Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

  “Fuck this,” said Gentry and heaved himself backward, pulling the driver out of the car with him. He had transferred his right hand to the man’s collar and after checking that the automatic was nearby, half under the car, he flung the driver to the pavement eight feet away. By the time the other man had scrambled to his feet, Gentry had drawn the heavy Ruger Blackhawk his uncle had given him when he retired. The weapon felt solid in his hand.

  “Hold it right there. Don’t move a muscle,” ordered Gentry. A dozen or so people had emerged from businesses and storefronts to gawk. Gentry made sure that they were out of range and that only a brick wall stood behind the driver. He realized with a sickening lurch that he was preparing to shoot the poor son of a bitch. Gentry had never fired a weapon at a human being before. Instead of leveling the revolver with both hands as he’d been trained, feet braced far apart, Gentry stood upright, elbow cocked, muzzle pointed skyward. The rain was a gentle mist on the sheriff’s florid face. “Fight’s over,” he panted. “Just relax a minute, fella. Let’s talk about this.”

  The driver’s hand came out of his pocket with a knife. The blade flicked out with an audible click. The man went into a half crouch, balancing lightly, the fingers of his other hand splayed wide. The sheriff was sorry to see that he held the knife correctly, dangerously, thumb flat over the hilt atop the blade. Already the five-inch steel was swinging in short, fluid arcs. Gentry kicked the automatic pistol farther under the Plymouth and took three steps back.

  “Come on now, fella,” said Gentry. “Don’t do anything stupid. Put it down.” He did not underestimate the speed with which the man could cover the fifteen feet separating them. Nor did Gentry doubt that a thrown knife could be as deadly as a bullet at that range. But he also remembered the holes that Blackhawk left in the black target paper at forty paces. He did not want to think about what the .357 slugs would do to human tissue at fifteen feet.

  “Put it down,” said Gentry. His voice was a smooth monotone, holding no threat, allowing no argument. “Let’s just stop a minute and talk about this.” The other man had not spoken or made a sound other than grunts since Gentry had approached the Plymouth. Now a strange whistle, like steam from a cooling kettle, came from between his clenched teeth. He began to raise the knife vertically.

  “Freeze!” Gentry leveled the pistol, one handed, sighting down the barrel at the center of the man’s thin tie. If the blade rose to full throwing height, Gentry would have to fire. His finger tension on the trigger was almost strong enough to lift the hammer.

  Gentry saw something then that made his thudding heart lock in painful paralysis. The man’s face seemed to be quivering, not shaking but flowing like an ill-fitted rubber mask sliding over the more solid features beneath it. The eyes had widened, as if in surprise or horror, and now they flicked back and forth like small animals in panic. For just an instant Gentry saw a different personality emerge in that thin face, there was a look of total terror and confusion visible in those captive eyes, and then the muscles of the face and neck went rigid, as if the mask had been pulled down more tightly. The blade continued to rise until it was directly under the man’s chin, high enough to be thrown accurately now.

  “Hey!” shouted Gentry. He relaxed the tension on the trigger.

  The driver inserted the blade into his own throat. He did not stab or lunge or slash, he inserted the five inches of steel the way a surgeon would make an initial incision or the way one would carefully pierce a water-melon for carving. Then, with deliberate strength and slowness, he pulled the blade from left to right under the width of his jawline.

  “Oh, Jesus,” whispered Gentry. Someone in the crowd screamed. Blood flowed down the man’s white shirtfront as if a balloon filled with red paint had burst. The man tugged the knife free and remained standing for an incredible ten or twelve seconds, legs apart, body rigid, expressionless, a cascade of blood drenching his torso and beginning to drip audibly on the wet sidewalk. Then he collapsed on his back, legs spasming.

  “Stay the hell back!” Gentry shouted at the bystanders and ran forward. With his heavy boot he pinned the man’s right wrist and flicked the knife free with his baton. The driver’s head had arched back and the red slash on his throat gaped open like an obscene shark’s grin. Gentry could see torn cartilage and the ragged ends of gray fibers before the blood bubbled up and out again. The man’s chest began to heave up and down as his lungs filled.

  Gentry ran to the cruiser and put in a call for an ambulance. Then he shouted the crowd back again and poked under the Plymouth with his nightstick to retrieve the automatic. It was a 9mm Browning with some sort of double-row clip which made it heavy as hell. He found the safety catch, clicked it up, stuck the gun in his belt, and went to kneel by the dying man.

  The driver had rolled on his right side with his knees curled up, arms pulled up tight, fists clenched. The blood filled a four-foot-wide pool now and more pulsed out with each slow heartbeat. Gentry kneeled in the blood and tried to close the wound with his bare hands, but the cut was too wide and ragged. His shirt was soaked in five seconds. The man’s eyes had taken on a fixed, glazed look which Gentry had seen on the face of too many corpses.

  The ragged breathing and bubbling ceased just as the siren of the approaching ambulance became audible in the distance.

  Gentry moved back, dropped to both knees, and wiped his hands against his thighs. Somehow the driver’s billfold had been kicked out onto the pavement during the scuffle, and Gentry lifted it away from the advancing rivulet of blood. Ignoring proper procedure, he flipped it open, quickly going through the plastic inserts and compartments. In the wallet were a little over $900 in cash, a small, black and white photograph of Sheriff Bobby Joe Gentry, and nothing else. Nothing. No driver’s license, credit cards, family snapshots, social security card, business cards, old receipts— nothing.

  “Somebody tell me what’s going on here,” whispered Gentry. The rain had stopped. The driver’s body lay peacefully nearby. The thin face was so white it looked like wax. Gentry shook his head and looked up blindly at the straining crowd and the approaching police and paramedics. “Would somebody tell me what’s going on here?” he shouted.

  No one answered him.

  EIGHT

  Bayerisch-Eisenstein

  Thursday, Dec. 18, 1980

  Tony Harod and Maria Chen drove northeast from Munich, past Deggendorf and Regen, deep into the West German forest and mountain country near the Czech border. Harod drove the rented BMW hard, shifting down at high rpm to take the rain-slicked curves in controlled slides, accelerating quickly to one hundred twenty kilometers per hour on the straight stretches. Even this concentration and activity was not enough to drive the tension of the long flight out of his body. He had tried to sleep during the interminable crossing, but he had been aware each second that he was sealed into a fragile, pressurized tube suspended thousands of feet above the cold Atlantic. Harod shivered, turned the BMW’s heater up, and passed two more cars. Now there was snow carpeting the fields and lying piled up by the roadside as they climbed into hillier countryside.

  Two hours earlier, as they left Munich on the crowded autobahn, Maria had studied her Shell road map and said, “Oh, Dachau is just a few miles from here.”

  “So?” said Harod. “So that is where one of those camps was,” she said. “Where they sent the Jews during the war.”

  “So what?” said Harod. “That’s fucking ancient history.”

  “Not so ancient,” said Maria Chen.

  Harod took an exit marked 92 and traded one overcrowded autobahn for another. He maneuvered the BMW into the left lane and held the speedometer at 100 kph. “When were you born?” he demanded.

  “Nineteen-forty-eight,” said Maria Chen. “Anything that happened before you were born isn’t worth thinking about,” said Harod. “It’s ancient fucking history.”

  Maria Chen fell silent and stared out at the cold ribbon of the Isar River. The late afternoon light was draining out of
a gray sky.

  Harod glanced at his secretary and remembered the first time he had seen her. It had been four years earlier, in the summer of 1976, and Harod had been in Hong Kong to see the Foy Brothers on business from Willi about bankrolling one of his mindless kung fu movies. Harod had been glad to be out of the States at the height of the Bicentennial hysteria. The younger Foy had taken Harod out for an evening on the town in Kowloon.

  It had been some time before Harod had realized that the expensive bar and nightclub they were patronizing on the eighth floor of a Kowloon high-rise was actually a whore house, and that the beautiful, sophisticated women whose company they had been enjoying were whores.

  Harod had lost interest then and would have left immediately if he had not noticed the beautiful Eurasian woman sitting alone at the bar, her eyes registering a depth of indifference that could not be feigned. When he asked Two-Bite Foy about her, the large Asian grinned and said, “Ah, very interesting. Very sad story. Her mother was an American missionary, her father a teacher on the Mainland. Mother died shortly after they come to Hong Kong. Father dies too. Maria Chen stay here and be very famous model, very high priced.”

  “A model?” said Harod. “What’s she doing here?”

  Foy shrugged and grinned, showing his gold tooth. “She make much money, but she need much more. Very expensive tastes. She wants to go to America— she is American citizen— but cannot return because of expensive tastes.”

  Harod nodded. “Cocaine?”

  “Heroin,” said Foy and smiled. “You like to meet?”

  Harod liked to meet. After the introductions, when they were alone at the bar, Maria Chen said, “I know about you. You make a career out of bad movies and worse manners.”

  Harod nodded agreement. “And I know about you,” he said. “You’re a heroin addict and a Hong Kong whore.”

  He saw the slap coming and reached out with his mind to stop her. And failed. The sound of the blow caused people to stop in mid-conversation and stare. When the background noise rose again, Harod removed his handkerchief and dabbed at his mouth. Her ring had cut his lip.

  Harod had encountered Neutrals before— people on whom the Ability had no power whatsoever. But rarely. Very rarely. And never in a situation where he had not known about it in time to avoid pain. “All right,” he said, “the introductions are over. Now I have a business proposition for you.”

  “Nothing you have to offer would be of any interest to me,” said Maria Chen. There was no doubt of the sincerity of her statement. But she remained seated at the bar.

  Harod nodded. He was thinking rapidly, remembering the concern he had felt for months now. Working with Willi scared him. The old man used his Ability rarely, but when he did there was no doubt that his powers were far greater than Harod’s. Even if Harod spent months or years carefully conditioning an assistant, there was little doubt that Willi would be able to turn such a catspaw in a second. Harod had felt a rising anxiety since that goddamned Island Club had induced him to get close to the murderous old man. If Willi found out, he would use what ever instrument there was to . . .

  “I’ll give you a job in the States,” said Harod. “Personal secretary to me and executive secretary in the production company I represent.”

  Maria Chen looked at him coolly. There was no interest in the beautiful brown eyes.

  “Fifty thousand American dollars a year,” he said, “plus benefits.”

  She did not blink. “I make more than that here in Hong Kong,” she said. “Why should I trade my modeling career for a lower-paying secretarial job?” The emphasis she put on “secretarial” left no doubt as to the contempt she felt for the offer.

  “The benefits,” said Harod. When Maria Chen said nothing, Harod went on. “A constant supply of . . . what you require,” he said softly. “And you will never need to be involved in the purchasing part of the process again.”

  Maria Chen blinked then. The self-assurance slipped from her like a torn-away veil. She looked down at her hands.

  “Think about it,” said Harod. “I’ll be at the Victoria and Albert Hotel until Tuesday morning.”

  She did not look up when Harod left the nightclub. On Tuesday morning he was preparing to leave, the porter had already carried his bags down, and he was taking one last look at himself in the mirror, buttoning the front of his Banana Republic safari travel jacket, when Maria Chen appeared in the doorway.

  “What are my duties besides personal secretary?” she said.

  Harod turned slowly, resisted the impulse to smile, and shrugged. “What ever else I specify,” he said. He did smile. “But not what you’re thinking. I have no use for whores.”

  “There will be a condition,” said Maria Chen.

  Harod stared and listened. “Sometime in the next year I want to . . . stop,” she said and sweat appeared on the smooth skin of her forehead. “To go . . . how do you Americans say it? To go cold turkey. And when I specify the time, you will . . . make arrangements.”

  Harod thought for a minute. He was not sure it would serve his purposes if Maria Chen escaped her addiction, but he doubted if she would ever really ask for that to happen. If she did, he would deal with it then. In the meantime, he would have the ser vices of a beautiful and intelligent assistant whom Willi could not touch. “Agreed,” he said. “Let’s go see about making arrangements for your visa.”

  “There is no need,” said Maria Chen and stood aside to let him walk ahead of her to the elevator. “All the arrangements have been taken care of.”

  Thirty kilometers beyond Deggendorf they approached Regen, a medieval city in the shadow of rocky crags. As they wound down a mountain road toward the outskirts, Maria Chen pointed to where the headlights had illuminated an oval board planted upright under the trees near the roadside. “Have you noticed those along the way?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” said Harod and shifted down to take a hairpin turn. “The guidebook says that they were used to carry local villagers to funerals,” she said. “Each board has the deceased’s name on it and a request for prayer.”

  “Cute,” said Harod. The road passed through a town. Harod glimpsed streetlights glowing through the winter gloom, wet cobblestones on side streets, and a dark structure hulking above the town on a forested ridge.

  “That castle once belonged to Count Hund,” read Maria Chen. “He ordered his wife buried alive after she drowned their baby in the Regen River.”

  Harod said nothing. “Isn’t that a curious bit of local history?” said Maria Chen.

  Harod turned left as he shifted down to follow Highway 11 up into the forested mountain country. Snow was visible in the twin beams of their headlights. Harod reached across to take the guidebook away from Maria Chen and to switch off her map light. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Shut the fuck up.”

  They arrived at their small hotel in Bayerisch-Eisenstein after nine P.M.,

  but their rooms were waiting and dinner was still being served in a dining room barely large enough for five tables. A huge fireplace warmed the room and provided most of the light. They ate in silence.

  Bayerisch-Eisenstein had seemed small and empty to Harod from the few glimpses he had caught before they found the hotel. A single road, a few Baravian-looking old buildings huddled in a narrow valley between dark hills; the place reminded him of some lost colony in the Catskills. A sign on the outskirts of town had told them that they were only a few kilometers from the Czech border.

  When they returned to their adjoining rooms on the third floor, Harod said, “I’m going to go down and check out the sauna. You get the stuff ready for tomorrow.”

  The hotel had twenty rooms, most of them taken by cross-country skiers who had come to explore the trails on and near the Grosse Arber, the fourteen-hundred-meter mountain a few miles to the north. Several couples sat in the small common room on the first floor, drinking beer or hot chocolate and laughing in that hearty German tone that always sounded strained to Harod’s ear.

&nbs
p; The sauna was in the basement and was little more than a white cedar box with ledges. Harod set the temperature up, removed his clothes in the tiny dressing room outside, and stepped into the heated interior, wearing only a towel. He smiled at the small sign in English and German on the door: GUESTS PLEASE BE ADVISED, APPAREL IS OPTIONAL IN SAUNA. Obviously there had been American tourists in the past who had been surprised by the German indifference to nudity in such situations.

  He was almost asleep when the two girls entered. They were young—no more than nineteen— and German, and they giggled as they came in. They did not stop when they saw Harod. “Guten Abend,” said the taller of the two blondes. They left their towels wrapped around them. Harod also wore a towel; he did not speak as he peered at the girls from under heavy-lidded eyes.

  Harod remembered the month almost three years earlier when Maria Chen had announced that it was time for him to help her go cold turkey.

  “Why should I?” he had said. “Because you promised,” she had responded.

  Harod had stared at her then and thought of the months of sexual tension, her coolest rejection of his slightest overtures, and of the night he had gone quietly to her room and opened the door. Although it was after two A.M., she had been sitting up in bed reading. As he stood in the doorway, she had calmly set down her book, removed a .38 caliber revolver from her nightstand drawer, rested it comfortably on her lap, and said, “Yes, what is it, Tony?” He had shaken his head and left.