The Closer

by Donn Cortez

  The Gourmet tried again, yanking Jack toward him at the same time, so that his behind scooted forward and his legs bent at the knees. By leaning forward Jack was able to keep his balance, but the head rolled off his groin and landed between his spread thighs. It stared blankly up at him as if to say, “Hey—you’re the one that chopped me up in the first place.” Jack’s arms flopped limply at his sides, screaming sacks of dead, useless muscle.

  “Now,” the Gourmet said, taking a step backward, “I think there’s a prize hidden in this particular container. I’d like you to pull it out.”

  “All right,” Jack said. He didn’t see any reason to resist.

  It took an agonizing effort to move his arms at all, but his hands still worked. He managed to fumble the head around so it wasn’t looking at him anymore.

  “Is this a twist-off, or do I need an opener?” he asked.

  “Go in through the neck. There’s a slit in the back of the throat—it’s behind that.”

  Of course there is, Jack thought. I put it in there myself. Too bad I didn’t put a .38 in there while I was at it.

  He was about to reach inside—when suddenly, dogs started barking.

  Nikki froze—then darted inside and pulled the door shut behind her.

  She looked around wildly. If he came out of the trailer to check on the noise, she should have a place to hide—and then she noticed the door in the far wall, beyond what looked like exercise equipment. What if he came out of there?

  There was a pile of bales in the far corner, next to the elephant. She ran without thinking, ducked down behind them. The elephant favored her with a bemused glance.

  She heard the door in the back open.

  The fuck am I thinking? I know he’s the Gourmet. I should just stick my gun in his face and wrap him up for Jack.

  Except this one wasn’t going to faint the way Road Rage did, was he? No. Somehow, she didn’t think that a guy who kept a bull elephant in a shed behind his house would be intimidated by a woman with a pistol. She might have to just shoot him—and she knew, with a cold certainty, that she could.

  But what if it wasn’t the Gourmet? What if he’d used a go-between, or it was some half-bright local he’d hired to feed his fucking menagerie?

  She heard footsteps.

  The Gourmet glanced sharply at the door, then back at Jack. “Of course,” he said. “You’re working with Road Rage, aren’t you? That would be him, now.”

  Jack knew better, knew who it had to be. “You fucking moron,” he said, forcing a laugh. “Think you’ve got everything under control? That’s not Road Rage— I’m Road Rage. You’ve been torturing the wrong guy— Christ, you haven’t even figured out that Djinn-X is a woman.”

  That got his attention. Good—if he thought Nikki held the keys to the Stalking Ground, he’d think twice before killing her. Jack continued, “And she didn’t come alone, either. See, we all talked it over, and we realized something—namely, that you’re a fucking loon. And since we never got to have our little hunt, we thought it might be fun to do the real thing.”

  He fixed the Gourmet with his eyes, tried to project a savage glee. “You poor asshole—the Patron’s out there.”

  The Gourmet swallowed.

  “Then I don’t need you anymore, do I?” he asked.

  He raised the revolver and shot Jack in the head.

  Was that Jack’s voice?

  She barely had time to finish the thought before the sharp crack! of a gunshot made her jump. Before she knew what she was doing, she was sprinting around the elephant and for the back of the quonset. That’s where the shot had come from—where Jack’s voice had come from. Jack’s voice, saying something about the Patron.

  She stopped herself just short of the door. The dogs were barking crazily now, yelping at the top of their poodle lungs. The elephant raised his trunk and trumpeted. The chimp, completely unmoved, continued to stare at her with mournful eyes. It seemed resolved to whatever fate had in store.

  She had to think. Think like Jack.

  No. Think like the Gourmet….

  Fortunately, it wasn’t Jack’s head.

  By the time the Gourmet finished his statement, Jack knew what he was going to do. Gambling that the Gourmet’s habits would make him go for a body shot, he raised Road Rage’s head to chest level.

  Impact slammed the head against him, knocked him flat on his back on the table. The sudden movement of his arms was excruciating; he wanted to scream, but the breath had been knocked out of him.

  He wondered how much of the damage the skull had absorbed.

  He wondered how long he had to live.

  The Gourmet didn’t waste time putting a second bullet into his captive; he moved quickly and quietly from the kitchen to the workshop, frightened yet exhilarated. The Patron? Here?

  Djinn-X may have been the Stalking Ground’s creator, but the Patron was its undisputed champion. The Gourmet knew he’d have to eat him eventually, but…

  He wasn’t sure he was ready. This was the Patron, for Christ’s sake. His elaborate scenarios, his attention to detail, his knack for eliciting horror—all inhumanly perfect. If he and Djinn-X had pooled their talents, his chances for survival were minimal.

  Except—they were on his turf. His stalking ground.

  Smiling, he opened the electrical panel on the wall of the workshop and flipped three of the switches— the ones marked in red.

  Too late, Nikki remembered how much the Gourmet liked traps.

  A loud chonk! from the front of the quonset caught her attention. A steel bar had swung down and locked into place, blocking the door she’d come through. The overheads shut off, and a bank of colored spotlights behind the octopus tank flared to life and began to flash. The room flickered blue, red, green.

  And the sound began. A rhythmic, bass pulsing, so deep Nikki felt it in her bones. Speakers, mounted somewhere above her.

  “Hello.” The disembodied voice issued from the same speakers. “Are you aware that elephants can converse across many miles?”

  Abruptly, the chimpanzee began to scream. It was a crazed, wild sound, both heartbreaking and terrifying at the same time. The chimp began to throw itself around its cage, slamming into the wire mesh with no apparent regard for its own safety.

  “They use ultra-low frequency waves, undetectable to the human ear. The French have experimented with the same type of waves on human beings, and discovered they can produce a wide range of effects: disorientation, nausea, extreme anxiety.”

  Nikki’s heart pounded. The bass pulse got quieter and deeper at the same time—it felt like she was hearing it with her whole body, not just her ears. Her stomach lurched in panic and her head ached.

  “Pachyderms are much more sensitive to these waves, of course. I’ve done a few experiments of my own. At a certain level of intensity, they become quite agitated. I imagine it’s like having the whole universe screaming in your brain….”

  The elephant bellowed, much louder than before. There was an audible click and Nikki saw the cuff around its leg fall off. It shambled toward her, madness in its eyes.

  Nikki did the only thing she could think of. She shot the octopus tank.

  The front exploded outward in a wave of water, tentacles and shattered glass. She was already sprinting— not away from the elephant, but toward it. She cut to the side, ducked as it swung the wrinkled gray club of its trunk at her, went into a shoulder-roll and came out of it in a desperate, full-length leap.

  She landed sprawled on top of the pile of bales at the same moment the wave of water sloshed against them. Against them, and past—to the cuff lying on the floor, the one that had restrained the elephant.

  The cuff attached to the wall with the thin, insulated cord.

  For a second, she thought she had guessed wrong. The elephant had turned, a corrugated cable of muscle was reaching for her neck—and then there was a sharp crackle, followed an instant later by a deafening bellow of pain. The colored spots died, as did th
e speakers.

  The sound of the elephant collapsing in the dark was like someone dropping a waterbed from a two-story window. She’d been right—the cuff had been electrical, had shorted in the water. The jolt had been enough to knock the pachyderm for a loop, but she could tell from its ragged breathing it was still alive. The chimp had stopped its screaming, the dogs their barking; she hoped she hadn’t killed them, but at least they wouldn’t be dinner for a sociopath. She could hear octopi flopping wetly on the floor.

  She stepped down cautiously from the bales, hoping that the power wouldn’t suddenly come back on. Cool water soaked through her shoes. She kept as far away from the wheeze of the elephant as she could, and began once again to make her way through the darkness toward the back of the quonset.

  She was in the middle of the room when she heard the door open.

  The Gourmet heard the shot, the surging splash, the elephant’s roar and collapse and the dark silence that followed. He knew what must have happened: overloaded by fear, about to be trampled, the intruder had shot at the elephant and missed, hitting the tank. A single shot meant the elephant must have dispatched him immediately afterward. The water had then shorted out the electrical systems, incapacitating the animals and causing the collapse of the elephant.

  Well. He’d have to work quickly to get the necessary organs into storage.

  He quickly located a flashlight in the darkness, though he didn’t turn it on. Opening the door, he ducked through quickly, staying low. He had the revolver in one hand and the flashlight in the other. He really didn’t think there was anyone left alive in the room—if there had been more than one person, there would have been more than one shot—but he liked to be thorough.

  He crouched in the dark, listening.

  Nikki stayed perfectly still. She brought her gun up and trained it on where she thought the Gourmet would be. She waited.

  Abruptly, the lights came on.

  Nikki had enough time to see one thing—that’s not Jack—and then she fired.

  Bullets slammed into the Gourmet’s body. He staggered back, dropping the revolver and the flashlight. The last rational thought he had was why are the lights on? and then he died.

  Jack appeared in the doorway. He met Nikki’s eyes.

  “You killed him,” Jack said. “Fuck.”

  And then he collapsed.

  Jack came to on a couch. He looked around; he seemed to be in a mobile home. “Nikki?” he croaked.

  She came in from the kitchen holding a glass of water. She tried to give it to him, but Jack couldn’t seem to raise his arm. She held it to his lips and he drank.

  “Jack,” she said. “What the hell happened?”

  “Got sloppy. Gourmet traced my remote access to the motel, staked it out. Followed me.”

  “Yeah? How’d he miss me?”

  “Didn’t. Assumed you were just a hooker I was going to do—thought I was Djinn-X.”

  “A real genius. Sure did a number on you, though.”

  Jack glanced down at the mottled green, purple and yellow of his arms; they looked like the skin of something from another planet. “Yeah. I’d have a bullet hole in my chest to go with them if the GPS unit hadn’t caught the slug. Lucky he didn’t stick around for a second shot.”

  “Well, I’d be elephant toe-jam right now if I hadn’t shorted out Jumbo’s electric leash.” She described how she’d managed to incapacitate the elephant. “I guessed he had it wired up to give the beast a jolt if it tried to break free—otherwise, there was no way that cord could be strong enough.”

  “You guessed wrong.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Baby elephants are restrained with a thick chain— they soon learn they can’t break it. As they get older, the thick chain is replaced by a thinner one, and eventually by a rope. The elephant is conditioned to think it can’t break free—so it doesn’t. Only the lock was electric, so he could release it remotely.”

  “Huh. Well, what the fuck do I know about elephants? I’ve never even seen Dumbo, for Christ’s sake….”

  Jack struggled to his feet, wincing in pain. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “You expecting friends of his to show up?”

  “No. I doubt if the Gourmet had any.” Jack edged past Nikki, headed for the door.

  “But—shouldn’t we go through his stuff while we’re here? Check for notes, trophies—”

  “There’s no point. We’re done.”

  “Jesus, Jack, you sound like you’re giving up.”

  “Giving up?” He turned back and faced her. “There’s nothing to give up. We lost. Don’t you get it? All we can do now is screw up evidence—there’s nothing we can accomplish now that a forensics team can’t do better. I’ll send the Gourmet’s files from the Stalking Ground to the police, and hope he was arrogant enough to be honest. If not, we’ll never know. You understand? We’ll never know.”

  “What was I supposed to do, Jack? Let the asshole shoot me?”

  “No. You were supposed to do your job.”

  “Yeah? Kinda hard to do when your partner disappears in the middle of the fucking night.”

  “I wouldn’t have gone anywhere if you hadn’t jumped down my throat—”

  “You were fucking up! Somebody had to tell you, and it wasn’t gonna be one of our targets, was it?”

  “My targets,” Jack said, “tell me everything I need.”

  It hurt like hell, but Jack forced himself to grab the knob and open the door. He walked out into the pitiless Nevada sunshine, and told himself he was lucky to be alive.

  He almost believed it.

  They erased as much of their presence as they could, though they didn’t re-enter the menagerie. Nikki could hear the elephant moving around, and she didn’t think he was happy. They broke down the back door instead, and retrieved the remains of the GPS unit. “So what about Road Rage’s head?” Nikki asked. “Or what’s left of it…”

  “Leave it,” Jack said. “We get rid of the packaging, the authorities will think he was just another victim.”

  “Once this hits the papers—with the fucking elephant and all—the Patron’s gonna figure out what happened,” Nikki said.

  “Yeah. The Stalking Ground is just him and me, now….”

  They drove back to Reno in Nikki’s rental. They didn’t talk much. When they got to the motel room, Jack took four painkillers and slumped onto one of the beds, exhausted. He was asleep in seconds.

  When he woke up, Nikki was gone.

  Dear Jack:

  I saved your life, you asshole.

  Not that you haven’t saved mine—but at least I say thanks when you stop some maniac from gutting me like a fish. I do the same for you, and I get the feeling you’re disappointed.

  I can’t do this anymore, Jack.

  I still believe in what we do. I do. Other people would say we’re crazy and doomed and sooner or later, we’re going to get caught. I don’t give a shit. I know we made a difference, that we’ve saved lives and helped people in pain get on with living.

  This is hard for me to say, Jack. I’m quitting because I’ve lost faith in you.

  You’re looking to fail. I’ve seen that look in the eyes of other people on the street, and they’ve just stopped believing in anything but death. They know it’s coming and they wish it would get here just a little bit faster.

  I don’t want to die. For a long time I didn’t know what I wanted—maybe I still don’t—but I don’t want that. I’ve tried talking to you, but you don’t hear me. I don’t think this will change your mind, either.

  I’m sorry, Jack. I hope you can at least admit what you’re doing to yourself, if not to me. Do what you have to, I’m not going to judge. I wish you luck.

  Nikki

  PART THREE:

  Critical Response

  There thou mayest wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

  —John Dryden, The Maiden Queen

  CHAPTER
ELEVEN

  Charlie Holloway stood on the roof of his gallery and looked up. It was late afternoon in October, almost five o’clock or so, and the gray Vancouver sky was punctuated with thousands of dashes of black. Crows, flying southeast to rookeries in Burnaby, just like they did every day at this time. Charlie knew a flock of crows was called a murder, but what would you call this? A massacre? A holocaust?

  He watched for another few minutes as the last stragglers swooped past, trying to beat the sinking sun, then climbed back down the fire escape and into the alley. His assistant, Falmi, leaned next to the open back door, smoking a clove cigarette. He looked even more Gothic than usual; his spiky black hair was stiffened with some arcane styling product, every inch of exposed skin was dead-white, his nose and eyebrows and lower lip all sported silver rings or studs. His pants were made of skin-tight black latex, his shirt a mesh of some bright orange industrial plastic. Silver barbells pierced his nipples, stretched the gaunt scarceness of his belly button. His boots were high-heeled, black, and laced to the knee. He sported a new tattoo on his right arm, a naked woman draped over a grinning, fanged skull.

  “You know, you can see the crows from here,” Falmi said in his high-pitched voice.

  “Yes, but you can’t see them filling the whole sky,” Charlie said. “Expanse, vista, that’s what I like.”

  “Expense, Visa, that’s what you like,” Falmi said. He dropped the clove cigarette to the ground and crushed it out delicately with one thick-soled boot.

  Charlie chuckled. Falmi knew one of the reasons Charlie kept him around was the image he projected, and his sardonic attitude was part of that. “Everything ready?” Charlie asked as they went inside.

  “Caterers are just finishing up,” Falmi said. “We’re good to go.”

  Charlie bustled around, checking on last-minute details. He expected a good turnout for this opening, lots of media, and he wanted to make sure everyone was fed and happy.