Dog Soldiers (54 page)

He went back to the b
edroom and carried the new pack
age he had made into the front room. A backpack of Kjell
’
s was slung on a hook over the console wires — Hicks shoved the package inside it.

“
We
’
re doing this your style,
”
he said.
“
Where things aren
’
t what they seem. She
’
s carrying sand down there.
”

“
You
’
re an idiot.
”

“
Did you see her walk out, Dieter? You dig her walking to her fate thataway? Nothing but class.
”

“
You
’
re not going to beat those people, Hicks. They don
’
t care about your games.
”

“
She
’
s the love of my life, no shit,
”
Hicks said.
“
Beats hell out of Etsuko. Out of all of them.
”

“
Hicks,
”
Dieter said,
“
be warned. They
’
re smarter than you.
”

“
Now I don
’
t believe that for a minute,
”
Hicks said. He put the pack on his back and set the automatic fire.
“
The trails still the same as they were?
”

Dieter nodded.

“
Well, I
’
m gonna give it a shot. Down through the shelter the way your man came up.
”

“
It
’
s absurd,
”
Dieter said.
“
You
’
ll get everyone killed for nothing. You can
’
t do it.
”

“
Oh man, don
’
t go and piss me off. Of course I can. Why can
’
t I?
”

Dieter shivered.

“
Your woods still light up all nice?
”
Hicks asked him.

“
They haven
’
t been lit for a long time. Most of them work, I think.
”

“
When you hear a round, light them up. Get on the mikes — I want a real deluge of weirdness. I want an opera.
”

“
Yes,
”
Dieter said,
“
I can see that. But in real life, you can
’
t pull it off.
”

“
Well then, fuck real life. Real life don
’
t cut no ice with me.
”
He transferred a couple of clips from the seabag to his pockets.

“
Do you think they
’
d do something like this for you?
”

“
Come on,
”
Hicks said.
“
What kind of a question is that.
”
He went around to the
rear door and listened for a moment.

“
Watch this, Dieter,
”
he said,
“
this is gonna be the revolution until the revolution comes along.
”

Sheltered, as he hoped, from the opposite pinnacle, he ran along the dammed stream with the rifle slung over his shoulder. He held the barrel pointing downward with one hand and in the other clutched his dope and a light.

The trail dipped steeply into darkness, a barely visible vein among the rock and root. There was no wind at all in the forest; he was sweating, short of breath. For a minute or two he could see Marge
’
s light below him.

Shapes came out of the darkness at his eyes.

Not that I was ever any good at this, he thought, a lover is what I am. The something in everybody
’
s hole, everybody
’
s shift and stir, everybody
’
s handler. An easy man to walk away from.

A half mile down was the entrance to the Indian shelter. The rocks that concealed it were clear in his recollection, but in the almost total darkness it took him nearly twenty minutes of feeling along packed earth at the bottom of the bluff before he found the right tunnel. The trouble made him angry and despairing. He tossed the bag and his light into the chest-high opening and struggled up into it, lashing out with his foot at the spider webs. He wriggled into it, feet foremost, lying on his back, clutching the slung rifle and shoving the bag and light along with his heels until he heard them fall. Another push and he was able to sit up; the tunnel opened into a chamber. He found the light and turned it on.

The walls were the solid stone of the mountain, rising to a vault forty feet above and covered to a
n
improbable height with a Day-Glo detritus of old highs.

There Are No Metaphors
, it said — in violet — on one wall. Everywhere he turned the light there were fossilized acid hits, a riot of shattered cerebration, entombed. The floor was littered with filter tips and aluminum film cans, there were mattresses reverting to the slime, spools of tape and plastic pill bottles. A few light brackets and speakers were strung with rusted copper wire over supporting pegs set in the stone. The unnatural colors had hardly faded at all.

He walked across the chamber and into a smaller area separated from the first by a partial wall of factory brick. The ceiling there was lower, supported by an oak pole that rose, through a brick-lined hole in the dirt floor, from a lower story. He tried the
pole, dropped the lighted lamp
and the sack into the hole, and eased down along the pole.

The hole was the mou
th of a brick chimney which wid
ened to form a buttress for the upper story. The place into which he had descended was the Dick Tracy Room; the lamp shone on Dick
’
s neat rep tie and on the base of his mighty chin. Next to him there were portraits of Flyface and Flattop and Vitamin
Flintheart. A girl named Light
ning Webb had painted them there years before because it was the center of a hollowed-out hill, a Dick Tracy sort of place.

He left the heroin there. The walls of the Dick Tracy room narrowed into a tunnel, through which he had to move in a crouch. As he
remembered it, there were taran
tulas in the tunnel; he walked heavily, trying not to touch the walls. It was a long way b
efore he got a taste of the out
side air. When he did, he turned the light out and went more slowly, trying the invisible ground ahead. When he felt the breeze, he knelt down and felt for the edge of the drop he knew would be ahead.

He lay on his belly, his head and shoulders overhanging the bluff, trying to see into the black woods. It seemed to him that he heard women singing far off. Now and then, a patch of purple glistened in the darkness before him, a little flash from his mushroom.

There were people who claimed to have gone into the line on acid but he had never believed them.

He was not very high, not high at all, it seemed to him — but prone to small marginal hallucinations. He felt at home in the darkness.

After lying still for a while it occurred to him that he was losing time; he felt along the edge of the rock face for the handholds that were carved there and when he felt two of them, swung himself over the edge and started down.
’
He lowered himself very slowly, his feet scurrying over the rock to find the next foothold. It was awkward and he was off balance. With each desc
ending step, his weight more op
pressed his grip.

He was three quarters of the way down when, he heard the first flutter — a second later a solid weight crashed into his chest, closing off breath and knocking him from his handhold. He landed with his ankles together and rolled over on his shoulder, lying still until his breath came back. When it came, he felt the wounds on his chest — there was blood on his shirt. A black shape whistled close over his head and disappeared into the trees; a bat he thought at first, then realized that it must have been an owl or a nighthawk, panicked bird, a freak, to the Japanese the worst of omens.

There was no trail where he was and he saw no light. He stumbled downward, making an unconscionable amount of noise.

He would be below them now. They would come down the trail to his left, Mar
ge from the right. Acting on in
stinct, they would be able to intercept her where her trail joined the dirt road at a po
int he reckoned to be almost di
rectly below him. He struck off through the woods again, wary of the drops and deadfalls he knew were all around him.

The women
’
s voices came to him again — they were faint but real enough. The Brotherhood
’
s women — singing in the village.

A little farther down, he saw a shape below him that made no sense. He slowed and stalked it, bringing his weapon up — when he saw what it was, he ducked and hurried off to the left, easing into steep hollow grown with ferns which he had made out just in time.

It was the pickup truck and through its window he could see the lighted end of a cigarette burning. Covered in ferns, he sought higher ground, then sat listening as hard as his concentration allowed. His frame arched from the fall but he was beginning to enjoy himself. The folly and complacency of the smoker in the truck were a great com fort to him.

I
’
m the little man in the boonies now, he thought

The thing would be to have one of their Sg mortars. He was conceiving a passionate hatred for the truck — its bulk and mass —and for the man who sat inside it.

The right side for a change.

Marge tried to make it like walking into the ocean, p
ictur
ing herself a swimmer on a beach stepping into the tide. The image of ocean kept her almost calm; she clung to it.

All it could do, she assured herself was kill — there would be no need to talk to it. At intervals she shifted the package from arm to arm.

Where the grade of the trail eased, she switched off her light. The sky was moonlit but the moon itself invisible, sealed off by close hills. There was light enough for her to make out tree shapes and rocks along the trail. She heard singing but she had forgotten whether the voices were real or imaginary.

A sound in the woods on her right caused her to stop; the sound was like a shod footstep on metal with the creak of a steel hinge. She could smell gasoline. Turning round slowly, she saw against the dark trees the figure of a man in a broad-brimmed hat above on the trail. Oceanic comforts shattered; her body ached with fear.

A little farther on, she was certain that she had passed a second man who was standing just beside the trail. The man followed her, moving through the brush, level with her descent.

“
Stop,
”
a voice whispered. She stopped.

“
I have it,
”
she said softly.

“
Shut up,
”
the voice
whispered back. A whisper of au
thority, clearly enunciated.

The three of them stood in the darkness; for what seemed several full minutes neither of the men moved or spoke.

Hands took the package from her.

“
Where is he?
”
she asked.

The figures before her
swayed as the package passed be
tween them.

“
Right over there,
”
a man said.

“
Where?
”

“
Just right down there,
”
the man
’
s voice told her.
“
Just ahead. Turn your light on.
”
She moved away from them and switched on the flash light; its beam probed among rocks and ferns. There was no one.

One of the men who had intercepted her stepped off the trail and a few moments later headlights flashed out of the darkness into which he had gone. He had set the package on the fender grid of a truck and was unwrapping the tape that bound it. The man in the Stetson was coming behind her, about ten paces back.

Ahead on the trail, in a clearing where it intersected the dirt road on which the truck was parked, she saw someone move out of the shadows. She hurried toward them.