“Give it a few minutes,” Oddy said. “We got nothing but time.”
A massive raven settled to roost on the peaked roof of the central hut. It preened itself with a hooked beak, digging ticks and other parasites from its molting plumage. The walls of the hut rattled. The startled raven took flight, leaving a drift of black feathers on the thatched roof. A smell wafted across the village grounds to where the soldiers were hunkered.
“Jesus,” Crosshairs gagged. “The fuck is that?”
Nobody could liken it to anything they had ever smelled before—except Gunner, who, as a teen, had worked in his uncle’s hog-butchering pen. The smell reminded him of standing above a vat of rendering hog fat, the fumes thick enough to achieve a nauseating, buttery physicality beyond mere scent, forcing itself to be felt and tasted.
“Something’s not kosher here.” Oddy’s extremities had gone numb for some unexplained reason. “So we’ll sit tight and see what happens.”
The sound of a choppy motor in the distance. It was near dark, and Oddy had to squint through the binoculars as he focused on the waterline. A pair of NVA gunboats beached on the sandy shore. Soldiers offloaded long wooden crates.
“We got company,” Oddy said. “Ten-twelve NVA with a shitload of crated firepower.”
The Viet soldiers made their way up the gradual grade leading from the shore to the village. Two-man teams carried crates on their shoulders, or by the hemp handles hung on each side. Their cigarette tips bobbed in the darkness, easy targets for Crosshairs or any member of Team Blackjack, all competent marksmen. Their officer, identified by his yellow armband, called out. When nobody answered, he ordered his men to search the huts. Soldiers entered and exited two huts without incident. Then they entered the third, central hut.
And all hell broke loose.
The soldier’s screams were unlike anything Team Blackjack had ever heard: high and blood-curdling, the screams of small children caught in savage traps. Pieces of meat spewed out of the hut’s tombstone-shaped entryway, resembling wet rags or scraps of fat.
More screams. This time they were worse. Much worse. They wailed out and out, as if the soldiers’ lungs had been soaked in napalm and lit.
The remaining Viet soldiers were of two minds: some of them drew their weapons and stood firm, while others fled towards the boats. Another sound emanated from the darkened hut: the sound of giant, clattering teeth, or threshing steel gears.
The NVA officer detonated a percussion grenade and rolled it through the entryway. It exploded in a starburst of white light and Oddy saw, for the briefest second, shapes hanging from the hut ceiling.
Long slack shapes. Muscle-corded and tendon-strung shapes. Bright red shapes.
A soldier was thrust from the doorway. He appeared uninjured until he spun in a drunken circle to reveal the flayed tableau of his back, spine torn down to the hipbone, hanging between his legs like a freakish segmented tail. He toppled forward into the fire pit, dead before the embers began to sear his flesh.
Oddy wasn’t sure who the enemy was anymore.
Charlie was a savage motherfucker.
But at least he was human.
The NVA officer pulled his .38 service revolver and aimed it at the entryway. He squeezed off a shot, knowing his men were dead, not knowing who or what had killed them. The gunshot echoed into silence. Oddy waited, poised, listening.
A pair of eyes, blood-red, stared from the blackened hut.
There was nothing human in those eyes. Nothing at all.
For the first time ever, The Magnificent Seven were in way, way over their heads.
— | — | —
Excerpted from the Slave River Journal,
April 12th, 1986:
Search and Rescue Team Sent to Find
DNR Researchers Now Missing
“Nothing to Worry About,”
— RCMP’s Spokesman Says
By Michael Fulton
Fort Simpson, NWT: A ten-man search and rescue team headed by Ed “Mad Dog” Rabidowski, the elite RCMP tracker, have gone missing in the area surrounding Great Bear Lake. Communication between the search and rescue team and their base of operations ceased on April 10th at 3:30 a.m., and no further contact has passed. The team, sent to find three-member Department of Natural Resources research crew of Carl Rosenberg, Bill Myers, and Lillian Hapley, had been checking in at three-hour intervals.
“There is nothing to worry about,” cautioned RCMP spokesman Sid Grimes at a hastily-held news conference. “The magnetic pull of the poles is strong up there, and has probably fouled up their communication link. I have the utmost confidence that Mr. Rabidowski’s team is safe, and will be in contact soon.”
In the meantime, another ten-man team is being put together to search out Rabidowski’s missing crew. The new team, headed by Earl Triggers, will follow in the missing team’s footsteps, and hopefully find clues as to…
— | — | —
III.
Reconnoiter
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
December 5th, 1987. 4:05 p.m.
Oddy Grant acknowledged the stewardess’s chirpy “Enjoy your stay in Toronto,” with a sober nod, then moved down the tube connecting the Douglas DC-9 to the main concourse. Snow pelted the tube’s shell, which swayed slightly with the wind. An overweight Canada Customs agent with a beery face and shellacked hair gave his passport a cursory glance while an equally obese agent inspected the contents of his duffel bag.
“Have a nice stay, Mr. Grant.”
“Do my best.”
Pearson International Airport was an architectural nightmare: Roman-style granite columns lacking any practical purpose rose to an arched ceiling adorned with a nationalist mural—fir trees blending into buck-toothed beavers melting into the cascading waters of Niagara Falls ceding to the shimmering glow of the Northern Lights. The structural schizophrenia continued in the Arrivals area, where steel pillars were again employed to no functional purpose, except perhaps to divert attention from a sculpture of what may have been a killer whale, a crushed ’67 Dodge Dart, or anything in between.
Oddy bypassed the baggage carousel and made his way through a pair of frosted-glass sliding doors onto the main concourse. He walked to the outdoor taxi stand, buttoning his buckskin jacket against the cold.
“Chilly oot there, eh?” The taxi driver was stereotypically-attired: floppy cabbie hat and checkered lumberjack shirt. “Where to?”
“The Sheraton,” Oddy said, mildly surprised the cabbie hadn’t tacked on “Mac.”
“You got it, Mac.”
Oddy leaned back. The cabbie stole furtive glances at him through the rearview mirror: black and bumpy and bald, broad as a meat locker with a neatly-trimmed goatee, whiskers shockingly white. Thick lips, large white teeth. Eyes close-set, but their closeness did not accord him the look of dopeyness that characterized a high-profile athlete the cabbie had once driven. Wearing khakis and a pearl-snap shirt, a buckskin jacket the Toronto winter would slice through like razor blades.
“In town on business or pleasure?”
“Not sure,” Oddy answered honestly.
The cabbie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “First time in the city?”
Oddy nodded, staring out over the bleak cityscape. Grey clouds hung so low Oddy was half-convinced he could roll down the window and grab a thickened handful.
“Lots to see, lots to do,” the cabbie continued. “You like plays? The Phantom of the Opera just opened.” The cab hit a pothole. The bobble-headed Dalmatian on the dashboard bobbed accordingly. “The fucking Phantom. City’s getting some class.”
“Huh,” Oddy said noncommittally. His mind was occupied with other thoughts, specifically, what he might expect over the next few hours.
He didn’t need to be told it was a scenario out of a schlocky B-movie: a mysterious stranger with a queer name—Anton Grosevoir? Come on—requesting an opportunity to discuss—what? But Oddy didn’t have any enemies (at least not any Canadian on
es), and the location was safe: nobody was going to get whacked in a witness-packed bar in a busy downtown area. Fifty grand for an afternoon’s work, work that didn’t involve wearing a mask or shoving a gun up someone’s nose. Easy money. Ludicrously easy.
“Some nice museums, too,” the cabbie droned on. Oddy exhaled loudly through his nostrils in an attempt to convey his utter disinterest. If the cabbie noticed, he was unfazed. “The Royal Ontario Museum is a good one. Lots of pretty paintings. And there’s an indoor botanical garden, if you’re keen on flowers’n such…”
Ten interminable minutes later the cab pulled into the Sheraton’s horseshoe-shaped drive. A bellhop opened the hotel’s thick glass door, ushering Oddy into the opulent lobby. The clerks, two girls with cute prairie faces wearing pinstriped gray uniforms, regarded him with pasted-on smiles. He winked. They averted their eyes, giggling.
The bar was called Canary Isle, a name Oddy felt would attract homosexuals like mosquitoes to a bug-zapper. The décor was neo-something, very trendy, clear Plexiglas bar threaded with colored neon lights—green, purple, and hot pink running through lengths of flexible PVC tubing. The stools were also Plexiglas, seats stenciled with the initials CI in gold lettering. A Muzak version of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth” filtered through recessed speakers. It seemed to Oddy an environment catering to gold-diggers, fledgling adulterers, and poseurs of every stripe.
The bartender was a blonde beefcake in a vanilla silk suit. “What can I get you?”
“Beer you got on tap?”
“Molson Canadian, Labatt’s Blue, Coors, Coors Light, Budweiser, Connors Best Bitter, Kilkenny Red, Rickard’s Red, Clancy’s Red, Propeller, Garrison’s—”
“Canadian’s fine,” Oddy said to ensure he got a drink before nightfall.
The beer arrived in a tapered glass with a tiny and utterly useless handle, like on a teacup. Oddy was somewhat relieved he hadn’t smuggled a firearm: the urge to shoot up Canary Isle was overwhelming. Who knew Canadians could be so pretentious?
Oddy scanned the room. A man sat in a plush booth, his back turned away from the bar. A woman and a man, the woman dazzling, the man hideously ugly but wearing a platinum Rolex, talked in hushed tones at a corner table. Another man sat on the far side of the oval-shaped bar, everything except his Blue Jays cap obscured by a central display of liquor bottles.
Oddy sipped his beer and imagined what Mr. Anton Grosevoir might look like: he pictured a remarkably tall and spindly man with watery joints, a marionette cut loose of its strings. Oddy figured he’d slap the check down, get it signed, listen to Grosevoir for as long as he cared to, then hit the bricks.
A guy sat down a few stools away. Oddy cut a look at him: same age or perhaps a few years younger, a paunch he carried well, tanned, a gray-streaked ponytail and a t-shirt reading “HERE’S THE BEEF” with an arrow pointing down. He ordered a double Stolichnaya and tonic, then told the bartender to fuck the tonic. The beefcake barman copped perplexity.
“Don’t want you to stick your pecker in the seltzer spritzer,” the guy said. “Just deep-six the tonic, okay?”
The guy had an accent in conflict with his tan: Upper Plain States, Nebraska or Minnesota. Oddy squinted at him; he seemed recognizable in a distant, unreal way, as if Oddy had once dreamt him.
A woman with blood-red lipstick, gold hoop earrings, a white miniskirt, and fuck-me pumps strutted into the bar, seating herself at the ugly man’s table. She nodded and smiled at the other woman and soon their hands were playing over the man’s vulturish shoulders and wet-noodle arms as if he were Adonis himself.
“There anything money can’t buy?” The ponytailed man said, eyeing the display.
“What it can’t buy I don’t need.” Oddy found himself smiling for reasons he couldn’t explain. “Real pretty ladies, though.”
Ponytail shrugged, as though he’d seen so many beautiful women the gender itself now bored him. He pulled a soft pack of Lucky Strikes from his jacket and asked the bartender for a matchbook. “Filthy habit,” he said.
“We all got our vices, son.”
Ponytail looked at him funny. He offered the pack.
“I quit,” Oddy said. “But that was my brand.”
“Name’s a mislabeling,” Ponytail said. “Nothing lucky about these fuckers. Been smoking them since…” Ponytail rolled the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other and said, “Since too long.” A disgusted snort. “Lost my willpower somewhere.”
Another man entered the bar. Short and thickly-muscled, dressed in a charcoal suit by Brooks Brothers, right arm in a paisley-patterned sling. His eyes locked with Oddy’s for a moment. He frowned, opened his mouth, closed it, then seated himself in one of the booths.
“My boyfriend’s back and there’s gonna be trouble…”
Oddy swiveled on his stool to look at the singer. Ponytail was looking back at him, smiling slightly.
“Hey-la, hey-la, my boyfriend’s back…” sang Ponytail.
It slammed together in Oddy’s head with all the snap and flicker of billiard balls following a crisp break. He stared at Ponytail, at the crow’s feet and wrinkles, searching out the young, recognizable face beneath the accumulated years. “Tony… Jesus… Tripwire?”
Tripwire slammed his palm on the bar. “I can’t believe it—Oddy, Christ! I never would’ve figured except you calling me ‘son.’ So I thought—”
“You’d sing that trademark tune of yours—”
“And if it was you, you’d understand, and if it wasn’t—”
“I’d just think you were some nutjob who got off singing in bars!”
They shook hands, then, needing something more, chucked each other on the shoulder. He took the stool next to Oddy, his head shaking, a goofy grin on his face.
“This is too much. It’s been, what…?”
“Twenty years.”
“Twenty?” Tripwire’s shoulders slumped. “Jesus. Half a lifetime.”
“You look good,” Oddy said. “A bronzed god.”
Tripwire looked relieved. “You think? Man, it’s a miracle, then—haven’t exercised in a decade. You, though—what’d you do, swallow a goddamn refrigerator?”
Oddy smiled. “Clean living, son.”
“And steroids?”
“Clean living.”
They ordered another round. At the corner table, the ugly rich man swore loudly and kneaded the women’s thighs under the table.
“So,” Oddy said, “what you been up to?”
“Pretty broad question, Sarge,” Tripwire said, slipping effortlessly into their old dynamic. “Job-wise…” He coughed into a cupped palm. “I direct adult features.”
Oddy cocked an eyebrow.
“Ah, fuck it,” Tripwire said. “I make pornos.”
“Ah,” Oddy said, considering. “Well, are they good? I mean… artistic?”
“Well, we’re not talking Fellini or anything, but…sure, they’ve got merit.”
“Anything I might have seen?”
“Ever watch Dirty Sanchez Versus the Anal Virgins of the Sierra Madré?”
“Must’ve missed that one. Sure sounds artistic.”
“Oh, it was.” Tripwire rolled his eyes. “And you?”
“Been robbing banks the past five years.”
It was Tripwire’s turn to cock an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Last one was a balls-up. I shut it down.”
“Wait a sec.” Tripwire covered his mouth with his hand, eyes staring down in concentration, as if consulting an internal Rolodex. “I read about a botched job in, where was it…Washington, I think. Was that you?”
Oddy shrugged.
“Holy shit. There were, what, four bodies or something? A security guard, a couple cops—”
“Yeah,” Oddy said. “A guy on the crew went Section-8. Total apeshit.”
“Fuuuuck,” Tripwire said. “So, you up here ’till the heat dies down?”
Oddy shifted on his stool and said, “Not really s
ure why I’m here, son.”
“Makes two of us.”
At the corner table, one of the women stood abruptly. She shouted something at the hideous rich man and threw a vodka gimlet in his face. The man cackled and grabbed at her ass, greasy black hair plastered to his scalp in three long ropes. The woman took a step back and kicked at him. Displaying perhaps the most grace he ever had or ever would, the man caught her foot deftly, doffed her satin pump, and tried to suck her toes off. The woman squealed as his thick pink lips engulfed her big toe.
The man in the Brooks Brothers suit exited his booth, crossed to the corner table, grabbed the toe-sucker by his collar, spun him around, and punched him in the face, all with one hand. Mr. Toe-sucker folded like a Mongolian lawn chair and went down under the Plexiglas table. The woman frantically swabbed her toes with cocktail napkins. Mr. Toe-sucker struggled to sit up but the other woman kicked him in the nose. He went down again, head hitting a table leg with a hollow sound. The white knight laughed. Oddy and Tripwire exchanged glances.
“Couldn’t be—”
“No fucking way,” Tripwire said. “Danny? Hey!”
Zippo turned and saw the huge black man he’d noticed on the way in sitting beside a Coppertoned longhair wearing an obscene t-shirt. Both of them were grinning like goons.
“Get your ass over here,” the black dude said.
“You got a problem?” Danny pointed at Mr. Toe-sucker. “Want some of what he got?”
The beatnik leaned forward, feet hooked around the stool legs, arms outstretched.
“Danny,” he said in a chiding tone. “Zippo. Don’t leave us hanging, baby.”
Zippo’s mouth fell open. “Tripwire? Get the fuck out of here.” He took a step back, squinting at the black guy like he was staring directly at the sun. “Od…Oddy?”
“The one and only, son.”
The Preserve Page 9