The Big Finish

by James W. Hall

  Before she closed the door, Thorn said, “There’s a duffel in the canoe. Could you get it out, bring it up here? It’s a little heavy.”

  “Oh, I can handle heavy.”

  “Yes,” Thorn said. “I see that.”

  When the door was closed, Flynn said, “So many good people, risking themselves to hide me, help me. So many good people, here, everywhere we’ve been this last year.”

  “The hospital, Flynn, we need to do it. You’re in bad shape.”

  “You’re telling me? Eddie was giving me pills for the pain, morphine or Oxy or something, I don’t know. But I made him stop. I want to feel this. I don’t want to be cloudy. I want to be right here, experience this as close to natural as I can.”

  “None of this is natural,” Thorn said.

  “Let’s not argue, okay? Can you just follow my wishes?”

  Thorn came around the bed and took Cassandra’s chair. Flynn held out his hand and Thorn gripped it in his own. Feeble, bony, trembling.

  “We never really got to know each other, did we?”

  Thorn couldn’t find an answer.

  “It’s okay, I know you don’t do schmaltzy. That’s fine. But we do need to discuss a couple of things.”

  “Anything you want.”

  “We have to find Jellyroll and the others, where they’re buried. The law will need their bodies for evidence, but we need to give them a proper funeral. Let their families know.”

  “I’ll make sure of that, yes.”

  “Then there’s the question of what to do with my ashes.”

  Flynn smiled at Thorn’s awkward silence.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “It’s about the only decision I have left.”

  Before Thorn could respond, Flynn winced and closed his eyes, bit down hard on his pain, and in a minute or two he drifted away again.

  Thorn watched the tick of his son’s heartbeat in his throat, slow but steady, and felt his own heart downshifting to match it. While Flynn was out, Thorn drank in the young man’s face, his elegant cheekbones, his solid chin, his mother’s sensitive mouth, her lashes, Thorn’s eyebrows arching over the young man’s deep-set eyes.

  The room darkened but he didn’t rise to turn on the lights because it would mean releasing Flynn’s hand. So he sat in the expanding shadows and listened to a wood thrush give its final call of the day and a while later in the full darkness a barn owl began to practice its strangulated screech in the nearby woods. Each of them searching for a mate or defending its territory. Doing what was necessary to keep the species alive.

  * * *

  X-88 tracked the dual scent trails through Belmont Heights then through the thick stand of woods behind the shacks and to the river’s edge near where the hippies had been camping. He wandered up and down the shore for twenty minutes, stopping now and then to crouch and bring his nose near the ground.

  “Who lives downriver?” Cruz asked Dobbins.

  Webb was bone tired and sick of these people, sorry as hell he’d ever given Cruz the time of day. His nose was stuffed up with blood and swollen tissue and his entire face ached. He was certain the nose was broken. Last time that happened, Ladarius Washington was the culprit, basketball practice, Dobbins jigging left when he should have jogged right.

  “Depends on how far downriver you go,” Webb said.

  Cruz stepped close to Dobbins, peered up into his eyes.

  She slapped him across the left cheek, then drew back fast and slapped him again. Neither strike was hard but they stung his flesh and Webb could feel a bulge of anger rising up the column of his spine.

  “Wake up, you fool,” Cruz said in a harsh whisper. “Wake up and focus. They’re getting away, both of them. From the very first you’ve screwed this up and you’re goddamn lucky I came along to save your ass, but I’m out of patience. Do you understand? Now who lives downriver that might be sympathetic to their cause and take them in?”

  Dobbins fingered his burning cheek.

  “You want names?”

  “Let’s start with how many there are. A dozen?”

  “About ten miles down there’s a state park, the river runs past it without any private homes for a long way. Most of the cabins this side of the park, they’ve been abandoned since the river went bad. Out-of-towners, they found somewhere else to vacation.”

  “Nobody local?”

  “There’s one down there, a woman and her kid. I know her pretty well.”

  “And she’s loyal?”

  “I always believed she was.”

  “Her name?”

  “Millie, waitress at the diner in town. Kid’s name is Emma. Pretty little girl, lost her legs in a car accident. Coming back from the beach, her daddy was drunk, ran their vehicle head-on into a tree.”

  “Nobody else lives down there?”

  “Hey, you didn’t need to hit me. I’m not a goddamn punching bag. I’ve got my entire livelihood riding on the outcome of this hoo-hah. So give me some room, lady.”

  “Anybody else down there beside this waitress and her legless kid?”

  Webb stared at this cold bitch for a moment, considered striking her back, how good it would feel.

  “No,” he said. “Nobody this side of that park but Millie Johansson and a bunch of abandoned houses, then it’s twenty miles of state land. After that it gets populated again.”

  Cruz watched X-88 coming back up the shore.

  She said to Dobbins, “Can you locate a boat for the three of us?”

  “It’ll be dark in another half hour. There’s rocks downriver, boulders. It’s shallow in places.”

  “Then we’ll just have to get some goddamn flashlights, won’t we?”

  X-88 sidled up beside them, dusted his hands off on his pants leg.

  “They went downstream, both of them, traveling together.”

  “Will you be able to catch the scent from the middle of the river?”

  “Hey, this kid smells so nasty even Dobbins could handle that.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  “SOMEONE’S COMING.”

  Thorn heard the woman’s voice filtering down the deep shaft where he’d fallen. He opened his eyes, but it took a moment to locate his place in the story. Pine Haven, drugs, pigs, his son badly wounded. Then snapping awake.

  He’d fallen forward, head sagged against Flynn’s mattress. Someone was stroking his hair. He raised his head and found Flynn’s hand brushing the back of his head, the boy comforting his old man.

  Millie stood in the doorway in pale blue pajamas.

  “Someone’s out on the river in a boat with a spotlight. Emma saw them from her upstairs room. They’ll be by here in a minute or two.”

  “The duffel?” he said.

  “In the living room. I’ll get Emma and we’ll stay in here with Flynn.”

  “Bolt the door.”

  Flynn groaned and winced, his head pressing into his pillow, his grimace stretching his lips like a grin gone terribly wrong.

  “You have anything for pain?”

  “Aspirin is all,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” said Flynn, struggling to form the words. “Go save the world, Thorn, save us one and all.”

  His mouth made a noble attempt at a smile.

  “Go, go.”

  Thorn found the duffel laid out on one of the corduroy couches. He hauled out one of the Atchisson shotguns, and from his memory dredged up the instructions Cruz had given him back in St. Augustine in the motel room eons ago. He loaded the twenty-round drum with FRAG-12 cartridges, grenade rounds that looked exactly like twelve-gauge shells, but enclosed within them was a small projectile that erupted from the casing and flew like a small stabilized warhead arming itself as it left the muzzle and detonating on impact. A miniature grenade launcher. At least that was Cruz’s sales pitch.

  He locked the drum in place, and with the heel of his hand he bumped it hard to make sure.

  The black, stainless-steel shotgun was sleek and futuristic, a gorgeous piece of hardware
whose grim purpose was concealed by its artful design. It was lighter than his own Remington twelve gauge and felt twice as solid and a hundred times more lethal.

  He dragged the couch away from the wall, slid the duffel behind it, and scooted the couch back into place. Hiding it there as a safeguard, considering the vulnerability of his son lying in the other room, considering Emma and Millie and this house full of other people’s memories.

  The boat hovered offshore, the beam of the flashlight searching the bank for a place to put in. Thorn snuck down the stairs, angled toward darker shadows south of the lodge, listening for voices, watching for any glimpse of faces or clothes, a flicker of recognition. He didn’t need much evidence to end this now, distant from any courtroom or legal babble.

  Pine Haven existed in some extrajudicial time zone, abiding by its own corrupt due process. A battlefield without even a rudimentary code of honor. Take what you can. Kill what threatens you. Brutalize the weak, hold hostage any who endanger your throne. Add Cruz on her mission of revenge and X, who was driven by forces beyond Thorn’s reckoning. They’d disposed of Tina, killed three idealistic kids, cut them down in the woods and buried their bodies. They tortured Cassandra and a Mexican worker, shot down Thorn’s son and left him dying. Any retaliation he took was legit.

  He pressed his back against an oak but kept the shotgun lowered. Two men were speaking quietly, one deep voice, one even deeper, though they were too faint to identify. He leaned forward, pressed the weapon to his shoulder, kept it aimed to the ground. As the boat turned in a circle, the putter of the small outboard shielded their conversation.

  They weren’t trying to hide, weren’t shy about this landing. Which made him second-guess. Could this be Cruz, the crude way she would stage an assault? Or were they simply so certain of their superior firepower and numbers, they didn’t bother with stealth?

  If he took his shot while they were in this tight cluster, his chances were better, much better before they came onshore and scattered. He didn’t know the tightness of the trigger pull, the accuracy of the sights, so he had to account for missing at least the first few rounds. Still, the shotgun was full-auto, Cruz had informed him, holding the trigger down would empty the drum in less than thirty seconds.

  After it was empty he had no backup plan. He didn’t know the terrain, where to retreat if one of them was left standing, he didn’t have a flashlight, hadn’t thought to ask Millie for any of that. If the three of them made it to land and fanned out quickly, he could be outflanked in no time.

  The spotlight raked through the trees around him and Thorn pressed his back against the trunk. He crouched, settled his left elbow against his bent knee, sighted on the man in the bow who was directing the flashlight, trying to see past the glare, make out the face. All he needed was one face of that trio.

  They chose their docking spot, and the one at the throttle nudged the dinghy hard against the embankment, and the man with the light jumped across from the bow onto the muddy slope. He scrambled up the hill, the beam shining in front of him, briefly passing across Thorn, blinding him, then the boat reversed, dislodged the prow, and swung into the river, heading back upstream.

  Thorn’s finger was tight against the trigger, lifting the barrel until he settled the sights on the man with the flashlight. Maybe the others had jumped to shore when he was dazzled by the light and had moved out of his line of sight and were just now skirting the open grassy area and heading through the bordering trees. Maybe the man in the boat was going to make a second landing nearby and he and the others would blitz from a different angle.

  Thorn eased the sight to the left and right of flashlight man, spotting shadows moving across the grassy yard, the shadows of men or oak branches in the moonlight, or the shadows of nothing at all. Training his sight again on flashlight man, Thorn tightened his finger on the smooth steel of the trigger, letting the man come closer, while the shadows to his left and right appeared and disappeared in a flutter of moonlight.

  He gave the man a few more feet, allowed him to enter an oblong of moonlight. Thorn increased the trigger pressure, a sudden swell of doubt holding him in check, not sure if the drug was playing a role in this, some chemical trickery impairing his judgment, holding him back when he should be letting go. No way to know.

  The man stopped. He swung his beam of light to the left, then brought it around to the right as if signaling his team to converge. Thorn scanned the area to each side of flashlight man but saw nothing, only the erratic shadows of limbs swaying.

  Flashlight man inched forward as if he sensed Thorn’s presence, and he targeted his light on the front steps of the house only three or four yards to the left of Thorn’s position and kept moving forward, the beam so bright and held waist high, there was no way to see anything but flashlight man’s legs.

  Thorn’s trigger hand was slippery. He wiped the sweat on his jeans, reset his grip on the weapon, pressed his cheek to the stock, focused on the man’s midsection. He decided to shout a one-word warning, to be a hundred percent certain and maybe flush the others out of hiding, if there were others.

  He let the man come a few more steps toward the house. And was about to call out when the recognition came with such a rush of gratitude and relief Thorn could feel a lump of heat rise into his throat. He lowered the shotgun, gripped it by the barrel, and stepped out from behind the tree. He recognized flashlight man’s gait. The unmistakable limber-legged stride of Sugarman.

  * * *

  “Up ahead,” Dobbins said. “Just beyond that next bend.”

  X-88 was in the bow, holding his weapon at port arms, his body wobbling as the boat threaded through narrow passages between boulders and jagged rocks, some that were hidden below the surface. Dobbins was at the throttle while Cruz managed the flashlight.

  X felt like shit. He didn’t like boats, didn’t care for water of any kind, rivers, ocean, lakes. He hated swimming pools. He couldn’t even dog-paddle, sank like an anchor, didn’t have whatever flotation tissues other human beings possessed. He was beginning to feel queasy from the boat ride, riding all those dips and swells, trying to keep his balance as the boat bobbed and slid sideways then bobbed again.

  And dead center in his chest something was throbbing. Maybe from the tension of the moment, then again, it struck him this feeling might be about Pixie; he might be experiencing heartache. Over the years he’d heard songs about it, lots of sappy songs, but he’d not felt the sensation himself as far as he knew.

  He’d gotten along better with Pixie than with any female before. She had a slinky way about her that X found hot. He liked the way she talked, so wild, so giddy. But he’d never felt heartache before, so he wasn’t sure this hard pinging in his chest was it. More likely it was just a touch of seasickness.

  Dobbins kept the speed slow, the motor burbling quiet. The plan was to cut the engine a distance before the dock and drift with the current to the pilings, lasso them with one of the lines, use the boat hook to pull themselves in. Dobbins claimed he was an experienced seaman. They’d find out shortly.

  Doing his part, X-88 was still fetching for Cassandra’s scent. It came in pulses, not the reliable spoor it was on land, but clear enough.

  Back at the farm Dobbins had provided X with an AR-15 with a thirty-round staggered column magazine. Not X’s weapon of choice, but it would do. Dobbins carried a Remington twelve gauge, telling them that he and Burkhart used the same weapons to waste the hippies who were trying to destroy his business.

  “And you didn’t dispose of them after,” Cruz said, acid in her voice.

  “This was my daddy’s gun,” Dobbins said. “It’s a family heirloom with strong sentimental value.”

  “Tonight when we’re done,” she said, “they go into the river. The AR and the heirloom.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Dobbins said.

  X-88 felt the power shifting from Cruz. She was losing her hold on them. She’d also lost Pixie, and she’d lost X long ago with her fanatical foc
us on the redhead and her lack of attention to loose ends. And Dobbins seemed ready to mutiny, bonding with X-88, choosing him as the natural pack leader. Which he was.

  He’d never been in any group where that wasn’t the case. He was usually stronger, more vicious, willing to do the crazy shit no one else had the stomach for.

  After so many years of falling in with groups of brutal thugs and cold-eyed hoodlums and every time rising to the dominant position, X believed he’d gathered a force field around him. People deferred. They didn’t have to be told or shown. He never had to demonstrate it, he simply walked into a room, didn’t say a word or act tough, and the seas parted.

  Even lately as his brain ballooned and the pressure inside his skull grew, even as the migraine pain doubled and tripled, he didn’t reveal how much it cost him, didn’t complain, didn’t even admit it to himself. He was the big dog. That’s what the big dog did.

  Yeah, Thorn had faked him out, pretending to be drugged, and he’d sucker-punched X, knocked him semiconscious, and earlier he’d pulled that stunt with the gasoline hose, hammered him from behind, left a painful knot on his skull, but those were the early rounds, and no way that was happening again, next time the guy was going down, all the way down, and staying there.

  “Cut the light,” Dobbins hissed at Cruz.

  The light went off, the engine shut down, and they drifted through the darkness. A minute of silence, another minute, the boat gliding near shore.

  “Still got her scent?” Cruz asked.

  X nodded.

  “Getting stronger?”

  He nodded again.

  When the collapsed dock appeared, Dobbins handled the boat hook, reaching out, snagging a piling smoothly. He drew the small boat up to it and looped a line around the piling and tied it off, then the boat swung around, facing into the current, and Dobbins used the hook to pull the rear end up close to the shore.

  “Good work,” X said quietly. “Handled like a pro.”

  Dobbins grunted his thanks, and even through the darkness X could make out the cold look on Cruz’s face. Not liking what she was witnessing, these two men forging a connection, getting along fine without her.