Busted Flush

by George R. R. Martin

  Drake felt the truck turn and slow, then stop entirely.

  “If he opens up, do we stay or go?” Drake asked.

  Niobe took a moment, then softly replied, “We get out.”

  He heard footfalls on gravel moving around the side of the car to the back, then the door opened. The driver stood on the right side and lit up a cigarette. Niobe gave Drake a gentle nudge. He sidled quickly and quietly past the man and into the driveway of what turned out to be a county courthouse. They moved far enough away from the truck to be out of earshot and checked their surroundings. It had the look of a small town, with few buildings taller than two stories, even in what appeared to be downtown. Drake spotted a water tower and squinted to make out the print on its metallic tank.

  “I know this place,” he whispered. “We’re in Pecos.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Niobe said. “Now we just need to figure out where we’re going.”

  There were few people on the streets, and even fewer cars on the road. A number of the locals had obviously decided bicycles were a good way to get around, as a half dozen were in plain view.

  Drake eyed a nearby bike and tugged at Niobe’s shirt. “Come with me and have Zane keep us covered.”

  The trio headed over to the bicycle and Drake snatched a backpack from its wire rack. Niobe gave him a disapproving look, but when Drake fished out a plastic water bottle, her expression changed to a smile.

  “You have some first,” she insisted.

  Drake took several deep gulps. In spite of being lukewarm, it was the best water he’d ever tasted. He handed the bottle to Niobe and checked out the rest of the contents of the backpack. The big find was a knife, which might come in handy. The other stuff inside was a bust, and included a shirt, sweatpants, and a copy of Aces! magazine.

  Niobe suddenly looked at Zane, panic on her face.

  “Not now,” Niobe said, looking around frantically. “Please.”

  A champagne-colored Ford Taurus was pulling out of the parking lot of a hardware store across the road. Niobe pointed to it and dragged Drake toward the car at a near run. She held her remaining child to her chest.

  An instant later the Taurus disappeared, but not its driver. He swiveled his head, then grasped frantically for the unseen door latch. Finding it, he leapt out of the car and sprawled onto the parking lot. The car popped back into view and Niobe jumped in behind the wheel of the slowly moving car, Zane still clutched to her. Drake didn’t need to be told what to do. He ran around to the passenger side and got in. Niobe set Zane on the seat between them and backed out. The man pointed with an open mouth at his car.

  “Go right,” Drake said. “Head east on I-20.”

  They weren’t far from Pyote, from home. Drake didn’t believe it was blown up. The people at BICC were all liars, so why would they have told him the truth about Pyote?

  Niobe looked down at Zane, tears starting in her eyes. He puddled out on the seat as Niobe was reaching for him.

  “I’m sorry,” Drake said, knowing how sad losing her kids made Niobe. “We’d never have gotten away without him.”

  “No,” Niobe said, and then she was quiet.

  Drake didn’t know what else to say so he kept his mouth shut. An idea occurred to him and he started taking the backpack apart. First, he pulled out the laces. They were still in pretty good shape, not brittle or frayed. One of the laces was slightly longer than the other, which was ideal for his purpose.

  He cut a rectangular piece of leather from the shoulder strap and carefully bored a hole in either end with the point of his knife, then trimmed the sides so that the remaining piece of leather resembled an elongated octagon. After working the laces through the eyeholes in the leather, he tied them off and created a loop at the end of the longer lace, just big enough for his finger.

  “A sling,” Niobe said when he showed her the finished product. “You ever used one before?”

  Drake shrugged. “Made one as a kid, I mean a really young kid, but I didn’t use it much. I’m going to practice getting good at this thing. You’d be surprised how far and fast you can toss a stone.”

  Without Zane, they’d have to be much more careful about the people from BICC who were after them, for sure. More careful about everything.

  Clouds hid the moon and stars, making it hard to see anything, but Drake knew where he was going. They’d hidden their stolen car behind a small rise. By now the cops were looking for it and it was getting low on gas anyway. Drake placed his feet carefully as they scaled the hill. It would be easy for one of them to stick a foot in a hole and twist an ankle, or worse. A broken bone and it was over. They’d be captured for sure. He wasn’t sure what they’d do to Niobe, but it wouldn’t be good. Drake they would probably kill. He remembered the tone Justice had used when they put Drake in the high-security wing. Like he was going to death row.

  “Almost there,” Niobe said, balancing herself with a hand on the dried and dusty ground.

  Drake dug in with his feet and hands, using the last of his strength to make it to the top of the hill. Then he collapsed into a sitting position, head down, panting for breath.

  “Drake, look.”

  He raised his head and looked at the horizon. The sky was glowing red and orange, like the aurora borealis but in the wrong color. Drake knew what it meant. It meant it was true. He was a murderer. He’d killed his own family and everyone else in town.

  Niobe put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Leave me alone, okay?” He shrugged her hand off his shoulder. “Don’t . . . don’t touch me.” He collapsed to his knees, staring at the fire on the horizon where his home and family had been. Maybe it would go away if he just kept looking at it.

  The glow continued to flicker across the night sky.

  Maybe Justice and the rest were right. Maybe he did deserve to die. Drake closed his eyes. He beat the ground with his fists, sending dirt and sand flying. He’d never believed in hell, but now he’d made one. His family was there, and his friends, pretty much everything he’d ever known. Drake stood and started walking toward the distant glow. It was where he belonged, in hell with everyone else.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back. “Drake, I’m sorry, but we need to get going if we’re going to find shelter before dawn. We can’t go that way.”

  Drake did not have the strength to fight her. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Wordless, he turned away from the blazing ruin that had been Pyote, and didn’t look back.

  Drake stumbled. Niobe caught his arm, steadied him. “Easy, kiddo,” she said. “I got ya.” She gave his arm a little squeeze before letting go.

  He shuffled off like a sleepwalker. His body was going through the motions, but his mind was elsewhere.

  She wished she still had her children. Drake needed Cameron, her piebald little healer, whose touch erased pain in its myriad forms. Or Gabriella, with her electric blue hair and infectious laughter. Or even Wynn, who sealed away one memory with every paper crane she folded. But they were gone, reduced to stains and memories before Niobe met Drake.

  Niobe and Drake followed the contour of the hill until they found themselves standing at the edge of what appeared to be an arroyo. It stretched into the darkness to both left and right. She hoped it was shallow, so that they could cross it directly. She was too tired for detours.

  Niobe pulled Drake a few steps back from the edge. “Here. Let me climb down first.”

  She crawled backward on her hands and knees. Gravel scraped her palms and dirt packed itself beneath her fingernails. She moved until her ankles dangled over the edge. First her ankles, then her shins, then her knees. She was perched with her waist on the edge of the arroyo when her feet sank into soft sand.

  “We’re in luck. It’s shallow.”

  Drake needed her help to climb down. His legs were too short and he was moving like a marionette with tangled strings. Random, purposeless.

  The poor kid was slipping deeper into his own head. Probably re
living memories of Pyote. She wondered if he’d had a large family. Drake’s file at BICC had been scarce on biographical details.

  “Wait,” she said, when he trudged off again. “Let’s take a break.” The sand shifted as she sat down, making a depression where she could rest her tail. The sand was damp beneath the surface. It made the seat of her sweatpants clammy, but this was still the most comfortable she’d been since leaving BICC. “Oof. This feels nice. I could lie down right here.”

  Drake plopped down unceremoniously, as though a capricious puppeteer had cut his strings altogether. He mumbled something.

  “What’s that, Drake?”

  “Might flood,” he said.

  “We’ll get going in a minute. Just need a breather.”

  Niobe knew he was right. He’d warned her about flash flooding in the desert. It didn’t take much for a rainstorm to spawn a deadly gullywasher. But she had larger concerns at the moment. She scooted closer to Drake. Sand trickled into her sweatpants.

  “How you doing, kiddo?”

  His shrug was so minute as to be almost invisible. She nodded in companionable silence.

  A gritty breeze ruffled his hair. It dusted them with ash, traced new patterns of moonlight and sand along the soft bed of the arroyo. She hoped Drake didn’t notice how the wind from Pyote smelled like soot.

  She couldn’t see his face; a cloud bank had swallowed the moon. Maybe it was time to get out of the arroyo.

  “You know, Drake, there was a time when I hated my power and I hated myself for having it. It just hurt so damn much. But I eventually realized that if I didn’t have my power, I’d miss out on lots of happiness, too.”

  He pulled away from her. “I’m not happy about what I . . . about what happened.” His shoulders shook freely now.

  “No, no, of course not. I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is that sometimes it takes a while to understand the full extent of these things. I used to think that my power was useless and cruel. But it isn’t. We wouldn’t have made it this far without my children. You see?”

  “Nothing . . . good . . .” Drake struggled to force the words out between sobs. He fell against Niobe, pushed his face into her shoulder. “. . . killed them . . .”

  He stopped holding everything in. Finally.

  She held him while he cried. The moon set. He cried. The clouds thickened. He cried.

  It didn’t rain.

  Drake was tired from their cross-country journey, but the thought of the BICC and cops on their trail kept him going. He’d done some practicing with his sling when they stopped to rest, but hadn’t come close to hitting what he was aiming at. He was determined to get better at it, though.

  They were near Wink, but the blazing remains of Pyote from the previous night were still etched in Drake’s mind. Niobe decided they should move only after dark. Without Zane, a chopper could sneak up on them too easily, given how little cover there was. Tonight they weren’t going any farther, though. Niobe had twisted her ankle earlier and it was still pretty swollen. She’d picked an area of scrub not far from a farmhouse for them to hide out in. It was a moonless night and she’d already crashed out. Her heavy, even breathing annoyed Drake, since he dreaded going to sleep. The dreams didn’t come all the time, but they seemed more real now because he knew they were true.

  Drake couldn’t do much about most of the things that were making him miserable, but he had a plan for getting some food. A hope, anyways, if he was lucky; he was due in that department. The nearby farmhouse was a two-story job, which meant the bedrooms were almost certainly upstairs. There hadn’t been a single bark to indicate the presence of a dog, since a pooch would have killed his plan altogether.

  Moving as quietly as possible, Drake headed toward the house. There was a chain-link fence around the yard and he walked around it, looking for an alarm sign. Nothing. He struggled over the fence and plopped down on the other side, then crouched and hurried toward a shingled wall. Drake gathered himself for a moment and took deep breaths. The reality of breaking into a house was a little scarier than he’d thought it would be. He walked slowly to the back door, noting that there was no food bowl there. No dog for sure. Drake grasped the cold, metal handle on the screen door and it turned with a click. He crept up the steps and let the door close behind him.

  Once inside, he took time to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. There was a single doorway leading into the house proper. He spotted a refrigerator directly on the right. Excited as he was, Drake waited a long time before opening the fridge door.

  A rush of cold air from inside the refrigerator ran over Drake, but he hardly noticed. He grabbed a carton of milk and set it on the floor. This was the closest thing to happy he’d been in a long time. He closed the door and took a gulp of milk.

  The beam from the flashlight caught him flush in the eyes. “Hold it right there, Mr. Thief.” If the shotgun hadn’t told Drake the man meant business, his voice sure enough did.

  Drake raised his arms over his head. “Don’t shoot, mister. I was just hungry.” His heart was thumping in his chest.

  The man turned on the kitchen light. He was old and had more hair in his bushy beard than on his head. He set the flashlight down on the kitchen counter. “Well, son, you can get food at a restaurant or a supermarket. My house isn’t either one.” He kept the gun leveled at Drake.

  “I didn’t mean anything. Just let me go and you’ll never see me again.” Drake pointed at the food he’d left on the floor. “Want me to put it away for you?”

  The old man shook his head. “You go sit over there.” He nodded toward the breakfast table.

  Drake did as he was told.

  “I’ll get the county sheriff out here. He’ll give you something to eat. And plenty more besides.” The old man moved to the doorway Drake had come in through and picked up the phone from a handset mounted on the wall.

  “Please.” Drake started to feel . . . wrong. He tried to control his fear, push it deep down into his gut. It was going to happen again and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Put down the phone, or I’ll blow your head off.” Drake recognized Niobe’s voice. His panic went away. “Get down on your knees and set the gun down behind you,” she said.

  Drake saw that Niobe had only a piece of pipe in her hand, pressed against the back of the old man’s head. If the man turned around it was game over. But he didn’t. He knelt and set the shotgun down.

  “Find something to blindfold and tie him up with,” Niobe said, then mouthed “no names.” Drake understood.

  Minutes later the man was bound and his eyes covered with a bandana.

  “I’m cooperating,” the old guy said shakily. “No need to do anything stupid.”

  They carried him into the next room, out of easy earshot.

  It was a bedroom. Niobe took care not to brush the man with her tail, and to keep it hidden behind her back in case he could peek under the bandana, while she and Drake half lifted, half pushed him onto the bed. Mostly they pushed; Drake was too short and too weak, and her bad ankle wouldn’t let her take most of the weight.

  Drake panted quite a bit from the exertion. The kid needed to eat some vegetables.

  The exertion worsened the throbbing in her ankle. She whispered in Drake’s ear. “Check the bathroom. Try to find some painkillers. Aspirin, ibuprofen, whatever,” she said. “But leave any prescription bottles alone.”

  He went. Niobe stayed behind, keeping an eye on their prisoner. Thanks to Drake the Feds would have a new lead on their location as soon as this man freed himself.

  They needed help. She considered propositioning the man. It would obliterate their attempts at anonymity, but with luck her children could more than make up for that.

  And then she realized she was thinking like Pendergast. Children as tools, means to an end. Never. Never.

  Then again, Drake didn’t have a chance if she didn’t have another clutch soon.

  She argued with herself, hating herself fro
m both sides, until she noticed the computer on the desk in the corner. A beige box and a small monitor, with little brown smudges on the mouse and keyboard from years of use.

  “Do you have an Internet connection here?”

  The man on the bed was silent for several moments. He realized she was talking to him. “What?”

  “Does your computer have Internet?”

  “Now why the hell would I want that?”

  Niobe slumped against the wall. For a moment, the briefest of moments, it had felt like they actually had hope. With an Internet connection, she could have sent a message to Michelle, could have begged her for help.

  She roused herself, fearing what it would do to Drake if he witnessed her despair. She went through the closet. This, more than anything else, made her feel like a true burglar. But until Niobe had another clutch, they needed better disguises.

  The man on the bed heard her rummaging through his things. “Take anything,” he said. “Just don’t kill me.”

  Niobe said, “We won’t hurt you. I promise.” She rummaged through the closet. “We’re not here for your money or valuables, either.”

  She found a skirt that fit. It was sized for a full-figured woman, which was perfect for hiding Niobe’s tail. She wondered where the man’s wife was. Then she saw the jewelery atop the dresser, one gold band and one diamond ring, next to a wedding photo of a smiling couple. The groom was a younger version of the man trussed up on the bed; the bride was a zaftig brunette. One corner of the photo was draped with a black velvet band.

  “I’m truly sorry for your loss,” said Niobe.

  “Gather up whatever food you want to take and put it in a garbage bag, then wipe down everything else you touched with this.” Niobe gave him a handkerchief. “Hurry.”

  Drake quickly grabbed bread, cold cuts, cheese, some bananas, and a few other items like matches and the flashlight. After putting his loot into the bag, he dutifully wiped down the fridge door and chair for prints.