Strange Prey

by Chesbro, George C. ;

  The old man walked unsteadily across the room, pushing aside both Perry Parker and Rita Cassady. He gripped Pam’s arm and led her to the doorway, then used his other arm to draw his son close to him.

  “Did you help kill your brother, Richard?” Horace Cassady said, leaning so close to the other man that their fore-heads were virtually touching.

  Richard Cassady’s mouth opened and closed. He swallowed hard, managed to say, “Father, I don’t understand any of this.”

  “I believe you,” the old man said after a pause. “Give this woman back all her papers, Richard, and help her bear witness to what’s happened here. Cooperate with her in any way she wants. It’s God’s will. Goodbye.”

  And then, displaying surprising strength and quickness, he pushed them both out through the doorway. The last thing Pam saw before the steel panel that had been hidden in the wall slammed shut across the entranceway was Horace Cassady holding up the heavy cross he carried and pressing what appeared to be a button embedded in its handle.

  Suddenly the entire tower seemed to be filled with clicking sounds—electric relays being activated, closing. And suddenly Pam understood why the former mining engineer who had exercised such close control and personal supervision over the construction of his Creation Park had been so certain he was going to die if his wishes were not fulfilled.

  Richard Cassady was pounding with his fists at the steel panel, shouting his father’s name.

  Pam wrapped her arms around the man’s waist, pulled him away from the panel and toward the staircase. “Come on! We have to get out of here! He’s wired the whole place with dynamite!”

  Together, they raced down the stairs, out the front entrance. Shouting, pushing and pulling, they struggled to move the students outside away from the base of the tower to safety.

  Creation Park was the first to go, multiple explosions lighting the night sky and raining debris down over the campus of Cassady College moments before the dome of the tower disappeared in a thunderous flash of fire and smoke.

  DREAMS

  “Ever Dream?”

  The old man finished his move and glanced up from the checkerboard. “Everyone dreams, Johnson.”

  The pale brown eyes were watery, the tired eyes of a man who has parlayed acceptance into a kind of wisdom and lost a chunk of his soul in the process. The eyes peered at him from a head without a body, a wizened face that swam on the edge of the ragged pool of light carved out of the darkness by the flickering candle at his elbow.

  “Have you ever dreamed of dying?”

  “I’m not afraid of death, Johnson. You shouldn’t be either. Are you tired of the game?”

  “No,” Johnson said quietly. He moved a checker, then pressed down very hard on the surface of the red wooden circle. His fingernail snapped back and he felt a stab of pain in the soft quick. Johnson frowned. “I’m not afraid of death,” he continued, taking his finger away and cradling it in his other hand. “Everybody dies sometime, and that’s enough comfort for me. Dying of old age, or cancer, or even sticking your own head in the oven; that’s one thing. But having other men take your life; that’s something else again. A man’s life is something special, an infinite collection of memories and hopes, loves and hates, fears; wonderful, secret, hidden places that even he may not know about. It isn’t right. A man’s life shouldn’t be like a lamp just anybody can pull the plug on.”

  “Men kill other men, Johnson. Sometimes they kill in passion, or stupidity, or rage, and sometimes they just kill out of meanness. What is a society to do with these killers?”

  “If they’re soldiers you promote them or give than medals. Usually both.”

  “You’re not being serious.”

  “Judge them, I guess,” Johnson said quietly.

  “Yes.” There were three sharp clicks. A palsied hand mottled with liver spots emerged from the darkness and removed three of his men. “Now I think you’re in trouble, Johnson. That was a triple jump.”

  “I dreamt once that I killed somebody,” Johnson went on, advancing one of his checkers. If he could get a king he might still stand a chance. “I couldn’t even remember what the man looked like, or why I’d killed him. It was like a dream within a dream; maybe I was stoned, or drunk out of my mind. Anyway, I’d killed him and a court had sentenced me to hang. The next morning.

  “I didn’t even know that until a few hours later when a priest told me. I’m not even Catholic but they sent a priest because he was the only one in the village who could speak English. It was a real small town, really just a patch of dust with some shacks on it, some-where in Guatemala. At least I think it was Guatemala. At first I laughed. I mean, the thought that they were going to execute me was ridiculous. I’d get hold of somebody; somebody who’d explain for me, somebody who’d at least get me another trial in a language I could understand.

  “Then I realized there wasn’t anybody. I’d been drifting for two, three years. Country to country, living off the land and the women. And even if there’d been somebody to get, there was no way to contact them. No phones, and no time to write a letter to the embassy because they were going to snap my neck the next morning. Like a chicken.”

  The withered hand hovered over the pieces, almost made the wrong move, and then made the right one.

  “In the evening, they asked me if I wanted anything. I asked for a glass of orange juice. Years before, I’d always had a glass of orange juice before I went to bed. I’d sit on the edge of the bed and drink the orange juice and smoke a cigarette and think of the day. That day. The next day. Anyway, they found some oranges somewhere, squeezed them up and made me my orange juice. They were very decent about that. It was pulpy and warm, but it was good, and it helped me remember better times. Then I realized that was the last glass of orange juice I would ever have. There would still be oranges growing; there would still be people picking them and selling them and buying them and eating them. There would still be people … washing dishes, or sending their children off to school, or beating up their children, or scratching themselves, or looking up at the sky, or making love, or going for walks. But that was the last glass of orange juice I would ever have. Because in the morning people who couldn’t even speak my language were going to take me out to a gallows and put a rope around my neck and drop me through the air. I’d dance and crap in my pants and be dead. I wouldn’t even know if … I wouldn’t even know anything.”

  “It’s your move, Johnson.”

  The promise of dawn was bleaching the fabric of night and Johnson could see that the old man was huddled against a cold he himself could not feel. He moved and lost two of his remaining three men. He moved the last man into a corner.

  “Of course I woke up,” Johnson continued. His own voice sounded strange in his ears, as if the sound track of his words was out of synch with the film of his thoughts. “I sang in my car on the way to work that morning, sang at the top of my lungs. It was spring, and I ran over every pothole I could find. During the day I drank a lot of water, sipping it slowly and sloshing it around my teeth. I looked into people’s faces and smiled; when they spoke, I listened very closely. One person had a lisp and I asked him to repeat something just so I could listen to that lisp. Later that day I walked around a block in the city. I found a brick on the sidewalk and I stopped and stared at it for a long time. I picked it up and dropped it. I picked it up and threw it just so I could see what it looked like sailing across the sky. Do you know why I did all those things?”

  “No.”

  “I was celebrating my dream. Love and hate and pleasure and pain, depression, excitement; in the end, they’re all illusions. Sometimes they are grand, and men write symphonies, or write stories, or they dance. But these things are still insignificant. They’re not life. Life is little things.”

  “It’s your move, Johnson.”

  The light was stronger now, muscling its way across the floor, bumping up against a sweating clay wall. Johnson rose and walked to the single window. He wrapped
his fingers around the rusted bars and stared at the gallows in the dusty courtyard below. The rope had been used before. Many times. It dangled limp, like a dead worm. Somewhere a door opened and closed and children ran to play in the shadow of the scaffold. They shouted in a language Johnson could not understand. He turned to the old man.

  “I’m afraid, Father.”

  “I think it may be good to pray now, Johnson,” the priest said, drawing his hands into the folds of his dark tunic and bowing his head.

  Beside the priest was a bench. On top of the bench was a checkerboard. Beside the checkerboard was a candle. And a glass. Flies buzzed on the rim and at the bottom of the glass, poking their hairy needle snouts into the orange, pulpy residue that had dried there.

  A key bumped in the heavy iron door at the opposite end of the room. Two men in ragged uniforms entered, walked to him and grabbed his arms. One man yawned without covering his mouth. Johnson’s feet would not move, so they dragged him.

  “Father, the game’s not over!”

  “It’s over, Johnson, the priest said, rising and resting the gossamer weight of his hand on Johnson’s shoulder. “The game is finished.”

  Johnson lifted the finger he had pressed against the wooden checker and examined it. It still hurt. A tiny blossom of blood had sprouted beneath his cracked nail. “Why don’t I wake up, Father?” He was crying now. The warm tears rolled down over his lips, salting his mouth. “Why don’t I wake up, Father?!”

  “Because it’s time to rest now, my son,” the priest said softly. “It’s time to sleep. Try to think of all this as a dream.”

  THE DRAGON VARIATION

  Morning on the Gornergrat was cold, dry, space-clear. Ringed by the Alps, the glacier was a ribbon of ice flowing down the side of the mountain to drip waterfalls and rivers into the July valley below. In the distance the east wall of the Matterhorn spewed clouds into a china blue sky; the jagged peak thrust up into the sky like an angry, jealous god guarding the village of Zermatt at its feet. It was all in Technicolor and totally unreal.

  Zermatt was where Douglas Franklin came when he had played in one chess tournament too many, when tension had stretched his nerves and shriveled his emotions to a point where the most beautiful cities became no more than squares on a playing board and he no longer cared to distinguish between people and chess pieces.

  Douglas eased his backpack onto the ice, and then sat down on it. He threw back his head, opened his mouth wide and sucked in the icy breath of the mountains. With the terrible tension gone he could begin to relax and think about the good things, the first-place trophy and $30,000 check back in his hotel room. He had won an Interzonal, and the victory would launch him into the elimination finals for the world championship. It was something to think on, to savor, and Douglas intended to do just that.

  He removed a bottle from his pack, uncorked it and sipped at the thick, clear liquid. The liquor hit his stomach and exploded in a warm glow that left a pleasant ringing in his ears. He waited for the echoes to die away before rising, shouldering his backpack and resuming his trek down the face of the glacier. Fifteen minutes later he found the dog.

  The small black poodle was still alive—barely. Its eyes were closed, its breathing labored and shallow. An irregular, speckled trail of blood in the snow ended in a large stain surrounding the dog’s hindquarters. The cold had stopped the bleeding, but was killing the exhausted dog. Threads of torn muscle were interwoven with black, kinky fur along a single, deep groove cut in the animal’s left flank. It was the kind of wound that might be left by a bullet.

  Douglas quickly removed his fur-lined parka and wrapped it around the animal. Then he picked up the bundle and cradled it in his lap. He was rewarded with a weak whimper. A stubby abbreviation of a tail worked its way out through a fold in the parka and began to wag feebly.

  “You just hang in there, pal,” Douglas heard himself saying. “I’m going to fix you up.” He’d always thought it silly in the past when he’d seen people talking to animals; now he found himself crying.

  He picked up a handful of snow, let it melt, then pressed his hand over the dog’s muzzle; he could feel a small tongue licking the palm of his hand. He repeated this procedure until the tail wagging became stronger and the eyes opened. The dog’s eyes were large, very black and soulful. They had the gleam of intelligence, like those of a precocious child. He poured a mug of coffee from his thermos, let it cool, then laced it generously with the liquor. He held the mug in front of the dog’s muzzle and the animal lapped it up. The dog coughed, barked, and licked Douglas’ hand.

  “There, dog,” Douglas said affectionately, “what’d I tell you?” The dog barked. Douglas produced a sandwich from his pack and the dog wolfed it down.

  There was a license and a leather pouch hanging from a collar around the dog’s neck. Douglas opened the leather pouch. Inside was a note announcing that the dog’s name was “Dragon,” and giving the name, address and telephone number of the dog’s owner. The address was an apartment building in Zermatt. The name of the dog’s owner was Victor Rensky.

  It occurred to Douglas that he’d heard the name before. He thought for a few moments, and then placed it; Rensky—if it was the same one—was a former OSS officer turned journalist after the war. His books on little-known aspects of covert Nazi operations in Europe had made him famous, not to mention rich.

  “All right, Dragon,” Douglas said, rising to his feet and cradling the dog in his arms, “let’s get you home.”

  Dragon barked his assent, and then promptly fell asleep.

  It was past noon by the time Douglas emerged from the network of hiking trails into the town of Zermatt. He walked to the river flowing through the center of town and turned right, heading for the cluster of apartment buildings jutting up from a steeply rising slope to the west. Two hundred yards to his left a red jet helicopter rose from a large heliport cut into the side of the mountain. That particular sound was a familiar one in Zermatt; usually it meant that someone was dangling—or dead—on the Matterhorn.

  The main entrance to the Helvetia apartment house was open. Dragon was awake now, trembling with the excitement of being back in a familiar place. The apartment directory indicated that Victor Rensky lived in 3C. Douglas entered the lift and got off on the third floor.

  There was no answer from 3C. Douglas rang the bell a third time, gave a perfunctory knock, then turned to go. Dragon was not willing to give up so easily. Showing an unexpected surge of strength, the dog leaped from Douglas’ arms, yelped with pain when he hit the floor, but remained on his feet. He scampered back and used his paw to push aside the mat in front of the door, revealing a key that had been hidden there. Dragon picked up the key in his mouth and trotted triumphantly back to Douglas. The key dropped with a minor clatter at Douglas’ feet.

  Douglas laughed. “Is this an invitation? I know your master will be glad to see you, but I’m not so sure he’ll appreciate your bringing any two-legged friends into the house.”

  But why not? Douglas thought. Perhaps Rensky would be back in a few minutes. Dragon, after being shot and almost freezing to death, deserved a taste of home before being locked up in some doctor’s office. Douglas decided he would wait a half hour. If Rensky wasn’t back by then he would leave a note and drop Dragon off with a veterinarian, as he’d originally intended. He scratched Dragon behind the ears, picked up the key and went into the apartment.

  The interior was tastefully decorated in dark browns and gold, lightened by a series of framed blowups of the Zermatt valley and the Matterhorn. It reflected a journalist’s mind, the constant, not-quite-successful struggle to create order out of chaos. There were magazines on every conceivable subject strewn about the room. One wall was book stacks, filled with five or six hundred well-worn volumes. A workbench extended the length of another wall; on the bench were two typewriters—one portable and one electric—and a stack of manuscript paper surrounded by more books. There were a dozen chess sets around the room. B
eside each was a small pile of postcards, identifying Rensky as a postal chess player. There was one set on the workbench, along with another pile of postcards.

  Douglas went to the bookcases. The collection was a potpourri of books and subjects, with the emphasis on Nazi Germany; many of the books were Rensky’s own. One shelf was devoted to chess, and the first book that caught Douglas’ attention was his own, a small but popular monograph on The Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense. “Good taste,” he grunted. He turned to Dragon and said, “I wonder if you know that you’re named after a chess opening?”

  Dragon’s bark indicated that he certainly did. The dog lay down on a well-worn throw rug, licked his injured hindquarters, then promptly fell asleep. Douglas went to the workbench.

  The books that Rensky was using all seemed to be on the same subject. The one that was open bore the title, The Nazi Fifth Column In Switzerland: The Hidden Traitors; and it appeared that Rensky was writing a book of his own. The pile of typescript was heavily annotated in what Douglas assumed was Rensky’s handwriting.

  He moved on to the chess set and picked up the postcards, intending to go through the moves in his mind. He riffled through the cards, stopped when he was halfway through the pile and started again, this time more slowly. They didn’t make sense.

  Douglas was thoroughly familiar with the rules and method of playing postal chess; he usually had a dozen games going at one time, using postal chess as a painless means of analyzing new opening ideas in a painless, non-tournament situation. He knew that in Europe they would use the algebraic method of chess notation in order to send moves. That would mean that the eight squares on the first rank of the chessboard would be assigned the letters A to H; the squares on the files, counting from White’s side of the board, would be numbered from 1 to 8. The cards, datelined from a number of different cities in both Germany and Switzerland, bore just about every letter of the alphabet, and the numbers were frequently higher than 8; and there was something else that was odd: all of the postcards had been written by the same person who had annotated the typescript.