Nightwalker 3

by Frank Roderus

  Becca shuddered. “I’m so very, very sorry.”

  “Not your fault. Not at all.” He motioned toward the basket. “I don’t suppose you brought me a file baked into a cake there, or a spoon I can use to tunnel my way out of here?”

  “Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. Just a can of pork and beans.”

  “The real thing?”

  “Yes, pre-war!”

  He smiled. “Sounds like the best offer I’ve had all day.”

  “They made me open the can before I came in here. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Heaven forbid I should have any sharp objects.” He laughed and pointed to the big bowie knife on his belt. No one had thought to take it from him, and he certainly was not going to suggest such a thing.

  He accepted the can from Becca and poured half of it on the floor for the dog. Then, lacking a spoon or any other utensils, dipped the can up and drank the contents. The beans, swimming in a thin, sweet sauce, tasted wonderful.

  “Could you do me a favor?” he asked between bites.

  “If I can, certainly.”

  “The dog needs to go outside to do his business. Then bring him back, if you wouldn’t mind.” Wolfe smiled. “He’s good company. Better than a lot of people I could think of.”

  “Do you have a leash for him?”

  “No, but I imagine he’ll go with you.”

  Becca snapped her fingers and patted her thigh. The dog gave Wolfe an inquiring look and only consented to go when Wolfe motioned toward the door.

  Becca was back in five or six minutes. She let the dog back into the makeshift cell, returned the empty bean can to her basket, and took out a plastic soda bottle.

  “Don’t believe the label. It’s only water.”

  “Water’s fine, thanks.”

  She retrieved the candle and paused at the door to look back at him for a moment, then she was gone. He heard the sound of the bolt being closed again, locking him and the dog inside.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  He spent the next two days in the cell. Becca came by several times each day, bringing him food and walking the dog while Wolfe ate. He enjoyed those breaks, but was not lonely during the times when he was alone. After years driving the highways alone in the cab of a truck plus two years alone in the bottom of the mine, he was accustomed to being by himself, and truth was, he found himself to be pretty good company.

  He sang; Wolfe could not remember the words to very many songs, but he remembered long phrases and sometimes whole verses. He would sing those over and over again, and nearly always in the same voice as whichever artist recorded the piece. The thing was that Jim Wolfe had a singing voice that would have frightened women and terrified small children, so he sang without sound, and inside his head, his range was tremendous, his pitch, perfect. Why, sometimes, he could sing duets, or even sound exactly like Cher. On a good day, he could reproduce the entire Village People. As far as he was concerned, well, it was singing, sort of. And he enjoyed it.

  On a not-so-good day, he spent his time thinking about Lurleen and Jojo. The memories were good ones: Lurleen in the kitchen, smiling and chattering, stopping in the middle of her work to pour him a fresh cup of coffee or walk over to him and give him a kiss behind the ear for no reason at all. Jojo, asleep with that stuffed pink elephant he adored, or the side-to-side way he used to run when he was barely able to walk, but refused to slow down in spite of that.

  The memories would have been easier to bear if he only knew they were still alive. If he could be sure they were waiting for him. But then, they had to be, didn’t they? Because if they were gone, then so was he. Breathing or walking, or lying cold and empty in a town dump, if Lurleen and Jojo were not alive, then neither was he. They had to be alive. Somewhere. And he had to find them. That was all there was to it. He had to return to them.

  When those memories came to him, he sat on the storage room floor and pulled the dog into his lap and hugged it close, taking its warmth as a substitute for the comfort he really wanted to feel inside his arms. Singing inside his head was a far better way to pass the time. But he missed them. Good Lord, how he missed them. And if his eyes became moist at those times, well, he was probably coming down with a head cold or something like that.

  It was on his third night confined in the makeshift jail cell that he heard the boom and crackle of gunfire nearby. The dog jumped to its feet, head tilted, ears erect. It looked at Wolfe and gave him a tentative and questioning wag of its tail, as if to ask what all the racket was about. The dog did not know, but the man did. Paradise was invading Delaney.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Wolfe heard the crash of a chair falling onto the concrete floor of the abandoned service station as the guard with his shotgun jumped to his feet and ran out into the melee. That was all Wolfe needed in order to make his escape. He had extraordinary strength, it was true, but he was no comic book superhero, and being strong was not the same thing as being bulletproof. A load of buckshot would take him out as readily as it would anyone else.

  Now that the guard was gone, Wolfe went to the locked door and smashed the heel of his hand into the door panel just above the doorknob. The door shattered, and he was able to reach through and slide the bolt back.

  He paused at the door leading onto the street to take a look around before charging outside. The street was empty. He could see bursts of light coming from behind the houses and few businesses on either side of the main drag. They looked like miniature lightning flashes, but of course, it was gunfire.

  One glance and he knew what was happening. Whatever it might have been that Kent Laffrey wanted them to do, the people of Delaney had adopted Wolfe’s entrapment plan, after all. They had built barricades across the alley mouths and placed otherwise useless cars and pickup trucks at either extremity of the street, ready to be rolled into place once the Paradise invading force was between them. From the front of the makeshift jail, Wolfe could see the cars and trucks parked, waiting to be positioned. Across the street from him, he could see barricades made of old furniture and who knew what else.

  The problem was that the men from Paradise had not come rolling down Main in their wagons. They’d come on foot, creeping close in a wide and circling move, coming in behind the barricades. Wolfe wondered if there had been an alarm given. If the Delaney guards were only posted on the highway east of town, they would have been taken completely unaware. Wolfe suspected that was exactly what had happened. He felt a sense of deep, guilty hopelessness. This was his plan and it was a failure. Instead of trapping the Paradise force, it misdirected the Delaney defenders and allowed them to be overwhelmed by the superior numbers and armament of the people from Paradise.

  As suddenly as it had begun, and as vicious as the fighting must have been, the rattle of gunfire was already subsiding from one end of the street to the other. Wolfe felt heartsick over it, but there was nothing he could do, not at this point. His concern now was that he get out of sight. If he were captured, he would surely be executed by a vengeful Mistress Alethia, and that would help no one.

  “Go back,” Wolfe said to the dog, sweeping his hand in a motion to send the animal back into the service station. The dog obeyed and Wolfe commanded, “Stay,” then closed the door to ensure it would not attempt to join him and give him away.

  With that, he took a quick look up and down the street to make sure no one was watching, then took hold of the down spout and climbed hand-over-hand onto the gas station roof. He lay down there behind the business’s sign and settled in to wait until he could be reasonably sure of remaining free. Besides, he wanted to be close enough to see what was happening here in town before he decided on his next move.

  There were a few final cracks of pistol shots, and then at the east end of Delaney, a red flare rose into the sky and burst like a skyrocket, obviously a prearranged signal to someone. It probably meant that Delaney had been taken, its residents captured. Lord that had been quick. And so very easy. And it was all his fault. T
he defense plan was his, so now was responsibility for the defeat. Wolfe put his head down and offered up a prayer of heartfelt apology. He could not have been more miserable than at this moment, not even when he had first realized that those flashes of light in the sky meant his beloved country was under nuclear attack by her enemies. Even that had not been as bad, because at least that war was not his fault. The loss of this infinitely smaller war was on Jim Wolfe’s conscience, and it weighed very heavy there.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Wolfe watched from his rooftop perch as horse-drawn wagons were driven in from where they’d been waiting a mile or more to the east. The residents of Delaney were herded out of their homes into the street, then grouped according to age and sex and loaded into the wagons. There were not enough wagons to carry them all, so the younger, stronger men were held in a bunch at the tail end of the wagon train, surrounded by armed guards.

  One young male, looked like a teenage boy, Wolfe thought, panicked and tried to run to safety. One of the guards shot him in the back. Another walked over to stand over the writhing, crying boy, and finished him with a bullet in the head.

  The prisoners were silent after that, and there were no further attempts to escape.

  Wolfe noticed that the people stood mutely, staring toward the ground for the most part. No one seemed willing to look anyone else in the eyes.

  Once the population of Delaney was well under control, squads of Paradise goons fanned out through the town and started going through the buildings one at a time, looking for any holdouts who might be hiding from the invaders. Wolfe guessed they were looking for anything worth looting, also, because one wagon was held back, ready to carry anything of value that could be recovered.

  The prisoners were required to wait while a quick initial sweep was made through their town. Then four very large and muscular thugs were left behind with the one empty wagon, while all the others started east toward Paradise. Paradise. Wolfe found the name was foul in his mouth now. Some Paradise.

  He saw with surprise that there was one Delaney resident who was exempt from the rough treatment accorded all the others. Kent Laffrey was set out onto the seat of the lead wagon, treated like a hero, which, to Alethia, he might very well be. No wonder Laffrey spoke against Wolfe. The Paradise invaders must have planned an assault that would have been vulnerable to a surprise entrapment on Main Street. That would be why Laffrey opposed it. And when the council decided to set the trap anyway, Laffrey must have gotten word to Alethia that the invasion plan had to be changed at the last minute. Kent Laffrey sold out his own friends and neighbors for...what? Thirty pieces of silver? Or whatever the current equivalent would be, Wolfe judged. Whatever he was promised. Wolfe hoped the SOB choked on it.

  Just before the wagons began moving, Wolfe saw Laffrey turn and point toward the old service station where Wolfe now lay hiding on the roof. Was Laffrey selling him out, too? Probably so.

  Indeed, one of the Paradise leaders spoke to the cleanup squad who had been busy carrying boxes and bundles out of a derelict movie house, probably Delaney’s food storehouse, and they headed at a trot toward the gas station where Wolfe had been imprisoned.

  The main body of invaders and their prisoners turned their attention eastward toward Paradise while the cleanup crew came to get Wolfe. Wolfe had no illusions about what they intended to do with him once he was in their hands. Had they wanted him as a prisoner, they would have taken him and put him with the others before the train moved off. Instead, the prisoners were all being taken to Paradise without him. It seemed certain these men intended to kill him here in Delaney and not go to the trouble of hauling him all the way back to Paradise for disposal.

  As far as Alethia was concerned, Wolfe’s sentence was already passed. The only thing remaining was to execute that sentence and Jim Wolfe.

  Wolfe flexed his muscles and rose into a crouch behind the signboard atop the service station. The four bully boys were coming close now; the Paradise wagons were not terribly far away, but no one in the wagons was likely paying much attention to what lay behind. Besides, it was night. Wolfe could see perfectly under these conditions, but the others were literally in the dark and there were no night vision goggles in evidence here. Whatever happened between himself and the Paradise death squad, no one else was likely to interfere.

  The four thugs reached the end of the block. Their pace slowed, and they headed past the gasoline pumps toward the door of the Delaney jail.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “He’s locked in the storage room?” Wolfe heard a voice inquire.

  “That’s what they said. Him and that dog of his.”

  “Well, watch out for the dog when you get in. Shoot it first. Then we’ll take the guy.”

  “I don’t know about you guys, but I want to take this one alive. You saw what he did to Andrew. I want to make him pay for that.”

  “He must be pretty tough, Jack. Andrew wouldn’t have been any pushover.”

  “Against four of us? That’ll be the day.”

  “All right then, but shoot the dog first, then we’ll swarm the guy. We’ll tie him up and everybody have a go at him. Take turn and turn about until he’s dead. That way everybody gets to have some fun with him.”

  Fun, Wolfe thought. So this was what these boys considered to be fun. If he had had any regrets about what he intended to do to them, those thoughts were gone now. These thugs deserved whatever they received. They’d gone to Paradise to sow the seeds of sin and violence; now it was time for the whirlwind to reap the fruits of those seeds.

  Wolfe heard the gas station door being opened and the voices recede indoors. He stepped over the sign and dropped lightly to the ground behind the four men.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The last of the four was barely inside the door when Wolfe dropped behind him. The man heard Wolfe hit the concrete and spun around. Wolfe landed in a crouch, his knees bent to absorb the impact of the fall, and he came upright in a rush, slamming the heel of his right hand into the fellow’s face. The man’s head snapped back. Wolfe could hear a crunch as the neck broke, and the would-be murderer crumbled.

  For one fleeting instant, Wolfe wondered if this was the one who thought it would be ‘fun’ for them to take turns killing him, after first killing the dog. Wolfe was as angry about their threat to shoot the dog as he was about their plan to murder him. Damn them anyway.

  The man hit the floor with a clatter and the next two in line turned around. Wolfe leaped across the body of their fallen comrade and attacked before they had time to realize what was happening. All four had firearms and he did not want to give them time to bring their weapons into play.

  His main advantages were the combination of bewildering speed and vastly superior vision. Here indoors, it would be very dark to the three from Paradise. Wolfe knew he was silhouetted against the night sky outside; he slipped to one side to take that away from them and continued his charge, bolting into one man and flinging him off his feet. Wolfe bent and scooped that man off the floor, lifting him like a bag of feed and throwing him in an underhand motion into the chest of the next one in line. Both men, the one Wolfe threw and then one who was hit by the several hundred pounds of bone and muscle, went sprawling onto the floor.

  The one who had been first in line was standing at the storage room door. The lock was already smashed from when Wolfe broke out, so he only needed to pull it open. That’s when Wolfe turned the dog loose to race into the station to wreak havoc. The man held his rifle ready to shoot whoever came out of the storage room. Instead, Wolfe came in, fast and furious. The SOB was ready to shoot his dog, and Wolfe was mad.

  He knocked the rifle out of the man’s hands with a chop across his arms that broke both the thug’s forearms. The Paradise goon shrieked in pain and dropped his rifle just in time to receive the dog’s charge, the big crossbreed leaping at his throat from inside the blackness of the storage room.

  Wolfe left that one to the dog and spun to make sur
e of the two he’d thrown onto the floor. Those two were getting themselves sorted out and coming to their feet. One of them had recovered his rifle from the floor and was trying to bring it to bear. Before he had time to aim and fire, Wolfe kicked him in the teeth, the sole of Wolfe’s shoes breaking the man’s jaw.

  Wolfe grabbed the gun and twisted it out of his hands, then took it by the barrel and made a backhanded swing as hard as anything Sampras or Agassi ever hit. The stalk of the rifle broke, so did the goon’s face.

  Behind him, Wolfe could hear the dog snarling and the fading screams of a dying man, leaving only one invader who posed any danger. That one was on his hands and knees, fumbling about on the floor in search of his pistol. Wolfe could see it even if the goon couldn’t. It lay several feet away.

  Eventually, the fellow probably could have found it; Wolfe didn’t give him time to do that. Wolfe stood over him, took the man’s head between his hands like a center grabbing a football, and gave it a sharp twist. Again he heard the crunch of bone breaking, and the man went limp in his hands.

  Wolfe dropped the body and leaned over his partner to check for signs of life. There were none, so he turned back to see how the dog was doing with his invader. That one would not be shooting anyone again, neither human nor otherwise. He lay in a pool of dark, quickly-spreading blood from a severed carotid artery.

  The dog stood there wagging its tail, its tongue lolling out and a happy expression on its furry face.

  “Good boy,” Wolfe said, patting his thigh to summon the dog closer so he could pet and praise it.