Dark Advent (42 page)

The Mexican landed on the lawn between the two houses, hands- and face-first in shards of glass, then he was on his feet again, up and shrieking. The dog went for the nearest forearm, clamping onto the meatiest part and shaking violently. And Jason had thought he’d screamed loudly when landing in the glass.

Leaning heavily on the cane to take the weight off his throbbing leg, Jason stumped out of the background line of fire as one of Gil’s men popped out from beside Molly’s front porch. When he snapped up an assault rifle and shouted a command, the dog suddenly let go and dropped to the ground.

The Mexican put his hands out in a futile plea.

A quick staccato burst was all it took, a tight swarm of bullets that clustered in center mass. A red mist fogged the air behind him, and he did a jittery little dance before collapsing in a heap.

Jason heard their truck rev, saw it cornering around the far side of Molly’s house, the wheels chewing up clots of earth as it straightened. The engine gunned again and the truck careened over her back walk, splintering the door that lay there and aiming for him.

He pushed off with the cane, going for the gap between houses in a stiff-legged hop, diving for cover beside a honeysuckle bush when the truck passed by in back. He got a glimpse of the two men in the cab, faces he knew he would hate until the day he was dead.

Lucas was driving, gripping the wheel as if it were the only thing keeping him alive. Hagar was crouching in the truck bed, wild red hair and beard flying, a pair of binoculars slung around his neck. Jason covered his head as he sprawled on the ground and held his breath, awaiting a burst of gunfire that never came.

He heard the truck roar on by behind the houses, then got up again to hobble out to the street. At least a dozen guys were out here now, although a couple sat bleeding on the pavement, and one of the dogs lay panting on its side in Molly’s lawn. The black truck reappeared at Gil’s end of the block, and headed for the lake. A shortcut to the quickest way out of town.

Gil yelled at someone running up the street with an olive-colored tube in his hand. The man stopped beside Gil, looked at him. Gil nodded, grim and tight-jawed. The soldier pulled a pin and telescoped the tube out longer, and a pair of sights popped up front and rear. Jason had seen enough movies to know what the thing was: a LAW rocket, a one-shot, disposable bazooka.

“Light ’em up,” Gil said.

A moment’s hush fell while the soldier lifted it to his shoulder and sighted in on the rolling truck. The LAW fired with a sound like the crack of doom, and a smoky trail jetted toward the tailgate.

Lucas must have had good eyes and even better reflexes, because he bailed out through the driver’s door. Jason could no longer see Hagar, figuring he must have stretched out prone in the bed to make himself less of a target. With no idea what was headed his way.

Lucas hit the ground in a spill of arms and legs as the truck bounced on without him, and an instant later it blasted apart in twin explosions—first the rocket, then the gas tank. A tire soared up and back to the ground, bouncing in blooms of flame. Bits of wreckage rained down around the truck, starting little fires in the grass or hissing as they splashed along the shallow edge of the lake.

Twenty feet behind the burning truck, Lucas pushed himself onto hands and knees, fell over, tried it again, got a yard along and fell over once more.

Jason turned back to look at the men grouping in the street. Gil caught his attention and raised an eyebrow.

“You know something about them?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Jason nodded, pointing at the floundering Lucas. “Give me a minute or two alone with this one.”

With the cane for support and the riot gun for leverage, Jason limped down the street. He listened to the crackling fire, the only sound he would let himself hear now, on this windless morning. Old hurts, old grudges, old scores to settle…they surged up in him like a black tide: Memories of Lucas helping to massacre three men across from Union Station. Lucas wielding the lash that had forever left its mark on Jason’s back. For months it had all lain just below the surface, a Pandora’s box of hatred waiting for the right moment to spring open.

This was the first moment he’d actually had to think since leaving Gil’s kitchen.

Halfway there.

And with the calm came time to wonder, in dread:
How the hell did they know where to look for me?

Lucas knew he was coming. Jason could read it in the strain on the man’s face and the fear in his eyes and the tension of those clenched teeth. Jason limped, pressing resolutely forward, never slowing no matter how much it hurt and finally speeding up, until he stood over this man who had come nearly 800 miles to find him.

Resting on his left hip, Lucas was still trying to get a leg underneath him. His right leg was rigid, jutting stiffly away. A chunk of metal three inches wide protruded from his thigh, a jagged souvenir from the truck. Clenching his jaw, he lifted his head up to face Jason. What was he trying to accomplish with such a plaintive look? Trying to elicit a little pity?

You’re looking to the wrong guy.

Jason’s fingers flexed on the cane, squeezing the handle.

“I never got to finish what I started,” Jason said.

“Uh?” Lucas said with an uncomprehending look.

Jason leaned his weight on his right leg, then whipped the cane in a vicious arc across Lucas’s face. He took it full force, the last thing he’d expected. He rolled onto his back, hands clutching his nose and catching a fistful of blood. Jason looped the cane into the air again and brought it whacking down against his ribs. Lucas’s hands went for his side, a diversion that Jason used to slash the cane across his face the opposite way, bringing a fresh spurt of blood onto his chest. Cartilage ripped, bone cracked. Jason thought he’d done a decent job of breaking Lucas’s nose before, though it paled by comparison to
this
job. It would never look remotely right again.

“Why did you come down here?” Jason asked, shaking the point of the cane at him.

Lucas looked miserably up at him, holding his nose as blood dribbled through his fingers. His mouth curled into a sneer.

If he says
fuck you
again, he’s had it.

Some guys never learn. It cost Lucas a heavy shot to the balls.

“Talk to me, asshole. Or you’ll think I was just giving you a handjob then.” Jason lifted the cane again. “Why did you come after me?”

“
He
wanted you back,” Lucas said, his breath hitching. His voice sounded thick and bubbly, as if he had the king of head colds.

“Who did?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know, man. Peter Solomon.
Him.
”

It was the first time he’d heard the name, but from the reverential fear with which Lucas spoke it, Jason had no trouble putting the right face with it. “So how did you know where I was?”

“Solomon just knew, is all.”

“Oh bullshit!” Jason yelled. “Don’t jack me around!”

Lucas scrabbled backward into a tuft of weeds, taking the next swipe of the cane on a knee. “Okay! Fuck! This guy coming up he caught. Some wild-looking Indian, they said.”

Jason’s gut tightened. “What did Solomon want with him?
Huh?
”

Lucas’s eyes were scrunched in anguish, and he was starting to go fetal. “Don’t ask
me
why he took him too. I thought he was gonna be happy when he got that girl.”

His stomach was now a chasm. “
What
girl?”

“I don’t know her name, just some cute piece of tail from Brannigan’s.”

The world turned to crystal, shattering around him in mocking fragments. All those earlier hopes swirled away, the dreams of the two of them fixing up one of the houses here, living like normal human beings once more…all crumbling. He lifted the cane again and was on top of Lucas as if to batter him into the soil.

“What did he do to her?” Jason screamed. “WHAT DID HE DO?”

“He just keeps her in a room is all!” Lucas screamed back. His raw voice had climbed into a high raspy wheeze.

Jason stopped, gave the cane a rest. His leg ached, his shoulder ached, his head felt peeled and pounding. When the wind shifted he caught a faceful of smoke from the burning truck.
Get a grip,
he told himself. Lucas was trying to hold everything at once, clutching his ribs and his groin, his nose mashed to a fat pulp and his face a mask of blood.
Oh Jesus God he’s a mess. And
I
did that to him.

The earlier sneer crossed Lucas’s face, as if he’d glimpsed a weakness in Jason and deplored it. He groaned, spat thick blood, grinned. “She’s got a nice ass. She had me up it twice a night. Not her idea.”

Jason couldn’t think anymore, could only react. Acid tears in his eyes, he slammed the tip of the cane onto the metal poking from Lucas’s leg, as if driving a spike into wood. Lucas howled his loudest yet, drizzling blood and swearing, then pushing himself back up onto his hands. He looked up at Jason with all the hatred his blackened soul could find, with the resolve of a man who’s gone to the brink of agony and beyond. A man who will drag himself to the inevitable end because he knows he has nothing left to lose.

“’Course your Indian friend was the one that sold you out.” Lucas laughed, blood and ropy snot stringing from the ruin of his nose. “Right before Solomon ripped him apart.”

Jason was already unsteady, and this nearly killed his balance. His stomach was bottomless, his head ached to the core. As the walls caved in around him, he shrieked like a man from the first primal dawn.

Jason let the cane fall to the ground, pumping another shell into the shotgun’s chamber and leveling it without aiming. Close enough. He tottered backward with the recoil as Lucas’s head dissolved from his shoulders in a thick burst that painted the shoreline and hurled fragments ten feet across the water.

And then…a curious calm.

He watched the body flop into the weeds, loose as a fallen scarecrow. One arm slowly unfolded along the ground, then was forever still.

I
don’t feel a thing,
he thought dully.
Not for him, I don’t.

Moments later, thunder from the shotgun fading in his ears, sweating from the twin infernos of the sun and the burning truck, Jason stooped to retrieve his cane. Its length was shellacked with red.

Gil and the others were silhouetted in the distance, and Jason turned his back on the body to make his weary way toward them. He battled back the tears that had wanted to come a minute earlier, a joyless victory.
Erika,
he thought.
Tomahawk.
Then he pushed their stricken images away. Sometimes it was better not to feel at all.

6

One thing became apparent from the outset: Travis made one surly prisoner of war.

They’d marched him into Brannigan’s the night before, in all his naked glory, and while the hour was late and several people had already gone to bed, several more were still up to witness the sight. On the way in, Caleb, exhibiting a characteristic display of conscience, wondered if he shouldn’t go in and find a robe to cover Travis.

“Bad idea,” Diane had said, laughing. Then she’d reached over to the still-hopping Travis and playfully pinched his rump. “We don’t want anybody to get the idea that he’s carrying any concealed weapons.”

Travis growled, Travis angrily jerked his shoulders around, Travis glared sullenly at everyone and everything. The reaction from the others ranged from awe to sudden attacks of jittery nerves. Juanita Morris promptly hustled Farrah, now thirteen, out of the main room, but not until after the girl had gotten a good look at the man’s dangling privates.

After a brief debate they decided to keep him upstairs on the sixth floor, tied tightly to a chair, with an armed guard for company. For the time being, at least. Jack Mitchell opted for giving him a pair of gym trunks to slip on, and personally held a gun on the man while he stepped into them. They all went upstairs then, Travis settled into a chair, and on went the ropes. When they finally removed his gag, he shouted and cursed and made threats without end, and back down on the fifth floor, Nicholas began to cry. Travis thrashed in his chair, thudding up and down on the floor, until Diane finally quieted him by showing him the fish knife and musing about a vasectomy.

“Bitch,” he said once again.

She puckered a kiss at him. “Love you too.”

He made no more noise that night.

It wasn’t until Saturday morning that the ugly realities of the situation began to set in. At the same time that Jason was in Texas separating Lucas from his head, Diane approached Jack Mitchell and Rich Patton.

“What are we going to do with him?” She flicked a quick glance at the ceiling. “I mean, I
do
feel a certain responsibility.”

Jack and Rich looked at each other, at her, at each other again.

“The floor’s open for suggestions,” Rich said.

“You know, you’ve put us in a hell of a spot just by bringing him here,” Jack said. He dragged his fingers through his ever-thinning hair. He’d lost handfuls in the past several months. Give him another year and he’d be a cue ball.

“I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter,” Diane said. “If I’d left him there in his room, he could have had the rest of Union Station down on us. If not before we were even away from the place, then for sure he’d’ve been found soon enough and they’d
all
be here. You wouldn’t be sitting there slurping your Bartlett pears out of a can, that’s for sure.”

Jack frowned and set the near-empty can beside the sofa.

“Or maybe you’d rather I left Erika in there,” she pressed.

Rich heaved a sigh. “Nobody wanted that, Diane. Nobody wanted her back here any more than I did.”

“Nobody’s minimizing what you did last night either,” Jack said. “It’s just that you’ve put all of us in a very
tricky position. A very dangerous one.”

Diane tipped her head, incredulous, and barked a derisive laugh. “
I’ve
put us there? Come on, Jack, open your eyes. We were already there. For months. Anytime they think they can stroll in and tell us to be somewhere, or haul one of us away,
that’s
being in a dangerous position.”

“I have to agree with her there.” Rich tugged up the bottom of his shirt, exposing a hairy belly, and used the cloth to wipe the sheen of sweat from his face. “Already heating up in here today,” he muttered, then smoothed his shirt back. “However, I do think we’re taking a little too much for granted. We got Erika back, and we’ve got him. Okay. But there’s no way
they
have of knowing that. Travis is just gone, and if they haven’t noticed him missing by now, they will soon, but there’s no way for them to immediately link that with us. Same with Erika. Nothing leads back here. You have to admit, one of us walking right in and taking the two of them out from under their noses has to be the last thing any of them would expect.”

Jack nodded. “But how long will it be before one of them gets the crazy notion that that’s exactly what happened? It doesn’t matter if they believe it or not. As long as they consider it feasible enough to check into, we’re screwed.”

They all pondered this in silence, and even Diane had to nod.

“Anyway. We’re straying from the main issue,” Jack said. “What do we do with him?”

Another round of silence. Beyond them, Nicholas and Farrah had engaged in a noisy argument. Farrah called him an immature dweeb, he retaliated, and then Colleen entered the picture as referee. While Jack’s question still hung in the air like frozen breath.

“If no one wants to bring up the obvious, I’ll do it.” Rich laced his fingers together, flexed and unflexed them. “Umm…we…execute him.”

The three of them traded furtive glances, looking from eyes to their laps and back again, as if afraid to venture forth an opinion one way or another.

Finally Jack shook his head. “I can’t see doing that. I mean, the man’s done enough to deserve the death penalty several times over, the way things used to be, but…I just can’t see us drawing lots to make up a firing squad.”

Diane gave a short, ironic laugh. “Neither can I.”

“I know. That’s not what we’re about,” Rich said. “If we did that, what difference would there be between us and them? We might as well all join hands and go on over like Ted and Wendy did.”

“I suppose we could hang on to him indefinitely,” Diane said. “Last night I told him he was our insurance policy for getting out of Union Station okay. Well, suppose we keep him as a kind of long-term insurance for getting out of St. Louis okay. Until Jason comes back and we head south.”

“That’s another thing.” Jack stooped to retrieve his pears and started on the last few chunks. “It’s been over five months. One of these days we’re going to have to consider the fact that he may not be coming back. Ever.”

“One crisis at a time, okay?” Rich massaged his heavy cheeks, rubbed his eyes with fingertips. “You know, I’ve been thinking, running something over in my head. It’s a short-term solution, but things may get to a point that it’s our only option. We clear out of Brannigan’s entirely and move someplace else. Someplace where they couldn’t find us right away.”

“That’s a little drastic, isn’t it?” Diane said.

“Yup.”

“Do you have someplace in mind?” Jack asked.

“I do.” Rich nodded, then shrugged, as if to say he’d done his best and they could take it or leave it. “Back when I was working for Brenton Pharmaceutical, there was a shipping outlet I used sometimes. On the south side, way down on Jefferson Avenue, I think. It doesn’t match what we’ve got here, but it’d do for a while, in a pinch. It’s got a big garage, lots of storage space. The outer offices have a good-sized skylight. It’s pretty close to the river. Enough places around to scavenge food from. Probably have to bunk in sleeping bags on the floor, and lose some privacy, but…anyway, that’s my idea.”

Jack nodded and Diane remained impassive, but neither voted against it, and that, at least, was something. A moment later they began a calm debate on the pros and cons of leaving, one that lasted for nearly half an hour but left nothing settled.

And all the while, Travis sat bound upstairs under guard, quietly clenching and unclenching his fists, learning the virtues of patience and keeping himself entertained by imagining endless scenes of unbridled revenge.

* *

It was shortly after noon, and outside the sun was reaching another August zenith. In her room, Diane knew she could get to cooler places within the confines of the building, but felt too lazy to get up and seek them out.

And I just want to be alone.

She wore shorts and a halter top and lay on her bed, every few moments feeling the wet trickle of a bead of sweat. These days you’d lose your sanity if you minded sweat, but she never had. It had made her something of an oddity among her circle of old friends back in Connecticut, most of whom would’ve preferred ritual suicide than to be seen breaking sweat in public. Sweaty, sticky…big deal. Sometimes it made her feel horny.

Ah, Travis, why couldn’t you have been a fat slob?

In retrospect, the toughest part of last night hadn’t been working up the courage to enter the lion’s den of their arena, or walking the halls of the Omni with Erika propped against her shoulder—it had been approaching the brink of sex with Travis and then pulling back the reins. Easier said than done, when the need was there.

Her hand was resting on her stomach, and it was beginning to stray south when a tentative tapping sounded at her door. She frowned, tempted to announce that she was trying to sleep and under no circumstances wanted to be disturbed.

Yeah, and watch me go out later and find they’ve all moved.

“Come on in,” she called.

The door opened a foot she saw big wide eyes and long sandy hair held back with barrettes. A skinny, coltish leg appeared next.

“Hi Farrah.” Diane smiled an invitation; okay, this interruption was allowed.

“I can come in?” the girl asked.

“You? Anytime.” Diane swung upright and dangled her legs off the bed, patted the covers next to her. Farrah swept in and sat beside her.

“I haven’t talked to you for a couple days,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

“Looks like I can fit you into my schedule today,” Diane said. “Something on your mind?”

“Not really.” Farrah drew up her legs and folded them underneath her on the bed, hunched with elbows on knees. “I used to think Colleen was my best friend here. I don’t know. Now, maybe, I guess it’s you.”

“Nothing against Colleen, though.”

“Oh no! Colleen’s great, and all that, but…it’s like you’re really yourself with me. Like, with her I’m always gonna be a kid.”

Diane leaned back and laughed. “You
are
a kid.”

“I guess. But
you
always manage to let me forget it.”

Diane felt a glowing warmth welling up within, felt it showing on her face. Felt a piece of herself coming alive again after a long, dormant sleep since last fall, since Denver.

“Colleen says you had a daughter once, about my age.” Farrah said it lightly, softly, walking on eggshells.

Diane closed her eyes and nodded. Opened them again and smiled. “I did. Her name was Tracey. And yeah, she’d be about your age.” Feeling somehow soothed by the maternal tone in her own voice, Diane almost got tickled by the contrast…this complete reversal of the flippant bitch she’d played last night for Travis. “Let’s see. She was pretty, like you are, and she had a tendency to slouch, just like you’re doing now.”

Farrah straightened as if a rod had been jammed down her back.

“I think she would’ve been tall, taller than me, at least, and I bet you will be too. But hmmm, the hair, no, that’s not the same at all. Tracey’s was dark and sort of curly. She had her father’s hair. And she could get a suntan in five minutes.” Diane cocked her head to one side. “Did you like Boy George?”

Farrah wrinkled her nose. “Gag.”

Diane shook her head. “You two would’ve clashed over that. Tracey was nuts over him. Personally, I’m on your side.” They had a laugh over this, and when they quieted down, Diane said, “And you know, she always seemed to sense when I could use a hug.”

Their eyes met, and an uneven grin played across Farrah’s face, speckled with freckles and, on her forehead, a single pimple. Then she scooted across and wrapped her arms around Diane, and they swayed gently.

“I’m glad you’re around,” Farrah said.

Diane squeezed harder.
If only you knew how good it feels from
my
side of it, girl.

“Do you think I’ll ever have a boyfriend?” she asked out of the blue.

Diane drew back and sputtered delighted laughter. Now they were getting to it, something on her mind after all. “So boys aren’t disgusting anymore?”

“They never were. They were just sort of jerks is all.”

“But not now.”

“I don’t know any boys now. Except for Nicky, and he’s still a jerk, but he can’t help it.” Farrah dropped her gaze to the bedspread, peering at it from one angle, then another. “And Jason…he was always kind of fun to be around.”

Uh-oh, crush time.
“Farrah, my dear, Jason’s more than a little too old for you.”

“I know, I know.”

“Besides, you’d have to fight Erika for him. And I bet she really knows how to yank out a head of hair.”

Diane couldn’t seem to wipe that silly grin off her face. Oh, to be thirteen again, just for a day, when the most innocuous comment and the most innocent glance held the power to lift you to ecstatic heights or crush you to miserable depths.

“Sometimes I sit around and I have these daydreams,” Farrah said. “And it’s just like in the fairy tales, you know? I’ll be in trouble and this boy will come along and save me. Or he’ll be trapped someplace and things look awful for him, and I’ll
come along and save
him.
And he’ll be so happy and we’ll fall in love and we’ll go away and nobody can keep us apart.” She crinkled her nose. “Stupid, huh?”

Diane scooted closer to her and tossed an arm around her shoulders. “I know it’s hard, but just a little more patience might be in order for you,” she said softly. “You know why?”

Farrah shook her head.

“Because Jason’ll come back one of these days, and he’ll tell us about someplace he’s found. And we’ll all pack up and move to Florida or Georgia or Texas or someplace like that, and we’ll have a real home again. You can live with me if you want.” She could feel Farrah nod against her shoulder. “And there’ll be boys there, trust me. Then someday when you haven’t been there very long at all, some boy’s going to come along and do something incredibly stupid right in front of you, trying to impress you. And then you’ll know.”