Darkman (31 page)

The Man on the Flying Trapeze

O
F ALL THE
things he had been deprived of by the burning—his hands, his face, his career, his fiancée, his self-control—until this day, air had not been high on the list. But it most certainly was now, because Durant’s crashing karate chop had made his larynx slam shut, and the tattered, scorched remnants of his facial skin were turning pale blue between the charred edges as he slipped into oxygen starvation. Durant stared down at him with a small half smile curling his lips. The helicopter was barreling straight up, seeming to want to touch the clouds, which it probably could.

Durant bent over him. “I hope you regret the day you met me, Mr. Big Shot Westlake, because I am going to enjoy this very much, and you will not.” He looked up at the pilot. “How high?” he asked above the noise.

Dalton checked his altimeter. “Twelve hundred feet, Mr. Durant.”

“Sounds perfect, my friend. Let’s level off here and look for a fitting burial site for Mr. Westlake.”

He looked back down at him. “You see, Westlake, I happen to know that you have already been declared dead, so no one will care when you wind up ten feet underground from the force of the impact. Remember all the old cartoons? Road Runner? Daffy Duck? Sure you do. Every time somebody fell off a cliff, they punched a hole ten feet deep in the ground. As a child I often doubted this, but now we will find out for sure.”

He jerked Darkman to a sitting position and began pushing him toward the open side door, where evening’s bright colors were still patched into the fabric of the sky. Darkman struggled uselessly, laboring to live, feebly kicking and waving his crippled hands. One shoe caught on a thick white rope near the edge of the door. The rope was snapped out by the wind, spooling in fast motion, as well as the shoe, which tumbled twelve hundred feet to the ground.

None of this was of the slightest interest to Darkman, because his legs were dangling in the wind and the tips of his finger bones were sliding across the floor of the copter, as if it were made of glass and grease. With one gigantic shove Durant pushed him out. There was a moment when Darkman seemed to be floating, airborne, kicking, and flailing, and then gravity took over and he zipped out of sight.

“Survive
this
one.” Durant chuckled, and told Steve Dalton to make a beeline for the Strack mansion on the outskirts of town.

Darkman did fall, his fear draining him of everything but the will to survive this latest in a series of catastrophes that had started so long ago—the day he was born and did not die. As he fell, an inner voice, silent until now, told him that his life had been a brief, tumbling fall from darkness to darkness, not knowing where he came from, not knowing where this fall would end. It was a philosopher’s idea, a philosopher’s dilemma. Could life be so meaningless, so worthless, to be ended for no reason at all?

A dim part of his mind took over the power of his sight while the Peyton that had been fell to his death. His eyes registered a flapping series of white ropes directly in front of his face: a rope ladder made of sturdy white nylon. He counted the rungs as he fell, still another part of his mind wondering if this were an accident or Providence or not worth a dime. He reached out to the last rope-rung with both mangled hands, still drifting in fear and in misery and the knowledge that death was the only real truth and monster and demon: the only thing truly to fear on Earth.

The ladder snapped taut, making his shoulders pop as his own weight pulled against it, and his fall ended and became a flight as the helicopter surged forward. He looked up at his hands and realized in a strange and disturbing way that if these had been ordinary fingers, they never could have held. His bony claws did not feel the pain that real fingers would have.
Thanks again, Mr. Rangeveritz,
he thought.
And this time I mean it.

Durant stuck his head out of the helicopter, already frowning. They had felt the heavy jerk up there, which Darkman knew had made the copter wobble. Durant’s eyes opened wide with disbelief. If Darkman could have drawn enough air through his swollen larynx, he would have laughed up at him while the wind shooshed past his remaining ear and flapped his polyester suit against his bones. It was definitely no joyride, but it beat the hell out of making that ten-foot-deep man-shaped hole Durant had promised.

Durant’s head pulled back in. Darkman thought he heard shouting. Suddenly the copter began to descend, still making good speed but falling.

He looked down. Colorful lights, the crisscrossing of streets, skyscrapers, big city. They were headed to the new downtown, away from the dead wreckage previous generations had left in the belly of the old city. The fresh, clean buildings below were a gigantic aerial postcard from this height, and it rushed up as the copter fell, becoming large and very real. Darkman swallowed, knowing that what came next might not be fun.

They dragged him along a high rooftop decorated with TV antennas. The aluminum poles and struts snapped as he was towed through this forest of metal, Darkman emitting
oofs!
and
oogs!
as these blunt spears slapped against him at high speed, too dull to puncture him but not all that pliable, either. He grabbed the next rung on the rope ladder and pulled himself up one step.

The antennas slipped behind, replaced by wide streets farther below. The copter began swaying from side to side, creating a deadly whiplash effect, still descending. The gritty limestone wall of a huge bank swept into view, ready to slam against him, and he stuck out his feet, one shoe on, one shoe off, and kicked it away. This made him swing wildly, spinning, too confused to get his bearings. He was reminded of the toy drinking bird that had evaporated in the explosion. He was the bird now, bobbing ever closer to danger, a big kid on a park swing that had gone out of control and might bash him against the pipes and make him cry.

He caught a glimpse of something large. As he spun again he saw the gigantic face of a woman drinking iced tea. He blinked, not understanding. As he spun back he tried to make sense of it again. The word
Lipton
swooshed by.

He clenched his eyes shut as he smashed into the huge billboard, shattering wood, tearing free huge slabs of paper, breaking electric floodlights and making glass crash down to the freeway below. One car spun out of control, its headlights dancing against the dark. Another car plowed into it. The explosion was loud; Darkman looked back, full of regret.

Durant leaned out again, this time from the cargo door. He swiveled the machine gun down and began to fire. The long black barrel sprouted flowers of orange and blue, but Darkman was directly below the copter, nowhere in range, and it was useless. Durant fired wildly, trying to shoot straight down, able only to puncture a variety of cars and make them swerve and crash. He screamed in rage and defiance, firing now toward the first evening stars.

The machine gun tipped over the edge of the cargo floor. Darkman saw a foot clad in a patent-leather shoe, one of the angry Durant’s feet, shoving the gun out. It swept past Darkman on its way down, a strange, gawky contraption full of gizmos and gadgets, clattering noisily while trailing a shiny ammo belt to a new existence sixty feet below. Darkman hiked another rung higher.

Durant leaned out with the grenade launcher, his hair a flapping black flag. He aimed the top end of the black tube skyward and dropped a grenade in, then jerked it downward to aim at Darkman. Militarily speaking, this was not a recommended tactic, for an upside-down grenade launcher will lose its grenade, much as a can of soup will lose its soup if turned upside-down. Darkman saw the grenade slip out and tumble past him. It exploded on the freeway, causing more cars to smash into one another.

Durant shrieked. He began throwing grenades at Darkman by the handful. One actually came close, and Darkman snapped a hand out, snagging it in midair. He chucked it upward, not expected anything miraculous and not getting it. Durant looked absolutely insane now. He ducked back inside. Almost immediately the helicopter jumped downward again.

Darkman climbed up, and up. The rope ladder twisted and flapped below, sometimes dragging on the cement of the freeway. Cars honked and swerved, as if driven by drunks, some of them taking the bumpy ride into the median strip, others spinning in circles while smoke belched off their tires. Red and blue lights began to flash in the distance. Police were on the way, but Darkman doubted if they could do much, unless they contacted a police helicopter and got it here in ten seconds, which wasn’t likely. As soon as Darkman had been killed, this copter might well vanish to Mexico.

An old white Delta 88 was coming at him. The helicopter dipped low, dropping him so close to the highway that he had to raise his legs. The oncoming car honked, as if this were all Darkman’s fault. He felt a driving rage to kill the knucklehead, but then he was scrambling up more rungs to get out of the way. The car honked without pause, sounding normal, then passed, sounding low as it receded. The Doppler effect, Darkman thought almost hysterically, wondering if he really had been a scientist named Peyton or if his entire life had been preparation for this moment.

The copter swerved left, descending on the outbound lane. Darkman was lowered over the roof of a green car, then jerked up and down, pounding him against the paint and steel. Dalton was a fine pilot, no doubt of that.

The driver of the green car hit the brakes and the copter moved on. Darkman was up on the third from the last rung. The lack of Durant poking out the door began to worry him. What if he had gotten a bright idea and decided to cut the rope ladder?

What if he doesn’t have a knife?

What if the ladder is tied to something he could untie?

What if this huge truck in front of you hits the brakes and you slam into its ass end? Doesn’t that warning label on the back say anhydrous ammonia? That’s not exactly Kool-Aid.

Darkman worked himself higher, was forced to cock his head sideways as it jammed under the copter’s belly. Dalton let the craft cruise a little faster than the truck, bringing it directly under Darkman’s feet. The rest of the rope ladder twirled and thunked against the shiny aluminum skin of the truck’s ammonia tanks.

Darkman crawled back down the ladder. His feet bumped into the top curvature of the truck’s rearmost tank while the cool evening wind blasted against his head, where a happy little grin could be found, if only he had a face. There was a large steel hook atop the tank, though Darkman had no idea what it was for. Still holding the rope ladder, he knelt down and gave it a tentative pull.

Solid. Perhaps useful. Perhaps . . . very useful.

He pulled the flapping tails of the ladder together and tried to straighten out the tangles, gave up, and stuck as many loops as he could under the hook. As far as rescue devices went, it looked horrible, a bundle of rope tied into a Rubik’s Cube of knots. Darkman let go of the ladder entirely and plopped himself down onto the smooth metal tank, hugging it like a child might hug a horse the first time he rode bare-back. This was going to be close, or not at all. He looked up and saw a reflective green sign that proclaimed
AVENUE A, NEXT EXIT.

“Please don’t exit there,” he said aloud. “One last favor.”

The truck began to slow. The rope ladder grew taut as the copter tried to fly over the tanker. Darkman pounded the shiny hide of the tank he was riding, begging the driver not to take the exit.

It changed lanes. The final exit sign swept past, and ahead was the overpass that allowed Avenue A people to go west. Fortunately for those lucky people, they were not on the bridge when the truck passed beneath, towing a helicopter that was already filled with shouts and screeches. Darkman caught one voice—
“Pull her up! Pull her up!”
—and it sounded very, very much like Robert G. Durant shouting the last words he would ever speak.

The truck was big, more than six tons of anhydrous ammonia sloshing inside, moving fast. The copter was light, an easy tow. The truck passed under the huge concrete overpass, as it would a thousand times more before it was retired, but the helicopter ceased to fly and was dragged into the bridge in a huge yellow fireball of destruction, death, and brilliant light that would be talked about for weeks by those who witnessed it.

Darkman looked back at it as the driver slowed to see just what the hell had happened. When the truck was safely parked on the shoulder and the driver was gone, Darkman jumped down and slipped out of sight.

There was only one thing left to do, and that was to rescue Julie. After that, he promised himself, he would buy a bottle of the world’s cheapest whiskey and drink himself into oblivion.

38

Skip

W
HILE
R
OBERT
G. D
URANT
was being incinerated, the last member of the motley group that had killed Yakky and nearly killed Peyton, Mr. Skip Altwater, was watching television while smearing Noxema on the stump that used to be his right leg. He had not had the dignity of losing his leg in Vietnam, for he was far too young, though he usually told the young ladies he dated that he had sacrificed it for his country, which always went over big. Tonight, though, he was taking it easy, no company, letting the old stump take a break. Cutting the grass yesterday with the balky old mower had started the pain. Hauling that she-devil Julie around today had jammed the skin tight against his wooden leg, crunching it into the amputated bone. Because the wooden job was not exactly a normal prosthetic device, what with being a machine gun and all, it was far heavier and had no padding. Wearing it was often excruciating, as it was today.