Having seen more than enough, he instructed Ernesto to drop him off in the nearby Zona Rosa neighborhood. It was getting near time.
5
Pruitt awoke from his doze with a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead and reports of rifle shots and the terrified screams of children ringing in his head. Sitting up, for a paralyzing few seconds he darted his eyes around the darkened space and didn’t know where he was. Not daring move a muscle, he waited to hear the familiar din of the jungle when he heard instead the sound of waves crashing against a not so distant shore, and he remembered.
He was at the uncle’s house. He was there to protect the girl. Glancing across the room toward the window, he saw that night had fallen while he slept. The almost full moon sent glistering beams of milky white light fanning across the ocean beyond. Farther out to sea, he thought he could just spy the outline of a cruise ship.
Sitting back, he lifted his arm and wiped away the now chilly sweat with his sleeve, understanding then that he’d had the dream again. More terrifying to him was that specific details of the dream were beginning to seep from his subconscious into the forefront of his thoughts, and he wasn’t ready for that. He knew he wasn’t ready. The boy had told him so.
But the boy wasn’t visiting him as often as he once did, and the suggestions he had given seemed somehow to weaken over time. Where the hell was he? He should be back by now. He had promised Pruitt he’d be back by now. Oh, well, west Texas. Just gonna have to suck it up, aren’t you boy? But he wasn’t ready to suck it up. Where the hell was the boy?
Scott was his name, though he had given Pruitt permission to call him Dugan, if he liked. He had said that only his friends called him Dugan, and he wanted Pruitt to consider him a friend. Pruitt did. More than that, really. Closing his eyes, Pruitt tried his best to take control his rambling thoughts, to suppress the night terrors that he knew would overwhelm him if the boy did not return soon, those dark visions that would surely put him back on top of the cliff looking down at the stones and the jagged rocks below. It was hard to imagine that if the boy didn’t come back soon, he might die, but he knew it to be true.
In an effort to distract himself, to master his own thoughts and hold back those vile half remembrances, he started pondering the word master itself. He knew it meant mostly to become really good at something. What had he ever become good at? He could shoot some. One of the few nice things his drill sergeant ever said to him was about his rifle skills. He supposed he was an okay wrestler too, and would have won more than he’d lost if the fix wasn’t in. But that was on the low rent, ham and egg circuit, so no, he couldn’t claim to have mastered that. He recalled there were some master sergeants in the service. He’d even met one or two, though what they were masters of, he had no idea. Then, he thought of the most obvious one of all, slaves and their masters. Now that was a relationship he could understand.
In a bolt of insight, he realized then that although he knew he was no slave, and that Scott would deny it and say it wasn’t so, that Dugan was his master. Surprising himself, he smiled to think that was just fine with him. Hell, he hadn’t done such a good job being the master of his own life. It was probably for the best that someone else do his thinking for him. And he knew that with Dugan, he could do a lot worse.
Feeling better about things, he was finally able set all those troubling thoughts aside. Guessing it was around ten o’clock or so, he was just about to get out of the recliner to check on the girl when he heard a noise come from somewhere near the front door, and knew in an instant that someone was inside the house.
6
The road leading out of the exclusive neighborhood of walled estates gave way to the Zona Rosa nightclub district of outdoor cafes, dance clubs, museums, and restaurants. The evening was warm, and the avenues were teeming with people out looking for fun. You almost wouldn’t think there was a war on, Dugan thought, never mind that there were thousands of people living in cardboard hovels just a few miles down the road, he reflected more bitterly.
After releasing Ernesto and allowing him to go on his way, Dugan saw even at this early hour, Club Infierno was packed, with an overflow line of well dressed people outside waiting to be let in. The building itself wasn’t much to look at, a brick, multi-story, almost industrial looking structure, painted bright purple, with barred, plywood covered windows on the upper floors. Two sizable wooden doors opened out onto the sidewalk.
As for Dugan, he had no trouble getting in. Ducking into the front of the line, he wandered purposefully toward the velvet rope at the entrance. At a glance from him, the man working the door unhooked the rope and let him pass. The thickset muscle man behind him didn’t bat an eye, nor did they ask to check his now heavier bag, slung across his shoulder and stuffed with both his personal items and the briefcase Richards had given him to hold.
Dance music blared and heavy bass throbbed as he slipped inside, weaving his way among and through the crush of patrons milling about the bars nearest the entrance. When a gap in the throng opened, he saw a doorway just ahead behind which colored lights blinked off and on to the unrelenting beat of the music.
Stepping into the smoke filled club, he saw it was a deceptively large space, three stories tall, each floor ringed with tables and conveniently spaced bars, all now about three deep. He was on the second level. Most all the red leather booths that lined the walls were occupied. The lighted dance floor below was jammed with people dancing to three-year-old Duran Duran. Looking up to the slightly less crowded third level, he saw people sitting at tables or leaning against the railings, drinking and smoking and talking. The noise from the crowd, in conjunction with the music from the massive speakers, was earsplitting. Even so, he estimated that at about six-hundred people, the club was still only half full.
Walking through, he saw a diverse mix of clientele, from businessmen in suits to students dressed to the nines to high-end prostitutes plying their trade. Here and there he saw spit shined and slick haired Salvadoran military officers out for a night of fun. He spotted buzzcut and apple cheeked young men, whose cocky demeanor and smiling self assurance revealed to Dugan they could only be off-duty American soldiers. Overhearing a few shout good-naturedly to one another as he passed them by only confirmed it.
He found Richards sitting in a booth in the far corner with two other men. Richards had changed the clothes they were provided last evening, slipping into another of his seemingly inexhaustible supply of white suits, though this time paired with a blue collared shirt and again, no tie. Seeing him in deep conversation with another man as the two pored over a map laid out on the table, he hung back and waited for Richards to acknowledge him.
While waiting, he noted the other of Richards’ companions was a Salvadoran colonel. Bristly mustached and heavily pockmarked, he chimed in occasionally with what appeared to Dugan to be a mixture of haughtiness and arrogance. Richards’ bespectacled companion would simply look up and nod at these interruptions from the military man before ignoring them and continuing his conference with Richards.
When a cocktail waitress came to their table, Richards lifted his head to see Dugan lounging against the wall opposite. Sending over a tenuous nod, Dugan returned it and understood Richards needed more time, which was fine by him. On the brink of their final journey together, Dugan discovered then that he was in no hurry at all.
7
In a cramped apartment in downtown San Marcos just off the town square, about a block from the tavern where her husband Carlos held court on Wednesday nights, a doting Margarite cooed to her sleeping granddaughter and kissed her goodbye. The baby was sick, with flulike symptoms and a mild fever. Her daughter was under the weather as well. Truth be told, even Margarite was not feeling her best. Perhaps she also was coming down with something. It would be very unlike her, for she was always healthy as a horse.
Then again, a good night’s sleep was possibly all she needed. Carlos had been frisky last evening, and had kept her up late into the night. She joked t
hat the full moon always brought out the worst in him before she lovingly and gently and, to be honest with herself, eagerly performed her wifely duties.
Yawning, she looked up to the clock and saw it was almost nine-thirty now. Her daughter was asleep on the couch. She would give Carlos just a few more minutes, because he works hard and deserves his leisure time, before she went to scoop him up and they would call it a night.
8
In his car, Torres removed the hypodermic needle from its case and primed it, making sure it was ready and there would be no fuss. He expected the young girl would be sleeping, but no matter. Either way, she was coming with him, he thought, adjusting himself once more.
The satchel was across his shoulder as he stepped down the walkway toward the house, passing by the hydrangea and bougainvillea that were so lovingly tended by the handyman gardener, and approached the front door. In the darkness beneath the awning, with the hypodermic still in hand, he used his other to reach for the keychain clipped to his belt, quickly finding the one he had put tape on earlier in the evening. Torres had keys to most all the rental houses in town, their owners desirous that the police monitor the properties when they were vacant, or to access them should there be any trouble. Torres hadn’t used this key in more than three years.
The key slipped cleanly into the lock, and with a satisfying ‘click,’ the door opened. Reaching to his belt for his flashlight, he flicked it on and stepped through the foyer into the front room. The moonlight coming through the large window was such that he did not need the flashlight, however the hall leading to the bedrooms to the right was dark, so he kept it in his hand as he approached the archway.
He was only halfway there when suddenly, he was grasped around the waist and lifted off his feet. He felt an ungodly crushing pressure on his chest. Automatically, he clenched one hand and unclenched the other, the flashlight dropping to the floor and rolling off to the side. Soon after, while still dangling high above the floor, he discovered that he could not breathe.
9
Dugan waited patiently along the wall for Richards to finish his conference and for the two to go on their way. He had seen military vehicles parked outside the club, so perhaps that was their transportation. More probably, he guessed, they would return to Ilopango and take air transport to their northern destination, Chalatenango province, was what Richards had said. Dugan elicited from Ernesto that Chalatenango was mostly under the control of the leftist guerrillas who were in revolt against their government and the aristocratic landowners that government represented. Dugan had a soft spot for them already.
Duran Duran had long ended, and the dance floor now pulsed with the rhythmic tones and dulcet voice of Thelma Houston, whose heart was full of love and desire, when beneath the cigarette smoke and the sickly sweet smell of tropical fruit drinks and thick layers of cologne and perfume, Dugan sensed another, more caustic aroma. However, before isolating it, with a heady bang of realization he got the strong sense there was something else going on in this club; in fact, he knew then with certitude there was another vampire in the room.
10
Pruitt had reacted out of instinct when he saw the shadow cross the floor, lifting whoever it was and interlocking his arms in his once fabled West Texas hold ‘em chest crunch. He had to curb those same instincts from completing the move, which would have entailed lifting the man above his head and smashing him across a folding chair. Soon after picking him up, he heard something heavy fall to the floor, then watched a ring of light roll around and around. Seconds later, he felt a sharp pinprick in his leg.
Out of pain and surprise he squeezed more tightly, then heard a sickening ‘crack’ echo around the room, a sound he recognized from long experience as the breaking of ribs. Feeling bad about that, he loosened his grip a bit, and somehow, the broken ribbed man in his arms managed to rasp out: “Policia! Por favor, senor. Soy policia!”
Fuck, was Pruitt’s first thought. Just my luck.
He rolled it over in his mind for a quick second, releasing his hold a little more so at least the man could breathe. His second thought was that the boy might be mad at him for attacking a policeman, and it wouldn’t be the first policeman he’d gotten into a tussle with. With regret and some shame, he recalled that none of those other incidents had ended well for him. Most had led to his spending the night in a jail cell or worse, followed by him needing to make hasty tracks out of town the next morning.
On the other hand, why was a policeman inside the house? Why hadn’t he knocked? Before he could even begin to ask those questions, his mind went sluggish and his tongue grew thick. Puzzled by that, he tried once again to master his thoughts, but couldn’t. They all began to run together. He started to drift away.
Oh, boy, am I in trouble, he thought again. Not just that, but I broke the guy’s fucking ribs. Then again, he was headed toward the girl’s room, wasn’t he? Surely he had done the right thing, he told himself. Even if it was a mistake, he had done what he’d been asked to do, hadn’t he? The boy would understand that, wouldn’t he? The last thing he thought before his mind surrendered to the darkness was, Where the hell is the boy?
After that, he didn’t think anything at all.
11
The disquieting revelation that there was another of his kind in the room hardly came and went before Dugan focused again on what he had sensed just prior to that. The palpable presence of the other vampire was already receding, as if they too had simply come and gone, when Dugan isolated what it was he had smelled beneath the hellish stew of odors wafting throughout the space. Second cousin to the aromas that had filled the cargo hold of the planes he had so recently flown in, it was just the barest hint of acrid sulfur and black powder and a bitter metallic tang, and it came to him.
There was a bomb inside the club.
Not wasting a second, he strode toward Richards’ booth, where he was still in deep discussion with the glasses wearing man, who Dugan guessed might be an embassy flunky of one kind or another, when he seized Richards by the shoulder and yanked him close. Moving his mouth to his ear, he whispered, “Bomb,” and then grabbed him by the arm. Hoisting him upright, he started forcefully steering him away from the booth in the direction of the front door of the club.
Doubtless unused to being manhandled, Richards jerked himself away from Dugan’s grasp. When Dugan looked behind him, he saw Richards face was red with anger. He contemplated simply reaching into his mind and coercing him to go, however he had tried that once before with Richards on their long boat journey, and was confronted with a haze of static and unsettling visions. Thrown, he had glanced toward Richards and found him smiling knowingly, as if he were wise to what Dugan was up to and wasn’t going to allow it.
So Dugan just stood there amid the smoke and the throng and let his face do all the pleading before mouthing a brusque, “Let’s go!” and turning again to weave his way through the thickening crowd toward the door, as if his purposeful example alone would be enough to get Richards moving. He sensed immediately that it was, and that Richards was close on his heels. He felt sharp relief he had gotten through.
Still, he wished there was more he could do for the rest. He certainly couldn’t shout “Bomb!” because that would cause an instant panic and then nobody would be able to get out. Already halfway toward the entrance, he didn’t know how much time was left or if even he would make it out. The best he could do was to send flee responses to some of the individuals he passed: a pair of American soldiers; a woman on the arm of a businessman twice her age; a duo of prostitutes; a young couple who had only just come inside. He felt them follow him too.
The crowd was thickest at the entrance, with knots of people pushing their way in or standing ten deep at the now all too obvious fire hazard bar, in a quick hurry to get liquor into their systems. Swimming against this tide of humanity, pressing against and pushing people, Dugan heard more than a few shouted “Heys!” and “Asshole!” but at that moment didn’t really care.
The entrance was just ahead. He felt the cool night air on his face, saw the brawny muscleman standing outside who had let him pass through unmolested earlier in the evening. He had just broken through the last clump of people and stepped out onto the sidewalk when a blast from behind lifted him off his feet and sent him soaring into the air.
12
The fishing line cut deeply into his hands and fingers causing them to bleed before Torres fully returned to himself. Once he did, he let go of the line and then collapsed sideways to the floor, to once again try to catch his breath.
When the giant had finally toppled like Goliath, dropping him like a rag doll, the police chief could only roll and cough and gasp for air while clutching his damaged insides. At one point, he realized he was coughing up a viscous fluid that could only be blood, and was certain that at least one lung had been punctured by his broken ribs, maybe both. He was having difficulty catching his breath. But that didn’t stop him, when he found strength and air enough, to get the fishing line out of his satchel and wrap it ever so tightly around the man’s thick neck. He squeezed and squeezed and watched his face turn the color of a ripe cherry tomato until he knew it would be impossible for the man to have any life left in him.
Once he was able, he rolled over and crawled onto all fours. With a sharp internal twinge, he heaved himself to his feet. Soaking wet from pain and exertion, he wiped his brow and flung the sweat to the floor before gingerly bending down to pick up his satchel. The knifing ache came again, but the sharp intake of breath it had caused reassured him that at least he was taking in some air.
Applewood (Book 3): The Space of Life Between Page 16