Mike Nelson's Death Rat!

by Michael J. Nelson

  Bromstad asked for a clarification. “Just this?” he said, pointing to the button in question.

  “Ja,” said Ülo.

  Bromstad had a follow-up. “I don’t have to focus?” he asked, but Ülo had lost patience with his student and did not instruct him in the finer details of the M6’s autofocus features, but said only, “No.”

  “Okay,” said Bromstad with extreme, almost theatrical skepticism upon taking the camera from Ülo. He then turned it over a few times in a manner intended to indicate that, due to shoddy and inadequate schooling, he couldn’t be sure whether to put his eye to the viewfinder or perhaps to the plastic buckle of the camera’s strap.

  “Have you got it?” Ülo tested.

  “I guess,” said Bromstad shakily.

  What Jørgen could not have known was that thirty-nine hours before, drivers on the stretch of hilly road along which he now traveled had been less than impressed with the top speed of Tom Anderson’s new Massey-Ferguson 8200 tractor (36.5 mph) as it cruised along in front of them, effectively blocking their way. Even though it was easily the fastest tractor he had ever owned, Tom began to see their point, especially when the driver of the 1997 Ford F-150 directly behind him demonstrated his displeasure by flashing his lights, swerving wildly back and forth across the blacktop, and sounding his horn, the final and most effectively communicative blast lasting more than fifty-three seconds. Tom pulled off to the right and reluctantly throttled back the new Massey, the tread of its massive tires leaving deep, Volvo-grabbing ruts in the soft gravel of the shoulder, to let the speedier drivers pass. (“Get a farm!” the driver of the truck had yelled, rather unhelpfully, as he passed.)

  And none of them could have guessed that while Bromstad was deliberately being a pain in the handling of the camera, he had been more effective at it than he could have imagined when he thumbed the tiny silver button and put the camera into auto-flash mode. Just as Jørgen began to accelerate, gaining speed with the intent of passing the bus to give Bromstad the proper vantage to snap photos, Bromstad had become even more of a pain by accidentally pressing the one button that Ülo had instructed him, however sketchily, in the proper use of. This caused the automatic focus to adjust the cameras lens to the exact focal length necessary to pick up the finest detail of their dome light, the shutter to snap open and close again quickly, the film to advance automatically, and, most unfortunately, the flash to pop, fully blinding every occupant of the Volvo. Jørgen then found that, though there is most probably never a very convenient time for the driver of a moving automobile to be fully blind, Bromstad’s choice had been particularly ill timed. It was precisely at a moment when he should have been fully sighted, which would have aided him greatly in avoiding the road shoulder and its tire-grabbing ruts. As it was, Jørgen could see neither the shoulder, the ruts, nor anything really, save the bright crimson of his own assaulted retinas, so he was unable to avoid the danger. All he could do was flip over one hundred and eighty degrees and scream in terror, which was of little use to anyone. Despite its lack of efficacy, the other occupants found this to be the most convenient course of action as well.

  Fortunately for most everyone involved, there were only twenty-eight loose objects careening around the interior with them as the car made several more spectacular barrel rolls. Twenty-seven of the objects were the nearly identical Ricola cough drops that had come loose from their bag, which had been tucked into a storage pocket on the driver’s-side door and were not capable of doing any significant damage. They flew about the cabin recklessly, one connecting with Jørgen’s chin, another hitting Vagns sharply on the ear, but any effect was swamped by greater pains, buffets, and concerns. (Had they been in any state to do so, they might have wanted to thank Jørgen, who did not allow snacking in his automobile, that they weren’t battered with empty peanut jars, or half-full bottles of warm soda.) The twenty-eighth missile, the hardcover copy of Jack Ryback’s Death Rat, had more inherent potential to wound, and it made good on that potential when it slammed into the ceiling and caught Bromstad a glancing blow off the side of his head, prior to hitting the seat again on the car’s second somersault, bouncing up (perspective-wise, though in reality, down, toward earth’s crust) before catching him on the forehead.

  Several minutes later, when Bromstad awoke, he discovered how over the years he’d become so very dependent upon waking in a more or less horizontal position on a reasonably conventional sleeping surface—mattress, cot, even one of those accursed futons—to keep him from flying into a blind panic. When he realized that all of these expected conditions were absent, and that he was in a great deal of pain, he flew into a blind panic. This disgusted his Danish accomplishes, two of whom had already climbed out the broken windows of the Volvo. The third, Ülo, who was at least partially responsible for his consciousness, as it was he who had slapped Bromstad awake, now slapped him again when he beheld Bromstad’s un-Danish display.

  “Get a grip on yourself, man!” he said, bits of broken glass dislodging from his hair with the effort of the slaps.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” shrieked Bromstad, who had remembered to wear his seat belt.

  “Stop it, you blathering fool,” shouted Jørgen, who was trying to make a phone call. He stood just five feet away from the spot next to the red oak where Bromstad was screaming, Ülo was slapping, and the car was still running, and paged through the menu of his Nokia digital phone in an attempt to find Stig Stou-Thorup’s home number.

  Ülo began pushing harshly on Bromstad’s left side in a not-so-subtle (or medically prudent) effort to get him to make an attempt to climb out the only window accessible to him. He quickly realized that if this method were to bear any fruit, he would have to unbuckle Bromstad from his seat belt. He groped around the moist heat of Bromstad’s midsection until he found the belt and followed it down to its source, pressing the buckle’s release. It was a deep and unexpected flaw in Ülo’s plan that he could not foresee a humid and panicked Bromstad falling fully onto him once he’d released him from his restraint, for that is precisely what happened.

  It was at least twenty minutes before Vagns and Jørgen could extract both men from the Volvo by climbing atop its exposed driver’s side and pulling them up through the window, Jørgen taking a moment after his rescue to slap Ülo, who had been screaming off and on for the full twenty minutes that he’d been forced to bear Bromstad’s bulk.

  Once all screaming had ceased and an inventory of wounds had been taken (total: one large bump on Bromstad’s head, two slight hand marks on each of Bromstad’s and Ülo’s cheeks), the now carless party trooped back to the road under the leadership of Jørgen.

  “We are lucky to have had the Volvo,” Jørgen said somberly. “The Swedes aren’t much as a people, but they understand the value of side-impact beams.”

  “Ja,” the remaining Danes agreed.

  “Now what?” asked Bromstad in an accusatory tone suggesting that he’d forgotten that the crash was largely his fault.

  Jørgen turned toward Bromstad, apparently intent on killing him with his eyes. “You, Mr. Bromstad,” he said icily, “are going back to your home immediately, where you can do damage only to yourself. We are going on to Holey to reconnoiter and continue our surveillance of Mr. Ryback.”

  “What! How? The car’s a wreck, isn’t it?” Bromstad whined.

  “You are correct. The Volvo is not operational. Per is bringing another unit to us, but you shall be returning home by found transportation.”

  “I don’t get to go with you anymore?”

  “You will have no more opportunities to kill us, no.”

  Several minutes later Bromstad was standing on the shoulder of the southbound lane on a bright, moonlit night, gazing toward the north with a sad, dazed look, like a man who has just lost his dog and is standing at his mailbox with the hope that his dog manages to drive itself back home. The Danes stood across the two lanes from him looking purposeful. The casual spectator, however, would have had no easy time
discerning just what that purpose might be, as there was really nothing within a fifty-mile radius of the men that seemed to require having any purpose applied to it.

  After a five-minute wait, headlights approached from the north, and Bromstad tentatively put out a thumb and pointed it roughly in the direction of St. Paul. The car, a white Saturn, whizzed by without slowing, although it did sound its horn, seemingly as a taunt to the hitchhiking author. Bromstad blinked heavily to remove road grit from his eyes. He then rubbed them like a tired toddler and yelled testily across the road, “Are you sure I can’t go with you?”

  “No,” Jørgen said firmly.

  “Why?” whined Bromstad. “It wasn’t my fault you crashed.”

  “Ah, but it was,” said Jørgen.

  “Ülo did it.”

  “That is not true,” Ülo yelled. Then he turned to Jørgen and repeated it in a quieter but firmer manner. “That is not true.”

  “I know, Ülo. Mr. Bromstad,” Jørgen began, “like so many Americans, is unable to admit when he—and he alone—is the cause of a single-vehicle crash.”

  “What?” said Bromstad, who really hadn’t heard Jørgen’s accusation.

  “Just keep watching the road, you great oaf,” Jørgen said irritably.

  “Did you call me an elf?” an incredulous Bromstad asked.

  “No. Can you not—” Jørgen began, but before he could explain to Bromstad that he’d referred to him not as a kind of pixie but as a fool, headlights in the distance cut him short. A dun-colored 1979 Chevrolet Impala roared past, then screeched to a halt several hundred yards down the road before backing up at high speed and stopping in front of Bromstad. The window rolled down, and he peered tentatively in, as though he were expecting it to be piloted by a bear. Instead he saw that it was driven by a young man of eighteen or so with patchy, unlaundered facial hair. Next to him sat a woman with no facial hair that he could immediately make out, although she did have bounteous hair on her head, mostly blond until it got within an inch of her scalp, where it turned dark brown.

  “Climb in,” said the man.

  Bromstad stood up, looked over the road to the small knot of Danish men, and heaved a questioning shrug. “Should I get in?” he shouted.

  “Yes,” they replied in unison.

  Bromstad attempted to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Sorry, man. Door’s busted. Gotta climb through the window.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The staff of the Bugling Moose had never received an order for meringue larger than an amount that would fit atop a slice of already prepared lemon meringue pie. In fact, meringue had never been ordered separately from a pie, and certainly never in as great a quantity as fifty gallons. Their pies, when they had them, came from Wouton Bakery in nearby Eagle’s Nest, so they had never even attempted to make meringue, chiffon, or any other whipped-egg-white-based confection. Patty Perpich, the owner of the Bugling Moose, tried to explain this fact to Gary.

  “We don’t do meringue,” she said. “We could make you an omelette.”

  “No. I don’t think that’ll work. King Leo was very specific about the meringue,” Gary explained, scanning a sheet of paper he held in his hands.

  “What does he need fifty gallons of it for?”

  “Says it’s good for his skin or something,” Gary said sheepishly.

  “Wow. Even so, you’d think he’d gain an awful lot of weight from it,” said Patty.

  “Oh, no. He doesn’t eat it. I guess he bathes in it or something.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. We might get some pies in on Monday. If there are any lemon meringues in the batch, I could scrape the tops off and have those sent to him. But I don’t want to overpromise, ’cause we don’t get meringue pies very often. And of course I’d have to charge for the whole pie.”

  “Well, let’s just forget it. I’ll have to explain it to King Leo,” he said, then sighed.

  The Funkabus had disgorged its passengers the night before, and the crew of eight had rented out four units, the band decorating all of them to King Leo’s taste immediately, accomplished by the use of liberal applications of draped silks and paper lampshade covers. In King Leo’s unit, velvet upholstered pillows were also heavily utilized until the cabin’s backwoods feel was almost completely obfuscated and replaced by a look not dissimilar to the set of Rudolph Valentino’s tent in The Sheik.

  Because of limited available space, Jack shared a cabin with Billy Moonbeam and Wigs Jackson (which turned out to be to his distinct advantage, because in his haste to pack he’d forgotten his dop kit, and Wigs had brought along toiletries in ridiculous abundance and lent all of them to Jack with extreme, almost excessive, largesse). King Leo took Cabin 7, known as the Snowshoe Lodge. (The titular snowshoes were now covered in pink and yellow silks.)

  The morning after they arrived, Jack awoke, and though it appeared that they couldn’t have been forced to care, made an excuse to Wigs and Billy (“I’m going to see if I can spot a loon”). He was sneaking his way over to Ponty’s cabin when a voice from above made his spine stiffen and his arms shoot out at his sides.

  “Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack,” said the voice.

  Jack scanned the sky around him and saw King Leo perched on the low branch of a medium-size white pine, his back resting against a branch above it. Jack made a conscious effort to quiet his aroused nervous system before speaking.

  “King Leo,” Jack observed.

  “It’s nice up here,” he said.

  “I’ll bet,” said Jack. “Um . . . whatcha doin’ up there?”

  “I couldn’t do my meringue bath this morning, so I came up here for a little peace and reflection. Communing with whatever I could find.”

  Jack’s concentration was so absorbed with slowing his breathing that he let King Leo’s sentence slip by him without even attempting to comprehend it.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We belong here, Jack. Are you feeling it?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Just a moment ago, as I sat here in this tree listening to the birds, watching the hamsters scamper across the damp forest floor, I felt a profound sense of peace. And apprehension, too.”

  Jack put his hands in his pockets and looked down while trying to find the handle on what King Leo had just said. Though he recognized immediately some deep problems with it—among them, how one could simultaneously feel a sense of profound peace and apprehension (and because they were standing among sparse trees, he might also have quibbled about the term “damp forest floor”)—he asked for clarification on one particular point.

  “Hamsters?”

  “Yes. They have been very active this morning. Putting on quite a show for me,” King Leo said with a bucolic smile.

  “There are hamsters running around in the woods?”

  “Oh, yes. If you wait with me, you’ll probably see one come out of that little stand of brush over there,” said King Leo, pointing.

  Though Jack felt he’d be wise to let it pass, he pressed on out of morbid curiosity.

  “What do they look like?”

  “You’ve never seen a hamster? Ooohhh, Jack, Jack, Jack, this place is going to be good for you,” King Leo said with tender condescension. “Hamsters look like smaller squirrels, only with playful little stripes on their backs and little white spots,” he said, as though he were passing on a treasured family secret.

  Jack blinked at him. “King Leo? Those are squirrels. Ground squirrels. I don’t think we have hamsters here in Minnesota.”

  “Jack, you been in the city way, way, way too long.” He dismounted the tree limb nimbly. “Walk with me, Jack. Let us talk of many things.” Jack looked about nervously as King Leo threw an arm over his shoulder. They walked with apparent aimlessness for several yards. Finally King Leo spoke. “Jack,” he said. Jack had not yet become inured to King Leo’s habit of prefacing innocuous statements by saying his name in a prepostorously weighty manner.

  “Yes, I’m here,” Ja
ck replied solemnly.

  “Did you sleep well?” King Leo asked.

  “Okay. Billy Moonbeam snores.”

  “Should I fire him? I will if you want me to.”

  “No. No. It’s fine, really.”

  “Jack?”

  Jack decided not to respond this time in order to find out if answering King Leo was a requirement for hearing what was coming next. He waited some fifteen seconds. Finally King Leo spoke.

  “Take me to the spot where it happened, Jack. Take me to the mine.”

  “What?” he said, his voice breaking slightly. “Now?”

  “I think we should see it together, you and I.”

  Jack wondered why King Leo persisted in thinking there existed a “you and I” made up of he and him. He thought quickly, intending to add another person to the formula.

  “You know, there’s a guy I want you to meet. He’s a local, and the real expert on the mine.”

  Before King Leo could object, Jack walked deliberately for several hundred feet, approached Cabin 2, and knocked loudly on the door. While they waited, King Leo leveled a reasonable question: “He lives here at the Bugling Moose?”

  In his haste Jack hadn’t thought of this, or much of anything, really. He realized how threadbare was the fabric of their lie that it could be so easily shredded by King Leo. But he did not intend to give in.

  “His place is being bug-bombed.”

  King Leo’s curiosity seemed sated for the moment, though Jack knew that his response naturally led to more questions about how he could have such up-to-date intelligence concerning the pest-extermination practices of the residents of Holey. Before that line of questioning could be pursued, however, Ponty appeared, to Jack’s eye looking a touch riled, like a raccoon roused from a hollow log.

  “Ja—”

  “Hello, Earl,” Jack said pointedly.

  Ponty looked over Jack’s shoulder and, seeing King Leo, felt for his top lip.

  “Hello,” said Ponty as Earl. Though his Earl voice was indistinguishable in tone from his regular voice, it was obvious he was trying to add something Earl-ish by the way his body moved differently from the effort of it.