Last Gasp (69 page)

“Then why are you holding him?” He couldn’t make sense of this. Perhaps the only sense resided in the convoluted workings of Baz Brannigan’s drugged brain and it was futile to expect a logical explanation.

“Tell him he can go screw himself,” said a slurred voice from the group. “We don’t have to take this hassle.”

“Damn right, we don’t.” Baz raised his rifle and Chase saw that several small notches had been cut in the polished stock. A tally of animal—or human?—kills. “Get your gear together and get out. I want you off the settlement by sundown, and take the sick woman with you.”

Chase stood his ground. “I demand right now to see my son. I have a right—”

A spasm of insane fury broke across Baz Brannigan’s face, which under its ruddy tan had a gray pallor. “I’ve told you what to do and I’m not going to repeat it. I’m all through with words. From here on we talk in bullets.”

“It’s impossible, you can’t reason with them,” Nick said later in the cabin. “In the end it all comes down to brute force. What are you going to do?”

“What about you?” Chase said, looking out at the majestic sweep of mountains to the north. Was Boris still out there somewhere? “Are you coming with us?”

Nick leaned against the stone mantel, hands in pockets, and stared down at his shoes. “This place isn’t going to last much longer, not with Baz and his cronies running things.” He glanced up. “We’ll come with you if it’s possible, but there’s the problem of getting out—there isn’t room for all of us in one jeep.”

“There must be other transport.”

“There is, a couple of pickups and an old truck. They’re parked around the back of the council hall where Baz can keep an eye on them. We’ll have to try for one of the pickups, though how we do that without getting our heads blown off I don’t know.” Nick added reflectively, “And I’ve grown attached to mine.”

“We need something to divert their attention,” Ruth said. “A fire; anything to keep them occupied.”

Chase nodded, but he was thinking of their other problem. Stealing the pickup would be easy compared with getting Dan out. He looked at his watch. “Whatever we decide it’ll have to be quick,” he said. “Baz wants us off the settlement by sundown, which gives us four hours. We’ll have to start making preparations right now. How soon could you be ready to leave?” he asked Nick.

Nick surveyed the room and sighed. “Well, there’s not a lot we can take with us. About two hours, I’d say, to get our personal stuff and supplies for the trip together. Jen?” His wife nodded her agreement. “Have you got a gun?”

“Two rifles. Jo’s a crack shot. Better than me.”

“Four weapons,” Chase said. He kneaded the bruise on his ribs. “If they’re unprepared for us that might be enough.”

“How are you going to do it?” Ruth asked, her eyes liquid and dark beneath the swathe of white bandage. “We can’t start a gunfight with Cheryl in the middle of it, and she’s in no shape to be moved quickly.”

“Cheryl won’t be there and neither will you.” Chase stared into space, thinking it through. “The three of us will leave in the jeep before sundown, exactly as Baz wants us to do. That should relax him and set his mind at rest—if that’s conceivable. We’ll find a quiet spot somewhere off the road where you and Cheryl can wait in the jeep while I double-back on foot. Then Nick and I will get Dan out, take the pickup, and rendezvous with Jen and Jo down by the lake.” He looked at the others.

After a moment’s silence Nick said, “The first part sounds simple— the three of you leaving in the jeep. It’s the rest of it that worries me. Baz has Dan under guard night and day, and there’s probably someone watching the pickup too. If shooting starts we’re outnumbered twenty to one.”

Chase gave a wan smile. “Baz already made that point and I haven’t forgotten it. As Ruth says, we need some kind of a diversion to draw them away from the council hall. Do you know which room they’re holding Dan in?”

“He was in the library stock room,” Jen said, “if they haven’t moved him.”

“Let’s hope they haven’t. Has it got windows?”

Jen nodded. “I used to help out in the library. It’s a corner room with two windows.”

“How many doors?”

“Just one. I’ll draw you a plan.” She clenched both fists.

“What is it?”

“Next door to the stock room there’s a small kitchen with a trapdoor into the loft. If you could get into the loft from outside you could get in without being seen. Maybe they’re not even guarding the stock room, just the main door.”

“Can we get into the loft from outside?” Chase asked Nick.

“I don’t know. There’s an outhouse, a kind of lean-to shed at one end, so we can get onto the roof quite easily.”

“Okay, that’s a possibility we’ll have to keep in mind.” Chase paced up and down the small room.

Jo appeared at the door and said apprehensively, “Ruth, Cheryl’s having trouble breathing and there’s that stuff on her lips. Can you come?”

Chase turned anxiously, but Ruth held her hand up, moving quickly to the door. “It’s all right, I’ll see to her. You’ve got enough to be thinking about.” She followed Jo out.

“Would a fire do it, do you think?” Jen asked, hugging her knees and looking from Chase to her husband and back again.

“It might,” Chase said, racking his brains. “But it would have to be something that threatened Baz personally, his house, his drugs—” Nick thumped his palm. “Christ, Gav, that’s it! The dispensary! If that went up, they’d beat the flames out with their bare hands!”

“That would do it all right,” Chase agreed, “but we’d be hurting everyone else in the community, too, destroying drugs that innocent people need.” He tugged fretfully at his beard. “No, we can’t do that, Nick. It could cause their death.”

“It’s life or death for us, too,” Nick said. “Every man for himself.” Chase looked away, his face drawn and tight. “That’s why the world’s in a fucking awful mess right now. The biggest grab the most. What’s yours is mine and what’s mine’s me own. Old Lancashire saying.”

“I remember you and your bloody conscience at Hailey Bay,” Nick said, shaking his head wryly. “While the rest of us were wallowing in lurid sex fantasies, you were worrying about the dissolution of carbon dioxide in seawater. How about some coffee?” he said to Jen.

“Yes, all right. Do you want something to eat?”

“Not for me. Gav?”

Chase shook his head. Jen went through to the kitchen and Nick took a bottle and glasses from a cupboard. “Genuine and original Oregon brandy,” he said, pouring out four measures. “Made from apple cores and caribou droppings. This stuff puts hair on your chest and everywhere else as well.”

Jen returned and while they were drinking the coffee and brandy Chase told them about the marine trials. “Up to the time of leaving the Tomb they seemed to be going well. I’m hoping Frank Hanamura’s final report will be waiting for me when I get back.”

“What if the trials aren’t successful?” Jen asked.

“There are other methods we’ve been working on, but the problem with those is that it could take another twenty years to develop them sufficiently. Microorganisms with a high oxygen yield, seeding the deserts to make them net oxygen producers, and so on. But I’m not sure we’ve got twenty years—or even ten, the way things are going.”

“Not even ten?” Jen said numbly.

“There’s a negative feedback operating now, which means that adverse climatic conditions reinforce themselves to produce even more adverse conditions, and they in turn tighten the spiral. The climatic deterioration is happening a lot faster than anyone predicted. And there could be other factors we’ve overlooked or simply know nothing about, in which case we might already be too late to do anything about them.”

“Because you don’t know what they are?” Jen said.

“That’s right. Like a man backing away from a rattlesnake and walking deeper into a quicksand he doesn’t know is there. He’s going to die anyway, and not much consolation to know it won’t be by snake venom.”

Ruth and Jo came in and helped themselves to coffee. Chase felt uncomfortable in the girl’s presence, as if he bore some of the responsibility for what had happened to her. Rationally he knew this to be nonsense, and yet by association he felt that Dan’s act had somehow soiled him and made him party to the guilt. He searched Ruth’s face anxiously. “Is she all right?”

“I’ve given her another injection. It should ease her breathing, but it won’t help her overall condition. There’s nothing more I can do till we get her back to Desert Range. Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“I don’t know, have we?” Nick said to Chase.

Chase told them about Nick’s idea for setting fire to the dispensary, which he didn’t agree with, and Jo spoke up. “There’s no need for that. Baz and most of the others will be over at Tom Brannigan’s place watching blue movies on video. They do that every Friday night.”

“Is today Friday?” Chase said. He hadn’t the faintest notion. “They’ll leave two or three guys at the council hall,” Jo said, “but if you time it for about eleven, they’ll either be drugged or asleep or both. It’s the ones on the road we’ll have to watch out for.”

“Are they posted there all through the night?”

Jo nodded. “Since they set up a refugee camp near Alturas we’ve had to watch the road all the time. We’ve always had immigrants from the south, but these are crazies; they’d loot the settlement and wipe it off the map if we didn’t keep them out.” She added grudgingly, “I guess that’s one thing we have to be grateful to Baz for.”

Chase smiled at Jo, finding her an attractive and spirited girl. He liked her. “Well, let’s just hope Baz and his friends are too busy watching dirty movies and getting stoned to bother about us.” He said to Nick, “I’ll need to know a trail that will bring me back here, avoiding the road. You be ready to move by eleven. We’ll get Dan out, take the pickup, load it up with your stuff, and get out fast, roadblock or no roadblock. If they want a fight we’ll give them one. We’re leaving tonight. All of us.”

He stood up, his breathing tight in his chest. He hoped he looked more confident than he felt. “Right, let’s get organized.”

The lights of the settlement were a sparkling necklace of diamonds along the black oval curve of the lake. Beyond them the night rolled on into impenetrable forest darkness. Coming down the pale sandy trail, the sky ablaze with stars, Chase was struck by how vulnerable it looked. An attack by the “crazies” Jo had mentioned would leave the place desolate in a couple of hours. And if they found out that a bunch of youngsters was in charge—equally crazy in their own way—it would be an open invitation, too ripe and juicy to resist.

He and Nick had arranged to meet at the point where the trail dropped steeply through the trees, only a few hundred yards from the settlement. Nick was there, crouched with his back to a tree, the rifle balanced across his knees. He got up and without a word being exchanged they moved in single file down the last gentle slope, seeking the protection of the shadowy trees and bushes.

Chase had left the rifle with Ruth and carried the Browning. The night was warm and he was already perspiring from his three-mile hike. His stomach felt hollow with nervous anticipation.

As they approached the first lighted cabin Nick touched his arm and they skirted it, stealthily working their way around to the rear of the council hall. There was no sign of activity within; indeed, except for the cabin lights, the entire place might have been deserted.

Nick pointed out the vehicles parked in the back lot. There was a Dodge pickup that looked in reasonable shape. He leaned close and murmured in Chase’s ear, “We’ll check the roof first. The outhouse is at the far end.”

A jumble of packing crates made it easy to climb onto the lean-to roof. Stepping like cats, they moved along the roof searching with their outspread fingers against the rough timber wall of the main building.

Chase strangled an oath as he caught a splinter under his thumbnail. His throat stung. Dan was only yards away, the thickness of a timber wall separating them, and he had to fight an impulse to smash his fist through, infected with the mad idea that he could reach inside and pluck his son to freedom.

Nick’s hand tightened on his shoulder, and in the almost total darkness Chase saw that his bearded mouth was split in a grin. Chase strained to see and made out a small recessed hatch, at about knee height, fastened by a bent nail through a hasp. There was no padlock.

Nick put the nail in his pocket, opened the hasp, and pushed gently. The door resisted and Chase’s heart sank at the thought that it might be barred on the inside. Nick pushed harder and the door suddenly gave and flew back on its hinges. The two men held a collective breath at the expected crash, but none came. A faint creak of timber, a squeak of metal, that was all.

Crouching down, Chase followed Nick inside, feeling a bead of sweat rolling down between his buttocks. Inside it was black and stifling. He waited on all fours until the pencil beam of Nick’s flashlight pierced the blackness and flicked across the massive crossbeams supporting the roof and settled on the floor of the loft. At once Nick found the trapdoor and he began edging his way along one of the rafters, flashlight in one hand, rifle in the other.

Waiting until he had safely made it, Chase followed, guided by the thin light. They knelt together, like fellow penitents, and listened. Chase counted the passage of time with the beats of his heart, and after several moments of absolute and unearthly silence, he took the Browning from his pocket and released the safety, then held the flashlight while Nick drew back the bolt on his rifle with infinite care.

No voices or sounds from below, so there was nothing to be gained by waiting. Nick pried his fingers around the edge of the trapdoor, and as soon as it began to move Chase switched the flashlight off.

An oblong of light appeared, the corner of a sink unit, a scuffed pine floor. The kitchen was empty.

Chase went first. Heaving himself through and hanging at arm’s length, he dropped lightly to the floor, which gave a slight groan under his weight. He took the rifle while Nick climbed down. The kitchen was tiny, narrow, with a fluorescent light that buzzed like a fly trapped in a jam jar. Chase pointed to a Formica-topped table alongside the wall, and at Nick’s understanding nod they lifted it together and positioned it under the trapdoor: their quick escape route. Chase was even beginning to hope that Dan’s disappearance wouldn’t be discovered till morning, by which time they’d be miles away—even if they had to shoot everyone in that road patrol, he thought with grim resolution.