Endangered Species (45 page)

see her as well as the others, but by the reflection of the moon off the

water, Schlessinger looked too tightly strung, a guitar string about to

snap.  The skin of her face was rigid beneath her eyes and over her

cheekbones.  In the brief silence that followed the ultimatum, Anna

became aware of the faintest of sounds, like distant rocks clashing

together in the surf.  Marty was grinding her teeth.  The barrel of the

gun hanging down by her thigh twitched spasmodically.  The fingers of

her left hand drummed on the barrel of the flashlight.

If her drug of choice was cocaine and she'd bolstered her courage with a

line or two more than she was accustomed to, Marty Schlessinger was in a

volatile state.  Fear was not a factor, but paranoia was.  Pain wouldn't

figure into her equation till the drug wore off.  Freedom from fear and

pain gave her more courage than Anna cared to think about. Consequences,

squeamishness, ethics, morality-all the leverage human beings use to

keep themselves and one another from tearing society apart would have no

effect.

"Shoot me then," Mona said, and dug a cigarette from the pocket of her

trousers.

"I thought you used those to leave a trail," Dot said accusingly.

"Held one back to smoke before the execution.  I'm a sucker for

tradition." The words were brave and Anna was impressed, but she noticed

Mona's hand shook so badly she could scarcely light her cigarette.

Their captor seemed not to hear or not to process the information.  With

a visible effort to keep the quaver from her lips, Dot went on with

forced nonchalance ." We left quite a trail, Marty.  There's no way you

can erase it all.  We left enough clues to send you to the gas chamber.

Why don't you just let us go?  Mona and I don't care a fig about this

turtle thing.  We never really understood how it worked .

We're just a couple of senile old schoolteachers.  Let us go and this

never happened." Her voice grew stronger as she spoke.  Years of

compelling children to learn were not wasted.

With a glimmer of optimism, Anna waited for Marty to see reason.

Unmoved and unmoveable by humor, logic, or pathos, Schlessinger raised

the semiauto with the unstoppable glide of a machine; preprogrammed and

soulless.

"Holy shit," Anna whispered.  All the weapons she didn't have flashed

before her eyes.  The tire iron still hung from her belt but it only

worked when applied up close and personally.

The pistol was reaching the end of its are.  No sign of humanity yet

sparked in Schlessinger's pupilless eyes.  Dot and Mona, closed in a

circle of hard light, Dot's hands on Mona's shoulders, watched the

barrel with frozen fascination.  In a supreme act of courage and

defiance, Mona raised the cigarette to her lips and took in a lungful of

smoke.

Time was up.

Without thought, Anna snatched up a rock the size of a PingPong ball and

hurled it at Schlessinger.  Gender had robbed Anna of a childhood spent

throwing and catching spherical objects.  The rock hit the biologist in

the hip.  Light and gun rotated toward the embankment.  Three rapid

shots were fired into the woods.  Schlessinger thought Anna was above

her.

"Run!" Anna shouted.  Dot and Mona sprang up, Mona's knee miraculously

healed.  The shout brought Schlessinger's gun and flashlight back

around.  She caught the VIPs in the beam.  They had bolted north, away

from the fall of dirt that hid Anna.  Land gave way to marsh and they

plowed only a yard or two through the knee-high muck and grass.

Screaming like a banshee, Anna began throwing everything she could lay

her hands on: rocks, sticks, dirt clods, and something that felt

suspiciously like a frog.  Her shrieks were guttural, visceral,

everything she could remember from training, monster movies, and PBS

snuff films.  She hoped she sounded like an army of lunatics.

Forgetting Dot and Mona, Schlessinger turned on Anna, this time firing

in the right direction.  Anna saw the muzzle flash at the same instant

she felt a slug pound into the dirt by her elbow.  Loose dirt was no

match for bullets fired at close range.  At best it would slow them down

just enough so the hole they blasted through her body would be bigger

and she'd die with less time for suffering.

Balling up like a pill bug, she rolled to the bottom of the hill.

Three more shots slammed into the bank in rapid succession, sending down

a rain of dirt.  Now would be a good time for backup, Anna thought,

though to be rescued in such an ignominious position would be galling.

She wanted to uncurl herself and move to better cover.  The original

barrage of rocks would have tipped anyone off-even someone slightly mad

and seriously high-that their attacker was unarmed.  Any minute

Schlessinger would be coming over the ramparts of Anna's fort.  For what

seemed a deadly eternity but was less than a second or two, Anna's body

refused to uncoil, to expose more of itself to danger.  Then she was on

elbows and knees snaking south through the mud.  As she crawled, she

hollered for Rick, AI, Dijon, and Guy; like Beau Geste, calling up a

phantom army to keep Schlessinger off balance long enough for Dot and

Mona to get out of the line of fire.

Given the efficiency of the island grapevine, Anna didn't hold out much

hope the ruse would work for long.  That the Hansons were to be staked

out for a drug bust wasn't common knowledge, but everyone knew fire crew

had been called off Cumberland for some law enforcement

cloak-and-daggering.

A broken beam of light snapped over the berm.  Anna logrolled into

deeper water.  Stretched full-length, she presented an irresistible

target.  The water was close to body temperature, making it hard to tell

where she was wet and where she was dry.  She could feel her hands

sinking into the ooze that nourished the salt meadow.  Grass, terribly

sparse for the duties she required of it, rose a foot or so over her

head.  Disturbed slime gave off the rich smell of death and new life

intermingling.

Distressingly buoyant, Anna's legs wanted to float, her shirt and

trousers ballooning with air.  Grasping the grass down near the roots,

she anchored her boots in the muck and forced her body beneath the

surface.

Marty Schlessinger reared up on top of the tumble of earth .

Either she was crazy or she'd figured out Anna had nothing but rocks in

her arsenal.  Anna suspected both.

"Aaannaaa." The call was long and eerie, like that of an evil child ."

Olly olly oxen free."

Despite the tropical temperature of the water, Anna felt an icy current

running down her spine.  Crazy people made her nervous .

Politically correct or not, crazy people made everybody nervous.  In

madmen one couldn't help but see one's own potential slippage from

sanity.  All rules were suspended.  The game changed.  Not even the

board remained the same.

" Your little old ladies are dead."

Sadness seasoned by a bitter sense of failure welled up within Anna.  A

repulsive gush of self-interest carried it away.  Marty didn't dare

leave Dot and Mona alive.  If she'd already succeeded in killing them,

Anna's responsibilities were at an end.  She could lie low.  She could

run away.  She could save her precious little hide.  Inch by inch she

began easing backward through the marsh grass toward the open sound.  A

quarter-mile's slither would bring her to swimmable water.  After her

long intimacy with chiggers and ticks, leeches struck her as almost

family.

Pathetic bleating halted her progress.  Flicka, tied to his stump, had

been alarmed by the shots.  Sorry, Anna thought cravenly.  You're on

your own.

" Flicka!"

Anna winced.  It was Mona.  Schlessinger had lied-or been mistaken.  At

least one little old lady was still alive.

His mistress's voice excited the fawn and he began to cry frantically'

as if he were being disemboweled with a dull knife.

"Flicka!" Mona called again, closer this time.  The fawn, unwitting, yet

as effective as a Judas goat, was leading Anna's lambs to the slaughter.

Cowardice begged her to stay in the marsh, her arms and legs and heart

were heavy with it.  Warm enfolding mud was her dearest companion.  Eyes

above the waterline no more than a selfrespecting alligator's, Anna

watched the events on shore unfold .

Things slowed.  A creature of the marsh, she watched the human drama

with something approaching disinterest.

Grimly, methodically, reminiscent of the wooden men in clocks who raise

their mallets day in and day out to strike off the hours, Marty

Schlessinger's gaze was pulled from the south where Anna hid.  The

semiauto began to swing up.  Pivoting smoothly on her uphill foot, she

turned toward the fawn's guardian angel.

Necessity overcame self-preservation.  With a shout, Anna came up out of

the mud like a creature in a horror film.  Less than twenty feet

separated her from Schlessinger, but it stretched as distance will

stretch in a dream.  Pulling the tire iron from her belt, Anna pushed

though air thick as the mud she'd come from.  Roaring filled her ears.

Some of it she recognized as her own, some a higherpitched staccato.

Mona and maybe Dot shouting.

Her back to the bank, the ocean in front of her, besieged from two

sides, Schlessinger screamed like a cornered animal.  The flashlight

fell away, its beam spiraling down the side of the mound .

Marty had the pistol in both hands.  Fire flashed.  Anna saw the ten

inches of blue and knew the shot had gone in the direction of the VIPS.

She yelled again.  Time and distance collapsed.  Suddenly she was at the

bottom of Marty's mountain.  Black of metal, of roots, of human limbs

ran together.  An explosion, so close Anna was deaf with it, struck at

the same time as a numbing blow to her inner thigh.

Anna had been punched, rolled in toxic waste, tumbled off cliffs, and

once, a woman had tried to drown her.  But never had she been shot.

Outrage flooded her veins ." You shot me!" she heard herself screaming

." You tucking shot me." Fury swept her up.  She'd never been so angry;

she was amazed her hair didn't catch on fire.

She hit Schlessinger in the knees and the woman fell back, head down the

far side of the berm.  Her feet came up; the toe of one boot caught Anna

under the chin.  Maybe it hurt, maybe it didn't.  Anna was beyond pain.

Grasping Marty's ankles, she clawed her way up her body.  Dirt mixed

with the water streaming from her clothes and she stuck like glue.  A

fleeting question: How much of it was blood?  She was alive, so the

femoral artery hadn't been severed.  That would have to be good enough.

Hands hammered at her head.  Anna fought back, smashing the tire iron

into what she hoped was fallible human flesh and not the unfeeling dirt

of the bank.  Locked in tightly, there wasn't much leverage and the

blows did little harm.  Stiff, clawlike fingers tore at her cheek.  One

ripped the corner of her mouth.  She bit it and hung on like a terrier.

Blood trickled down her throat, choking her.  Her teeth were stopped by