The Best of Lucius Shepard (109 page)

“Did
you hear that?” Jo clutched my arm.

I
bellowed at Pellerin. He looked at me from, I’d estimate, twenty-five feet
away, and it was not a human look. His features were strained, his lips drawn
back, stretched in a delirious expression, part leer and part delighted grin.
That’s how it seemed, that he had been made happy beyond human measure,
transported by the perception of some unnatural pleasure, as if the fire were
for him a form of release. I was frightened of him, yet I felt a connection,
some emotional tether, and I was afraid
for
him as well. I urged him to
come with us, to make a try for the boat. He stared as if he didn’t recognize
me, and then his smile lost its inhuman wideness.

“Come
on, man!” I said. “Let’s go!”

He
shook his head. “No way.”

“What
the hell are you doing? You’re going to die here!”

His
smile dimmed and I thought his resolve was weakening, that he would break
through the fences of flame separating us and join us in flight; but all he did
was stand there. Behind me, I heard an explosive crash as the window gave way;
the gunfire grew louder.

“Listen!”
I said. “That’s Billy’s men out there! You want them to catch you?”

“That
ain’t Billy! Don’t you believe it!” He pointed at Jo. “Ask her!”

Despite
the high ceiling, smoke was beginning to fill the room, drifting down around
us, and Jo was bent over, coughing.

“This
shit isn’t working for me.” Pellerin seemed to be talking mostly to himself.
“It’s just not acceptable.”

I
understood what he meant, but I entreated him once more to come with us. He
shook his head again, an emphatic no. Turning his attention to the fire, he
performed a series of complex gestures. The latticework of flames surrounding
us appeared to bend away from his fingers and a path opened, leading toward the
kitchen. The heat was growing intolerable—I had no choice but to abandon him.
My arm around Jo’s waist, I started along the path, but she panicked, fighting
against me, scratching my face and slapping the side of my head. I hit her on
the point of the jaw, picked her up in a fireman’s carry as she sagged, and
broke into a stumbling run.

The
sky was graying as I emerged from the house and staggered across the lawn; the
Mystery
Girl
lurched in my vision with each step, appearing to recede at first, as
though I were on a treadmill that kept carrying me backward. The small arms
fire had intensified—at least a dozen weapons were involved. I had no idea what
was happening, and not much of an idea where I was going. If the boat had gas,
I thought I would head north and search for the entrance to the intercoastal
waterway, try and make it to Tampa where I had friends. But if Billy had
survived, Tampa would not be safe and I didn’t know where to go. Not New
Orleans, that was for sure. I could have kicked myself for not shooting the
scummy little weasel when I had the chance.

The
planks resounded to my footsteps as I pounded along the dock, and the smells of
creosote and brine hit me like smelling salts. When I reached the
Mystery
Girl,
I laid Jo in the stern. She moaned, but didn’t wake. I climbed the
ladder to the pilot deck, keyed the ignition, and was exultant when the engine
turned over. The needle on the fuel gauge swung up to register an almost-full
tank. I pulled away from the dock and opened up the throttle. There was a light
chop on the water close to shore, but farther out, beyond the sandbar, the
surface was smooth and glassy, with gentle swells. Crumbling banks of fog
blanketed the sea ahead. Once inside them we’d be safe for a while. I wondered
what had gotten into Pellerin, whether it was Ogun Badagris or simply a madness
attached to having been brought back to life by bacteria that infested your
brain and let you use more of it. Maybe there wasn’t any difference between the
two conditions. Jo’s first slow-burner had gone out in much the same way, in
the midst of a huge
veve,
so you were led to conclude that some
pathology was involved ... and yet it might be the pathology of a god trapped
in a human body. I remembered how he’d smiled, leering at his fiery work, and
how that smile had planed seamlessly down into a human expression, as if the
man he was had merely been the god diminished by the limitations of the flesh.

I
cleared my mind of ontological speculation and focused on practical matters,
but when I tried to think about what we were going to do once we reached Tampa,
it was like trying to walk on black ice and I wound up staring at the flat gray
sea, listening to the pitch of the engine. I zoned out and began to think about
Pellerin again. Formless thoughts, the kind you have when you’re puzzled by
something to the point that you can’t even come up with a question to ask and
are reduced to searching the database, hoping that some fact will provoke one.

I
had all but forgotten about Jo and when she called out to me, I turned toward
the sound of her voice, full of concern. She came scrambling up the ladder and,
once she had solid footing, told me to cut the engines, having to shout to make
herself heard. The wind lashed her hair about, and she held it in place with
one hand.

“Are
you crazy?” I gestured at the fog bank. “Once we’re into the fog, we’ll be
okay.”

“We’ll
never get away! If I thought we could, I’d go with you. You know that, don’t
you?”

“You
are going with me,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

She
didn’t answer, and I glanced over at her.

She
had moved away from me and was standing with her legs apart, aiming a small
automatic with a silver finish. A .25 caliber Beretta. With that black cocktail
dress on, she might have stepped out of a Bond movie. She had to be wearing a
thigh holster. The unreality of it all tickled me and I couldn’t repress a
laugh.

“Where’d
you get that thing?” I asked her. “Out of a cereal box?”

She
fired, and a bullet dug a furrow in the control console an inch from my hand.

I
recoiled from the console. “Christ!”

“I’m
sorry,” she said.

She
looked sorry. Her make-up was mussed. The heat of the fire had caused her to
sweat, and sweat had dragged a mascara shadow from the corner of her eye,
simulating a tear. She told me again to cut the engines, and this time I
complied. The boat lifted on a light swell. I heard the faint cries of
seagulls—they sounded like the baying of tiny, trebly hounds. I heard another
noise, then. Two dark blue helicopters were approaching from the south.

“Who
the hell is that?” I shouted.

“Calm
down. Please! This is...” The wind drifted hair across her face; she brushed it
aside and said weakly, “It’s the only way. They’re relentless, they keep coming
after you.”

“You
did this? You told them where we were?”

“They
always knew! They never went away! Don’t you get it?”

“You
knew the whole time? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I
didn’t know. Not for sure, not at first. And what good would it have done? You
didn’t listen to Doctor Crain.”

“I
would have listened to you,” I said.

One
of the helicopters positioned itself off the port side of the
Mystery Girl;
the side door had been slid back and someone in harness sat in the opening. I
couldn’t see what he was doing. The other helicopter hovered above the boat. A
gilt script D was painted on the nacelle.

“I
love you, Jack,” Jo said.

“Yeah,
uh-huh.”

“I
do! Back at the hotel ... they contacted me. They were going to step in, but I
convinced them to keep the experiment going.”

“The
experiment. This was an experiment?”

“I
told them we might learn more about Josey if he went through with the game.
Maybe that was wrong of me, but I wanted some time with you.”

I
was unable to line up all the trash she’d told me about her mother, how it had
warped her, with her capacity for betrayal. Yet what she had said smacked of a
childish willfulness and a clinical dispatch that, I realized, functioned as a
tag-team in her personality. Until that moment, I had not understood how
dangerous these qualities made her.

“I
can lose them in the fog,” I said.

“You
can’t. You don’t know them.”

“I’m
damn well going to try. You think they’ll let me go after what I’ve seen? They
just wiped out twenty people!”

“I’m
sure they didn’t kill them all.”

“Oh
... well. Fuck! That’s all right, then.”

I
punched in the ignition; the engine sputtered and caught, rumbling smoothly.

“Don’t,
Jack! Please!”

“I’m
fucking dead if they catch me. Do you understand? I am dead!”

The
barrel of the automatic wavered.

“You’re
not going to shoot me,” I said.

I
pushed the throttle forward. Jo said again, “Don’t,” and I felt a blow to my
back, a wash of pain. I was out of it for a while, and when I was able to
gather my senses, I found myself lying on the deck, with my head jammed up
against the base of the control console. I knew I’d been shot, but it felt like
the bullet had come from something larger than a .25. The guy in the harness,
maybe. I was hurting some, but a numb feeling was setting in. It was a chore to
concentrate. My thoughts kept slipping away. Jo knelt beside me. I locked on to
her face. Looking at her steadied me. “Did you...” I said. “Did you shoot...?”

“Don’t
talk,” she said.

Silhouetted
against the gray sky, a man was being lowered from the helicopter overhead,
along with a metal case that dangled from a hook beside him. It seemed as big
as a coffin. The sight confused me visually, and in other ways as well. I
closed my eyes against it.

Jo
laid a hand on my cheek. The touch cooled the embers of my anger, my
disappointment with her, and I was overwhelmed with sentiment. Bits of memory
surfaced, whirled, dissolved. She lay down on the deck beside me. She became my
sky. Her face hanging above me blotted out the chopper and the man descending.

“I’ll
take care of you, I promise,” she said.

Her
brown eyes were all that was holding me.

A
gurgling came from inside my chest. She started raving, then. Getting angry,
swearing vengeance, weeping. It was like she thought I’d passed out, like I
wasn’t there. Half of it, I didn’t understand. She said they would regret what
they’d made her do, she’d make certain I remembered everything, and I would
help her make them pay. I didn’t recognize her, she was so possessed by pain
and fury. She laid her head on my chest. I wanted to tell her the weight was
oppressive, but I couldn’t form the words. The lengths of her hair were
drowning me. Her voice, the helicopter rotors, and the fading light merged into
a gray tumult, an incoherence.

* * * *

“Jack...”

...Jack...

A
jolt, as of electricity, to the back of my neck.

Jack
... Jack Lamb...

My
eyelids fluttered open.

A
gray ocean surrounded me, picked out by vague shapes.

Jack
Lamb ... Jack...

Another
jolt, more intense than the first. I tried to move, but I was very weak and I
succeeded only in turning my head. Someone passed across my field of vision,
accompanied by a perfumey scent. Wanting to catch their notice, I made a
scratchy noise in my throat. The effort caused me to pass out.

Jack...

“Jack?
Are you awake?” A woman’s voice.