by Tim Willocks
“Ella, I’m going to jump out the back, you understand?”
She nodded.
“The next time their fire hits us I want you to step on the brakes. Halve your speed. But wait until they hit us. Okay?”
She nodded again.
“Good. Then, right after that, I want you to drive like you’re losing control. Weave, slow down some more, then put the van into the left-hand ditch.”
“The ditch.”
“The ditch to the left of the road. Take both your left-hand wheels over the edge. The weight will be right, don’t worry. It’ll tip it over on its side. Then do what Titus says. You got all that?”
“I got it.”
She felt his hand squeeze her shoulder, then he was gone. She focused herself. The road seemed darker than ever but she could see the black strips of the rain ditches racing by on either side. The rotor blades were closing in again. She glanced at the speedometer. They were doing fifty. She heard a dim rattle of gunfire and almost snatched her foot from the gas but the slamming of bullets didn’t follow. Wait till they hit us. She waited. The road. The ditches. The left-hand wheels. This time she didn’t hear the gunfire at all: just a sudden din of hammered aluminum and steel. She crammed on the brakes. There was no need to pretend to lose control: her body jerked forward and the wheel in her hands slipped through her fingers. The black rim of the ditch veered toward her from her right. She squeezed the wheel, heaved, swung back toward the center, whipped her foot off the pedal, bullets kicking dust spots from the surface up ahead. The speedometer: twenty. Another clanging drum roll on the hood. She jacked the wheel left then right, almost off the road, then back again, more brake, slowing—both left-hand wheels—and back across, in a shallow diagonal, toward the gaping black stripe of the ditch: now.
A bang as the axle beneath her hit the edge of the pavement. Her shoulder slammed into the door. Moving, grinding, squealing underneath her. Only the front wheel was down. She sensed the rear end about to skim rightward and roll them over. She dragged the steering wheel clockwise, still moving, heard a bellow of rageful movement behind her, a weight hurled against the wall—a second bang as the rear end dropped. The wheel slipped from her hands. Then the world tilted before her, still moving, weeds and dirt whipping into her face. She closed her eyes. They stopped. She found herself clenched up in a ball.
“Ella, get back here. Keep your head down.”
It was Oates. The van was two-thirds on its side, the right-hand-side door gaping up to the sky, the floor almost perpendicular to the pavement. Through the open rear door she saw a section of road and a few yards of watery ditch. Grimes and Gul were gone. Atwater lay in a tight huddle. Titus Oates stacked the two suitcases one behind the other near the rear exit. Ella crawled over to him.
“Got your gun?” said Oates.
She reached down. The revolver had slipped inside her waistband. She pulled it out, checked it.
“Good,” said Oates. “What loads you using?”
“Black Hills wadcutters.”
“They’ll do the trick. Hunker down behind these cases.”
He indicated the barricade he’d made at the backdoor.
“Eyes and ears peeled. Don’t mind me. Anyone comes along from this end you play dead until their body blocks the door, then you let them have three of them wadcutters. Can you do that?”
“I can do it.”
“I’ll handle the rest.”
Ella curled behind the cases. It wasn’t right. She shifted one of them over four inches so there was a gap between the edge of the case and the rim of the doorframe through which she could look and fire. She focused on the sound of the chopper: it was coming from the far side of the road and the pitch of its rotors had changed. She guessed it was landing in the field. She looked back into the van.
Titus Oates was crouched with his back to the tilted floor, just beneath the gaping hole formed by the open side door. On his knees before him was Rufus Atwater.
“When your buddies show up, Rufus, you are going to talk to them, real friendly, and exactly as I instruct you.”
Atwater nodded.
“Then you’re going to climb out, real cool, and then there’ll be shooting.”
Atwater swallowed.
“From now on I want you to repeat everything I say,” said Oates.
Atwater nodded and waited.
Suddenly Oates clamped Atwater’s head between both hands and jammed his thumbs into the prosecutor’s clot-rimmed nostrils. Atwater uttered bewildered grunts of pain.
“Obey me, scum,” whispered Oates. “Repeat everything I say.”
Atwater said, “Obey me, scum. Repeat everything I say.”
Oates, satisfied, nodded and let go. Two automatics appeared in his fists. He checked them rapidly. Ella turned back to the ditch. They waited.
The noise of the chopper was even lower now and at a constant pitch. It had to be on the ground. The seconds ticked by. She kept her mind blank. Then, very close, a blast of gunfire raked the underside of the van. She squeezed down behind the cases. The shooting stopped. Her ears rang. From her angle of vision she could see nothing.
Behind her, Atwater yelled. “Muchachos! It’s me! Atwater! Don’t shoot!”
She couldn’t help glancing back. Atwater had raised both hands through the doorway above him and was slowly standing up. Both of Oates’s pistols were pointed at his crotch.
Oates said softly, “The others are hurt bad. I think they might be dead.”
As Atwater’s head and chest cleared the door he piped, “The others are hurt bad! I think they might be dead!”
Ella heard a voice answer, “How many?”
Oates murmured, “Just two. Can I get outa here?”
“Just two. Can I get outa here?” asked Atwater.
She looked out the back again: still nothing but ditch, road and sky.
“Slowly!” came a voice, closer than before.
Oates said, “Am I glad to see you guys.”
“Am I glad to see you guys!”
Ella forced herself to keep looking outside as she heard Atwater climbing out. Ditch, road, sky. Suddenly the van echoed to a rage of guns. She snapped her head around.
“Eat the peanuts!” bellowed Titus Oates.
Titus was up on his feet, muzzle blasts blazing from both fists. His body twitched once. He kept firing. Ella’s neck prickled. She turned.
A dark shape plunged with a splash into the ditch outside. She pointed and fired twice. The shape jerked. A flutter of flame. Something thumped into the cases in front of her. She pointed and fired twice more. The shape collapsed into the trench and didn’t move. The deafening rage had stopped. She looked backward: the guns in Titus Oates’s fists were silent. Oates ducked his head down and glanced back beyond her, nodded.
He said, “Nice shooting. Now let’s see if the doctor kept up his end.”
THIRTY-FIVE
PLAYING DEAD in the middle of the road was the easiest thing Cicero Grimes had done all day. He had crouched in a ball at the back of the Tradesman and waited until the bullets hit and Ella had slowed down, then he just tipped himself out and over the edge. So battered was he already that bouncing on the pavement again hardly made much of an impression on him. When he stopped moving he lay prone for a while. He might have stayed there for good but Gul came up and pushed his tongue into Grimes’s left eye. Grimes raised his head in time to see the van teeter into the flood ditch and fall on its side. The Sikorsky was wheeling above the field, to the right of the road, and straightening up to land.
Grimes was behind schedule.
He dragged himself to his feet and started running. He jumped into the right-hand flood ditch to conceal himself and splashed through the mud. Each step as it landed jarred his knee, his spine, his head. Gul loped ahead of him, setting the pace. Grimes stared, trancelike, at the muddy water and thought only about getting air into his lungs. Above the rasp of his breathing he heard the chopper descending. He glanced to his right:
above the tops of the marsh grass he saw the black chopper puttering down toward the earth. It would land about twenty yards from the edge of the ditch. Grimes trudged on. He realized, belatedly, that the clinging mud in the ditch was doubling the energy demanded of him. The ditch meant he didn’t have to bend forward to conceal himself; but the men in the chopper probably weren’t looking at him anyway. He closed up on the van, from which came no sign of life. Another rightward glance: the chopper was out of sight but he could feel its wind. The gunmen would be unloading; at any moment they would appear on the road ahead. Ideally Grimes would reach the Sikorsky after the troops had cleared the field but before Titus had started the ball. Gul suddenly increased his pace and stretched ahead of him.
“Gul,” wheezed Grimes.
Gul stopped and looked back at him. From amid the grass—no more than fifty feet away—came a burst of automatic fire directed at the Tradesman. Grimes plunged sideways into the field. He landed on his knees, got up, and waded forward, bent at the waist, through the chest-high blades of grass. The shooting stopped. All he could hear were the rotors. He couldn’t see Gul. He felt the downblast getting stronger, the grass now leaning into his face. He reached the edge of a flattened circle in the middle of which sat the Sikorsky, its tail pointing almost toward him. He paused, forearms propped on his knees, and heaved for oxygen. Did the pilot have rearview mirrors? Was there a blind spot? He should’ve asked Titus Oates. What the fuck difference did it make? He reached for his Colt: it wasn’t there. He searched. He must have lost it when he hit the road. Fuck it. He plunged forward across the wind-flattened circle.
The inside of the Sikorsky was dark. Had they left a spare man in there? The fear of what lay inside was countered by the knowledge that come what may, he could soon stop running. Gul appeared to his left. Grimes blessed him.
“Gul.”
The dog glanced over. Grimes pointed at the chopper.
“Go.”
Gul streaked ahead, jumped, disappeared into the dark doorway. Grimes thought he heard gunfire from the road but he wasn’t sure. He staggered against the side of the chopper with his right shoulder, looked inside, saw: the rear of the cockpit, Gul’s stiffened tail, nothing more. He darted across the doorway, checked the rear of the interior: nothing. He heard marrow-curdling growls and a wail of terror. He hoped the pilot hadn’t done anything rash. Grimes crawled into the chopper and thrust his head into the cockpit.
The pilot was buried beneath his arms, his knees pulled up into a shivering ball. Gul looked up at Grimes and barked, pleased with himself. It was quieter in here than it was outside.
Grimes said, “You, what’s your name?”
The pilot didn’t answer. Grimes poked his shoulder blade. The pilot showed him one glazed eye and a wedge of face. He looked Hispanic.
“Su nombre?” said Grimes.
“Mariano.”
Grimes sat in the copilot’s seat. It felt so good he doubted he would ever be able to get up again. He pulled Gul back a few inches.
“Mariano, relax,” said Grimes in Spanish.
Mariano unwound from his ball. He turned rabbit eyes on Gul.
“It’s safer if you don’t look at him,” said Grimes.
Mariano turned the eyes on Grimes.
“When I tell you to take off, you do it, immediately. Understand?”
Mariano nodded. He put his hands on the controls.
“How many of your companions are at the Stone House?”
“Four, I think. Including Colonel Herrera.”
“Is the woman inside?”
Mariano nodded.
“Alone?”
Mariano shook his head. “With the boss man and Colonel Herrera, maybe another, or more, I don’t know.”
The Stone House was a fortress. Grimes remembered the steel-lined antechamber to the cage. Even one man could hold it till doomsday. Could the pilot talk them in? It seemed unlikely. Could Faroe be bargained with, with Jefferson’s suitcases? Grimes guessed Faroe was in too deep to turn back. How could they get inside?
Grimes looked out toward the road. He couldn’t see the van. He twisted and scanned the empty cabin behind him. Bolted into the back was some kind of tool chest.
“Do you have a rope?” asked Grimes.
“Yes.” Mariano pointed back at the chest.
Grimes looked outside again. A gangly silhouette appeared above the edge of the field. Grimes waited. Another figure: the baseball cap and bulk unmistakable. Then Ella. She waved. Grimes levered himself from the seat and went back and showed himself in the doorway. The others started forward through the grass. Grimes went to the tool chest and unlatched it. Inside he found a coil of nylon climbing rope. He rummaged further and pulled out a pair of oily rawhide gloves. Ella climbed inside. Her face was drawn but she seemed unharmed.
“Go sit up front,” said Grimes.
Grimes looked past her. Atwater toiled forward, his legs wobbling under the weight of the suitcases. Behind him came Titus Oates, shotgun in hand. Oates’s right hand glistened with a dark sheen. His sleeve was soggy. Grimes looked at him.
“I’ve been shot before,” said Oates.
Grimes went back to the pilot.
In Spanish he said, “Call Colonel Herrera. Tell him you have the prisoners and Mr. Atwater and that you’re bringing them in.”
Grimes took one half of the headset and listened. When Herrera asked how many prisoners, Mariano looked at Grimes. Grimes jerked his thumb at Ella and himself: he wanted Faroe to feel good.
Mariano said into the mike, “Two. A man and a girl.”
Herrera checked out. The muzzle of Oates’s shotgun appeared against Mariano’s skull.
“You wanna get rid of Paco here, I can fly this bird.”
Grimes let Mariano pray for a moment then said, “No, I need you out back.”
Oates grunted his disappointment and fell back.
To the pilot Grimes said, “A la Casa de Piedra. ”
THIRTY-SIX
FOR WANT of a rider the battle was lost.” She could take it. “For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.”
She could take it.
There was a pause in the cycle of yells and blows.
Lenna waited.
For all that she had been punished by time and fate, Lenna had never been physically assaulted before. She huddled on her hands and knees as the spasms of her body faded and her breath returned. There was blood in her mouth, but since the first blow Faroe had directed all his kicks and punches, with perverted precision, at her belly. She hadn’t fought back. She did not want to stoke his anger any more than he stoked it himself with his chanting rhyme. Her mind floated strangely above the nausea and pain. She had given up her body; she’d made it a commodity to be bargained with. She would sell it in return for Faroe’s anger and for a window of time. If he could pour that anger into her perhaps he would have less to direct at Ella; if the window was large enough perhaps an opportunity would arise to ensure her safety. Even so, Faroe’s violence revolted her, as did his pale, shaved cranium and gleeful eyes, his watery mouth, his withered arms and shoulders not even strong enough to kill her. Moments before, Faroe had started to unzip his fly when Herrera had called him away. She knew he’d be back.
She could take it.
Her body was no longer hers. With each blow of his fist she had felt herself change, felt some small crumbling of that which remained of herself to herself. It was not the bruising of her flesh. It was as if she were being pushed back step by step down a tunnel, at the end of which she would find a cell in which she would be locked away forever from any possibility of contact and trust. The contact and trust that had ached her bones so deeply, and so briefly, in the arms of Cicero Grimes; and in the arms of Ella. When Faroe took out his penis and jerked off in her face or jammed it inside her, would that cell door clang shut? It didn’t matter. As long as outside the cell—far outside—Ella, and Grimes and all the rest of the world were able to find their very small remnant, it wo
uldn’t matter that she’d lost hers. After all, she had taken Faroe’s from him. She had no right to pity and she did not claim it. She raised her head as Faroe returned into the room. He looked down at her without smiling.
Lenna became aware of the sound of a helicopter beating overhead.
“I’ve got her, Magdalena,” said Faroe. He raised his eyes briefly to the roof. “I’ve got your daughter. She’s come back home to the Stone House too.”
The window had closed and with it the door of her cell. Lenna pulled one foot under her, firm on the floor. Her stomach muscles cramped. She looked at Faroe. Though he held the world in his hands he seemed more wretched than ever. She would not hate him again. She would not die with any trace of his poison, or her own, in her heart. She thought of Ella and loved her.
“Help me,” she said, calmly.
Faroe blinked, uncertain. He took a step forward and held out his hand. Lenna took it and climbed to her feet.
She thought of Ella and loved her.
Then she threw herself on Faroe and sank her teeth into his lips. She closed her eyes to his face and her ears to his screams and retreated into a boundless space, which she filled with her love. And somewhere outside that space her teeth clenched and locked and would not let go and her hands groped and found a withered throat and squeezed. She loved and bit and squeezed. There was a sudden flash and an absence. Then she was falling in blackness and she heard a shatter of blurred noise. And she knew it to be the sound of her death and in the silent center of that sound Lenna heard herself cry: I love her.
THIRTY-SEVEN
GRIMES SAT in the chopper and stared down at a splash of blood on the floor. In the De Havilland, flying back from the Ohoopee River bottomlands, he had not imagined that so much would have to be spilled or that he would be steeped in it so deep. The stuff itself bothered him not at all; over the operating table he had spent thousands of hours incarnadined to the elbows. But this was different. The pool of cells and plasma at his feet signified something else.