by Barr, Nevada
She didn’t just make him vanish into thin air. She killed him. In the dark, alone, Anna had killed a man. Once he was dead, she had taken his clothes.
Of course Heath knew thugs didn’t quietly go away because they were told to. They had to be convinced; had to be killed. Jimmy leaving camp alive and in good health, no corpse, no blood, coupled with the curdling screams receding into the distance, had allowed her to put the incident into the part of her mind where zombies, dragons, and ogres lived.
Knowing Anna had taken the man’s life laid such a weight of sadness on Heath’s chest she found it difficult to breathe. Her sorrow wasn’t wasted on Jimmy. The world was a better place without Jimmy. The demise of the bearded thug made the sea of society one drop cleaner than it had been while he lived. Heath’s burden was for Anna. Killing a man, his blood literally on one’s hands, had to have an effect on the killer. Lady Macbeth, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” post-traumatic stress disorder: people agreed, at least on the surface, that there was a terrible, psychic, soul-wrenching penalty to be paid when one took the life of another.
Would it change her to kill the dude or Reg? Two days ago she would have said absolutely it would. Now she didn’t think so, not for the worse, anyway. Accidentally killing a friend or a child, that would be crazy-making. Killing these vermin might be in the same vein as poisoning cockroaches. It was a smelly business, and not without risk, but once it was done, there was only relief and satisfaction. No one lit candles for the skittery little buggers, or piled minuscule teddy bears at the scene of the carnage. They weren’t given another thought until it came time to kill them all over again.
Killing Sean and the dude and Reg would be like that, Heath decided. Murder was idiosyncratic, each killing generating a unique affect, like one’s first few love affairs.
The weight of sorrow lifted. Though scratched and dented as they all were, Anna would still be Anna when this debacle was over. Heath prayed the rest of them would be around to welcome her back into the civilized world. Such as it was.
She closed her eyes. One hand rested gently around Elizabeth’s ankle. She slept deep and hard. There were no dreams.
* * *
Sunrise was only a suggestion far to the east when the dude woke them by banging on the boulder with a chunk of blackened wood.
“Up. We’re moving.”
Long hours of immobility had stiffened overworked, sore muscles. Stirring elicited groans even from Katie, who was the youngest, and usually as agile as a gymnast. This morning she was a gymnast with a chipped front tooth and a bottom lip as swollen and purple as a ripe plum. Elizabeth’s face had reached what Heath hoped was maximum nastiness. She was glad her daughter couldn’t see it. The eye was monstrous, purple-and-black, fat with blood. Her fine cheekbone was hidden under a blob of swollen flesh in varying hues from puce to celadon. Heath doubted her own face was any more appealing, though, as far as she could tell, her skin was more broken than bruised. The burn on her arm was hideous, four inches across, with the nylon of her jacket seared into the flesh. What was happening below her belt she didn’t want to think about. Pain that was not pain, but almost pain, ghosted along the old nerve pathways hinting at dire blockages, leaks, and ruptures.
No one spoke of Sean or checked his corpse—or whatever remained of it. The dude acted as if the man had never existed. Reg pointedly avoided the side of the boulders where he lay. Katie and Leah had no desire ever to see Sean again, and Heath forbade Elizabeth to look. “Face smashed in” had been a sufficiently evocative description. She wanted no visuals in Elizabeth’s mind to augment the audio.
Heath wanted to see Sean’s body, not for any ghoulish reason, she assured herself. Just to be absolutely sure he was absolutely dead. Her formative years had been during the post-Jaws era when no monster stayed dead until it had been dispatched at least twice. The thought of Sean, a mangled mess of smashed bone and skin fragments where a face should have been, leaping out at her before the credits rolled engendered within her a superstitious tremor.
Since there was no good way she could get to the corpse without involving Leah or one of the girls, she decided to take it on faith that Katie and the dude were not mistaken, and Sean was irrevocably dead.
A night’s rest, and the knowledge they weren’t alone, had revived them. Once they extricated themselves from between the kindly boulders and got the blood circulating, there was almost an air of giddiness. This lightening of mood was not missed by the dude. His face was tight with suspicion. As they relieved themselves, he did not turn his back or look away as he had before.
Ghosts who bashed out the brains of rapists wouldn’t be a satisfactory explanation for Sean’s demise for such as the dude. He seemed a practical man. Heath studied him, seeking a clue to his mental processes. Chthonic, Heath had learned that word in high school English. Until now, she’d never had cause to use it. Of the underworld, without humanity, hard, harsh: chthonic, the dude. A sidewalk was more expressive. On a good day, one might be able to carve one’s initials in his visage with a sharp stick. At present, even that niggardly sign of life was gone.
She and Elizabeth would have to be very careful today. Belligerence or delay would not be tolerated. With Sean no longer around to slow the pace, Heath was the weakest link. She daren’t falter. The dude would put a bullet through her brain without a second thought.
For a while it looked as if he were going to leave the girls and Leah in wrist bindings, rendering it virtually impossible for them to pull the chair. Heath was readying her mind to die with dignity when, with a shrug that could have meant anything, he cut the plastic. Raw welts oozed blood where the ties had bitten deep. Heath had to look away lest she cry.
Fog shrouded the forest. The sun rising over the treetops was a glowing dime-sized silver disk when the dude called a stop. They were deep into the burned area, the landscape cremated and scattered by the wind. Bare-toothed rocks and black amputated limbs attested to the fact there was no peace in death. E and Leah put Rick Shaw’s paddle handles on a waist-high rock so Heath could sit upright. She leaned her shoulder against a foreshortened tree trunk.
The perch was gratingly uncomfortable, but Heath was afraid if she unpacked herself, when the plane flew over the dude would shoot her rather than wait until she was remounted. Should they get home one day, she would greet Robo-butt—as E dubbed her wheelchair—as an old friend rather than an odious necessity.
Leah and the girls sat in the grit of old ashes. Reg and the dude paced. Around them was nothing but the grim residue of fire: blackened tree trunks, arms burned to stumps, pointing accusingly at the dull gray sky.
“Katie,” Leah whispered, “does the dude look familiar at all to you?”
Katie stared hard at the man for a minute or more. “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“Why?” Heath asked. “Does he look familiar to you?” If Leah knew him, surely she would have mentioned it by now.
“I thought he did at first,” Leah said. “Then I thought not. Who could forget those eyes?”
“Carp eyes,” Elizabeth said.
“Shark eyes,” Katie said.
“Then last night he said something odd.”
Heath had known Leah long enough to realize that, without help, she wouldn’t go on. Often she didn’t finish sentences. Evidently finishing them in her head was sufficient communication. “What did he say?” Heath prompted.
“I told him Katie was a child, an innocent. He said, ‘Tell that to Gerald.’”
“Your husband?” Heath asked.
“I guess so. He sounded like he knew Gerald.”
“Maybe a business contact?” Heath asked.
“Why would daddy know a douche bag like him?” Katie asked.
“Katie,” Leah remonstrated.
“Douche bag,” Elizabeth confirmed.
“You’re outvoted, Leah,” Heath said.
“What business? Gerald has … issues, but violence isn’t one of them,” L
eah said.
“Shut up,” Reg snapped at them. Then, as if it had been too long since he’d said it, “Fuck. Plane can’t find us in this shit, Dude.”
“Ground fog,” the dude said. “It’ll burn off.”
The sun climbed; the fog thinned, then was gone. Sunlight warmed Heath’s cheeks and hands.
No silver plane burred into the blue sky.
Reg stopped pacing. He sat with his feet planted wide apart, throwing a jackknife into the dirt and scowling. The dude removed his red-and-black checked hunter’s coat and spread it on the ground, colorful side up, to make a bigger signal for the plane. He kept looking from the coat to his wristwatch to the sky.
Another hour passed. No airplane.
Heath was out of the chair, her spine braced against the stump. She still believed the dude would shoot her should she cause delay, but the pain of holding herself upright and balanced made the bullet seem the lesser evil.
By the time the sun was halfway up the sky, and clouds were beginning to show ominously in the northeast, the dude was including Heath in his geometry of vision: coat, wristwatch, sky, Heath. The pattern reminded her of a cocaine addict she roomed with briefly in college. When the stuff was available, Sarah would obsess on something else, her hair, the mirror, her makeup. Eventually, and inevitably, the coke would be factored into the pattern. That’s when Heath knew Sarah had lost the battle; she would use.
Heath tried to ignore the lightning strikes of the dude’s eyes. She had the eerie feeling that his drug was death itself. His emotions would crescendo, hit a set point, and he would blow her to kingdom come just to take the edge off.
Reg stripped to the yellow hoodie, identical to the black one that customarily covered it. The dude nodded approval at the bright color. From then on, Reg was configured into the pattern. Five points: sky, watch, coat, Heath, Reg; an infernal pentagram drawn in the air. Tension quivered so palpably Heath expected it to become visible, to shiver and shimmer like July heat off the Smoke Creek Desert.
Reg ceased his constant grumbling. Bereft of the word “fuck” he did not speak. Periodically, he shot the dude hostile glances, but never when the dude was looking at him. Having nothing better to do, he glared at the women, daring them to speak.
Heath was scared to scratch, yawn, stretch, or breathe too deeply. Who knew what might bring disaster down upon their heads? This was a hideous game, and only the dude knew the rules. Breaking one carried a penalty of death or beating.
Though the plane meant nothing good for the captives, Heath found herself praying to hear the angry buzzing of the engine, anything to interrupt the high-pitched psychic whine running along the wires of her mind. Nitroglycerin ran through the dude’s veins. Living each minute knowing he might explode and destroy Elizabeth or Katie or Leah was so excruciating Heath was tempted to bring his wrath upon herself simply to end it.
Unfortunately, it was Katie who set him off.
“Leah—Momma—I think I know where I saw him!” she exclaimed suddenly. “The dude. Daddy has a picture of him.”
Slowly, a crocodile emerging from cold river mud, Reg raised his head. His eyes returned from whatever inner vista they’d been watching to rest on Katie.
“Dude,” he said in a low voice. The pewter-colored pistol lay atop the black hoodie he’d dropped on the ground. He picked it up as he rose to his feet.
The dude squinted over his shoulder. “What?” he demanded, then rotated his body until it aligned beneath his face. Head and body seemed to move independently of each other. Heath’s crawling sense that he was not human flared. Had her legs been functional, she might have run away, abandoning her child and risking a bullet in the back.
“Kid’s seen a picture of you,” Reg said.
The dude walked slowly toward them, a power contained, wild horses being held in check. When he reached them, he bent over to close his fist in the front of Katie’s shirt. Without apparent effort, he lifted her until he was looking up into her face. “Your father has my photograph?”
“Put her down,” Leah begged, scrambling to her feet. Elizabeth was rising as well. Heath couldn’t reach her to drag her back down.
“We were talking about a TV star who looked like you is all,” Katie squeaked. “He, he—”
“He was on The Young and the Restless,” Heath said. Given all the hours she’d spent in a hospital bed she knew the classic soaps.
Never taking his eyes off Katie’s face, he quietly asked, “Is that right?”
“Yes,” Katie gasped. His free arm shot out like a piston, his fist punching Leah in the stomach. Her slender body folded over, then crumpled to the ground
“Are you sure?” the dude asked in the same even tone.
An eager tension plucked at the corners of his eyes like a smile so long unused it had atrophied.
“The plane! The plane!” Reg was shouting and pointing.
Heath was of the generation that could not hear those words without picturing Hervé Villechaize on the beach of Fantasy Island. Hysterical laughter clawed its way up her throat. Putting both hands around her neck, she squeezed to keep her esophagus from bursting. Katie was going to die, and the plane was coming to lead them into perdition, and it took every ounce of strength she had to keep from laughing until her rib cage cracked.
Instantly indifferent to Katie, the dude dropped her. Unhurt, she got to her feet and ran to where Leah was uncurling from the gut punch. Reg tore off his yellow hoodie. Waving it frantically, he shouted, “Down here! Here! Down here!” The dude stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the oncoming aircraft as if waiting to be strafed.
The metal of the plane flashed, the wings rocked; it descended until Heath thought the wheels would touch the tops of the trees. In a roar and a storm of disturbed ashes it flew over. Heath could count the rivets on its undercarriage. Two white objects, each the size of a fat bed pillow, emerged from the plane’s left-side door to plummet to earth.
FORTY-ONE
Anna and Wily lay low until the thugs and hostages were gone from the sheltering stones. After helping Wily to descend, Anna found the knife. When she dropped it into the coat pocket, it clanked. The cell phone; she’d forgotten she had it. Two bars of power showed. There was still no signal.
Wily limping at her side, she trailed the thugs across the burn. Had Reg’s familiar “Fuck!” not alerted her, she would have shown herself. Just over a low rise, jagged with the charred remains of trees, the dude had stopped to await the plane.
Within earshot but out of sight, Anna skinned out of Jimmy’s coat. Spread like a blanket, checkered side down, it kept her and Wily off of the cold ground. She didn’t bother to wrap her black T-shirt around her hair and face. Ash from the burn, coupled with soot from the thugs’ fire, grimed her until she was probably much the same color as the remains of the forest.
Sharing tepid water and filtered sunshine, she and Wily listened and waited. The sun climbed, warming the air. Wily slept. Anna dozed and nodded until screams snapped her out of a fantasy of corn chowder with fresh buttered bread.
A gunshot arm made belly-crawling an exercise in self torture. On three legs, like Wily, Anna crabbed uphill until she could see over the berm of earth they were hiding behind.
The dude held Katie up high in one hand. Leah was on the ground in the fetal position. Wily smelled a stink inside the dude that made his nose wrinkle. A whine burned in his throat. Anna believed she could smell it, too, a mix of burning electrical wires and acetone.
Before Anna could piece together what was happening, an angry buzzing of enraged hornets shook the sky. A shadow struck like a fist across her eyes. Wily barked unheard as the airplane flew over low and slow. Two parcels tumbled out the pilot’s-side door.
Reg ran after them. Grabbing one up, he tore it wide open.
“Food, man. Food!” he shouted with the innocent delight of a child.
In pure agony, Anna and Wily watched as Reg and the dude devoured deli sandwiches and guzzled from lit
tle boxes with straws. There would be food left over. The pilot had brought enough for four men. Only two still lived.
Anna winked at Wily.
Heath and the others got what was meant for Sean and Jimmy. Anna and the dog watched them eat, delighting as their friends grew in strength bite by bite. Wily was sniffing: meats, cheeses, breads, and the smells of his people filling with food and hope.
“Look,” Anna whispered, pointing at Heath nudging a paper-covered parcel behind the tree stump she’d been homesteading. “Lunch.”
Still chewing, the dude fished a piece of yellow lined paper from one of the sacks, letting the plastic bag fall to the ground. Anna counted the separate pieces of litter the dickheads had strewn about the landscape. Wrappings, bags, napkins, juice boxes, straws, plastic utensils, packages of salt and mustard and mayonnaise.
Litterbugs.
Anna was glad she’d killed two of them.
“What’s the penalty for littering, Ranger Pigeon?”
“Death, you slovenly pig.”
“What is it you got?” Reg asked as he loped over to the dude to read over his shoulder.
“Note from the pilot,” the dude said.
The thugs pored over the paper for what seemed an awfully long time. “Reading probably isn’t one of their job skills,” Anna whispered. Wily gave her a shushing look.
Leah and Elizabeth were quickly helping Heath back into her chair. Katie was holding the handles steady.
“Clever girls,” Anna murmured to Wily.
The plane flew over again. This time the group followed in the direction indicated, the dude leading, Leah and E pulling the chair, Katie pushing, and Reg bringing up the rear. Beyond a jagged black crest of a hill, they disappeared from sight. The hell-born stench dissipated.
Anna and Wily waited another five minutes to make sure nobody came back to see if they’d turned the iron off and locked the back door, then came out of hiding and trotted to the white paper sack Heath had squirreled away.
Partially squashed from the unusual nature of its delivery was a ham-and-cheese sandwich on a kaiser roll. The ants had gotten to it. Anna brushed off the ones that weren’t mired in the mayonnaise, tore the sandwich in two pieces, and gave one to Wily. Both wolfed the food down without bothering to sit.