Gord Rollo

by The Jigsaw Man v2. 0

surprised, I congratulated myself on a clean getaway.

  All I had to do now was lay still and wait for the big

  bang.

  Let 'er rip, Andrew, Blow her straight to hell!

  This was exciting stuff. I could hardly wait to see the

  first fireball and I didn't want to miss any of the show so

  I kept my eyes riveted on Andrew's tower. W h e n he

  sparked the lighter, that room would be the first to go.

  Ten minutes passed and n o t h i n g happened.

  Even the guards were staying silent on the radio and

  that was starting to worry me. W h a t if they'd discov¬

  ered my plan and were quickly and quietly going around

  shutting the gas valves and opening windows to air out

  the rooms? Or what if t h e guards had rushed the tower

  room and grabbed the lighter before Andrew could ig¬

  nite the gas? Or Andrew had accidentally dropped the

  lighter onto the floor, and being paralyzed, couldn't

  move to pick it back up?

  All of those scenarios were valid reasons for worry,

  and with every passing minute, the tension in me was

  cranked up a notch. Leaving Andrew alone might have

  been a big mistake.

  Dammit! Should I go hack?

  Maybe.

  Probably.

  Yes.

  Leaving my bed of leaves behind, I started back

  across the grassy field, not having a clue what I in¬

  tended to do once I made it back to the castle. I could

  head for one of the basement windows and—

  BOOM!

  The tower room detonated, the sudden explosion

  catching me unprepared, a mighty crack of thunder

  smashing into my eardrums from what seemed like two

  feet away. It was a good thing I still had most of the

  field between the building and m e , or I'd be a goner.

  Andrew's room was there one second, gone the next,

  and then the sky darkened and started to rain chunks of

  brick. Chunks of Andrew and a guard or two, as well,

  I'd imagine, but I tried not to think about that. I hit the

  deck, curling into a ball on the grass, protecting my

  head with my arms.

  Seconds later, there was a huge explosion on the

  fourth floor, followed immediately by an overlapping

  series of minidetonations throughout the building. W h e n

  the basement blew, it appeared that the entire fourstory structure—foundation and all—lifted fifteen feet

  into the air, the superheated gases expanding and push¬

  ing upward in the same way volcanic eruptions occur.

  There was no lava flow from the basement, but fires

  raged and the thickest, blackest smoke I'd ever seen

  came p o u r i n g out to obscure the final explosions that

  tore N a t h a n Marshall's research facility apart at the

  seams.

  I never saw the castle come back down to earth, but I

  sure heard it. There was a tremendous growl within the

  swirling smoke, then a volley of j a r r i n g thuds that shook

  the ground under me like an earthquake. I had my head

  buried and my eyes tightly shut, praying none of the

  thousands of pounds of concrete, brick, steel, plaster,

  and glass being torn apart and thrown skyward would

  land on m e , crushing me in my moment of triumph.

  I kept my eyes closed for a long t i m e , feeling very

  much like Chicken Little as the sky fell all around m e .

  N o t h i n g touched me. N o t a thing. W h e n I opened my

  eyes, the billowing smoke was so thick over where the

  building had been, I couldn't tell how much damage I'd

  actually done. Had I demolished the entire structure,

  or did some of it still stand, untouched? As black and

  acrid-smelling as the smoke was, it had to be the oil

  furnace reservoirs that were burning. If that were the

  case, the fire might rage for a while yet. I sat up with

  my legs crossed at my ankles, and waited.

  It gets awfully quiet after a large explosion. Too quiet.

  Once the fires and smoke died down a little, I could see

  that my hopes had been granted—there was n o t h i n g

  left of the castle except a large hole in the ground. I

  should have felt ecstatic, but in all honesty, what I felt

  most was empty. Everyone that I'd channeled my ha¬

  tred, fear, and anger into for so long, as now gone. Dr.

  Marshall, Drake, the security team, whichever of the

  cruel doctors, nurses, and orderlies unlucky enough to

  have been on duty today—all gone in the destruction

  that had just ended. I felt like the sole survivor of a ter—

  rible plane crash, sitting here amid the debris scattered

  over a three-hundred-foot blast radius. It was a creepy

  feeling, alone among the charred pieces of the dead, so

  I tried thinking about me and what I should do next to

  get my mind focused on something different.

  Bad idea.

  My thoughts about the people who'd j u s t been blown

  apart started me t h i n k i n g about my own new body and

  how it was also made from pieces of the dead. From

  there, my thoughts swirled darker and darker, wonder¬

  ing where I was supposed to go from here. W h e r e could

  a freak like me possibly fit in? And would I even be

  given a choice? W h e n the authorities finally showed

  u p , it wouldn't take long for them to realize I wasn't

  exactly an innocent bystander. One look at my body by

  a policeman or an ambulance attendant and the gig

  was up. I'd soon find myself hurried off—for my own

  protection, of course—to some hospital room, where

  they'd poke and prod me until someone with more

  power got wind of me and sent his own people to poke

  and prod me more thoroughly.

  I had a bleak vision of my life b e c o m i n g a never-ending

  series of tests and medical examinations, every doctor,

  scientist, and government official in the country vying

  for the right to keep me as their own personal oversized

  lab rat. It would happen, too, I wasn't just being para¬

  noid this time. N a t h a n Marshall had been a brilliant

  man and his success with me was a huge leap forward in

  nerve regeneration and transplantation research. For

  science, finding me would be the equivalent of the

  Wright brothers getting their hands on a space shuttle.

  They wouldn't stop testing, scanning, questioning, ex¬

  amining, pushing, pulling and molesting every square

  inch of me—body and mind—until they uncovered all

  of Dr. Marshall's secrets. The same secrets, I'd vowed to

  destroy along with the rest of this place.

  Son of a bitch/

  W h a t had I done? Here I thought I'd had the last

  laugh on everyone, the bum who had defied the odds

  to defeat the mad scientist and destroy his research

  forever. Only now was I realizing I should have stayed

  in the building and went up in smoke along with ev¬

  eryone else.

  Briefly, I considered taking off, disappearing before

  anyone showed up to investigate the explosions. No one

  knew I was here so all I had to do was slip away and

  never say a word to anyone. People who saw me
would

  cringe at my scars but with the crowd I h u n g out with it

  wouldn't really matter much. Blue j would still be my

  friend, regardless of how hideous I looked.

  It was a nice dream but I knew it couldn't happen. For

  one, someone would rat me out eventually and someone

  would come to check out the mysterious reports of the

  homeless Frankenstein monster. Even if that didn't

  happen, and people j u s t left me alone, I was on several

  antirejection medications to keep my body from attack¬

  ing all the foreign parts. They were expensive drugs

  that I'd have no way of getting my hands on. Without

  them, my body's immune system would start waging

  war in a hurry. If I went back to live with Blue J and

  Puckman, within a few weeks I'd start getting sick and

  I'd be dead before Christmas.

  Stay here or take off? Either way I was screwed.

  I had no idea what to do. No idea what I could do.

  Then I heard a noise coming from a long way off in the

  woods. It was a familiar sound that put a smile on my

  face and erased the nagging questions in my mind. I rose

  to my feet, instantly knowing what I had to do. Turning

  away for the smoking chaos I'd created, I started hob¬

  bling back toward the woods, hearing the sound again,

  only closer this time.

  The lonely sound of an approaching train whistle.

  PART FIVE

  T H E E N D

  C H A P T E R F O R T Y - T W O

  Full circle.

  For obvious reasons, those words were stuck in my

  head and I couldn't shake them. The idea of things al¬

  ways returning to where they'd begun was a total crock,

  but there was no denying the notion appealed to me.

  After all, if I was going to kill myself I had a perfectly

  good gun that would do the trick with one pull of the

  trigger. There was no reason for me to lug my battered,

  aching body through the woods on a freezing cold day

  j u s t to achieve the same goal on a railroad track I might

  never find, much less find beibre the train passed me by.

  But something inside of me wanted to try.

  Swallowing Drake's gun would be quicker, easier,

  and far less messy, but that was part of the reason I

  didn't want to end my sad excuse of a life that way. The

  bullet would ruin my head and send my soul packing—if

  I still had a soul left—but it would leave the scientists

  my body intact to slice, dice and dissect at will and I

  wasn't going to let that happen. The train, although

  harder to get to and a potentially agonizing death if it

  didn't kill me on first impact, would at least leave noth¬

  ing behind bigger than a bread box. I'd seen pictures of

  train wreck victims and, man oh man, most had to be

  scraped up off the tracks and put into little plastic freezer

  baggies. Let the government scientists try do their r e

  search on me that way. Good luck.

  More importantly, when they identified my remains

  on the railway track, my daughter Arlene would still get

  her college fund from my life insurance policy. Good

  old dental records. At least my teeth were still my own.

  Arlene and Gloria would have no idea why I was out

  wandering in the woods so far from Buffalo, but nei¬

  ther would anyone else. No one knew I had ever been

  here, which was good. The insurance people could

  squawk but in the end they'd have to pay. That thought

  put a smile on my face.

  I couldn't remember crossing any train tracks when

  Jackson had been marching me to my death along the

  wooded trail, and I'd walked a fair distance along it. My

  guess was Dr. Marshall and Drake had known where

  the tracks were and made the trail out to their macabre

  graveyard in the opposite direction. It wouldn't do to

  have the railroad crews passing by j u s t as Drake was

  dumping a fresh body into a shallow grave. People tend

  to remember things like that. N o , the tracks would be

  nowhere near the trail, so when the path veered to the

  right, I cut into the trees and headed left.

  I was fairly confident I'd find the tracks, but not at all

  sure if I'd make it on time. Judging from its whistle, the

  tram had seemed to be fairly close, but the way sound

  travels in the open woods, there was a better chance it

  might still be miles away.

  I hurried as fast as I could manage, my knee throbbing

  in time with each step across the uneven, leaf-shrouded

  terrain. The trail far behind me now, my sense of direc¬

  tion was getting all screwed up. There was n o t h i n g to

  see but trees and bushes. No wonder people always got

  l o s t in the woods. Every bloody thing looked the same.

  For ten minutes I charged forward, one foot in front of

  the other, hoping I was headed in a reasonably straight

  line. Ahead of me, the land started to slope upward, and

  when I crested the hill the trees fell away and I suddenly

  found myself standing on large chunks of rock and

  gravel instead of frozen dirt.

  The tracks were twelve feet in front of me.

  Bingo!

  Had the train passed already? That was the question.

  I walked out into the center of the tracks and looked

  both ways. Nothing. The track was straight as an arrow

  and clear for miles on my right. I was on a bit of a curve

  heading to my left, but I could still see for a long dis¬

  tance down the line. I considered going down on my

  knees and putting my ear to the track like I'd seen train

  robbers and Indians do countless times in the old West¬

  ern movies, but my knee hurt too much to bend and I

  didn't know what to do once I got down there. Were you

  supposed to put your ear to the track and listen for the

  chug-a-chug-a sound of the approaching train wheels,

  or was the purpose to feel the silent vibrations along

  the steel rail?

  Either way, it wasn't necessary. One look at the top

  of the rails told me everything I needed to know—the

  train hadn't passed yet. There was rust on them, which

  would have been scratched and buffed shiny had a cou¬

  ple of hundred steel wheels jostled and rolled over them

  recently.

  As if to confirm my deduction, the train whistle

  blared again, louder this t i m e , m a k i n g me j u m p and

  twist my bad knee again. I fell to the ground between

  the tracks and tried getting back up but it hurt like a

  bugger and wasn't really worth the effort. I made it to a

  sitting position, straddling the one rail, and decided to

  stay there. I'd be less likely to be seen low to the ground

  like this, and the engineer wouldn't slam on the brakes

  to try stopping the train. I wanted him going -full bore

  when we had our first kiss. It had to be less painful that

  way, and the damage to my body would be much greater.

  Especially the way I was sitting, one leg on either side of

  the rail.

  The whistle had sounded off to my left, and just now

  I could see the fr
ont cowcatcher and the louvered steel

  radiator grille of the big diesel engine rumble into view.

  Despite the curve, I had a fairly unimpeded line of sight

  in that direction but it was still hard to tell how far away

  the train was, or how long I had until it was on top of

  me. All I could do was wait it out.

  Do you really want to do it this way?

  Good question. I was nervous and scared. There was

  no sense denying that. Far more scared than I'd been

  on the Carver Street tracks back in Buffalo. There was

  no reason why—I was more than ready to die, glad I

  might finally be helping Arlene, and more than a little

  excited about the possibility of seeing my wife and son

  again—but deliberately sitting in the path of a speed¬

  ing locomotive takes a lot of balls and makes even the

  bravest of men rethink their plans.

  Maybe I should just shoot myself now, let the train destroy

  my body when I'm already dead and gone.

  N o w that was tempting, but it might not work. I

  wasn't a big guy and I was seriously worried I'd fall be¬

  tween the tracks and the train would scoot right over

  the top without touching me. It might clip a leg or a

  foot off, but again, that would leave the scientists more

  of me than was acceptable. N o , I'd come this far; I was

  determined to see it through to the end.

  As far back as I can remember, even as a y o u n g boy,

  I'd always loved trains, and being run over by one wasn't

  as bad of a way to die as you might think. The after¬

  math is nasty, absolutely, but death would be instanta¬

  neous and relatively painless. One quick SLAM, and

  it's over. My body might be strewn over a mile of track,

  but my suffering would only last a second. That's not so

  bad. I could get through that.

  The train was getting closer, smoking along the track,

  maybe two hundred yards away. I closed my eyes and

  tried to conjure up a picture of Jackie, thinking the sight

  of my wife would be the perfect way to end things, but

  I couldn't do it knowing the train was barreling down

  on me the way it was. I couldn't keep my eyes closed,

  some masochistic need forcing me to watch my death

  approaching.

  One hundred and twenty yards to go.

  So far there'd been no whistles or the shrill screech

  of brakes to indicate that anyone had spotted me. That

  was good. At the speed they were traveling, even if some¬

  one did see me sitting here, there wouldn't be enough