Last Gasp (70 page)

Chase hefted the automatic and mouthed Where? to Nick, who jerked his thumb, indicating the room along the passage to the left. Pressing close to the wall, Chase eased the door open a crack, saw that it was clear, and sidled out into the passage, the gun held near his chest. As Nick followed, the floorboards creaked under their combined weight. Chase could feel his shirt clinging to him like a second skin, and when he stole a glance over his shoulder saw that Nick’s face, like his own, was running with sweat.

The door of the stock room was at the end of the passage. Opposite were a pair of double doors that led presumably into the main body of the hall. Was that where Baz had posted his guards? He couldn’t hear voices, music, anything; but that didn’t mean there was no one there. He and Nick were going to have to be as quiet as church mice.

There was a heavy padlock on the stock room door, recently fitted judging by the film of grease still on it. That made things very awkward. They couldn’t break the padlock without making enough noise to wake the dead ... and then his eye fell on something and he grinned exultantly. Next to the door, on a nail, hung a key.

Chase fitted the key, which turned easily, and the padlock sprang open. He removed the padlock and placed it on the floor and turned the handle with a firm, steady pressure, Nick’s breathing audible in his right ear as he pushed the door open and took a step into the room.

He sensed at once that something was wrong. They had made a dreadful mistake.

Even as he took in the bound-and-gagged figure in the chair, the eyes wide with fear and warning, even as he knew what those eyes were signaling—all this passing through his mind in an instant—Chase was still too late and too slow to prevent three pairs of hands clamping him simultaneously on his hand, arm, and shoulder while behind he heard the rattle of the double doors and Nick’s gasp of shock as the rifle was wrenched from his grasp.

Baz stood there grinning. “Didn’t I tell you?” he boasted to the others. “Had to be.” It was his moment of triumph and he was luxuriating in it.

He took a long hunting knife from its sheath, went behind the chair, and sliced through the ropes. Dan sagged forward and clawed the gag from his mouth, sucking in air. He looked old. The bones of his face showed pale through his skin. His lips were bloodless and his eyes were black circles. The flesh hung wrinkled on his elbows.

“Oh, my God,” Nick said. “You bloody bastards.”

Chase couldn’t speak. An icy paralysis held him rigid, an iciness that burned with the most intense and consuming anger he had ever known.

“It’s okay, he’s alive,” Baz said blandly. He held the knife upright, touching the point with successive fingertips. “We could have let him die or killed him. We decided not to.”

He looked at Chase, thick fair eyebrows raised as if seeking commendation for this act of mercy. His eyes were a bright dreamless blue. He might have been drugged, mad, or both; it was impossible to say.

Chase pulled himself free and knelt in front of his son. He tried to speak and couldn’t. He wanted to say that it was all his fault, his stupidity, that he was to blame for what had happened to his son and Cheryl. He shook his head dumbly, holding Dan’s arms like a baby’s, as if afraid they might break.

“I was coming to see you at Desert Range, Dad. I wanted you to help us—help me—but they wouldn’t let me. I’m sorry for what I did, I—” Dan choked up. His eyes were moist and red-rimmed. “I can’t tell you how ashamed I feel. I loved her, Dad. I loved her and yet I did that to her.” He hung his head and his shoulders started to heave.

Chase released him and stood up. He turned slowly and looked in turn at each of the seven young men and finally at Baz. He said, “That’s why you couldn’t let him go, isn’t it? It would have ruined your chances of becoming tin-pot dictator here, you and your”—he made an empty, dismissive gesture—“bunch of crazy thugs. Do you know you’re insane, Baz?” He glanced around at them. “You’re all stark bloody raving mad, did you know that? You’ve pumped yourselves full of poison and your brain cells have corroded. And you talk about survival of the fittest.” Chase shook his head pityingly. “You’re a dead man, Baz. All of you are as good as dead. Nothing can save you now.”

Baz thrust the point of the blade at Chase’s throat. The arteries on his forearm stood out, lumpy and blue, the skin hard and shiny where repeated punctures had formed scar tissue.

“You’re fucking dead, Chase, not us!” He rocked forward and Chase felt the tip penetrate his skin. It felt like a red-hot needle. “All I have to do is keep on pushing,” Baz said, “and pushing and pushing and we all stand around and watch you bleed to death like a stuck pig. I told you already to get out. That was your one and only chance. But I knew you’d be too dumb to take it.”

Nick said, “We’re going, we’re getting out, all of us. If we go we’re out of your way, which is what you want, isn’t it? Why keep Dan here or any of us?”

“I don’t want you,” Baz said, easing back and pointing the knife at Dan. “I want him. He wants to kill me, don’t you, Danny boy? The bastard tried it once.” He yanked out his shirt to expose a white bubbled scar across his stomach and pelvic bone. “And nearly fucking did it.”

“Don’t give me another chance, Baz,” Dan said, his voice hoarse and low. “Next time I will do it.”

“That’s why you’re not going anywhere!” Baz shouted, his eyes glazed blue. “Not any of you!” He blinked and wiped his mouth, as if coming out of a trance, and pushed a hand through his disheveled hair. Then he abruptly grabbed Chase by the shoulder and heaved him violently across the room.

Nick went for him as he strode to the door and actually got a handful of Baz’s shirt before three of the others pounced on him and dragged him away. One of them swung a rifle butt at Nick’s head and there was a dull solid sound like the distant boom of a cannon and Nick fell to his knees.

Baz kicked at him viciously. “Stay here and fucking rot! ” He glared at Chase and Dan, chest heaving. “You’re here and you stay here. Cheryl and that other woman have gone and they’re never coming back, understand? They can take their chances on the road.” Suddenly his grin came on, as if somebody had pulled a string. “We’ll let your wife and daughter stay,” he told Nick. “Now that Jo’s been raped I bet she’s got a taste for it.” He sprayed his mad grin around at the others. “One at a time or all together, huh?”

Nick struggled to rise, his eyes hooded with pain. “You go anywhere near my family and I swear I’ll swing for you. I’ll get you. I’ll get you.” He stumbled forward, arms outstretched. “You fucking miserable excuse for a human being....
Aaaaaggghhh!”

Baz had lashed at him with the knife and there was bright blood everywhere, pumping from a deep gash in Nick’s shoulder. The front of his shirt rapidly changed color to a dark plum and hung slackly to his chest.

“Oh, yeah? What are you going to do?” Baz taunted him, waving the dripping knife blade in a circle. “Bleed to death? Yeah, great, I like it. Go on, bleed, you cunt.” He continued to grin, spots of blood on his forehead and cheeks.

Chase supported Nick and helped him to a chair. He bound the wound with his handkerchief and knotted it tightly to stanch the flow. It was pointless trying to reason with Baz because there was no reason left. His was a mind on a one-way track, fixated, a mind that needed only the flimsiest excuse to slaughter them on the spot.

If there was a way out of this he couldn’t think of one. It wasn’t only the three of them here who were in danger, but the women too. Jen and Jo at the mercy of this drug-crazed mob, Ruth and Cheryl out there in the darkness on a lonely road ...

He raised his eyes to where Baz was standing with the others bunched around him, each of them with a fragment of a common expression like a splintered mirror showing a single demented face. And as he looked something locked in Chase’s throat. Under his hand he felt Nick’s body stiffen. The double doors across the passage had silently opened and they watched a man come through with a double-bladed ax lifted high above his head and bring it down with maniacal force on the crown of Baz’s head, splitting it into halves.

The scene turned red. Through the sticky fountain Chase saw other men pawing their way forward clutching knives, hatchets, steel bars, hacksaw blades, scythes and cutting and slashing indiscriminately at whatever was in their path. They were filthy, with matted hair and beards, their clothing stained and ragged. Some were putrefying, their faces and arms covered in scabs, others totally bald with skin a drab pasty white. All of them were demonical and possessed with blood-lust.

The carnage spilled into the passage as the attackers were flung back by a barrage of gunfire. At such close range the large-caliber weapons made a ghastly mess of human flesh and bone. All but three of the young men had been killed and one of these had had the side of his face scythed open, his ear hanging off like the tab of a zipper.

There were rifles on the floor among the hacked bodies, and Chase grabbed two and flung them to Nick and Dan. His Browning automatic was stuck in the belt of a corpse with its neck almost completely severed and an arm hanging by a tattered sleeve of skin.

Both double doors had been ripped off their hinges by the blast of gunfire and in the main hall Chase could see the attackers regrouping. Of the three young men still alive the one with the scythed-open face was bent over holding the flap in place, blood running freely between his fingers. These were no longer the enemy, but allies.

Chase pulled Nick to his feet under the armpit. “Can you make it?” Nick held up the rifle. “You take this, I’ll have the gun.” He made a quizzical grimace. “Dicky shoulder, I’m afraid, old chap.”

The floor was awash with blood. The two young men still holding rifles, one on either side of the door, were uncertain what to do next. Chase stepped forward and took charge. “We’ll have to rush them,” he said tersely. “If we get trapped in here we’ve had it. There are five of us, all armed. We should get through. Ready? Let’s go!”

With that he grabbed one, then the other, and pushed them forward. They stumbled across the passage and into the hall, firing from the hip, but as Nick and Dan crowded behind Chase in close support, he ducked aside and ran toward the kitchen, yelling over his shoulder, “Back the way we came in!”

Nick steered Dan along the passage. As they reached the kitchen door the explosion of gunfire and the screams of injured men made a dreadful symphony. Dan went up first, onto the table and hauling himself weakly through the trapdoor, reaching down to give Nick what help he could while Chase got underneath and lifted him bodily from below. Chase went up and slammed the trapdoor shut. The open hatch in the end wall was clearly outlined a different shade of black in the blackness of the loft, and they stumbled toward it not caring whether they walked on the rafters or not.

“Right, the pickup,” Chase said breathlessly when they were on the ground. The rifle was sticky in his hands.

They ran with Nick leading the way across the compound where the old truck and the Dodge pickup were parked next to a small shed with a door paneled in metal sheets. Holding his shoulder, Nick raised his foot and kicked at the padlock on the door.

“Gasoline,” he gasped, and Chase brought the rifle butt down and sheared the padlock from its mountings. In a few minutes they had loaded ten large jerry cans into the back of the Dodge.

With Chase at the wheel and headlights blazing, they accelerated across the compound and through the gate and roared past the council hall: silent of gunfire now, silent of screams of pain and suffering, but shrill with the cries of triumph and victory.

They were between Sulphur and Tungsten when the pickup blew a front tire. Chase thought the geographical symbolism apt—on one side a bitter, acrid chemical associated with hellfire, on the other a hard gray metallic substance used as an abrasive.

He backed the jeep onto the sandy shoulder, taking care not to jostle his passengers. They had driven nonstop for nine hours and it was now a few minutes after 10:00
A.M.
There was no cloud and no welcoming shade and the temperature was already high in the eighties.

Chase climbed down, cramped and stiff, and turned to the two women, one cradled in the arms of the other. “How is she, Ruth? Would it help if we stopped for a while?”

“Her pulse is weak. I could give her an injection, but I’m afraid her system isn’t strong enough to take it.” Ruth moved her arm and winced as the renewed circulation jabbed her with a thousand needles. “I think we ought to carry on; I can’t do anything for her until we get to Desert Range. How long would you say?”

“About fifteen hours without stopping or holdups. Maybe we should have something to eat now while they’re changing the tire.” It was anguish for him to look at Cheryl. In the harsh sunlight her face had the color and consistency of wax.

Nick and Dan were squatting by the pickup, loosening the bolts on the wheel. As Chase went over to them the two women got down from the cab and stretched themselves. Everyone went still, his head lifted to catch the low throbbing sound of an engine, and moments later a small red car loaded down so that the body was pressed onto the hubs toiled around the bend toward them. The roof rack was piled high with boxes, furniture, and household goods. Through the dust-smeared windows it was possible to make out a man and two women, one of them elderly, and two young children with wide curious eyes. The car labored past in the direction of Sulphur without any kind of greeting being exchanged.

Chase helped them fit the jack and began to crank it. “What condition is the spare in?”

Nick straightened up and smiled wanly. “Let’s hope we have a spare.”

“We’ll be in a hell of a mess if you haven’t,” Chase said. “Dan, will you take a look?” His son nodded and wandered off like a sleepwalker. “How’s your shoulder, Nick?”

“Jen dressed it for me, but I’ll never be able to play the violin again. Is Cheryl holding up?”

“I think so.” He didn’t want to tempt fate by any show of optimism. He gazed around at the baking hills, the grass burned brown and threadbare. There was a low mountain range ahead topped by Star Peak. “We’re not far from Interstate eighty. We’ll take that as far as highway ninety-three and then head south. Can you make it without rest? Ruth thinks we should press on.”