The cutthroat w-2

by Jason Frost

  Tracy grabbed an empty Campbell's Tomato Rice soup can Eric had tied to the thwart, and began bailing water out of the canoe.

  She kept her head tucked low.

  Eric was kneeling in the stern, facing her, paddling with slow powerful strokes. Occasionally he would change sides or let the blade of the paddle drag so he could steer. Each stroke dug into the slick black water without a sound, propelling them along as smoothly as if they were sliding across glass.

  Tracy tossed another canful of icy water over the side, then looked up. "Eric?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Do you think Goldie Hawn's still alive?"

  "Huh?"

  "I've been kinda wondering, you know, if maybe Goldie Hawn was killed in the quake. I know it's crazy. But I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Like maybe she was home with her kids. Or maybe she was somewhere on location, safe. Don't ask me why her, I'm not even that much of a fan.''

  Eric smiled.

  "I just hope we don't come across her corpse like all the others." She stared at him, her eyes intent. "You think I'm nuts, right?"

  "Nope. For a while at the beginning, I used to wonder the same thing about Pavarotti. And I hate opera." He shrugged. "Trick of the mind, I guess. We miss the things we never got a chance to know. Even if we didn't like something, it was still there, so we might like it someday. Taps into our sense of hope."

  "Like New Yorkers who've never been to the top of the Empire State Building. At least they knew they could go."

  "Right!"

  "Hey! Maybe in a couple months we can start a gossip magazine. A Who's Who of celebrity survivors."

  The canoe sliced quietly through the water.

  "Eric?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I hate boats. That's why I've been acting strange lately."

  "I noticed."

  "You've never complained. Not once."

  "Is that an accusation?"

  "No. Well, yes. You make me feel so damn guilty. Always patient and understanding. You rehearsing for sainthood?"

  He laughed. "No, I figured it was just withdrawal tension, you know, from quitting smoking."

  "I never smoked."

  "Really?" He shrugged. "My mistake."

  Tracy laughed, her first in the two weeks since Eric had revealed his plan for them to take to the sea. The news had reached out, grabbed her by the throat, and had been squeezing tighter ever since. Not only did she hate boats, she hated any kind of water that didn't come out of a tap or was safely enclosed in a pool. Jaws had only confirmed her worst fears about the sea, begun when she was a child watching Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. For weeks afterward she'd suspected a giant squid lived inside the toilet, waiting for her. She used to run next door to the Riker's house to use their bathroom. Once she didn't make it.

  But this was even worse, knowing that they were floating over the drowned remnants of cities she used to romp through back in high school. Yesterday Corona del Mar. Today Huntington Beach, where she once dated that surfer her parents hated, Davy Lee. Silver Surfer, his buddies had called him. Was Davy down there now, hanging upside down from the ankle strap attached to his surfboard while fish gnawed away the cute dimples she'd loved to kiss when she was sixteen?

  Eric was doing his best to make her feel better, letting her blow off steam without comment. It made her feel like a selfish child. After all, he had lost more than she, had even more to lose if they didn't hurry. So even under his cheerful patter she could detect the grim determination in his eyes.

  But he hadn't always been so calm and understanding. She still remembered the rage that had fueled him only a few weeks ago during all that killing at Savvytown. Suddenly she realized that he had not dragged that murdered body out of the water just to prove to her there might be danger or to retrieve an arrow. He had wanted to study the face. Make sure it wasn't him. Dirk Fallows.

  "Eric, are you sure Fallows came this way?" "You were there when I questioned that old man in Anaheim. He said a white-haired man in his forties and a young boy. Described Fallows and Timmy perfectly. Said the man shot him before stealing his boat. That's Fallows' style."

  "Except that the old man lived." "Fallows wanted him to. So he could tell us." "Okay, but he could have taken that boat in any direction."

  "No, he'd-" Eric paused, peered into the dark, looked troubled.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Shhh." He stopped paddling, tilted his ear to the wind.

  Tracy listened, heard nothing. Same old shrill wind.

  After a few minutes of listening, Eric began paddling again.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Wind sounded funny, as if it had to shift around some large object."

  "Like an island?"

  "Maybe. Or some debris. Could be anything."

  Silently she peered into the night, unable to distinguish anything in the foggy darkness. The sea and air seemed one solid seamless black mass. They might as well be paddling underwater.

  Eric continued speaking as if there had been no interruption, but Tracy could see him tilting his head for sound, still listening. He pulled his crossbow closer. "I figure Fallows stole the boat and took Timmy up to join his troops in Santa Barbara."

  "Think he knows we're following?"

  "He's counting on it. He just doesn't know we'd also come by boat. Probably figures to beat us there by a couple days. Get his men ready. They'll be waiting for us."

  Tracy scraped the soup can along the bottom of the canoe, scooping up the last of the water and dumping it over the side. "That leaves me with only one question."

  "I know. What was that boy's body doing out here this far from shore with an arrow through his face and no boat?"

  "Right."

  "Well, he wasn't keeping his head down, that's for sure."

  "Do you think he was-"

  Eric's ears perked. He stopped paddling and swiveled his head to the left.

  Suddenly an explosion of blinding light stabbed their eyes.

  A deep voice echoed across the water. "Ahoy there, maties," it said in an amused, cynical tone.

  The large ship had been waiting dead in the water, cloaked by the darkness and silence. As soon as Tracy and Eric had come within fifty yards, someone on board had switched on a high-beam searchlight. The bright white tunneled through the dark, flooding over the canoe like a vaudeville spotlight. Eric and Tracy shielded their eyes, but they still could not see the ship clearly. Only that it loomed behind the light like a large dark building. And that it was close.

  "Let me see," the voice said. "What's the best way to put this without sounding, um, insensitive?"

  Jeering laughter from the crew.

  The captain continued, enjoying his own cleverness. "I've got it. Adds just the right touch of melodrama." This time the voice was humorless, hard and cold. "How about, surrender or die!"

  The crew hooted obscene approval.

  Eric reached for his crossbow.

  4.

  Eric's hand grazed the cool metal stock of the crossbow, but he didn't lift it into sight. The glaring searchlight from the ship made him feel too exposed, like a grasshopper impaled on a pin.

  "What do you want?" he shouted at the ship.

  "Want?" The voice affected a tone of surprise. "Fellowship, my dear man. The love of a good woman. Perhaps two. The respect of my peers. To die in bed at age ninety-nine, humping twin sixteen-year-old virgins."

  Howling laughter from the crew.

  "I want whatever I can take," he barked angrily. A match flared behind the searchlight, briefly outlining a broad lump of a man. The red tip of a cigarette glowed. The gesture was not lost on Eric. Cigarettes were a habit only of the powerful. Two cigarettes could buy you a horse. Three a whole town.

  Eric glanced over at Tracy. She was quietly working her Colt Cobra.38 out of the nylon backpack. There were only three bullets left in the cylinder, their last three. He watched her pale hands trembling as she stared directly into the blinding light. Her expression wa
s tense, yet defiant. She fidgeted with the gun in her lap, finally easing the safety off.

  "We don't have anything of value," Eric called. "A few cans of food, a couple canteens of water."

  "Food and water, huh?"

  "Yeah. And the canoe."

  "That's all?"

  "That's all."

  The captain snickered. "Surely you underestimate the worth of your cargo, my friend. From here you look absolutely laden with treasure."

  Eric's hand tightened around the crossbow's black stock, dragging it across the curved ribs of the canoe. His finger snuggled against the cold trigger and he noticed for the first time that his hands were sweating. Good, he liked to be a little frightened. It kept him from doing anything stupid. He pulled the bow closer. Already cocked and armed with a sharp wooden bolt, the waxed string strained to flex its one hundred seventy-five pounds of pressure against the arrow.

  "Quite the charmer," Tracy said. Her voice was flat, almost dreamy as she stared into the light.

  "David Niven he ain't."

  "The Welcome Wagon he ain't, either." She clenched her fist tighter around the gun.

  "Easy," Eric soothed.

  She didn't answer.

  "Trace?"

  "I'm fine," she said, but Eric could see that she wasn't.

  It wasn't just the danger of their situation that was frightening Tracy now. The threatening tone of the man's voice had been oily with innuendo. His references to her as a "treasure" were not meant to flatter, merely assess, as one might livestock, for sale. Or cargo.

  The quakes that had ripped California from the rest of the continent, that had sent a billowing dome of chemical and biological weapons clouding the sky to cut them off from the rest of the world, had also brought a lot of social changes among the survivors. People, who before had felt only marginally bound by society's rules, now felt free to do whatever they wanted. Whatever the cost. A few had turned their ruthlessness into profit, selling, whatever was in short supply. The millions of deaths in the quakes and subsequent fires had left a lot of severe shortages: food, water, weapons-and one that the survivalist magazines hadn't predicted. Women.

  And business abhors a vacuum.

  So women soon became good business. Scavenging entrepreneurs created an underground slave trade in women, sometimes buying them from camps, sometimes stealing them. A settlement of men might chip in a whole case of Heinz baked beans for a healthy woman. And if she was a little attractive, they might be willing to toss in an additional case of plums in extra heavy syrup.

  "Now, I want you both to sit perfectly still," the captain ordered. "A couple of my men will be over to, um, welcome you."

  Eric did not respond.

  "Did you hear me?"

  Eric studied Tracy in the bright beam that washed over her face. Last week she'd insisted he hack off her wavy red hair with his knife until it was as short as his. Now it wreathed her head in wispy tufts like the furry red petals of some exotic flower. True, it was easier to keep clean, and under some circumstances might allow her to pass for a male, but still he'd hated doing it. Not just because it had been so stunningly beautiful before, but for a much more selfish reason. One that he'd felt too guilty to admit. Her hair reminded him of Annie, his murdered wife.

  Sometimes while lying in Tracy's arms, Eric would wrap her thick long hair around his fist, between his fingers, the way he used to do with Annie's. And for a few precious moments he would be back in their quiet suburban home. Timmy and Jenny would be playing chess, Jenny with one ear cocked for telephone calls from boys. He and Annie would be cuddling on the sofa, watching a video-tape movie they'd rented. The history professor and his family. Happily average, his infamous past almost forgotten.

  But that was before.

  Before the quakes. Before his daughter's throat had been slit open. Before Annie's neck had been snapped. Before his son, Timmy, had been stolen.

  Before Dirk Fallows had returned.

  Sometimes Eric wasn't sure whether his fondness for Tracy was for who she was or because she reminded him of Annie. He suspected Tracy knew this. Perhaps that was why she'd suddenly insisted on having her hair cut off.

  He wasn't sorry he'd taken up with her so soon after Annie's death. This new world was unforgiving and impatient, allowed no time for mourning. Not if you were to survive.

  Looking at her attractive angular features now, he couldn't imagine anyone mistaking her for a man. If anything the ragged haircut made her look even sexier, perhaps in the way it emphasized her beauty while hinting at the toughness underneath. A smooth stream sliding over sharp stones.

  "We're not going to have any trouble from you, are we?" the captain asked lazily.

  "We don't want trouble," Eric shouted back.

  "Nor do we. But you've got trouble, my friend. Right here in River City." He chuckled. "And unless the two of you follow my orders, your trouble is spelled with a capital T which rhymes with D which stands for dead. Should I sing you a stanza?"

  Eric didn't answer. No point, the guy was too full of his own wit, chattering away with manic energy.

  "Griffin!"

  "Cap?" someone on board answered.

  "We've had a request. Play your instrument for the lovely couple. Something romantic."

  Instantly Eric heard the unmistakable sound of a bow string snapping. An arrow thwacked wood, poked through the canvas and splintered a rib of the canoe's hull. The sharp metal tip lodged only inches away from Eric's knees.

  "Bravo!" the captain said, applauding. Others on board joined in the applause, whistling and jeering. "A virtuoso performance, wouldn't you agree? You might even say he handles a bow better than Isaac Stern, eh?" The captain cackled with laughter.

  Eric lifted the crossbow to his lap, waited.

  "Apparently you two lack a sense of humor." The captain's voice hardened, shouting across the water now as if enraged. "You will remain motionless while my men approach you."

  Out of the dark shadows skirting the ship, a small dinghy emerged. One man rowed, the other sat on the rear transom with a 9-mm Uzi submachine gun aimed at Eric and Tracy.

  Somewhere in the dark Eric thought he heard a rubber band snapping.

  "We'd prefer not to waste any precious bullets on you, so your cooperation will be appreciated." The captain's voice was calmer now, but measured, as if he was still struggling to control his temper. "By the way, you do have the Alabaster map, don't you?"

  "The what?" Eric asked.

  There was a pause. Eric heard the buzzing of whispered conversation. A woman's shrill voice mingled with the man's.

  "No matter," the captain said cheerfully. He flicked the cigarette overboard in a bright arc of red light. "Perhaps you will feel more like talking on board. If not, well, we shall make do."

  The dark figure behind the spotlight walked across the ship's deck, his thick body outlined in the rim of white from the searchlight. Then he was gone. Another figure, shorter, thinner, took his place behind the light.

  The rowboat glided closer. The only sound was the oars pounding water with a quick cadence.

  Tracy lifted the Colt.38 from her lap.

  "Wait," Eric whispered.

  "For what?"

  "Wait."

  She hesitated, then rested the gun back on her lap. She rolled her lower lip between her teeth, bit lightly.

  The rowboat sliced through the black water until it too was basking in the bright beam from the ship's searchlight. The oarsman's back was to the canoe, but he kept looking over his shoulder at Tracy.

  "Eric, look," she pointed.

  Eric stared at the approaching men. Both looked like refugees from the midnight screening he'd attended last June of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Annie had dressed in an outrageous costume, sneaking past the babysitter and children. Stripping out of her trenchcoat in the car, she'd swiveled the rearview mirror over so she could shovel on her makeup while he drove. They'd laughed all the way to the theater.

  But these men
were serious. Their faces were caked white with some kind of makeup. Thick black mascara rimmed their eyes, scarlet lipstick was smeared on their lips. The oarsman's greasy hair was knotted into a heavy braid that hung down the middle of his muscular back like black rope. The skinny gunman on the transom wore an expensive black tuxedo with no shirt underneath, just his pale bumpy chest. Around his bony neck he wore a white flea collar.

  "Jesus," Tracy said.

  "Get ready."

  "For what?"

  "All the gear tied down?"

  "Yeah."

  "I mean everything. Backpacks, weapons."

  She looked at him, realizing. "Oh no, Eric."

  He lashed the paddles to the thwarts, secured the extra bolts for his bow in one of the backpacks.

  "There's got to be another way."

  "You think of one?"

  The rowboat splashed closer. The gunman with the flea collar stood up in the boat and waved his Uzi. "Shut the fuck up, assholes."

  The oarsman glanced over his huge shoulder and leered at Tracy. Three of his front teeth were missing. The others looked like rotten prunes.

  Tracy sighed at Eric and shrugged resignation.

  "Keep your head down," Eric winked.

  "I said to shut up!" the gunman screamed. The rowboat was only ten feet away now, directly between the canoe and the ship. "You want to suck on the end of this, jerkoff?" He waved the Uzi at Eric.

  Tracy snapped up her Colt in a double-fisted grip and fired. The.38 slug blasted a hole through the gunman's wrist, splashing a pattern of blood on the tuxedo jacket and bare skin of his chest. Undaunted, the bullet continued on through the wrist and into the center of the bloody pattern, burrowing another hole through his bony chest. The impact flipped him over the side of the small boat. His heavy boots dragged his dying body to the sunken sidewalks of Huntington Beach below.

  The oarsman grabbed at his partner's Uzi, which had clattered to the floor of the rowboat. He had it in an instant and was swinging toward the canoe.

  Eric hefted his Barnett Commando crossbow to waist level and pulled the trigger. The bolt jumped out of the bow, plunging through the oarsman's red Linda Ronstadt T-shirt. The Uzi dropped from his hand into the boat, but he didn't seem to care. He sat back down with a heavy thud, staring blandly at the feathered plume lodged in his chest. Blood even redder than his lipstick oozed out of the corner of his mouth.