beg your pardon, uncles,” he said. “What were you saying to Fat Addly?”
“Talk of conquest,” Uncle Jickie said.
“Oh?”
“Why indeed, young buck, we have transformed these hep-filled hillsides into a damned playground safe enough for kiddies! We have chopped a path from the shores of Nikajack as far south as Heir’s Peak. We started Goback, Little Chattanooga, and Bastard Hill,” he said, eying Addly, who along with Chase’s friend, hailed from the little burg. “Mark my words, nephew, the day will come when the names of Robo, Jickie, Gilli and Kenzo will rank higher in the annals of history than even Christopher Collum—”
“Ha!” Addly laughed.
Addly, of course, was amused at his uncle. Old Jick had been a leading spirit in The Good Fight, and his enthusiasm still knew no bounds.
Addly paused with a supercilious smile, puffing grandly on his cigarette. “By damn but you merry adventurers wouldn’t need to have accomplished much to eclipse Christopher Columbus.”
His uncle flushed. That reference to merry adventurers, with just a perceptible, slighting emphasis on the merry part, wasn’t to his taste; not when they were all confirmed bachelors, and most certainly not when their savagery had allowed the lazier young fatasses of the hills to come in afterward, living relatively normal lives without so much as felling one zombie.
“Pardon him, Mister Addly,” his uncle said, furrowing his brows thoughtfully. “You forget that by the terms of their charter, it was the blowjobs your mother gave them that convinced them to let you and your kin in.”
Addly tsked, and his cheeks took on a deeper purplish shade. But Chase had to say this of him, he returned the charge good-humoredly enough.
“Nonsense, Jickie, my good friend,” he laughed. “If mama gave such good head, why the frozen hell did so many of you Gundersons have her on her back?”
Before the laughter subsided, “It was her heart!” interrupted Uncle Jickie. “And I’d thank you not to talk about Miss Fay like that!” he added tartly.
“Miss? Just listen to this,” Addly cried. He pulled out a handwritten marriage license…
“Where can Billy be?” Chase said, losing interest.
“Damn won’t you listen!” sneered one of the guards behind Addly. This fellow had the sort of scars that were brought on by a clumsy tongue, not real war. “Home with his wifey.”
The stout man turned to Chase with a challenging glare, paying no attention to the elucidation of a subject his own commander had raised.
“Good old fellow, Billy, but since marriage, he’s utterly gone to the teats like a piglet.”
“Like a what?” Chase asked.
“Say again?”
“To the what did you say Billy had gone?”
He acted as though he could not remember what he had just said, then leaned in to listen to Uncle Jickie, who was reading the marriage license. It was just enough, along with the fact that his uncle seemed to relish the rapt attention, to keep him from having to shit his own teeth the nest day.
Chase decided to leave, and let the cool air tamper down his aggravation.
Then the uncles all rose as well, and he feared for a moment they were going to follow him out. But it was only to get nearer the bar and sort it all out with beer, where Chase heard his uncle flinging more verbal fists.
“Oh, sure! Clever motherfuckers, you MacAndrews’ are, always going on about the old days until you stumble on a tale you don’t like.”
“Now see here, Jick…”
Chapter 5
It was a windy night, and as cold as a hep’s fraying nipples. A foot of snow covered the ground while a few lonely clouds scooted atop the black pines trees. There was a wolf’s eye moon rimming the naked, twisted girders of the old power plant on the horizon, and it smelled of even more snow, or perhaps sleet, despite the great splash of stars mid-heaven.
Chase looked up the side of Colli Mountain to the light of Uncle Jickie’s hall. It was a grand old lodge, built like a cabin designed in the fevered dreams of a lunatic. Spikes jutted from every conceivable angle, like a porcupine. It was there that Chase met Billy. He had only just arrived, still wiping tears from his sleeves. Billy must have noticed the look in his eyes, because he deigned to ask who he had lost. And in less than a moment, Chase had learned that the same thing had happened to him when he was just a boy, and that Jickie had raised him like a son. At that information, Chase’s heart gave a curious, jubilant thud. It was hard to explain. The circumstances were so alike, maybe. He had no idea. All he could feel was a warmth spreading across his chest. Did he just need someone to relate to? As he pondered why he felt so much better, so suddenly, his uncle mentally measured him with that stern look he was so good at, interrupting his reverie.
Seemingly undecided, he turned to Billy.
Once the lively redhead had stepped out that night, Uncle Jickie looked at him again. He seemed to recognize the renewed vigor. “You’ll have your smile back, lad. And pray Heaven you’ve got have half as much as one that old boy!”
Before that year had passed, Billy and Chase they were as good companions as two fellows could be. But Billy had long had a big ripe, fair-haired wife. That did not mean, however, an end to their rides, to their sailing down the Jickie River, and their long evening talks. . Shiri was almost as much fun as Chase, with a laugh that could light up an old coal mine. She made second place feel just fine.
So, here Chase was, stepping outside Goback Pub, waiting for Billy’s arrival.
Peering from the porch for sight of him, he was calculating how long it would take to ride from Bastard Hill when Chase was surprised by the form of a horse beneath the lantern of the arched gateway; and his surprise increased on nearer inspection. As Chase walked up, the creature gave a whinny. Then he recognized it was Billy’s horse, lathered with sweat. It was shivering, but he had given it no blanket. The reins were slung over the hitching post, and he heard steps hurrying to the side door of the pub.
“Billy?”
There was no answer.
Chase led the horse to the stable-lad and hurried back to see if Billy was inside. The sitting room was deserted, but Billy’s well-known red-topped figure was entering the dining room. He must have seemed a curious figure to the questioning looks of old commandos, who were still arguing: in one hand was his riding whip, in the other, his gloves. He wore Kevlar and in the belt were two axes. One sleeve was torn from wrist to elbow and his boots looked like something had clawed them. His helm was still on, slouched down over his eyes.
“Frozen fuck, Billy!” Uncle Jickie thundered, facing him as Chase came up behind. “Have you been in fight or in bed with that Shiri?”
“She let you out of the house with this chill in the air?” asked Addly, gazing hard at the helm, which should have been taken off at the door. Everyone kept their weapons at hand at all times, of course, but the helms were to be taken off, a precaution against broken hands during the many brawls.
Not a word came from Billy.
“How’s the cold in your head?” Addly continued, stilly trying to stare Billy’s hat off.
Chase rushed forward. “Hey, old fart! What’s kept you?”
But Chase quickly checked himself. Billy turned slowly towards him, offering no greeting but a pair of eyes like frozen little ponds and parched, wordless lips. Even Addly, insufferably honest ass that he was, hadn’t been jowls-deep in beer, would have noticed that there was something terrible written on Billy’s face.
“Did the wifey let him out of her ass long enough to come play?” he asked, despite Chase’s raised hands and headshaking.
Barely were the words out wh
en Billy’s teeth clenched behind the bearded lips, giving him a feral expression that was strange to his jolly face. He spun and took a quick stride towards the fatass.
Then he whirled his whip in one cutting blow, landing it across Addly’s bloated red cheeks.
Chapter 6
The whole thing was so unexpected that for a moment not one soul in the room drew a breath. Then Addly sprang up with the bellow of an enraged bull, overturning the table in his rush.
A dozen guards were pulling him back from Billy.
“Billy!” Chase yelled, unsure what to add
But Billy stood motionless as if he saw none of them. Except for being out of breath now, he wore precisely the same strange, distracted air.
“Hold back!” Chase implored.
Old Addly was striking every nose and noggin around him to get free from the guards.
“Calm the hell down, there’s a mistake! Something’s fucking wrong!”
“Glad the mistake landed where it did, all the same,” Uncle Jickie whispered in his ear.
“Demon!” Addly roared. “Cowardly fuck, you will pay!”
“Hellfire, but get him out of here,” his uncle said. “Side room—here—lead him in—he’s gone mad, by damn!”
“Never,” Chase said. Chase knew both Billy and his wife too well; they were stout men with stout minds. But they led the poor, dazed being into a side office, where Jickie promptly turned the key and took up with his back against the door.
“Now, mister,” Jick broke out sternly, “if it’s neither drink, nor madness—” There, he stopped because Billy, utterly unconscious of them, moved automatically across the room. Throwing his commando’s helmet down, he bowed his head over both arms on the mantelpiece.
His uncle and Chase looked at each other. Raising his brows, Jickie touched his forehead and whispered across to him, “Mad.”
At that, Billy turned slowly round and faced them with bloodshot, gleaming eyes. “Mad,” he muttered. He took a breath, framing his next words with great effort. “Fuck me, boys, you both should know him better than to mouth such rot. Tonight, I’d sell my soul, sell this fucking soul to be mad, to know that all I think has happened, hadn’t happened at all—” and a sharp intake of breath broke his speech.
“Frozen hell, out with it, old boy!” Jickie shouted. “We’ll stand by you! Has that fat ass red-cheeked bastard—”
“Shit, Jick! Spare your curiosity a moment,” Billy cut in. He put his gloved hand to his forehead.
“What the—what did you strike him for?”
“What? Did I strike somebody?” he asked, speaking with the slow, icy self-possession bred by a lifetime of danger. He almost seemed to chuckle.
Again, his uncle flashed a questioning look at him.
“Did I strike somebody? Wish you’d apologize—”
“Apologize!” thundered his uncle. “Fuck. I’ll do nothing of the kind! Served him right. ‘Twas an ugly way, an ugly damn way, to speak of any man’s wife—” But the word “wife” had not been uttered before Billy threw out his hands in an imploring gesture.
“Don’t! I can’t get away from it! It’s no nightmare. Boys, how can I tell you? There’s no way of saying it! Such things don’t—couldn’t—to her—of all… But she’s…”
“See here, Billy,” his uncle said, suddenly and utterly beside himself.
“See here, Billy,” Chase said, stupidly heedless of the brutality of their consol.
But he heard neither of them.
“They were there—They waved to me from the garden as I entered the forest. By damn only this morning. They were waving to me, and me Chase returned from the river at noon, they were gone! The curtain moved and Chase thought his boy was hiding, but it was only the wind. We’ve searched every nook from cellar to attic. His toys were littered about and I heard his voice everywhere, but no! No—no—we’ve been hunting the house and garden for hours—”
“And the forest?” Jickie asked, the cutter instinct of former days suddenly re-awakening.
“The forest is ankle-deep with snow! We beat through the bush everywhere. There wasn’t a track or a broken twig where they could have passed.”
His torn clothes bore evidence to the thoroughness of that search.
“Nonsense,” his uncle burst out, beginning to bluster. “They’ve been driven to town without leaving word!”
“No sleigh or truck was at Bastard Hill this morning,” returned Billy.
“But the road, Billy?” Chase questioned, recalling how the old timber hall stood well back against the compound’s walls, right near the road. “Couldn’t they have climbed over and gone down the road to those Zombie nests you scouted?”
“The road is impassable for sleighs, let alone walking, and their winter wraps are all in the house. For fuck’s sake, boys, suggest something! Don’t madden him with these useless questions!”
But in spite of Billy’s entreaty, the excitable uncle subjected the frenzied soul to a storm of questions, none of which helped. Chase stood back, listening, and pieced the distracted, broken answers into some sort of coherency:
That morning, Billy light-heartedly kissed wife and child and waved them a farewell. He rode down the winding path at the northern edge of Robo Forest to catch some fish. At noon, when he returned, there was no wife nor child, nor any trace of them. The great hall, which had echoed to the boy’s prattle, was deathly still. The nurse was summoned. She was positive Madam Shiri was amusing the boy across the hall, and reassuringly bustled off to find mother and son in the next room, and then the next, and yet the next, all to discover each was empty. Utterly. Empty. Alarm spread to the hall servants. The handwomen and housewives were questioned, but their only response was white-faced, blank amazement. And all the superstitions of hillside lore added to the fear on each anxious face. They began mumbling about the gods. You still see them, you know, they whispered to each other. Shortly after Mister Billy went to the river, they told him, Madam Shiri had taken her little son out as usual for a morning walk, and had been seen trekking up and down the paths that wound atop the walls. Billy had torn outside the fortifications, followed by the whole household; but from Bastard Hill in the center of the glade to the encircling border of snow-laden firs there was no trace of wife or child. He could see for himself that the snow was too deep and crusty among the trees for Madam Shiri to go twenty paces into the woods. Besides, fooprints could be traced from the garden to the bush. He need not fear wild animals. They were receding into the mountains as spring advanced.
Then, suddenly, Billy had laughed at his own growing fears.
Shiri must be in the house, he had thought.
The search of the old hall began again. From the hidden chamber in the vaulted cellar to attic rooms above, not a corner of the hall was unexplored.
The alarm now became a panic.
Billy, half-crazed and unable to believe his own senses, began wondering whether he was in a nightmare. It was as if he thought he might wake up and find the dead weight smothering his chest had been the boy, snuggling too close. He was vaguely conscious that it was strange of him to continue sleeping with the noise of shouting men and whining hounds and snapping branches going on in the forest. But the din of terrified searchers rushing through the woods and of echoes rolling eerily back from the whitened hills called him back to an unendurable reality—that, in broad daylight, his wife and young son had disappeared as suddenly and completely as if blotted out of existence… or spirited away by the gods…
“The thing is utterly impossible, Billy,” Chase said, afraid to give the thought any reins whatsoever.
“Would that it were, dammit!”
“It was daylight, Billy?” Jickie asked.
He nodded moodily.
“And she couldn’t be lost in Robo Forest?” Chase added, taking up the interrogations.
“No trace—not a footprint!”
“And you’re quite sure she isn’t in the house?” his uncle said.
&nb
sp; “Fuck yes! Quite!”
“And there was a zombie nest a few miles down the road?” Jickie asked.
“What has that to do with it?” he asked, springing to his feet. “They had moved off long before they disappeared. Besides, Jick, heps don’t run off with women. They eat them! Haven’t I spent his life among them? I should know their ways!”
“But if she isn’t in the hall, or the woods or in the garden, can’t you see, the river is the only possible explanation?”
The lines on his face deepened. Then a sort of blackness overcame his brow. He made a noise you might hear in the shadows of a forest, and if ever Chase had ever seen murder written on a face, it was on Billy’s.
“The fucking longmongers...”
And they all just stood there a moment.
Jickie was the first to pull himself together. “Come,” he said. “Gather up your wits! We have to retrace your steps to the river!”
The three of them flung through the pub room, much to the astonishment of the gossips who had been waiting outside for developments in the quarrel with Addly.
There was no time to explain themselves.
At the outer porch, Billy laid a hand on Jickie’s shoulder.
“Old friend, I pray don’t come,” he begged. “There’s a storm blowing. It’s rough weather and a rough road, full of drifts.”
“Nonsense!”
“Please, Mister Jickie. Make his peace in there with that bastard I struck.”
And with a huff, Jickie nodded.
Then Billy and Chase whisked out into the blackness of a boisterous, windy night. A moment later, their horses laden with swords and shotguns, the two men were riding over snow-packed cobblestones.
Chapter 7
“It will snow more,” Chase said, already feeling a few flakes driven through the darkness against his face. “The wind’s veered north. After the sleet, it will come thick as feathers. They need to get out to the camp before all the traces are covered. How far by the High Dog Road?”
Bring On The Dead Page 4