Reincarnage

by Ryan Harding

  Please, dear Jesus, please, please, please let Gin live.

  “Patrick?” Adam whispered.

  The moonlight cast a rectangular gray box along the doorway. Patrick’s old pants were a crumpled shape on the floor at the furthest reach of the light. Adam rotated to look Gin’s way. He couldn’t see her outline.

  When he turned around he saw the dark shape in the doorway. No time to search for the napalm and lighter, Adam took several steps forward and dropped to his knees, grabbing for the unseen string Patrick left on the shelf. Orange stepped through the doorway, his boot high over the wire.

  The trap clicked and swung downward with the metallic screech of a long-dormant hinge. Clumps of debris and a cloud of dust accompanied the crashing wallop as the wooden panel struck Agent Orange’s left knee and outstretched left forearm. Patrick rose from the shadows of the next aisle and threw his body into the backside of the panel. The panel splintered and strained past its mooring. Orange reeled backward, hopping on his right leg. It looked like the measured retreat of a wounded warrior, positioning himself to parry the next blow or deal one of his own. Off the curb now, he put the right side of his body forward to face Patrick, who charged around the trap. He went at Orange head-on, but then feinted left.

  Adam smelled the napalm. He quickly retrieved it and stuffed Gin’s panties into his pocket so he could grab the lighter.

  Outside Patrick ducked and dodged his way forward, to the side, in reverse, his left hand flashing toward Orange and then withdrawing. It was like watching a bantam weight boxer totally outclassed in size and weight, dancing around his opponent and landing light, quick jabs. Orange swung a machete with his right hand but Patrick ducked or hopped backwards, staying out of its range with ease. He was so much more than the basement showdown suggested—a giant slayer.

  And the giant dropped to his left knee in a growing pool of blood. The MacPherson gas mask had been replaced with a different version, one adapted to accept very modern night vision goggles.

  Adam edged around the trap and the lighter came to life on the first try. He held it to the stiff cloth wick and it caught instantly. Adam feared it might explode in his face.

  “No!” Patrick yelled. He rushed at Adam and batted the bottle from his hand, which shattered a couple yards across old asphalt with a whoosh.

  Orange seized the momentary distraction to swing the machete and Patrick blocked it with his smaller blade, but it knocked him off balance. Orange’s left arm, which had hung limply at his side since the trap sprang on him, swung around with something smaller than the machete, but effective enough to dislodge the knife from Patrick’s hand. The blade skittered across the pavement toward Adam, halted by a clump of weeds.

  Adam wondered how he screwed anything up by attempting to set Orange ablaze. Sharp, burning pain lit his neck as he stooped for the knife. Would Patrick knock this from his hand too? Did Patrick feel there was room for only one hero?

  Patrick ducked beneath a machete swing, then jumped and hammered his fist onto Orange’s goggles, knocking them askew. He rolled backwards beneath a reverse swing that would have taken off his head. It gave him time to return for his knife. He had his right hand tucked to his chest, dark with blood.

  Adam lifted the knife and looked to see if Patrick approved, wondered if he blamed Adam for wasting the napalm though he couldn’t have missed with a proper throw.

  Patrick’s eyes were vacant as if he’d checked into some other world. He didn’t go for the knife. He put his foot against Adam’s arm just below the shoulder and grabbed the arrow along the fletching. He braced with his foot, wrenched back on the shaft, and yanked it free as gracefully as a magician pulling the tablecloth from beneath a banquet spread.

  Adam screamed, expecting to see fire shoot from both wounds. He tensed on reflex to stay upright and the explosion of pain dropped him to the street, the impact with the sidewalk a merciful distraction from his neck for about half a second until both pathways converged for a network of pulsing anguish.

  “Don’t move,” Patrick ordered needlessly. He turned back to face Orange, whose crippling injury had slowed him enough for the extraction procedure. He still had a couple yards of clearance. Orange held the long blade at ear level.

  The napalm fire turned the storefront into the neon of Las Vegas compared to a minute ago. Shadows swam through Adam’s vision, shades he knew weren’t really there. He rested his head on the curb to take pressure off his muscles, at a good angle for the Patrick/Orange showdown.

  Patrick still had the arrow. He lunged with it and just as quickly snatched his arm back as Orange hacked at the limb. A distant part of Adam realized if Patrick fell, so would he.

  I hope Gin took off, but if we somehow manage to kill Agent Orange, how will we find her again?

  He buried the question deep. His head felt heavy enough without the dilemma, even as that same logical part of him laughed at the idea of “we.” Patrick would be the one to stop him, with Adam’s contribution solely voyeurism.

  Always glad to be of service.

  Patrick bounced back awkwardly as Orange slashed in a wide arc with a backhand motion. Patrick stuck him in the exposed rib cage.

  Come on, Patrick, cut him up!

  It couldn’t have been too deep, however, as he withdrew the arrow without much effort. Orange went for a death blow, a high swipe of the blade at Patrick’s head. He hit the deck and rolled away on concrete.

  “Stay off the ground,” Adam mumbled. He could barely hear himself.

  Patrick sprang up. They moved uncomfortably close to Adam. He tried to call out a warning, but the world seemed too loud. It would be a cruel twist of fate for Patrick to fail because he tripped over Adam, though he wouldn’t have to lament this for long before Orange permanently cured his nagging neck pain.

  Patrick struck with the arrow again. Orange dodged it easily, but stumbled and went down on his injured knee.

  Holy shit. Adam wasn’t sure if he said it or only thought it, but regardless, it was amazing Patrick had brought the slayer to his knees. If they got out of this, he’d never question Patrick again.

  Patrick raised his arm and in a flash drove it at the top of Orange’s head. There was a loud cracking sound like a tree trunk splitting in half, and Orange slumped to the ground motionless. The fire light revealed the shape of the black arrow protruding from his head.

  Patrick crouched low to reach for Orange’s weapon. Adam waited for him to spring to life and lop Patrick’s head off as effortlessly as the fluff from a dandelion.

  Movement from the corner of Adam’s eye.

  “Adam!”

  Damn it, Gin…I ran out here like an idiot so you’d get away, and you never left the stupid store?

  He couldn’t have been more overjoyed to see her. Tears threatened, a combination of his pain, sorrow, relief.

  She’s still here. It really sucks that I’m probably going to bleed to death.

  Patrick pulled the blade from Orange’s hand like Excalibur. He flung it over in Adam’s direction. It clattered a yard from his head. Another clatter followed, which he recognized from the mace as Gin set it down. She slipped an arm beneath Adam’s and started to haul him upright.

  “Careful,” Adam warned. He meant the pain, but also not wanting to get his blood all over her. Not when they’d just traded out jeans.

  She stayed for me, he thought. She didn’t leave. She couldn’t leave.

  He could come up with a thousand reasons later why he was foolish to think this. He needed the hope to keep him in the here and now. He blinked several times, wincing as Gin dragged him to a seated position.

  “Stay with me, Adam,” Gin said.

  Patrick stood to full height and backed away, not taking his eyes from his fallen opponent.

  Fallen? That’s a weak word. Patrick conquered him.

  “Is he really…” Gin began. After a few seconds, she let herself finish. “Dead?”

  “Is he ever?” Patrick asked, still not
turning to them. “He hasn’t moved. It’s not a wise tactical move to fake his death and let us disarm him. He hardly needed the advantage of surprise.”

  “Didn’t stop him from taking it anyway,” Gin said. “Big man. Shot a child in the dark like a coward.”

  “A child who nearly napalmed him.”

  “Can we not…not call me that?” Adam said, his voice almost normal again. Gin’s healing touch? “I’m old enough to have a driver’s license.”

  He didn’t, but he was old enough. It didn’t do much for his flutter of joy to hear Gin refer to him as a child, either.

  Guess I don’t need to loot Sandalwood for an engagement ring.

  Patrick bent down for a closer look. “Hope we don’t need to cauterize that wound, Adam.”

  Adam began to feel like a passenger in a car where the driver kept looking at him as he talked instead of the road. He kept his head steered where he could see Orange, but if he’d moved, it was as imperceptible as the minute hand of a clock. Hopefully Gin watched too.

  The thing that murdered his parents, still motionless.

  Patrick tilted his head from side to side to examine Adam’s neck. “Doesn’t look like you’ve lost a scary amount of blood.”

  “It hurts,” Adam said.

  “You got lucky. A couple more inches either way and we might not be talking right now.”

  “Yeah. Lucky me.” Although he did feel lucky with Gin’s hands on his shoulders. She wasn’t massaging or anything, but it was amazing compared to the inexperienced guy—of legal driving age—who woke up earlier today wearing such stupid clothes. With the starkness of black and white crime scene photos, he remembered how the presence of his parents at Morgan Falls Lodge had been his lone comfort in all that fear and uncertainty.

  “I can’t believe you killed him,” Gin said, pulling him back from another meditation of grief.

  “Just needed the advantage of the trap,” Patrick said. “Aim for the brain and you can’t go wrong.”

  “We should take his head off. To be safe.”

  When Patrick made no attempt to answer her, Adam asked the burning question: “What the hell was the deal with the napalm? I would have hit him. Why did you knock it away?”

  Gin’s voice sharpened. “What does he mean you knocked it away?”

  Patrick sighed. “It’s like we talked about in the back.”

  Irrational as it was, jealousy stirred somewhere in Adam’s heart at their private exchange. His own with Patrick amounted to Stay focused and try not to get us all killed. Gin’s was probably no different.

  Probably.

  Patrick continued. “Orange is no good to us burnt to a crisp. If he’s dead for days or weeks, what does it do for us?”

  “It keeps us from getting shot with arrows for days or weeks, for one!”

  “You two still aren’t seeing the bigger picture here.”

  “No, we understand perfectly that you want to play games with the recon soldiers or whatever. It doesn’t help us. You can kill fifty of them and we’ll still be stuck here.”

  “When you kill him you can decide what we do with the body,” Patrick countered. “This is my call.”

  “It would have been my kill if you hadn’t blocked it,” Adam said, though he couldn’t really buy into the idea he would have shut down the killer elite by his lonesome.

  As if in agreement, the napalm flames tapered noticeably.

  “Sometimes we might not get a choice,” Patrick said, ignoring him. “We may have to overdo it. So be it. This time we’ve got a chance and we’re going to take it.”

  He stood up, dusted off his backside, and hesitantly approached the body.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Adam said.

  “That makes two of us.” Gin scooted to sit beside him on the curb. Metal slid over concrete as she dragged the mace with her.

  “Why’d you stay?” he asked. He wondered if he could stretch and yawn as he slipped an arm around her. He decided the move would be more effective if it didn’t result in covering her shoulders with his blood. It wasn’t exactly like giving a girl your letterman jacket.

  “The fire,” she said. “I thought you guys hit him with the napalm. I had to see.”

  She has a really cryptic way of saying, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you, Adam.

  “I’m glad you stayed,” he said.

  “I’m glad you did, too.”

  It was probably the best he would get tonight, but he’d take it. He was still alive and a lot could happen from day to day. She’d pretty much said so herself.

  Yeah, right before he shot me with that arrow. Way to ruin a moment, dickhead.

  It was funny how there wasn’t a way to go back to a moment that was barely five minutes old. It would feel too forced now, the vibe completely disrupted.

  “You’re right about cutting his head off,” Adam said. “And I should get to do it.”

  “Well, he can’t watch him forever,” Gin said. “You might get your chance.”

  Playing Mr. Guillotine right now seemed like an awful idea with his injuries, but he’d do it. And if that wasn’t satisfying enough, he’d probably get another crack at it in a week or so.

  Patrick surveyed Orange like a golfer trying to line up a difficult putt.

  “Paging Dr. Patrick,” Gin said as they watched. “He thinks Agent Orange can regenerate fast from something like the arrow. He wants to turn him on those recon soldiers. You know, poke the bear. Great plan, huh?”

  “So what, we’ll tie some shoelaces to the arrow like the trip wires, then yank it out when they get close?”

  Gin shrugged. “Yep. Like pulling away a coin from someone on the street.”

  “If that’s the case, we’re going to need a lot more shoestring.”

  Patrick gave Orange wide berth as he circled, craning his head. The black arrow stuck out of his head like some kind of toy accessory. Patrick stooped down, extended a hand and tapped the arrow, then jerked his hand back.

  “It’s in there deep,” Patrick reported. “Didn’t budge.”

  Adam made himself stand, just in case. Patrick seemed likely to go full scientific experiment here to prove Orange truly deceased. Maybe he intended to unmask him. The archives of Richard Dunbar were limited to some grainy newspaper pictures and a couple of snapshots from Vietnam, something that seemed unthinkable to Adam, who was used to people immortalizing every trivial moment of their lives on the internet now with digital cameras and phones. “Who is Richard Dunbar?” was the sort of thing missed on Jeopardy! because about as many people thought of him by that name as they did Terrell Wilson as Busta Kapp. Seeing his face would go a long ways toward humanizing him, though Adam didn’t expect it to stay his hand too much when he chopped the fucker’s head off. Might as well get his hits in while he could because Orange would probably pay him back one of these days.

  Probably? Well, his newfound optimism was remarkable. It helped to see Orange—Dick Dunbar— dead right in front of him and know it could really happen. He didn’t buy Patrick’s theory of resurrection, but say it did happen…those recon soldiers would be trained to finish the job. The three of them were safe for a little while. Enough to find a place to hole up and trap in case Dunbar dropped by unannounced. A lot could happen with Gin in a week or so.

  Patrick reared back and kicked at the body, hard. It didn’t connect.

  “Shit!” Patrick shouted. Orange—he was Orange again, as someone named Richard Dunbar would have died from that head wound—had caught his ankle. “He’s still—”

  Gin sprang to action beside him with a clattering of chain lengths. He grimaced as he followed her movement, the ball of the mace swinging beside her like a pendulum.

  We should have taken his head while he was down, Adam thought miserably, but despite what Patrick said about faking, if there was some kind of regeneration, he’d just bought himself a few minutes to engage the ol’ mutant healing factor. They never really had him vulnerable. />
  His neck pulsing as though needled by some medieval torture device, Adam staggered forward with the knife.

  Seventeen

  Gin shouted as she surged forward to save Patrick’s idiot life. The mace was cumbersome, but it only needed to strike one good time to leave that gas-masked asshole at their mercy—of which he’d find precious little.

  Orange sat up and caught Patrick’s leg with his back turned to her, the arrow still jammed between the straps of his gas mask. Patrick swung the long blade at the hand clenched around his ankle and Orange let it go. Patrick dropped backward and hit the lot.

  Gin heard footsteps pound behind her. Adam. Brave but foolish. He could barely hold his head up. Her strike had to count. She let all of her momentum infuse the swing of the mace. The heaviness of the spiked ball did the rest of the work. The gas mask turned to her and he moved without taking any time to assess the threat. The ball lodged in the meat between his shoulder and neck.

  That’s for Adam, prick.

  Behind him, Patrick stumbled to his feet. Orange eclipsed him as he stood. She tried to pull the mace back and perhaps deliver the death blow, but it stayed embedded, caught in bone. He knocked her hand away.

  He was a bizarre sight in his gas mask, the arrow in his head, the heavy length of chain dangling. She couldn’t see his eyes for the night vision goggles (perhaps a gift from a careless Stalker or a recon soldier), but just like in the rec room of the lake house she obviously transfixed him, paying no mind to Adam rushing up beside her with the knife or Patrick or even the mace.

  Eyes only for her.

  Adam reached him first, stuck the knife into the side of his head. Orange finally acknowledged the boy, turned and reached for him.

  No playing possum now.

  Gin took a protective step over to cut him off, in time to see Patrick charge with the long blade. He held it out like a spear. Orange saw him, held up a hand to ward it off. It slammed through the palm of his gloved hand, stopping inches from his mask.