Scott Free

by John Gilstrap

  Scott tried waving, but his arms were too heavy.

  “Help!” he shouted, but the vocal cords didn’t work either. “Please help me!”

  The man was waving, too, but it wasn’t a gesture of friendship as much as it seemed to be a gesture of urgency. He seemed to be yelling, but Scott couldn’t decipher the words.

  Scott smiled and tasted blood. He’d made it. Finally, the nightmare had ended. He’d be warm again, with food in his belly—

  Was that man holding a gun?

  He saw the muzzle flash and the puff of smoke. He actually had time to understand that he was dead before the bullet arrived.

  THE RIFLE’S SUPPRESSED REPORT barely made it past the muzzle before it was lost to the wind. When the boy fell, Isaac couldn’t believe it. It was supposed to be a warning shot, for God’s sake, just close enough to get his attention.

  Lowering the rifle, Isaac scanned the hillside for signs of the boy, but he was gone.

  How could that be?

  He stood there, riveted in place as he tried to put it together. When he raised the scope back to his eye, he clearly saw the stripe his bullet had cut in the bark of the nearby tree.

  He couldn’t possibly have hit him, so where did he go?

  Then he understood. “Oh, shit.”

  FOR AN INSTANT, Scott thought that he was flying. It was a wonderful feeling of weightlessness, and he wondered if this was what it meant to die.

  Then he hit the ground, his shoulder first, triggering a flailing, ass–over–tea kettle tumble that never seemed to end. It was a nightmare of impacts; head, back, knees, shoulders. Trees and sky became snow and then trees and sky again as he slid and tumbled out of control down the river side of the embankment.

  When he finally hit the water, he landed back first, and he was instantly immersed. The pain of the frigid water was excruciating; he might as well have landed in boiling oil. He tried to scream, but his mouth filled with water. It raced up his nose and down his throat, and when he tried to gag, he only brought in more.

  Struggling to find the surface, he kicked hard and the current coughed him up. He saw a brief flash of sky before he saw nothing more at all.

  20

  SOMEWHERE IN THE DARKNESS, in the far reaches of Scott’s mind, a voice prattled on about something, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was. A news report, maybe? The noise sounded as if it were coming from the end of a galvanized tunnel. His awareness of his pain blossomed more quickly than that of his surroundings. Everything hurt—his back, his neck, his arms and legs. Everything. But his stomach especially. Even through the fog, he recognized the need to eat.

  His eyelids resisted his efforts to open them.

  Finally, his left eye cooperated. He lay on his back in the middle of a large room, and his vision sparkled a bit on the periphery. The light in the room danced, as if from a fire. He was on somebody’s sofa, buried under a thick layer of blankets. Beyond the lumps that were his feet, a fire blazed in a stone fireplace. That noise he’d heard was someone talking about the weather.

  He dared move only his head, trying to figure out where he was. A living room, he supposed, rustic and a little worn down.

  “So, you’re alive!” boomed a voice from behind. A man stepped into his field of vision. “I was wondering there for a while.”

  Scott cleared his throat. “Who are you?” It was like licking sandpaper.

  “You first,” the man said. As his host sat on the coffee table opposite the sofa, Scott couldn’t help but notice the pistol on his hip.

  “You shot me,” Scott said.

  “Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, eh?” The man laughed, but Scott didn’t get the joke. “Who are you, son? And why are you wandering around in this weather? With blue hair.”

  Scott shifted his position under the blankets and felt skin against skin. He had no shirt on. As if to verify it, he pulled his arm from under the blanket and looked at it. He was naked. He shot a look to the man with the gun.

  “Your clothes are drying in the other room,” Isaac explained, reading the look for what it was. “I went fishing in the river and reeled in a blue teenfish.” He laughed again.

  Scott rattled his head, hoping to shake something into place that would make sense. Oh, yeah, the fall. The water. “You rescued me?” he croaked.

  Isaac half-shrugged. “Rescue is too heroic. I sorta just snagged you as you floated by.”

  “Thanks.” Scott buried his arm under the covers again and drew the blankets tight. He didn’t know that he’d ever be warm again.

  “You were going to tell me your name,” Isaac prodded.

  “Scott O’Toole.”

  The man cocked his head. “Scott O’Toole,” he mused aloud. “Why does that name ring such a—” Then he got it. “Holy shit, boy, what are you doing all the way over here?”

  Scott hated being this addled. Nothing this guy said made sense.

  “You’re one of the plane crash kids, right?”

  Scott nodded.

  “Well, criminy Jesus, you’re supposed to be forty, fifty miles from here.”

  The way he said it, Scott wondered if he was supposed to apologize. “Who are you?”

  “Isaac DeHaven.” Isaac offered his hand, and Scott again pulled his arm from its cocoon to shake it. “How long have you been walking?”

  Scott shook his head. “I don’t know. I started at about three in the afternoon.”

  Isaac did the math. “Jesus. How far, do you know?”

  “I figured it to be about ten miles. This place was the only building on the map.”

  “What map?”

  “In my pocket. Wherever my pocket is.”

  Isaac thought about this. “The news said there’s two of you.”

  Scott looked away. “Not anymore.” The words sounded awful, so permanent. “Do you have anything to eat?”

  “What does ‘not anymore’ mean?”

  “It means he’s…not alive anymore.” Scott didn’t want those images to return.

  “He’s dead, then,” Isaac said. “Is that what you’re telling me?” The thought seemed to please him somehow.

  Scott nodded. “Killed in the crash.” He thought about mentioning the wolves but decided not to.

  “Too bad.” The words were meant to be sympathetic, but the tone didn’t quite sell them. Isaac stood abruptly and headed off, out of Scott’s field of vision. “You must be starving. When was the last time you ate?”

  Scott had to think about that one. As he struggled to a sitting position, he noted that Isaac was heading toward a kitchen. “Tuesday morning, I guess.”

  That stopped his host cold in his tracks.

  “What?” Scott asked.

  “This is Friday,” Isaac said. Then, as if to drive the point home, “Late Friday.”

  Jesus. No wonder he was hungry.

  “Anything in particular you’d like?”

  Now there was a good question. “Got any Froot Loops?”

  Isaac laughed. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “How about bacon?” Scott asked, remembering. “Bacon and eggs?”

  Isaac smiled. “How do you like them?”

  ISAAC’S CLOTHES NEARLY FIT SCOTT. A little baggy, especially across the shoulders and chest, but serviceable. It was slow-going at first, weakness and nausea threatening each step. His muscles and joints all felt as if they’d been manufactured from melted glass.

  Despite the lure of the sofa, Scott sat at the table in the kitchen to eat.

  “How many eggs can you handle?” Isaac asked.

  Scott answered without thinking. “Four.” He quickly caught himself and added, “Please.”

  Isaac smiled. “How about I start you with one and we’ll work up from there.” He served the egg fried, over easy with two strips of bacon and a piece of toast.

  In less than a minute, it was all gone and Scott handed over his plate for more. Nothing had ever tasted so good. A second egg followed, with more toast. God, i
t was wonderful. Isaac returned to the stove for one more, and just like that, it wasn’t so wonderful anymore. In fact, it was an emergency. Scott barely made it to the sink in time to upchuck all of it. The heaving brought tears to his eyes, and the crushing disappointment made them real. When he was empty again, he felt a hand on his back, rubbing him gently between his shoulder blades.

  “Too much too fast,” Isaac said gently, handing him a towel.

  Scott wiped his face. “But I’m hungry.” His legs felt wobbly.

  Isaac walked with him back to his chair at the table. “This time, we’ll start with some toast. Your stomach’s shrunk.”

  It wasn’t the meal he’d fantasized about, not by a long shot. But it stayed down. After four slices, he felt full. “So, now I’m a super-model,” Scott quipped. “Thank you.”

  Isaac smiled. “You’re welcome.” He gathered up the boy’s plate and carried it to the sink.

  “You seem like a nice guy,” Scott said. “So, why did you shoot at me?”

  Isaac continued to clean as he replied, “That’s a long story. I’m just glad I didn’t hit you.”

  “Were you trying to?”

  Isaac took a deep breath, as if he were considering an answer, then said, “Your mother’s famous, isn’t she?”

  Scott snorted out a chuckle. “She thinks she is. She wants to be.”

  “You don’t approve?”

  “I don’t care. There’s a difference.”

  Isaac acknowledged the point with an eyebrow. “Sounds like home is not the happiest place in the world.”

  Scott regarded his host for a long moment. Lean and clean-shaven, he had a powerful look about him, despite his unremarkable size. His hair—a military buzz cut—had a certain home-inflicted quality to it. The eyes were hard to miss, though: dark brown laser beams.

  “How come you won’t answer me about the shooting?” Scott pressed.

  Isaac answered slowly. “Let’s just say that I don’t like visitors all that much.”

  “So, you shoot them?”

  Something in Scott’s expression made Isaac laugh. “Well, no, not always.”

  “How come you’re carrying a gun now?”

  “Does it make you nervous?”

  Man, you’d think it would, wouldn’t you? But something about Isaac’s demeanor actually put Scott at ease. “More curious than nervous,” he said.

  Isaac finished at the sink and helped himself to the chair opposite the boy at the table. “Well, curiosity can be a dangerous thing, Scott. If I were you, I’d keep that in mind.” The words sounded more like advice than a threat. “I carry the gun because I need to. Now, tell me about your mother. On the news, I keep hearing references to her being a famous author.”

  Scott dismissed the notion with a one-shouldered shrug. “She’s a psychologist who writes books on how people should live their lives.”

  “And you don’t like that.”

  “I told you, I don’t care.”

  Isaac just waited for the rest.

  “Okay, I think you should learn to live your own life before you start telling other people how to live theirs.”

  “She doesn’t do that?”

  Scott took a deep breath. “You know what? I’m tired. I don’t want to talk about this.”

  Isaac held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, then we won’t talk about it.”

  “Good. Thank you.” Nobody moved for a long moment. “How can I get word to my dad that I’m okay?”

  Isaac stood and led the way back to the living room. “Well, now, that’s something of a dilemma.”

  “Can’t we just make a phone call?”

  Isaac laughed. “Maybe you need to step outside and take another look where you are. I don’t have a phone. No lines run out this far.”

  “You’ve got electricity,” Scott observed. “Don’t they run together?”

  “I’ve got electricity because I’ve got a bank of batteries out there in the shed and a windmill to recharge them. I’ve got running water because another windmill keeps the storage tanks full. Those flames you see on the stove don’t run from underground pipes, they run from a big tank out back. This is the country, my friend.” He laughed again. “In fact, you don’t get a whole hell of a lot more country than we are right now.”

  “So, how do I tell him? I need to tell people about Cody, too.”

  “I guess when the storm settles down, and the roads get cleared, I can take you to a phone.”

  Scott thought about that. He hated like hell to think of his dad enduring any more than he had to. “I heard you talking to somebody,” Scott said.

  Isaac’s head came around at that one. “How’s that?”

  “Before I completely woke up. I heard you talking to somebody. I don’t remember what it was about, but I remember it just sounded like a conversation.”

  Busted. “That was a radio,” Isaac said, finally. “Short wave. Sometimes, when I get a little loopy from the quiet, I turn it on to chat.” Isaac sat in a chair near the fire and gestured to the sofa for Scott.

  “Well, why can’t we put out a message on the radio that I’m okay?”

  Isaac sighed. He really didn’t want to get into this. “You are a nosy son of a bitch, aren’t you?” he said, shaking his head. He gestured to the sofa again. “Please, take a seat.”

  Scott sat.

  Isaac took a long moment to collect his thoughts, then rubbed his face vigorously before beginning. “You put me in a spot.”

  Scott just waited for him to get to it.

  “Okay, here it is. I’ll tell you, and then we’ll deal with what to do about it later, okay?”

  The boy nodded, but something in the tone put him on edge.

  “Do you know what the witness protection program is?”

  The gasp escaped Scott’s throat before he could stop it.

  Isaac saw the recognition and nodded. “Well, there you go. A few years ago, I testified in court against some really bad people who did really bad things. I broke confidences, I tape-recorded conversations, and then I sent them to prison for the rest of their lives, plus a good chunk more.” He paused for a moment, then stood. “Do you want some whiskey?”

  Now there was a question he’d never been asked before. “Sure.” Scott shrugged. “Why not?”

  Isaac continued to speak as he walked to the kitchen and poured two shots of Jack Daniel’s, one three times larger than the other. “These bad guys—”

  “What are their names?” Scott interrupted.

  “You gonna talk or you gonna listen?”

  Scott sank back into the cushions.

  “I’m not gonna tell you their names, and I’m not gonna tell you what they did, because that’s none of your concern. All you need to know is that they and their friends promised to kill me. The operative word there is promised.” He paused to let the concept sink in as he brought the drinks back to the living room. “There’s an open-ended contract on my head. Five hundred thousand dollars to the man who does me in.”

  Scott’s jaw dropped.

  Isaac handed him the glass. “And before you get any ideas, trust me. These are not people you want to be doing business with.”

  Scott vehemently shook his head. “God, no. I’d never even think—”

  Isaac raised his glass. “To life.” He fired half of it down in one gulp.

  Scott brought the glass to his lips, sniffed it.

  “Tell me this isn’t your first drink,” Isaac said.

  Scott sort of shrugged, inexplicably embarrassed. “Well, I’ve had beers.”

  “Trust me, kid, there’s only one way to do it. Fire it on back and don’t let the sofa buck you off.”

  The boy looked at the drink for a second or two, then downed it in a single gulp. It was like drinking burning razor blades. Took his breath away.

  Isaac laughed, toasted him again. “Welcome to manhood, kid.” The fact that Scott couldn’t make his voice work triggered another laugh. “Anyway, in return for m
y testimony, your parents’ tax dollars gave me a new name and a nifty place to live. You’re not gonna puke again, are you?”

  The question caught Scott off guard. No, he wasn’t going to puke, but he sure did feel warm all of a sudden. “I’m fine. What does that have to do with me getting word to my dad?”

  “Press coverage. I can’t afford it.”

  “I won’t tell where I am, just that I’m safe.”

  “Can’t afford it. This is my life, kid. I value it highly.”

  “So, what happens?” Scott asked. “You’re just gonna keep me here forever?”

  Isaac issued a giant sigh. “Well, I tell you what. That would have been a hell of a lot tougher choice a week ago than it is right now.”

  Scott cocked his head.

  “A couple of days ago, I got word that the bad guys know where I am. My cover, as they say, is blown, which means that I’ve got to pull up stakes when the storm stops. I figure I can drop you someplace, and by the time you make the right phone calls, I’ll be long gone.”

  “How did your cover get blown?”

  Isaac sighed, wishing that he’d never opened Pandora’s box. “I went someplace I shouldn’t have gone. It was stupid, but there you go.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “None of your business.”

  Scott struggled to wrap his mind around it. It was all pretty cool when you got right down to it. “So, you, like, went to the store or something, and somebody saw you?”

  Isaac’s body language testified that he was ready to move on. “Something like that, yes.”

  “Did you know it was stupid at the time?”

  “Let it go,” Isaac snapped.

  Scott tried to piece the puzzle together. “So, these bad guys. They know that you’re here.”

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “Which means that they’ll be hunting for you.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Which explains why you took a shot at me. You thought I was them.”

  “Exactly.”

  Scott paused again, waiting for the computer in his brain to plow through it all. “So, you really were trying to kill me?”

  Isaac leaned in close. “If I’d wanted you dead, you wouldn’t be here. Trust me. Sniping was one of my greatest skills before I started to squeal on people for a living. I just wanted you to know that you were in the wrong place. Then you panicked and went into the water, and I went fishing.”