by Neil Mcmahon
Glenn’s eyes showed alarm. “No way, man.”
“If you don’t, his blood’s going to be on your hands. Let that sink in through your tough-guy shell, Glenn. A four-year-old.”
Glenn’s gaze flicked around, as if he were looking to escape. “I mean-there’s no lines up here, and cell phones don’t work.”
“Come on, you’re the computer ace. There has to be some way.”
“There’s satellite e-mail, but Freeboot changes the password every day. He only gives it to me when he wants something.”
“Is there a vehicle we could steal?”
“They keep all the cars at the security station up the road,” Glenn said, squirming under Monks’s grip. “There’s guards, twenty-four seven.”
Monks remembered with icy clarity the group of scalp-hunting maquis that he had seen last night-trained, violent, and well armed.
“Do you have a gun?” he said.
“Dad, you’re fucking crazy-”
Monks shook him hard.
“No,” Glenn muttered. “I don’t need one for what I do. Now, would you let me go, please?”
So-this failure was absolute. Monks had not really expected Glenn to suddenly come to his senses. By Glenn’s lights, he was making the sensible choice-staying safe. Still, Monks had harbored the faint hope of swaying him and made one last try.
“You’re strung out, at risk, maybe dangerously ill,” Monks said. “And mentally impaired. You’ve bought into whatever fanaticism Freeboot and Shrinkwrap are preaching, but all they’re going to do is take you down.”
He stared hard into his son’s eyes for another ten seconds, then released him. Glenn backed away, rubbing his arm and looking badly shaken. The tough-guy skin had been bruised at least a little bit.
“I can’t leave here,” Glenn said, with a whine in his tone.
“Of course you can.”
“You don’t understand, man.”
Monks exhaled. “I’m going as soon as it’s dark. Say, twenty minutes. Come over to the lodge if you change your mind.”
“Why the fuck did you bring this on me?” Glenn burst out, in misery and anger. “Now I’m part of it.”
“You don’t have to tell anybody.”
“I can’t lie to Freeboot.”
Monks shook his head helplessly. There was no answer to that. He clasped Glenn’s shoulder, more gently this time.
“I love you, Glenn,” he said. “Believe that, will you?”
He stepped out into the downpour, leaving Glenn standing there, pale and alone.
Through the deepening gloom, Monks could just make out the thin figure of Sidewinder. He threw a salute in that direction and walked on to the lodge, clamping off his surging emotions like severed blood vessels-no time to deal with that now.
The lodge was still empty. He quickly checked Mandrake over, and coaxed as much water down him as he would take. His brief improvement had slowed and maybe reversed. Monks had anguished over whether to take him along, or race for freedom in the hopes of sending back help. Trying to carry him would impede Monks severely, and might doom them both.
But while leaving Glenn behind was wrenching, leaving Mandrake would be unbearable. Glenn was an adult, capable of making his own decisions. Monks hardened his heart. This was triage.
He was under no illusions about his chances-carrying the boy on foot, without a weapon or even decent gear, they amounted to not much better than nil. The only hope he could see was to beat his pursuers to the thick, brushy timber ahead, where their night goggles would not be of much use. If he made it to the next day’s light, he would try to reach a paved road.
He broke a porcelain cup into shards and used one of them to worry slits in a wool blanket, fashioning it into a serape for himself. It was far from adequate, but wool would at least keep you warm when it was wet. He fashioned another blanket into a sling that he could loop around his shoulders to carry Mandrake. He collected the remaining insulin and syringes into a pillowcase, along with some bread and cheese that he had taken from the kitchen, and stuffed that inside his shirt.
Mandrake seemed only vaguely aware of what was happening when Monks wrapped him in the blanket, pulling his legs through the slits so they would hang free like a baby’s in a carrier.
“Come on, buddy,” Monks whispered. “Let’s go find some mermaids.”
16
Monks quickly pulled up the plywood panels under the kitchen sink, then lowered Mandrake into the crawl space. He followed head first, squeezing his way painfully through the narrow cut-out. There was only about a foot of room between the cold earth and the floor joists. He managed to reach back up and pull the cabinet doors closed. Then he rolled onto his belly and wormed his way forward, pushing Mandrake ahead of him as gently as he could.
The opening in the rock foundation was barely visible now. He pushed Mandrake out and worked his way through, one arm and shoulder at a time. The sharp rock edges scraped his skin through his clothes, and the sluicing rain was already soaking his arms and legs. Finally free, he spent a few seconds on hands and knees, getting his breath. Then he scooped up the little boy and stood, arranging the sling over his shoulders.
“I was just starting to trust you,” Freeboot said, behind him. “You motherfucker.”
Before Monks could turn around, he heard a distinct metallic click-like a gun’s safety being released. A figure stepped into view ahead of him, from around the corner of the building. It was Sidewinder, holding his assault rifle leveled.
Monks sagged.
“Put the kid down,” Freeboot said. He sounded more disgusted than angry, like a teacher whose patience with an unruly student had finally run out. It was more chilling than his rage.
Monks unslung Mandrake and set him on the ground.
“Take off your blanket.”
Monks pulled his homemade serape over his head and tossed it aside.
“Callus,” Freeboot called commandingly.
A third figure came striding toward them from the forest. Monks recalled seeing him at the scalp hunt. Like the other maquis, he was clean-shaven and neat-haired, with an insurance salesman’s look that contrasted jarringly with his backwoods clothes. He was one of the older men, in his thirties, and he had an air of efficiency that was almost prim-but there was a ruthlessness about it, too.
Callus also was carrying a leveled rifle, Monks thought at first. Then he realized that it was a tree branch, four or five feet long and twice as thick as a broomstick.
Something slipped around Monks’s neck, yanking tight. He clutched at it, fighting to free himself from the choking pressure. But it was futile. His fingers felt leather, slippery with rain-Sidewinder’s rifle sling.
Monks drove his right elbow back into Sidewinder’s gut with everything he had. He got the grim satisfaction of feeling Sidewinder double up with an explosive grunt. The sling’s grip loosened. Monks stomped down hard on Sidewinder’s instep with his bootheel, and fought to twist around.
Off to the side, he thought he heard Freeboot laughing.
Then Callus swung his heavy stick across Monks’s shins.
Monks yelled, a roar of rage and disbelief at the agony that burst through his bones and shot up into his brain. Pain was so intimate. There was no way to hide. It knew everything about every tiny bit of you, flared up in every one of those millions of nerve endings that you were unaware of most of the time.
“You cocksucker,” Sidewinder sobbed into his ear. The sling tightened viciously. Through the spots starting to float across his vision, Monks saw Callus swing the stick again. This time, the impact was hard enough to chip bone. Monks clawed back at Sidewinder’s face, his feet dancing crazily, trying to run of their own accord.
A third blow crashed across his shins, bringing him to the edge of blacking out. His consciousness was filled with the torture in his legs and the sound of his own choked bellowing in his ears.
The pressure around his neck let up suddenly, and the sling was released. The rif
le butt slammed into his back, driving him sprawling onto the ground.
“Next time we’ll use a sledgehammer,” Freeboot said. “Now get back under that floor.”
Monks crawled to the foundation’s opening and forced himself through, moving helplessly past the wool-wrapped bundle that was Mandrake. Maybe he had been aware of what had happened, maybe not.
“He still needs his blood sugar checked every hour,” Monks panted. “And the insulin shots.”
Something came into view outside. There was just enough light left for him to recognize Freeboot’s bare feet.
“Yeah?” Freeboot said. “I’m starting to think you’ve been keeping him sick. Trying to get me to let you go.”
“If you want him to die, you’re almost there,” Monks said hoarsely.
The feet stayed there a few seconds longer. Then they were gone.
“You, fuckhead-I ought to make you get in there with him,” he heard Freeboot say to Sidewinder. “You better be right on top of him, watching every second. Callus, bring the kid.”
Another pair of feet appeared outside the opening, this time wearing boots.
“You stick your fucking nose out, I’ll blow it off,” Sidewinder said. His voice trembled with fury.
Monks curled up again and closed his eyes, trying to rub a little of the fire out of his throbbing shins. A couple of minutes later, he heard the sound of bootsteps on the kitchen floor above him, then hammering. The plywood sheets under the sink were being nailed down. There might have been a hidden camera, watching him the entire time, he thought.
Or Glenn had gone to Freeboot and alerted him that Monks was planning to run.
Gradually, the pain subsided to a bearable ache. The discomfort of being cold and wet moved in to join it. Lying in the dirt, trapped by the floor joists, he couldn’t move enough to warm himself. Within half an hour he was shivering convulsively.
A warm deer carcass to crawl into would have looked pretty good about now.
17
A couple of hours later, Monks heard Sidewinder kick loudly against the lodge’s wall.
“Hey! Asshole!” he yelled. “Come on out.”
Monks uncurled himself stiffly and squirmed to the foundation’s opening, his raw shins scraping against the hard rock-strewn dirt. He pulled himself out into the rainy gloom, fearful that he was going to get a boot or rifle butt in the face. But Sidewinder only held the leveled weapon on him.
“Freeboot says you can go back inside,” he said sullenly.
Monks’s eyes teared up with pleasure when he stumbled into the firelit warmth of the lodge. But when he walked into Mandrake’s bedroom, he saw that the shackles with the cable attached were lying on the floor.
“Put ’em on,” Sidewinder ordered. His raingear was dripping puddles onto the floor, and his face radiated his rage and resentment.
Monks sat, pulled off his boots, and snapped the iron rings around his own ankles.
“Freeboot’s got some business to take care of,” Sidewinder said. “He told me to tell you the kid better be better when he gets back.” He turned on his bootheel, in pseudo-military style, and stalked out.
Mandrake was in bed, lying on his tummy. He didn’t open his eyes or respond when Monks turned him over. His forehead was hot. Whatever complication was at work was advancing. Monks helplessly moistened the inside of the child’s mouth. Dehydration was quickly entering into the mix-while sheets of rain pounded down on the metal roof.
Sidewinder hadn’t said how long it would be until Freeboot came back, but this much was certain: the kid was not going to be better.
Monks sat down and painfully unstuck his pant legs from the crusted blood on his shins, then pulled them up to his knees. By now the lacerations were surrounded by long purple bruises, and swollen into knobs. He explored them with his fingers, grimacing fiercely. At least they weren’t the kinds of wounds that were likely to get infected, and any bone chips would eventually heal themselves. It just hurt like hell.
A couple of minutes later, he heard the lodge’s door open and close. Quiet footsteps hurried across the floor toward him.
Marguerite stepped hesitantly into the bedroom. She looked concerned, even frightened. Her eyes widened at the sight of his legs.
“I heard what happened,” she said. “I got Freeboot to let you back in.”
Wearily, Monks nodded thanks.
She stepped to the curtain, to leave, he thought. Instead, she looked around the outer room, then came back in and knelt beside his chair.
“I’ll help you get away,” she whispered. “I know how. You have to take me, too.”
He stared at her in numb amazement. For the first time, she seemed really to be looking at him. Her dark eyes were clear, free of the spaced-out affect he had grown used to.
But wariness followed instantly. He had not forgotten that she was the one who had set him up in the first place.
“Is this another one of Freeboot’s tests?” he said.
“No.” She looked puzzled. “Freeboot’s gone, he’ll be gone all night. So will most of the others.”
That jibed with what Sidewinder had said.
“How did he catch me?” Monks asked, probing to find out if there was a hidden camera that might be watching them right now.
“Coil told him.”
The news came like another ugly bucket of sludge, thrown on top of all the rest. But it had the ring of truth.
“What changed your mind?” Monks said.
As she hesitated, guilt, shame, and the admission of her own stupidity passed across her eyes.
“I didn’t want to believe you,” she said. “That Mandrake’s going to die. But I’ve been watching him, while you were…gone. He seems like he’s almost dead now.”
Monks kept staring hard at her, trying to believe her.
Her gaze faltered. “I understand why you don’t trust me,” she said.
“Bring me a gun, and I’ll start.”
“I can’t get a gun. But Hammerhead’s standing guard. He volunteered, because of me.”
“And?”
“You could take his gun,” she said.
“Just walk up and ask him for it?”
“I could-you know, get him thinking about something else,” she said, with her eyes still lowered. “You’d have to hit him, or something.”
Sure, nothing to it, Monks thought. “With what?”
“There’s pipe wrenches in the toolshed.” She held out her hands about three feet apart. Monks was distantly surprised that she even knew what pipe wrenches were. But that was probably as good a weapon as anything short of a firearm. A knife or garrote was too risky against a man as strong and well trained as Hammerhead.
A hard blast across the back of the head, while not exactly honorable, might do it.
“What about this?” he said, reaching down to rattle his shackles.
“There’s bolt cutters, too.”
“Can you get other gear? Flashlight, matches, compass? Some food, warm coats. A rucksack, to carry Mandrake.”
“I’ll try,” she said. She reached into a pocket of her jeans and pressed something into his hand. It felt smooth and cold like a pebble. “This will jack you up.” She rose and slipped out.
Monks opened his hand and looked at what she’d given him-a small glass makeup jar with a screw-on lid. It was full of finely ground white powder.
His first impulse was to throw it out. But he hesitated. Meth seemed to be the key to the violent, psychotic edge that the maquis had, and that might be a big help right now.
He opened the jar and and tapped some of the powder out onto the dresser top-about half the amount he had seen Freeboot use. He didn’t have a knife to inhale it with, but he knew that it could be done through a narrow paper tube, and he fashioned one from a page he tore out of one of the Heavy Metal magazines.
He snorted hard with each nostril. It shot in like a hot sharp wire thrusting up behind his eyes and into his brain. The burn worsened instantl
y, becoming almost intolerable, bringing him to panic that he had done himself serious harm. But then it gradually calmed, leaving a metallic-tinged residue-and a bristling, fiercely euphoric energy.
Monks paced the small room, allowing the ache in his shins and the clank of his chains to steadily heighten his fury, like the drumbeats of a primitive tribe in a war dance-tangible reminders of his own helplessness, of the child who was slipping away from him, of his terror that this was another trap that was going to bring him only a brutal, agonized death.
Very soon, his hands were flexing in anticipation of that pipe wrench.
18
Marguerite came back twenty minutes later, carrying a big laundry basket covered with a dripping poncho. Monks pulled the poncho off. On top were neatly folded pajamas for Mandrake. But they hid a warm hooded snowsuit underneath, and a nylon rucksack big enough to carry him. Then came a large polyfil jacket with a water-resistant shell, the kind that the men wore around camp. Wrapped up in it were a folding pocket knife, a heavy-duty flashlight, matches, and a Ziploc bag stuffed with bread, cheese, cold cuts, and candy bars. There was no compass, but this was a hell of a good start on getting out of here and staying alive.
At the bottom, his groping hand touched metal. A pair of bolt cutters and a pipe wrench about thirty inches long were nestled in the laundry like snakes in a brushpile.
“Hammerhead just called in his security check-in,” Marguerite whispered urgently. “We’ve got an hour before they’ll miss him. He’s waiting for me, over at the bathhouse. Give me a couple of minutes.”
“Whoa, wait,” Monks said. “You have to keep him outside. I need a clear shot at him.”
She bit her lip nervously. Then she brightened.
“I’ll tell him I want to do it in the rain.”
Monks was impressed. That was thinking on your feet.
“Get up against a wall,” he said. “That’ll keep his back turned.”
“Don’t worry, he won’t be thinking about anything but me.” She left again, looking scared but determined.
Monks got out the bolt cutters and snipped the chains from his ankles. His feet once again were free. He put the snowsuit on Mandrake, then slit the rucksack to allow for his legs and eased him into it. This was going to be a lot easier to carry than the clumsy sling.