SelectionEvent (2ed)

by Wayne Wightman

  “That wasn't what I meant, and I apologize, Mr. Curtiz. I'm sure your organization will serve you well.”

  “If I had a gun, I'd serve you well, a-hole.”

  “Shut up, Stewart. I'm seeing the same thing I used to see in the old world, Martin. You expect me to fail.” He gazed down the table at him. “There's something you need to understand, Martin. This is the New America. The new and improved America, and I am going to make it work. This is something I can do. Now, Marty, I don't want to be too heavy here, but until the time is right to establish a democratic system, I own you. Get it?”

  “Yeah,” Stewart said, scooping peas into his spoon with his thumb, “You get it now, dumb-ass?”

  “Yes sir, I understand.” Martin reminded himself again that his goal was to get away from these people and that he didn't need Curtiz to think he was ready to challenge him at every turn. “I've been out of touch with people for a long time. My expression may be a little awkward. I apologize.”

  “Ryan, take Martin down to his room and lock him in. Then you and your men can take care of yourselves. We'll deal with him in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Curtiz,” Ryan said gratefully.

  “Leave the boy here till he finishes,” Curtiz said.

  “He can bring his plate with him,” Martin said.

  “Good night, Marty. Get 'im out of here, Ryan.”

  “C'mon,” Ryan said, now standing behind him. “Be quick.”

  Martin stood up, casually palming the mushy paper napkin from beside his plate.

  Ryan walked behind him down the hallway and when they came to Martin's room, Martin turned and stood in the doorway, facing Ryan.

  “Bring the boy down as soon as he's finished, all right?”

  “Get inside.”

  “Ryan, help me take care of the boy.”

  “I have my own concerns.” The dim light in the hallway made Ryan's face look cavernous and skull-like, as stripped of flesh as the woman was of spirit.

  “But if you can, Ryan, bring him down. The boy would be safer with me than with Curtiz.”

  “If I can,” Ryan said. “Get inside.”

  Martin stepped back and closed the door for Ryan to lock. He heard the key turn in the lock and then Ryan's receding footsteps and another door opening and then closing. Martin carefully pulled the door open. The wadded napkin he'd shoved into the latch-hole had kept it from locking. He now carefully packed it in place.

  Down the corridor in the dining room, Martin heard low voices in conversation, then Stewart laughed loudly. Chairs scraped over the floor and he saw shadows moving across the dining room walls.

  He quietly reclosed the door and heard muted footsteps on the carpet and rustling clothes as they went past. He listened another minute but heard nothing else, no door opening or closing nor any movement at all.

  He waited several more minutes, five perhaps, straining to hear any sound at all, and then again carefully opened his door and stepped out into the darkened hallway, with only the slightest idea of what he was going to do next.

  Chapter 21

  Isha stopped suddenly — she smelled hot food. It had been a long time since she had smelled cooking meat. She trotted one way down the street and then the other until she found its direction and then went toward it.

  It was three streets over, and as she got closer, she smelled more and more smoke in the air, along with the hot meaty smell. Finally, through the rain, she could see the smoldering embers of a house that had burned. She shook herself again to lighten the weight of her wet hair and to clear her eyes. Then she approached cautiously, keeping herself hidden behind cars and hedges.

  Two houses away, she smelled something besides the cooked-meat smell from the burned house — something alive and dangerous.

  She flattened her ears and very carefully watched for movement around the ruin — and something moved. Two somethings moved.

  They were as big as men but they were cats, long and low spotted cats, and they moved in utter silence, bellies close to the ground, circling the house and watching the embers. One of them paused and lifted its blunt muzzle into the air and sniffed.

  Isha flattened her ears even more and silently dropped her belly to the wet ground.

  The cat switched its thick tail twice and turned its attention back to the smoldering ruin. It took two... three... slow steps into the wet ashes, lowered its head, gripped something in its jaws, and stepped carefully backward, dragging the charred thing with it. It held the dead cooked thing against the ground with one paw and ripped half of it away in its teeth. Its huge jaw muscles pulsed as it chewed and cracked bones in its mouth.

  Isha slowly backed away, turned, and ran.

  Chapter 22

  The corridor turned ninety degrees, and beneath a closed bedroom door was a line of yellow light across the carpet.

  “...hasn't told me nothing,” Max was saying. “He just kept tryna get me to eat but I was full from the candy you gave me.”

  “You be sure to tell me everything he says to you,” Curtiz said.

  “Boy, lookit these.” It was Stewart's voice. “Wow.”

  Martin heard Max giggle. He forced himself to breathe slowly and evenly.

  “Boy...” Stewart said. “She's not bad looking either. How long you think she'll last?” Stewart yukked softly. “What'll we call her? She's gotta have a name.”

  “What'll we name her, Max?” Curtiz asked.

  “Linda,” Max said.

  “I like that,” Stewart said loudly. “Linda baby.”

  “Keep your voice down, god damn it,” Curtiz said. Then after a pause. “You want to do her? Go ahead.”

  “Come on, Mr. Curtiz!” Stewart whined. “Come on, let me.”

  “Shut up, Stewart.”

  Martin listened another minute to Curtiz' encouragements and Stewart's giggles, and every repugnant suspicion was confirmed.

  Using Max on Martin, keeping the woman as a slave — the man was more cunning and degenerate than Martin imagined. The landscape had changed; Martin's choices changed.

  Always choices, he thought, and never an easy ones.

  Ideally, what he wanted now was to get himself and the woman away from them. He wondered what Diaz would do... probably grab one of the cars and overnight it to New Orleans.

  All right, Martin thought, what would I do if I were the person I wanted to be?

  Martin crept down the hallway and located Ryan. He slept in a back room with his god in his blood. A small lamp on his bedside table had not been turned off and his syringe lay there, next to a half-filled glass of water. In the next room, which was probably a converted shop, were five cots, and the other men lay on them in their clothes, sleeping deeply. They looked dead.

  Martin quietly went out to the van they had driven to San Francisco and retrieved a coil of nylon rope, went back to Ryan's room, silently closed the door, looped one end of the rope around the knob, pulled it tight and looped it around the shop door, and then secured the other around the base of a toilet in a bathroom around the corner. Tying doors shut was something he'd learned in the dorms at college.

  He stood a moment in the dark living room, listening to the rain dripping off the eaves and plopping onto the plants around the house. How, he wondered, could all this be happening? He was no rescuing hero. Why, after the catastrophe the world had gone through, was it turning out to be as crude and cruel as it had been in the old world?

  The answer was not complex: this was not a new world. This was the same old world that he had left behind when he had gone underground. Curtiz and Stewart were simply transplanted from one time to another, bringing with them all their greed from the old world. This wasn't a new world at all. It was the last rotten remnants of the old one.

  Martin found the closet where Curtiz had stored the weapons they had brought back. He took out one of the automatic shotguns, held it near a window in the light. He turned off the safety and quietly shoved six cartridges into it. He went down
the hall and gave Curtiz' bedroom door a brisk shove open.

  Stewart was lying on top of the woman, who was only half undressed. His head jerked toward Martin and he grunted, “Hunh?” Wearing only his undershorts, Max sat in a chair in the corner with a can of Coke in one hand. Curtiz stood on the other side of the bed, barefoot, with just his pants on, smoking a cigarette, which he slowly took out of his mouth. The look on his face was somewhere between fear and utter hatred.

  “Get off the woman, Stewart,” Martin said, holding the shotgun loosely and letting it play between the two men.

  “What are you doing, don't kill me, what are you doing?!” Stewart squeaked as he scrambled off the far side of the bed, covering his groin with his cupped hands.

  “They made me do it,” Max said quietly. He pumped a little more life into his voice. “They said they'd kill me if I didn't do what they said.”

  Martin ignored him. He said to the two men, “Move back to the wall.”

  Stewart's fear overcame his modesty — he waved his hands slowly in front of his chest. “Be real careful, guy, okay? Don't even think about the trigger, okay? Okay? I'm not going to do anything, okay?” He soft-stepped over behind Max.

  “Marty,” Curtiz said, “you're messing up the program. We're the only line of defense between you and whole shitload of trouble out there. You think the world used to be a jungle? You kill us, and what's left but barbarism?”

  “You're protecting me from barbarism? If you weren't insane, you'd laugh at yourself. I just want to get the woman out of here.” Keeping the shotgun trained on Curtiz, Martin reached toward the woman's shoulder and gave her a shake. She lazily turned her head and looked at him. “Get up,” he said. “We're going to leave.”

  “Leave her alone, Marty. She'll like it here,” Curtiz said. “We'll feed her well, keep her warm and happy. Why don't you just get lost, Marty, we'll call it even.”

  Martin shook her shoulder hard. “Get up. We can get out of here.” She looked at him.

  “See, Marty? She's got no problem with civilization.” Curtiz looked down at the small table beside him where his holster and sidearm lay. “You're an educated idiot, Marty, that's all. You don't understand Thing One about human nature. I, on the other hand, do.”

  “Get up,” Martin said to the woman. He took a handful of her blouse and tried to pull her toward his side of the bed.

  “Watch this, Martin. I'm going to prove to you that you've got no future. You should have died when the disease came through. Your type is extinct.” Curtiz openly looked down at the .45 in the glossy black holster. “I'm going to pick up that gun, and I'm going to put your ignorant ass away if you aren't out of here by the time I get it leveled on you. I have a mission, Marty, and it's bigger than you.” He looked at Martin straight in the eyes and tapped his teeth behind his lips. “Way bigger than you.”

  In the other corner of the room, Max was breathing audibly in short hiccuping gasps and Stewart's eyes were wide and his mouth hung open.

  Martin pulled hard on the woman's blouse. “Come on,” he said, trying to maneuver her and keep the shotgun aimed. She looked back at him with empty eyes.

  Curtiz unsnapped the strap over the hammer and wrapped his fingers around the grip.

  “Come on!” Martin begged the woman. “Get up, get up!” The woman lay inert, like a watery bag of bones and soft muscle.

  Curtiz lifted the .45 out of the holster. “You're just pathetic. Now evolution is going to take its intended course.”

  Martin touched the trigger and the shotgun went off twice very fast. The noise was so loud it seemed to blank his vision and scramble his thoughts. Then, through the smoke and stink, he saw Curtiz, most of Curtiz, lying on the tipped-over table, and the rest of him, his legs, were blown back against the wall. Tremendous quantities of blood ran out of the seat of the chair and the smoke rose lazily and seemed to gather around the ceiling light. On the bed, the woman still gazed impassively at him.

  Gradually he became aware of Max, huddled in his chair making soft “Eee, eee, eee” sounds, and crouched behind him, Stewart panted as though he had just run several miles.

  “Stewart, you and the kid, I'm going to take you outside, you're going to get one of the cars, and you're going to leave. Let's go.”

  “But—” Stewart wheezed through his open mouth as he moved slowly around the chair. “we — don't have any — clothes.”

  “Stewart, if I ever hear the sound of your voice again, I'll kill you. Do you understand? If you say Yes, I'll kill you. Come on, Stewart, you're stupid enough not to believe me. Do you understand? Say yes.”

  Stewart said nothing and peed down his leg.

  “Move quickly,” Martin said. He was thinking of Ryan now — he didn't know how far out of it he would be, but he expected to see him at every corner.

  Stewart moved faster but Max sat huddled, staring across at the blood and mess of Curtiz.

  “He was a bad guy, Max. He didn't mind hurting people. And you're old enough to know what a mean little shit you are.” He didn't move or make a sound.

  “Stewart, take him with you.”

  He came back and dragged the boy after him.

  The lights from the house cast vague shadows across the driveway. The rain had stopped but water pooled everywhere. As he herded the two of them toward Stewart's Corvette, Martin sidled up to the lighted window of Ryan's room. He was still sprawled on his bed in the same position Martin had last seen him.

  Behind the wheel of the Corvette, nude except for his two wrist watches, Stewart looked milky white and frail. His chest was sunken and he shivered on the leather seats. Max huddled in the seat beside him, and Martin noticed that in the back seat were four or five cardboard boxes of hard liquor, a wide-screen TV, and half a dozen boxes of audio-video add-ons.

  Martin wanted to make a good final impression on Stewart before he left.

  He rested the barrel of the shotgun on the window ledge and then shoved it forward so the opening of the barrel jammed into the side of Stewart's neck, just below his jaw. He pushed it in firmly.

  “You should go somewhere far away, like Maine, because if I ever think you're anywhere near me, Stewart, I'll hunt you down and I will kill you. Anything you want to say, Stewart? Good. Now, leave.”

  Martin stood back, the Corvette rumbled to life, moved out of the driveway and down the street and was gone.

  Back in the house, Martin checked on the woman — but she was no longer in the bedroom — and for a moment he panicked, but then he saw a light under the bathroom door and heard water running.

  Ryan, he thought, what should he do about Ryan? Nothing, he suspected. With no one holding his dope for him and making him do tricks, Ryan would have no reason to do anything but feed his habit and bliss himself to death.

  And the woman? He would take care of her, he supposed. Maybe someday she would talk. Maybe not. But he couldn't leave her.

  The water continued to run in the bathroom sink.

  Martin looked at the closed door a moment longer and had an uneasy feeling. He knocked and said, “Hello? Are you all right?”

  No answer.

  He turned the knob, expected that it would be locked, but it wasn't. The light on the white tile and porcelain was so brilliant he had to squint, but from the first moment, he knew what he was looking at. There was red everywhere.

  She had used double edged blades and had badly cut up her fingers in doing her job, but she had done it thoroughly. She sat in the floor of the shower stall leaning against the wall, blood red from the neck down. Eyes closed, the only color in her face were the smears of blue eye shadow. No pulse. She looked, as she always had, at peace.

  Martin wondered how sane she had been. She had been sane enough to know that her life had become a nightmare.

  He closed the door of the shower stall, turned off the water in the sink and the light overhead, and left.

  Outside in the driveway, he wondered what he should do about Billy and the others. I
f he left them, tomorrow they could be slaves again, this time belonging to Ryan and the others. But right now they were free and didn't know it.

  He found them in the house next door, sleeping under thin blankets in a row of army cots. Martin turned on the lights and shook Billy hard and got him awake. His eyes focused slowly.

  Martin threw the blanket off him, pulled his legs off the edge of the bed, and then pulled him to a sitting position. “Billy, are you awake?”

  “Yes.” He blinked quickly five or six times and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, yes, awake.”

  “You're free to go.”

  “Free?”

  “Yes, free. Curtiz is dead. You're free and you and the others should get the hell out of here right now. You can come with me. I have a place.” From there they could figure what to do next.

  “Mr. Curtiz have our medicine.”

  Martin tried to explain to him but he wasn't sure Billy understood. One of the Hispanics had opened his eyes and was listening. “Do you understand what I'm talking about?” Martin asked him.

  “Sure.”

  “Curtiz told me you didn't speak English.”

  “He wrong, man.”

  Martin grinned and shook his head. “You guys, all of you, get up, get in the van, and I'll take you someplace safe. By morning, Ryan and the others could start causing you problems.”

  “We want to go to LA,” one of them said.

  “LA, yes, good,” Billy said, coming to life. “Family have store there.”

  “You all want to go to LA?” Several of the others were coming around now and Martin saw a couple of their heads nod.

  “All right. There's an extra can of gas in the back of the van.”

  Martin reached out and shook Billy's hand. “Good luck. You guys are going to have some rough days ahead.”

  “Yes, we be sick, but we be okay. Only two months he give us heroin. We be sick, but no sweat.” He beamed.

  Martin left them, and now he was going home once more. Once more, he thought, starting over.

  Chapter 23

  Isha loped in a wide circle, her head low from exhaustion, the rain dripping from her muzzle. Turn here, something told her, and she turned, not knowing why, just moving, keeping moving, and turning when urged to do so. She did not notice when the rain slacked off and finally stopped altogether. Turn again, something told her, turn again and keep going, keep going, and then she heard a car noise.