Everyone's Dead But Us (17 page)

The road was narrow. We leapt to opposite sides of the road. The pedicar lurched past. Its headlights described swirling arches as it bounced and rattled. In moments it struck the rail on the seaward side of the path. It careened crazily for several moments. It hit the wall again ten feet above Apritzi House, lumbered to the other side of the path and banged into a storage shed. The engine fuzzled and rumbled for several moments. A shower of sparks erupted from the undercarriage. The rain quenched any attempt at fire. The engine died. The lights failed.

We rushed to the pedicar. It didn’t have a driver. The shape at the wheel was a slew of books stuffed in a sack and tied to the steering wheel to hold it straight. The gas pedal had a cinder block wedged on top of it. Half of the charred electric engine lay on the concrete. The car wasn’t going anywhere.

I said, “We need to get under cover.”

We hustled to the next doorway and crouched within. We peered through the wind and rain to the curve the pedicar had come around. Scott said, “We’ve got to get up there to see what’s going on. The killer could have waited for us and simply opened fire when we got closer. We weren’t taking a lot of precautions. We weren’t trying to skulk secretly to the house. This doesn’t make sense. Why not simply shoot us?”

“We’re armed, alert, and ready? There’re two of us and all the other killings have been done to a person alone? He needs us closer? He flunked the ambush course in terrorist-training school? He was absent the day they covered ambushing in school? We’re not part of the plan? Help me out here. I’m stumped.”

He muttered, “Stumped bordering on stupid.”

I said, “The famed teenage mumble-under-the-breath is no more attractive in an adult. And it’s not stupid. Nothing makes sense. Whatever the plan is, maybe we’re part of screwing it up, and it’s not a good plan or the killer is a raver and can’t plan. I’m at the end of my suggestions, and don’t say good. You got any better ideas?” It was cold. I was exhausted and exasperated. I said, “Whichever one of us figures out what the plan is first, please be sure to tell the other one.”

“Sarcasm isn’t helping.”

I said, “Whoever was trying to kill us was up there not more than five minutes ago. If he didn’t wait for us, why not simply start walking down here?”

“Maybe he’s a lousy shot?”

“Feeble attempts at humor are not any better than sarcasm.”

I felt his body pressed against mine. We looked at each other. He said, “I’m sorry for what I said. I know we’re both frightened.” He leaned his head over and kissed me. “I love you,” he said.

I breathed deeply, appreciated his warmth, returned the sentiment, then said, “We gotta get out of here.”

He said, “We’re in a doorway. Let’s enter the house.”

The door was locked. We tried several of the kick-the-door-above-the-keyhole type kicks from the movies. The door didn’t budge. Either we’d been watching the wrong movies, or we were in trouble.

Seconds later the door began to creak open. We both eased back into the street. Shots rang out from above us. We rushed to the door and bashed it open.

We came face-to-face with Rufus Seymour and Matthew McCue. They were in their early twenties. Seymour’s looks tended toward the more austere British aristocrat who might have been a few calories short of beginning to be pudgy. McCue was tall with narrow shoulders and jet black hair swept back in complex swirls. He was a rail-thin supermodel who, I suspect, struck smoldering poses while he was taking a shit. Scott had spotted McCue a few times in the weight room in the past few days. His father owned a string of Australian right-wing newspapers. I thought he and Seymour made a great couple in their superior dourness. Neither had deigned to speak to us before the current tragedy.

“What’s going on?” McCue asked.

We hurtled past them and slammed shut the door, locked and bolted it behind us. Neither of them was pointing a gun. This was a plus.

When we were secure behind the door, I said, “You didn’t hear the gunshots?”

They both nodded.

“You didn’t check it out?”

McCue said, “The top room of our villa has an access stair to the roof. The roof connects to the King’s parapet. We got a great view of everything,” McCue said.

“And you didn’t come down to help?” I asked.

“Well, really,” McCue said, “what could we have done? And we couldn’t see a lot with the electricity still out.”

“People are dying.” The oblivious rich. I was enraged by their callousness. The only subspecies of human I considered lower than them were the willfully stupid. And here we maybe had a combination of both. Sigh.

McCue said, “The rain is pouring down. The help should have all this mess under control. They always do. Movado’s guard told us we’d be safer inside.”

I said, “We watched him die.”

McCue looked troubled for the first time. “You have guns. Did you kill him?” He began to back away.

I said, “No, you twit. Someone is trying to murder all the people on the island. If we were here to kill you, we could have done it without all the drama and dialogue. There was a killer on the street above us. He was probably up there somewhere near where it connects to the parapet. He tried to have one of the electric cars run us over.”

“They’re such little things,” McCue said. “It can’t have been that hard to jump out of the way.”

I said, “We could try it with you.”

McCue giggled. “Well, really, that can’t be true.”

“You were trying to fix it,” Scott said, “what happened?”

McCue said, “It would sort of work. We put it in the garage at the top of the slope above here.”

I said, “Did you think of telling anyone else this news? Maybe we could have used it to get around, maybe gotten a lot less wet.”

“There wasn’t much to do,” Seymour said.

“Find a killer,” I suggested.

“Help will arrive,” McCue said.

“In time?” I asked.

Seymour said, “This really sounds like nonsense. Why murder all of us?”

Obviously the murderer had started with the wrong victims and blown up the wrong structure.

I said, “Maybe he’d murder you because you’re selfish, hedonistic morons.” After the last election campaign for United States Senator from Illinois, I’d been tempted to wear a button that said Selfish Hedonist for Jesus. Amusing and sarcastic. Scott said it would probably also be pointless. Probably just as pointless now as it would have been then.

Seymour said, “You’re a little out of control.”

I did my best to keep my temper in check as I said, “I don’t know why all the killings are happening. We found the treasure room. When we talked to Dimitri Thasos, he talked about danger connected with a secret treasure. We found it. We’re not dead. Others are. Did you know about the treasure room?”

They looked at each other. That told me enough. Lack of knowledge didn’t require that look.

I said, “So many people have died. Don’t you think the truth is necessary about now?”

Seymour spoke. “I can’t help you.”

“You could die.”

“Is that a threat?” Seymour asked.

I said, “I give up.”

Scott normally intervenes at this point when my anger has gotten the better of my reason. I looked at him. He kept gazing from one to the other of them. He looked as if they’d just delivered the shit-dip for his raw broccoli.

Scott said, “Where were you from nine o’clock last night until now?”

McCue said, “We don’t answer to you. You’re not the boss of us.”

The childish formulation did it. I said, “You moronic twits. Haven’t you got the slightest clue about how this world really works? Death and destruction are in control of this island at the moment. You could both be killed.”

“Nonsense,” McCue said.

I gripped McCue by his skinny throat and rammed him up against the wall. His head hit with a satisfying thud. “Look, you rich, asshole, punk.”

I looked at Scott. He had Seymour restrained in an arm hold. Seymour asked, “Are you going to kill us?”

“No,” Scott said. “We are not your problem.”

I eased up on McCue. He gasped for breath. He was crying. “We need answers,” I said.

Scott eased his hold. They both recovered as much dignity as a surly teenager caught in his room in a compromising position with his own fist. They leaned near to each other.

“Fine,” Seymour said. As an adult, he’d probably never been closer than a traffic altercation to real violence. He repeated, “Fine,” straightened his shirt, shrugged his shoulders. “After we helped with the fire, we had some champagne here by ourselves. I helped out with Thasos from time to time. Mr. Movado assured us we had nothing to worry about.”

“With people dying?”

McCue said, “Movado’s guard came by this afternoon. He assured us everything was going to be okay. We ate a few leftovers here for breakfast. With the electricity out we couldn’t warm anything up. We lit a fire and read books by its light while it poured rain. We hadn’t had a need to go out yet. Where is there to go? Everything you need is here. We were waiting for the help to return.”

Seymour added, “When we got back after helping with Thasos, we went back to bed and had sex.”

I asked, “What secrets does that treasure room hold that keeps you all silent? Is that stuff all real? You’re all willing to die for it?”

“There is no such room,” Seymour said.

“Nope, sorry,” Scott said. “It’s real. We’ve seen it. Wouldn’t it be easier to tell us the truth?”

“Easier for whom?” Seymour asked. “Eventually we will be in contact with the rest of the world. This storm is not going to last forever.”

Scott said, “It only has to last until we’re all dead.”

They clammed up. We’d done as much bullying as I could stomach for the day. I preferred reason to violence. Usually. But when the corpses were piling up, I tended to get a trifle short-tempered. We got out of there before I got even more tempted to add to the murder count. We left by the door on the opposite side of the villa from the road down which the pedicar had careened. As we were discovering, the villas dotting the slope up to the headland all had a connecting link to the parapet.

Scott said, “I wonder if it would help if we put up a neon sign out here that said, Do Them Next.”

“The electricity is out.”

“Maybe we could write it on chalk on the wall.”

“Would the killer find it soon enough? The rain might wash it away.”

“Indelible Magic Marker?”

“As long as he finds them before he finds us.”

“Got that right, but being out here gives the killer another shot at us.”

Night had long since fallen. The rain continued to pummel the earth. I said, “He’s got to see us first. I’m exhausted. We’ve got to get somewhere where we can sleep. Either that or I need a gallon or two of coffee. How are your arms and your head?”

“I feel like I could swallow about ten aspirins. The arms hurt like hell.”

“I had the all-in-one travel fix-it medical ointment in my bag.” My mother had insisted I carry the thing. In all our travels I’d never needed it once. I know what my mother would say at this point. See, it’s a good thing I gave it to you. It came in handy. Yeah, once in a lifetime. And it had been blown up with all our other luggage in the destruction of the castle. Not quite handy enough. We were mostly shielded from the rain as we stood half hidden in a declivity between the villa and a narrow stairway that led up to the top of the parapet.

“We’ve got to go somewhere,” I said. “I still need to know more about these people. Although the more I find out, the more wretched they seem.”

“I’m not sure they’re all wretched so much as pathetic.”

“If you’re this rich, you don’t get to even join the pathetic Olympics. They can buy their way out of pathetic. They don’t mint enough money on the planet to buy their way out of wretched.”

“Which leaves aside the question of where the hell we are supposed to go next. We don’t trust anybody on the island, do we?”

“No.”

“Do we hang out with those we’ve known the longest? Do we try to find a place to hide in? The cavern is still open. Or we could sneak into one of the vacant villas.”

“Presuming we could get into one without being seen.”

Scott asked, “Why did the killer put Henry Tudor in our room?”

I said, “While we’re asking questions, how about this one? Why not wait and kill us along with him? Why leave us alive? He was obviously in our rooms. They aren’t hard to sneak into, but they are designed for privacy.”

Scott looked at the stairs then back at the villa. “Which way?” he asked.

“The killer was up the road. There aren’t more than a few more steps for us to get to the top of the hill and away. Or maybe he left.”

Fat chance. The rain pummeled the earth as hard as it ever had. There wasn’t as much thunder and lightning as at the opening of the storm. Our yellow slickers were not the best cover in the world at this point. Toss them and get soaked or wear them and get dead?

We came level with the parapet. Feeble as the light now was, we didn’t dare turn on the flashlight. Through the darkness and the storm, we saw nothing. The door we’d just exited began to slowly creep open. Had they come to their senses? Lightning flashed in the distance. I saw light glinting off the muzzle of a gun. It was turning toward us.

“Run,” I yelled.

The answer to the fleeting notion that maybe it was a person on our side being careful, was given seconds later as shots rang out. Through the darkness we ran straight inland. You couldn’t get that lost. It was a small island. I thought we couldn’t get much wetter, but the pathless land was miserable. We were soon as dirty as on our little excursion to the castle, but this was much worse. With the castle at least we could see a realizable goal in the illumination from the occasional burst of lightning. Here there were no landmarks. We were quickly too far from any villa even if we made the choice to enter one and get trapped inside. We were also now at the highest point on the land around us. Lightning could find us at any moment. We huddled close to the ground. It was far too dark and stormy to discern any path across the island. What might have been a path was now thousands of tiny rivulets. We were soaked and filthy I hoped we weren’t simply going in circles.

The wind had shifted. It had been from the east. Now it was blasting from the south. Just in time to be in our faces. We slogged forward. Scott asked, “Where are we slogging to?”

“Shelter,” I said. “Any kind of shelter. We’ve got to get out of this and under some kind of cover.”

We came to the southern tip of the island. Waves crashed from the south into the curve of cliffs. We went west following the path that clung to the perimeter of the island. Doing this, we would eventually come to the cavern.

At each point where the path dipped, the surf crashed across our way. What had been pleasant paths with occasional puffs of spray on our daily runs was now a continuous series of roiling breakers ready to sweep us into the sea. We timed our dashes carefully. I thought we might have been nearing the cavern when we came to a gap in the path where we couldn’t see the other side. The cliff face was far above our heads on the right. I touched the rock and earth there. I found no foothold or handholds that would help us climb.