Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

  A dilemma.

  In the end, I had Vincent keep the boy there while I sent Anne to join them. I was not comfortable with staying alone— even in Grumblethorpe— but I had little choice. I did not want to bring the boy back to either house while there was a chance of him or Vincent being seen.

  Anne drove the DeSoto and parked it down the street, taking care to lock the car. It was difficult for her to go through the basement window so I had Vincent drag the heavyset boy downstairs and the two broke the lock on a side door. It was quite dark in the first-floor room when Anne began asking questions.

  “Where did the photograph come from?”

  The boy’s eyes widened further and he licked his lips. “Wha’ photograph?”

  Vincent struck the boy, low, very hard. The Negro gasped, struggled. Vincent brought the blade up against a raw throat.

  “The photograph of the elderly woman. It was on one of the boys who died Saturday,” Anne said softly. Because of the conditioning, it was not difficult to Use her while restraining Vincent.

  “You mean the Voodoo Lady,” gasped the boy. “But you ain’t her!” Anne smiled when I did. “Who is the Voodoo Lady?”

  The boy tried to swallow. His expression was comical. “She be the lady who make the honky mo . . . who make this dude do what he does. That is what the woman say.”

  “What woman is that?”

  “The one that talks funny.”

  “How is it that she speaks funny?”

  “You know,” the boy was panting as if he had run a race, “like the fat honky pig. Like they from down south somewhere.”

  “And she brought the photograph? Or did the . . . overweight police officer?”

  “She did. Day before yesterday. She be lookin’ for the Voodoo Lady. Marvin saw the picture, he remember right away. Now we all looking.”

  “For the woman in the photograph. The . . . Voodoo Lady.”

  “Yeah.” The boy began to twist away. Vincent struck him on the side of the head with the heel of his hand, rolled him over, slammed him against the wall twice, and lifted him by his torn shirtfront. The knife blade was an inch from the Negro’s eye.

  “We’re going to talk again,” Anne said softly. “You’re going to tell me everything I would like to know.”

  The boy did as he was told.

  In the end I sent Vincent out of the room before Using the boy. There was no difficulty. I could not approximate the youth’s loose-jointed, exaggerated style of walking, but there was no reason to do that. Of more concern were his speech patterns— tone, vocabulary, syntax. I had him speak to Anne for over an hour before I began to Use him directly. There was no real resistance. At first the voice and phrasing came only with difficulty, but by relaxing, allowing some of the boy’s subconscious flair for dialect to come through, I was able to speak through him in a way I hoped would be believable.

  Anne drove the two back to the vicinity of Grumblethorpe where she dropped Vincent and the boy, Louis, off on the corner. Vincent disappeared for a few minutes and then returned with cartridges for the revolver. I sent Louis back to their Community House while Vincent came in through the tunnel and Anne returned the car to the garage behind her house on Queen Lane.

  The charade with the gang members went very well. Once or twice I felt my control slipping for a split second but concealed it by having Louis simulate problems with his throat. I recognized the gang leader— Marvin—at once. It had been his blue eyes that stared at me so pitilessly on Christmas Eve as I lay in the dog feces. I looked forward to settling accounts with this boy.

  In the middle of the discussion, just when I was beginning to feel secure, a young black woman in the back of the crowd said, “You recognized her from my photo?” and I almost lost control of Louis. Her voice was free of the flat, ugly northern dialect. It reminded me of home. Next to her, wrapped in an absurd blanket, was a white man whose face seemed very familiar to me. It took me a minute to realize that he also must be from Charleston. It seemed to me that I had seen his photograph in one of Mrs. Hodges’s evening papers, years before . . . Something about an election.

  “. . . Sounds too easy,” Marvin was saying. “What about the pigs?”

  He meant police. I knew from interrogating Louis that there were plainclothes officers in the neighborhood. He had no more idea why they were there than I did, although I assumed that the elimination of five people, even worthless gang members, would bring some official reaction. But his use of the ugly vernacular pigs for police sparked the connection. The red-faced white man was a Charleston police officer— the sheriff if I remembered correctly. I had read an article about him some years ago. “Hey, man,” I had Louis say to Marvin, “Setch say bring you right away. You want to see them or not?”

  Although the presence of these two Charleston people and the knowledge that there were numerous plainclothes police in the area created deep anxiety in me, the rush of concern was counterbalanced by a thrill approaching true exhilaration. This was exciting. I felt younger each hour this game was played.

  The timing was very tricky. Vincent set off the gasoline bombs in the abandoned vehicles just when Louis led the gang leader, the sheriff whose name I could not remember, and six others onto the street near the apartment building. I stayed with Vincent then as he ran around behind the Community House, eliminated the single gang member remaining on the back porch, and went upstairs with his awkward scythe.

  I had hoped the girl would go with Louis and the others. It would have been helpful, but I learned long ago to deal with reality as it was, not as I wished it to be. But I wanted the girl alive.

  There was a brief scuffle on the second floor of the Community House. Just when Louis needed my attention, I found myself working to restrain Vincent from being too rough. Because of that temporary awkwardness, the girl escaped into the streets behind the house. I let Vincent follow in pursuit and returned my attention to where Louis stood swaying on the curb near the apartment building.

  “What the fuck the matter, man?” The gang leader’s name was Marvin something.

  “Nothing, man,” I had Louis say. “Throat hurts.”

  “You sure they in there?” the one called Leroy said. “I don’t hear nothing.”

  “They in back,” I had Louis say. The white sheriff stood nearby in the light from the only working street lamp on the block. As far as I could tell, he was unarmed except for a camera much like the one Mr. Hodges used to drag out at every opportunity. Two trains roared by, out of sight in their cement canyon.

  “The side door’s open,” Louis said. “Come on, I’ll show you.” He had unzipped his jacket moments earlier. Under the sweater and rough wool shirt, I could distantly feel the cold steel of the cabdriver’s revolver. Vincent had reloaded it in the dark alley earlier.

  Marvin hesitated. “No,” he said. “Leroy and Jackson and him and me will go.” He jerked a thumb at the sheriff. “Louis, you stay here with Cal and Trout and G. R. and G. B.”

  I had Louis shrug. The sheriff gave me a long look before he turned and followed Marvin and the other two around to the side door. “They on the third floor, man!” I had Louis call after them. “In the back!”

  They disappeared into the snowy darkness. I did not have much time. Part of my consciousness was aware of the warm glow of the heater and the staring eyes of the mannequin in the nursery, part of me ran with Vincent through the darkened alleys, heard the labored panting of our tired quarry ahead, while part of my attention had to be with Louis as the one called Calvin shifted from foot to foot and said, “Shit, it’s cold. You got something to smoke, man?”

  “Yeah,” I had Louis say, “I got something good here.” He reached under his shirt, pulled the pistol free, and shot Calvin in the stomach from two feet away. The tall boy did not go down. He staggered backward, put his hand to the hole in his coat front, and said, “Fuck, man.” The twins took one look and ran back toward Queen Lane. The twenty-year-old named Trout tugged a long-barreled revolver fro
m under his coat. Louis swiveled, leveled the pistol, and shot Trout in the left eye. There was no way to muffle the noise.

  Calvin had gone down to his knees in the street, holding his stomach with both hands and looking irritated. He grabbed at Louis’s leg when I tried to walk by. “Hey, Jesus fuck, man, why’d you do that?”

  There were three sharp, flat sounds from the direction the twins had run toward parked cars on Queen Lane and something hit Louis in the upper part of his left arm. I blocked the pain for both of us, but felt the numbness there. He raised the pistol and emptied it in the direction from which the shots had come. Someone screamed and there was another shot, but no impact.

  I had Louis drop the revolver and rip open Calvin’s coat, pulling the shotgun free. He stepped over and pried the pistol out of Trout’s clenched hand. Three more shots slapped from the direction of Queen Lane and something struck Calvin with the sound of a hammer hitting a side of beef. Incredibly, the tall boy still clung to Louis’s leg. “Oh, fuck, why, man?” he kept repeating softly. Louis shoved him away, slid the target pistol in his coat pocket, hefted the shortened shotgun, and ran for the side of the apartment building. There were no more shots from the direction of Queen Lane.

  Vincent had cornered the girl in a burned-out row house not far from Germantown Avenue. He stood just inside the doorway and listened to her stumble around amid the charred timbers and tumbled stairways in the rear of the structure. The windows were boarded. As far as we knew, there was no exit except for the single doorway. I used the full force of my will to make Vincent move just inside the door and to squat in the darkness there, listening, sniffing the air, smelling the faint, sweet scent of the woman’s fear and moving the scythe blade gently back and forth.

  Louis stepped through the side door of the apartment building, moving quickly so as not to silhouette himself against the lighter doorway. Those inside must have heard the shots. Or found the bodies on the third floor.

  There were no shots as Louis moved quickly down the hall. He stopped outside the first room and peered in. There was no light. Something moved down the hall in the direction of the main stairway and Louis fired the shotgun, the recoil flinging his right arm up. He braced the short stock against his thigh to pump another shell into the chamber and then squatted, watching for shadows.

  For a second I had the sense-impression overlay of the two young men, Vincent and Louis, more than a mile apart, squatting in almost identical positions, ears straining to hear the slightest sound. Then there was a flash and an echoing roar, plaster pelted Louis’s cheeks, and Vincent and I flinched reflexively even as I had Louis up and running toward the flash, firing, pausing to pump in another shell, running again.

  There was the sound of footsteps on the littered stairs. Someone shouted from the second floor.

  Louis squatted at the base of the stairs while I thought it out. Louis was eminently expendable. Already his reflexes had been dulled by the shock of the small bullet in his left upper arm. I would love to Use one of the others in the building, but that was too much to ask; already I was straining to keep Anne alert on the first floor of Grumblethorpe, hold Vincent in check in the burned-out row house, and keep Louis functioning. I wanted the blue-eyed Negro. I wanted him very badly. I also wanted to see the sheriff again, to get as close as possible. I had questions to ask of him, and possible uses for him after I received the answers.

  A large handgun flashed from the next landing and a piece of banister splintered away. Louis crouched lower. There were four of them. Marvin, who had loaded a heavy revolver and laughed when the sheriff had asked for it back in the Community House. Leroy, the bearded one, who had been carrying a shortened shotgun identical to the one Louis now held. The sheriff, who had no weapon visible. And Jackson, the older Negro, who had been carrying a blue backpack. Also, G. B. and G. R., the young twins, might at that minute be returning with their cheap little pistols.

  Louis ran up the stairs, stumbling once, missed a step and fell forward onto the second-floor landing. A shotgun blasted from fifteen feet away.

  Something ripped at Louis’s scalp and the side of his face. I blocked the pain but used the back of his hand to touch his cheek and left ear. The left ear was gone. Louis extended the shotgun straight-armed and fired in the direction of the flash.

  “God damn it,” shouted a black voice I thought was Leroy’s.

  A handgun roared from the opposite direction and a bullet pierced Louis’s calf and struck a railing slat. I had him run in the direction of the handgun flash, pumping the shotgun by bracing it against his chest. Someone ran down the dark hallway ahead of him and then created a racket slipping and falling. Louis stopped, found a lighter shadow against the dark background, raised the shotgun. The figure rolled into a black rectangle of a doorway just as Louis fired. The muzzle flash showed the one named Marvin rolling out of sight even as the doorway splintered.

  Louis pumped, extended the shotgun around the corner, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing. He pumped and fired again. Nothing. I had him throw the useless weapon even as the handgun flashed again and something struck Louis hard on the left collarbone, spinning him around. He struck a wall and slid to the floor, pulling out the long-barreled pistol as he fell. There was another shot, high, striking the wall three feet above Louis’s head. I helped him aim carefully, very carefully, precisely where the muzzle flash had been.

  The pistol did not fire. Louis fumbled for a safety catch, found a lever, pushed it down. He fired twice toward the corner and then rolled to his left over his dead arm, struggling to his feet.

  Louis ran into someone, felt the breath go out of himself and heard it go out of the other man even as the two crashed into the corner. I knew from the size of the figure that it was the sheriff. I raised the pistol until it touched his chest.

  Light exploded into our eyes. Louis backed away and I had the frozen image of the sheriff standing there, triggering the electronic flash on the camera at his side. There was a second flash, a third; Louis tried to blink away blue retinal echoes, and I turned him toward the real threat, pistol extended, but too late; even as we turned and squinted through blue haze the gang leader was crouching with the heavy revolver braced in both hands, squeezing, squeezing.

  I felt no pain but sensed the impact as the first bullet caught Louis in the groin and the second one struck his chest with the sound of splintering ribs. I would have Used him still if the third bullet had not struck him in the face.

  There was a loud rushing noise and I lost the contact. As many times as I have experienced the death of someone I was Using, it remains an unsettling experience, like being cut off in mid-conversation on the telephone.

  I rested a moment, sensing only the hiss of the heater, the scabbed face of the life-size doll, and the now-audible whispering of the nursery walls. “Melanie,” they called. “Melanie, there is danger. Listen to us.”

  I listened even as I returned my attention to Vincent.

  The noises in the back of the charcoal-smelling row house had all but stopped. The girl had nowhere to go.

  I felt the adrenaline surge through Vincent’s powerful body as he stood, hefted the balanced deadliness of the scythe, and moved surely and silently toward her through the darkness.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Germantown

  Monday, Dec. 29, 1980

  They operated on Saul Laski on Monday afternoon. He was unconscious about twenty minutes and woozy for another hour. When he was aware of his surroundings— the same small cell he had been in since Sunday morning— he peeled back the dressings and inspected the incision.

  They had cut into the fleshy part of the inside of his lower left arm, about three inches above the faded tattoo of his camp number. The surgery had been competently carried out, the stitches carefully done. Despite the postoperative soreness and swelling, Saul could make out a lump that had not been there before. They had inserted something about the size of a thick quarter beneath the large muscle of his forearm. Saul re
placed the dressings and lay back to think.

  He had had much time to think. It had been a surprise when they had not released him or used him for some purpose on Sunday morning. He was certain that they had brought him to Philadelphia for a reason.

  The helicopter had landed at a remote section of a large airport, and Saul had been blindfolded and transferred to a limousine. From the stops and starts and muffled street sounds, he was sure that they had driven through busy parts of the city. Once he heard the hum of bridge metal under tires.

  They had bumped across a rough area before stopping. If it had not been for city sounds— a distant siren, shouts, the rush of a commuter train moving up to speed—Saul would have thought they were out in the country. Not the country then, but an open, muddy, rutted area in the middle of a city. An empty lot? Construction site? Park land? He had gone up three steps before being led through a door, right down a narrow corridor, right again. He had bumped the wall twice and something about the feel of it and the echoes in the narrow room made him believe he was in a trailer or mobile home.

  The cell was less sturdy and impressive than the one in Washington. There was a cot, a chemical toilet, a small ventilator grill through which came muted voices, occasional laughter. Saul would have killed for a book. It was odd how the human organism adapted to almost any condition, but he could never get used to going entire days without reading. He remembered as a boy in the Lodz ghetto how his father had taken it upon himself to list available books and set up a sort of lending library. Sometimes those who were being shipped to the camps brought the books with them and Saul’s father scratched the title off the list with a sigh, but usually the tired men and sad-eyed women returned them religiously, sometimes with a bookmark still in place. “You will finish it when you return,” Saul’s father would say and the people would nod.