The cutthroat w-2

by Jason Frost

  "How do you know?"

  "That's the Crocker Bank Building. Used to be fifty-four stories tall. Now it's about four."

  She stood up enough to peek through the porthole, then flopped back down again shaking her head. "Jesus."

  Eric stared out at the important office buildings once occupied by members of the Fortune 500. They looked decapitated, little boxes made of stone and steel and glass, floating on an orange ocean.

  "It looks like a toilet bowl out there," Tracy said.

  He smiled, sat next to Tracy on the bunk. "In 'Nam I knew a man pinned down in a foxhole, laid on the stinking corpses of his buddies for almost thirty-six hours before figuring it was safe enough to crawl away. Later he told me all he thought about the whole time he was lying there, smelling the stench of their rotting bodies, was where he might have torn his high school-letter sweater one night three years before. Kept playing back that whole evening over and over while lying there with his face pressed against the bleeding guts of his sergeant, retracing his steps, mentally searching everyplace he'd been that night for a nail or something that might have ripped his sweater."

  "Spooky. Did he figure it out?"

  "Yeah. He remembered a piece of metal trim that was bent back on the door of his girl friend's Buick. Snagged it after a marathon necking session when she dropped him off at home. Pictured the car perfectly. The Gumby doll hanging from the mirror, the empty 7up bottle on the floor, the Cliff Notes for Scarlet Letter wedged in the back seat. Only trouble was, he couldn't remember what sport he'd played to win that letter. Or the name of his school. Not even the name of his girl friend."

  "And the moral is?"

  "What moral?"

  She gave him a look and nodded. "Right. I'll be okay."

  Overhead they heard the pounding of footsteps running for position.

  Tracy popped up, pressed her face to the porthole, waving desperately at the passengers. They didn't notice her. She started to unfasten the porthole. "Maybe they can hear me now."

  Eric reached over her shoulder and slammed the porthole shut.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded, trying to pull his hand away. "We can warn them!"

  "Not without Rhino and Angel hearing you. They'll be down here in half a minute performing open heart surgery on us."

  "But all those people, Eric. We've got to try."

  "Right now those people are my only hope for escape."

  "Again with escape. You haven't forgotten we're not alone, have you? That this whole damned ship is crawling with armed maniacs?"

  "That's why that ship out there is so important. Everyone topside will be occupied with them. That leaves only the guard they posted outside for me to deal with."

  Tracy backed away from him, her face pinched with emotion. "God, Eric. Sometimes I forget."

  "Forget what?"

  "Forget how cold and ruthless you can be. I mean I know all about your past, your hitch in 'Nam with that group of assassins. And all that Indian crap you learned from the Hopis when you were a kid. But this." She shook her head, took a deep breath. "You're willing to use the slaughter of all those people as a diversion for your escape?"

  "Yes," he said, returning to the pile of magazines he'd stacked.

  Tracy followed him. "What do you think the world will think about us? I mean if we ever get out of here, back to the mainland. You were a history professor, what will history say about what we've done?"

  "They'll say we acted like savages, selfishly and with little regard for human life other than our own. And they'll be right." He fixed his sharp reddish-brown eyes on her. "But as long as Timmy's alive, I don't care what they think or say. Besides, it's the survivors who write history, so in the end they'll think what we tell them."

  She looked out the porthole, read the name of the ship. Home Run. The passengers were leaning over the rails, reaching out. She could see the smiles on their faces. She wondered briefly if any of them were wearing Lee jeans.

  Behind them the tops of the office buildings peeked out of the flat ocean like gravestones. Here lies Los Angeles, AKA Tinseltown, The Big Orange, Sin City, Cocaine Gulch. Rest In Soggy Peace.

  "I'm going with you," she said quietly.

  "I thought you didn't like the odds."

  "They've improved. Besides, I don't think I want to stay to see the show." She shrugged. She wanted to add oh yeah, I happen to love you more than my own life. To say that she hadn't really wanted to stay behind here without him before, but had made the grand gesture, knowing he'd have a better chance without her. But she didn't say any of that because he'd just stare at her embarrassed, with the memory of Annie knotting his tongue.

  She clapped her hands together enthusiastically. "Well, I made my big humanity speech, now let's get the hell off this zoo."

  "Okay, give me a hand with these magazines."

  "Those? What for?"

  "They're going to get us out of here."

  ***

  Rhino had two memories of childhood, both of them bad.

  First, his name. His real name, that is.

  John Smith.

  Not even a middle initial, for Christ's sake. Just John Smith, as if his parents had used up all their creativity coming up with John.

  "It's bad enough we're stuck with the last name of Smith," he once complained to his parents over morning Rice Krispies. "But couldn't you have been a little more imaginative with my first name?"

  His father, James Smith, had looked confused as he sliced a banana into his cereal. "I don't understand."

  "He doesn't like his name," his mother, Jane Smith explained.

  "He doesn't like John? What's wrong with John? Strong tradition, John is. John Hancock, John Milton, John Kennedy, John Updike, John, uh, uh…"

  "John Wayne," Jane Smith added. "Johnny Carson, John Travolta, Elton John. The list goes on and on."

  Fearing that his parents would too, young John Smith just shook his head, pushed the soggy cereal away, and took the shortcut back to school for football practice. He was team manager. Which meant he got to haul water when the players were thirsty and toss towels to them when they trotted dripping out of the shower. He didn't mind. It gave him access to the lockers while the others were out on the field grunting their guts out. During his three years of junior high and three years of high school, team manager had translated into a lot of emptied wallets and missing watches. Locks were changed twice during his tenure there, but he'd never been caught.

  He had been a big boy even then, with a thick body that had no particular shape. It wasn't fat exactly, but neither was it muscular. No clothes seemed to fit right. It was a misshapen blob of flesh, formless like his name.

  For a couple years the coach pleaded with John to try out for the team, but he always refused. He could see no profit in banging heads and eating dirt. Not compared with what riches awaited him in the silent lockers.

  At first, the members of the team had teased him, calling him Fatty, Blimp Boy, and such. It didn't bother him much; at least it was better than John Smith. But once, after a particularly bad practice in which the coach had really chewed their asses off, they'd come back cranky and surly and ganged up on John, trying to force him into the shower with his clothes on.

  John Smith had not wanted to go.

  Before the coach finally came in to investigate the ruckus, John had broken the quarterback's thumb, twisted the halfback's ankle, cracked the center's ribs, and bruised a tackle's eye. The worst thing that had happened to John had been a torn pocket on his shirt, which his mother sewed that night during The Fugitive.

  Breaking the thumb had been the most fun. He'd straddled Tom Jenkins' chest, pinning his arms to the concrete floor. Then, while fighting the others off, he'd yanked back on Tom's thumb so hard the web of skin between the thumb and index finger tore. Bone ground against bone like squealing brakes until the thumb snapped. Tom's scream bounced eerily around the shower stalls.

  John had not been punished by the school. After
all, he had only been defending himself. Nor did the team members try to gain revenge. The coach's only reaction was again to encourage John to try out for the team.

  But John had learned a valuable lesson. About himself and others. He learned that he was not afraid to administer pain to someone else if necessary. He realized that he could just as easily have snapped Tom Jenkins' neck as thumb. It didn't matter. He felt no guilt.

  And he learned that public displays of power go a long way toward controlling others. Before the incident, although he'd been ranked third in his class academically, no one had paid any attention to him. But after word got around school of what had happened in the showers, no one called him any names again. Younger boys talked to him with respect and awe. Older guys nodded hello. Girls giggled and whispered, but with curiosity.

  The second childhood memory was about sex.

  His first time.

  It was after a football game. They were celebrating their 27-14 victory over arch-rival University High. The party, as usual, boasted a couple kegs of beer that some of last year's grads brought, and some joints supplied by Dennis Bedlow, proud holder of the worst attendance record in the school.

  The party was at Valerie Rhinehart's house because her parents were at a fat farm for the weekend. Valerie, the head cheerleader, had been dumped last week by Tom Jenkins after going steady for two years. She got drunk almost immediately, threw up on Tom's date, and passed out in the bathroom. A couple guys carried her up to her bedroom, discussed jumping her, but chickened out. That's when John went up.

  He had never had any kind of sex, except masturbation, and he hadn't much enjoyed that. Dating had never really interested him. The idea of spending money on someone you didn't know very much seemed stupid. Where's the profit, the payoff? It had to be more than just ejaculating. He could do that by himself and it didn't cost anything. If there was something special, he wanted to know about it.

  Valerie was still in her cheerleader outfit, the short skirt folded up revealing long athletic legs. One of the guys had jokingly placed her Snoopy doll face down between her legs. John plucked it away, tossing it onto the floor.

  What if she wakes up? he wondered, and a strange thought bloomed in his mind: I'll kill her. As simple as that. No malice or hate or fear or desire. Just a fact.

  It didn't take him long to work her cheerlead-ing panties down her legs, though he had some trouble unhooking them from her ankles. Valerie shifted once, but her eyes remained closed, a slight snore puffing her lips.

  He dropped his pants to his knees and climbed onto the bed. No point in getting undressed himself. This shouldn't take long.

  He poked his finger into her vagina, which was warm and wet. Sticky, he thought, like spilled Coke. He grabbed his penis, which was semistiff, and plunged it into her.

  He pumped against her for several minutes, stopping once to rearrange her legs because her knees were starting to chafe against his wide hips. He continued pumping for several more minutes, but nothing happened. He started to pull out.

  Valerie's eyes opened.

  Concerned that she might scream, his hand reached for a pillow. Smother her, I guess, he thought, surprised at his own calmness.

  "Don't stop," she whispered, licking his ear.

  He dropped the pillow and continued moving against her. She panted in his ear, which annoyed him. He liked her better unconscious. Finally he felt the semen boiling through his penis and shooting into her.

  "Yes, yes," she gasped. "I want it in me. All of it."

  He wanted to giggle. Such a corny line. The trash she must be reading.

  He got up quickly and pulled up his pants.

  "Don't go," she slurred drunkenly. But when she jumped up to stop him, she swooned and dropped to her knees. She barfed on the Snoopy doll.

  John left her kneeling next to her bed like someone in prayer.

  He'd learned another valuable lesson that would guide him through his later life. He didn't like sex. It had no effect on him. He tried it again a few times at intervals of a couple years, but to his relief, it never got any better. The realization was thrilling, as exhilarating as rolling in snow. It made him invulnerable to women. And it gave him plenty of time to pursue other interests, namely money.

  Those interests eventually led him to the presidency of DataStat, an information warehouse that other computers were able to tap into, for a fee. In the course of his rise to power, he had several times found it necessary to impose the lessons he'd learned as a child. Two competitors were killed at his request to allow a profitable merger. An argumentative lawyer lectured to him about ethics in front of his vice-presidents and in midsentence received a bottle of Perrier across his cheek in reply. The surgical restructuring of the face was paid for by the company as was the partial disability for eighty percent loss of sight in one eye. It was reported as an industrial accident. No one ever questioned his ethics again. Aloud.

  As the years passed, his millions of dollars hadn't changed his attitude about his name or about sex.

  But since his adventures in the Long Beach Halo, he had changed. Not just in his hideous face, which he almost enjoyed now, as if it were a mask behind which he could retreat. But other things had changed, in his body. He couldn't sleep. One or two hours a night was all he could manage, and sometimes not even that. It was not uncommon for him to stay awake for three or four days at a time. He didn't feel especially tired-in fact, just the opposite. He was bursting with excess energy, always restless, always on the move. It had made him impatient, quick to sudden flares of temper. He felt like a nuclear reactor on the verge of a meltdown.

  Angel had suggested the rubber band around the wrist. An old home remedy to help people quit smoking. Whenever they craved cigarettes, they would snap the rubber bands against their wrists. Aversion therapy. That's what Rhino did when he felt his rage boiling at the back of his brain, flames crackling behind his eyeballs. Sometimes it worked and he would be in control again.

  And sometimes it didn't work.

  ***

  "Too bad I didn't know you earlier, my Angel," Rhino said. "Before this city was turned into a giant aquarium. It would've been a kick showing you around. Behind that building over there"-he pointed with his short delicate finger-"is the Original Pantry. Great restaurant. Bunch of guys in white shirts and bow ties acting like waiting on tables is something they do to relax between cashing dividend checks. Served the best breakfast in L.A."

  "I don't eat breakfast," Angel replied simply.

  "Right, right. No breakfast. Small lunch. Tea for dinner. Christ, who was your nutritionist? Gandhi?"

  She glanced over at his lumpy, shapeless body, then up into his face. She arched a thin crescent eyebrow, saying nothing.

  Rhino laughed. "Beautiful. Beautiful expression, like in one of those old film noir movies. Joan Crawford blowing cigarette smoke up Bette Davis' nose. You must practice that." He stretched the rubber band around his wrist, but didn't release it. "What a pair we make, Angel. Dragon Lady and the Phantom of the Opera. My, my."

  He chattered on energetically, but his eyes remained fixed on the approaching ship. He could feel the energy building in his body, buzzing along his raw nerves like exposed high voltage wires. He was afraid to look at his hands, thinking that if he did he might see the nerve endings boring out through the skin like hungry worms. Last night he'd had only forty minutes of sleep, the night before barely an hour. But he was practically vibrating with energy now. Even the scar tissue on his face tingled as The Centurion swept closer to the stranded Home Run.

  "Toss us a line," a young man from the ship shouted. Rhino thought he looked like a famous tennis player, one of the Swedish ones with a name like smelly cheese, but he couldn't be sure since he had always hated tennis. Bratty kids with sour faces and no personalities. Not like the sports heroes of his time. Mantle, Namath, Chamberlain.

  "Toss them a line, Devon," Rhino said.

  Devon hoisted the rope next to him, one end of which was
secured to a cleat. He tossed it over the side to the Home Run, less than fifteen feet away now. The rope seemed to hover over the water for a moment, uncoiling, before bouncing onto the other ship's deck. The blond boy waved thanks. Devon just stared and waited for the signal, his right hand flexing toward his hidden bow.

  Rhino counted people on the Home Run. Five men and three women. All apparently unarmed. They didn't look dehydrated or scrawny, either. Probably a good supply of food and water aboard. Who knows what else? But even if there wasn't, the women alone would be enough. One was close to forty, but still looked pretty fit. The other two were mid-twenties. No raving beauties, but nice bodies worth something at Liar's Cove.

  He unfastened the top brass button of his jacket. When he unbuttoned the other two, it would signal the crew to attack, first with a wave of arrows, then hand to hand if necessary. The use of guns was strictly last resort. Ammunition was too precious and rare. Besides they would probably need it for the trip to Liar's Cove, not to mention while they were there.

  A few more ropes were exchanged between ships, with crew members from both sides pulling their crafts closer to the other. The Home Run rode lower in the water, which pleased Rhino since it would mean easier access for his crew.

  He unfastened another button.

  The hulls of the two ships bumped. Ropes were tied off to secure the ships.

  The older woman leaned over the rail and waved up at Rhino and Angel. She didn't seem to wince at the sight of Rhino's mangled face. "Thank you so much," she said. "We've been stranded out here for almost two days. The rig's split and we didn't want to risk snapping it off altogether. We thought the current might take us closer to land." She shrugged, embarrassed. "But I'm afraid none of us are really sailors. It's my husband's yacht, but he died." Her voice trailed off in what seemed like a sad memory. "Anyway, thanks again."

  "Our pleasure." Rhino touched two fingers to the brim of his cap in a snappy salute. "Code of the sea demands that we help. Right, Angel?"