Jumper: Griffin's Story (27 page)

In the Empty Quarter I made a fire ol" dead mesquite out in the middle of the wash, adding more and more wood until it was like a pyre.

When the flames were taller than me, I threw the fragments of the sketch into the fire and watched them vanish almost immediately–flame, ash, and then sparks drifting into the sky.

Triangulation.

Honesty is the best policy, that's what they say, but it was a disaster for me. I should never have mentioned Borrcgo Springs. But I had plenty of warning. They drove around
listening.
Waiting for me to jump so they could figure out where my lair was.

The sheep farmers had started throwing coyotes down my shaft again and I was getting ready to make another visit, though this time I was considering taking the baseball bat.

I'd jumped to a ridge near Fish Creek campground with my binoculars, trying to catch the Keyhoe brothers on their ATVs, when a truck kicking up a dust trail in the wash below suddenly swerved and braked.

I stepped behind a boulder and took a look with the binoculars.

Three men. Kemp and the big man from
Oaxaca
and someone I didn't know. They'd felt the jump. They were looking up the ridge.

I walked away, down the other side of the ridge toward the gypsum mine. I was considering just walking away until I was at least eight miles out of range, but I didn't know what direction they'd drive their truck.

And anyway, if they were
this
close, they'd already felt me jump from the Hole multiple times. They were probably taking bearings, triangulating.

I jumped away, to the park headquarters, then to the Key–hoe ranch, where I smashed a window and riled up the dogs, then jumped away to
New York
and had a hot dog in Battery Park.

After thirty minutes I sighed heavily.

Time to move.

On the outskirts of
Rennes
I found a farmer with a shed to rent. It was dry with a good roof and a stone floor well off the damp ground and he took a year's rent in cash without asking for an ID of any kind.

"Dmuges?"

"Bien sur que nonl"

Drugs indeed!

I jumped back to the Hole and transferred the wall of sketches, my dresser, and the weapons I'd taken from them so far. I looked at everything else–the batteries, the generator, the lights, the bed, and the furniture and decided against it. I hesitated over the shelf of self–study materials, then 1 shook my head.

I jumped to
San Diego
and stole six barbecue canisters of propane gas from a gas distributor and brought them back.

Then I spent three hours doing nothing but jumping from one end of the Hole to the other end.

If the bastards didn't feel that, then what good were they?

Every hour I jumped to the surface, right above the Hole. It wouldn't feel much different to them compared to underground, unless they were already there, but they weren't.

But I heard them coming.

I walked away, back into the boulders, and made my way up the hill. I had my binoculars and the baseball bat, and I was ready to play.

There were six of them in two different all–wheel–drive trucks and when they left the vehicles they fanned out in two groups of three. They looked inward, toward each other, and I realized it was a way to watch each other's back, because if your enemy could materialize in your midst, you had to look
everywhere.

I waited until the two groups were well apart and took out one of Kemp's group, smashing his knee, taking advantage of his fast reflexes and hitting him as he lashed out.

Both Kemp and his other teammate fired their spikes toward me, but they missed because I'd jumped away, and they missed their teammate because he'd fallen on his ass.

I snagged Kemp by the collar while he was reloading, and dropped him in the Hole. When he twisted and fired at me, I jumped to the other end of the cave where I'd left my own equipment.

My
spikes and cable caught him across his chest and pinned him to the plywood wall. It was ironic. That was the sheet that still said "Sensitives" on it, though the sketches were in
France
now.

He was struggling out from under the cable and I wondered if the charge was gone. Or if he was just tough. I fired another, lower, across his thighs, and saw him spasm. I put another across his chest and arms, and then another, shoulder high.

He carried his knife in a sleeve sheath, a mechanical thing that popped it into his hand. He had a shock stick in his back pocket and six cartridges for his gun in the loops of his belt. I took his cell phone and his wallet, too, and put them on the table.

There were three different IDs. None of them for Kemp. I guess I'd made it too hot for him under that name. I took a jump back to the surface, and then to the metal ladder leading down into the mine. It stank–the dead coyotes were still there–but I didn't mind somehow.

I returned to Kemp and jabbed him with the shock stick.

Oh, good.
I'd been thinking he had some sort of immunity. The plywood, thick, three–quarter–inch stuff, flexed like cardboard.

While he spasmed,
I got
a
chair and straddled it, arms
resting across the back.

His twitching lessened and I said, "Paladin. Hmph. That's an odd name for someone who goes around killing children."

I had his full attention suddenly. He hadn't been looking particularly good but when I said that he went pasty white.

"Am I not supposed to know that?" I asked innocently. "Which part am I not supposed to know? That you guys are paladins? Or that you spend most of your time offing little kids?"

He was staring at me like he'd made a mistake, like he'd thought I was one thing, and he'd discovered I was another. "Listen, boy–"

I jabbed him in the stomach with the shock stick, jumping forward past the chair.

As he went into another set of convulsions, I walked back around to the chair. "We got off on the wrong foot, I think. Probably when you
killed my parents.
Maybe you thought I didn't
like
my parents but I gotta tell you, you were wrong about that. Then there was Sam and Consuelo ... now I'm confused. Why
did
you kill them? Wouldn't it have been better to leave them alive, to see if I'd make contact again? Would
Roland
have done it that way?"

He began thrashing again, but it wasn't the shock stick. He was trying to get out of the cables. Was it the mention of Roland's name? This time I kicked him in the bollocks.

"Christ, would you settle down!" I shouted. He was having trouble breathing and he was making little groaning sounds. I pointed at his groin. "Oh, yeah. And then you had to go and mess with my love life! That was really the last straw."

I looked back over at my books, the schoolwork, the novels I loved.

"I used to be a nice kid. Probably the kind of kid you're used to, the kind of kid who dies nice and quiet when you show up with your knives and spiky guns and cables and shock sticks and all."

I jumped away, back to the other side of the cave, where it led out to the vertical shaft. They'd broken open the grating and I could hear them coming down the ladder.

I returned to Kemp and began stacking the propane tanks on top of the table, two rows of three. When I was done, I went down to the other end of the room, to my little twelve–volt refrigerator, and took out a pack of dinner candles.

I'd bought them with E.V. in mind, for a romantic dinner.

I lit two of the candles, dripped wax atop the fridge, and anchored them there, burning brightly.

Romantic.

"So, do you have a secret headquarters, Kemp? I mean, someplace where you guys hang out, shoot darts, heft a few pints, eat paladin cakes, and practice killing little kids?"

He licked his lips. "Alejandra," he said.

I kicked him again. Same place. "Don't even
say
her name!"

He was reaching. I hoped he was reaching, but no matter what, I wasn't going to play their games anymore.

"Why do you guys do it? Why are you after me? Why do you go around killing us?"

He looked at me and I saw hate and I saw fear, but he didn't speak and I was sick of hitting on him.

I opened three of the six propane tank valves and jumped away, to the top of the hill above.

I counted to ten. For a moment, I thought the candles had gone out. Then I felt it in my feet, the shock, followed by the rumble, echoing against the hill.

Down below, the mineshaft opening spat dust and smoke and, oddly, a near perfect smoke ring that spread as it rose until it was over a hundred feet in diameter.

Their trucks had cracked windows but the guy I'd injured first was still alive, shaken and staring around.

I thought about taking him away and playing with him, maybe extracting some information about this Roland guy, but I was tired.

Let him explain
this
to the park rangers.

I had a lead on a cell of three paladins who operated around the Gare de Lyon train station and I was drawing them out with a series of jumps, figuring out who were the Sensitives.

I'd identified one working the news kiosk and another, a waiter at Le Train Bleu, but I'd had no luck on the third and didn't want to move until I had.

I was eating
pain au chocolat
and between the flaky crust all down my jacket and the sticky chocolate on my face and fingers, I was making a right mess of things when a group of Spanish tourists went by following their tour guide. She was discussing the history of the station in perfect Castilian, but the voice wrenched my head around and widened my eyes.

She'd dyed her hair blond and cut it short, but it was her, slightly thinner, just as beautiful as ever.

As Alejandra came closer I turned away, pulling napkins from my paper bag and dabbing at the chocolate on my face. I soaked in every word, every bit of the warm, musical voice.

I wanted to run after her, to grab her, to hold her. I wanted her to hold
me.

I didn't turn around until she was gone.

People surrounded me, moving through the station like schools of fish in a reef, like milling sheep. Meeting each other, talking, kissing, hurrying to make a train, their thoughts on their destinations or points of origin or just dinner.

But not me.

You don't have to drive or walk or
even jump
to get to the
Empty Quarter
.

Sometimes it comes to you.

The waiter I'd already identified talked briefly to a customer passing out of the restaurant. This man wandered around the train station for five minutes, watching the timetables, then abruptly went to the news kiosk. There he bought a newspaper, and talked briefly to the clerk, my other subject–only a few sentences, but more than were necessary to buy a paper.

Hello, boys.

I jumped.

The End